"Housework" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... story will be found in No. 146.) The old proverb about the shoemaker sticking to his last is sure to come to mind as one reads, but it seems to lose force when we notice that the "goody" has no trouble with the mowing, while the good "man" has much with the housework! ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... 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 did in them days), and then ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the rocky farm that the father and mother looked about them to see how they could add to it. Miranda Conwell turned to her needle and often sewed far into the night, making coats, neckties, any work she could obtain that would bring in a few dollars. She was never idle. The moment her housework was done, her needle was flying, and Russell had ever before him the picture of his patient mother, working, ever working, for the family good. The only time her hands rested was when she read her children such stories and pointed such lessons as she knew were needed to develop childish minds ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... leave them. At the same time, I know some of us must go away, for we shall be very poor; we'll have no money at all except the income from mother's little fortune, and that will go a small way. I have asked mother to let us do without a servant, for I quite love housework. But really, Annie, everything at ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... he do with his spare time, of which he has so much? He spends it in watching and listening to the hotel guests. He has heard legends of large sums paid for silence or for speech. There may be money in it, therefore, and there is always amusement. So the only housework which the boy san does really willingly, is to dust the door, polish the handle, wipe the threshold;—anything in fact which brings him into the propinquity of the keyhole. What he observes or overhears, he exchanges with another boy san; and the hall porter ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... don't know whether it would work. Perhaps it 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 to be talked about, and I don't blame 'em. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... upon 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
... never know they had wealth, they lived so simply, and Mrs. Colfax had even done much of her own housework. I was hired because a baby was coming, and you can believe it was a happy house in those days, with its peace and the sprinklers spraying water on the lawn in the last hot days of the autumn, and the leaves rustling ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... was busy with housework, talking to herself without intermission as she worked. And David spent long hours in his study, poring over enormous books that Carol insisted made her head ache from the outside and would probably give ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... barn and wouldn't send it on up to the house. He went to San Francisco that fall and I had men out here and put water in the kitchen. When he got back the bill was waiting for him and he was ashamed to complain. It isn't that men are so bad. It's just because they haven't any idea what real work housework is. How ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... He was a good man, she said; but it was a dreadful thing for a woman to lose her liberty, especially when liberty brought so much idle time. "Why, girls, I have quilted and darned up every rag in the house. He will do half the housework himself; he is an everlasting Betty." She was cheerful, however, and helped Hepsey, as well as the rest ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... with men first; but that wears off when you get your bearings and find out that it's only a shuffle in the game, anyway. Land of love! if man and woman was all, then when they came face to face with life they would get smashed; but housework tempers the matter powerfully; and man's work out among other men; and then when children come and you have to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child; after that all lives ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... girl. Well, one day I was reading, and Aunt Caroline happened to come in. She despised reading, and thought it was an utter waste of time, and that I ought to sew or knit all the time, since I could not help Mother with the housework. She was very practical herself, and a famous housekeeper. So she looked at me, and frowned, and said, 'Well, Pink, mooning away over a book as usual? Useless rubbish! yer ma'd ought to keep ye at ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... said we'd get up and help!" exclaimed Jan. For she had promised her mother, on leaving home to visit Uncle Toby and Aunt Sallie, that she would help with the housework. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... the permissible embrace to the ultimate intimacy in their annual festivals, and the good women doubtless thought no more of it than a woman of to-day thinks of waltzing with a presentable stranger. They went home to their husbands and their housework as if they had been to church. Certain Bolsheviki, even in the year 1918, put up placards renewing the ancient Mesopotamian custom, under the guise of a community ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... a rumour that Marie has got a job at general housework. This gave me the blues—after all our life together, this the end! I'd rather have her do general prostitution, with the chance of having an occasional rest in the hospital. But perhaps her drudgery will kill her enthusiasm for ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... They all are. They fight all day sometimes over whose turn it is to carry the milk or bring in the wood. Mrs. McGee never has trained them to help her a bit, and though Ophelia is past twelve years old, she is as useless as the baby when it comes to doing the housework." ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... did whatever they pleased all over the place, much to his entertainment. At recess the youngsters spent much of their time around him, if he were at home, and though this interfered considerably with his housework he ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... 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 slept ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... been more wide-awake, she could hardly have failed to notice how quickly the housework and cooking were done next day; but as she was not given to interesting herself in other people's motives (although she was very suspicious when there was the slightest cause for it, and sometimes when there was none at all), she did not observe that Little ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... about it. The great sorrow has come upon you, and there's only one comfort—there are others. It falls upon all who try to get out of doing their own housework in New York. And I'll bet you were good enough to the last cook, too—only asked her for one night out a week, came to her meals promptly, didn't demand more than a fair living wage, and let her have the rest. Yes, of course you did. And you're going ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... quiet parlour with a silent, catlike tread. She was at his side before he knew it. It was the girl whom he had met on his way to the Manse the first day of his arrival. Jess's experience as a maid to her ladyship has stood her in good stead. She had a fineness of build which even the housework of a farm could not coarsen. Besides, Winsome considered Jess delicate, and did not allow her to lift anything really heavy. So it happened that when Ralph Peden came Jess was putting the fresh flowers in the great bowls of low relief chinaware—roses from the garden ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... three years had gone: For as for Helen and her daintiness, Troy held a mort of women who no less Than she could pleasure night when work was over And men came home ready to play the lover; And in housework would better her. Let Helen Be laid by Paris, villain, and dead villain— Dead long ago if he had taken the field Instead of Menelaus. Then no shield Had Kypris' golden body been, acquist With his sword-arm already, near the wrist! So Diomedes. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... to one miserable room and the cold mutton of yesterday. I 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 ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... a minute with a clipping from a newspaper and hands it over to 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
... bit of housework above another that Mary Jane loved to do, it was to clean the bathroom washstand; and she could do it beautifully, too. Mrs. Merrill gave her a soft cloth and the box of cleaning powder and she went to work. First she cleaned the soap dish; then she sprinkled a little powder on her cloth (just as ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... is—so sudden——" she gasped, looking about for some chance of escape. "Don't, sir! I assure you I am the worst sort of servant. I have deceived you: as a matter of fact, I know almost nothing of housework or ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... "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 ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... 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 night. They did not ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... how her mother treats Vetsburg, her oldest boarder, and for what he pays for that second floor front and no lunches she can afford to cater a little; but that such a girl shouldn't be made to take up a little stenography or help with the housework!" ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... 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 ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... The housework was all done and the kitchen swept and as neat as a new pin when the gay tooting of the Cameron automobile horn called Ruth to the porch. There was only Helen on the front seat of the car; but in the tonneau was a bundled-up figure surmounted by what looked to be a scarlet cap which Ruth ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... that the old man was a bachelor. He had two young men working for him, and also a woman who came in during the day to do the housework, but all of these went home ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... house; nothing disturbs the deep repose; hardly a voice is heard; you catch the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, or the buzzing of a fly in the parlour, all over the house. Miss Bronte sits alone in her parlour; breakfasting with her father in his study at nine o'clock. She helps in the housework; for one of their servants, Tabby, is nearly ninety, and the other only a girl. Then I accompanied her in her walks on the sweeping moors the heather-bloom had been blighted by a thunder-storm a day or two before, and was all of a livid brown colour, instead of the blaze of purple glory ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... explained. "Greg is chopping it up. Harry is hauling the water supply and Dan is doing the housework in ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... housekeeper, she may have physical strength exercised in lighter domestic toils, not only without injuring her beauty, but with manifest advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl would be the better in health, and therefore handsomer, for two hours of active housework daily; and the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an equal advantage to her moral development. The labors of modern, well-arranged houses are not in any sense severe; they are as gentle as any kind of exercise that can be devised, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... slight twist of laughter as she resumed, "I suppose you've seen on the hoardings all about this 'Smythe's Silent Service'? Or you must be the only person that hasn't. Oh, I don't know much about it, it's some clockwork invention for doing all the housework by machinery. You know the sort of thing: 'Press a Button—A Butler who Never Drinks.' 'Turn a Handle—Ten Housemaids who Never Flirt.' You must have seen the advertisements. Well, whatever these machines are, they are making pots of money; and they are making it all for that little ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... being dignified, it has been demeaned. No other honest work in the country so belittles a woman socially as housework performed for money. It is the only field of labor which has scarcely felt the touch of the modern labor movement; the only one where the hours, conditions, and wages are not being attacked generally; the only one in which there is no organization or standardization, ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... Woman. Now all my housework is done I think I will make some gingerbread. There is nothing quite so good for lunch as warm gingerbread and a glass of milk, or a cup of hot tea. I can make pretty good gingerbread, too, all of my friends say. Here is the flour and butter and molasses and milk. Now ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... community about sixty-five years. She resides on a small farm, two miles east of Brazil on what is known as the Pinkley Street Road. This has been her home for the past forty years. Her youngest son and the son of one of her daughters lives with her. She is still very active, doing her housework and other chores about the farm. She is very intelligent and according to statements made by other citizens has always been a respected citizen in the community, as also has her entire family. She is the mother of twelve children. Mrs. Boysaw has always been an active church ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Mrs. 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
... to thinkin' of her; in my great affliction she Was sich a comfert to us, and so kind and neighberly,— She'd come, and leave her housework, fer to he'p out little Jane, And talk of her own mother 'at she'd never see again— Maybe sometimes cry together—though, fer the most part she Would have the child so riconciled and happy-like 'at we Felt lonesomer 'n ever when ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 girl ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... of view softened. She was what they called in those days a "good housekeeper" and she kept it so well that Father had to move out for his working hours, first to the study, then two miles away. When it came to housework, Mother possessed the quality called inevitableness to an extraordinary degree. She had a way of fastening a cloth about her head, a sort of forerunner of the boudoir cap of to-day, a means of protecting her ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... writing Louisa loved her mother, and by and by, as the little girl began to grow into a big girl, she felt very sad to see her dear mother work so hard. She helped all she could with the housework, but nothing could really help the tired mother except money; she needed money for food and clothes, and someone grown up, to help in the house. But there never was enough money for these things, and Louisa's mother grew more and more weary, and sometimes ill. I cannot ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... around to pick up a few extra dollars here and there to make both ends meet; once we knew for the first time the satisfaction and added joy that come from some responsible person to help with the housework—we felt that we were soaring through life with our feet hardly ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... whose whole education had been hard labor. Therefore, the scholars and the cultivated would take their part also in the manual labor, working on the farm or cultivating nurseries of young trees, or they would even engage in the housework." ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... the house at lunch time, Miss Bean was in the midst of a stream of gossip. Her usual surroundings gave rise to no more varied subjects than the personal appearance of her companions, and the routine of the housework, in which they all had a share. Doubtless it was partly for this reason that the worthy woman made the most of her brief outings, to gather up any bits of information which might serve to enliven the days to come, and render her an object of admiration in the community where ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... social circle as the lady of the house and it was customary for her to intimately address her mistress by her Christian name. She enjoyed the right to engage in all conversations; she was, in short, "as good as anybody." The new Mrs. Windom was not long in transporting the general housework "girl" into a totally unexampled state of astonishment. This "girl,"—aged forty-five and a prominent member of the Methodist Church,—announced to everybody in the community except to Mrs. Windom herself that she was ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the tent," called Hazelton, as Dick started inside to use a broom there. "You fellows are the providers, and I can do the little housework that's ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... winter as a season of leisure in connection with Shenac, for this winter was a very busy time with her. True, her work did not press upon her, so as to make her anxious or impatient, as it sometimes used to do in summer; but she was never idle. There were sewing and housework and a little wool-spinning, and much knitting of stockings and mittens for them all. The knitting was evening work, and, when Hamish was not reading aloud, Shenac's hands and eyes were busy with different matters. She read ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... after him a little wistfully. Where should she go now? How should she spend the long day? Gwen would see to the housework, and would brook no interference with her management. Nobody wanted her, and nobody thought of her, except Shoni, and to him she seemed rather a burden; or was there one who thought of her sometimes?—who cared a little ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... "Pull in that hoss, Joe, or I'll git out an' walk the balance o' the way afoot. That ain't what I axed you, Dolly Drake. I want to know now an' here if you are goin' to teach my gals an' other folks' gals a lot o' stuff that was got up by bold-faced Yankee women with no more housework to do, or children to raise, than they have up thar these days. I want to know, I say, for if you are I'll keep my young uns at home. I've always had the highest respect for you, an' I've cheered an' stomped my feet every ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... she did not know how to cook. She did not think it strange that it was hard to find a clever and well-trained young woman who would gladly spend all her time in housework and cooking for something less than three hundred dollars a year. Her eyes were beginning to be opened to the immense moral and social questions that lie behind the simple preference of American girls to work for men rather than for women. Household work was ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... incessant twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and the worn, white, blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove stalls for protection, would writhe and twist in and out again. Little girls just learning to crochet borrowed ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... table they took their 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, who handled them very gently and spoke kindly in a sort of confidential whisper to their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... women who do the paying and oversee things generally. They are engaged in all kinds of business for themselves and are employed by scores of thousands. Many thousands carry work home where they can take care of their children, do the housework and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... 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. ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... answered. "Mary is always busy with her housework and her flowers and the poor sick folks she's always a-looking after—just like her mother, if you remember. Charlie, he's working late to-day—some breakdown or something that's keeping him overtime. That brother of yours is a fine manager, Miss Helen, and," he added, with ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... what sleep they could before dawn waked them to another day of toil. Thursday evening was set for the event. On Wednesday the Lusk girls coming in to discuss, found Judith with shining eyes and crimson cheeks, attacking the simple housework of the cabin. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... called on Say occasionally, but only between the periods of the attacks of fever. On such visits she would assist the patient, do the housework, and arrange the hides or covers for her. Say harboured a wish to consult her about her disease; but Shotaye studiously avoided any opportunity for confidential talk. One day, however, when the two were alone in the kitchen, and the invalid felt somewhat relieved, she opened her heart to ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... It cannot be added that for doing the same kind and amount of work women are paid men's wages. The census does not include the services of the mother and daughter among the paid vocations, though, as is well known, in many instances they do all the housework of the family. They get no wages, and therefore do not appear among the "useful classes." They are not earners, but savers of money. A money-saver is not a recognized factor, either in political economy or in the State census. The mother, daughter or ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Old Tarwater was up and limping about the housework of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men of the creek. Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and hard-bitten, who had been buried so deeply inside the Circle that they did not know there was a Klondike Strike. The ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... glued on Fiddy, as if 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 wait on women ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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
... was only thinkin'. I hoped she was. Aunt Maggie don't have nothin' much, yer know, except her father an' housework—housework either for him or some of us. An' I guess she's had quite a lot of things ter bother her, an' make her feel bad, so I hoped she'd be in the book. Though if she wasn't, she'd just laugh an' say it doesn't matter, of course. That's ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... soft, white and attractive hands, even though compelled to do housework. Every lady desires to have nice hands, and all may do so by following the directions of this book. The most coarse, rough, red hands will, by following this teaching, become beautifully delicate and white, and it causes very little trouble to care ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... cosey appearance with the glow of the burning coal visible; and because the kitchen and pantry contained everything that is necessary for life, and a little more. Frederick refused to have anybody share his quarters with him or help with the housework. As he said, he wanted to settle his accounts and take his trial balance, and the presence of another person might be disturbing ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... said Aaron. And then the widow seeing that the matter was so far settled, put down her work and came round into the passage. Hetta followed her, for there would be housework to do. Aaron gave himself another shake, settled the weekly number of dollars—with very little difficulty on his part, for he had caught another glance at Susan's face; and then went after his bag. 'Twas thus that Aaron Dunn obtained an ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... She did her daily housework from sheer habit, and she studied because he had told her to do it, and because with the sweet, stubborn, credulous faith of her youth, she never doubted that he ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... well proportioned. Some of the men and women had fine figures, strong and robust, and many of the women were powerful and of unusual height. The greater portion of the work fell to the lot of the women, who looked after the housework, tilled the land, laid up a store of wood for the winter, beat the hemp and spun it, and made fishing nets from the thread. They also gathered in the harvest and prepared it for food. The occupation of ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... girls had all taken an interest in the housework-made-easy-plan, and had arranged to use the boiling water as it came from the motor after cooling the cylinder. "But it ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... of hand-wrought chairs and a commodious swinging seat. The other end, just off the parental bed-chamber, has been converted into an out-door sleeping-room for John C. Percival. The Governor's lady has no nursemaid. She does her own housework, her own washing and ironing, and she takes care of her own baby. (There is no such thing on Trigger Island as a servant. More than one woman who reads this tale will sigh and murmur something about Paradise.) Ruth still teaches in the little ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... home with her parents or not, every normal woman longs for a home of her own, and a girl who resents even arranging the flowers on her mother's dinner-table will after marriage cheerfully do quite distasteful housework in the place ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Yes, that's Lizy Ann Ez full o' grit ez any man 'T you ever see! She does the chores Days when I can't git out-o'-doors 'Account o' this 'ere rheumatiz, And sees to everything there is To see to here about the place, And never makes a rueful face At housework, like some women do, But ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... to Patrick. He says that that afternoon he procured this from Patrick, who told him how to administer it. This was a few moments after six o'clock. Rice was sleeping soundly. The colored woman who did the housework was absent for the day and the rooms were deserted. He saturated a sponge with chloroform, constructed a cone out of a towel, placed the sponge in the cone, put the cone over the sleeping man's face and ran out of the room and waited thirty minutes for the chloroform to ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... 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
... being any disgrace connected with work of any sort—it never entered my head. From a child I had been taught that work was honorable, and especially for a woman housework and cooking were respectable and healthy service. So I had no pride whatever in the matter; it was only a question of finding the work, and I did not doubt my ability ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... kind of weather prevails, a daily brisk walk should be taken, out of doors, on the porch or in a room with open windows. A daily sweat, as well as the daily prayer, is good for the well-being of the expectant mother. All forms of light housework are commendable. Keep out of crowds. Spend more time in the parks than in the department stores. An occasional evening at the concert or theater is diversion and harmless provided the ventilation is good. Such exercises ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... cottage a 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 sufficient for ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... expecting you to lunch. But she has some impossible people there to-day—the Brailsfords, father, mother, and son. He made his money in motor-cars during the war. They live over at Dorking in a house with forty-nine bedrooms, and only fifteen years ago Mrs. Brailsford used to do the housework herself. Now they're rolling in ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... man went on, "that I've had more time to myself lately than you have, for all I've my living to earn as well as the housework." ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... probably represented a good deal of looking into windows and pricing; and her gown of the cheapest material, drooping from her round shoulders, is the product of the poor dress-making skill of hands which show only too well who does all the housework at home. The children, a boy of four and a girl of seven, are in their best, too, with faces ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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 ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and she knew enough to come home, when she was hungry. Best let her go her ways, then. She would learn to be a little woman, all the sooner; and, in the meantime, it was a great deal easier to do the housework without having a child ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... almost of one woman. Pray don't despise him when I tell you that he kneaded the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that he did most of the family washing—that is, he did the rubbing, the wringing, the lifting, the hanging out—and once a week he scrubbed. When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... knowledge; hence, misdirected. We have the most indifferent domestic service in the world, but we employ, as a rule, too few servants, such as they are. It is considered altogether sensible and becoming for the mechanic's wife to do her own housework as a bride and as a matron of years. Unless her husband prospers rapidly she is accounted "shiftless" should she hire a washerwoman, while to "keep a girl" is extravagance, or a significant stride toward gentility. The wife of the English joiner or mason or small farmer, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... 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
... o'er the housework would sigh, Till SAPOLIO I urged her to trigh, Now she changes her tune, For she's done work at nune, Which accounts for the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... turves flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. 'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... for, and neglect of, "housework," so often deplored in these days, arises from unpleasant surroundings. If the kitchen be light, airy, and tidy, and the utensils bright and clean, the work of compounding those articles of food which grace the table and satisfy the appetite will be a pleasant task, and one entirely worthy of the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... had earned when no one even knew I was working. I argued that if I kept my family so comfortable that they missed nothing from their usual routine, it was my right to do what I could toward furthering my personal ambitions in what time I could save from my housework. And until I could earn enough to hire capable people to take my place, I held rigidly to that rule. I who waded morass, fought quicksands, crept, worked from ladders high in air, and crossed water on improvised rafts without a tremor, slipped with many misgivings into the postoffice ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... 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 ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... home, and when Mrs. Burt fell asleep, Polly left Jim to watch her—he was as faithful as a dog, poor fellow!—and went in to Preston to try and get somebody to stay with her through the day. Polly Jane went first to 'Squire Stevens's, thinking that Abby Matilda had less housework to do than most of the girls; her mother kept a hired woman, and perhaps she'd be willing to go for one day; but Abby was afraid of catching the fever, and said 'they'd better have Widow Burt taken ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... been equally successful. It has now nearly 200 pupils of both sexes, representing a great variety of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. The pupils in both these institutions receive not only an elementary English education, but are also instructed in housework, agriculture, and useful mechanical pursuits. A similar school was established this year at Forest Grove, Oreg., for the education of Indian youth on the Pacific Coast. In addition to this, thirty-six Indian boys and girls were selected from the Eastern Cherokees and placed in ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... these matrons of the pioneer days were four maidens who must have been valuable as assistants in housework and care of the children,—Priscilla Mullins, Mary Chilton, Elizabeth Tilley and Constance Hopkins. The first three had been orphaned during that first winter; probably, they became members of the households ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... thrills and simply an average ex-slave's story. As a slave, she was well fed, well clothed, and well treated, as were her brother and sister slaves. Her mother was a weaver, her father—a field hand, and she did both housework and plantation labor. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... be of some slight use," and she smiled at him till his own slow smile responded, troubled and amazed though he evidently was by her determination. "I've roughed it a good deal with daddy-prof. I can cook—some things. And I can do housework——" ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... all the housework, but she managed to do her duty and found spare time for reading. He gave her the works of Dostoievsky and Tourgenieff to read. Those descriptive of the beauties of nature she liked best. Their conversations were but momentary, when they met ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... declared Sinclair, when the girl had gone about some housework, "I'd actually think you believed that God was on your side. You talk about Him so familiar—like ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... the last moth was mounted, and the housework finished. Elnora said to her mother, "If you don't mind, I believe I will go into the woods pasture beside Sleepy Snake Creek and see if I can catch some dragonflies ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... would do their courting in everyday clothes, and if the girl would go about her housework while the man looked on, or better still, if he helped her with it for one or two years, they ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... mocking-bird singing in the moonlight among the flowering locust trees behind the house. He could almost smell the heavy sweetness of the locust blooms, as he used to smell them sitting on the steps after supper, tired from a day's heavy plowing, while the clatter of his mother's housework came from the kitchen. He didn't wish he was back there, but it was pleasant to think of it now and then, and how the yellow farmhouse looked and the red barn where his father never had been able to find time to paint ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Kate to be starting away to school. Because it was so self-evident that she should have what the others had had, she said nothing about it until the time came; then she found her father determined that she should remain at home to do the housework, for no compensation other than her board and such clothes as she always had worn, her mother wholly in accord with him, and marvel of all, Nancy Ellen ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... good humor. But Jasper was sorry at once that he had started Mr. Crow to talking about his ills. It happened that the old gentleman was then suffering from gout, hay-fever and housemaid's knee. And he liked to talk about his ailments. Living all alone as he did, he had nobody to do his housework. And that, he complained, was the reason why ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... cheerful and busy too, Mrs Snow saw, accomplishing wonderful things in the way of learning to do housework, and dairy work, under the direction of Hannah, and comporting herself generally in a way that was winning the good opinion of that experienced and rather exacting housekeeper. She took great interest in out-of-door affairs, going daily with the deacon to the high sheep ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... adopted stable-boy was thus happily effected, and the wheels of life continued to run smoothly in the Doctor's house. Jean-Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the morning; sometimes helped in the housework; sometimes walked abroad with the Doctor, to drink wisdom from the fountainhead; and was introduced at night to the sciences and the dead tongues. He retained his singular placidity of mind and manner; he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 blister, had been so frightful a terror to Emma Jane's ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... pastel. Now she went to the Louvre to work, and tried to copy the Chardins and Latours. She went there alone. It was a little imprudent, she was so pretty; but Louise had no time to go with her, and her mother had to be at home to attend to the housework and cooking. Maria's appearance had already excited the hearts of several young daubers. There were several cases of persistent sadness and loss of appetite in Flandrin's studio; and two of Signol's pupils, who were surprised hovering about the young artist, were hated secretly as rivals; certain ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the doctor's opinion as to the prevalence of tumours, displacements and cancer among women who labour in the fields and have to bring up children and do all the housework of a peasant's dwelling. The doctor replied that he was disposed to think that cases of the ailments I spoke of were not numerous. Cancer was certainly rare. He knew that in Japan rickets, goitre and gout were all less common than in the West. He expressed the opinion ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... but the stranger knew that she wouldn't take money. How firmly he had said that "I don't!" She felt the warm blood fly to her fresh young face at the thought of it. He had understood her. She might be living in a poor cabin, doing all the housework herself, and her husband only a fisherman, but he had treated ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... forget that every housewife was something of a physician, and the gathering and drying of herbs, the making of ointments and salve, the distilling of bitters, and the boiling of syrups was then as much a part of housework as it is to-day a part of a ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... 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 by John Clay's loud voice, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... to the actress, since her directions are more often received from the stage manager or manager than from a woman star. True, her life is hard, she has no home comforts; but, then, she has no heavy duties to perform, no housework, bed-making, sweeping, dish-washing, or clothes-washing, and when her work is done, she is her own mistress. She goes and comes at her own will; she has time for self-improvement, but best of all she has something ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... 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 ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... my place like an actress who can no longer take ingenue parts because of wrinkles and gray hairs. When I came home that day and discovered how unimportant I was, how weak had become my applause, instead of trying to play a new part by making myself useful and necessary—helping with the housework, putting away laundry, mending, and so on—I went about concocting ways and methods of filling ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... that tries you, as far as 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 way a little, and try ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... from church. I think I never scanned A girl's face with such sunny smiles upon it Showing beneath the roses on her bonnet— I went into the house to have a cry. A few days later Kimbrough lost his wife. Between housework and hoeing in the garden I read Sir Thomas More and Goethe's life. My heart was numb and still I had to harden All memory or die. And just the same As when you sat beside the window, passed Larson, the cobbler, hollow-chested, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... never get to bed at half-past eight and very seldom at nine, and that she would never be free in the afternoons. She knew that if her mother would only consent to sit still and not interfere, the housework could be accomplished with half the labour that at present went to it. There were three women in the place, or at any rate, a woman, a young woman, and a girl—and in theory the main preoccupation of all of them was this ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... dollars a month, and the table-d'hote dinner runs up to over twenty-two dollars apiece, so with my half of the rent—eighteen dollars—I'd have less than nothing left out of my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons. You see you'd not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but you'd be paying more of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Missionary Society. I have an industrial class for girls, and give them instruction in sewing, in housework on the principle of the kitchen-garden system, without the practice, as I have not the articles to use for that purpose. Then a lesson from the Bible, also, comes in, and some amusement in the way of puzzles. The girls are pleased to belong to a society of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... similarly does he 'support' the servant who does the same duties. He also gives her seven dollars every Monday morning, or she leaves." Are we to suppose that a wife is a woman who does general housework for board and clothes, with a few ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... malaria and nervous sick headaches, and after my third child was born (a beautiful baby boy of ten pounds) I only recovered after a long illness; I barely gained strength enough in two years' time so that I was able to crawl about to accomplish the little housework that I had, by lying down to read many times each day; had sick headaches very often; and many pains and aches, all the time complaining of getting no better. I finally asked my husband to get a bottle of Dr. Pierce's Favorite Prescription, which he promptly ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... said, "you must have been. Just playing at cooking and housework, reading aloud to her while she drew—yes, she told me that. And the flowers and all her little trumpery odds and ends about. Awfully ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... at Hof. "Richter's study and sitting-room offered about this time," says Doering, his first biographer, "a true and beautiful picture of his simple yet noble mind, which took in both high and low. While his mother bustled about the housework at fire or table he sat in a corner of the same room at a plain writing-desk with few or no books at hand, but only one or two drawers with excerpts and manuscripts. * * * Pigeons fluttered in and out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke |
