"Washerwoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to make a rapid note on his shirt-cuff; but that is a dangerous practice. Wives might resent the face if it were too pretty, and your washerwoman might recognise a Member of Parliament as her intimate friend. The incident which cured him of using his shirt-cuff for sketching happened at a large dinner, where he was introduced to the wife of a ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... to the washing. I spend my time in this uncertain weather watching the clouds on the days when the clothes are to come home, for it would be altogether too great a trial if one's starched garments, borne aloft on Jack's head, were to be caught in a thunder-shower. If the washerwoman takes pains with anything, it is with gentlemen's shirts, though even then she insists on ironing the collars into strange and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... first in Bayham Street. "A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow Street officer over the way." It was a shabby district, chosen by the elder Dickens because the rent was low. As he neglected to pay the rent, one wonders why he did not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... her own remorse, and the reassurance of his half frankness, she walked back to the station and waited, in the midday heat, for the returning car. Her head had begun to ache, but she said to herself that she must not disappoint little Donny. So she went, in the blazing sun, to the old washerwoman's house, climbed three flights of stairs, and found the boy in bed, flushed with worry for fear "Miss Eleanor" wasn't coming. She took the little feeble body in her arms, and sat down in the steamy kitchen by an open window, where Donny could see, on the clothes lines that ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... share their fruits and flowers with friends and neighbors, as well as to distribute roots and seeds to those who have not the means of procuring them. A woman or a child, by giving seeds or slips or roots to a washerwoman, or a farmer's boy, thus inciting them to love and cultivate fruits and flowers, awakens a new and refining source of enjoyment in minds which have few resources more elevated than mere physical enjoyments. Our Saviour directs us in making feasts, to call, not the rich ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... succeeding this day, Peyton sat alone in his room, his head leaning upon his hand, and his brow contracted. There was a tap at his door. "Come in." A poorly-clad, middle-aged woman entered. It was his washerwoman. ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... you the recipe when I give you the one for the noodles. Bella says it's the best she ever ate. My husband gets so mad when I go down in the kitchen—me with two grand girls and washerwoman two days a week! But the girls can't ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... answered, 'I leave that to my sister. Mamma is my district. And do you know, her headaches are as painful as any washerwoman's.' ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... Many of them perform their round of labor with as little apparent concern or interest, as the horses or mules which they drive before them. There are, I admit, exceptions, but as a general rule, my remarks hold good. I never owned a negro, but I frequently employed them as cooks, washerwoman, &c., and many years observation satisfied me, that as a general rule, that when left to themselves, they consumed, or rather wasted, one-third more precisions than would have sufficed for my family under the management and supervision ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... are in a shocking way. In short, it is horrid to think what the poor creatures suffered: several of them were beggars, who, from having no lodging, were necessarily found in the street, and others honest labouring women. One of the dead was a poor washerwoman, big with child, who was returning home late from washing. One of the constables is taken, and others absconded; but I question(676) if any of them will suffer death, though the greatest criminals in this town ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... was irresistibly comic, and I question if Liston, Munden, or Joey Knight, was ever greeted with such merriment; for Romeo dragged the unfortunate Juliet from the tomb, much in the same manner as a washerwoman thrusts into her cart the bag of foul linen. But how shall I describe his death? Out came a dirty silk handkerchief from his pocket, with which he carefully swept the ground; then his opera hat was carefully placed for a pillow, and down he laid himself. After various tossings about he seemed ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... no amorous fancy disturbed the peace of my soul, except an accident which happened to me with the daughter of my washerwoman, and which increased my knowledge in physics in a singular manner. That girl was very pretty, and, without being what might be called in love with her, I wished to obtain her favours. Piqued at my not being able to obtain ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... purity; cleaning &c. v.; purification, defecation &c. v.; purgation, lustration[obs3]; detersion[obs3], abstersion[obs3]; epuration[obs3], mundation|; ablution, lavation[obs3], colature|; disinfection &c. v.; drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse[obs3]; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi[obs3], laundryman, washerman[obs3]; scavenger, dustman[obs3], sweep; white wings brush[Local U. S.]; broom, besom[obs3], mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. napkin, cloth, maukin|, malkin|, handkerchief, towel, sudary[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ladies. Only a few days before leaving London I attended a grand masquerade ball at Almack's, where my Lady Archer appeared as a boy wearing a postman's blue coat. Lord Edgecombe assumed the character of an old washerwoman. Sir Watkins Wynne rode into the hall on a goat, assuming the character of holy Saint David. The goat, more accustomed to browse in the pastures than take part in such high jinks, frightened by the blare of trumpets, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... bore the charge of his meals. In some respects I am like him, for I am furnished by the labors of a multitude. A wig has fed me two days; the trimming of a waistcoat as long; a pair of velvet breeches paid my washerwoman, and a ruffled shirt has found me in shaving. My coats I swallowed by degrees. The sleeves I breakfasted upon for weeks; the body, skirts, etc., served me for dinner two months. My silk stocking have paid my lodgings, and two pair of new pumps enabled me to smoke ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... woman, her eyes brightening. She caught at the word as though she had descried a new star in the firmament. "I wish I could have them. They cost so much to buy. I might have my washerwoman come and help with the cooking. She cooks pretty well, and I could help her beforehand, but she couldn't wait on table, to save her life. I wonder if you know much about menus. Could you help me fix out the courses and say what you think I ought ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the favorite old tune faded on the ears of the delighted audience. Then they had The Portland Fancy and The Irish Washerwoman and The College Hornpipe, and at last the clock in the carriage house struck midnight and the guests departed in groups of twos and threes and fours, their cheerful voices sounding far down ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pilfering wholesale so long as Mrs. Staines and her sloppy-headed maids counted the linen, and then forgot it, was brought up with a run, by triplicate forms, and by Staines counting the things before two witnesses, and compelling the washerwoman to count them as well, and verify or dispute on the spot. The laundress gave warning—a plain confession that stealing had been ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... observe the effect. It galled me raw, yet I must perforce submit. When the whole job was finished, and I was allowed to sit, I gained no comfort. My clothes were too tight in some places, while in others I rocked about as loose as a washerwoman's arm ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?" ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... fond of talking with the people of the valley, who are Italians, and his Italian was better than one is accustomed to hear from English people, even from those who live in Italy. We passed a fountain one day, at which a washerwoman was washing her linen, and he stopped to talk to her, and asked her, among other questions, if she had always been a washerwoman. No, she replied, she had been a blia (nurse) once. He was struck by her pronunciation of the word blia ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... of her patron saint," exclaimed the picture dealer, "why don't she get the robe made white again at the expense of a few baiocchi to her washerwoman? No, no, my dear Panini. The picture being now my property, I shall call it 'The Signorina's Vengeance.' She has stabbed her lover overnight, and is repenting it betimes the next morning. So interpreted, the picture becomes an intelligible and very natural ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... against the dear old lady, Lorimer! Granted that she hates London, and sees no fun in being stared at by vulgar crowds, I think she's quite right,—and I sympathize heartily with her liking for a cup of tea in peace and quiet with some old Scotch body who doesn't care whether she's a queen or a washerwoman." ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... There are no limits! He wants to give away everything. He wishes me now, at my age, to become a cook and a washerwoman. ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to office, down the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather strap between an Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of his guests had seen him then they would have said: "How distinctly American!" and—Wilton did not care for that tone. He had schooled himself to an English walk, and, so long as he ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... literary gentleman, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding); the genius who is at work on the slate, and the two honest lads who are hugging the good-humored washerwoman, their mother,—all, all, save, this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome certainly are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture. It is full of grotesque beauty. The artist has at the back of his own skull, we are ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... doggie, so you have lost your master and have had nothing to eat since God knows when, and I've just chased out my wife, yes, yes, and she went away yesterday. Yes, yes, she's going to try to shift for herself as a washerwoman down in Winnipeg this winter, yes, yes, that's how it is now. Yes, yes, we packed up and left a fairly decent living there at home and came here into this damnable log-cabin existence, yes, yes. ... Well, try that in your chops, you miserable cur, you can gobble that up, I tell you. Oh, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... wasn't much of a team. There were the two heavy horses for 'shafters'; a stunted colt, that I'd bought out of the pound for thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along in Cob & Co.'s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn't belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather. And I had all sorts of ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... been called to mourning since we have! I have not taken up a paper in which I have not seen a record of two or three accidental deaths; some of them even more bitter and cruel than what has befallen us. I read this morning of a poor washerwoman, whose house was burned, and all her children consumed, while she was away working for her bread. I read the other day of a blind man whose only son was drowned in his very presence, while he could do nothing to help him. I was visiting yesterday that poor dress-maker whom you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries; five body-servants, including the Turks, Mahomet and Mustapha; four pages, two trumpeters, a carver, twelve footmen, eighteen cooks, three cellarmen, two housemaids, and one washerwoman. It may be mentioned that in 1696 there were only two washerwomen for the three hundred and seven persons, exclusive of royalty, that at this date made up ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... a somewhat similar verse to my own mind. Why should not our washerwoman's work have its touch of ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... and legs planes of his own design, and launched himself from an upper story of his house in Paris, in the attempt to fly across the river Seine to the Tuileries, about two hundred yards away. He glided some distance, and then fell on a washerwoman's barge in the stream, breaking his leg in the fall. These and other disastrous attempts might be defended in the words of Wilbur Wright, written in 1901, while he was experimenting with his own gliders. 'There are ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... interpreted allegorically, as having reference to the herd of Epicurus, of which litter Horace confessed himself a porker. His name of Erasmus he derived partly from his father having been the son of a renowned washerwoman, who had held that great scholar in clean linen all the while he was at Oxford; a task of some difficulty, as he was only possessed of two shirts, "the one," as she expressed herself, "to wash the other," The vestiges of one of these CAMICIAE, as ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... That's different. Besides, I don't nag 'em. Not what you'd call nagging. But zize saying: Now, here's Paul, the nicest, most sensitive critter on God's green earth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... expensive thing in every phase. The event that robbed Rudd of his wife, his child, his hope, had taken also his companion, his cook, his chambermaid, his washerwoman, the mender of his things; and in their place had left an appalling monument of bills. The only people he had permitted himself to owe money to were the gruesome committee that brought him his grief; the doctor, the druggist, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Washerwoman. The Einsiedlerstein. Its Dungeons and Hall. Its History. Inscription over the Hermit's Grave. Lose our Way. Guided by a Peasant. His Conversation. Mistaken for Italian Musicians. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... sort your worship is thinking of," said the galley slave; "mine was that I loved a washerwoman's basket of clean linen so well, and held it so close in my embrace, that if the arm of the law had not forced it from me, I should never have let it go of my own will to this moment; I was caught in the act, there was no occasion for torture, the case was settled, they treated ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... heerd tell of him, sir, a young and gallant naval ossifer like yerself, 'specially that yarn consarnin' him and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin' when he were ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Higginson, in Eminent Women of the Age, mentions in this connection that, according to an established custom, on the night before Thanksgiving "all the humble friends of the Francis household—Marm Betty, the washerwoman, wood-sawyer, and journeymen, some twenty or thirty in all—were summoned to a preliminary entertainment. They there partook of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pie made in milk- pans, and heaps of doughnuts. They feasted in the large, old-fashioned ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not listening. 'And Cecile was a fairy, with spangled wings—the sweetest thing you ever saw. We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but as nobody took any notice of Madame de C—she has behaved like a washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help her ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... most merciless of Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen, replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman a princess,—meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... kept it, why she kept it, and what a good time she had playing cook, and washerwoman, and ironer, is told as only Sophie May can tell stories. All the funny sayings and doings of the queerest and cunningest little woman ever tucked away in the covers of a book will please little folks and ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... had been picked up in the street, for the fourth time, by a benevolent "washerwoman," who happened to be passing by at the moment; had been conveyed to the said washerwoman's lodgings; and now appeared before us, despoiled, at last, of all the glories of the red polka, enveloped from head to foot in clouds of white muslin, and ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... "No washerwoman's filthy hand shall e'er, Sweet pocket-handkerchef, thy worth profane, For thou hast touched the rubies of my fair, And I will kiss thee o'er and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Some one had noticed that the white beach sand at Santa Cruz turned pink when heated. Seizing upon this fact, McLaren and Guerin used it to give a final touch to their scheme of color. They drew another lesson from the washerwoman. A familiar laundry device was used to give sparkle and brilliance to the waters of the pools and lagoons. They were blued, not by dumping indigo into the water, but by tinting the bottoms ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... talent for drawing, and in almost every letter came two or three childish but spirited little pictures, all labelled "Drawn for papa!" "The true picture of our courier in a rage, for papa to see." "The washerwoman's dog, for papa," etc., etc. Again and again I sat by, almost trembling with delight, and saw John spend an entire evening in looking over these little missives and reading Ellen's letters. Then again I sat alone and anxious through an entire evening, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that leads to the conservatory is violently thrust open, and a peasant woman, her face bluish red with rage, bursts in. She is not much better dressed than a washerwoman: naked, red arms, blue cotton-skirt and bodice, red dotted kerchief. She is in the early forties; her face is hard, sensual, malignant. The whole figure is, otherwise, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... letter to him, drank tea at his house, and then Mr. Sereno Dwight carried me to Mr. Davis's who had agreed to take me. While I was at Dr. Dwight's there was a woman there whom the Dr. recommended to Sam. B. and me to have our mending done, and Mrs. Davis or a washerwoman across the way will do my washing, so I am very agreeably situated. I also gave the letter to Mr. Beers and he has agreed to let me have what you desired. I have got Homer's Iliad in two volumes, with Latin translation of him, for $3.25. I need no ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... breaches of these rules. The original rule [704] was that the Sourka or first victim must not be a Brahman, nor a Saiyad, nor any very poor man, nor any man with gold on his person, nor any man who had a quadruped with him, nor a washerwoman, nor a sweeper, nor a Teli (oilman), nor a Bhat (bard), nor a Kayasth (writer), nor a leper, dancing-woman, pilgrim or devotee. The reason for some of these exemptions is obvious: Brahmans, Muhammadan Saiyads, bards, religious mendicants and devotees were excluded ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... chance to discern that, broad and tolerant as he was, he saw things as they were (except in the case of his wife), never misstated and rarely overstated. For all that, she set out on Saturday afternoon prepared to meet the typical washerwoman of fiction—worn, bedraggled, shapeless, and forlorn. She was prepared to go into a steaming kitchen with puddles on the floor and dirty children all about, and have this red-faced personage take a scarlet hand out of the tub, dry it on a dirty apron, ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... picnic Mr Cheesacre came down to Montpelier Parade with Captain Bellfield, whose linen on that occasion certainly gave no outward sign of any quarrel between him and his washerwoman. He was got up wonderfully, and was prepared at all points for the day's work. He had on a pseudo-sailor's jacket, very liberally ornamented with brass buttons, which displayed with great judgement the exquisite shapes of his pseudo-sailor's ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... suspect that at the bottom of the pan to be poison?—I found it very gritty, and had no smell. When I went down and saw the old washerwoman, that she had tasted of the water gruel and was affected with the same symptoms as Mr. Blandy, I then suspected he was poisoned, and said I was afraid Mr. Blandy had had foul play; but I did not tell either him or Miss Blandy so, because I found by the maid that ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... own private feelings, his own pride of race and name, his own ideas of what was due to his ancient rank with the political creed by which his conduct in public life was governed. The peer who sat next to him in the House of Lords, whose grandmother had been a washerwoman and whose father an innkeeper, was to him every whit as good a peer as himself. And he would as soon sit in counsel with Mr. Monk, whose father had risen from a mechanic to be a merchant, as with any nobleman who could count ancestors against himself. But there was an inner feeling ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... A few children were jumping over the mud-puddles, and an old washerwoman was putting a wooden vessel under the gutter, to collect ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... career as a female you are strong and well," said he. "For the purpose of a career as a singer—" He smiled and shook his head. "A singer must have muscles like wire ropes, like a blacksmith or a washerwoman. The other day we were climbing a hill—a not very steep hill. You stopped five times for breath, and twice you ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... unbridled woman Agreements were valid only until he should repent All Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity which ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... the same principles, as no doubt we all do, more or less. I saw a colored boy come into a public office one day, and ask to see a man with red hair; the name was utterly gone from him. The man had red whiskers, which was as near as he had come to the mark. Ask your washerwoman what street she lives on, or where such a one has moved to, and the chances are that she cannot tell you, except that it is a "right smart distance" this way or that, or near Mr. So-and-so, or by such and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... by such little books. Mine gives me a sentence requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after to-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... human beings should be classed by strata, as if they were metals in the earth. Instead of dividing by nations, let us class by quality. So we might find Turk, Jew, Christian, fashionable lady and washerwoman, master and slave, hanging together like cats on a clothes-line by some connecting ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Maria's mother was a washerwoman who lived outside Coleby on the common, and gained her income by acting as laundress generally for all who would intrust her with their family linen; but she called herself in yellow letters on a brilliant scarlet ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and humble little efforts to do something for her comfort. Then the train halted at the Italian line and she hopped up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see how she had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of marrying Totski, four years ago! I meant mischief, I confess—but I could have had him, I give you my word; he asked me himself. But I thought, no! it's not worthwhile to take such advantage of him. No! I had better go on to the streets, or accept Rogojin, or become a washerwoman or something—for I have nothing of my own, you know. I shall go away and leave everything behind, to the last rag—he shall have it all back. And who would take me without anything? Ask Gania, there, whether he would. Why, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... set my heart on anything of the sort again, and the young rascals may marry whom they like. I'm prepared for anything now—so if Steve brings home the washerwoman's daughter, and Mac runs away with our pretty chambermaid, I shall say, 'Bless you my children,' with mournful resignation, for, upon my soul, that is all that's left for a ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... widely separate paths, each one feeling oddly alone, and yet not wholly disliking the sensation. Catherine, well-used to her mother's ways and beliefs, smiled to herself as she went off to tell stories and play cat's cradle with the washerwoman's little girl, who had a "spine" and had to be "kep' quiet with high ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... aimed at me then, and now, by God, you've done worse than the fellow who ruined poor Thomson. Look up there, and you'll see your father's portrait. He was a merry lad in his day, but he wouldn't have intrigued with a washerwoman. That's about what you have done. However, we'll have no more scolding. Of course, you understand that the affair is ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... was another point which Snubbin, in cross-examination, ought to have driven home. Mrs. Cluppins was of an inferior type, of the common washerwoman or "charing" sort; her language was of Mrs. Gamp's kind; "which her name was" so and so. Yet, this creature, in another room, or on the stairs, the door being "on the jar," can repeat with her limited appreciation, those dubious and imperfect utterances of Mr. Pickwick! ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... in a low voice. My friend gave me a look, and told me afterwards that Abednego had ran away, and that his family considered it a disgrace, and never spoke of him. I hear of a negro boy who absconded, and when he was found and being brought home, an old washerwoman watched him as he went up the street. 'La,' said she, 'who'd a thought he'd a beginned to act bad so young,' But let us leave off Abolition and take a walk. Our cigars are out and we will resume the subject to-morrow afternoon, when we ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... hear of my wrongs. Sprucehill shall have redress for the insult put upon her favorite daughter. In all that General Grant has done in the way of omission, nothing approaches the inactivity which has wrung my heart, as wet blankets are twisted in the strong hands of a washerwoman. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... man always at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities, and his private charities were both minute and abundant. He would take a great deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the shoemaker's son, and he would watch over Tegg's church-going; he would defend Mrs. Strype the washerwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of her drying-ground, and he would himself-scrutinize a calumny against Mrs. Strype. His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire strictly into the circumstances both before and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Immediately one of the assistants seizes the wet canvas, crumples it up without more ado, as if it were dirty linen, and takes it off to a wooden washing trough, where it is kneaded and washed in true washerwoman fashion. Water in plenty is sluiced over it, and after more vigorous manipulation still, it is passed from trough to trough until deemed sufficiently free from soluble salts to tone. The toning—done in the ordinary way with gold—removes any unpleasant redness the picture possesses, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... she could not stomach any other service, and, since she must be parted, was resolved to better herself. This phrase is sometimes drolly applied by servants, because they throw Independence into the scale. In Nancy's case it meant setting up as a washerwoman. Helen opened her hazel eyes with astonishment at this, the first round in the ladder of Nancy's ambition; however, she gave her ten pounds, and thirty introductions, twenty-five of which missed fire, and with the odd five Nancy set up her tub in the suburbs, and by her industry, geniality ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... it to ye," said Mr. Dooley. "'Tis this way. Ye see, this here Sagasta is a boonco steerer like Canada Bill, an' th' likes iv him. A smart man is this Sagasta, an' wan that can put a crimp in th' ca-ards that ye cudden't take out with a washerwoman's wringer. He's been through manny a ha-ard game. Talk about th' County Dimocracy picnic, where a three-ca-ard man goes in debt ivry time he hurls th' broads, 'tis nawthin' to what this here Spanish onion has been again an' beat. F'r years an' years ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... because no painter dared paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but Rembrandt, entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. It was no Venus, or June, or Diana he wanted. He might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the canvas in all the glory of ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... slaves run riot among the eatables. I did not know this until I observed that every time the sugar-basin came to the table it was empty. On visiting my patient by night, I passed along a corridor, and unexpectedly came upon the washerwoman eating pine-apples and sugar. All the sweetmeats were devoured, and it was difficult for me to get even bread and butter until I took the precaution of locking the pantry door. Probably the slaves thought ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas's wife ten old wool dresses and a shawl and three old cloaks. All the other things which did not go into ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rents of Colonel Henry Pendleton! They were contributed by "George Washington Thomson;" his wife, otherwise known as "Aunt Dinah," washerwoman; and "Scipio Thomson," their son, aged fourteen, bootblack. It did not amount to much. But in that happy moisture that dimmed the old man's eyes, God knows it ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... degraded the name to its present form, and that so hopelessly, that the other day an old Negress in Port of Spain puzzled the officer of Crown property by informing him that she wanted to buy 'a carre in what you call de washerwoman's.' It had been described to me as possibly the remotest, loneliest, and unhealthiest spot in Her Majesty's tropical dominions. No white man can live there for more than two or three years without ruin to his health. In spite of the perpetual trade-wind, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to the shrine. But I have a clear notion of woman. In all of them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark. And when there is a spark there can ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... like this, it is much easier to plan generous enterprises than to carry them into effect. After Mr. Noble had purchased the child, he knew not how to provide a suitable home for her. At first, he placed her with his colored washerwoman. But if she remained in that situation, though her bodily wants would be well cared for, she must necessarily lose much of the refinement infused into her being by that early environment of elegance, and that atmosphere ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the old washerwoman over the way," said his mother, as she looked out of the window. "The poor woman can hardly drag herself along, and she must now drag the pail home from the fountain. Be a good boy, Tukey, and run across and help the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... pastrycooks. The squabbles between the young ladies about rank and precedence were continual: what then must have been the position of poor little Virginia, whose mother was a clear-starcher and getter-up of fine linen? At first they called her the washerwoman's daughter, and would not associate with her, which made her very uncomfortable; and she used to tell me on the Sundays when we walked out how she had been treated during the week. But it was all for her advantage, and tended to correct the false pride and upstart ideas which ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... like an old washerwoman than a young goddess. Ovid calls her rutilis Aurora capillis. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... went through me, and the next moment I broke out into a cold sweat. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't any money in my room. I had given every cent, except two dollars of the amount I had brought uptown with me, to my washerwoman the night before. The bill was not due, but Mrs. Jones wanted it for Thanksgiving and so I let her have it. And yet, gentlemen—would you believe it!—I walked on, trying to think if there mightn't be ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October grass, driving an old red cow to the barn ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... more truly noble because more full of mercy; namely, his halting his little army in full retreat in Ireland in the face of the English host under Roger Mortimer, that proper care and attendance might be given to one sick and suffering washerwoman and her new-born babe. Well may his ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never—the utmost they reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk! The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dream of asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion! The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, ever yet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. Hamlet, in his sublimest moods, speaks ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... I meet to-day but Meredith! My washerwoman, Ellen Blount, is ill, So ill I fear she never will be well. 'Tis the old story, every day renewed: A little humble, tender-hearted woman, Tied to a husband whom to call a brute Would be to vilify the quadrupeds! A fellow, who must have his ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... restless young son[2] was stimulated, and circumstances fed the flame. In the last year of the government of Andros [1688], a daughter, thirteen years old, of John Goodwin,—a mason living at the South End of Boston,—had a quarrel with an Irish washerwoman about some missing clothes. The woman's mother took it up, and scolded provokingly. Thereupon the wicked child, profiting, as it seems, by what she had been hearing and reading on the mysterious subject, "cried out upon her," as the phrase was, as a witch, and proceeded to act the part understood ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... what you are driving at," said the washerwoman sharply, "and make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed that you have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then, and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any harm when you have only to ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Chamberlain. Men thought of her as something nearer to them even in being further off; as one who was a good queen, and who would have been, had her fate demanded, with equal cheerfulness, a good washerwoman. Herein lay her unexampled triumph, the greatest and perhaps the last triumph of monarchy. Monarchy in its healthiest days had the same basis as democracy: the belief in human nature when entrusted with power. A king was only the first citizen ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... eagerly as you New Yorkers watched the Woolworth Building. When they are graduated from high school we are all there with bouquets and presents, and we have an equity in the whole brood. Molly Strawn, the washerwoman's daughter, got more flowers than any one last year. And when they leave town to get a job, if they are boys, or when some rude outsider breaks in with a marriage license and despoils us of them, if they are girls, we all ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... character and worth were the only titles to respect in the community, where the son of a President or the son of a Senator or of a Governor stood on an absolute and entire social equality with the son of the washerwoman. If the son of a President or Governor gave himself any airs on that account, he had applied to him a very vigorous and effective remedy well known ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... listen to Ivar reading the Bible, and here she could run about among the stables in a pair of Emil's old boots. Though she was bent almost double, she was as spry as a gopher. Her face was as brown as if it had been varnished, and as full of wrinkles as a washerwoman's hands. She had three jolly old teeth left in the front of her mouth, and when she grinned she looked very knowing, as if when you found out how to take it, life wasn't half bad. While she and Alexandra patched and pieced ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... below the Ponte Navi; and if no one thought any the worse of her, none, unhappily, thought any the better—at least in the way of marriage. It is probable that no one thought of her at all. Giovanna was a beauty and a very good girl; but she was a washerwoman for all that, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... violence of the wind and rain. The rain drops were pelted or slung against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and I felt as if every drop cut my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up like a washerwoman's, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my stick under my arm. O, it was a wild business! Such hurry skurry of clouds, such volleys of sound! In spite of the wet and the cold, I should have had some pleasure ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... and throwing to the earth any gods that came to her rescue. (Iliad, XV., 15-24.) Rank does not exempt the women of the heroic age from slavish toil. Nausicaea, though a princess, does the work of a washerwoman and drives her own chariot to the laundry on the banks of the river, her only advantage over her maids being that they have to walk.[296] Her mother, too, queen of the Phoeaceans, spends her time sitting among the waiting maids ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... however. Mrs. Bond went away when she could begin to go about the room and help herself. Cousin Jane was a good nurse, and she declared, "There wasn't work enough to keep her half busy." She did the mending and the ironing; Mr. Reed insisted they should have a washerwoman. Mrs. Reed sighed when she thought of the expense. It had been the pride of her life that she never had a fit of illness, and had never hired a day's work done except when Charles ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... couldn't see what it all was till my eyes got used to the darkness. There was a row of nails goin' all round the wall, and old clothes hangin' on every one of 'em. And down on the floor there was piles of old clothes, folded smooth and laid one on top o' the other jest like a washerwoman would fold 'em and pile 'em up. Harvey's old clothes and Mary's and the children's, things that any right-minded person would 'a' put in the rag-bag or given away to anybody that could make use of 'em; there they was, all hoarded up in that old room ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... of surprise, and his white teeth flashed in a smile; then he sat silent under the ministrations of the white man who sucked at the wound, spitting the venom upon the ground, until the dark skin was drawn and wrinkled like the hand of a washerwoman. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... longing for a plain rough life among a crowd. She recalled vividly that far-away time when she used to be called Anyutka, when she was a little girl and used to lie under the same quilt with her mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children's crying, the accordion, and the whirr of ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... pocket. Here you have it! no, that's my washerwoman's bill. Ah, here it is!" and Jack pulled out a crumpled note, and placed ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... possessor of fifteen thalers, whereof he had reserved five for the return to Bauerbach. His friend Meyer had found him a nice place where, by dispensing with breakfast, he could eat, drink and lodge for about two thalers a week. Hair-dresser, washerwoman, postman and tobacconist would require, all told, one thaler. So he hoped to keep afloat in the great world at least three weeks, and then,—back to his heart's home in Saxony! The ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... to balk the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time—a smart, lively young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a lovely washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have something more than mere flames and sentiment;—a washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps, and a necklace every now and then, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... floor in large piles. No one knew to whom they belonged, no one seemed to care, and it appeared to me impossible to bring any degree of order out of the chaotic mass of wet, half-dry, rough-dry, in some cases mildewed clothing lying everywhere about. Prompt measures were taken with the washerwoman, which resulted, in a day or two, in a procession of darkies, each bearing a pile of clothing embracing almost every article of men's apparel. A "linen master" having been detailed, a "linen-room" ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... remembers an aged colored woman, who was employed as a washerwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this woman married a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by her industry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised nine hundred dollars for her husband's freedom, which she paid, as she raised it, into the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as presentable as a gallant signor. He gives himself the airs of a young dandy, tries to be lithe and frisky and to disguise his ugly face; he might try all he knew, he always smelt of the musty lawyer. He was not so clever as the pretty washerwoman of Portillon who one day wishing to appear at her best before one of her lovers, got rid of a disagreeable odour in a manner well known to young women of an inventive turn of mind. But our crafty fellow fancied himself the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... never stale upon me. I wish that life was an opera. I should like to live in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Ghaut" The steps (or path) which lead down to a watering-place. Hence the Hindi saying concerning the "rolling stone"—Dhobi-ka kutta; na Gharka na Ghat-ka, a washerwoman's tyke, nor of the house ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and sister-in-law of my wife. The wife of my nephew and the niece of my wife are my nieces by marriage. A woman who treats the sick is a lady doctor; the wife of a doctor is a doctor's wife. Mrs. Dr. A. visited Dr. and Mrs. P. to-day. He is not a laundryman, he is a washerwoman's husband. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... argument himself he would have made it in his usual cool, well-poised manner. But David, although he knew Miggs to be a veteran of the toughs, felt sure of his innocence in this case, and he was determined to battle for him, not for the sake of justice alone, but for the sake of the tired-looking washerwoman he had seen bending over the tubs. This was an occupation she had to resort to only in her husband's times of indulgence, for he was a wage earner in his days ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... I know," returned the washerwoman—"too young to be confined down as much as she is. But then she is a very patient child, and knows that her mother has a great deal to do. I often wish it was easier for her; though, as it can't ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... you may see the ditches by the roadside dammed up to yield a little dirty water. She may have to walk half-a-mile to the brook, and then carry the bucket home as best she may, and repeat the operation till sufficient has been acquired; and when her mother is washing, or, still worse, is a washerwoman by profession, this is her weary trudge all day. Of course there are villages where water is at hand, and sometimes too much of it. I know a large village where the brook runs beside the highway, and ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... which, in its first edition, was illustrated by etchings of Forain and Raffaelli, is simply the attempt to do in words what those artists have done in aquafortis or in pastel. There are the same Parisian types—the omnibus-conductor, the washerwoman, the man who sells hot chestnuts—the same impressions of a sick and sorry landscape, La Bievre, for preference, in all its desolate and lamentable attraction; there is a marvellously minute series of studies of that typically Parisian music-hall, the Folies-Bergere. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... pages in the books of a neighboring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had even started a boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and slavery to whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family), and had clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those horrible requirements he ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... pretty one, and no mistake! You don't know that my idol is worth more than the whole lot of your things! A draper's shopman wouldn't have selected that pink stuff. Was it your idea to fascinate your washerwoman?" ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... beard, and a world of disordered white hair floating over and around its head. At all events it was white for a moment, then it looked green—a great green beard which the old man took with his two hands and twisted just as a washerwoman twists a blanket or counterpane, so as to wring ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... I'm told that in some parts of Europe the washerwomen themselves get into the tubs. They do this to keep their feet dry. The tubs or barrels are empty, and are set along the river banks in the water, and each washerwoman stands in her tub and washes the clothes in the river, pounding, and soaping, and rinsing them, on a board, without changing ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... she tucks you in with woodland green, has smiles and graces that you never saw before, yet the houseboater soon learns that each delightful, new-found pocket in the watery world means necessity for several other new-found things. There must be a new-found washerwoman, and new-found somebodies who can supply meats, eggs, vegetables, ice, milk, and water—the last two separate if possible. True, the little harbour is beautiful; but as you lie there day after day watching waving trees ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... of the original idea of a raking pot of tea evidently belongs to the washerwoman and the laundry-maid. But why should not we have Low life above stairs as well as High life ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... trouble about his vagaries and never loved him better than when he went off to catch some trout for her that dark afternoon in March. But he didn't return, and when she came down after dark to her aunt, Maria Pardoe, the washerwoman at Little Silver, and made a fearful stir about the missing man, the people felt sorry for her, and a dozen chaps went down the river to find Spider and fetch him along. His rod they found, and his basket and his bottle of lob-worms on the bank ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... great man, for with them it is become a fashion. Let ruffians go their own way. Let gentlemen be your companions, and never fail to show them that you can at least be their equal in courteous demeanor. Always pay your washerwoman; be not ashamed to acknowledge your father, and remember that the fonder you speak of your mother, the more you will be beloved by strangers. Avoid politicians, who are come to be great vagabonds, who drink bad liquor and give their thoughts to base designs ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... told us confidentially her friend was washing a blanket, which she would have to dry that same afternoon, as it would be 'wanted' at night; but 'the friend' professed her readiness to take charge of anything we had to spare for the washerwoman—a mouthful of baccy, a 'sucker' for the baby, or 'three ha'pence for a cup of tea.' Boys were there of fourteen and sixteen, with great rents in the knees of their corduroys, who only went out to hawk one day ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... order. It was something new for German poetry to find inspiration in the wrath of a beggar who cannot pay his dog-tax, the sardonic piety of an old widow reduced to penury by the exactions of the "gracious prince," or the laborious resignation of an aged washerwoman.—The Silesian nobleman JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF (1788-1857), Prussian officer and civil official, was a consistent conservative in his political attitude, a pious Catholic, and a romanticist in every fibre of his poetic soul. His lyrics are the purest echoes of folk-song ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... sir," answered Nelson; "I've a hard life of it, Cuffe; there is not a washerwoman or a shopkeeper in Naples who does not treat me exactly as if I were a podesta, and it were my duty to hear all the contentions about lost clothes and mislaid goods. His Majesty must appoint a Lord ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stone, fifty yards from the house. 'Dang my buttons,' said he, 'if here is not master's snake. He came back and told my wife, who told him to go and kill it. It happened to be washing-day: the washerwoman gave him a pailful of scalding soapsuds to throw on it; but whether he was most afraid of me or of the snake is still a question: however, the washerwoman brought it home with the tongs, and dropped it into the dolly-tub. It dashed round the tub with the velocity of lightning; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... 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, if brisk, notable and healthy, may dispense with the stated service of a maid of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... we were playing "Here we go round the mulberry bush" in the woods near the house, little Ikey, our colored washerwoman's boy, came along with a live crow ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... remark was a rude one; but, being what you are, I don't mind telling you that I save up every penny I can scrape together for little Netta White, the girl that has just gone out to fetch the butter. Although she's not well cared for,—owing to her mother, who's a washerwoman, bein' overburdened with work and a drunken husband,—she's one of the dearest creeters I ever did see. Bless you, sir, you'd be amazed if you knew all the kind and thoughtful things that untrained and uncared for child does, and never thinks she's doing anything more than other people. ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Brutus took advantage of his opportunity to creep over to another woman, who also petted him, and who the boys afterwards learned was his aunt, a washerwoman of the town. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... vulgarity of their subject. I remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stuart: and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth—though she did it very well—I could not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion at all. The same part was incomparably better played by the Italian Ristori; and, in fact, the Italian nature, though in many respects ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Papers from Downing Street," nor adopt the pseudonym of "The Man with the Hot Water (or the Morning Tea)," nor shall I roundly assert that I have been the private secretary, the doctor, the dentist or the washerwoman of the great men of whom I speak. Nevertheless I have sources of information which I do not mean to disclose, except to say that heavy persons who sit down carelessly on sofas may unknowingly inflict considerable pain, through the sharp ends of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... from Sunday to Sunday. And the number of people that slept grew less and less, until, at last, it was reduced to the churchwarden, Mr Brownrigg, and an old washerwoman, who, poor thing, stood so much all the week, that sitting down with her was like going to bed, and she never could do it, as she told me, without going to sleep. I, therefore, called upon her every Monday morning, and had five minutes' chat with her ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... not large, but it was select. It included a washerwoman with very red arms; a care-taker who had obviously failed to take care of herself; a couple of chimney-sweeps with partially washed faces; a charwoman with her friend the female greengrocer, who ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne |
