"Linsey-woolsey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some years before this to remark with pleasure the change in the dress of the people of Illinois: the gradual disappearance of leather and, linsey-woolsey, the hunting-knife and tomahawk, from the garb of men; the deerskin moccasin supplanted by the leather boot and shoe; the leather breeches tied around the ankle replaced by the modern pantaloons; and the still greater improvement ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... The ugly butcher's knife and tomahawk, which had been essential as was the rapier to the costume of gentlemen two centuries earlier, began now to be more rarely seen at the belt about the waist. The women wore linsey-woolsey gowns, of home manufacture, and dyed according to the taste or skill of the wearer in stripes and bars with the brown juice of the butternut. In the towns it was not long before calico was seen, and calfskin shoes; and in such populous centres bonnets decorated the heads ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... consisting of a huge oyster recumbent upon a sea-green field; being the armorial bearings of his favorite metropolis Communipaw. He brought to the camp a stout force of warriors, heavily armed, being each clad in ten pair of linsey-woolsey breeches, and overshadowed by broad-brimmed beavers, with short pipes twisted in their hat-bands. These were the men who vegetated in the mud along the shores of Pavonia, being of the race of genuine copperheads, and were fabled to have sprung ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... of red and green linsey-woolsey for a frock for the little girl and some brown strong stuff for the boy's suit; and then white muslin to make things for the girl, and blue check ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... work shaving shingles in his own front yard. While Mr. Means was making the speech which we have set down above, and punctuating it with expectorations, a large brindle bulldog had been sniffing at Ralph's heels, and a girl in a new linsey-woolsey dress, standing by the door, had nearly giggled her head off at the delightful prospect of seeing a new school-teacher eaten up by the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... might have come later, when one of the early occupants of the cradle had been taught to do her stint. It made a small, plaintive noise when I turned it, and I could see a little old-fashioned girl in linsey-woolsey dress and home-made shoes and stockings, in front of the big fireplace down-stairs, turning and turning to that droning cadence, through long winter afternoons. Those other wheels had come for other daughters, or daughters-in-law, and if there ever was a time when all four were ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of sheep shears cut out the coat, while Aunt Betsy held the pattern down on the heavy grey cloth. The goods were of the home-made quality, known as "linsey-woolsey," a material worn by farmers almost universally in those days. The household scissors were too dull to cut it, hence the sheep shears were pressed into service ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... neighbors said he was getting forehanded. Several times during the year he made a journey to Boston with his cheeses, beef, pigs, turkeys, geese, chickens, a barrel of apple-sauce, bags filled with wool, together with webs of linsey-woolsey spun and woven by his wife and daughter. He never failed to have a talk with Mr. Adams and Doctor Warren, John Hancock, and others foremost in resisting the aggressions of the mother country upon the rights and liberties of the Colonies. When at home he was up early in the morning, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... to hear this, and to see her son in a linsey-woolsey coat with large brass buttons, and six pairs of breeches—the gift of the city of Amsterdam—stride up the streets of New Amstel, with copper buckles in his shoes and his hair tied in an eel-skin queue. The ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... come to linsey-woolsey, though the weavers of Germantown make fine goods, and there is silk already made in our own town. Instead of so much gossiping and sitting with idle hands we must make our own laces. It is taught largely, I hear, at Boston, and my mother was an expert ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... whatever they may be, are also considered an abomination; but locusts, bald locusts, and grasshoppers are recommended by name. Even in clothing we are carefully forbidden to use a garment of linen and woolen, yet among our pious Puritan ancestors "linsey-woolsey" was a ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of the shuttle and the useful loom. We weave linen, cotton, woolen, linsey-woolsey, and, not to be behind the rogues outside, cottonsey-woolsey and cottonsey-silksey; damask we weave, and a little silk and poplin, and Mary Baker velvet itself for a treat now and then. We of the loom relieve the county of all expense in keeping us, and enrich a fund for ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... daughter in the quadrille d'honneur, is likewise descended from noble Knights (of Labor) and dames of high degree. He traces his lineage in unbroken line to that haughty Johann Jakob who came to America in the steerage, wearing a Limburger linsey-woolsey and a pair of wooden shoes. Beginning life in the new world as a rat-catcher, he soon acquired a gallon jug of Holland gin, a peck of Brummagem jewelry, and robbed the Aborigines right and left. He wore ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... women of the frontier was suited to the plainness of the habitations where they lived and the furniture they used. Homespun, linsey-woolsey and buckskin were the primitive materials out of which their everyday dresses were made, and only on occasions of social festivity were they seen in braver robes. Rings, broaches, buckles, and ruffles were heir-looms ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... one of these stable-keepers (for they have modesty enough to give themselves no higher denomination) in a part of the town called the Pleasance; and, on entering the house, we were conducted by a poor devil of a girl, without shoes or stockings, and with only a single linsey-woolsey petticoat which just reached half-way to her ankles, into a room where about twenty Scotch drovers had been regaling themselves with whisky and potatoes. You may guess our amazement when we were informed that this was the best inn in the ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... length of Rebecca's hair and add a word as to its remarkable evenness and lustre, at times when Mrs. Perkins grew too diffuse about Emma Jane's complexion. She threw herself wholeheartedly on her niece's side when it became a question between a crimson or a brown linsey-woolsey dress, and went through a memorable struggle with her sister concerning the purchase of a red bird for Rebecca's black felt hat. No one guessed the quiet pleasure that lay hidden in her heart when she watched the girl's dark head bent ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock in the cradle by her side. The good wife, in linsey-woolsey short-gown and red petticoat steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... was just out of linsey-woolsey dresses and wore trousers buttoned to a calico waist, she began preparing him for college. The old lady had loved a college man in her youth, and she judged Harvard by the Harvard man she knew best. And the Harvard man she saw in her waking ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... and ammunition, tomahawks, knives, shot pouches, a knapsack, and a blanket for each man. Their uniforms were leggings, breeches, and long loose shirts of gayly fringed deerskin, or of the linsey-woolsey spun by their women. Their hunting shirts were bound in at the waist by bright-colored linsey sashes tied behind in a bow. They wore moccasins for footgear, and on their heads high fur or deerskin caps trimmed with colored bands of raveled cloth. Around their necks hung ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... taken her spectacle case and knitting from her basket. She put on her spectacles, took up her knitting, sat down by the fire and began to knit. She wore a woollen flowered jacket under a black shawl, and a skirt of linsey-woolsey. From time to time she looked over her spectacles without raising her head and glanced at Riekje walking up and down the room groaning. When the pain became worse, Madame Puzzel tapped her ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... settlements of the whites. Mayall was young and handsome, and would have been considered a prize for a young lady of merit, who was not looking for a companion that possessed lands and money. He seemed to be a favorite among the young ladies of the Mohawk Valley who dressed in linsey-woolsey—I ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... turned neatly back under a pure linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim now—perhaps from too much crying—but her broadly marked eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... which the silvery little voice would say "Pooh!" But all the same the slim little figure would shiver in the hot sunshine inside its short blue linsey-woolsey frock, and the dark eyes would grow larger than ever at the prospect, especially at the ripping by the giant pieuvre, in which they both believed devoutly, and eventually she would promise not to throw ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... linsey-woolsey dress and her squirrel furs and cap, was the life of every gathering, and when Stephen took her hand and they glided upstream, alone together in the crowd, he used to wish that they might skate on and on up the crystal ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in the summer, but in winter the pioneer wore moccasins of buckskin, and buckskin leggins or trousers; his coat was a hunting shirt belted at the waist and fringed where it fell to his knees. It was of homespun, a mixture of wool and flax called linsey-woolsey, and out of this the dresses of his wife and daughters were made; the wool was shorn from the sheep, which were so scarce that they were never killed for their flesh, except by the wolves, which were very fond of mutton, but had no use for wool. For a wedding dress ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... large, fair, and credulous creature, rising twenty. Florid and slow-speaking, she had impulses of daring that covered her broad face with immense blushes. She was dressed in grey linsey-woolsey, and wore a black hood after the manner of the stricter Protestants, but she had round her neck a gilt medallion on a gold chain that Katharine Howard had given her already. She was, it was true, the daughter of a gentleman courtier, but he had been knocked on the head by rebels near Exeter ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford |
