"Ironing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they get that? Typist going up Roger Greene's stairs two at a time to show her understandings. Handed down from father to, mother to daughter, I mean. Bred in the bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the mirror to save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman's eye on a mirror. And when I sent her for Molly's Paisley shawl to Prescott's by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking! Clever little minx. I never told ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... York in August; and, after some difficulties and hardships on account of poverty, finally settled in what appears to have been then a wilderness, "the woods of Watervliet, near Niskeyuna, about seven miles northwest of Albany." In the mean time Ann Lee had supported herself by washing and ironing in New York, and her husband had misconducted himself so grossly toward her that they finally separated, he ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... their time in breakfasting, knowing that nothing was to be gained by haste in view of the fact that Joe Shafto would be engaged in ironing the family wash, and that they probably would not get started on their journey to the Big North Woods ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... watching his illness with a curious mixture of fierce resentment and proprietorial pride. He spent a good deal of his time trying to think of ways in which he could circumvent the choking sensation that often came to him. Marcella brought some comfort by placing the kitchen ironing board across the bed, resting on the backs of two chairs so that he could lean forward on it. Sometimes he slept so, his grey head jerking forward and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... and crippled, sat on the porch beside a wooden bucket of well-water. The county newspaper lay on his knee, and he was reading the items aloud to his wife, old, too, but active, standing at her ironing-board within the kitchen door. A cat purred in the sunshine, and all the lilac bushes were in bloom. "'Ten companies from this County,'" read the tollgate keeper; "'Ten companies from Old Botetourt,—The Mountain Rifles, the Fincastle Rifles, the Botetourt Dragoons, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... any man ever talked like that in this world. I don't believe I talked just so; but the fact is, in reporting one's conversation, one cannot help BLAIR-ing it up more or less, ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as prinking at ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and ruptured the cord about one inch from the umbilicus, but with speedy attention the happiest results were attained. Twitchell has an example in the case of a young woman of seventeen, who was suddenly delivered of a child while ironing some clothes. The cord in this case was also ruptured, but the child sustained no injury. Taylor quotes the description of a child who died from an injury to the head caused by dropping from the mother at an unexpected time, while she was in the erect position; he also speaks ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a positive manner when you talk about Dexter," said Hannah thoughtfully. "You'll be House President senior year. O, dear!" for Frieda, in getting up to help Dr. Helen fold up the ironing-board, had brushed by Hannah's chair, and a fat little button bag rolling to the floor had emptied its ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... family where no other maid is kept,'" read Alexandra, "'a graduate will take entire charge of kitchen and dining room, go to market if required, do ordinary family washing and ironing, will clean bathroom daily, and will clean and sweep every other room in the house, and the halls, once thoroughly every week. She will be on hand to answer the door only one afternoon every ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... 'professionally;' he was informed that they wished to have a deed executed. With great presence of mind, Abijah concealed every symptom of growing palpitation, and led the way out of the store into the kitchen of his house near by, where Mrs. Witherpee was busy ironing, and several little Witherpees at 'sixes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... possible way, and with pleasant variety." Passing from the kitchen the care of the different rooms of the house is taken up—the chambers, the sitting-room and the storeroom; instructions are given for making "blue Monday" less blue; the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are devoted to "Company Days," "Shopping," "Sickness in the House," "Making the best of Things," and "Helps that are Helps," the servant-girl question forming ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... very slow, however. Mrs. Bond went away when she could begin to go about the room and help herself. Cousin Jane was a good nurse, and she declared, "There wasn't work enough to keep her half busy." She did the mending and the ironing; Mr. Reed insisted they should have a washerwoman. Mrs. Reed sighed when she thought of the expense. It had been the pride of her life that she never had a fit of illness, and had never hired a day's work done except when ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... he did, not in so many words, but that was what I thought he meant. It was like this, sir," continued Mrs. Brunton, as they stood face to face on the wet gravel: "just about this time yesterday I was busy ironing, when my nephew, the lad you used to send with letters, who's here again for his summer holidays, comes to me an' says, 'You're wanted.' So I went, and there was a young gentleman looking fit to drop. He'd a bag with him, and he'd walked all the way from Upthorpe station, same as I suppose you have ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... schools, but they soon favored them. One cannot enter these schools without a diploma from the common schools. Each teacher is given twenty-four pupils. The girls are taught to make their own apparel, gardening, cooking, washing, ironing, mending ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... day she prescribed and bandaged, cut out garments, superintended washing, and initiated women into the secrets of starching and ironing. Day by day she held a morning and evening service, and it was with difficulty that she prevented the one from merging into the other. On Sabbath the yard became strangely quiet: all connected with it were clothed and clean, and in a corner stood a table with a white cloth ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... thing for Posy, and as Mr Fleming do wish little Meg and Robin to go along with us, which are like my own children, and as he's to be in the same ship, I'm not the woman to say No. I'm a good hand at washing and ironing, and sewing, and keeping a little shop, or anything else as turns up; and there's ten years' good work in me yet; by which time little Meg'll be a stout, grown-up young woman; to say nothing of Posy, who's old enough ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... some weeks away from Cape Town, we sent our wash ashore; a resort of desperation. It came back clean enough, but for ironing—well; and as to starch, much in the predicament of Boatswain Chuck's frilled shirts after the gale, upon which, while flying in the breeze, he looked with a degree of professional philosophy that could express itself ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... employment alone will give a good appetite. I wonder how you could expect to relish your food after lounging about doing nothing all the morning! I'll be bound that if you had been in your shop ironing hats or waiting on your customers since breakfast-time, there would have been no complaint ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... his high chair as good as gold, a precious, watching me doing of the ironing. Get along with ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... ironing.] Yes, yes, that'll be it. If he wants two hundred, six hundred's sure to have come. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... laughed, not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have scolded her, and I have made ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one could dress her but Patty; nobody could make her bed, so that she could sleep on it, but Patty; no one could make jelly, or broth, or whey, that she could taste, but Patty; no one could roast, or boil, or bake, but Patty. Of course, all these things must be done by nobody else. The ironing of Mrs. Crumpe's caps, which had exquisitely nice plaited borders, at last fell to Patty's share; because once, when the laundry-maid was sick, she plaited one so charmingly, that her lady would never afterwards wear any but of her plaiting. Now Mrs. Crumpe changed her cap, or rather had ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... untamable, free creature, happiest alone with the dogs on the moors, with little sentiment or instinct for friendship; no desire to meet her fellows. Emily was perfectly happy at Haworth cooking the dinner, ironing the linen, writing poems at the Waterfall, taking her dog for miles over the moors, pacing round the parlour with her arm round gentle Anne's waist. Now she would have to leave all this, to separate from her dear little ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... has grease on its cover, it can be removed by scraping French chalk or magnesia over the place, and ironing with a warm (not hot) iron. A simpler method is to apply benzine to the grease spots, (which dissolves the fatty material) and then dry the spot quickly with a fine cloth. This operation may be repeated, if not effectual at the first trial. The same method of applying benzine to oily spots upon ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... up her sewing—she was making herself a new dress; or else the great kettle was steaming on the hob, and the women stood over the washing-tubs. On the following evening they worked on either side of the ironing-table, the candle burning brightly and their vague woman's chatter sounding pleasant in the hush of the little cottage. A little after nine they were in bed, and so the days went softly, like happy, trivial dreams. It was not till the end of the third week that Mrs. Lewis ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... thanked! cost you one penny during the twelve years I've been with you, and you have had the pleasure of my company into the bargain. I could have earned my own living anywhere with the work that I've done here,—washing, ironing, looking after the linen, going to market, cooking, taking care of your interests before everything, slaving myself to death from morning till night,—and this is ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... glitter of the glasses in the bar and the glare of the sunshine through the open door, was wide awake. Customers came in for foaming tankards of beer, and sometimes a little girl, with a jug hidden under her apron, would appear, with a request that it might be filled for 'mother', who was ironing. Indeed, the number of women who were ironing that afternoon, and wanted to quench their thirst, was something wonderful; but Miss Twexby seemed to know all about it as she put a frothy head on each jug, and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... fuel and some care in its preparation, for it needs long, slow cooking in order to make it a good pudding, but when it is properly made it is a very delicious dessert. If a coal stove is used, it is a good plan to make such a dessert as this on a day when the stove is heated for ironing or for some other purpose that requires the use of fuel covering a long period ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... at is Paris," said Humphrey, "and they tell me 'tis where the king's head was cut off years ago. My poor mother used to tell me about that business. 'Hummy,' she used to say, 'I was a young maid then, and as I was at home ironing mother's caps one afternoon the parson came in and said, "They've cut the king's head off, Jane; and what 'twill be next ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... After ironing the few little things Trudy shampooed her hair with scented soap and by the time its reddish loveliness was dry it was high noon and she repaired to her bedroom to mend and write letters. At one o'clock, in the process of dressing, she rapped ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... and from the pantry, with quick, nervous movements, as the sun went toward the west, saying to Maggie who was ironing with all possible speed: ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... a stranger?" Alix said. "If Peter's a stranger," she added animatedly, "what is an intimate friend? Peter walks through this house at all hours; you can't wash your hair or do a little ironing without having Peter under your feet; he borrows money from me; he bullies ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... neighbourhood, for luring maids from the smaller homes. Of course Mrs. Airedale and Mrs. Collie could afford to pay any wages at all. So now the best he could do was to have Mrs. Spaniel, the charwoman, come up from the village to do the washing and ironing, two days a week. The rest of the work he undertook himself. On a clear afternoon, when the neighbours were not looking, he would take his own shirts and things down to the pond—putting them neatly in the bottom of the red express-wagon, with ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Mrs. Creddle was ironing, and she looked up from the board almost in tears as her niece entered the kitchen. "Oh, Carrie," she began at once, "I thought you'd be coming. I am in such a way. I don't know whatever you'll say ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... which their newly arrived countrymen had organized and were carrying out against the Trinidadians proper. It happened that, on the occasion to which we wish particularly [88] to refer, the woman in question was at home, engaged in her usual occupation of ironing for her honest livelihood. Suddenly she heard a heavy blow in the street before her door, and almost simultaneously a loud scream, which, on looking hastily out, she perceived to be the cry of a boy of some ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... general cleanliness; I am reminded of one or two exceptions, which I think, however, were errors of zeal. His manner of sprinkling clothes in preparing them for ironing was peculiar. He would fill his mouth with perfectly pure water from a glass beside him, and then, by one dexterous movement of his lips in a prolonged expiration, squirt the water in an almost invisible misty shower on the article before him. Shocking as this was at first to ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... the door and went over the way. Here she found a somewhat tidy woman at work ironing. Nobody else in the room. She made known her errand. The woman ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... girl, Patty," returned her mother, winking away the moisture in her eyes, as she went on with her ironing. "Amabel, don't you be trampling on Patty's best dress, there's a good little lass. Well, as I was saying, Patty, only the children do interrupt so. There, Joe and Ben, just take your sugar-sticks and be off to play. I think I have found a nice little place ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... work as chiropodists to keep the feet of the prisoners in good condition, and the laundrymen, besides washing and ironing all the clothes, sheets and pillowcases, had to wash and disinfect all the blankets once a month. There were no walls surrounding the prison building, but the reservation being the headquarters of an army corps with barracks on all sides, escapes by ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... liquor, which wasn't there, and trod on Denison's canvas-slippered foot, and knocked over the little tin kerosene oil lamp which was standing on the floor, and when Hayes, with loud and blasphemous remarks grabbed at the ironing-blanket of the laundry-table to extinguish the flames, he pulled the table down on the top of Denison and himself and the goat and everything, for the blanket was nailed on at the four corners, and when he ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... arms, then let them fall. Spiridon measured him several times, walking round him during the process like a love-sick pigeon round its mate, going down on one knee, bending double.... My mother, weary, exhausted by her exertions and heated by ironing, watched ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Storer lately lived, he is looking for a less house. I tell my Aunt I feel a disposician to be a good girl, & she pleases herself that she shall have much comfort of me to-day, which as cousin Sally is ironing we ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... anything out of the mother right now," Scott replied, "but I got this. They were waiting up for the father—he's on the swing shift—and the kid wanted ice cream. The store's just around the corner and the mother was busy ironing, so she gave ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... I muttered this, were on the one shop in my line of vision that was still open and lighted. It was the den of a Chinese laundryman, and through the windows in front I could see him still at work, ironing. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... mash. Then we turned to our work in the house while the men sat and smoked and spat on the veranda, discussing the drought for an hour, at the end of which time they went to help someone else with their stock. I made up the fire and we continued our ironing, which had been interrupted some hours before. It was hot unpleasant work on such a day. We were forced to keep the doors and windows closed on account of the wind and dust. We were hot and tired, and our feet ached so that we could ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... customers, while the measures used in selling rice and salt are so small that you can not take them seriously. The transaction reminds you of your childhood days when you were playing "keep store" with a nickel's worth of candy on the ironing-board. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... people who "make" time for everything, and this remarkable mother was one. That winter she baked bread for every English bachelor ranchman within ten miles. She did their washing and ironing, and never neglected her own, either. She knitted socks for them, and made and sold quantities of Saskatoon berry jam. When spring came she had over fifty dollars of her own, with which she promptly bought a cow. Then late in March they made a small first payment of a team of horses, ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... thinking a moment, then went down stairs into the kitchen, and put an iron on the fire. She meant to press out the shawl herself, as the servants might object to ironing ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the whole country," said Toad airily. "All the gentry come to me—wouldn't go to any one else if they were paid, they know me so well. You see, I understand my work thoroughly, and attend to it all myself. Washing, ironing, clear-starching, making up gents' fine shirts for evening wear—everything's done ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... made their eventful histories the more piquant. If he went to the hotel to see a traveling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards, with their white throats ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... where all the difficulties of life are kept in oblivion, and existence runs on well-oiled wheels is very pleasant, doubtless, but one misses a lot. I love the nearness of Hillview, to hear Mawson and B.B. converse in the kitchen, to smell (this is the most comfortable and homely smell) the ironing of clean clothes, and to know (also by the sense of smell) what I am going to have for dinner hours ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... chair-making, china-painting, construction work, cooking, clay-modeling, coopery, dairying, domestic science, drawing, dress-making, electricity, embroidery, engineering, fancy work, farming, floriculture, gardening, glazing, harness-making, house decoration, half-tone engraving, housework, horticulture, ironing, knife work, knitting, lace-making, laundering, leather work, manual training, mattress-making, millinery, needlework, nursing, painting, paper-hanging, photography, plastering, plate-engraving, plumbing, pottery, poultry-farming, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... big Indian shake her by the shoulder because she wouldn't give him bread. She was ironing at the time, and threatened him with a hot flat iron till he hurried out. Another came in one warm summer afternoon, shut the door behind him, and leaned against it, glowering at her. For once she was thoroughly frightened. He had with him a tomahawk, having a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... old, going back at least to the mid-70s and probably much earlier. The word 'automagic' occurred in advertising (for a shirt-ironing gadget) as far back as ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... when she noticed that her husband's temper was causing him annoyance, took pains to help him to get rid of it. To relieve his sufferings I have known her search the house for a last month's morning paper and, ironing it smooth, lay it warm and neatly folded on his ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... like a steel-trap, who remained with me just one week, and then went off in a fit of spite. To her succeeded a rosy, good-natured, merry lass, who broke the crockery, burned the dinner, tore the clothes in ironing, and knocked down every thing that stood in her way about the house, without at all discomposing herself about the matter. One night she took the stopper from a barrel of molasses, and came singing off up stairs, while the molasses ran soberly out into the cellar bottom all night, till by morning ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... door led to the seventh room, where there was another nun ironing and directing the servants who were making quince marmalade and extract of pomidoro and discharging similar autumnal duties; ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... obeyed and consoled herself by giving the apprentice, who was ironing hose and towels by her side, a little push. Gervaise had a cap belonging to Mme Boche in her hand and was ironing the crown with a round ball, when a tall, bony woman came in. She was ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... way, and at the extreme end of which were hung dark red plush curtains, as if before a shrine. We pulled aside these trappings of gloom, and there were two iron cots, not over a foot and a half wide, about the shape and feeling of an ironing-board, covered with what appeared to be gray army blankets, I looked to see "U.S." stamped on them. I have seen them in ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... get any pupils," she confessed. "And I couldn't bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... woman dreams that she burns her hands while ironing, it foretells she will have illness or jealousy to disturb her peace. If she scorches the clothes, she will have a rival who will cause her much displeasure and suspicions. If the irons seem too cold, she will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Millicent, and leading him to the hall, she directed him to a room which had at one time been fitted as a laundry, and in which was an ironing bench. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... while, after that talk with her mother, Mona worked with a will. She swept, and scrubbed, and polished the stove and the windows and helped with the washing and ironing, until Lucy laughingly declared there would soon be nothing ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "tidied up" and dressed the baby. Then she did one of "the bits of washing," that came from a family in whose service she had been before she married BOB, and that family's connection. And this occupied her fully, what with soaking, and mangling and ironing, until it was time to carry BOB his dinner. In the pauses of her work she had been able to cook it, and it was quite ready to go with her when she was prepared to take it. It was a long walk (in the rain) to BOB'S place of work, and it seemed the longer because she could not leave the baby. But both ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... with her search, Lucy returned to the house, and there found Deborah ironing at the long table in the hall, and crooning away her one dismal song of ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a charitable light, Nan consented, and went cheerfully on with her work, wondering how she could have thought ironing an infliction, and been so ungrateful for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the corner stirred again; And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke, Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke. It piled in a maze round the ironing-place, And there on the snowy table wide Stood a Chinese lady of high degree, With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face.... Yet she put away all form and pride, And laid her glimmering veil aside With a childlike smile for Chang and ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... soldiers have a living-room, scullery, and one, two, or three bedrooms according to the size of their families. A laundry is provided adjacent to the married quarters, equipped with washing-troughs, wringer, drying-closet, and ironing-room; and the women are encouraged to use this in preference to doing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... through Norfolk, and one afternoon, to escape a coming thunderstorm, I knocked at the door of a lonely cottage on the outskirts of a common. The woman, a kindly bustling person, asked me in; and hoping I would excuse her, as she was busy ironing, returned to her work in another room. I thought myself alone, and was standing at the window watching the pouring rain. After a while, without knowing why, I turned. And then I saw a child seated on a high chair behind a table in a dark corner of the room. A book of pictures was ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... mine. I am sorry not to be in mourning on the night of her funeral, but I have just been to put some flowers on her grave, and I took it off afore going that the damp mid not spoil the crape. You see, she was bad a long time, and I have to be careful, and do washing and ironing for a living. She hurt her side with wringing up the large sheets she had to wash ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... you owed and what men owed you; you had none the worst of it," Sam protested coldly, while Kate held her breath and Jane McPherson, at work over the ironing board in the corner, half turned and looked silently at the man and the boy, the slightly increased pallor of her long face the only sign that ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... every part between the hands, without rubbing. Put them in fresh suds, and, if the water still looks dark after another washing, take still another. Boil and rinse as in directions given for other clothes. Starch with very thick hot starch, and dry, not by hanging out, and then ironing, but by putting a light common mattress in the sun, and pinning the curtain upon it, stretching carefully as you pin. One mattress holds two, which will dry in an hour or two. If there is no sun, lay a sheet on the floor of an unused ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... I should take off the rudder, which was certainly useless to a boat situated as ours was, and make an ironing-table of it. I persisted that the laws of symmetrical propriety required that the rudder should remain where it was—that the very name of our home would be interfered with by its removal, but he insisted that "Ironing-table Grange" ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the fir- covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple and ash ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doctor called in the forenoon and found his patient easier. Later in the day Mary said to Susan that as her master had taken physic, he would require more gruel, but as there was still some left, she need not make it fresh "as she was ironing." Susan replied that the gruel was stale, being then four days old, and, further, that having herself tasted it, she felt very ill, upon which facts Mary made no comment. She thoughtfully warned ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... to Paris at the beginning of 1831. Her establishment there was of the simplest. It consisted of three little rooms on the fifth story (a mansarde) in a house on the Quai Saint-Michel. She did the washing and ironing herself, the portiere assisting her in the rest of the household work. The meals came from a restaurant, and cost two francs a day. And thus she managed to keep within her allowance. I make these and the following statements on her own authority. As she found her woman's attire too expensive, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... points to the south. In building a house they make the roof first and the foundation is the last thing they put in. The key in the door turns backward to lock it. The kitchen is in the front while the best room is in the back of the house. When a Chinaman sprinkles clothes for ironing purposes he uses his mouth as the sprinkler. I never had a collar washed in China that was not ironed wrong side out. He pays the doctor when he is well and stops the pay the moment he gets sick. You can almost bank on a Chinaman doing anything ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... wet linen lay on the ground, but a quantity had not yet seen the water. After a considerable amount of jabbering and talking, it was agreed that the task could be accomplished. The sun was hot, and the gentlemen must not be very particular about the ironing. While one half of the damsels set to work again in the stream, the rest, headed by the mistress, began to hang up the washed articles, a young girl being despatched apparently for further assistance. This looked like being in earnest, and the dame assured Norris that the things should ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Garland would say after the girls had kissed one another, "I was up early this morning—soon after dawn. Madge Blair and I had our arms in the tubs by half-past three, and she had got the pot to boil before that. So now I am ready for the ironing, and—" ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... bell go so heavy in his hand for years—it was just as if the gudgeons wanted oiling. That was on the Sunday, as I say. During the week after, it chanced that William's wife was staying up late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for Mr. and Mrs. Hardcome. Her husband had finished his supper and gone to bed as usual some hour or two before. While she ironed she heard him coming down stairs; he stopped to put on his boots at the stair- foot, where he always left them, and then came on into the living-room ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... to board with the girl I knew. I was earning ten shillings a week and paid that for my board and helped with the ironing for my washing. Her father had got out of work again for times were bad and they were glad to get my money. Lizzie got ten shillings a week and she had a brother about fourteen who earned five shillings. That was about all they had to live ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... as she took a turn at the ironing while she told her the news, and Mary washed the dinner things, "I am dreadfully nervous. I wish we had a cook and a parlourmaid, and I wish we were able to buy all the best things that can be got. Granny does so like to have nice food and nice everything. She has always been accustomed ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... accustomedness provided her with pleasure. She was fond of her scrubbing, she enjoyed the washing of her dishes, she definitely entertained herself with the splash and soapy foam of her washtubs and the hearty smack and swing of her ironing. In the days when she had served at the ribbon counter in a department store, she had not found life as agreeable as she had found it since the hours which were not spent at her own private sewing machine were given ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wonder sometimes at her boundless energy. She would whirl through the housework, help prepare the meals, do a morning's ironing, run the sewing machine all afternoon, and then often, after supper, challenge Norman to some such thing as a bonfire race, to see which could rake up the greatest pile of autumn leaves ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the most laborious day, as she always did her washing and ironing on Sunday morning, it being, as she said, the only leisure day she had; for on the other days she went about the country telling fortunes, and selling dream-books and wicked songs. Neither her husband's nor her children's clothes were ever mended, and if Sunday, her idle day, had ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... chair—the one beside the doorway. Solomon, who had followed at his heels, looked up inquiringly into the emaciated face. Its extraordinary melancholy may have alarmed him. But Pats paid no attention to his dog. He looked at Elinor who was ironing, at the heavy table—the dining-table—in the centre of the room. Her sleeves were rolled back to the elbow; her head bent slightly over as ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... you mean to say that our Sarah, daughter of the Reverend Samuel Blake, wilfully broke the Sabbath by ironing?" Concentrated horror ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... mistress testified the excuse of fearing unreasonable confinement. "I told her she might go when she had done her dishes after dinner," said Mrs Murchison, "and then she had only to come back at six and get tea—what's getting tea? I advised her to finish her ironing yesterday, so as to be free of it today; and she said she would be very glad to. Now, I wonder if she DID finish it!" and Mrs Murchison put down her pan of potatoes with a thump to look in the family clothes basket. "Not she! Five shirts and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... them all come in, one after another (though I knew the greater part of them already, to speak to, and they me), that I got leave of absence on purpose, and established myself in a corner, near the petition. It was stretched out, I recollect, on a great ironing-board, under the window, which in another part of the room made a bedstead at night. The internal regulations of the place, for cleanliness and order, and for the government of a common room in the ale-house, where hot water ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... said he was not wanted upstairs any more. Charles went to bed shortly afterwards—he sleeps in one of the two rooms off the kitchen. I went to my own bedroom before ten, after first telling Ann, the servant, who was doing some ironing in the kitchen, to turn off the gas at the meter if the gentlemen retired before she finished, but not to bother if they were still sitting up. It had been decided that the young gentleman should occupy the bedroom next to Mr. Glenthorpe, and Ann was a bit late with her ordinary work because ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... determination he visited his lovely and all unconscious mistress the next day, but the fair lady was busy ironing.—"I shall see her again this evening," thought he, as he turned slowly towards the town; and see her that evening he did. They rambled out towards the cape, or promontory, almost invariably the scene of their summer evening walks; for lovers, after one ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... and ironing it, perhaps," he chuckled. "No, no! We used to wash all fleeces before they were clipped, 'tis true. But your father says that now buyers care little for them washed. Folks will pay about as much for good wool unwashed as washed. It is ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... were a Medical Inspector in the army who was not a first rate judge of the art of folding and ironing a sheet or pillow-slip; of the particular tuck which brought out the outlines of the corners of a mattress, as seen through a counterpane; and of the art and mystery of cleaning a floor. It did seem as if they had all reached office through their ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... the gentility of her former places; and would tell the lady over whom she reigned that she had lived with folks worth their three and four hundred thousand dollars, who never complained as she did of the ironing. Yet she had a sufficient regard for the literary occupations of the family, Mr. Johnson having been an author. She even professed to have herself written a book, which was still in manuscript and preserved somewhere ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... without stay or delay and taking out of her bundle a budget of Taifi leather,[FN474] opened it and drew forth a pair of knitting needles, wherewith she fell to work and stinted not till she had made a beautiful zone, which she folded up in a wrapper after cleaning it and ironing it, and laid it under her pillow. Then she doffed her dress till she was mother-naked and lying down beside Nur al-Din shampoo'd him till he awoke from his heavy sleep. He found by his side a maiden like virgin silver, softer than silk and delicater than a tail of fatted sheep, than standard ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... middle-class German family recognises no such foreign body as a nurse. It employs one maid of all work, who helps the housewife wherever help is needed, whether it is in the kitchen or the nursery. The mother spends her time with her children, playing with them when she has leisure, cooking and ironing and saving for them, and for her husband all through her busy day. Modern Germans like to tell you that young women no longer devote themselves to these simple duties, but if you use your eyes you will see that most women do their work as faithfully as ever. There is an idle, pleasure-loving, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... commodious swinging seat. The other end, just off the parental bed-chamber, has been converted into an out-door sleeping-room for John C. Percival. The Governor's lady has no nursemaid. She does her own housework, her own washing and ironing, and she takes care of her own baby. (There is no such thing on Trigger Island as a servant. More than one woman who reads this tale will sigh and murmur something about Paradise.) Ruth still teaches in the little school. Though she is the first lady of the land, she supports ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... is there to do your work and she does whatever may be called for. If she is asked to take care of the baby for a few hours, she does it willingly, as part of her duties; or if she is called upon to do some ironing left in the basket, she assumes that it is part of her work, and doesn't say, "No, Madam, I wasn't hired to do that," at the same time putting on her hat and leaving as under ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... good people of Bethany imagined. As a matter of fact, a more corrupt Chinaman had never been smuggled into America. Ostensibly in the laundry business, and really a master workman in that line, the astute Chink had long since relinquished the labor over the tubs and ironing-board to Hop Wah, his silent partner. Ah Moy's chief interest in the establishment lay in its cavernous sub-cellar, where he conducted gaming tables and a smoking-'parlor' with flattering success. The gods evidently smiled upon him, for his den seemed to ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... walked a step until he was five years of age, and would be lame always. He was now twelve—a dwarf in statue, hump-backed, weazen-faced and shrill-voiced, unsightly in all eyes but those of his parents. To them he was a miracle of precocity and beauty. His mother took in fine ironing to pay for his private tuition from a public school-teacher who lived in the neighborhood. He learned fast and eagerly. His father, at the teacher's suggestion, subscribed to a circulating library and the same kind friend selected books for the cripple's reading. There was a hundred dollars in the ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... vintage,—always and everywhere labor." Edouard Frere, in his scenes from humble life, which the skilful lithographer places within the means of all, represents the incidents of domestic existence among the poor. "The Prayer at the Mother's Knee," "The Woman at her Ironing Table," "The Child shelling Peas," "The Walk to School amid Rain and Sleet," are all charming idyls of every-day life. With yet greater skill and deeper pathos does the peasant Millet tell the story of his neighbors. The washerwomen, as the sun sets upon their labors, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... three girls, grandma, mama, the baby, and himself; so it is hard for him, and I haven't the heart to ask them for anything, no matter how bad I need it. I take in washing from the boarders at the two hotels, also sewing and ironing, or go out to do housework whenever ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... and sheet on purpose for ironing, and on no account suffer any other to be used. Have plenty of holders always made, that your towels may not be burned out ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... he sat down, was an extremely poor and homely place, but with that air of comfort about it, nevertheless, which cleanliness and order can always impart in some degree. Late as the Dutch clock showed it to be, Kit's mother was still hard at work at an ironing-table; a young child lay sleeping in a cradle near the fire; and another, a sturdy boy of two or three years old, very wide awake, was sitting bolt upright in a clothes-basket, staring over the rim with his great round ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the teacher fifteen dollars a month for board. That included his washing and ironing. I really earn my board by the work I do here Saturdays and Sundays, and in the mornings and evenings before and after school. But I will pay you twelve dollars a month for ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... to live with a Mrs. Maria Campbell, a colored woman, who adopted me and gave me her name. Mrs. Campbell did washing and ironing for her living. While living with her, I went six months to Lewis' High School in Macon. Then I went to Atlanta, and obtained a place as first-class cook with Mr. E. N. Inman. But I always considered Mrs. Campbell's my home. I remained about a year with Mr. ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... nowhere to be seen when the interviewer mounted the steps of his cabin. Daisy, his wife, was ironing on the back porch and when she learned the object of the proposed interview, she readily agreed to induce Tom to talk. She approached a basement door and called: "Tom, here's one of dem giver'ment ladies what's come ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... ugly one was ironing in his shop in the basement of 263 1/2 Main street, he looked up and saw a crowd of childish faces pressed against the window. Most Chinamen make friends with children; this one hated them and tried to drive them away. But as soon as he returned to his work they were back at the window again, ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... she had driven the sparrow away, made some more rice-paste, grumbling all the time at the trouble, and after starching all her clothes, spread the things on boards to dry in the sun, instead of ironing them as ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... supplies in four weeks. It is only permitted to obtain from the outside coffee for one's own consumption in lots of fifty pounds. House fathers and mothers shall not allow their work people, especially their washing and ironing women, to prepare coffee, or to allow it in any manner under a penalty ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... gentlemen can be accommodated with good board, washing, and ironing; or a gentleman and wife. Terms, $6 per week; or two single ladies. Apply at —, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... I had become, you see, one of those characters I had read about in short stories dozens of times before—an unemployed girl in New York, even to the hall-bedroom, the handkerchiefs stuck on my window-pane in process of ironing, the water-bugs around the pipes in the bath-room. It was this consciousness of myself that made many of the hardships bearable—this and the grim determination ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... grass—and again I recall That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill Watching together the curving thunderous fall Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until My mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that wound On the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turning In the humming dark rooms of the mill: all sense and discerning By the stunning and dazzling ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... was elected I thought it wisdom to send my sister upstairs with the news. My mother was ironing, and made no comment, unless with the iron, which I could hear rattling more violently in its box. Presently I heard her laughing - at me undoubtedly, but she had recovered control over her face before she ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... a minute they were talking over old times together in the little sitting-room over the shop. CYRIL MUSH was delighted. "You can't charge an old friend anything for just ironing his hat," he said, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... wraped it up in a towel that was drying in front of the fire, and laid it on a bundle of clothes ready for ironing that was on the table. Then he went back ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... tables and chairs for the use of the innumerable women and girls invariably attached to the service of those noble ladies who knew so well how to maintain their rank in that blessed time of serfdom. At this hour the workroom was empty. Some of the women were washing, others ironing, some cleaning and turning upside down everything in the private apartment the countess had just left. The young peasant girl, with her needle uplifted, rested her ruddy hand upon the edge of the frame and ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... a ministering angel, you know," said Billie, "sent to do the washing and ironing and scullery work. Except for cooking meals, we expect to take life easy from ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... marriage. There is nothing picturesque about these orphans, for, as I said before, the most deformed and helpless, and maimed and sick, are the peculiar objects of Doa Margarita's care; nevertheless, we saw various healthy, happy-looking girls, busied in various ways, washing and ironing, and sewing, whose very eyes gleamed when we mentioned her name, and who spoke of her with a respect and affection that it was pleasant to witness. Truly, this woman is entitled to happy dreams and soft ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... to interview the milk dealer; Jane was cold and went into the cottage to warm herself. "It is well I'm at ironing today," said Mrs. Brent, "for so I hev a good fire. Come your ways in, ma'am, and sit on the hearth. Let me make you ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... marketing to do, and sewing continually on hand, and house-cleaning at stated intervals. In Helen Somers's old home the daily routine had been as inflexible as its ancestor's original Calvinistic creed—Monday, washing; Tuesday, ironing; Wednesday, cleaning the silver; Thursday, at home to visitors; Friday, sweeping; Saturday, baking; and Sunday, the hardest day of all. For, withal, the Puritan sense of observance, that had not been utterly swamped by the ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... bread and filled the water glasses and opened the oven a dozen times and strained and stirred and mashed and salted and peppered, he begins to understand why his wife is so tired after getting a Sunday dinner. And when he thinks of other days, washing days and ironing and baking and scrubbing and sewing days, why, if he's anyway decent he begins to suspect that he's darn lucky to get a full-grown woman to do all that work for just her room and board. And when he stops to count the times she's tied his necktie, darned his socks and patched his clothes, besides ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... his mother not being very well and having gone to lie down, his father being out, as he so often was, upon Scramble the old horse, and Tibby, their only servant, being busy with the ironing, Willie ran off to Widow Wilson's, and was soon curled up in the chair, like a little Hindoo idol that had grown weary of sitting upright, and had tumbled itself ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... soap-suds, occasionally rubbing the soiled places with a soft sponge. It must be rinsed well after the same manner in clean water. When the lace is clean, apply a very weak solution of gum arabic and stand the bottle in the sunshine to dry. Take off the lace very carefully when perfectly dry. Instead of ironing, lay it between the white leaves of a heavy book; or, if you are in a hurry, iron on flannel between a few thicknesses of fine muslin. Done up in this way, lace collars will wear longer, stay clean longer, and have a rich, new, lacy look that they ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... house. Dere wuz five women who done de washing an' ironing. Dey had to make de soap. Dat wuz done by letting water drip over oak ashes. Dis made oak ash lye, and dis wuz used in making soap. After de clothes had soaked in dis lye-soap and water, dey put de clothes on tables and beat 'em 'till dey ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... sister. Lucy Anthony soon became acquainted with the stern realities of life. Her third baby was born when the first was three years and two months old. That summer she boarded eleven factory hands, who roomed in her house, and she did all the cooking, washing and ironing, with no help except that of a thirteen-year-old girl, who went to school and did "chores" night and morning. The cooking for the family of sixteen was done on the hearth in front of the fire-place and in a big brick oven at the side. Daniel ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... every-day tablecloths, fine and good; but in the drawer above, she knew, was the best damask, snowdrops and other patterns more wonderful, with birds and butterflies. She debated but a moment, and then pulled out a lovely piece that shone with ironing. "I'll tell you what it is, Jared," she said, returning to spread it on the table with deft touches, "it's we that change, as well as other folks. Ever think o' that? Ever occur to you old lady Knowles wa'n't much over sixty ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... calls the cook's delight. It's an ironing-board on wash-days, a supper table at supper-time, and on the cook's reception days it can ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... thought it would be a good way to get even with Duffy, when he was weak, and I went down there to his shanty and gave him his medicine, and read to him all day, and he cried 'cause he knew I ought to have mauled him, and that night I sat up with him while his Ma did the ironing, and Duffy was so glad that I went down every day and stayed there every night, and fired medicine down him, and let his Ma sleep, and Duffy has got mashed on me, and he says I will be an angel when I die. Last night makes five nights ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... business was that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen at deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing,—performing, in short, all kinds of domestic labour—although no traces of anything accomplished could be detected the next morning. Some neglected duty of her servitude—some ill-starched ministerial band—disturbed the poor damsel in her ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the great house which looked upon the garden and the sea, had been compelled to let the lower stories to warehousemen and small shopkeepers, in order to augment their rents. Near the lordly portal, inside the glass windows, some girls who greeted Don Jaime with a respectful smile were busy ironing linen. He stood motionless contemplating the ancient house. How beautiful it was still in spite of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... once more on the same side in the shade, which today, to be sure, was deeper than the first time; for it was still early morning. And now I stood by the window, put my arms on the window-sill and said, "Good morning, Mariandel, sweetmeats!" And she stood before an ironing board which rested on the windowsill and the table, and was ironing with a charcoal flat-iron. She put the iron down on the rest, gave me her firm, warm hand, and said, "Bom dia, senhor doutor! Passa bem?" and her eye seemed to beam ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... and late, washing, ironing, milking, churning, baking, nursing the younger children, sharing her mother's labors, and paid as her mother was—with her board and a scanty, grudgingly given wardrobe. She was now twenty-four, and had never had a five-dollar bill to spend as she pleased ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... not merely handcuffed, but with heavy irons on their legs, which had occasioned considerable swelling, and in one instance serious inflammation. The Brothers sailed in 1823, with its freight of human misery on board, and the suffering which resulted from the mode of ironing, was so great, that Mrs. Fry took down the names id particulars, in order to make representations to the Government. Twelve women arrived on board the vessel, handcuffed; eleven others had iron hoops round their legs and arms, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... Neri dismissed the rest of the company to their various avocations; the ladies silently retired to superintend the ironing and mending of the house linen, and Domenico was escorted by his host to see the newly arrived piece of statuary. It had been placed already in the banker's closet, where he could feast his eyes on its perfection while attending to his business or improving his mind by study. This ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... sons of an ironing-woman, were apprentices in a foundry of the near-by Ronda. The younger passed his days in a continuous capering, indulging in death-defying leaps, climbing trees, walking on his hands and performing acrobatic stunts from all ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... down on the sofa, on the warm chintz cushions the children loved. Then he fell into a kind of doze. That afternoon Mrs. Morel was ironing. She listened to the small, restless noise the boy made in his throat as she worked. Again rose in her heart the old, almost weary feeling towards him. She had never expected him to live. And yet he had a great vitality in his young body. Perhaps it would have been ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... from nine to twelve in the forenoon and from one till four in the afternoon was that of any ordinary school, except that the girls who prepared the meals were excused earlier than the others. One day in the week was devoted to washing and ironing down on the river-bank and in the shade of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... on to describe the maid's work-room, which was also of polished hardwood, and dust-proof, and had a balcony for brushing clothes, and wires upon which to hang them, and hot and cold water, and a big ironing-table and an electric stove. "But there can't be much work to do," laughed the girl, "for she never wears a gown more than two or three times. Just think of paying several thousand dollars for a costume, and giving it to your poor relations after you have worn it only twice! And the worst of it ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... little express wagon with her basket of clothes along the streets, Mandy finally reached her home where she did the washing and ironing. Her children were waiting for her to come to supper. Liza Ann, the oldest girl, had set the table, and Jim, the next oldest boy, was out on the steps watching for his mother, just as Arnold and Mirabell watched ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... Lizzie had faithfully carried out her part of the bargain. The three babies were done up in bright-coloured calico dresses; she had spent the morning in washing and ironing these garments—also her own dress, which was half-red and half-green, and of generous, almost crinoline proportions. Lizzie herself was built on that scale, with broad hips and bosom, big brown eyes and heavy dark hair. She was a fine strong woman when she had shed her bedraggled ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... looked out into the night. There was neither moon nor stars and a storm was brewing, but she knew she could find her way in the dark. Quietly and with a great peace in her heart she bathed her swollen face, changed her dress to one fresh from the ironing board—pale blue it was with a dainty vine running through it—threw a wrap about her and ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... he gave within from the threshold where he paused, and said, "She ain't here, David." Nancy had cleared her breakfast away and was ironing at the shelf where she had eaten; the baby was ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... apparition failed to be impressed the clerk turned tail and fled. The ghost returned by a short cut, and the clerk found his wife calmly ironing the parson's surplice. He did not return ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... she began to feel stifled in the house, where she had been busy ironing curtains, and tying on her old straw hat went out for a breath of air on the road. There was a light mist over the watercourses, veiling the pollards and thorn trees and the reddening thickets of Ansdore's ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... safe and sound asleep in the swing-box that dour old Whinstane Sandy had manufactured out of a packing-case, with Francois' robe of plaited rabbit-skin to keep their tootsies warm. I'd finished my ironing and bathed little Dinkie and buttoned him up in his sleepers and made him hold his little hands together while I said his "Now-I-lay-me" and tucked him up in his crib with his broken mouth-organ and his beloved red-topped shoes under the pillow, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... taken out of the wash-tub, starched, and hung over a chair in the sunshine, and then laid on the ironing-board. And now came the glowing iron. "Mistress widow," said the shirt-collar, "little mistress widow, I feel quite warm. I am changing, I am losing all my creases. You are burning a hole in me. Ugh! I ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... things," she replied to Mrs. Gartney's advance of assistance. "I've just come over to tell you what I'm going to do. I've made up my mind to take the minister to board. And when the washing and ironing's out of the way, next week, I shall fix up a room for him, and ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... with the modest self-possession of a lady. The newcomer took a survey of the labors of a family of ten members, including four or five young children, and, looking, seemed at once to throw them into system, matured her plans, arranged her hours of washing, ironing, baking, cleaning, rose early, moved deftly, and in a single day the slatternly and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly appearance that so often strikes one in New England farmhouses. The work seemed to be all gone. Everything was nicely washed, brightened, put in place, and stayed in place: ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the strain, she just dies. The obituary notice of her as the wife of so-and-so never tells how she just "gave out," having borne eight children and having done the cooking, washing, ironing, and sewing for the family, besides "helping in ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... to herself, says she. Things ain't like what they used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and we didn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither. The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself—cooking, sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. I never got to church Sundays because I had to stay home and get the Sunday dinner. Like enough they'd bring the preacher home to dinner. You got to watch chicken—it won't cook itself. Weekdays ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... tablet. This gives an excellent lustre to linen or muslin, and imparts a splendid perfume to the clothes, and makes the iron pass very smoothly over the surface. It requires but half the ordinary labor to do an ironing. It is admired by every lady. It prevents the iron from adhering to the surface, and the clothes remain clean and neat much longer than by ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... remained in his chair by the window. It was six o'clock, supper time, when he entered the kitchen. Keziah, looking up from the ironing board, saw him. He was white and worn and grim, but he held ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... several times for a day or two, to refresh the weary frames of the men and cattle, toiling under the burthen of the camp equipage. The camp on those days used to present even a more busy scene than usual. The dobies were employed in washing and ironing their master's clothes, while the other servants and camp-followers were mending, making, and repairing garments, saddles, and harness, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... because he had a monster for a playmate. But I didn't know he had a playmate, and much less did I know it was a monster. The honest truth is that for the first time since baby was born, I had my nerves under control, and I didn't dare investigate why he wasn't crying. I got all the ironing done—all of it, mind you—and I got Harry's work-clothes mended and I also read three installments of a Saturday Evening Post serial I'd been saving. And besides this Mabel, my neighbor, and I had a couple or three cups of coffee. We also had a giggling fit. I remember once ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne
... aunt are themselves middle aged gray-haired people, and still calls them her boy and girl. When made aware who I was my grandmother seemed delighted to see me, and talked long and affectionately of my mother whom she had not seen for many years. Aunt Lucinda was busily employed at the ironing-board, but looked often to see that her mother's wants were all supplied; nothing could exceed the affection and care she seemed to bestow upon her aged parent, indulging every whim, so that the old lady hardly can realize that she ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... was to die on the pavement, and it would not take long if, on getting into her room, she could only screw up enough courage to fling herself out of the window. What increased her ugly laugh was the remembrance of her grand hope of retiring into the country after twenty years spent in ironing. Well! she was on her way to the country. She was about to have her green corner in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... listen. No sound came from the interior of H. Cragg's apartment. Farther along she found a similar door on which was a card reading: "Miss Huckins, Dressmaker and Milliner." Listening again, she heard the sound of a flatiron thumping an ironing board. ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne) |
