"Sewing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Maltby was forever engaged in sewing or in fancy work; and, to tell the truth, Dot was not much interested in needlework. She was often seized upon by Aunt Sarah, however, and made to sit down to ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... consulted his dying mother, she advised him that anybody can cut off, but that the sewing on is an acquired art. Mr. Bryce feels strongly for the men who practised what Catharine thought so difficult, and he stops for a moment in the midst of his very impersonal treatise to deliver a panegyric on Alexander Hamilton. Tanto nomini ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... time I had observed that Gretchen was no longer spinning, but instead was employed in sewing, and that, too, on very fine work, which surprised me the more, as the days were already shortening, and winter was coming on. I thought no further about it; only it troubled me that several times I had not found her at ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... permanent or necessary? Can we not transfer cooking from the home to the scientific laboratory, along with the laundry? Cannot machinery, in the hands of self-respecting and well-paid artisans, do our cleaning, sewing, moving, and decorating? Cannot the training of children become an even greater profession than the attending of the sick? And cannot personal service and companionship be coupled with friendship and love where it belongs and whence it can never ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... kitchen, where Eliza was sewing, and, opening the door of a small bedroom, said gently, 'Come in here with me, my daughter; I have news to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin, Young Folks' Edition • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but instinctively felt that such action on the part of a guest would be indecorous. She hoped Mrs. Barry would suggest it, but such a move was evidently far from that lady's thought. She sat in her white silken gown, with sewing in her lap, the picture of ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... were sitting over the fire In the growing dusk of a February evening. Their sewing lay on the table; some home dresses they were making for themselves, for they had never too much superfluous cash for dressmakers, with fashionable patterns and fashionable prices. It had grown too dark to work, and they had turned to the fire for ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "up-stairs," to wait upon and take care of. Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good deal; her daughters took it with more outward calmness. Although baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation, born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of society out of the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... its membership increased to seventy-five, congregations large and growing, a nourishing Sunday-school and mission school, two preaching services on the Lord's day, and a vigorous Y.P.S.C.E.; a wide-awake mid-week service, a woman's missionary society, and a sewing-school for girls. The church edifice has been renovated at a cost of three hundred dollars, and a parsonage is being erected. For intelligence, Christian character and progressive work, this church is considered the best among ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... of an efficient person to assist you in taking charge of your domestic affairs, Enna," said a maiden aunt of mine to me one evening. I pulled my little sewing-table toward me with a slight degree of impatience, and began very earnestly to examine the contents of my work-box, that I might not express aloud my weariness of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... my maid, for I was nervous at being so far away from anyone. M. and Mme. A. and all the servants were at the other end of the house, and there were no bells in our wing (nor anywhere else in the house except in the dining-room). When I wanted a work-woman who was sewing in the lingerie I had to go up a steep little winding staircase, which connected our wing with the main building, and walk the whole length of the gallery to the lingerie, which was at the extreme ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... or Brokennose get the map now, without getting me; and, I reckon, you fellers will see that they have their hands full if they tackle that job," and his eyes glanced proudly around the little circle of men, who had gathered close about him while he was performing his interesting little feat in sewing. ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... a small room, well shielded from the draughts which raged through the building in winter; and here Sergeant Archelaus had lit a fire to-night and sat before it, sewing an artilleryman's stripe upon ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church and, on one occasion, she patched her young son's trousers into a hideous pucker, by reason of her greater interest in the method ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Mrs. Burtwell was wont to explain in a deprecatory tone; "only we should have preferred to have Madge graduate first, before devoting herself to a mere accomplishment. It seems a little like putting the trimming on a dress before sewing the seams up," she would add; "I did it once when I was a girl, and the dress ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... ready; and it struck Hawksley forcibly that he was hungry, that he had not touched food since the night before. Gregor, valeting in a hotel, pressing coats and trousers and sewing on buttons! Groggy old world, wasn't it? Gregor, pressing the trousers of the hoi polloi! Gregor, who could have sent New York mad with that old Stradivarius of his! But Gregor was wise. Safety for him lay in obscurity; and what was more ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... puff sleeve close to the shoulder was the last of the dainty dress to be put on. Mrs. Bilter took eager pleasure in dressing her pretty sister in the daintiest of gowns. When she looked up she saw her husband coming through the gate for his noon dinner. She put down her sewing and moved to meet ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... the Manor House did not get their dresses from London, a dressmaker came from Brighton to help them, and all together they sat sewing and chattering in the work-room. Maggie would take a bow or a flower, and moving it quickly, guided by the instinct of a bird building its nest, would find the place where it decorated the hat or bonnet best. Neither Sally nor Grace could do this, nor could they drape a skirt ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... other pupils scattered far and wide to their various homes, Nita had remained at the convent, roaming at will through the deserted class-room and beautiful grounds. She was the pet and darling of the entire community. In the long summer afternoons when the nuns carried their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river, Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her snatches of song ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... 1716, taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses, flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing, Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking children and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels, embroidery, silks, and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers. Many of the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... although we found it much more difficult than to make cordage of our old cables, after they had been converted into junk, which was an expedient that we had been obliged to practise long before. We had also long before used all our sewing sail-twine, and if, knowing that the quantity with which I had been supplied was altogether inadequate to the wants of such a voyage, I had not taken the whole quantity that had been put on board to repair the seine into my own custody, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... woman had constituted herself the "mother of the Circus Boys," as she expressed it. She always insisted on doing their sewing for them, helped them to plan their costumes and gave them friendly advice on ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... but a moment for Jerry to reach the house and in another she had reached the room where her mother sat sewing. ...
— A Day at the County Fair • Alice Hale Burnett
... years ago the cotton gin, the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, the reaping, sewing, and modern printing machines, and numerous other inventions of scarcely less value to our business and happiness were ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... in the river, the children were swimming to school, blue smoke curled up into the still air, kalo was baking among the stones, and a group of women sat sewing and making leis on the ground. The Waimanu day had begun; and it was odd to think that through the long summer years days dawned like this, and that the people of the valley grew grey and old in ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... sat in the house all day long, occupied solely with her ornaments and her rouge, and did not concern herself with sewing and stitching. So Sia Kung-Schong's mother still had to look out for ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... to be dreaded by them, on account of the inevitable discomforts and dangers of it. While the ship is lying in the docks, waiting for the appointed day of sailing to arrive, they can pass their time very pleasantly, sitting upon the decks, reading, writing, or sewing; but as soon as the voyage has fairly commenced, all these enjoyments are at once at an end; for even if the wind is fair, and the water is tolerably smooth, they are at first nearly all sick, and are confined to their berths below; so that, even when there are hundreds ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... Tom Davis, brother of Bertha and Agnes, asked for a half-day's vacation and helped Algernon whitewash. Bert had impressed Max into carpentering, and the work of bookcase-building went on noisily inside the shed. The girls sat on the weedy patch of ground outside, sewing ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... In sewing up the wounds in the abdominal walls, advantage will be gained by putting in a certain number of stitches so deeply as to include the whole thickness of the muscles, and in the intervals between these deep ones to insert others less deeply, so as accurately ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... sit and dream. She would gradually cease sewing and, with her hands idle, and forgetting her surroundings, she would weave one of those romances of her girlhood and be lost in some enchanting adventure. But suddenly Julien's voice giving some orders to old Simon would snatch her ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a large amount of industrial work done by the inmates. This chiefly consisted of sewing and embroidery. A feature of the exhibit was an oak cabinet containing a series of specimens showing cross sections of the brain prepared at the Pathological Institute in New York city. It was of decided scientific value and interest. ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... of course, her mother had to get her another needle, and then thread it for her. She went to sewing again till she pricked her finger, and the sight of the wee drop ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... was growing strong that like Him in whose memory the day was honored, she and her little ones might soon not know where to lay their heads. She succeeded in getting the small sum owed to her and payment also for some sewing just finished. More work she could not readily obtain, for every one was busy and preoccupied by ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... not learn that father left anything, and we were compelled to get long as we could. Mother obtained sewing to do at low prices, ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... noted the contrast it made with the bare, unkempt posts of the State. It was the Catholic mission at Wombali, and it was a beauty spot of flowers, thatched houses, grass, and vegetables. There was a brickyard, and schools, and sewing-machines, and the blacks, instead of scowling at us, nodded and smiled and looked happy and contented. The Father was a great red-bearded giant, who seemed to have still stored up in him all the energy of the North. While the steamer was unloaded he raced me over the vegetable garden and ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... out of the country hied, His breast with love and valour glowing. In cloister they have placed his bride, Instruction to receive in sewing. ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... were as empty as possible they shut the doors and sprinkled bran on the carpets just as though they were sewing garden seeds, which ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... her ways with them, she watched their work, and made them those pretty speeches that seem like the flowers of childhood, and which her cousin had already silenced, for that gaunt woman loved to impress those under her with salutary awe. The sewing-women were delighted with Pierrette. Their work, however, was not carried on without many and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... interesting employment she thought proper to be so much engaged as not to remark the entrance of our hero. To Joseph's accustomed "Good evening, Miss Silence," she replied merely by looking up with a cold nod, and went on with her sewing. It appeared that she had determined on a literal version of her promise not to say any thing to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stitches, and knit 78 rows: this is for the coloured part, and in sewing it together at the elbow, it must be rather tightened; and for the cuff, which is done in white, cast on 18 stitches and knit 66 rows, and sew it very nicely to the ...
— Exercises in Knitting • Cornelia Mee
... without stint to her husband's people, with never a thought of self-pity or self-praise. By day and by night she labored for her husband and family and for her people, for she thought them hers. She taught the women how to adorn their rude homes, gathered them into Bible classes and sewing circles, where she read and talked and wrought and prayed with them till they grew to adore her as a saint, and to trust her as a leader and friend, and to be a little like her. And not the women only, but the men, too, loved and trusted her, and the big boys found ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... people who talked, with many intimate pauses of silence, were all Bostonians, though of widely different types. The hostess, sitting in an easy chair and engaged with some sewing, was a girl of about twenty-six. She wore a brown skirt of an ugly cut and shade and a white silk shirt, adorned with a high linen collar, a brown tie and an old-fashioned gold watch-chain. Her forehead was too large, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... garden, with its surrounding railings and locked gates, nurses in uniforms were pushing prams. Toddlers were tossing a ball across the lawn and tottering after it with excited shouts. Beneath a tree in the clear sunshine a young mother sat sewing. Other men's women! Other men's babies! He would have to set out in search of his kingdom afresh; all his old quests had been mistaken. But he was older now and lame; he lacked the energy for a new journey. It seemed to him that ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... then framed by him before delivery, the rule laid down in the Robbins case was held to apply throughout, with the result that North Carolina could tax or license no part of the transaction described;[583] so also as to a sewing machine ordered by a customer in North Carolina and sent to her C.O.D.;[584] so also as to brooms sent in quantity for the fulfillment of a number of orders, and subject to rejection by the purchaser if deemed by him not up ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... who were either supported by, or supported, the ten old men were kept busy by their aged relatives hunting shirt studs and collar buttons, pressing broadcloth trousers, letting out waistcoats or taking them up, sewing on buttons and laundering white ties. The barber had to call in extra help, because of the trimming of beards and shaving of chins and cutting of hair that ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... few days, Charles and Louis called again. Minnie was crocheting, and her adopted mother was occupied with sewing; while Thomas engaged them in conversation, the subject being the impending conflict; Louis, taking a decided stand in favor of the South, and Thomas being equally strong in ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... if they was mine; but they do seem sort of different. Sort of lovin'er, like they was when they was little. I can't say, Ben, that I ain't missed it. Seems real pleasant to have 'em let on how much they think. It makes me feel reel good. Dear me suz!" said Mrs. Potter simply. She took up her sewing and sat busily working. Once in awhile she ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... linings, and thread, and sewing silk, and hooks and eyes! Why, David Dunne, it can't be true! How did he know—David, you blessed boy, you must ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... information about the usual operations in binding books; folding; gathering, collating, sewing, forwarding, finishing. Case making and cased-in books. Hand work and machine work. Job and blank-book binding. Illustrated; ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... out he sat for a moment in deep thought. Elsie's list of articles bought with her last month's allowance consisted almost entirely of gifts for others, generally the servants. There were some beads and sewing-silk for making a purse, and a few drawing materials; but with the exception of the candy, she had bought nothing else for herself. This was what ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... a bright afternoon in early autumn, that Annie sat sewing by a window in the luxuriously furnished parlor of Colonel Stuart, her uncle, who was the practicing physician of the village, that she was started by a loud ringing of the door bell. Supposing it was some one after her uncle, she paid little heed till she ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the rind becomes soft, and then scraped smooth with a case-knife; then rinse, and wipe and dry it, and return it to the cheese-room, and turn it often until dry enough for market. Rich cheeses are apt to spread in warm weather; this is prevented by sewing them in common cheap cotton, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... drew near, the under-master perspired up the sunny road with another object than that of refreshing himself at the familiar little inn. He entered by the ivied porch, and within, as usual, found Miss Fouracres, who sat behind the bar sewing. Miss Fouracres wore a long white apron, which protected her dress from neck to feet, and gave her an appearance of great neatness and coolness. She had a fresh complexion, and features which made no disagreeable ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... to let her stay longer in the Industrial School than was usual with the young girls of the neighborhood. Even up to the day of her confirmation, she had taken sewing lessons twice from a most accomplished teacher. A short time before Easter, the teacher had assured Gertrude that Veronica had made such extraordinary progress, that she was already prepared to ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... intelligence in a community tends to quicken invention, and leads to the discovery of those scientific principles and of those ingenious labor-saving machines, by which the productive power of the community is so greatly multiplied. The cotton-gin, the steam-engine, the sewing-machine, and the reaping-machine would never have been invented in a nation of boors. It is not asserted that every boy who goes to school will become an inventor. But it is as certain as the laws of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... completed her nest, sewing together the leaves by passing through them a cotton thread twisted by the creature herself, leaps from branch to branch to testify her happiness by a clear and merry note; and the Indian weaver[2], a still more ingenious artist, having ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... extra work which is thrown upon the nervous system through seeing, reading, writing, and sewing with defective eyes is recognized by all physicians as an important cause of disease. The tax made upon the nervous system by the defective eye lessens the supply of energy available for other bodily use, and the general health ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... laid with split boards, for dressed lumber is costly in the Bush. Looking through the open door into the general living-room, which was also lighted, he could see a red twinkle beneath the register of the stove, beside which a woman was sitting sewing. She was a hard-featured, homely person in coarsely fashioned garments, which did not seem to fit her well, and Nasmyth felt slightly disconcerted when he glanced at her, for she was not the woman whom he had expected to see. Then his glance rested on a ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... to myself, "I wonder what this means. It can't be a male sewing society, I suppose. It can hardly be a prayer-meeting at Jim Wheaton's house. Male members! eh? I thought the female members carried on this church." In my perplexity, I handed the note to my wife. She read it with care. "Well," said she, "I am glad the people are waking up at ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... congressional district, and it would really be doing his people a great favor to give them more. After setting forth the mutual benefits to accrue from trusting him, he appealed to Wogan & Co. with the vehemence and energy of the sewing-machine man, or life-insurance agent, to send on the goods without further delay. They should never regret dealing with him, his character and standing being a sufficient guaranty that he could not play false. He was acting in good faith, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... tea in Tish's parlor, but she kept us out of the bedroom, where we could hear Miss Swift running the sewing machine. Finally Aggie said out of a ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and a small washstand, has a door opening into the side yard near the stable, and another into the wash shed, besides the one connecting it with the dining room, making three doors in all, and one window. The fourth room is very small, and is used as a sewing room; it adjoins the dining room, and the parlor, and has a door opening into each. Besides the four rooms on the first floor, there is a large pantry, having a small window about four feet from the floor, the ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... 1st length twisted round the little finger work 2 D, L, 2 D, then put the second round the little finger, leave a little space, and work 2 R D, L, 2 R D; repeat until there are 66 Ls on each side. Fasten it neatly into a circle, by untying the first knot and sewing ...
— The Bath Tatting Book • P. P.
... chile was bruk aff that habit," observed the mother, as she seated herself beside the table with some sewing. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... named Graciosa. She was all her mother's joy. Every day she had given her a different dress, of gold brocade, velvet, or satin; yet she was neither conceited nor boastful. She used to pass her mornings in study, and in the afternoon she sat sewing by the queen's side. She had, however, plenty of play-time, and sweetmeats without end, so that she was altogether the happiest ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... "Afterwards—well, it was downhill all the way. I didn't know how to work, and by that time I had learned my health was going. Since then, I've lived on the proceeds of the pawnshop—I had my jewels, you know—and on the odd bits of money I could scrape together by taking in sewing." ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... impossibility of clearing it of the seeds!" But the foot-gin appeared on the scene, and indigo went down before cotton. Ranged along the walls of the room are some twenty rough wooden frames, looking like a compromise between a straw-cutter and a sewing-machine, each furnished with two strong rollers operated by a treadle and acting precisely like those of a clothes-wringer. Behind each of these machines stands a man or woman with one ever-moving foot upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... little one in both her own, and said, smiling, yet with meaning in her eyes, as she tapped the small fore-finger, rough with impatient and unskilful sewing— ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... very interesting to Lily-toes. No baby could be more comfortably situated on a hot summer day; at least, so her mamma thought, as she tied Lily-toes securely in her chair with a soft scarf, and went back to the sitting-room and the busy sewing and talking with her dear old girlhood friends. I presume if Lily-toes had been a first baby, her mamma would have hesitated about leaving her there. She would have feared—may be—that the chickens would eat ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... properly arranged, and so forth. Everything was going on well; the house was in exquisite order from attic to cellar. Ogden shut up with Mr. Richards, the servants quietly busy, and Danton Hall as still as a church on a week-day. Grace, humming a little tune, took her sewing into the dining-room, where she liked best to sit, and began stitching away industriously. The ticking of a clock on the mantel making its way to twelve, the rattling of the stripped trees in the fresh morning wind, were, for a time, the only sounds outdoor or in. Then wheels rattled rapidly over ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... maid's room sat three or four young girls who sat all day long sewing, or making bobbin lace, without once stretching their limbs all day, because the mistress did not like to see idle hands. In the ante-room there sat idly the melancholy Yakob, Egorka, who was sixteen and always laughing, with two or three lackeys. Yakob did nothing but wait at table, where ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... now turned his attention to matters touching the souls of his people. He appeared in church; he took a leading part in prayer meetings; he met and encouraged the temperance societies; he graced the sewing circles of the ladies with his presence, and even took a needle now and then and made a stitch or two upon a calico shirt for some poor Bibleless pagan of the South Seas, and this act enchanted the ladies, who regarded the garments thus honored as in a manner sanctified. The Senator ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... theatre goes no farther than the proscenium. Beyond that, you have a parlor, with one wall removed for your better view. It is Asmodeus's show improved. I went to a Paris theatre with a friend. The play began with half a dozen milliners chattering and sewing round a table. After a few moments, my friend gave a prodigious yawn, and declared he was going home, "for you might as well sit down and see a parcel of real milliners at work as this play." Tastes differ; and I did not find this an objection. But what a compliment that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... say," was the answer of the chief engineer. "We were running along all right, and we got your word to switch on more power, after the turn. We did that all right, and she was running as smooth as a sewing-machine, when, all of a sudden, she short-circuited, and the storage ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... against the coming of Winter. Life can be adjusted to its simplest forms. From his fortieth to his fiftieth year, Socrates worked every other Thursday; then he retired from active life, and Xantippe took in plain sewing. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... stupid mood!" laughed Hsi Jen. "Can it be that you don't know that our sewing in these quarters mayn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... occasionally were. Now on what slender circumstances do the fates of dogs and mortals hang. Only that afternoon Mr. Jellybrand, in the innocent self-confidence of his heart, had agreed with Miss Maple, an elderly and bitter spinster, that the next sewing meeting of the Dorcas Sisterhood should be held in her house and not at the Rectory. He had told Mrs. Cole of this on his way upstairs to the nursery. Now Mrs. Cole liked the Dorcas meetings at the Rectory; she liked the cheerful chatter, the hospitality, the gentle scandal ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... try our faith. In the course of the morning came from some sisters in Dublin, 18 yards of calico, 34 yards of print, 43 balls of cotton, and a pair of worn lady's boots. This donation came most seasonably, as we had been mentioning repeatedly the need of calico and print in our prayers; and the sewing cotton and the pair of boots came at once into use. Moreover, this donation was a sweet encouragement to me to continue waiting upon the Lord. Evening was now approaching, and no money had yet come in for provisions, etc., which would be needed on the Lord's day. About six o'clock, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... me with sharp and severe parents and a gentle schoolmaster; for when I am in the presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even as perfectly as the world was made, or else I am so sharply taunted and cruelly threatened—yea, presently sometimes with pinches, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... pretty lips of Oldfield. No wonder that Londoners thought the character bewitching; no wonder that Cibber wrote so enthusiastically of the actress in that wonderful Apology. "Had her birth plac'd her in a higher rank of life," he notes, perhaps forgetting that her very descent entitled the poor sewing-girl to a position which poverty denied her, "she had certainly appear'd in reality what in this play she only excellently acted, an agreeably gay woman of quality a little too conscious of her natural attractions. I have often seen her in private societies where women of the best rank might ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... in the fervor of his feelings he held his pipe between his teeth to free the hand which held it, and deliberately squeezed both of her hands in his, still she did not appear embarrassed, nor vexed; and when he had released it, quietly went on with her sewing, as composedly as if what he had just done was quite usual, and a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... fighting; white and black, all were at work, and all were eager; the servants contended for the honor of going with their master; the women flocked to the house to assist in the work of preparation, cutting out and making under-clothes, knitting socks, picking lint, preparing bandages, and sewing on uniforms; for many of the men who had enlisted were of the poorest class, far too poor to furnish anything themselves, and their equipment had to be contributed mainly by wealthier neighbors. The work was carried on at night as well as by day, for the occasion was urgent. Meantime the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Martin, I'm right down sorry for her, and poor little Miss Maudie," said Lucy. "Now, Miss Hoodie, I'm going to take you out into the garden a little, and when we come in I'm going to stay with you in the sewing-room." ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... see, it's not every trade that deserves to have a cat about the place. My first master was a shoemaker, and I lived with him happily enough, until one morning in winter, when I found the wicked man sewing strips of—let me whisper—cat's fur on ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... making cheese. In like manner, they go to the gardens near to the outskirts of the city both for collecting the plants and for cultivating them. In fact, all sedentary and stationary pursuits are practised by the women, such as weaving, spinning, sewing, cutting the hair, shaving, dispensing medicines, and making all kinds of garments. They are, however, excluded from working in wood and the manufacture of arms. If a woman is fit to paint, she is not prevented from doing so; nevertheless, music is given over to the women alone, because ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... he said suddenly, smiling, but the hated nickname to-night was almost a caress. "Tell me," Ralph's voice was very grave—"You've been sewing? Mother ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... she sat absorbed in her work, sewing her heart into it, for every stitch in it delighted not only her skilled artistic sense but her religious feeling, little waves of anxious thought swept across her one after another. She was a person of timid and brooding temperament, and her father's eccentricities and past ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... etc. Occasionally, for the "open day," or as a special exercise, a favorite play may be given by the children with the simplest kind of costuming and stage-setting. These can well be made in the school as a part of the manual training and sewing work. In giving the play, it will generally be better not to have pupils memorize the exact words of the book, but to depend upon the impromptu rendering of their parts. This method will contribute more largely ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... evening dress in the dining-room at night, and did honor to the place; but otherwise he was to be seen only in our corridor, or in the cold, dark chamber at the stair head where the camareras sat sewing, kept in check by his decorum. Without being explicitly advised of the fact, I am sure he was the best of Catholics, and that he would have burnt me for a heretic if necessary; but he would have done it from his conscience and for my soul's ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... was always on her legs from morning to night, and never seemed fatigued. Indeed, when she sat still she was rather uncomfortable; and this was her weak point, for her restlessness interfered with sewing and mending, which ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... reverent fear of intruding by a look than I should have at the door of a king's chamber. A narrow rough ledge added to the window-sill is his bench. Behind this he sits from six in the morning till seven at night, bent over, sewing slowly and painfully on the coarsest shoes. His face looks old enough for sixty years; but he cannot be so old. Yet he wears glasses and walks feebly; he has probably never had in any one day of his life ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... home, too, matters had settled into their usual routine. Miss Jane had returned, and the days, for Genevieve, were full of study, practice, and the usual number of lessons in cooking and sewing. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... case in her kamik, so it would not be lost. She could do wonderful sewing with the needles. Koolee was very proud of her sewing. No one else in the whole village could sew so well, because they had not such good needles to do it with. Koolee used them only for her very ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... on each side of the hearth, with their toes on the fender. Meg had been sewing at an overall for little Fay, but at that moment she laid it on her knee and ran her hands through her cropped hair, then about two inches long all over her head, so that it stood on end in broken spirals and feathery curls above her bright eyes. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... essentials; but, along with these, Crabbe gives you the complexity and detail of life which surrounded them. Hood presents you with the picture of a lonely woman at midnight toiling and starving in the slavery of sewing; but Crabbe would trace her from her quiet country-home, through the follies which led her to a London garret. Hood, in his "Lay of the Laborer," makes you listen to the wail of a strong man imploring leave to toil; Crabbe would find him drunk in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Aquileia, as soon as the weather was warm enough, as we meant to pass ourselves off for runaway slaves, if we were arrested and questioned gold coins in our possession would have been most dangerous to us. We agitated the idea of sewing a few into the hems of our tunics and into the ends of our belts; but we came to the conclusion that any attempt to exchange a gold coin for silver would be very dangerous and much ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... while, girls, if you please," said Alice, "till I just tell you what I want to have done. In the first place, I think it will be so pleasant to form a sewing Society, to meet on Saturday afternoons, and make bags and needle-cases and collars and many other things to sell; and I know my father will be delighted to have us put a box, with these things, in his store. Then, while we sew, I propose that one reads aloud from some interesting book ...
— Self-Denial - or, Alice Wood, and Her Missionary Society • American Sunday-School Union
... the Busy Bee Sewing and Civic Club, cool, starchy and unhatted, clicked past on slim, trim heels, all radiated by the reflection from a pink parasol, gay embroidery ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... one of the oldest towns in New Jersey," remarked Andy, as they walked around the depots and down Broad Street, the main thoroughfare. "Down along the water front is one of the largest sewing machine factories in the world. I was through it once and I can tell you it was a sight ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... worry neither. Everything we had was made by my folks. My aunt done de carding and spinning and my mammy done de weaving and cutting and sewing, and my pappy could make cowhide shoes wid wooden pegs. Dey ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... I had for some time been familiar with that tree, and all my surroundings, for I had been breathing two and a half years, and had made some progress in the art of reading and sewing, saying catechism and prayers. I knew the gray kitten which walked away; knew that the girl who brought it back and reproved me for not holding it was Adaline, my nurse; knew that the young lady who stood near was ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... hunting habits and the simple agriculture of his people, nor with their ways of doing other things. He has started an orange grove, and in a short time will have a hundred trees, so he says, bearing fruit. He has bought and uses a sewing machine, and he was intelligent enough, so the report goes, when the machine had been taken to pieces in his presence, to put it together again without mistake. He once called off for me from a newspaper the names of the ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... sewing resembles shoemakers' or saddlers' work; but, the leaf being like fine cloth and not like leather, perhaps the name "tailor-bird" is the most appropriate for the little worker. The bag is lined with soft, downy material, and in this the tiny eggs are laid—tiny indeed, for the ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... Leonard placidly sewing, with Johnnie and Ned playing about the room. "You, evidently, are not afraid," ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... must who is to earn her living by it, entails consumption or curvature of the spine. Engraving music is one of the most laborious, by the care, the minute exactitude, and the intelligence it demands. Sewing and white embroidery do not earn thirty sous a day. But the making of flowers and light articles of wear necessitates a variety of movements, gestures, ideas even, which do not take a pretty woman out of her sphere; she is still herself; she may ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... Press your thumb on its closed edges; for this casket opens with a spring, and, if it is ripe and ready, it will unclose with a touch, and show you a little fish, with silver scales laid over a covering of long, silken threads, finer and more delicate than any of the sewing-silk in your mother's work-box. This silk is really a wing-like float for each scale; and the scales are seeds, which will not stay upon the little fish, but long to float away with their silken trails, and, ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... its antimacassars, its upholstered furniture, its flower-pots and canary-bird, its sewing-machine in the window, was more like an old maid's best parlour than a soldier's sitting-room. The small, neat-featured mistress herself, who was not very strong, and always, even in summer, wore a little shawl round her shoulders, suited ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Sophomore Select Sewing Society met at the home of Miss Jane Bartley. A pleasant time was had by all, making rackets and nightcaps for ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... "Barbara the sewing-woman—" began a young voice, which immediately collapsed, the speaker retreating with great impetuosity behind her mother or aunt, whichever it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... compromising herself; so the only thing she said was that she had noticed that he had been acting a bit peculiar lately, now they mentioned it. As time went on, the scarlet porch became the talk of the town. It was duly discussed at the sewing society, and the reading club, and the general sentiment was practically unanimous that Jackson must be suffering from incipient cataract or senile dementia, and needed a guardian. Even Mary McGuire remarked to Mrs. Burke that she was afraid "that there front porch would sure set the ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... somehow, already as if she belonged with the place. She sat upon the doorstone and hemmed small muslin curtains which were to go in the bedrooms upstairs, and Martha, Winifred, and Ellen, seeing this, sent for their sewing materials and helped her, while ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... running machine, and in the second by a much larger number of men very poorly trained and ill-fitted for this work, and each of whom while doing it is taken away from some other job for which he is well trained. The work which is now done by one sewing machine, intricate in its appearance, was formerly done by a number of women with no apparatus beyond ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... a heavy heart she took herself up-stairs for the afternoon. This tete-a-tete had become their custom every day; she with her sewing, and the sick man luxuriating in a pipe. Tresler was still bandaged, but it was only lightly, for the wound ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... I took a book and sat down by the little fire to read; but though I kept on turning over the pages, I did not follow the text; for I was either thinking about Mrs Dean's needle as it darted in and out of the stuff she was sewing, or else about Mr John Dempster and our meeting that day—of how I had promised to go up and see him on Sunday, and how different he was to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... All that now remained to be done was to polish them off, and Erik worked at this while Father Mikko told his stories. The children had enough to do to watch 'Pappa' Mikko's face and listen to the wonderful tales, and Mother Stina was busy with some sewing—she couldn't spin because the noise of the wheel would have ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... years of such care and attention as the mother would be sure to bestow. Milly, as she was familiarly called, reared the children, tilled the garden, and, being especially handy with the needle, turned off many a job of sewing for the family of her mistress. She was entirely ignorant so far as books go, but Paul read the Bible to her when visiting his loved ones on Sunday and what he explained she remembered and treasured up for comfort in her ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... arisen at the entrance of Toulan, and laid their sewing-work aside. A ball of white cotton had fallen to the ground from the lap of one of them, and rolled through ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... godmother,' said Miss Wren, 'I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but it's the trying-on by the great ladies that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... uncommon thing in these sweatshops for men to sit bent over a sewing-machine continuously from eleven to fifteen hours a day in July weather, operating a sewing-machine by foot-power, and often so driven that they could not stop for lunch. The seasonal character of the work meant demoralizing toil for a few months in the year, and a not less demoralizing ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London |
