"Seamstress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attended, some carrying the coffin, and others walking two and two behind, with bits of black crepe round their hats and arms, while Mary and I, and Nancy and Tom, followed as chief mourners all the way to Kingston Cemetery. Nancy, with the help of a friend, a poor seamstress, had managed to make a black frock for Mary and a dress for herself, out of mother's gown, I suspect. They were not very scientifically cut, but she had sat up all night stitching at them, which showed her affection and her desire to do what she ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... Chapter contrary to the expressed wish of Louis XI., after he had killed a man who had insulted him. But in 1483 the element of romance appears again. A priest called Robert Clerot, with a sword beneath his cloak, was accustomed to pester with his attentions a pretty seamstress in the parish of St. Eloi. Her legitimate lover interfered, and, when the priest drew his sword, called in help and killed him with his dagger. Twice more in this period is a "couturiere" the heroine of the Fierte. In the very next year Denise de Gouy, whose previous history is ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... to which no reference has yet been made in this chapter is the work of the seamstress who sews by the day in the homes of her employers. If she is really a competent dressmaker, her employment is assured. But it is a mistake for a girl or young woman without training or experience, or without a dressmaker's gifts, to undertake ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... man of excellent abilities both as a lawyer and as an orator. John P. Green was born at New Berne, North Carolina, April 2, 1845, of free parents. His father died in 1850, and his widow was left to small resources in raising her family. But being an excellent seamstress she did very well for her five-year-old son, while she had ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... It wants respect and consideration. We desire no longer to be legislated for, it says; we want to be legislated with. Why do you never come to see me but you bring me something? asks the sensitive and poor seamstress. Do you always give some charity to your friends? I want companionship, and not cold pieces; I want to be treated like a human being who has nerves and feelings, and tears too, and as much interest in the sunset, and in the birth of Christ, perhaps ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stage possession is her Makeup Box. It contains the necessary tools of her trade, without which she would be helpless to carry on. It is to her what the brush and colors and palette are to the painter; the needle and thread to the seamstress; the hammer and saw and plane to the carpenter. Before you enter upon a stage career supply yourself with a complete makeup box equipped with all the needed tools and ingredients for making up for the part you are to assume. This is a necessary purchase, ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... relations which are almost always forced on one when dwelling on the same floor. However, without having exchanged a word, they were already acquainted with one another. Francine knew that her neighbor was a poor devil of an artist, and Jacques had learned that his was a little seamstress who had quitted her family to escape the ill-usage of a stepmother. She accomplished miracles of economy to make both ends meet, and, as she had never known pleasure, had no longing for it. This is how the pair came under the common ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Squire Baca's girls nor Edith May Jonas had better things than you," said Jane, unaware of all this. Her own garments remained things of the baldest utility, but the village seamstress was kept busy feather-stitching and beribboning articles ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... Her gorge rose at the thought of that neglected state into which the pariahs of society fall and on which the inexperienced so cheerfully comment. Neglected by her own set, shunned by the respectable, her fortune quite gone, she was nevertheless determined that she would not be a back-street seamstress or a pensioner upon the bounty of quondam friends. By insensible degrees came first unhallowed relationships through friendship and passing passion, then a curious intermediate state between the high world of fashion and the half world of harlotry, until, finally, in Louisville, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... new edition of old Bablington: delightfully bound—so light." And it was in July that Holm Oaks, as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best. For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season. It was their good pleasure not to. A week or fortnight of it satisfied them. They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... summer in scarlet, and her stage name was Aholibah—bestowed upon her by some fantastic poet who had not read Ezekiel, but Swinburne. It was rumoured by her intimates that her real name was Clotilde Durval, that her mother had been a seamstress.... ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... occupations for which women are admirably calculated are carried on by men, and I hope that some day a more manly public opinion will make all such persons as ridiculous as a male seamstress is now. I do not envy the feelings of men who can invent, manufacture or sell baby-jumpers, dress elevators, hoop-skirts, or those cosmetics I see "indorsed by pure and high-toned females." But when you and your friend seek the positions of "night-patrols ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... been having strange convulsive fits, and absurd beginnings of stigmata: one of them being an old wound, caused by her scissors when she was working as a seamstress, the other an eruptive sore in her side. Her transports suddenly turned to impious despair. She spat upon the crucifix: she cried out against Girard, "that devil of a priest, who had brought a poor girl of two-and-twenty into such a plight, only to forsake her afterwards!" ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... she was not half so wretched and lamentable as was expected of her. She even showed a brisk and pleasant air to the chief seamstress, and bade her keep some pretty things for the time of her own wedding. Even to her father she behaved as if there had been nothing more than happens every day. The worthy baron went to fold her in his arms, and let her cry there; but ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... is more than cook. She is my housekeeper, mother, trained nurse, corporation counsel, keeper of the privy purse, chancellor of the exchequer, fighter of exorbitant bills, seamstress, linen woman, doctor of small ills, the acme of perpetual good ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... occupation. A native of Savoy, he possessed the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Freres. This marriage gave to French letters Henry Murger. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... celebrated seamstress of Paris, had among her customers the Duchesse Cataneo, Louise de Chaulieu, and, probably, Madame de Bargeton. [Massimilla Doni. Lost Illusions. Letters of Two Brides.] Her successors assumed and handed down her name; Victorine IV.'s "intelligent scissors" were praised in the latter part ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... cook for your mutton and beef. I require a far better thing. A seamstress you're wanting for stockings and shirts, I look for ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... first, the industrial revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the maintenance of the home, ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... you!" continued Madame Boche in a lower tone of voice. "She never does any laundry, not even a pair of cuffs. A seamstress who doesn't even sew on a loose button! She's just like her sister, the brass burnisher, that hussy Adele, who stays away from her job two days out of three. Nobody knows who their folks are or how they make a living. Though, if I wanted to talk . . . What on earth is she scrubbing there? ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... each other for the mutual sustenance of all. The husbandman tills the ground and provides food; the manufacturer weaves tissues, which the tailor and seamstress make into clothes; the mason and the bricklayer build the houses in which we enjoy household life. Numbers of workmen thus contribute and help to create the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... replied, with a sort of fright. "He does not wish it—and he is right. You see, Monsieur, when he married me, five years ago, he was not what he is now; he was a railway clerk. I was a working-girl; yes, I was a seamstress. Then it was all right; we used to walk together, and we went to the theatre; he did not know any one. It is different now. You see, if the Baroness Dinati should see me on his arm, she would not ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... they will soon receive presents from others. They used to spend whole days on board our vessels, examining the fine clothes and ornaments, and frequently made purchases at a rate which would have made a seamstress or waiting-maid in Boston open ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... new patchwork quilt. Seven were neatly folded and put away in an old trunk in the attic. The eighth was progressing well, but the young seamstress was becoming sated with quilts. She had never been to school, but Miss Mehitable had taught her all she knew. Unkind critics might have intimated that Araminta had not been taught much, but she could sew nicely, keep house neatly, and write a stilted letter in a queer, old-fashioned hand ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... satisfied with that, she wanted me, just now, to advance her the price of three weeks' work. If I had been foolish enough to have done it, it would have been the last I ever should have seen of either money, work, or seamstress." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Richmond, and he always stopped for a friendly chat with his mistress, yes, and took off his thick-soled shoes that he might deliver into her hands a cipher despatch which she was generally awaiting eagerly! Much sewing was done for the Van Lews at that time by a little seamstress, who worked at both farm and city home, and in carrying dress goods and patterns back and forth she secreted much valuable information for the Spy, on whom the Union generals were now depending for the largest part of their news in regard to Confederate ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... and earn a living for themselves. When there was no father's hand or brother's arm to help, what could woman do? She looked out into the great thoroughfares of industry open to all men, and almost all were shut against her. Woman was a teacher at a dollar a day, and had to board round. She was a seamstress with still smaller pay, or she was a housekeeper at her own house or somebody's else, where, so far as material gains were concerned, the results were small. Other industries were shut to her. The world is as full of women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... My establishment consists of a housekeeper, cook, and chambermaid, seamstress, and two footmen. There are, besides, two fishermen and four bargemen always at command. The department of laundress is done abroad. The plantation affords plenty of milk, cream, and butter; turkeys, fowls, kids, pigs, geese, and mutton; fish, of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... month and $24.92c would be paid after I reach Detorit and went to work where they sent me to work. I had to stay there until I pay them the sum of $24.92c so I want to leave Mobile for there, if there nothing there for me to make a support for my self and family. My wife is seamstress. We want to get away the 15 or 20 of May so please give this matter your earnest consideration an let me hear from you by return mail as my bro. in law want to get away to. He is a carpenter by trade. so please help ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... shimmer like the light of dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing which so often he believes her—that she is more goddess than earthly ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... moved her shoulders slightly—"What else could she have done?" I agreed with her by another hopeless gesture. It isn't so easy for a girl like Flora de Barral to become a factory hand, a pathetic seamstress or even a barmaid. She wouldn't have known how to begin. She was the captive of the meanest conceivable fate. And she wasn't mean enough for it. It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... working day since the siege began, heedless of shells. There are tailors, too, who have done their best to keep officers and civilians clothed, not even quitting their benches when shrapnels burst near them, and I know of at least one poor seamstress who, by working night and day, has earned enough to buy something more than bare rations even at famine prices. Cynics do not look for heroes or heroines among such as these. They toil for gain, that is all. But they have stuck to their notion of duty in the ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... men. Nor am I expressing resentment at the fact that when a girl leaves the machine-speeded work of the factory, it is only to take up the heavy burden of the workingman's wife, as we know it. She must be wife and mother, and manager of the family income, and cook and laundress and housemaid and seamstress. The improvement of her position and the amelioration of her lot can only come slowly, through social changes, as expressed in the woman movement, and through the widening scope of the ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... might have seen it," Mrs. Windham said a little wistfully. "But she must help the Indian seamstress with her gown for the dance. Don Adrian is ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Whiting's own work, Beaufort House to wit, thrown off by the steam-ingine, best of paper, beautiful green wrapper, folded like clean linen come home from the clear-starcher's, and so exquisitely stitched that, regarded as a piece of needlework alone, it's better than the sampler of a seamstress undergoing a Competitive examination for Starvation before the Civil Service Commissioners—and I offer the lot for what? For eight pound? Not so much. For six pound? Less. For four pound. Why, I hardly ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... theft, and he trembled with agitation as he thrust the pocketbook into his pocket. He would have trembled still more if he had known that his mother's confidential maid and seamstress, Felicie Lacouvreur, had seen everything through the crevice ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... with the greatest propriety. He soon after applied to the Governor for a pardon, which was promptly granted. His next step was to procure a suitable home for her; and a worthy Quaker family in Pennsylvania, who were acquainted with all the circumstances, agreed to employ her as chambermaid and seamstress. When it was all arranged, Friend Hopper went out to the Asylum to carry the news. But fearful of exciting her too much, he talked upon indifferent subjects for a few minutes, and then asked if she would like to go into the city again to spend a fortnight with his family. She replied, "Indeed ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... She was an old seamstress, who came to my parents house once a week, every Thursday to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those country houses called chateaux, and which are merely old houses with pointed roofs, which are surrounded by ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... heard from the corner of a seat near by. From the beginning of this unpleasant affair, it was observed that a plainly dressed woman—a seamstress accompanying the family of a Mr. Graft—had become very pale and nervous, and had been seen to move uneasily in her seat. This woman had fainted away. She it was who had stared so strangely at Marcus in the car ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... succession of petty tortures, brutal or hypocritical exhibitions of spite, kicks that bruised her legs, and progressive movements of the body by which she gradually forced her companion out of bed—it was a cold winter's night—to the floor of the fireless room. During the day, the seamstress took Germinie in hand, catechized her, preached at her, and by detailing the tortures of the other life, inspired in her mind a horrible fear of the hell whose flames she ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Pascal, for it was the young seamstress, "don't mention it ... and let me thank you for your recommendation to the King. I got two big ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... be pushed in haste, and at once the big bedroom of Mamma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the blossoming, the whir of the machine and the feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress went like mad clockwork, while in and out Mamma's friends came hurrying, at the rumor, to hint of congratulation or ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... noisy whir of sewing-machines in Madame Levaney's large dressmaking establishment. Cicely Leeds's head ached as she bent over the ruffles she was hemming. She was the youngest seamstress in the room, and wore her hair hanging ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... State Street windows and come away with a mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress. Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't really a beauty, but some one had once told her that she looked like Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of its popularity). For years afterward, whenever she went to parties, she ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... profession justifies my opinion that no more cultivated or artistic actress now walks the stage than Madame Odille Orme. She is no mere amateur or novice, but told me she had laboriously and studiously struggled up from the comparatively menial position of seamstress. Even in Paris I have never heard a purer, finer rendition of a passage in Phedre than one day burst from her lips in a moment of deep feeling, yet I cannot tell you how or where she learned French. She made her debut in tragedy, somewhere in the West, and when she ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... left school, my mother installed me as her assistant seamstress. She had at intervals continued to work for the slop-shops, in spite of the low prices and the discourteous treatment she received; and now, when established as her regular helper, I saw and learned more of the trials inseparable from such an employment. I had also grown old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... shawl and a dark dress?" inquired my friend. "If so, it was Annie Linton, a girl who is a seamstress in ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... chil'ens I got left! O, Lord! O, Lord! Do, Massa, buy me, and this one baby! Oh, do Massa!" But the weight of the cow-hide drives her to the auction block, where in mock solemnity she is represented as "an article of excellent breed, a good cook, a good seamstress, and withal a good Christian, a ra'al genewine lamb of the flock!"—and then she is struck off to the highest bidder, who declares that he "won't have the young'un any how, 'cause he's gwine to drive her down ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... pollen; but its special art will remain an utter secret, notwithstanding all the scrutiny of the microscope. In our own industries, the plane denotes the joiner, the trowel the mason, the scissors the tailor, the needle the seamstress. Are things the same in animal industry? Just show us, if you please, the trowel that is a certain sign of the mason-insect, the chisel that is a positive characteristic of the carpenter-insect, the iron that is an authentic mark of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Tiphaine's, Sylvie dared not flinch from the three hundred francs for Pierrette's clothes. During the first week her time was wholly taken up, and Pierrette's too, by frocks to order and try on, chemises and petticoats to cut out and have made by a seamstress who went out by the day. Pierrette did not know how ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... ownership, would be the chosen receptacles for the numerous oddments which are required in the practice and pursuit of every home handicraft, and especially those connected with plying the needle. There was a time, however, when the fabrics used in the making up of clothing were home-made, when the seamstress and the needleworker stitched and embroidered upon cloths spun if not actually woven by the housewife and her handmaidens. In the barrows containing remains of people of the Stone Age, and the peoples of the early Bronze Age, among the few ornaments and personal adornments ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... and early manhood. Haunted by hunger, he battled for years to gain a mere living, often on the brink of despair. His only help was a small stipend from the king of Denmark, which enabled him to spend two years in Paris and Rome, and the meager pennies that his devoted friend Elise Lensing, a poor seamstress in Hamburg, sent him. His short stories, his dramas, although they brought him fame, were of little avail in this struggle that seemed all too hopeless. Then a sudden change for the better came. Stopping at Vienna on his return from Rome, he found himself in a small circle of ardent ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... of General Lampton that revived crucifixion as a legal method of execution. But in the end the condemned man found his executioner in the form of a slender girl of seventeen, Madeline Provence, who, to accomplish her purpose, served two years in his palace as a seamstress to the household. She died in solitary confinement after horrible and prolonged torture; but to-day she stands in imperishable bronze in the Pantheon of Brotherhood in the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... wife of John Andrew Dober. Rosina Zeisberger, wife of David Zeisberger. Judith Toeltschig, Catherine Riedel, Rosina Haberecht, Regina Demuth, going to join their husbands already in Georgia. Anna Waschke, a widow, to join her son. Juliana Jaeschke, a seamstress.* ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... young girl named Louise Lateau who had the stigmata. We have the most positive proof of it, as you may see in the accounts of her life now published. Her wounds caused her great pain and bled every Friday for many years. She was a delicate seamstress, and lived with her mother and sisters in almost continual poverty. She had always been remarkable for her true piety, patience in suffering, and charity to the sick. I mention this young girl because she lived in our own time, and is the latest person we ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... "I'm goin' to get A party dress all trimmed with jet, An' hire a seamstress in, an' she Is goin' to fit it right on me; An' then, when I'm invited out To teas an' socials hereabout, I'll put it on an' look as fine As all th' women friends of mine." An' Pa looked up: "I sold a cow," Says he, "go ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... gossip and seamstress, had been called in again, and the girls all had plenty of up-to-date winter frocks made. Miss Titus' breezy conversation vastly interested Dot, who often sat silently nursing her Alice-doll in the sewing room, ogling the seamstress wonderingly ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... family, the head of which was the cause of Reynolds Bartram's extraordinary course. Eleanor blamed Sam for all the discomfort to which she had been subjected on account of Bartram's religious aspirations, and she was inclined to visit upon the new seamstress the blame for all the annoyances ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor's on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are to be gone any length of time, she will not stay there at all, simply because she is afraid of your men ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... picture is this thou drawest! Yet such is my weakness, Jane, that I must shudder at the prospect. To tear thee from thy present dwelling and its comforts, to make thee a tenant of thy good widow, and a seamstress for me! ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... the ladies were not dancers, and had not countenances that consorted with impropriety. Their faces had merely the conventional Yankee sharpness and wanness of feature, and such difference of air and character as should say for one and another, shop-girl, shoe-binder, seamstress; and it seemed an absurdity and an injustice to refer to them in any way the disclosures of the ruthlessly scant drapery. A grotesque fancy would sport with their identity: "Did not this or that one write poetry for her local newspaper?" so much she looked the average culture ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... up a pair of compasses, balanced them for a moment in his fingers, and with the precision of a seamstress threading a needle, dropped the points astride a wavy line ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... idea of a black gown ornamented with cretonne roses, carefully applied. She and Sally cut out the flowers, and applied them with buttonhole stitch, sewing until their fingers were sore, their faces flushed, and their hair in frowsy disorder. It was slow work. Miss Pepper, the seamstress, engaged for one day only to do the important work on both Sally's and Martie's gown, kept postponing, as she always did postpone, the day, finally appointing the Wednesday before Thanksgiving ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... spoke to him alone. Since she was forbidden to walk and bustle about, and, indeed, could not do so, it became her duty to leave. She could very well work at something sitting down, and she had an aunt a seamstress. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... work, work! Sang HOOD, in the "Song of the Shirt," Of the seamstress slave who worked to her grave In poverty, hunger, and dirt. Work, work, work! The Bar-maid, too, can say, Work for ten hours, or more; Oh, for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... fine that it might be passed like thread through the eye of a needle. In the spring, after it had been bleached, Vasilissa made a present of it to the old woman with whom she lodged. The crone presented it to the king, who ordered it to be made into shirts. But no seamstress could be found to make them up, until the linen was entrusted to Vasilissa. When a dozen shirts were ready, Vasilissa sent them to the king, and as soon as her carrier had started, "she washed herself, and combed her hair, and dressed herself, and ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... that has been made about Betsy Ross, who worked at upholstering and as a seamstress during the Revolution, who is said to have lived in a house either No. 80 or 89 Arch street, Philadelphia, now said to be No. 239 Arch street, as having some time in June, 1776, made and designed the first ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... to a seamstress in King Street. Sir Henry Wootton also lived here; and Ben Jonson says that Spenser died here for "lack of bread," and that the Earl of Essex sent him "20 pieces" on hearing of his poverty, but the poet refused them, saying they came too late. Fletcher wrote of him: ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... more. She has patched and mended and turned and altered until she could patch and mend and alter no more, and still the same complaints; the table costs too much, the dry goods store bills are too long, the seamstress comes into the house too often, the physician is consulted too much, and of such as these many more. Not a word does he say about the expensive cigars he smokes, the wines he drinks; about his frequent visits to the sample-room, and ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... week—on Saturday, which was settlement day. She was a forlorn, gray creature, half blind, and she felt her way about gropingly. By the droop in her spine and by the corners of her lips, permanently puckered from holding pins in her mouth, a close observer would have guessed that she had been a seamstress before her eyes gave out on her and she took to keeping lodgers. Of the character of the establishment the innocent old major knew nothing; he knew that it was cheap and that it was on a quiet by-street, and for his purposes that ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... I never have clothes in that sense," said Karen. "A little seamstress down here makes most of them and Louise helps her sometimes if she has time. Tante gave me twenty pounds before she went away; would twenty pounds do for ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... feebly lighted by a lamp which Louisa modestly turned up, were scattered pell-mell, screens, boxes from Spa, alabaster paper-weights and other details of the art of illuminating, which profession my beauty practises; and which explains her occasional aristocratic airs, unbecoming an humble seamstress. A bouquet just commenced showed talent; with some lessons from St. Jean or Diaz she would easily make a good flower painter. I told her so. She received my encomiums as a matter of course, evincing none of that mock-modesty which ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... to cook and sew you can properly direct the cook or seamstress, and they will respect you ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... son of great virtue and merit, him, through jealousy and envy at the honor the Romans had for him, he caused to be murdered, and left his kingdom to Perseus, who, as some say, was not his own child, but supposititious, born of a seamstress called Gnathaenion. This was he whom Paulus Aemilius led in triumph, and in whom ended the succession of Antigonus's line and kingdom. But the posterity of Aratus continued still in our days ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... descends with the seamstress from the tumbril, and joins the fast-thinning throng of victims before the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls. The spare hand does not tremble as he grasps it. She goes next before him—is gone. The ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... was in the bottom of the vehicle. He swung this into the unconscious girl's face as he thrust her upon the seat. He had expected to see one of the servants of the mansion—a seamstress, or one of the maids, perhaps—but he was totally unprepared for the vision of girlish loveliness that met ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... over-jealous of their own professional dignity. Nevertheless, these crusty graduates were technically right in excluding Dr. Dolliver from their fraternity. He had never received the degree of any medical school, nor (save it might be for the cure of a toothache, or a child's rash, or a whitlow on a seamstress's finger, or some such trifling malady) had he ever been even a practitioner of the awful science with which his popular designation connected him. Our old friend, in short, even at his highest social elevation, claimed to be nothing more than ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... success and fame. He became proud even to insolence. Old companions, who, a very few years before, had punned and rhymed with him in garrets, had dined with him at cheap ordinaries, had sate with him in the pit, and had lent him some silver to pay his seamstress's bill, hardly knew their friend Charles in the great man who could not forget for one moment that he was First Lord of the Treasury, that he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he had been a Regent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more importance than it was worth, but which must have been sufficiently disturbing to Schopenhauer—we refer to the Marquet affair. It appears on his returning home one day he found three women gossiping outside his door, one of whom was a seamstress who occupied another room in the house. Their presence irritated Schopenhauer (whose sensitiveness in such matters may be estimated from his essay "On Noise"), who, finding them occupying the same position on another occasion, requested ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... whom you speak," she said, "an old maid without any relatives or any friends in particular. She was a seamstress here before the war. It was said that she went North at its outbreak, and as she was a Northern sympathizer it would seem likely; but she was a good seamstress; she made me a mantle once and I never ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... moment,—electric sparks which the mind's own rapid motion generated,—thought as little of the patient industry with which all had been elaborated as they who admire an exquisite ball-dress, that seems a part of the lovely form which it adorns, think of the pale weaver's loom and the poor seamstress's needle. We have known brilliant men; we have known laborious men; but we have never known any man in whom the two elements were met in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the poor to help the rich. It is equally important that the rich help the poor. It is impossible to overestimate the value of those visitations of the noble few who leave their homes and seek out the little room of the poor seamstress, and carry sunlight and love and comfort into the abodes of the impoverished ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... more dead than alive. I might be mistaken or I might not, but in neither case was it fitting for Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu to play the spy. I had sunk to the level of the gutter, by the side of courtesans, opera-dancers, mere creatures of instinct; even the vulgar shop-girl or humble seamstress might look down ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... were filled with curiosity; they besought an explanation. It appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection. Hence the career ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it is. She's a little bit humpbacked; that's right. That's the way women is, though, Doctor! A seamstress—that's what she was...! She sewed an' she sewed and saved up a little money...! An' what kind of a bargain is it she's got now. A handsome feller an' sickness an' worry an' no rest no ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... impressed by your ignorance of simple matters. Yesterday, out in the southwestern part of this very town, where I went to look for a seamstress, I heard again one of those bells rung lustily, and there was the tin can, as of old, riding majestically on the front seat of the wagon; but probably as a concession to modern prejudice the milkman was supplied with bottles, too. Come and tell ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... active member of all the parish benevolent societies, a zealous teacher in the Sunday-school, an industrious seamstress in the sewing-circle, and a regular visitor of the ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... some changes since we met; A patient little seamstress yet, With small means striving, Have you a Lilliputian spouse? And do you dwell in some ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... understand that I was under infinite obligations to her on this account, and must pay for the privilege by making myself generally useful. I soon found that this meant doing a servant's work without wages. During six months I filled, I may say, the place of a seamstress and nursery governess to some very ungoverned children, varying with occasional weeks of servant's work, when either the table girl or the cook left a place vacant. For all this I received my board, and some cast-off dresses and underclothes to make over for myself. I was tired ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... lies one of his own greatest safeguards against either criminal or civil prosecution. Scattered over the country are his investors—the mill hand, the poor seamstress, the humble artisan, whose total investments, comprising perhaps all their savings, seldom exceed one hundred dollars each; and, with their savings gone, there isn't money left to pay carfare to the office of the financial agent, let alone to undertake a civil suit or enlist the aid of the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... elastic hop of a bird, she knocked at the door of the lower front chamber, and immediately ushered her companion into the room. It was large and elegant, and in exquisite order. One really beautiful girl was driving a sewing-machine before a window with the industry of a seamstress. Another was engaged in trimming a tiny pair of satin boots with beads of every color. She was short, small, and swarthy, her chief beauty being a languishing pair of black eyes. A third lay at full length on a small bed in an alcove, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... turn out quite as good a seamstress as Celia," said she to the Doctor. "She sews steadily all the time, and nothing seems to please her so much as to finish a piece of work. She will be able to do much more than her own sewing, and may prove quite a help ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... begin by making love to a seamstress when I'm over the Potomac," remarked Welch, getting upon his feet. "I'm decidedly in need of a couple ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... to lose her very best seamstress, so Miss Stuart had her way. The sentimental Frenchwoman's own idea was that Miss Stuart was a young person of rank and position, who owing to some ill-starred love affair had been obliged to run away and hide herself from her friends. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... operation of backing-up from a queer shaped hammer lying upon the floor. The workman at the end of the room is sewing together the sections of a book, for sewing was properly regarded as a man's work, and a scientific operation altogether beyond the capacity of the raw seamstress. The work of the finisher is not represented, but the brushes, the burnishers, the sprinklers and the wheel-shaped gilding tools hanging against the wall leave us no doubt as to their use. There is an air of antiquity about everything ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... find her a maid," I said, "a good seamstress, who could go out with her, and above all who could talk Italian to her, for I want her to learn the language that I may take her into society at Florence, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... her services as seamstress, Margaret taught Eleanor the use of the typewriter. When she was married she left the instrument, for the summer months, in Eleanor's care. A nominal rent was agreed upon, and this was easy to pay, as Margaret's ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... beautiful dress Miss Lena Carlson ever made. Miss Lena goes out sewing for a dollar and a half a day." And she described the wedding at which Miss Lucy Miller had worn the frock made by the dollar and a half a day seamstress with an enthusiasm that was undimmed by Mother Johnson's lack of interest. From the wedding and Miss Lucy it was but a step to other Mifflin happenings. They found themselves in the park ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has been thought that Zenobia ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... others; they are put together only as parts in the same phantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the "Louvecienne" (Lucienne) of Gaboriau—she, province-born and bred; and opposed to Parisian civilization in the character of her seamstress friend. "De ce Paris, ou elle etait nee, elle savait tout—elle connaissait tout. Rien ne l'etonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science des details materiels de l'existence etait inconcevable. Impossible de la duper!—Eh bien! cette ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... fact, was it to be done? Where was the money to come from? He must have some new trousers, and pay a debt of long standing to the shoemaker for putting new tops to his old boots, and he must order three shirts from the seamstress, and a couple of pieces of linen. In short, all his money must be spent. And even if the director should be so kind as to order him to receive forty-five or even fifty rubles instead of forty, it would be a mere nothing, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... soon as a dress or a hat or a blouse or a parasol, a pair of boots, slippers, stockings, or any of the costly, flimsy, all but unlaunderable underwear she affected, became not quite perfect, she put it aside against that vague day when she should have leisure or inclination for superintending a seamstress. Within two hours of her decision she had a seamstress in the house, and they and her mother were at work. There was no necessity to bother about new dresses. She would soon be putting off black, and she could get in Paris what she ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips |
