"Housewife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how his grandmother, in '61, had put a Bible into one pocket and a housewife into another, and had sent him off to war. Had the fiber of our women weakened since then? But he knew it had not. All day, in the new plant, women were working with high-explosives quite calmly. And there were Audrey and the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the Trent Valley, so the travellers would start together, and Lucilla would be dropped on the way. In the cedar parlour, Owen's black knapsack lay open on the floor, and Lucilla was doing the last office in her power for him, and that a sad one, furnishing the Russia-leather housewife with the needles, silk, thread, and worsted for his own mendings when he should be beyond the reach of the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laughed with little Gretchen over her new snow-dance. The days passed on, and the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the little room—for Granny had taught her to be a careful little housewife—was off to the forest, singing a birdlike song, almost as happy and free as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day, preparing a surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most beautiful of the fir branches within her reach to take the next morning to the old sick ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues which make the woman a good housewife and house-mother, which make the man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need, stand at the bottom of character. But of course many others must be added thereto if a State is to be not only free ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... Mac Dougal! Ye canna forget ye are wee mither and it's hard for ye to be only woman richt noo. I know the kind of wife ye hae in mind for me. The patient wife, the housewife, the meek wife wi' only her een for back-and-ben, for kitchen and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... staple; and in the sugar district strop de batterie was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves and jellies were in variety and quantity limited only by the almost boundless resources and industry of the housewife and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breads and relishes would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpected guests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal than would be ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... admissions should give you pain—that my fancy has never been half so greatly enkindled by Carthula, of the bending spear, or Morven of the winds, as by the sedate and homely aspect of an ordinary dish of eggs and bacon, hot from the flaming frying-pan of some worthy housewife." ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the green sea. Here and there an ancient apple-tree, bent down and bowed to the ground with age, offers a mossy, shady seat upon one of its branches which has returned to the earth from which it sprung. Some wooden posts grown green and lichen-covered, standing at regular intervals, show where the housewife dries her linen. Right before the very door a great horse-chestnut tree rears itself in all the beauty of its thousands of blossoms, hiding half the house. A small patch of ground in front is railed in with wooden palings to keep out the pigs, and poultry, and dogs—for ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... copper kettle bubbled and steamed away upon the hearth, discoursing eloquent music, and servant after servant bustled in, one with a cold quail-pie, another with a quart jug of cream, and fresh eggs ready to be boiled by the fastidious epicures in person, he steadily worked on, housewife and saddler's silk, and wax and scissors ready to his hand; and when at last the door flew open, and the delinquent comrade entered, he flung his finished job upon the chair, and ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... baking oven, heated with fine-split dry wood, cooked the frugal but savory meal, which was served up on a solid old-fashioned table, around which the household gathered, first giving thanks to the Giver of all. When not busied with other duties, the housewife pressed with measured round the treadles of the loom, as she twilled the web she was weaving; and as the shades of evening descended the sonorous hum of the spinning-wheel gave token to the young man on courtship intent that the daughter of the house was ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... nor would she go to the country, until Mr. Warder agreed that she should take Jack with us to the Hill Farmhouse, where, in the warm months, she moved among her cattle, and fed the hens, and helped and bullied every poor housewife ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... grew all-powerful it became impossible for the husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is considered respectable. This is the genesis of the Club—out of the Housewife by Respectability. Nowadays every one is respectable—jockeys, betting-men, actors, and even actresses. Mrs. Kendal takes her children to visit a duchess, and has naughty chorus girls to tea, and tells them of the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... idea," said Karl, who was over head and ears in love with Norah by this time and thought that everything she did and said, was perfect. Still, like a prudent German, he wondered to himself if she would make a good housewife. He knew she must be good at cleaning or the dwarfs would hardly have employed her, but her dainty little hands did ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... English mantua-silk, manufactured in Spitalfields; her petticoat the same; her binding, a piece of chequered-stuff, made at Bristol and Norwich; her under-petticoat, a piece of black callamanco, made at Norwith—quilted at home, if she be a good housewife, but the quilting of cotton from Manchester, or cotton-wool from abroad; her inner-petticoats, flannel and swanskin, from Salisbury and Wales; her stockings from Tewksbury, if ordinary, from Leicester, if woven; her lace and edgings from Stony Stratford the first, and Great Marlow ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable. Thus it generally happened, that when other people were merry, Mrs Varden was dull; and that when other people were dull, Mrs Varden was disposed to be amazingly cheerful. Indeed the worthy housewife was of such a capricious nature, that she not only attained a higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral in an instant, but would ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... troublesome times?—but our argument was carried on without rancour; even my new sister could not bring us to that, though she did her best when we were together, and in the curtain lectures which I have no doubt she inflicted on her spouse, like a notable housewife as she was. But we trusted in each other so entirely that even Harry's duty towards his wife would not make him quarrel with his brother. He loved me from old times, when my word was law with him; he still protested that he and every Virginian gentleman ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had been a very handsome woman, and still retained much of her good looks. She was a most exemplary housewife and manager. I was often astonished to witness the incessant toil she had to ensure in attending to the wants of such a ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... man, though, I could glean nothing, till finally, a good housewife, overhearing her man and myself conversing, cried out, 'Eh! but by my surely, there's that Red Tom o' the "Fisherman's Rest," nigh to Saltburn, that's new come there, who features him you speak of; but he's nowt but a "fondy," oaf-rocked, they say he is; why, Moll who hawks t' fish about ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... for me to dwell upon our dealings with the owner of the hacienda, and therefore it will suffice for me to say, before ten days more had passed the purchase-money had been paid, we had taken up our abode there, and installed Joyful Star as housewife, with faithful servants chosen by myself from among the Children of the Blood. Djama, who had been strangely silent and reserved with all of us since the lesson I had taught him in the Hall of Gold, had taken possession of the chamber which was devoted to his uses, and had put ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... to help grandmother in the kitchen and to learn about cooking and housekeeping. She would stand beside her, watching her every movement. We were willing to believe that Mrs. Shimerda was a good housewife in her own country, but she managed poorly under new conditions: the conditions were ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... deciding to feed his stomach before I really tried to convince him. "It all comes under the heading of the drab, routine duties of a housewife. Come on now, ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne
... the contado. This village lies on the edge of a great oasis in the Sienese desert—an oasis formed by the waters of the Orcia and Asso sweeping down to join Ombrone, and stretching on to Montalcino. We put up at the sign of the 'Two Hares,' where a notable housewife gave us a dinner of all we could desire; frittata di cervello, good fish, roast lamb stuffed with rosemary, salad and cheese, with excellent wine and black coffee, at the rate of three lire ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to be taken from an exquisite work of Greek art. She had fled with her little treasure, which lay scattered around her—two silver cups, a few jewels, and some dozen silver coins; nor had she, like a good housewife, forgotten her keys, after having probably locked up her stores before seeking to escape. They were found ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Sabbath was indeed strictly observed; there was little visiting, no picnicking, no heavy meals, no week-end parties, none of the entertainments so prevalent in our own day. The wife and mother was therefore spared the heavy tasks of Sunday so commonly expected of the typical twentieth-century housewife. But it is doubtful whether the alternative—attendance at church almost the entire day—would appear one whit more desirable to the modern woman. The Sabbath of those times was verily a period of religious worship. No one must leave town, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... lived a certain housewife who had a sharp eye to her own interests, and gave alms of what she had no use for, hoping to get some reward in return. One day a Hillman knocked at ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... which have been enumerated, and which play an important part in supporting life in both the kingdoms of nature, we find a great many solids. Every housewife knows how dust settles upon everything about the house. This dust has recently been the subject of most active study, and it proves to be quite as important as the vital oxygen that actually supports life. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... once; but, the instant that Mary turned to attend to the iron kettle, he opened them, and continued to gaze at the busy little housewife, until she chanced to look in his direction, when he shut them again quickly, and very tight. This was done twice; but the third time Mary caught him in the act, and broke into a merry laugh. It was the first time she had laughed aloud since March met her; so he laughed too, out of sheer delight ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... waiting for his son at the posting station, and what a change already since that day; their relations that were then undefined, were defined now—and how defined! Again his dead wife came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... many intricate patterns of patchwork pleasantly occupied the spare moments of the women, thus serving as a means of expression of their love of colour and design. The following little domestic picture shows how conveniently near the thrifty housewife kept her quilt blocks: "A low chair with a seat of twisted osier, on which was tied a loose feather-filled cushion, covered with some gay material. On the back of these chairs hung the bag of knitting, with ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... still continued the great object of desire, particularly in the eyes of the old housewife, who produced a pot of parched flour and a string of biscuit roots. These procured her some trifle in return; but could not command the purchase of the mirror. The salmon being now completely cooked, they all joined heartily in supper. A bounteous portion was deposited before the captain by ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... might sooner or later win back her husband's love. But it was not so. When Sommervieux, fired with work, came in from his studio, Augustine did not put away her work so quickly but that the painter might find his wife mending the household linen, and his own, with all the care of a good housewife. She supplied generously and without a murmur the money needed for his lavishness; but in her anxiety to husband her dear Theodore's fortune, she was strictly economical for herself and in certain ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... letters and presents to acknowledge. Relations turned up trumps, and sent contributions towards the outfit in money and in kind; the General presented a handsome double-barrelled fowling-piece, which thrilled Miles with delight and his mother with horror. Miss Beveridge gave a "housewife" stocked with all sorts of mending materials—fancy Miles darning his own socks!—and Cynthia Alliot sent across a case containing one of the most perfect quarter-plate cameras ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... raw materials, railways, mines, ships, forests, and industrial enterprises. No power over the lives and property of citizens, deemed necessary to the prosecution of the armed conflict, was withheld from the government. The farmer's wheat, the housewife's sugar, coal at the mines, labor in the factories, ships at the wharves, trade with friendly countries, the railways, banks, stores, private fortunes—all were mobilized and laid under whatever obligations the government deemed imperative. Never was a nation more completely ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the jingle of the bells on the baker's cart as it begins its rounds. From innumerable chimneys the curdled smoke gives evidence that the thrifty housewife—or, what is rarer in Stillwater, the hired ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... new brand of olives he encloses a picture of the bottled olives, tinted to exactly represent the actual bottle and its contents, and underneath he prints the terse statement "Delicious, Tempting, Nutricious." If his letter has not persuaded the housewife to try a bottle of the olives, the picture on the enclosure is apt to create the desire in her mind and lead to ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... roam, Since path is none, save that to bring The needful water from the spring; When wrinkled news-page, thrice conned o'er, Beguiles the dreary hour no more, And darkling politican, crossed Inveighs against the lingering post, And answering housewife sore complains Of carriers' snow-impeded wains; When such the country cheer, I come, Well pleased, to seek our city home; For converse, and for books, to change The Forest's melancholy range, And welcome, with renewed delight, The busy day and social ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... features were good without being distinguished. She had quiet gray eyes. She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even pretty. But when Stroeve spoke of Chardin it was not without reason, and she reminded me curiously of that pleasant housewife in her mob-cap and apron whom the great painter has immortalised. I could imagine her sedately busy among her pots and pans, making a ritual of her household duties, so that they acquired a moral significance; I ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... and complementing the man's industrial defects, and springing from the same causes, is the woman's failure in the business of being a housewife. The wife's laziness, incompetence, lack of interest, and lack of skill and knowledge create, as one case worker puts it, "the sort of home that tends to get itself deserted." These faults of the wife are responsible for as many ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... hardened swelling on the breast of society. He is my sworn enemy. He fills himself up with cheap truths, with gnawed morsels of musty wisdom, and he exists like a storeroom where a stingy housewife keeps all sorts of rubbish which is absolutely unnecessary to her, and worthless. If you touch such a man, if you open the door into him, the stench of decay will be breathed upon you, and a stream of some musty trash will be poured into the air you breathe. These unfortunate people call ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... painted red or blue and charmingly gilded, or cooky-cutters in the shape of dogs and horses. All these rare and delightful articles he was willing to exchange for rags. Is it any wonder that the thrifty housewife saved her rags with the utmost care, keeping one bag for white clippings and one ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... and folding and airing, such diverse arrangements, and above all such severe study! For Mrs J. R., who had never been wont to do too much at home as Miss B. W., was under the constant necessity of referring for advice and support to a sage volume entitled The Complete British Family Housewife, which she would sit consulting, with her elbows on the table and her temples on her hands, like some perplexed enchantress poring over the Black Art. This, principally because the Complete British Housewife, however sound a Briton at heart, was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... son of Evil, has been sold to Ilmarinen to serve as his shepherd. The Rainbow Maiden therefore sends him forth with her cattle, giving him a loaf of bread as sole sustenance. When the son of Evil attempts to cut this bread, he breaks his knife, for the housewife has baked a flint-stone in it. In his anger the shepherd conjures up wolves and bears, which devour the cattle, and which he drives home in their stead after dark. When the Rainbow Maiden therefore unsuspectingly tries to milk them, she is instantly ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of the food and responsible for its safe keeping, wrote in his diary: "The shorter the provisions the more there is to do in the commissariat department, contriving to eke out our slender stores as the weeks pass by. No housewife ever had more to do than we have in making a little ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... pretended to lead monastic life, and led it without having natural faculty for it. But many more lamentable errors have arisen from the pride of really noble persons, who have thought it would be a more pleasing thing to God to be a sibyl or a witch, than a useful housewife. Pride is always somewhat involved even in the true effort: the scarlet head-dress in the form of a horn on the forehead in the fresco indicates this, both here, and in the ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... for black currants is limited, but the prices are fair. As to picking would say we pick them when not quite ripe, as the average housewife claims they jell better than when over-ripe. They must be picked by the stem and not stripped off—all defective, over-ripe and bruised berries should ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... cured hams while menstruating the hams would be spoiled. He had known this to happen twice. Another medical man wrote that if so, what would happen to the patients of menstruating lady doctors? A third wrote (in the Journal for April 27, 1878): "I thought the fact was so generally known to every housewife and cook that meat would spoil if salted at the menstrual period, that I am surprised to see so many letters on the subject in the Journal. If I am not mistaken, the question was mooted many years ago in the periodicals. It ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... For instance, what would happen tomorrow if one hundred thousand tramps should become suddenly inspired with an overmastering desire for work? It is a fair question. "Go to work" is preached to the tramp every day of his life. The judge on the bench, the pedestrian in the street, the housewife at the kitchen door, all unite in advising him to go to work. So what would happen tomorrow if one hundred thousand tramps acted upon this advice and strenuously and indomitably sought work? Why, by the end ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... under circumstances to judge of this fact; sometimes her hull appearing to be nearly smothered in the brine, and then, again, her copper glistening in the sun, resembling a light vessel, kept under the care of some thrifty housewife. ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... snatch, To pray and importune, Must wager and venture And hunt down his fortune! Then flows in a current the gear and the gain, And the garners are filled with the gold of the grain, Now a yard to the court, now a wing to the centre! Within sits Another, The thrifty Housewife; The mild one, the mother— Her home is her life. In its circle she rules, And the daughters she schools, And she cautions the boys, With a bustling command, And a diligent hand Employed she employs; Gives order to store, And the much makes the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... a magnetic and fascinating personality. A ready story was always on his lips; a smile shone constantly on his face. It was said of him that he could hypnotize the most unresponsive housewife into buying articles she never needed. Up and down the highways he trudged, unmindful of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... suddenly brightened, and the cause of the change was revealed by her thrusting her hand into her neckerchief, to draw out the miniature of herself. With her knitting needle she pried up the glass and, removing the slip of ivory, laid it carefully in her housewife, heaving, let it be confessed, a little sigh, for it was hard to part with the one trinket she had ever owned. Unconscious of how many hours she had been dwelling on her troubles, she caught up her calash, and with the miniature frame ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... an excellent little housewife. It is necessary to purchase immediately all that is wanted for Morel's family to be properly clothed, bedded, and settled in my room, for there is only sufficient for myself as a bachelor, that was brought yesterday. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... listening to her father's stories or helping her mother with the housework, which, good housewife that Mrs. Barton was, she took great pains to teach her youngest daughter how to do well, Clara was as busy as possible in some other way. In that household there were no drones, and the little girl was not even allowed to waste time in playing with dolls, although she ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... was an accomplished housewife of the olden time, and she gave constant attention to all matters of her household, and by her skill and management greatly contributed to the comfort and entertainment of the guests who enjoyed the hospitality ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... nothing of my designs to Mistress Pennyquick, foreseeing trouble in that quarter. It was pitiful to see her, who had been such a bustling housewife, sitting the greater part of the day with her hands in her lap, or dabbing the tears from her eyes, and to hear her melancholy plaints, which grew the more frequent as the time drew nearer for leaving the old house. After concluding my arrangement with Mr. Vetch I went back to ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within the soul of the housewife who achieves it—the lace-edged shelves, the scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... native food seemed delicious, if it was "hot," to J.W.'s healthy appetite, and if he had not seen over how tiny a fire it had been prepared he would have credited the smiling housewife with a lavishly ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... after league, he had been misled as to the distance by the lying statements of the peasants, he thought it would be prudent not to venture any farther without fortifying the inner man. Small as were his chances of finding any housewife in her dwelling at a time when every one was hard at work in the fields, he stopped before a little cluster of cottages that stood about a piece of land common to all of them, more or less describing a square, which was open ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... seat, emphasising the hospitality by leaning over the counter and gripping a chair back in a spasmodic manner, and so proceeded to obtain, unfold, and exhibit his goods for your consideration. Under which happier circumstances you might—if of an observing turn of mind and not too much of a housewife to be inhuman—have given the central figure of this ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... child?" said Mrs. Partridge, who was in the kitchen trying to instruct a negro girl how to use her broom of twigs so as to distribute the silver sand upon the floor in the complex wavy figures, which were the pride of the housewife of that day. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... room that night with a renewed sense of pleasure in the country quiet, the peaceful flower-scented house. Catherine, who was an admirable housewife, had put out her best guest-sheets for his benefit, and the tutor, accustomed for long years to the second-best of college service, looked at their shining surfaces and frilled edges, at the freshly matted floor, at the flowers on the dressing-table, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... encumber others. And now that Christmas is over and we contemplate our thin purses and impossible presents, we all wonder why 'that monster custom' doesn't permit us to exercise a little common sense. Christmas is becoming ever more and more a nightmare to me. The dinners are simply dreadful. The housewife begins a month in advance to plot against the stomachs of her people. I never ate but one Christmas dinner for which I did not feel like apologizing to my doctor, and that was not eaten in strictly religious company. It was a regular Bohemian lunch partaken of on a Pullman by myself, a newspaper ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... move, running hither and thither, can't keep still a moment, but trot about, worrying, hurrying, chattering, and clattering, and had nothing in them to keep them steady, but are so light that they run after a gastric zephyr as after their quintessence. No; on the contrary, she was a good housewife, always sitting in her chair or sleeping in her bed, ready as a candlestick, waiting for her lover when her husband went out, receiving the husband when the lover had gone. This dear woman never thought of dressing herself only to annoy and make other wives jealous. Pish! ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... some one to show you how," he said, after an unpleasant pause. "You will not dislike it so much after you learn how, Thursa. It is really pleasant work, housekeeping is, and I am sure you will learn to be a famous little housewife." ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... women in those days we call the "good old times." Take the married woman, the house-mother of that period. She not only lived in the strictest retirement, but her duties were so complex and manifold that, to quote Bebel, "a conscientious housewife had to be at her post from early in the morning till late at night in order to fulfil them. It was not only a question of the daily household duties that still fall to the lot of the middle-class ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... granite blocks, dates from a very remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple. Each of the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands. Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden, and for ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... environment. The women kept calling off their fish in shrill, piercing tones, or beating on their dirty scales to attract the attention of some possible purchaser. Smiles and quaint greetings of endearment would welcome the housewife as she came up; but if she found prices too high and passed on, a deluge of filthy epithet would follow after her, and the insolent ridicule would be taken up by the whole crew of vendors, instinctively ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Description of a Martian Home and Surroundings, then shows how the Food is manipulated. It is brought from a Central Depot in a Mechanical Contrivance which is run underground, thence up into the Dining room. The Soiled Dishes are run down and off the same way. No Drudgery for the Housewife! ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... demand is usually answered, with a whole drawerful of skeins peeping from their blue papers —such skeins as in my youth a thrifty maiden would draw into the nicely-stitched compartments of that silken repository, a housewife, or fold into a congeries of graduated thread-papers, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less." The very literature of Hazelby is doled out at the pastry cook's, in a little one-windowed shop kept by Matthew Wise. Tarts occupy one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... or four years older, the struggle becomes more severe: they want to do things. Those who observe them carefully discover that they have some "tendency." They wish to imitate what their mother does, if their mother is a housewife. They willingly follow her into the kitchen, they wish to share her work, to touch her things, and they try furtively to knead and cook and wash clothes, and sweep the floor. The mother feels wearied by them; she keeps on repeating, "Be quiet; leave it alone. Don't tease me. Go away." ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... unexpectedly answering your eye with the boldness of an outcast girl, broken tables, pictures of the Virgin, overturned stoves, and all the dear mantlepiece trash which but an hour before had been the pride of the toiling housewife, and the adornment of the ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... felt themselves competent to mingle in the youth's higher and holier sympathies; they were conscious that they were of altogether a different mold; but there were bodily wants that none knew better how to meet than the nice housewife, whose skill in such matters few could contest. The dainty bit was ever tempting, and the linen was pure and white, and the neat chamber inviting even to the most fastidious taste, so that there would have been nothing wanting to Archie's comfort or joy ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... has been, and always will be, by the drip and the filtration methods. The large hotels and cafes follow these methods almost entirely, and so does the housewife. When company comes, and something unusual in coffee is to be served, Mr. Beeson says he has known the cook to drip the coffee, using a spoonful of hot water at a time, pouring it over tightly packed, finely ground coffee, allowing the water to percolate through to extract ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the sweet serenity of her brow was not of this world but had come from God, and that she would return it to Him spotless in spite of man; and there were times when she reminded one of the careful housewife, who, when the wind blows, holds her hand before ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... lighted with palm chips, and heated with palm coals. The whole architecture of these countries is fashioned by the date tree. Date wine is the favorite intoxicating beverage. There is a proverb current there that a good housewife can vary the preparation of the date for her guests every day in the month. Even the pulp is eaten. Each tree yields an average of 50-250 lbs. of dates; and a tree may last over 200 years. An acre may contain more than 200 trees. The labor of cultivation ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... accumulation of letters that required immediate reply, it was with nervous starts from time to time, which he could trace to no other cause. His wife came in and out, with what he knew to be an accusing eye, as she brought up those arrears of housekeeping which always await the housewife on the return from any vacation; and he knew that he did not conceal his guilt ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... faint champing of marching feet could be heard and the Hun came down from the bedroom looking as pale as death. He opened the door and stood there listening. The insolent crunch, crunch, crunch of heavy nail-studded service boots came nearer, and a khaki column appeared on the winding road. The housewife, whose aching eyes had searched the road for Boudru all day, ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... sentiment about the kitchen in New England, a kind of sentiment not provoked by other rooms. Here the farmer drops in to spend a few minutes when he comes back from the barn or field on an errand. Here, in the great, clean, sweet, comfortable place, the busy housewife lives, sometimes rocking the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting the oven door, sometimes stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring vegetables, or mixing goodies in a yellow bowl. The children sit on the steps, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... about, quite as if his presence was in no way going to disturb her usual duties of the day. She rearranged the damask curtains which he had crumpled with his hands, placed two or three chairs in their usual places, and moved from this to that with the air of a housewife who is in the habit of brushing up a ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... with the fumes of tobacco. Nowhere else was smoking more constant than at the Coffee House. And why any one would leave his own home and fireside to sit amid such eternal fog, was a mystery to every good housewife. But every man of the upper or the middle class went daily to the Coffee House to learn and discuss the news ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... the dwelling, the housewife's handy-work is displayed in a pole hung with many a skein of snow white yarn, glistening in the sunlight. Four years have passed since Sybel was a bride—-her cheek has lost the bloom of girlhood, and has already assumed the hollow ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... many books, are essentially people of one Book. Wherever they are, the Bible is. Queen Victoria has it near by when the messenger from the Orient appears, and lays her hand upon it to say that this is the foundation of the prosperity of England. But the poor housewife in the cottage, with only a crust for food, stays her soul with it. The Puritan creeps into hiding with the Book, while his brother sails away to the new land with the Book. The settler may have his Shakespeare; he will surely have his Bible. As the long wagon-train creeps across the ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... I have questioned my peasant neighbours. They are men of the extremest vigilance in all that concerns their crops. To steal their property is an abominable crime, swiftly discovered. Moreover, the housewife, who individually examines all beans intended for the saucepan, would inevitably ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of the country. Most of the Chinese servants that I met corresponded very closely with what we read concerning Chinese character. We have all heard of the Chinese servant's unswerving adherence to a routine that he has once established. They say in the West that when a housewife gives her Chinese servant an object lesson in the preparation of a certain dish, she must always be very careful to make her demonstration perfect the first time. If, inadvertently, she adds one egg too many, she will find that, in spite of her protestations, the superfluous ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Smith and his little account, in the morning, symbolize duty, difficulty, struggle, which you will meet, let us hope, friend, with a manly and honest heart. And you think of him, as the children are slumbering once more in their own beds, and the watchful housewife tenderly ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... every chance when she married me that a woman ever had," continued the older man. "It only depended on herself. I didn't try to make a housewife of her or a drudge. She had all the healthy excitement and all the money she wanted, and she had a home here ready for her whenever she was tired of travelling about and wished to settle down. And I was—and a husband that loved her as—she had everything. Everything ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... Ribs of Lamb, Spinach, Potatoes, savoury Pie, a Brentford Pudding, and Cheesecakes. What a pretty Housewife Rose is! Roger's plain Hospitalitie and scholarlie Discourse appeared to much Advantage. He askt of News from Paris; and Mr. Milton spoke much of the Swedish Ambassadour, Dutch by Birth; a Man renowned for his Learning, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... practical instinct of the housewife, accustomed to be thoughtful about many things, revived in ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... and holding back some of the muslin and ribbons with one hand, whilst with the other he held out a forelock of his black curls, and she cut it off with the scissors out of the sailor's housewife which she had made for him. I turned my ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... thy limber bit of a thigh, thrust through that bunch of slashed buckram and tiffany, shows like a housewife's distaff when the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... prefers to build near the house, where hawks and crows and owls rarely come. She knows her friends and takes advantage of their protection, returning year after year to the same old elm, and, like a thrifty little housewife, carefully saving and sorting the good threads of her storm-wrecked old house to be ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... applied to investigations and experiments into the questions of pure food, household economy and employments suited to woman, is now directed more than ever before to the uplifting of American homes and the assistance of the homemakers. These researches are at the call of every housewife. However, to save her the bewilderment of selection from so many useful suggestions, and the digesting of voluminous directions, the fundamental principles of food and household economy as published ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... was well known in the town. Ilse was hated by everybody, and the young folks would go miles out of their way rather than meet her, for she had some ill-word for everyone. Therefore, when Master Peter came along, and let himself be taken in by her boasted skill as a housewife, she jumped at his offer, and they were married the next day. But they had not got home before they began to quarrel. In the joy of his heart Peter had tasted freely of his own good wine, and as the bride hung upon his arm he stumbled and ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... “Thou’st forc’d my housewife, and hast brought Distress and shame upon our head; But know one thing, my gracious King, Thy life ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... and Dora left early this morning. Mother has never gone away from us before for long at a time, so I cried a lot and so did she. Dora cried too, but I know on whose account. Father and I are alone now. At dinner he said to me: "My little housewife." It was so lovely. But it's frightfully quiet in the house, for 2 people don't talk so much as 4. It made me feel quite uncomfortable. To-day I talked several things over with Resi. What I think worst of all is that one saw the whole of his behind, it was really ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... days of Queen Elizabeth, addressed a copy of verses to his wife, "On Women's Vertues:"—these he divides into "the private, civill, and heroyke;" the private belong to the country housewife, whom it concerned; chiefly— ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... why it is that the most skilled hotel chefs cannot fry spring chicken so as to faintly imitate the culinary wonders attained by a capable housewife? ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... day's rations, and his pack, strapped to shoulders and waist in such a way that the weight of it was equally distributed. His pack contained the following articles: A greatcoat, a woolen shirt, two or three pairs of socks, a change of underclothing, a "housewife,"—the soldiers' sewing-kit,—a towel, a cake of soap, and a "hold-all," in which were a knife, fork, spoon, razor, shaving-brush, toothbrush, and comb. All of these were useful and sometimes essential articles, particularly the toothbrush, which Tommy regarded ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... doctor, again "and make them yourself, if you are a good housewife. Come, Lucy," said he, taking her hand, "do you know how the wild fowl do on the Chesapeake? duck and swim under water till they can show their heads with safety. 'T wont spoil your eyes to see by ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hardware; its rafters dangled with tinware and kettles, with rope, harness, webbing; its bins overflowed with various food-stuffs unknown to the purveyor of a lumber camp's commissary, but in demand by the housewife; its one glass case shone temptingly with fancy stationery, dollar watches, and even cheap jewelry. There was candy for the children, gum for the bashful maiden, soda pop for the frivolous young. In short, there sprang to being in an astonishingly ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... criminal's execution is left to the good wisdom of our well-beloved—etc., in plain language, to me. Now might I trouble you so far as to look out of this little window? What do you see in front of you? A kitchen? Quite so; always a homely and pleasant sight in the eyes of an excellent housewife like yourself. And—do you mind bending forward a little? What do you see up there? A small barred window? Well, let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that a hungry man, a man who grows hungrier and hungrier, sat behind ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... in the world to keep bright. Will whiting be allowed in the community?" inquired Sister Hope, with a housewife's interest in labor-saving institutions. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its edges,—and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this time"? What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... is a variant of a widely spread folk-tale in which a beggarman tricks a provident housewife out of a meal. He pretends a stone that he has, and which he gives her after his meal, makes good broth, but it is her chicken that has made the broth. It is a trifle, amusing enough, but remarkable chiefly for its difference from other work of Mr. Yeats. There is little ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife-bee and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with the housewife, who took care to wipe her own upon her apron in preparation for the ceremony. To the children he bade a comprehensive farewell, after which he turned again to Madge, advanced a step and then hesitated. He had doubtless meant to shake hands with her also but, ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... housewife moon kindles her pale fire on the hearth of heaven to-morrow, I shall be quiet enough. But either way you have given me a royal week, and I have made the most of it, lived a thousand lives, eaten my cake to the last sweet crumb and have known the ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hunger was supplied And my poor children prattled at my side. Methinks I see the old oak table spread, The clean white trencher and the good brown bread, The cheese my daily food which Mary made, For Mary knew full well the housewife's trade: The jug of cyder,—cyder I could make, And then the knives—I won 'em at the wake. Another has them now! I toiling here Look backward like a child and ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... sets to work to serve you with mt, and quickly rolls a cigar, which she hands to you from her mouth, where she has already lighted it by a live ember of charcoal taken from the fire with a spoon. Matches can be bought, but they cost about ten cents a hundred. If you tell the housewife you do not smoke she will stare at you in gaping wonder. Their children use the weed, and I have seen a mother urge her three-year-old boy to whiff ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... that the relatively slight increases of heat found as one goes deeper in existing mines are due to radioactivity in the rocks instead of to outward seepage from the internal fires. Another difficulty about utilizing earth heat is that heat moves so slowly through substances like rock, as any housewife can prove by trying to fry an egg on a brick placed over a gas flame. As soon as the rock heat immediately at the bottom of a bore hole had been exhausted heat supply would stop until more could diffuse in from ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... three chillun living. Walter is parcel post clerk here at de post office downtown. Delia Jenkins, my daughter is a housewife and Cleo Luckett, my other ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... one side, and butted towards the open door; but he strove in vain to close it, until his son and the General lent their aid. The hall was sown with broken glass and fragments of picture frames, and here and there an engraving lay wet and crumpled, but not even the housewife regarded these things for the ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and reread, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good: but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book; and the family must be poor indeed which, once in their lives, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... properties are undoubtedly due to tannic acid, as all the tests I have been able to make prove this to be the case. The readiness with which it can be obtained in the summer renders it a valuable adjunct, undoubtedly, to the materia medica of the country practitioner or housewife for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... it is the custom for the coal dealers to go along the streets with their lorries, crying their wares, much after the manner of a vegetable peddler in America. If a housewife wants any coal, she goes to the window when she hears the hail of the coal man, and holds up a finger, or two fingers, according to the number of ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... we turned homewards than a storm, making giant strides over the open moorland, was on us with an angry roar. I had no idea, while I was admiring the collyrium on the eyelashes of beauteous dame Nature, that she would fly at us like an irate housewife, threatening so ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... should make it a negligible matter whether or not a permanent "houseband" were enlisted with a "housewife" in building a home in which to place a child desired must tend toward a reversion, not an advance, in social organization. Or so it seems to many students of the evolution ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... thundering guns That tell the earth her warriors are dead. Inglorious! aye, the battle done and won Means not—a throne propp'd up with bleaching bones; A country sav'd with smoking seas of blood; A flag torn from the foe with wounds and death; Or Commerce, with her housewife foot upon Colossal bridge of slaughter'd savages, The Cross laid on her brawny shoulder, and In one sly, mighty hand her reeking sword; And in the other all the woven cheats From her dishonest looms. Nay, none of these. It means—four walls, perhaps a lowly roof; Kine in a peaceful ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... Peter turns upon Lord Sidmouth,[55] who has been prophesying woe and destruction from the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Such prophecies, he says, will, in the process of time, become matter of pleasantry even to "the sedulous housewife and the Rural Dean." There is always a copious supply of Lord Sidmouths in the world, and they have always uttered the most dismal predictions about every improvement in ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... in strict seclusion, and was a man-hater. But, for all that, she was neither a nun nor an Amazon. She was a true woman, neither inconsolably melancholy nor wantonly merry. She proved herself an excellent housewife. She rose betimes mornings, sent her workmen about their various tasks, saw that everything was properly attended to. Very often she rode on horseback, or drove in a light wagon, to look about her estate. She had arranged an extensive dairy, and paid daily visits to ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... thing, they have more state to spend on. A man may continue to make money in America, and not change his manner of living till he chooses, and he may never change it. Such a thing could not happen to an Englishwoman as happened to the elderly American housewife who walked through the magnificent house which her husband had bought to surprise her, and sighed out at last, "Well, now I suppose I shall have to keep a girl!" The girl would have been kept from the beginning of her husband's prosperity, and multiplied, till the house was full of servants. ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... very beginning woman was, by function, a mother; by virtue of her surroundings, a housewife. Man was then, as now, the active, dominant factor in those affairs outside the immediate pale of the fireside. Life was collective; "communal was the habitation, and communal the wives with the children; ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... pounding the bear meat, much as the white housewife would pound a steak, but with more vigor. Grizzly or any other kind of big bear was exceedingly tough, even after treatment, but, in the last resort, the Indians would eat it, and, despite their great stores of ordinary food, Xingudan feared they would ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... wore a strange expression, gratified, pleased, as though she had gained something which seemed to complete a picture in her mind. For this silent Emily, talking little save in rare bursts of wild spirits; this energetic housewife, cooking and cleaning as though she had no other aim in view than the providing for the day's comfort; this was the same Emily who at five years of age used to startle the nursery with her fantastic fairy stories. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the housewife; 'meanwhile, ye had best eat your porridge. Here is Father, in good ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for Man or Beast," stood a more modest structure. Brown, unpainted, unclapboarded, it stood by the wayside. Its log walls were stuccoed with mud, and in the wide mouth of the doorway was the brawny housewife, bare-armed, peering from beneath a slatternly red sun-bonnet, while over the doorway the passer-by read the letters in red chalk upon ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... and of dreams went by and passed, leaving me very weak, but not ignorant of where I was, and of what had come and gone. My master had often been by my bedside, and Elliot now and again; the old housewife also watched me by night, and gave me drink when I thirsted. Most of the while I deemed I was at home, in the house of Pitcullo; yet I felt there was something strange, and that there was pain somewhere in ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... henceforth made his head-quarters, rising to the position of cook to the Reform Club; rendered important services as a culinary expert in Ireland during the 1847 famine, and at the Crimea (1855); was the author of various highly popular works on the art of cooking, "The Modern Housewife," "Shilling Cookery Book," ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of learning; both the head And pipes that feed the press, and make it run; What reason hath from nature borrowed, Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun In laws and policy; what the stars conspire; What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire; Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas; The stock and surplus, cause and history: All these stand open, or I have the keys: ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... infinitely superior Rose is to all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her finery down one of the walks; a priest passes and, while his lips mumble prayers, his eyes, held in leash by fear, prowl ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... Jeff with the shining spade like a new sort of war weapon, going forth to spade "up". Evidently Anne intended to have no spading at random in a fair green orchard. She was one of the conservers of the earth, a thrifty housewife who would have all things well done. They looked happily intent, the three, going out to their breaking ground. Lydia felt the tempest in her going down, and she wished she were with them. But her temper shut her out. She felt like ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... specimens of the partial ignorance which passes under the ken of the Post Office authorities, and we may venture to assert, that such specimens of penmanship and orthography are not to be matched in any other country in Europe. A housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the plainest rudiments of education in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... a barn, or a meadow; when, in passing through a hamlet, I scented a good chervil omelette, and heard at a distance the burden of a rustic song of the Bisquieres; I wished all rouge, furbelows and amber at the d—-l, and envying the dinner of the good housewife, and the wine of her own vineyard, I heartily wished to give a slap on the chaps to Monsieur le Chef and Monsieur le Maitre, who made me dine at the hour of supper, and sup when I should have been asleep, but especially to Messieurs the lackeys, who devoured with their eyes the morsel I put into ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... appear," said the pedant, who was walking behind the chariot trying to find shelter from the icy wind, "that the celestial housewife up above has been plucking her geese, and is shaking the feathers out of her apron down upon us. She might a great deal better send us the geese themselves. I for one would be glad enough to eat 114 them, without being very particular as to whether they were done ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the street the women stood clacking the news just as though it were a week-day and the boats had brought in a famous haul. Feminine gossip in Polpier is not conducted in groups, as the men conduct theirs on the Quay. By tradition each housewife takes post on her own threshold-slate, and knits while she talks with her neighbours to right and left and across the road; thus a bit of news, with comment and embellishment zigzags from door to door through the town like a postal delivery. To-day being Sunday, the women had no knitting; but ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... was, as it seemed, little likely to settle to any other. My pretensions to genius and my literary qualifications were of no advantage to me, either with my uncle or my aunt; the one being only a good farmer, and the other only a good housewife. They contented themselves with asking me, coolly, what I had ever made by being an author? And when I was forced to answer nothing, they smiled upon me in scorn. My pride was roused, and I boasted ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... his table, and began to write. We hoped for peace, but it was not to be. A sudden thought struck him. He would sew his scattered leaves of MS. together. With dreadful deliberation he took needle and cotton from a little pocket housewife that he carried with him; and then began one of the most maddening performances I have ever watched. Carefully he held the needle to the light, carefully he wetted and trimmed his cotton to a point. And for ten stricken minutes we saw him miss the eye of the needle, sometimes by an inch, sometimes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... facial expression of all its beauty and spiritual significance, but carried as if it were an ordinary and rather heavy burden, so it is without any apparent suspicion of what she is about that the powerfully built housewife who is portrayed in the Arena beneath the label 'Caritas,' and a reproduction of whose portrait hung upon the wall of my schoolroom at Combray, incarnates that virtue, for it seems impossible, that any thought ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... was a thrifty, well-to-do man, anxious to give his children greater advantages than he had enjoyed, and to improve the fine place of which he was justly proud. Mrs. Grant was a notable housewife, as ambitious and industrious as her husband, but too busy to spend any time on the elegancies of life, though always ready to help the poor and sick like a good neighbor and Christian woman. The three sons—Tom, Dick, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... must still improve. You must become still more steady and collected, and prepare more earnestly and eagerly for your real calling, the only calling of a woman,—I mean the state of a housewife. Women have a difficult task; the constant occupation with apparent trifles, the interception of each drop of rain, that it may not evaporate, but be conducted into the right channel, the unremitting attention to every detail,—all ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... even old age and childhood bend, with prying eyes, to glean the scattered ears. The master looks on his riches, and swells with satisfaction; the busy housewife loads the hospitable board, and hands the mantling ale around; age tells the tale of past times; and the loud laugh and rustic song burst from the lips of jocund youth. Oh! ever thus return to us, with plenty ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... educated medical profession, and increased also the confidence with which any one might assume to observe and discuss facts connected with the art and science of healing. In every household there was traditional learning which served for ordinary purposes, and the housewife knew and used herbs with something of the practical wisdom which she applied to her cooking. In every community there was likely to be one woman or more to whom the rest turned in emergencies, and a rude practice was kept up which cannot be called ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... the master of the house has been coaxed by his womenfolk to take a holiday, and they descend upon the books, which he (the humbug) never reads, belabour and bang the dust out of them and flap them with dusters, and all with that vindictiveness which is the good housewife's right attitude towards literature—" ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... them no more the blazing hearth shall burn Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... of a shrewd housewife immediately set Wason in his place—Wason with his two hundred and sixty-five shops, and his racing-cars, and his visits to kings and princes. Wason had emporia all over the kingdom, and in particular at Knype, Hanbridge, and Longshaw. And now he had penetrated ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... of the Sun, and thou wert aweary in the arms of Calypso, and the Sea King's daughter came never to her longing. As for her who is dead, thy dear wife Penelope, thou didst love her with a loyal heart, but never with a heart of fire. Nay, she was but thy companion, thy housewife, and the mother of thy child. She was mingled with all the memories of the land thou lovest, and so thou gavest her a little love. But she is dead; and thy child too is no more; and thy very country is as the ashes of a forsaken hearth ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... kitchen or on the table of the housewife, there would be no excuse for tasteless or indigestible ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... Dolph was obliged to pay allegiance. Though a bachelor, and a man of such great dignity and importance, yet the doctor was, like many other wise men, subject to petticoat government. He was completely under the sway of his housekeeper; a spare, busy, fretting housewife, in a little, round, quilted, German cap, with a huge bunch of keys jingling at the girdle of an exceedingly long waist. Frau Ilse (or Frow Ilsy, as it was pronounced) had accompanied him in his various migrations from Germany to England, and from England to the province; managing his ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the children are inherited, not only from father, but mother as well; and it was easy to discern, from the remarks that fell from the subject of my interview, that the touches of artistic taste to be seen about the place were due to the "best of wives and mothers"—immaculate housewife and capital hostess—Mrs. Furniss. And, as Mr. Furniss himself acknowledges, half the battle of life is overcome for a hard-worked professional man by the possession of a sympathetic and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... began to flame The star of love; while o'er the northern sky That, which has oft raised Juno's jealousy, Pour'd forth its beauteous scintillating beam: Beside her kindled hearth the housewife dame, Half-dress'd, and slipshod, 'gan her distaff ply: And now the wonted hour of woe drew nigh, That wakes to tears the lover from his dream: When my sweet hope unto my mind appear'd, Not in the custom'd way unto my sight; For grief had bathed my lids, and sleep ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... down-stairs and wait for Daddy Captain, and perhaps he will think I am a real fairy. Oh, wouldn't that be fun? I am sure I look like one!" and down the stairs she flitted like a golden butterfly. Once in the kitchen, the housewife in her triumphed for a moment over the fairy: she raked up the fire, put on more wood, and swept the hearth daintily. "But Ariel did such things for Prospero," she said. "I'm Ariel just the same, so I may as well fill the kettle and ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... of the native servants are generally industrious. This one, Karlee boasted, was a notable housewife. Before she went out to service as an ayah she had cleaned the rice, pounded the curry, cooked all the meals, brought water from the tank in earthen jars on her head, swept and scrubbed the floor, cultivated a small kitchen garden, "shopped" at the bazaar, spun endless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs. Sue sat by the window in a reverie, watching the rain. Her quiet was broken by the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a man and woman in conversation in the passage below. The landlady's husband had arrived, and she was ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... housewife I open my door to whom I may choose to receive. I should have closed it to you, had I been able to guess what language ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... meat; if hunger can be partly satisfied on them, and it is true that a thick slice of bread and a bowl of soup will content the hungriest stomach, less meat will be required, and consequently less expense incurred. This is an excellent reason why the housewife should not spend the bulk of her market money on a large roast of beef, or a leg of mutton, but should rather divide the amount among the different dishes of soup, fish, a ragout, or stew of some cheap cut of meat, ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... tired Kaela; but she was always fatigued, that was the worst of it. So they sent for Sophy, and she was taken into the house to reside with them, and her presence there was a great advantage. Mamma-in-law acknowledged that Sophy was not only a clever housewife, but well-informed and accomplished, though that could hardly be expected in a person of her limited means. She was also a generous-hearted, faithful girl; she showed that thoroughly while Kaela lay sick, fading away. When the casket is everything, the casket should be strong, or else ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... obliged to cross to a neighbouring island, and this the majority of them did very regularly. Stores were brought twice a year from the town of Lerwick; and it seldom happened that these ran short, for Miss Adiesen was a shrewd housewife and James Harrison a notable manager; also the Laird was somewhat eccentric, and objecting strongly to all society outside of Boden, did not like that "provisions short" should be made an excuse for frequent expeditions ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... underworked mediocrities at twenty pesos a month than half a hundred abilities at four times that amount. The land-holders like to think of the mouths they are responsible for feeding so very poorly, and the busy housewife jingles her keys from weaving-room to embroidery frame, from the little tienda on the ground floor, where she sells vino, cigars, and betel-nut, to the extemporized bakery in the kitchen, where they are making rice cakes and taffy candy, which an old woman ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... a fine little housewife! A busy girl about the house, eh, Fritz? Is there anything you need ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... to superior beauty or cheapness, for to the eye of taste surely a pure plain white plate is infinitely superior to an unfeeling copy of a Chinese pagoda, bridge, and willow-tree "in blue print." The fact is that the bugbear of a vulgar mind—"fashion"—long rendered it imperative upon every good housewife and substantial householder to keep up a certain dinner-set of earthenware, consisting of two soup-tureens and a relative proportion of dishes and vegetable-dishes, with covers, soup-plates, dinner-plates, and dessert-plates, which were ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... added that the silver tea-caddy was in the shape of a heart, and that it had a key. Very dear to the heart of a housewife is the tea-caddy ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... intentions of the Count, but something tells me that that excellent housewife and incomparable hostess, Mistress Adams, was not enchanted by the unexpected addition to her delicious and carefully ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin |
