"Washerwoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... themselves. They seem to be a separate race of beings, for they all have large arms, and shoulders that would do honor to Tom Sayers. I have seen negro slave women at work in the field, with a muscular development that would be the envy of a Bowery boy. The washerwoman and the field slave show what can be done by cultivation. I know that their style of figure is not quite so attractive as I have seen, and I know that wherever there is an extraordinary tax upon muscle there is an extraordinary repression of mind and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... her undertaker-furniture, and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and humble little efforts to do something for her comfort. Then the train halted at the Italian line, and she hopped up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was to see how ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... confess—but I could have had him, I give you my word; he asked me himself. But I thought, no! it's not worthwhile to take such advantage of him. No! I had better go on to the streets, or accept Rogojin, or become a washerwoman or something—for I have nothing of my own, you know. I shall go away and leave everything behind, to the last rag—he shall have it all back. And who would take me without anything? Ask Gania, there, whether he would. Why, even Ferdishenko wouldn't ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... out?" I asked. "He's got three girls, to my knowledge, and, as for being deaf, why, he gasses more than any man in the town, and knows more of what's going on than old Mother Brindle the washerwoman." ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... gentlemen, that for two years Pickwick continued to reside constantly, and without interruption or intermission, at Mrs. Bardell's house. I shall show you that Mrs. Bar-dell, during the whole of that time, waited on him, attended to his comforts, cooked his meals, looked out his linen for the washerwoman when it went abroad, darned, aired, and prepared it for wear when it came home, and, in short, enjoyed his fullest trust and confidence. I shall show you that, on many occasions, he gave half-pence, and on some occasions even sixpences, to her little boy; and I shall prove to you, by a witness ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... people were those who kept a gig. In some towns the credential is that the family shall employ a "hired girl." In Fairhaven the condition was that you should have a washerwoman one day in the week. The soapy wash-water was saved for scrubbing purposes—this was in Massachusetts—and if the man of the house occasionally smoked a pipe he was requested to blow the smoke on the plants in the south windows, so as to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... literary gentleman, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding); the genius who is at work on the slate, and the two honest lads who are hugging the good-humored washerwoman, their mother,—all, all, save, this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome certainly are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture. It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of his own skull, ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are in Nanking; they have to look after our houses there, so they can't pay frequent visits to the capital. Her brother is the Wen-hsiang, who acts at present as our senior's accountant; but her sister-in-law too is employed in our worthy ancestor's yonder as head washerwoman." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... his humor, and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day. Other ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... about his dress; but for his dusty boots you would not have guessed he had been travelling. Poor Nino. When he had not a penny in the world but what he earned by copying music, he used to spend it all with the washerwoman, so that Mariuccia was often horrified, and I ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... degraded the name to its present form, and that so hopelessly, that the other day an old Negress in Port of Spain puzzled the officer of Crown property by informing him that she wanted to buy 'a carre in what you call de washerwoman's.' It had been described to me as possibly the remotest, loneliest, and unhealthiest spot in Her Majesty's tropical dominions. No white man can live there for more than two or three years without ruin to his health. In spite of the perpetual trade-wind, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... out of the shadow as if lifted by indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to the shrine. But I have a clear notion of woman. In all of them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark. And when there is a spark there can always be a flame . . ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... attempt was made to stop the party, and as it would be daylight when they reached Gravesend, the Queen arranged her disguise to resemble, as she hoped, a washerwoman—taking off her gloves, and hiding her hair, while the Prince, happily again asleep, was laid in a basket of linen. Anne could not help thinking that she thus looked more remarkable than if she had simply embarked as a lady; ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manner. But David, although he knew Miggs to be a veteran of the toughs, felt sure of his innocence in this case, and he was determined to battle for him, not for the sake of justice alone, but for the sake of the tired-looking washerwoman he had seen bending over the tubs. This was an occupation she had to resort to only in her husband's times of indulgence, for he was a wage earner in ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... breath may be sweet, and does everything to make himself as presentable as a gallant signor. He gives himself the airs of a young dandy, tries to be lithe and frisky and to disguise his ugly face; he might try all he knew, he always smelt of the musty lawyer. He was not so clever as the pretty washerwoman of Portillon who one day wishing to appear at her best before one of her lovers, got rid of a disagreeable odour in a manner well known to young women of an inventive turn of mind. But our crafty fellow fancied himself the nicest man in the world, although in spite of his drugs and perfumes ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... should I meet to-day but Meredith! My washerwoman, Ellen Blount, is ill, So ill I fear she never will be well. 'Tis the old story, every day renewed: A little humble, tender-hearted woman, Tied to a husband whom to call a brute Would be to vilify the quadrupeds! ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... I married I was a washerwoman for the white folks. My first husband was Isaac Dixon, who came from some place in Alabama and had been owned by Dr. Lipscomb, the chancelor of the university. Dr. Lipscomb married us in the colored Methodist Church, and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... have redress for the insult put upon her favorite daughter. In all that General Grant has done in the way of omission, nothing approaches the inactivity which has wrung my heart, as wet blankets are twisted in the strong hands of a washerwoman. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... religion is powerless to bestow. I am afraid these cynical persons are sometimes correct. I know that when I was a very young man (many, many years ago, as the story-books say) and wanted cheering up, I used to go and dress myself in all my best clothes. If I had been annoyed in any manner—if my washerwoman had discharged me, for instance; or my blank-verse poem had been returned for the tenth time, with the editor's compliments "and regrets that owing to want of space he is unable to avail himself of kind offer;" or I had ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... feelings, his own pride of race and name, his own ideas of what was due to his ancient rank with the political creed by which his conduct in public life was governed. The peer who sat next to him in the House of Lords, whose grandmother had been a washerwoman and whose father an innkeeper, was to him every whit as good a peer as himself. And he would as soon sit in counsel with Mr. Monk, whose father had risen from a mechanic to be a merchant, as with any nobleman who could count ancestors against himself. But ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... black woman who once had been a very attached servant in Mr. Rossitur's family, and having married and become a widow years ago, had set up for herself in the trade of a washerwoman, occupying an obscure little tenement out towards Chelsea. Fleda had rather a shadowy idea of the locality, though remembering very well sundry journeys of kindness she and Hugh had made to it in days gone by. But she recollected it was in Sloman-street ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... "There goes the old washerwoman over the way," said his mother, as she looked out of the window. "The poor woman can hardly drag herself along, and she must now drag the pail home from the fountain. Be a good boy, Tukey, and run across and help the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... B. Unwin, aged 40, washerwoman, applied to me on July the 10th, 1820, with severe inflammation and ulceration of the middle finger, arising from a puncture by a pin or needle some time before; there was much painful tumefaction, and the integuments had burst along nearly half of the length of the finger, on the ulnar side, ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a syllable, she turns ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... this most merciless of Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen, replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman a princess,—meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly to his Holiness, who ordered a strict search to be made for the author, but to no purpose. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... by such little books. Mine gives me a sentence requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after to-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Karl Maria's indignation burst over bounds at some unusual indignity; and he played a practical joke on the king. Meeting an old woman in the palace one day near the door of the royal sanctum, she asked him where she could find the court-washerwoman. "There," said the reckless Weber, pointing to the door of the king's cabinet. The king, who hated old women, was in a transport of rage, and, on her terror-stricken explanation of the intrusion, had no difficulty in fixing the mischief in the right quarter. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... towns where he stopped he was generally taken for a fighi, or teacher, and was pestered to write out charms. One day his washerwoman insisted on being paid with a charm in writing, that would induce people ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... kind of a washerwoman does THIS one turn out to be?" he asked, after they were seated, and he had invoked a blessing and was cutting ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Methodists, as a strict and extreme believer in the doctrines of that sect. During her attendance upon the Wesleyan rites, she became intimate with one Sanderson, who, whether a designing rogue, or only a very fanatical believer, pretended that he had discovered in the good washerwoman a Bible prodigy; and it was not long before the poor creature began literally, to "see sights" and dream dreams of the most preternatural description, for which Sanderson always had ready some very telling interpretation. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... in the Dublin Zoo were often to be seen washing the two shelves of their cupboard and "wringing" the wet cloth in the approved fashion. It was like a caricature of a washerwoman, and someone said, "What mimics they are!" Now we do not know whether that was or was not the case with the chimpanzees, but the majority of the experiments that have been made do not lead us to attach ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... their unpleasant vices by the plea that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,—as if the path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be written only at the painful sacrifice of bilking your washerwoman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... are. It is considered altogether sensible and becoming for the mechanic's wife to do her own housework as a bride and as a matron of years. Unless her husband prospers rapidly she is accounted "shiftless" should she hire a washerwoman, while to "keep a girl" is extravagance, or a significant stride toward gentility. The wife of the English joiner or mason or small farmer, if brisk, notable and healthy, may dispense with the stated service of a maid of all work, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... tell you that to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind like that which gleams—if I may be allowed the expression—which gleams—in your friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, who exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlour-window, dwelling next door, and a Bow-street officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his society is a source of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I am at present, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... creatures, devouring them; we heard his jaws, the cracking of bones, shrieks, and the voracious in-and-out of his breath edged with anger. A girl by my side exclaimed, 'It's not the Bench, after all! Would I have run to see a paltry two-story washerwoman's mangling-shed flare up, when six penn'orth of squibs and shavings and a cracker make twice ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... went to Belgium with a pair of fleece-lined gloves, I was sure, if I ever lost that pair, that they were irreplaceable. I lost them. I lost article after article, and was freed from the clinging. I lost a pin for the bodice. I left my laundry with a washerwoman. Her village was bombarded, and we had to move on. I lost my kit. A woman has a tie-in with those material things, and the new ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... gold watch. "Ah—getting late! Very agreeable exchanging amenities with old schoolfellows. But I have an appointment in the Palace Gardens, at the time they feed the muggers. That is a sight you should see, Mr Sinclair—when the beasts are hungry and have not lately snapped up a washerwoman or an erring wife!" ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... hadn't, not being famous enough, or rich enough, or clever enough to excite the hatred of mankind. He was simply an intelligent young man, who worked excellently when supervised by me. His mother is a washerwoman in this village, and the lad brought washing to my house. Noting that he was intelligent and was anxious to rise above his station, I engaged him as my assistant and trained him to ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... iron. The clock chimed twelve, and still the poor washerwoman smoothed and folded, though her heavy eyes almost refused to keep open, and the room began to feel the chill of the frosty ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... washerwoman, patted her bruises and repeated with symptoms of losing her patience, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... must be dead. Consternation reigned; and when it was reported that a woman had been killed in Dutoitspan Road, the excitement was at its height. The fatality sent a thrill of horror through the people, who awaited in dread anticipation the news of further massacres. The victim was a poor washerwoman, and the possibilities it conjured up before the mind's eye made her death doubly unfortunate. But, happily, no further damage to life or limb was to be recorded. A good many houses were hit, though not ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... and sees no fun in being stared at by vulgar crowds, I think she's quite right,—and I sympathize heartily with her liking for a cup of tea in peace and quiet with some old Scotch body who doesn't care whether she's a queen or a washerwoman." ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and time, and expressive of deep thought and active intellect, and you have before you the General Jackson who has lived in my memory from my childhood. Side by side with him stands a coarse-looking, stout little old woman, whom you might easily mistake for his washerwoman, were it not for the marked attention he pays her, and the love and admiration she manifests for him. Her eyes are bright, and express great kindness of heart; her face is rather broad, her features plain, her complexion so dark as almost to suggest a mingling of races in that climate ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... brooding boy, a year older than himself. The two lads were antipodal in disposition, intelligence, and social standing; for though Richard went poorly clad, the reflection of his cousin's wealth gilded him. Durgin was the son of a washerwoman. An intimacy between the two would perhaps have been unlikely but for one fact: it was Durgin's mother who had given little Dick a shelter at the period of his parents' death. Though the circumstance did not lie within the pale of Richard's personal ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... literary work, he took the poor mother aside and forced her to accept one hundred francs. The unfortunate woman, trembling with emotion, while two large tears rolled down her cheeks, admitted that the night before, in order to pay the washerwoman, they had pawned the only clock ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... strains of the favorite old tune faded on the ears of the delighted audience. Then they had The Portland Fancy and The Irish Washerwoman and The College Hornpipe, and at last the clock in the carriage house struck midnight and the guests departed in groups of twos and threes and fours, their cheerful voices sounding far down the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is reminded of it now! He cannot work, he has no craft nor profession; he knew enough to pass for an educated gentleman; not enough to earn a franc a day. He is the protege at present of his washerwoman, and can say, with some governments, that his debts are impartially distributed. He has only two fears—those of starvation in France, and a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... affairs we had a pleasant time recounting the days when we were young in the sense that we had no real trouble. Those were the times when we were earning fifteen and twenty the week; when our watches were always in durance vile; when we lied to the poor washerwoman and to the landlady; when we would always be "around to-morrow" and "settle up" with ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... inquiries, and learnt that the deceased had acted as washerwoman and followed the regiment. At last, after careful search, he found a grocer with whom she had dealt, and, on being asked whether a female of the name owed him anything, the grocer turned up his books and informed him ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... the field; others, that a German lord held him prisoner. But a page soon appeared who said he had seen him fall and could lead to the spot. He did so, conducting a party to a pond near the town, where, half buried in the mud, lay several dead bodies lately stripped. Among the searchers was a poor washerwoman, who, seeing the glitter of a ring on the finger of one of the corpses, turned it over, and cried, "Ah! ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... linen, and able to wear one surcoat and one suit of armor for any length of time without becoming repugnant to the nose of his lady when brought-into the opportunity for an embrace,—yet the heroes of this day have sore need of occasional aid from the washerwoman, and even the tailor becomes necessary for the replenishing of worn-out and faded garments. John Crawford the Zouave—the truth must be told—though he showed very little shirt, showed that little in an unclean condition; ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... saying, is not to get good, but to do good. Of pleasure, in the usual sense of the term, he knows nothing, and would grudge the expenditure of a sixpence upon himself as long as he knew a cadger or a decayed washerwoman who seemed to have a better claim to it. London is for him not a home, but a battlefield, and his spirit is the spirit of the soldier who dare not ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... indeed, is an unbridled woman Agreements were valid only until he should repent All Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... stay in Turin, no amorous fancy disturbed the peace of my soul, except an accident which happened to me with the daughter of my washerwoman, and which increased my knowledge in physics in a singular manner. That girl was very pretty, and, without being what might be called in love with her, I wished to obtain her favours. Piqued at my not being able to obtain an appointment from her, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rescued a drowning washerwoman; in youth he nursed men dying of cholera; as a veteran soldier he passed the night among the rocks of Caprera hunting for a lamb that was lost. No amount of habit could remove the repugnance he felt at uttering the word 'fire.' Yet this gentle warrior, when his career ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... demean myself in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?" ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... that human beings should be classed by strata, as if they were metals in the earth. Instead of dividing by nations, let us class by quality. So we might find Turk, Jew, Christian, fashionable lady and washerwoman, master and slave, hanging together like cats on a clothes-line by some ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... pantaloons, horsemanship, coupling freight cars, riding on a rail, riding on a pass, feeding threshing machines, how to wean a calf from the parent stem, teaching school, bull-whacking, plastering, waltzing, vaccination, autopsy, how to win the affections of your wife's mother, every man his own washerwoman, or how to wash underclothes so they will not ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... The warm-hearted washerwoman thrilled with pity for the forsaken child yet she put on her most brilliant surface-smile ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... under my notice when I was a student of medicine in 1819. I boarded at a good old Frenchman's, whose few domestics were French creoles. One of these was the washerwoman. When quite young she had left St. Domingo with her old mistress, who had been kind to her in the days of prosperity on the island. The old lady managed to save a small portion of her wealth, and lived quietly with her former servant, now her faithful friend. Madame Curchon, as she grew older, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... that tomorrow you are to be a free and a rich man. Then, as soon as you give your basket to the washerwoman at the Macon gate, I will pay you the promised ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... remembers an aged colored woman, who was employed as a washerwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this woman married a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by her industry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised nine hundred dollars for her husband's ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... groggeries, the music hall—and worse. The young man threaded gingerly into its dingy precincts, and by dint of a handful of Italian, picked up in a Roman winter's sojourn to be oddly practised on a local washerwoman sousing gay garments in the amber fluid of the Erie Canal, he singled out the Hinchey hovel from the squalid score it resembled. Before the sagging threshold tumbled a many-complexioned brood of children,—they ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... cried out sharply, "That will do." Immediately one of the assistants seizes the wet canvas, crumples it up without more ado, as if it were dirty linen, and takes it off to a wooden washing trough, where it is kneaded and washed in true washerwoman fashion. Water in plenty is sluiced over it, and after more vigorous manipulation still, it is passed from trough to trough until deemed sufficiently free from soluble salts to tone. The toning—done in the ordinary way with gold—removes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... elderly woman, poorly clad, blind of one eye, lame on one leg, and with her hair brushed into one large curl to hide the blind eye—but in vain, the defect was only the more conspicuous. This was "Lame Maren," as the neighbors called her, a friend of the washerwoman's. "Poor thing, slaving and toiling away in the cold water! it is hard that you should be called names"—for Maren had overheard the sheriff speaking to the child about his own mother— "hard that your boy should be ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... people sweeping all along the street; Baker Jorgen, the washerwoman, and the Comptroller's maid-servant. The heavy boughs of the mulberry-tree across the road drooped over the wall and offered their last ripe fruits to whomsoever would pick them. On the other side of the wall the rich merchant Hans—he who married the nurse-maid—was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the village washerwoman, and a capital nurse. It was an anxious moment for little Horace, when she unwrapped the crushed paw, Pincher moaning all the while in a way that went to ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... why she kept it, and what a good time she had playing cook, and washerwoman, and ironer, is told as only Sophie May can tell stories. All the funny sayings and doings of the queerest and cunningest little woman ever tucked away in the covers of a book will please little folks and grown ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... nothing will content my dear correspondents but to have me declare that the majority of ballet-dancers have villas in the Regent's Park, and to convict me of "deliberate falsehood." Suppose, for instance, I had chosen to introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story? I might get an expostulatory letter saying, "Sir, in stating that the majority of washerwomen are red-haired, you are a liar! and you had best not speak of ladies who are immeasurably your superiors." Or suppose I had ventured to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ironed in a curious way—across the apron—making little waves (our maids couldn't think what had happened to their white aprons the first time they came back from the wash—thought there had been some mistake and they had some one's else clothes—they had to explain to the washerwoman that they liked their aprons ironed straight); long gold earrings and gold chains. They are handsome women, dark with straight features, a serious look in their eyes. Certainly people who live by the sea have a different ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... great, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never—the utmost they reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk! The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dream of asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion! The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, ever yet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. Hamlet, in his sublimest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... she said, looking quickly behind her to see that Lucy was not listening. 'And Cecile was a fairy, with spangled wings—the sweetest thing you ever saw. We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but as nobody took any notice of Madame de C—she has behaved like a washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help her complexion ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all came back in a flash of rage that lit up this forgotten corner of her memory! The cause of the quarrel did not appear in the record, but that the girl had flung it at her that her people were nothing and nobody—her mother a washerwoman and her father a section hand—now stood out in letters of flame! Pearl had not been angry at the time—and she remembered that her only reason for taking out the miserable little shrimp and washing her face in the snow was that she knew the girl had said ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... geranium or rose so carefully nursed in the old cracked teapot in the poorest room, or the morning glory planted in a box and twined about the window? Do not these show that the human heart yearns for the beautiful in all ranks of life? You remember, Kate, how our washerwoman sat up a whole night, after a hard day's work, to make her first baby a pretty dress to be ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Fields is a Negro washerwoman who lives at South Claiborne and Toledano Streets. She was at home when she heard a big noise and went out to investigate. She ran into the arms of the mob, and was beaten into insensibility in less time than it takes ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... was not large, but it was select. It included a washerwoman with very red arms; a care-taker who had obviously failed to take care of herself; a couple of chimney-sweeps with partially washed faces; a charwoman with her friend the female greengrocer, who had been burned out of the opposite side ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... month a man from London, what lives at the Crown, he came here and asked me to show him the house, and when he see'd the garden and the condition it was in, he asked me to let him set to work in it and put it to rights; and a deal he has done in it to be sure for the time. He got Madge, the washerwoman, to come over one day and tell him how it all was when them people as lived in it last were here. And a power of work he did to put up that arbour there, as she told him it was afore the neighbour's boys had got in and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... of him. Judging from the goings on about the office in the two weeks I was there, he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for failing to pay for the washing of his shirts, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... you have lost your master and have had nothing to eat since God knows when, and I've just chased out my wife, yes, yes, and she went away yesterday. Yes, yes, she's going to try to shift for herself as a washerwoman down in Winnipeg this winter, yes, yes, that's how it is now. Yes, yes, we packed up and left a fairly decent living there at home and came here into this damnable log-cabin existence, yes, yes. ... Well, try that in your chops, you miserable cur, you can gobble that up, I ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the bakers, the beauties and the bigwigs will take care of themselves. (Rising and facing her determinedly.) Anyhow, I dont want to have things arranged for me by Wagner. Im not Wagner. How does he know where the shoe pinches me? How do you know where the shoe pinches your washerwoman?—you and your high F in alt. How are you to know when you havent made her comfortable unless she has a vote? Do you want her to come and break ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... visitor made a stand, he would bound away sideways on his four little legs; but the moment the visitor went on his way again, Snap was at his heels—"Yap! yap! yap!" He barked at the milkman, the butcher's boy, and the baker, though he saw them every day. He never got used to the washerwoman, and she never got used to him. She said he "put her in mind of that there black dog in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'" He sat at the gate in summer, and yapped at every vehicle and every pedestrian who ventured to pass on the high road. He ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... when I give you the one for the noodles. Bella says it's the best she ever ate. My husband gets so mad when I go down in the kitchen—me with two grand girls and washerwoman two days a week! But the girls ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Golden Deed, more truly noble because more full of mercy; namely, his halting his little army in full retreat in Ireland in the face of the English host under Roger Mortimer, that proper care and attendance might be given to one sick and suffering washerwoman and her new-born babe. Well may his old Scotch rhyming ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as taken down by the Medical Gentleman in charge,—"The body was cold, and covered by a clammy sweat—the features completely sunk—the lips blue, the face discoloured—tongue moist and very cold—the hands and feet blue, cold, and as if steeped in water, like a washerwoman's hand; the extremities cold to the axillae and groins, and no pulse discoverable lower; the voice changed, and the speech short and laborious. He answered with reluctance, and in monosyllables." This man had the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... utterances, and Lincoln's character. One of the golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... 1343. She had already been married by him to his nephew, Andrea of Hungary. This was not a happy marriage; for the inclinations of both were extremely contrary, and the prince was controlled by a Franciscan monk named Robert, and the princess by a washerwoman called Filippa Catenese. These indiscreet advisers brought matters to extremes, so that Andrea was strangled in 1345. The disinterested historians state ingenuously that Joanna was not guilty of this crime, although the others accuse her of it. She married again, on the ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... suits of clothes, the one old, "for every day"; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were black. He had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, and the third in the washerwoman's hands. He renewed them as they wore out. They were always ragged, which caused him to button ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... were busy at their ceaseless occupation. "Voila!" exclaimed our hostess, in exultation, and with an air which said, You must be gratified now; "Voila! this is the famous fountain where all the linen of La Rochelle is washed! and there is the chateau where my washerwoman lives,—a very respectable mother of a family;—and there are her turkeys and her farm-yard; and there is her market-garden! Oh! it is a ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... cold carrying the clothes!" Teddy's eyes fell to his own hands, which were always snug and warm in their red mittens. The washerwoman's little ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... Association to be merged in mere partisanship for any class or calling, or blind hostility to any abuse or oppression. We are not the champions of the slave or the hired servant, the factory girl or the housemaid, the seamstress or the washerwoman. We are not the advocates merely of labor against capital, of the employers as opposed to the employed. Ours is the cause of all classes and vocations, and our success is the triumph of all. We are in danger of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... him"—the bad name in my case being "a womanly woman"! What this means I scarcely apprehend, but I fancy it is intended to signify (in an actress) something sweet, pretty, soft, appealing, gentle and underdone. Is it possible that I convey that impression when I try to assume the character of a washerwoman or a fisherwoman? If so I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... upwards; then he cried: "Master, I cannot give that message, I am a poor unlearn'd man. And if I should go to England and cry aloud, they would say, 'Who is this, who comes preaching to a great people? Is not his mother with us, and a washerwoman; and was not his father a day labourer at two shillings a day?' and they would laugh me to scorn. And, in truth, the message is so long I could not well remember it; give me other ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... while its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's peak, an eye. Secretly I take stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety. Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it was too damned dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the grocer's. One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like sheep. "And although you were outside, if you weren't satisfied, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Our Landlady and Washerwoman. The Einsiedlerstein. Its Dungeons and Hall. Its History. Inscription over the Hermit's Grave. Lose our Way. Guided by a Peasant. His Conversation. Mistaken ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... principles, as no doubt we all do, more or less. I saw a colored boy come into a public office one day, and ask to see a man with red hair; the name was utterly gone from him. The man had red whiskers, which was as near as he had come to the mark. Ask your washerwoman what street she lives on, or where such a one has moved to, and the chances are that she cannot tell you, except that it is a "right smart distance" this way or that, or near Mr. So-and-so, or by such and such a place, describing some local feature. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... it! And it is flattering—very flattering—for me, as your daughter, to feel that you look upon me as so peculiarly suited for the washerwoman's post! None of that for ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... chairs. In the center of the room stood a big round table over which glowed two hanging lamps. The table was littered with papers and magazines. Home life was still further suggested by a canary bird in a gilt cage, a sleepy cat, and two pots of red geraniums. Thorpe had further imported a washerwoman who dwelt in a separate little cabin under the hill. She washed the men's belongings at twenty-five cents a week, which amount Thorpe deducted from each man's wages, whether he had the washing done or not. This encouraged cleanliness. Phil scrubbed out every day, while the men were ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... shore uninhabited by any living creature but rats, lizards, and centipedes. Several small octopi were soon brought in, and one of the men placed them on some boulders where the tide had left pools of water, and cleaned them of their poison. He rubbed them on the stone exactly as a washerwoman handles a flannel garment, and out of them came a lather as though he had soaped them. Suds, bubbles, and froth—one would have said a laundress had been at work there. He dipped them often in a pool of salt water, and not until they would yield no more suds did he give ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... The washerwoman lost no time in showing up, although her charges have been greatly reduced. She formerly demanded nearly treble as much as in London; now, however, she makes only sixteen to twenty shillings a month, not bad pay in a place where living costs threepence, and ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... me what you are driving at," said the washerwoman sharply, "and make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed that you have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then, and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any harm when you have only to guard the common council and ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... tell you of the supposed sister of an English queen, who married an American officer and dwelt in Oldport; of the Scotch Lady Janet, who eloped with her tutor, and here lived in poverty, paying her washerwoman with costly lace from her trunks; of the Oldport dame who escaped from France at the opening of the Revolution, was captured by pirates on her voyage to America, then retaken by a privateer and carried into Boston, where she took ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
