"Housework" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mother was like that. She died when I was thirteen. You see—there I was, so queerly fixed. I had to live with Mr. Pynche—there was no other home for me anywhere. And he kind of resented it. He had enough money not to need me for work—a sister of his did the housework better than I could—and yet he was poor enough to hate having to feed me and pay for my clothes. I was always feeling in the way, and a burden. There was ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... expense of extending the present buildings. The girls are also employed in making hoop skirts, in making clothes for themselves and the boys, in all sorts of repairing, in washing linen, and in general housework. The girls are generally less tractable than the boys; perhaps this is accounted for by their being older, some of them being as much as five or six and twenty. The boys average about 13 or 14, the girls 17 or 18 years ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... she do? To stay and be a burden for her friends to support was worse than anything. That, at least, she was resolved to do no longer. If she were only strong enough, she would go where nobody knew her and work at housework, or in a factory, or anywhere. Oh, if she only knew enough to teach school! She should like that. It would be so pleasant to have the children love her, and bring her flowers to put upon her desk! But, oh, dear! she didn't know enough, she feared. For all that she had graduated at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... And she did. "I'll tell you why I'm not mending' stockings, and why Susan has had to leave off mending stockings in order to look after me. Susan and I worked in a mill when she was ten and I was eleven. We were 'tenters.' We used to get up at four or five in the morning and help with the housework, and then put on our clogs and shawls and be at the mill at six. We worked till twelve, and then in the afternoon we went to school. The next day we went to school in the morning and to the mill in the afternoon. When we were thirteen we left school altogether, and worked twelve hours ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... their door, To zee em in their pleace, A-doen housework up avore Their smilen mother's feace; You'd cry—"Why if a man would wive An' thrive, 'ithout a dower, Then let en look en out a wife ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... time there were seven brothers, who were orphans, and had no sister. Therefore they were obliged to do all their own housework. This they did not like at all; so after much deliberation they decided to get married. There were, unfortunately, no young girls to be found in the place where they lived; but the elder brothers agreed to go out into the world and seek for brides, promising to bring back ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... her illness, and her former shyness and aversion to seeing people were rapidly leaving her. She no longer lay in bed until noon, but was up with the rest of the family, insisting on doing her share in the housework, and proving a very apt pupil in learning that useful and wrongly despised art; when callers came she always dropped in to chat with them a little while, and even the mail-carrier of the "rural delivery, route number two," the ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... make competition any less; perhaps competition would disappear if everybody did earn his own living and no more. I wonder, by-the-way, if the girls, the young women, of the class we seem to be discussing ever do earn as much as would pay the wages of the servants who are hired to do the housework in their places?" ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and almost of one woman. Pray don't despise him when I tell you that he kneaded the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that he did most of the family washing—that is, he did the rubbing, the wringing, the lifting, the hanging out—and once a week he scrubbed. When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... spending but little, until the thrifty sempstress was counted well to do, and held in esteem according. Sometimes, when she got weary, and thought a change of labor would do her good, she would engage with some lucky dame to help do housework for a month or two. She was a famous hand at pickling, preserving, and making all manner of toothsome knick-knacks and dainties. Nor was she deficient in the pleasure walks of the culinary art. Betsey Pratt, the tavernkeeper's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... capital too quickly. They were too young, too, to carry out such a thing, Nan did not add "and too pretty," though she colored and hesitated here. Their mother could not help them; she was not strong enough for housework or cooking. She thought that ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... The housework is speeded up with such conveniences as hot and cold water in kitchen and bathroom, and steam heat. The kitchen is an efficient little workshop lined by cupboards and shelves. Mrs. Tupper can sit before her kitchen cabinet and prepare a meal without moving about for ingredients ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... of her; in my great affliction she Was sich a comfert to us, and so kind and neighberly,— She'd come, and leave her housework, fer to he'p out little Jane, And talk of her own mother 'at she'd never see again— Maybe sometimes cry together—though, fer the most part she Would have the child so riconciled and happy-like 'at we Felt lonesomer 'n ever ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... sorry home-coming for the new-made bride, daughter of the great Capello! There was not even a drudge to do the housework, which Bianca was compelled to share with her bucolic mother-in-law. It is even said that she was compelled to do laundry-work in order to keep the domestic purse supplied. Her husband had forfeited his meagre salary; she had equally sacrificed the fortune left to her by her mother. ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... think you would," said Esther. "You would soon get tired. But perhaps you don't like doing housework. ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... found other more productive fields of industry, and the women, under the influence of the prevailing theory of life, have resolved to accept any employment at any wages sooner than do other people's housework. The result has been a demand for trained servants which the whole European continent could not supply if it would, and which has proved so intense that it has drawn the peasantry out of the fields en ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the thing grew, and became strange and unearthly, almost a discomfort. Gwen went back into the kitchen, where she found Ruth, affecting some housework but without much heart in it. She too was showing the effects of the night and day just passed, her heavy eyelids fighting with their weight, not successfully; her restless hands protesting against yawns; trying to curb ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... question. Every morning at sunrise she put on her hat and went to the ancient church of San Crisogono, which is served by Trinitarian monks. Sometimes Madame Bernard went with her, but more often she was accompanied by the one woman-servant who cooked and did the housework. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... giving lessons in the use of the rapier, and in teaching German; and gladly accepted the offer to move out to Kilgowrie, where he was established in a cottage close to the house, where his wife aided in the housework. He became a companion of Fergus in his walks and rambles and, being an honest and pleasant fellow, the lad took to him; and after a few months their conversation, at first somewhat disjointed, became ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... funny not to have any housework to do in the morning," Ma Briskow confessed, as they left the Ajax. "A hotel would spoil me in ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... girls made up our minds that we would learn to be independent. We resolved to know how to do every sort of housework, so that we might assist our mothers whenever they needed us, and be ready for any ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... do all the housework for a family of seven besides making butter and taking care of the chickens. If help was short, I helped with the milking, too. I made all the clothes the men wore. A tailor would cut out their suits and then I would make them by hand. I made all their shirts too. You should have ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... most interesting treatises on cooking and housework that we have ever read. It contains much useful information to the general reader, and is one we would recommend ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... domesticity. She knew that, with her mother in the house, Florrie would never get to bed at half-past eight and very seldom at nine, and that she would never be free in the afternoons. She knew that if her mother would only consent to sit still and not interfere, the housework could be accomplished with half the labour that at present went to it. There were three women in the place, or at any rate, a woman, a young woman, and a girl—and in theory the main preoccupation ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... matron, and was supported by a staff of six or seven assistants and teachers. Over three thousand Refugees were received and aided here in the six months from February to July, 1865, and both children and adults were taught not only elementary studies but housework, cooking and laundry work; the women were paid moderate wages with which to clothe themselves and their children, and were taught some of the first lessons of a better civilization. In the superintendence of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... what sleep they could before dawn waked them to another day of toil. Thursday evening was set for the event. On Wednesday the Lusk girls coming in to discuss, found Judith with shining eyes and crimson cheeks, attacking the simple housework of the cabin. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... dollars apiece, so with my half of the rent—eighteen dollars—I'd have less than nothing left out of my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons. You see you'd not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but you'd be paying more of the ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... pupils of both sexes, representing a great variety of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. The pupils in both these institutions receive not only an elementary English education, but are also instructed in housework, agriculture, and useful mechanical pursuits. A similar school was established this year at Forest Grove, Oreg., for the education of Indian youth on the Pacific Coast. In addition to this, thirty-six Indian boys and girls were selected from the Eastern Cherokees and placed in boarding ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her regrets which were despairing, and distracted dreams. She thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... comes your housework. This is the juggernaut department which grinds many a woman to skin and bones—and her husband discards the remains! When it comes to housekeeping a woman has need of all the love, wisdom and power ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... it was usual to have all the preparations and the housework completed by early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and after an early tea in parlour and kitchen—the servants, clean and neat, piled up the Yule clogs in the rooms, getting the large ones well alight, and ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... those whose whole education had been hard labor. Therefore, the scholars and the cultivated would take their part also in the manual labor, working on the farm or cultivating nurseries of young trees, or they would even engage in the housework." ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... and more difficult to induce girls to learn or practice housework. For the average woman this is still necessary, and the more advanced schools have taken it up. For the girl whom neither the home nor the school has been able to reach, Scouting offers a most successful and attractive means of getting ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous
... cannot be added that for doing the same kind and amount of work women are paid men's wages. The census does not include the services of the mother and daughter among the paid vocations, though, as is well known, in many instances they do all the housework of the family. They get no wages, and therefore do not appear among the "useful classes." They are not earners, but savers of money. A money-saver is not a recognized factor, either in political economy or in the State census. The mother, daughter or wife is put down in its pages as "keeping ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... But I hate to say anything; his eyes get so tragic. He declares that as soon as the trails are passable he's going to have a woman to help me, that this sort of thing can't go on any longer. He imagines it's merely the monotony of housework that is making my nerves ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... solution of the "servant problem" will not be that every woman will do all her own housework, but that domestic work will become, on the one hand, very much simplified and, on the other, will be put on the same footing as teaching, nursing or secretarial work. That we are beginning to move in this direction is evidenced by the coming into existence of schools of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... led you on! me, as decent and nice a girl as there was in New Haven if I do do housework, and that's my wedding ring and you put it there, and mother's got the certificate locked up good and safe in her box with my dead baby sister's hair and the silver plate off ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... and all the neighbors, called her Sweetie, she was so good and so thoughtful for others, so sweet-tempered and kind. She did everything so gently that none of them could ever love her half as much as she deserved. Though only ten years old, and very small and pale, she did every bit of the housework, and kept the ugly old room and its faded furniture so neat, that it seemed almost home-like and pretty to them all. It was happiness enough for the little ones to get her first kiss when she came back from an errand, to sit by her at table, and, above ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... must have been. Just playing at cooking and housework, reading aloud to her while she drew—yes, she told me that. And the flowers and all her little trumpery odds and ends about. Awfully amusing it ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... another tale, but found little time to work on it, with school, sewing, and housework. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... Alice helped her mother with the housework. In the afternoons, after the midday dinner was cleared away, Mary Alice had a good deal of time on her hands. Sometimes she sewed—made new clothes or remade old ones; sometimes she read. Once in a while she took some fancy work and went ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning dressmaking. Look—" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... clearly shivering under her shawl. They eat meat twice a week, and in the afternoon Mary lit the sitting-room fire. In the morning she contented herself with the kitchen, where, as she cooked for many sick folk, and had only a girl of fourteen whom she was training to help her with the housework, she had generally ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... decided that he simply must have more help in the cooking and housework. He had instructed Mrs. Spaniel to send the washing to the steam-laundry, and spend her three days in the kitchen instead. A huge bundle had come back from the laundry, and he had paid the driver $15.98. With ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... is this half a herring and boiled bird-seed arrangement. George Harrison has a sister of eighteen who kindly comes in to do cooking and housework for us every day. She thinks us frightfully queer, and if we bought some herrings and bird-seed and asked her to cook them for us I have no doubt she would oblige, but, though she doesn't much care what we eat, there are a lot of things ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... name of Polly assisted about the housework. She was considered one of the family, and always ate at the same table, according to the kindly custom of those primitive times. She always called her mistress "Mammy," and served her until the day of her death; a period of forty years. The ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... herself a good housewife, took no pains to teach her only daughter the domestic arts. She only petted and coddled her and sent her out to play. But my mother was as ambitious about housework as about books. She coaxed the housemaid to let her mix the bread. She learned knitting from watching her playmates. She was healthy and active, quick at everything, and restless with unspent energy. Therefore she was quite willing, at the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... was a bountiful meal. The depot master employed a middle-aged woman who came in each day, cooked his meals and did the housework, returning to her own home at night. After Mr. Wingate had mowed a clean swath through ham and eggs, cornbread and coffee, and had reached the cooky and doughnut stage, he condescended to speak further ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... children, with the exception of Flamingus and Amarilly, in rapid succession came down with a mild form of the fever. Mrs. Jenkins and Amarilly divided the labors of cook and nurse, but the mainstay of the family was the Boarder. He aided in the housework, and as an entertainer of the sick he proved invaluable. He told stories, drew pictures, propounded riddles, whittled boats and animals, played "Beggar my Neighbor," and sang songs ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... write. Mr. Nation wrote out what he wanted this man to swear to, and the man signed it, for he could just write his name. This man was in Oklahoma at the time, My neighbors came of their own accord and testified to my having done my cooking and housework; frequently cooking meals and taking them to Mr. Nation, who was still in bed. Judge Gillette, the same man who was on the bench in my slander suit presided. Mr. Nation did not get his divorce because of my "extreme cruelty," but because I testified that I could not, nor would never ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... because she goes to the altar with her head full of book learning, her hands of no earthly use, save for the piano and brush; because she has no conception of the duties and responsibilities of a wife; because she hates housework, hates its everlasting routine and ever recurring duties; because she hates children and will adopt every means to evade motherhood; because she loves her ease, loves to have her will supreme, loves, oh how well, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... not mind it in the least. The year before I was most of the time on the river, rowing till I was as strong as a girl could be. I've had gymnasium work and fencing lessons and have been brought up to keep myself in perfect trim by my baths and exercise. What frail thing am I that a little housework should ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... stiffly starched, and made according to the durable and comfortable pattern of her school-days. "All in one piece," Miss Hitty was wont to say. "Then when I bend over, as folks that does housework has to bend over, occasionally, I don't come apart in the back. For my part, I never could see sense in wearing clothes that's held by a safety-pin in the back instead of good, firm cloth, and, moreover, a belt that either slides ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... mischief. Had the governing classes not forced those accomplishments on them in 1872—But there is no use in repining. What's done can't be undone. On the other hand, what must be done can't be left undone. Housework, for example. What concessions by the governing classes, what bribes, will be big enough hereafter to get ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... bad for both of us!" Jenny did not think so really; but she said it. She thought Emmy had the bread and butter pudding nature, and that she did not greatly care what she ate as long as it was not too fattening. Jenny thought of Emmy as born for housework and cooking—of stew and bread puddings. For herself she had dreamed a nobler destiny, a destiny of romance, of delicious unknown things, romantic and indescribably exciting. She was to have the adventures, because she needed them. Emmy didn't need them. It was all very well ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... when she had finished her housework and had sat down to sew, half a dozen Indians, male and female, suddenly bolted in and clamored for bread. She shook her head and told them she had none for them. When she came West she had brought yeast cakes which, by careful renewal, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... couldn't hardly keep from eatin' of her up. An' she behaved consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out 'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them secesh fellers'll ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... over, the young crops were up, and the Shaws had none. The mother was not strong, yet she did an immense amount of work. As she had been highly trained in sewing, she made the clothing for the entire family. The two older girls, Eleanor and Mary, did the housework and this left Anna and her brother to do the rough outdoor work. Together they accomplished this and many other tasks. They even made a set of furniture for ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... sick, and all their household goods found their way to the pawn-shop; then he died, and then they came to the "Ark." Their mother did washing out of doors, but at last she became queer in the head. She could not bear unhappiness, and neglected her housework, to run about seeking consolation from all sorts of religious sects. At last she was quite demented, and one day she disappeared. It was believed that she had drowned herself in the canal. "But ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Federal Government is offering her aids.[3] It is, however, true that the housemother in rural communities still feels many of the obligations of the ancient woman. The three-meal-a-day routine, the actual preparation of raw material of food for the table, the personal offices of housework, washing, ironing, mending, making, sweeping, dusting, cleaning, in all their varied details, keep her in active sympathy with the past. This fact furnishes the main reason why "Women's Columns" and "Magazines for Women" reach such large circulation ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... of the dozen or so of cottages that radiate from the big hotel. Most of the cottagers take dinner and supper at the hotel, being, like ourselves, in a servantless condition. Belle said she could get along perfectly well without Margaret, when she had Mary Mason to help her with the housework, and, indeed, there was not much to be done. The four bedrooms open into one central room that we call the sitting-room, but it is only in wet weather it justifies the name, for, as a rule, we sit in rockers or swing in hammocks on the broad veranda that runs round three sides of ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... housework conditions is largely in the hands of household employees. If a young woman is an excellent cook and a competent household manager, she can make practically her own conditions with women employers. If she prefers to live at home or in a room of her own outside the house ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... of the Dutch nation—a manual which teaches how to live honestly and in peace. He has a word for all—for boys as well as old men, for merchants as well as princes, for mistresses as well as for maids, for the rich as well as for the poor. He teaches how to spend, to save, to do housework, to govern a family, and to educate children. He is at the same time a friend, a father, a spiritual director, a master, an economist, a doctor, and a lawyer. He loves modest nature, the gardens, the meadows; he adores his wife, does his ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... patchwork, the shelves arrayed with willow-pattern plates, the floors and tables bright with scrubbing or pipeclay, and the very kettle polished like silver. It is the sign of a contented old age in country places, where there is little matter for gossip and no street sights. Housework becomes an art; and at evening, when the cottage interior shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the housewife folds her hands and contemplates her finished picture; the snow and the wind may do their worst, she has made herself a pleasant corner in the world. The city might ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reached her just after the birth of a little boy, and there were two other mouths to feed besides. Her savings went quickly enough, and she fell into dire poverty, for she had not yet recovered her strength, and could not do housework. During Passion Week she sold her bed to pay what she had borrowed and to feed the children. It was cold, she had not a copper, nor any possibility of earning anything. Then the rest went, too, and there was no way of getting food enough for the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the housework of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men of the creek. Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and hard-bitten, who had been buried so deeply inside the Circle that they did not know there was a Klondike ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... writings that her point of view softened. She was what they called in those days a "good housekeeper" and she kept it so well that Father had to move out for his working hours, first to the study, then two miles away. When it came to housework, Mother possessed the quality called inevitableness to an extraordinary degree. She had a way of fastening a cloth about her head, a sort of forerunner of the boudoir cap of to-day, a means of protecting her hair from any imaginary dust, and this became a symbol, a battle ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... outdoors all I want to, and I'm going up to Miss Evelina's and play with my kitten, and help you with the housework, or do anything else you want me to do, but—no more quilts," concluded the ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... in lighter domestic toils, not only without injuring her beauty, but with manifest advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the better in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of active housework daily; and the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an equal advantage to her moral development. The labors of modern, well-arranged houses are not in any sense severe; they are as gentle as any kind of exercise that can be devised, and they bring into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... went downstairs, nor after she went to bed at night, except by candlelight, and she could not, of course, burn candles. So Mrs. Perry had to be taken into the secret, and Huldah worked in comfort by the fire in the afternoons, after she had done her housework. ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... country, intent on extending my knowledge, and gaining my bread; how I was ready to turn my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong or degrading; how I would be a child's-nurse, or a lady's-maid, and would not refuse even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and, questioning her countenance, I almost thought the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... besides, I can't help it." She was winking hard again against two fresh tears. "I spoiled two cakes this afternoon. Elice tried to show me how to make them; and I burned my finger"—she held up a swaddled member for inspection—"horribly. I just can't do this housework, Harry, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Cai, and there was mischief in the glance. "I expect the ploughing has begun, and I won't detain either of you. . . . The business? We won't discuss it now. I have to wait here for Dinah, who is coming for company as soon as she's finished her housework. . . . To-morrow, then, if you have nothing better to ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Tom said. "Don't worry about that. In fact, the top technicians from three government agencies were doing the housework around here this weekend, Mr. Andrusco. They probably didn't get the building much cleaner—but they swept up a lot of other things. Yes, ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... Saturday, and there was no school. Bert had gone off coasting on his new bob, but Nan did not want to go, her mother having asked her to stay and help with the dusting. But now the little bit of housework was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... land of homes, finds the housewife essential to its future. Housework in woman is ever honorable. It ought to be her glory and her pride. Let us make it so more ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Well, one day I was reading, and Aunt Caroline happened to come in. She despised reading, and thought it was an utter waste of time, and that I ought to sew or knit all the time, since I could not help Mother with the housework. She was very practical herself, and a famous housekeeper. So she looked at me, and frowned, and said, 'Well, Pink, mooning away over a book as usual? Useless rubbish! yer ma'd ought to keep ye at work.' I didn't say anything; I never ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... to her all the splendours accumulated for the setting-up of their housekeeping, but had never invited her to an inspection. No human eye was to behold them till Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever been inside his cottage; he did his own housework, and he guarded his son's privilege so jealously that the small objects of domestic use he bought sometimes in the town were smuggled rapidly across the front garden under his canvas coat. Then, coming out, he would ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... awaiting me at Shrewsbury. I asked the little maid who answered my knock at Mr. Vetch's door for Mistress Pennyquick, and felt some astonishment that the door had not been opened by the good dame herself, for she had no maid when I left her, doing all the housework herself. The girl stared ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... with eyes dancing—it was to be an especial day—a fete—and the gods had smiled on her planning and given them perfect weather. Never such sunshine, such crystal air, such high-hung clouds! Breakfast over, they hurried about the miniature housework, and packed the kit for a long day's tramp. Then they started forth, the cat following, tail aloft. Beyond a dim peak, where the clove opens southward, by the side of a tiny lake they lunched and took their noonday rest. She watched the smoke curl up from his pipe where he ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... stools, knitted stockings, or drank out of glasses handed across the shoulder to them by their lords. Some of these women were clearly notable housewives, and I have no reason to suppose that they do not take their full share of the housework. Boys and girls came in and out, and got a portion of the dinner to consume where they thought best. Children went tottering about upon the red-brick floor, the playthings of those hulking fellows, who handled them very gently ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... drawing, and her father used to give her lessons in pastel. Now she went to the Louvre to work, and tried to copy the Chardins and Latours. She went there alone. It was a little imprudent, she was so pretty; but Louise had no time to go with her, and her mother had to be at home to attend to the housework and cooking. Maria's appearance had already excited the hearts of several young daubers. There were several cases of persistent sadness and loss of appetite in Flandrin's studio; and two of Signol's pupils, who were surprised hovering about ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... steadily. Jack Frost threw photographs of fairyland upon the windows, and hung the roofs with fringes of crystal pendants, while the snowflakes piled themselves over the fences and made a shroud for the trees, and every day Pauline, with this strange peace in her heart, did her housework to ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... a quality of appeal to which he watched Ettie respond. The latter took a special pride in making Lucy as pretty as possible; in the afternoon she would dress her in sheer white with a ribbon in her hair. She spared Lucy many of the details of housework in which the latter could have easily assisted her; and when Calvin protested she replied that she was so accustomed to doing that it was easier ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... be kind to her, you know," the mother went on, "and teach her housework, and how to handle a baby; and, besides, she would help me, and I should be the stronger for it, and able to do an odd bit of charing now and then, when I got ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... occasionally, but only between the periods of the attacks of fever. On such visits she would assist the patient, do the housework, and arrange the hides or covers for her. Say harboured a wish to consult her about her disease; but Shotaye studiously avoided any opportunity for confidential talk. One day, however, when the two were alone in the kitchen, and the invalid felt somewhat relieved, she opened her heart to her ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... girl slaves in a factory when she could be earning good money and a home thrown in doing housework. I think of that as I watch Annie. Imagine Annie poking about by her lonesome, saying, "No, ma'm," "Yes, ma'm," "No, sir," "Yes, sir." "Can I go out for a few moments, Mrs. Jones?" "Oh, all right, ma'm!" Annie, whose talk echoes up and down the room all day. She is Annie ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... for the child to dovetail the two halves of her life. At night she must sit up as late as her elders, poring over her school books, and in the morning it was a fierce rush to get through her share of the housework in time for the red mark. In Mrs. Beckenstein's language: 'Don't eat, don't sleep, boil nor bake, stew nor roast, nor fry, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... poetical for me, but I like the idea of a school, Agnes. As I, too, wish to profit from it, I want it to be built on my estate. Lots of our workmen in the foundry have small children, whose mothers are busy with the housework and their small babies. So Agnes and Cornelli are going to found a singing school in Iller-Stream, where all the children will go, whose mothers have no time for singing. Upon their arrival the children shall all be given a bowl of milk and a piece of bread apiece to make their voices ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... violin, too, uncle Tony, even if the ladies don't faint away in heaps, and if the kitchen doesn't look like a battle-field when you've finished. I'm glad it doesn't, for my part, for I should have more housework to do ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... colonial days that, if the chief foundation of the New England commonwealth was religion, the second certainly was neighborliness. There was a constant exchange of kindly and loving attentions between families and individuals. It showed itself in all the petty details of daily life, in assistance in housework and in the field, in house-raising. Did a man build a barn, his neighbors flocked to drive a pin, to lay a stone, to stand forever in the edifice as token of their friendly goodwill. The most eminent, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad to have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Besides general housework, the girls are given special instruction in cooking, nursing and care of health, under their experienced matron. They sew for an hour a day in classes, under the supervision of another lady who also instructs a class in cutting by model and dress-making, and sees that all the girls attend properly ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... an early start with our housework," Theodora made haste to say, "so that we can all go. You must go, too, Gram. It is fun to see the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... with a sigh; "now I will dry the dishes for you.... You didn't mention the fact, when you engaged me, that I was also expected to do general housework." ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... planting, reaping. In the afternoons he painted—painted until the sun got too low to afford the necessary light; then he went for his daily solitary walk through the woods and fields, coming back at dark. After supper he helped his wife with the housework, put the children to bed, and then sat and read until ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... in, and I watched my chance and gave it to the woman. But Ducharme came in and he pushed me out, and I fell, and guess I cracked my head. That's when my eye began to hurt. The kafe business ran out, and I followed them to Chicago. And here I been for three months, doing most anything, housework generally. But I can't keep a place. Just so often I have to up and out on the road and try to find him. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... adventures, the discovery of the cave, and the fishing will probably be the scenes that will make the most immediate appeal to boys who are beginning to show the Boy Scout spirit; and other phases of outdoor life, no less than the touches of housework, will appeal to members of the Girl Scout and the Girls' Camp Fire organization. The illustrations in the book show hints for simple costuming which may be followed ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... because my maid—a jewel of a maid—lied to me with every second breath. There have been moments when I've wished I was the daughter of a poor New England minister—living in a little white house under a couple of elms and doing all the housework." ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... some horror, as if things inanimate still partook of men's dread at men's deeds. If you passed through the corridor and saw in the shadow of the wall that homeliest of instruments cast away and forgotten, you would smile at the slatternly housework. But if you knew that a corpse had been borne down those stairs to the left,—borne along those floors to that marriage-bed,—with the blood oozing and gushing and plashing below as the bearers passed with their burden, then straight that dead thing would take the awe of the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not the manners of a French valet. He was grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled, but was always at work in the daytime, and always reading in the evening. He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could properly do, would go to the door or "tend table," bought the provisions for the family,—in short, did almost everything for them but get their clothing. There was no office in a perfectly appointed household, from that of steward down to that of stable-boy, which he did not ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... happened to displease her, such as an extra meal to be cooked in emergency cases, or the failure of the cooking-sherry to come up to the exalted standards of her taste as a connoisseur in wines, and hard as the housework was, as I look back upon it now, I realize how much trouble I was spared in not having to follow a yellow-haired fluffy ruffles about the house all day long cleaning up after her. If there is anything of the labor-saving ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... who appeared in the shape of a horse, and whom Shakespeare is by many believed to have adapted as "Puck," was a goblin who combined "horse-play" with viciousness, but also at times helped with the housework. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... am a reader of YOUNG PEOPLE, and like it very much. I am thirteen years old. My father is Register of Deeds for Coos County, and I help him. I can record ten deeds in a day. And I can cook and do all kinds of housework. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... how I came to speak of the winter as a season of leisure in connection with Shenac, for this winter was a very busy time with her. True, her work did not press upon her, so as to make her anxious or impatient, as it sometimes used to do in summer; but she was never idle. There were sewing and housework and a little wool-spinning, and much knitting of stockings and mittens for them all. The knitting was evening work, and, when Hamish was not reading aloud, Shenac's hands and eyes were busy with different matters. ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... so fast! In a month or two, perhaps. But first must come other things outdoor things. Also housework." ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... stopped her boat in its course she was at the Sasso Scritto: a favourite resting-place with her, where, on feast-days, when Joconda let her have liberty from housework and rush-plaiting and spinning ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... in San Francisco for the restaurant habit, and for living in cooped-up apartments, is that the wife wants to get away from the burden of the kitchen and drudgery of housework. And like many other effects this eventually becomes a cause, for both husband and wife become accustomed to better cooking than they could get at home and there is a continuance of the custom, for both get a distaste for plainly ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... amateur cutting and sewing, or a milliner by creating her own bonnet. The house helper will not be incompetent, because the development and training of woman for her best and truest work will have extended to her also, and she will do housework because she loves it and is better adapted to it than to any other employment. She will preside in the kitchen ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... some bodily want or discomfort. He showed no repugnance to his wife, would let her wait upon him, and sit beside him in the garden. But he made no spontaneous movement towards her whatever; and the only person who evidently cheered him was Carrie. He watched the child incessantly—in her housework, her sewing, her gardening, her coaxing of her pale mother, her fun with Miss Anna, who was by now her slave. There was something in the slight foreignness of her ways and accent, in her colonial resource and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the ultimate intimacy in their annual festivals, and the good women doubtless thought no more of it than a woman of to-day thinks of waltzing with a presentable stranger. They went home to their husbands and their housework as if they had been to church. Certain Bolsheviki, even in the year 1918, put up placards renewing the ancient Mesopotamian custom, under the guise of a community privilege ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Belle, for the girls had all taken an interest in the housework-made-easy-plan, and had arranged to use the boiling water as it came from the motor after cooling the cylinder. "But ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... woman had said who came to help her with the last offices,—the miller discouraged "neighbors," but this was a matter of decency,—that it was as foolish for a man to have the say over babies and housework as it would be for his wife to want her word in the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... brought all the milk in Atpat to Shiva's shrine, not keeping a drop for their calves or even for their children. But although all the milk in Atpat was every Monday poured into Shiva's shrine, it yet did not become full to the ceiling. But one day an old woman came to the shrine. She had done all her housework. She had fed all the children and had bathed all her little daughters-in-law. Then she took a few drops of milk, a little sandal-wood paste, and a few flowers, and half-a-dozen grains of rice and went to worship at Shiva's shrine. She prayed to Shiva, ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... did the public stores furnish the public employees with every kind of goods for consumption, but the Government likewise organized all sorts of needful services, such as cooking, laundry work, housework agencies, etc., for the exclusive benefit of public employees—all, of course, conducted absolutely at cost. The result was that the public employee was able to be supplied at home or in restaurants with food prepared by the best skill out of the best material ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... you don't know how happy I am—not being away from those I love, but things are so different. I get up early and after breakfast I help Aunt Susan with the housework, for her maid is too old to go up and down stairs. I have learned to churn—to make butter and pot cheese as well. I dust, make my bed, and sweep my room. (Don't let mother see this. She may consider that I am ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... Vegetable Compound has done for me. When I first wrote to you I had suffered for years. The doctor said I had congestion of the womb, was troubled with my kidneys and bladder, my back ached dreadfully all the time, and I suffered with bearing-down feeling, could scarcely walk about to do my own housework. I stopped doctoring with the physician and took your medicine, and am now able to do my own work, have no more backache or weakness across me, and can do all my own work. I cannot praise your medicine enough, and would advise all suffering women ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... the gardening, the cooking, the housework, the clerical work—you don't do the laundry, too, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... farewell as he disappeared into the woods, then, to occupy herself, she helped Evangelina with what little housework there was to do, later going with her to the garden patch where ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... on the day before some holy Sunday, when solemn feelings almost irresistibly make their way into the heart, almost as on the eve of her confirmation, so Freneli felt on the eve of her wedding. Thoughtfully and seriously she did her housework; perhaps she had never spoken so little as on that day. At times she felt like weeping, and still she had a friendly smile for all she met. Then again she would sink into deep reflection, in which she forgot place and time and everything; she knew nothing of herself, nothing of this brooding. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Woman. Now all my housework is done I think I will make some gingerbread. There is nothing quite so good for lunch as warm gingerbread and a glass of milk, or a cup of hot tea. I can make pretty good gingerbread, too, all of my friends say. Here is ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... we did not get the Whitsuntide holiday, for I was too busy. Ellen was in bed all yesterday with a bad headache and was lying down most of the day before. So I have had the housework and cooking to do. Graham helped before breakfast by cleaning the kitchen stove, and afterwards by washing up after meals and undertaking the saucepans! I only missed school one day. The elder infants are getting on nicely; the parents of some are teaching them ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. 'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... or mother, lending a hand at housework when needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... take keer of you when you come to the ranch? We got three niggers now, just doin' the housework." As if in justification of this riotous mode of life, the oil man explained: "Ma wanted to do it herself, but she's porely, an' Allie vetoed it complete. She says we'll be stylish an' enjoy life if it kills all three of us. I'd of bought a bigger house if they'd of ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... dignified, it has been demeaned. No other honest work in the country so belittles a woman socially as housework performed for money. It is the only field of labor which has scarcely felt the touch of the modern labor movement; the only one where the hours, conditions, and wages are not being attacked generally; the only one in which there is no organization or standardization, no training, no regular ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... that's because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble into. And they're always around at meals, for the same reason. But the fact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just to take care of them, and a negro woman to do the housework and help take care ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in Society. Parliamentary law. Games. Book-reviewing. Manuscript-reading for publishers. Library work. Teaching music and painting. Home study of professional housework. The unmarried daughter at home. The woman in business. Her relation to her employer. Securing an increase of salary. The woman of independent means. Her civic ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... The housework had coarsened the mother's hands. Her nose had lost its shape and her temples had fallen in. Constant stooping over the kitchen range had made her a little round-shouldered. Father and mother met only at meals and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... years old, his father moved to Indiana, and there the first great sorrow of his life befell the little boy. His mother died of a fever that appeared among the settlers, leaving Abraham and his sister Sarah, a little girl of eleven, to do the housework and the heavy chores of a backwoods farm. The following year Thomas Lincoln went away to Kentucky to marry again, and he brought back with him a big hearted woman named Sally Johnson, who had three children ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... normal-school training or through familiarity with, and participation in, the domestic labor of a well-organized household. The working girl in a great city like New York does not have the advantage of either form of training. Her education, even at the best, is meager, and of housework she knows less than nothing. If she is city-born, it is safe to assume that she has never been taught how to sweep a room properly, nor how to cook the simplest meal wholesomely, nor how to make a garment that she ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... explains the difficulty of obtaining an abundance of farm labor, and is one of the obstacles to inducing young people to remain on the farm. Unfortunately, too, the women on the farm have often been the chief sufferers from close confinement to the drudgery of housework, with little opportunity for recreation and less chance than the men have to enjoy the ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... light, I suppose, and you see people, and get plenty of time for reading, and the pay is better than I could get at anything else. The fact is," she began to gain confidence as she talked, "I don't want to go on in the old humdrum way forever, doing housework and sewing, and never getting a chance at anything better. I have enough to eat and to wear at home, but the soul has some claims too, and I long for the contact of higher natures than those by whom I am now surrounded. I want opportunities for self-culture, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... of her; in my great affliction she Was sich a comfert to us, and so kind and neighberly,— She 'd come, and leave her housework, far to be'p out little Jane, And talk of her own mother 'at she 'd never see again— Maybe sometimes cry together—though, far the most part she Would have the child so riconciled and happy-like 'at we Felt lonesomer 'n ever when she 'd put her bonnet on And ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley |
