"Housework" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a successful young literary man had hired a buxom Dutch girl to do the housework. Several weeks passed and from seeing her master constantly about the house, the ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... Graham!" said my neighbour Mrs. Jones to me one day, "what shall I do for good help? I am almost worried out of my senses. I wish somebody would invent a machine to cook, wash, scrub, and do housework in general. What a blessing it would be! As for the whole tribe of flesh and blood domestics, they are not ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... whom he also makes mistress of his house, and who thus becomes an illegitimate wife who may separate from him when it pleases her. Some women contract this kind of union without being actually paid, simply for their maintenance, in return for which they do the housework. Here there is no actual sale of the body. The contract may be indefinite or limited. In such cases the effect of money on the attitude of the man toward his mistress is evident; his tone is generally less respectful toward paid ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Domestic Science. The vacuum cleaner and the fireless cooker are not even mentioned. The efficient kitchen devised in such an interesting and clever way has no place in it. Its exclusive object is to suggest a satisfactory and workable solution along modern lines of how to get one's housework efficiently performed without doing it ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... in the surroundings. Everything was plain, but spotlessly clean, and he learned that Larue made his living by doing odd jobs in an electric firm. He was just home from his work. Luzanne was employed every afternoon in a milliner's shop, but her evenings were free after the housework was done at nine o'clock. Carnac in a burst of enthusiasm asked if she would sit to him as a model in the mornings. Her father instantly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her illness, and her former shyness and aversion to seeing people were rapidly leaving her. She no longer lay in bed until noon, but was up with the rest of the family, insisting on doing her share in the housework, and proving a very apt pupil in learning that useful and wrongly despised art; when callers came she always dropped in to chat with them a little while, and even the mail-carrier of the "rural delivery, route number two," the ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... she was moved, together with her furniture. Here they designed making a home for themselves, inaugurating Mrs. Flannery as housekeeper. It seemed to them that they could in no other way carry out so fully the wishes of their dead friend. The housework would occupy her mind and keep her busy, and by their living thus together she would have with her the two friends in whose care the deceased had placed her. Moreover each desired a better home than their cheerless attic room had been to them, and they felt that they could ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... be more and more difficult to induce girls to learn or practice housework. For the average woman this is still necessary, and the more advanced schools have taken it up. For the girl whom neither the home nor the school has been able to reach, Scouting offers a most successful and attractive means of getting the practical information ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous
... Kukor. In all the five years he had lived at the Barber flat, she had continually watched over him, plying him with medicine, pulling his baby teeth, mending his ragged clothes, teaching him to cook and do housework, feeding him kosher dainties, and—for reasons better hinted at than made plain—keeping a sharp lookout in the matter ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... man, who had been upstairs, attending to some of the housework (for he was the only servant ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... Farm—alone. Before her marriage she had looked forward to the long evenings with her sewing and reading. She knew that she would be busy enough in the day, for the farmhouse was old and rambling, and she was to have no help in the housework. But she looked forward to quiet, peaceful, lamplit evenings; and only lately, after ten years of married life, had she reluctantly given up the hope of them. For peace was far enough from the old farm kitchen in the evening. It was driven away ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... granny, where everything was done for her, and the housework went on with the regularity of machinery, and without any share in it, or interest in it, on Audrey's part, she had grown up with a knowledge only of how things should look when done, but without the faintest idea of how to do them, or ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... The improvement of housework conditions is largely in the hands of household employees. If a young woman is an excellent cook and a competent household manager, she can make practically her own conditions with women employers. If she prefers to live at home or in a room of her own outside the ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... later day most of them found refuge for a time in the doctrines of Swedenborg. My mother was always reticent upon religious subjects. She never mentioned these to me nor did she attend church, for she had no servant in those early days and did all the housework, including cooking our Sunday dinner. A great reader, always, Channing the Unitarian was in those days her special ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... was so run down that I could not spank the baby. After taking three bottles of your Elegant Elixir I am now able to thrash my husband in addition to my other housework. God ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... because my maid—a jewel of a maid—lied to me with every second breath. There have been moments when I've wished I was the daughter of a poor New England minister—living in a little white house under a couple of elms and doing all the housework." ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... the fateful wedding-day. As on the day before some holy Sunday, when solemn feelings almost irresistibly make their way into the heart, almost as on the eve of her confirmation, so Freneli felt on the eve of her wedding. Thoughtfully and seriously she did her housework; perhaps she had never spoken so little as on that day. At times she felt like weeping, and still she had a friendly smile for all she met. Then again she would sink into deep reflection, in which she forgot place and time and everything; she knew nothing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... any nurse but his mother, and Mrs. Wheeler has a great deal else to do than looking after him. What would you be like, do you think, Olly, if I had to do all the housework, and cook the dinner, and mind the baby, and there was no nurse to wash your face ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that out," said Louis, indicating the tray which Rachel had drawn from concealment under the Chesterfield, and which was now loaded. Mrs. Maldon employed an old and valued charwoman in the mornings. Rachel accomplished all the rest of the housework herself, including cookery, and she accomplished it with the stylistic smartness of a ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... you can. Treat yourself like an invalid, as you are. Then change your way of life entirely: go out a good deal in the air, read, and talk, and sing, and play on the piano—you used to be a good player, I remember. Let the housework and the sewing be done by somebody else, except what you can do without a strain upon yourself. Then I should be a little careful about my dress, to have it becoming and all that, and I would invite in a little company once in a while, and go out in a sociable ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... the ultimate solution of the "servant problem" will not be that every woman will do all her own housework, but that domestic work will become, on the one hand, very much simplified and, on the other, will be put on the same footing as teaching, nursing or secretarial work. That we are beginning to move in ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... not very well, for the hardships of the war have worn upon her. Except Uncle Jerry and Aunty Chloe, the cook, all our negroes have left us, or been taken by the government to work on fortifications, and my wife and Gerty have to do most of the housework," replied Uncle Homer very gloomily; and it was plain to Christy that the mansion at Glenfield was not what it had been ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the young lady will take to housework like a bear-cub to a syrup keg, and old Marthy will potter around with her flowers and be perfectly happy with the two of them. Cheer up, Bill Loo! Lemme have a smile, anyway, before I go. And I wish," he added quizzically, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... the milk in Atpat to Shiva's shrine, not keeping a drop for their calves or even for their children. But although all the milk in Atpat was every Monday poured into Shiva's shrine, it yet did not become full to the ceiling. But one day an old woman came to the shrine. She had done all her housework. She had fed all the children and had bathed all her little daughters-in-law. Then she took a few drops of milk, a little sandal-wood paste, and a few flowers, and half-a-dozen grains of rice and went to worship at Shiva's shrine. She prayed to Shiva, "The little ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... waked them to another day of toil. Thursday evening was set for the event. On Wednesday the Lusk girls coming in to discuss, found Judith with shining eyes and crimson cheeks, attacking the simple housework ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... health began to fail. The housework of the large family became too much for her, and the brave maid-of-all-work, accompanied by Emma Jane, was obliged to return to London. They sought the advice of that dissenting minister whose shirt-fronts, if ever they showed a ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... writing a wonderful book, Sartor Resartus, and Jane using all her cleverness to make the home beautiful and comfortable. For they were very poor, and Jane, who before her marriage had no knowledge of housekeeping, found herself obliged to cook and do much of the housework herself. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... Mother to put you to housework, I think," she said. "That will give you exercise, and the chance of an occasional peep at the window. You don't deserve it, I fancy; but you are so handsome that I have a weakness for you. All you have to do is to speak fairly to Father Vicente and ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... When all the housework was finished, the girls dressed the happy, wriggling baby in his blue highwayman coat and three-cornered hat, and kept him amused while mother changed her dress and got ready to take him over to ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... Mrs. Carr quickly recovered her equanimity. "Very well, Mrs. Smithers," she returned, lightly, reflecting that when in Rome one must follow Roman customs; "Do you understand all branches of general housework?" ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... steadily. Jack Frost threw photographs of fairyland upon the windows, and hung the roofs with fringes of crystal pendants, while the snowflakes piled themselves over the fences and made a shroud for the trees, and every day Pauline, with this strange peace in her heart, did her housework ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... a cold climate, and fully as unfurnished to meet them. I had seen her draw her thin checked shawl around her, when I knew it was not enough to save her from the weather, and that she had no more. And her gowns, of thin cotton stuff, such as she wore about her housework at Magnolia, were a bare provision against the nipping bite of the air here at the North. Yet nobody spoke of any addition to her stock of clothes. It was on my heart alone. But now it was in my hand too, and I felt very glad; though just how to manage Dr. Sandford ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mother with the housework, picked peas and a squash and a saucer full of yellow pansies in the weedy little garden, and, at noon, dined on the trophies of her ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... they declined coming to the city. However, his brother George complied with a similar offer, bringing his family with him, where they found very comfortable quarters. Isabella was employed to do the housework. In May, 1833, Matthias left his house, and placed the furniture, part of which was Isabella's, elsewhere, living himself at the hotel corner of Marketfield and West streets. Isabella found employment at Mr. Whiting's, ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... Africa. In Mrs. Hooper's view it was providential that the death had occurred in South Africa, as there could be no inconvenient question of going to the funeral. But Connie had pleaded that the girl might go home for two days to see her mother; Annette had done the housework during her absence; and both maid and mistress had since been eagerly interested in the girl's mourning, which had been largely supplied out of Connie's wardrobe. Naturally the opinion of the kitchen was that "her ladyship ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... like the memories of childhood or the reading of the Book of Genesis. Then she had so changed Daniel's cottage—newly papered, whitewashed and thoroughly cleansed with soap and water, it seemed one of the cosiest, homeliest places I ever saw. I only went in the afternoons, and her housework then was always done; but she was never idle. I used to watch her knitting stockings of all sizes with silent curiosity; but one day I asked who a tiny pair of scarlet ones was for. "Mrs. Larkum's baby. The poor things are ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... or mother, lending a hand at housework when needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was dumbfounded. "Tell me all about this affair," he demanded of "Dodd," as he led the way to another room, leaving Mrs. Weaver to go on with her housework. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... station, superintending the transportation of the new stock, which had come by the early local; Betty was busy with her housework upstairs; and only old Sam ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... mornings, Mary Alice helped her mother with the housework. In the afternoons, after the midday dinner was cleared away, Mary Alice had a good deal of time on her hands. Sometimes she sewed—made new clothes or remade old ones; sometimes she read. Once in a while ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... 1889, Miss Starr and I moved into it, with Miss Mary Keyser, who began performing the housework, but who quickly developed into a very important factor in the life of the vicinity as well as that of the household, and whose death five years later was most sincerely mourned ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Committee "on labor and wages, and congestion of population," ten per cent. of the wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains of the protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... girl! If your father was as rich as all that, why would you care about wasting a doughnut? And look at your mother making her own butter and helping in housework! Anne says she even spins her own linen towels and knits your stockings. What under the sun would she work like that for, if she could afford to live better'n we do?" ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... mean that she must be brought up in ignorance and kept to housework only? Is she to be man's handmaid or his help-meet? Will he dispense with her greatest charm, her companionship? To keep her a slave will he prevent her knowing and feeling? Will he make an automaton of her? No, indeed, that is not the teaching of nature, who has given ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... morning at sunrise she put on her hat and went to the ancient church of San Crisogono, which is served by Trinitarian monks. Sometimes Madame Bernard went with her, but more often she was accompanied by the one woman-servant who cooked and did the housework. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... had taken through sorrow, was always seeing something wrong in everything we did; she never could be quiet or contented. The boys didn't get so much of it: they were off out of doors and later at their trades; but me, I was kept in to help with the housework, and kept in for company, and kept in for no other reason, I guess, than because my wicked heart longed so to go out and play with the girls and boys. I dare say it was good for me. Ma meant all right, that I know, but ma was all along a sick ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... wanted to go this afternoon, just as soon as you took the necklace away from me and I realised what people would say. But I knew that would be silly. People can't run away and leave notes behind. But I can tell Anne I want to go to New York and get pupils. And I could get them. I can do housework, too." ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... replied that he thought he knew of one that would suit, and that he would let me know the next day. I also telephoned two "want ads." to a morning paper, one for an experienced farm-hand, the other for a woman to do general housework in the country. Polly was to interview the women who applied, and I was to look after the men. That night I ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... INDIVIDUAL REWARD UNDER TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT.—As a typical example of disregard of individuality, the worker in the household may be cited, and especially the "general housework girl." Selected with no knowledge of her capabilities, and with little or no scientific or even systematized knowledge of the work that she is expected to do, there is little or no thought of a prescribed and definite task, no teaching specially adapted to the individual needs of the taught, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... she did. "I'll tell you why I'm not mending' stockings, and why Susan has had to leave off mending stockings in order to look after me. Susan and I worked in a mill when she was ten and I was eleven. We were 'tenters.' We used to get up at four or five in the morning and help with the housework, and then put on our clogs and shawls and be at the mill at six. We worked till twelve, and then in the afternoon we went to school. The next day we went to school in the morning and to the mill in the afternoon. When we were thirteen we left school altogether, and worked twelve hours ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... to base at such and such a time, I took in oil, etc., and reported ready for sea at —— o'clock." When you think of the amount of work a ship needs even after peace manoeuvres, you can realise what has to be done on the heels of an action. And, as there is nothing like housework for the troubled soul of a woman, so a general clean-up is good for sailors. I had this from a petty officer who had also passed through deep waters. "If you've seen your best friend go from alongside you, and your own officer, and your own boat's crew with him, and things of that ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... was usual to have all the preparations and the housework completed by early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and after an early tea in parlour and kitchen—the servants, clean and neat, piled up the Yule clogs in the rooms, getting the large ones well alight, and keeping them ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... pardonable; but what any one could find in the useless statuesque Clementina passed his comprehension. Could they not see at once that she was "just that kind of person" who would lie abed in the morning, pretending she was sick, in order to make Phemie do the housework, and make him, John Milton, clean her boots and fetch things for her? Was it not perfectly plain to them that her present sickening politeness was solely with a view to extract from them caramels, rock-candy, and gum drops, which she would meanly keep ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... was a bountiful meal. The depot master employed a middle-aged woman who came in each day, cooked his meals and did the housework, returning to her own home at night. After Mr. Wingate had mowed a clean swath through ham and eggs, cornbread and coffee, and had reached the cooky and doughnut stage, he condescended to speak further concerning the ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... housemother in rural communities still feels many of the obligations of the ancient woman. The three-meal-a-day routine, the actual preparation of raw material of food for the table, the personal offices of housework, washing, ironing, mending, making, sweeping, dusting, cleaning, in all their varied details, keep her in active sympathy with the past. This fact furnishes the main reason why "Women's Columns" and "Magazines for Women" reach such large ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... under a drift, with his staff and pouch. The sad news reached her just after the birth of a little boy, and there were two other mouths to feed besides. Her savings went quickly enough, and she fell into dire poverty, for she had not yet recovered her strength, and could not do housework. During Passion Week she sold her bed to pay what she had borrowed and to feed the children. It was cold, she had not a copper, nor any possibility of earning anything. Then the rest went, too, and there was no way of getting food enough for the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... persons "were treated as members of the creditor's family and never exposed to harsh usage." The effect of interference by the English was that the wives and daughters of the great men suddenly had to do all the housework. "Debtor and creditor lost confidence in each other."[701] "There is a detestable and actual slavery in these hills, which is now only carried on by independent tribes, beyond English jurisdiction. This is the captivity to the bow and spear,—men and women ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... top of Black Hill looked long at the Reid home. In his mind he could see Kitty dressed in some cool, simple gown, fresh and dainty after the morning's housework, sitting with book or sewing on the front porch. The porch was on the other side of the house, it is true, and the distance was too great for him to distinguish a person in any case, but all that made no difference to Phil's vision—he could see her ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... both of us!" Jenny did not think so really; but she said it. She thought Emmy had the bread and butter pudding nature, and that she did not greatly care what she ate as long as it was not too fattening. Jenny thought of Emmy as born for housework and cooking—of stew and bread puddings. For herself she had dreamed a nobler destiny, a destiny of romance, of delicious unknown things, romantic and indescribably exciting. She was to have the adventures, because she needed them. Emmy didn't need them. It was all very ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... exciting problem of the summer hat; and now she was planning for the fall hat—she had seen the cutest feathery toque, that came low down about her face, pushing to all sides little wisps of golden curls and making her look—well, very nice indeed. Then, of course, there had been less housework, and she had had much more time to herself, more time and more freedom. The acquaintance with Flossie, the young wife of the floor-walker in the flat across the landing, had helped a lot. Together they had plunged deep into the intoxication of the shops. And ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... had her sleeves tucked up like 's if her 'adn't finished her housework. Her wern't dressed ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... and Henry Fenn rioted in their twenties. John Hollander saved a bleeding country, pervaded the courthouse and did the housework at home while Rhoda, his wife, who couldn't cook hard boiled eggs, organized the French Cooking Club. Captain Ezra Morton spent his mental energy upon the invention of a self-heating molasses spigot, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... your father's present income if I were the only person to be considered? What do I care about any pleasure for myself? I'd be willing never to have a maid again; I don't mind doing the work. If we didn't have any children I'd be glad to do your father's cooking and the housework and the washing and ironing, too, for the rest of my life. I wouldn't care. I'm a poor cook and a poor housekeeper; I don't do anything well; but it would be good enough for just him and me. I wouldn't ever utter ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Mrs. Shaw. She took me away from my mother when I was four years old—taken me for her body servant. She learned me how to do housework and all kinds of sewin'—cuttin' and makin'. I done all the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... a man who speaks her language and is immediately offered employment at good wages, with all expenses to the destination to be paid by the man. Most frequently laundry work is the bait held out, sometimes housework or employment in ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... stopped her boat in its course she was at the Sasso Scritto: a favourite resting-place with her, where, on feast-days, when Joconda let her have liberty from housework and rush-plaiting and spinning of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... lamentable lack at the present time among a large proportion of the daughters of comfortable and refined homes, that they have small physical strength and no qualities of endurance at all. They are "all tired out" if they sweep and dust or do housework for an hour or two, or take a half-mile walk on an errand, or sew continuously for an hour. Very likely they will want to lie down and rest an hour after such exertion. This is all the result of unexercised muscles ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... locked her in. She knew then that she was a prisoner. When he was at the mill at night, while he slept during the day, she was to be locked up in her stuffy, airless room. When he was about she would do the housework, always under ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... when she came away no notion of improving her acquaintance with Miss Anastasia; but the supper, and the breakfast and the dinner of the next day, with all the nameless and almost numberless duties of housework that filled up the time between, wrought her to a very strong sense of the necessity of having some kind of "help" soon. Mrs. Rossitur wearied herself excessively with doing very little, and then looked so sad to see Fleda working on, that it was more disheartening ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... sections of Zenith, especially in the "young married set," there were many women who had nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves, electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen walls, their houses were so convenient that they had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth that the Great War had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their "wasting time and getting a lot of crank ideas" in unpaid social work, and still more to their ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... against her wearing anything else—so adorable was she. When this happy, dreamy indolence began to pall upon her—and she could not stand it for long—she would be up at sunrise helping Peggy wash and dress her frolicsome children or get them off to school, and this done, would assist in the housework—even rolling the pastry with her own delicate palms, or sitting beside the bubbling, spontaneous woman, needle in hand, aiding with the family mending—while Peggy, glad of the companionship, would sit with ears open, her mind alert, probing—probing—trying to read the heart of the girl ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was useless, and with a sigh I resigned myself to the inevitable; but when, ten days later, Elizabeth departed in a whirl of enthusiasm and brown paper parcels I turned dejectedly to the loathsome business of housework. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... tenements, which broke the sleek respectability of the well-to-do quarter. In those windows Ruth observed foreign-looking, idle women, not very clean, who had nothing to do after they had completed half an hour of slovenly housework in the morning. They watched their neighbors breathlessly. They peered out with the petty virulent curiosity of the workless at whatever passed in the streets below them. Fifty times a day they could ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... seat on low stools, knitted stockings, or drank out of glasses handed across the shoulder to them by their lords. Some of these women were clearly notable housewives, and I have no reason to suppose that they do not take their full share of the housework. Boys and girls came in and out, and got a portion of the dinner to consume where they thought best. Children went tottering about upon the red-brick floor, the playthings of those hulking fellows, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... in a small town in China a man named Hok Lee. He was a steady, industrious man, who not only worked hard at his trade, but did all his own housework as well, for he had no wife to do it for him. "What an excellent, industrious man is this Hok Lee!" said his neighbors. "How hard he works! He never leaves his house to amuse himself or to take a holiday as ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... tradespeople save milkman and baker being allowed to call, and they remarked that they never once found the area gate unlocked. And while these two women, prim and self-contained, went on with the cooking and housework and kept the doorstep clean, the so-called Miss Adela Mimpriss went on with the woolwork flowers at the dining-room window, where she could get most light, and the world outside had no suspicion ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... the difficulty of obtaining an abundance of farm labor, and is one of the obstacles to inducing young people to remain on the farm. Unfortunately, too, the women on the farm have often been the chief sufferers from close confinement to the drudgery of housework, with little opportunity for recreation and less chance than the men have to enjoy the ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... cared to. Which of the pair was right does not really matter. At all events Mrs. Winslow, whether she recovered or not, never walked abroad again. She was "up and about," as they say in Orham, and did some housework, after a fashion, but she never again set foot across the granite doorstep of the Winslow cottage. Probably the poor woman's mind was slightly affected; it is charitable to hope that it was. It seems the only reasonable excuse for the oddity of her behavior during the last twenty years of ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he couldn't hardly keep from eatin' of her up. An' she behaved consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out 'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them secesh fellers'll ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eaten until she was again and again assured and reassured that it was quite fit to eat. This home life of the very poor Chinese, if indeed it may be called home life, has a listlessness about it in marked contrast to that of the West. There is little housework, no furniture more than a table and chair or two, and the simplicity of the cooking arrangements does not tend to increase the work of ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... not appear at the cottage for several days. During that time Lydia tried to put Charlie's story out of her mind. With housework and swimming and giggling with Margery, she managed to do this during the day, but at night she dreamed of it and woke, and spoke ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Doctor Kirby, as proud as a kid with copper-toed boots. The doctor reads it all the way through, and then he hands it back without saying a word. The old lady goes away to fiddle around about the housework purty soon and the old man looks at the ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... upstairs, lying on the heap, the leaves already fading, she felt depressed and miserable. The breakfast was dull, and for the most part all three were silent. Mrs Hopgood and Clara went away to begin their housework, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... farmhouse. Passing through the hall, which,—unaltered since the days of its original building,— was vaulted high and heavily timbered, she went first into the kitchen to see Priscilla, who, assisted by a couple of strong rosy-cheeked girls, did all the housework and cooking of the farm. She found that personage rolling out pastry and talking volubly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... "I should never be allowed to do that; I must go to school every day, and then I have my exercises to do, and to help mother with the housework; the baby to mind; and—O I am always ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... him a last farewell as he disappeared into the woods, then, to occupy herself, she helped Evangelina with what little housework there was to do, later going with her to the garden patch where ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Iskender saw no more of Asad for three days, the clergyman-designate being called upon to help in the housework. But he continued to walk near the Mission at sunrise and sunset; and at last, one evening, going there as usual, he found Asad sitting, Frank-wise, on a chair before the gate, devouring chunks of the sweetment called baclaweh, which the cook had given him. Espying the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... had to do every mite of the housework, and milk cows, and make butter and cheese, and cook and wash and scour, and take all the care of the children, day and night, in sickness and in health, and spin and weave the cloth for their clothes (as wimmen ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that he did most of the family washing—that is, he did the rubbing, the wringing, the lifting, the hanging out—and once a week he scrubbed. When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although there seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... herself. There were chests of them piled away in the garret—Chilian's mother's, and those they had made to fill in the moments when housework was finished. She had a quiet sense of humor, and she smiled. What were they laying up these treasures for? Neither of them would be married, most of their relatives were ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... another thing," said Benny. "I don't go about telling tales, but I do think it is time you knew. The girls tell everybody that you like to do the housework so much that they don't dare interfere. And it isn't so. They may have taught themselves to think it is so, but it isn't. You would like a little time for fancy-work and reading as ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Saturday, and there was no school. Bert had gone off coasting on his new bob, but Nan did not want to go, her mother having asked her to stay and help with the dusting. But now the little bit of housework was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... "I can do housework," said Millicent eagerly. "I always did our room—all of it. And I cooked all our meals. Mother went out such ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... The housework had coarsened the mother's hands. Her nose had lost its shape and her temples had fallen in. Constant stooping over the kitchen range had made her a little round-shouldered. Father and mother met only at meals and at ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Industry.—Outside of the tilling of the soil, the early industries were centred in the home, which gave rise to the well-known house system of {431} culture. "Housework" has primary relation to goods which are created for the needs of the household. Much of the early manufacturing industry was carried on within the household. Gradually this has disappeared to a large extent through the multiplication of industries outside the home, power ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... repeated in the report we have under consideration. For the first, diligent investigation in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest number classed by occupations came from the lowest order of workers, those employed in housework and in hotels, and the next largest was found among seamstresses, employees of shirt factories, and cloak makers, both of these industries in which under-pay is proverbial. The great majority receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by seldom less than ten hours a day ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... to vote if they want to. There's nothing to stop 'em voting and doing their housework as well; and the Lord knows it doesn't matter who they vote for, as all the members are only a pack of 'skytes,' after a good billet for themselves. Think I'll have a go for it to see if it would pay better than farmin'," he said, with his mouth extended in a laugh that redeemed the weakness ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Pettitoes. "And they drink bucketfuls of milk; I shall have to get another cow! Good little Spot shall stay at home to do the housework; but the others must go. Four little boy pigs and four little girl pigs are too many altogether." "Yus, yus, yus," said Aunt Pettitoes, "there will be more ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... as if things inanimate still partook of men's dread at men's deeds. If you passed through the corridor and saw in the shadow of the wall that homeliest of instruments cast away and forgotten, you would smile at the slatternly housework. But if you knew that a corpse had been borne down those stairs to the left,—borne along those floors to that marriage-bed,—with the blood oozing and gushing and plashing below as the bearers passed with their burden, then straight that dead thing would take the awe of the dead being; ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his mother sitting down to rest while he washed the few dishes; it was a regular employment with him; not that he liked the job, but it gave him satisfaction to know that he was relieving her from some of the drudgery of the housework. ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... me has got to step along pretty sharp to git that hay in before it rains. No, Miss, I dunno where the young lady is. She was down in the hay-field this mornin', rakin', but I 'spects she is doin' some sort of housework jes' now, or perhaps she's in the garden. I'd go an' look her up, but beggin' your pardon, I ain't got one minute to spare, the boss is waitin' for me now," and, touching his shabby old hat, ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... are messages, Tommy. It would be a great advantage to me to have someone I could send on a message without feeling I was interfering with the housework." ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... would. There's a woman here out of the common run. She has quite a story, which I'll tell you in confidence. Then you can say whether you'd like to employ her or not. If you WILL stay on the farm, my advice is that you have a woman to do the housework, and me and Angy must try to find you one, if the one I have in mind won't answer. The trouble is, Holcroft, to get the right kind of a woman to live there alone with you, unless you married her. Nice women don't like ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... there isn't anything down there worth getting to. They're like servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing the drudgery itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and fuss and dirt they forget that the house was meant to live in. The housework has to be done, but the people who do it have been so overpaid that they're confused and worship the housework. They're overpaid, and yet, poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken can't have. Of ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... noisy"—he lifted a toe—"out he goes! I aim to keep my place straight." He shoved his thumbs deep into the belt of his breeches. "Not much doin' at this time of day. The girls in school or helping with the housework; the boys in the mines. Don't step out till after supper. Then look out! The young bucks shake a heel and the girls put on their lipstick. Them that can't afford a permanent go around all day with ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... I've gone off for an adventure. It just came over me that you've had all the adventures while I've been at home baking bread. Mrs. McNally will look after your meals and one of her girls can come over to do the housework. So don't worry. I'm going off for a little while—a month, maybe—to see some of this happiness and hayseed of yours. It's what the magazines call the revolt of womanhood. Warm underwear in the cedar chest in the spare room when you need it. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... and I think the Ogowe Protestant mission sadly short- handed—its missionaries not being content to follow the usual Protestant plan out in West Africa, namely, quietly sitting down and keeping house, with just a few native children indoors to do the housework, and close by a school and a little church where a service is held on Sundays. The representatives of the Mission Evangelique go to and fro throughout the district round each station on evangelising work, among some of the most dangerous and uncivilised tribes ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... shut up her books without some great twinges of pain; but she said not one word on the matter. She bestowed on her stitching and on her housework and on her butter the diligent zeal which used to go into French rules and philosophy. But Mrs. Stoutenburgh had reckoned without her host, for there was a great deal more of the butter than she could ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... will be immediately apparent. The numerous outdoor adventures, the discovery of the cave, and the fishing will probably be the scenes that will make the most immediate appeal to boys who are beginning to show the Boy Scout spirit; and other phases of outdoor life, no less than the touches of housework, will appeal to members of the Girl Scout and the Girls' Camp Fire organization. The illustrations in the book show hints for simple costuming which may be followed ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... children, and all the neighbors, called her Sweetie, she was so good and so thoughtful for others, so sweet-tempered and kind. She did everything so gently that none of them could ever love her half as much as she deserved. Though only ten years old, and very small and pale, she did every bit of the housework, and kept the ugly old room and its faded furniture so neat, that it seemed almost home-like and pretty to them all. It was happiness enough for the little ones to get her first kiss when she came back from an errand, to sit by her at table, and, above ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Wesleyans. Their family consisted of five sons and two daughters, a fine wholesome brood, who were all quite young, the eldest being about fifteen. The children were reared and trained with great care, and without distinction of sexes: they were all taught to do housework. Family worship was held morning and night. If the father was unavoidably absent, the mother took the service, and if both were absent, the eldest of the family, either son or daughter, took it. The house was a hive of industry ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... inkstand, locked her bookcase, and went at housework as if it were a five-barred gate; of course she missed the leap, but scrambled bravely through, and appeared much sobered by the exercise. Sally had departed to sit under a vine and fig-tree of her own, so Di had undisputed sway; but if dish-pans and dusters had tongues, direful would have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the specimens that go in for general housework in this burg are a sad lot. I ain't goin' all through the list. I'll ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Flamingus and Amarilly, in rapid succession came down with a mild form of the fever. Mrs. Jenkins and Amarilly divided the labors of cook and nurse, but the mainstay of the family was the Boarder. He aided in the housework, and as an entertainer of the sick he proved invaluable. He told stories, drew pictures, propounded riddles, whittled boats and animals, played "Beggar my Neighbor," and sang songs for the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... Slyme meet Crass as if by appointment and as the two men went away together she returned to her housework wondering what it meant. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... any Bell-person kind enough to give them board and lodging. And every one was surprised at the increased loudness in the voices of these hospitable bells. For, of course, the Bell-people from the belfry did their best to help in the housework as polite guests should, and always added their voices to those of their hosts on all occasions when bell-talk was called for. And the seven big beautiful bells in the belfry were left hollow and dark and quite empty, except for the clappers who did ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... mile outside the sleepy little town. He had gone there in the first place because it was far removed from everyone and everything he knew, and in some ways the experiment had proved a success. The deaf old woman who came in to do his cooking and housework worried him little, and apparently did not gossip about his actions or his habits; whilst the three rooms he had furnished were more than ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... fear getting up and making my own bed and washing my own handkerchiefs and blouses, and renovating last year's hats to make them look like this year's. I fear a poor husband and a procession of children, and doing the housework with an incompetent maid, or maybe without any at all. Those are the things I fear, ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace |
