"Sewing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little prayer in his heart, never articulate, that life would be good to her; that she might keep her illusions and her dreams; that the soundness and wholesomeness of her might keep her from unhappiness. Sometimes, as she sat reading or sewing, with the light behind her shining through her soft hair, he saw in her a purity ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I can do for her?" Rebecca asked finally in a desperate way. "If I can get her sewing ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... afternoon she was in the attic room, sewing at a frock for Robbie Goldsworthy—Robert Pennycuick, after the grandfather who had been expected to leave much money—while Deb and Frances entertained visitors downstairs. Old Keziah had brought her tea and cakes, and she had had a pleasant time with ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... were being drilled into soldiers, half-naked under the cutting blast of the north wind, their knees shaking tinder them, their arms and legs blue with cold, their stomachs empty, and their teeth chattering with fear; women were sewing shirts for the great improvised army, with eyes straining to see the stitches by the flickering light of the torches, their throats parched with the continual inhaling of smoke-laden air; even children, with weak, clumsy little fingers, were picking rags ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... were at work, and all were eager; the servants contended for the honor of going with their master; the women flocked to the house to assist in the work of preparation, cutting out and making under-clothes, knitting socks, picking lint, preparing bandages, and sewing on uniforms; for many of the men who had enlisted were of the poorest class, far too poor to furnish anything themselves, and their equipment had to be contributed mainly by wealthier neighbors. The work was carried on at night as well as by day, for the occasion ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Harding's idea of re-employing that which had been already used in the covering of the balloon. This with admirable patience was all unpicked by Gideon Spilett and Herbert, for Pencroft had been obliged to give this work up, as it irritated him beyond measure; but he had no equal in the sewing part of the business. Indeed, everybody knows that sailors have ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... "I'm in love with the work. I almost wish poor old Bos had been sentenced for ten years. I have enough of the woman in me to love minding other people's business, and, as far as I can find out, that's about all journalism amounts to. Sewing societies aren't to be mentioned in the same day with a newspaper for scandal and gossip, and, besides, I'm an ardent advocate of men's rights—have been for centuries—and I've got my first chance now to promulgate a few of my ideas. I'm really a man in ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... them in the sun to dry. When they were dry, she broke the thin outside skin and tore the tendon apart with her fingers. It came to pieces in many little threads. Burr took some of the little threads and twisted them together and made a good strong thread for sewing. ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... Mr. Farwell," the minister explained. "It was a school of home life, not only cooking and sewing and scrubbing, and what all you think of as domestic science, but a school of the home spirit—just the thing my people need. Thayer was, and is, a place where the girl students of Clark University learn how to make real homes. And in the college classes they ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... habit, if from nothing else, go through the familiar old rites of daily communion. He sits across the table from me when I eat, and talks casually enough of the trivially momentous problems of the minute, or he reads in his slippers before the fire while I do my sewing within a spool-toss of him. But a row of invisible assegais stand leveled between his heart and mine. A slow glacier of green-iced indifferency shoulders in between us; and gone forever is the wild-flower aroma of youth, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... thus far presuppose a Home Missionary Society organized on the modern basis of a programme of devotional exercises and various mission studies, and do not apply to those cases in which such exercises have been engrafted upon a sewing society with a long line of Dorcases as Presidents, and antecedents too respectable to be ruthlessly set aside. How shall a sewing society be so modified as to best subserve the present home missionary needs? Do not create friction by attempting a sudden and complete revolution. Propose ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 8, August, 1889 • Various
... me, that is. Ye see, Ailie and me we're weel to pass, and we would like the lassies to hae a wee bit mair lair than oursells, and to be neighbour-like—that wad we. —And ye see Jenny canna miss but to ken manners, and the like o' reading books, and sewing seams—having lived sae lang wi' a grand lady like Lady Singleside; or if she disna ken onything about it, I'm jealous that our bairns will like her a' the better. And I'll take care o' the bits ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Just little Curly Locks who sits on a cushion and sews a fine seam, and feeds upon strawberries, sugar, and cream! Here's some of my sewing, Father Christmas. (Presents needlework, ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... near it. 6. I wish to give both the peaches and the apples to the woman. 7. She is sitting in the house, near the window. 8. Mary is sitting in (on) a chair near her. 9. Both Mary and the woman are sewing. 10. They prefer to sew, and do not wish to walk in the garden to-day. 11. They are happy because they like to sew. 12. They do not wish to gather flowers, or walk, or see the birds. 13. They have neither apples nor peaches, but they do ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... grandmother Betsy Willis, was also a skilled seamstress and able to show the other women different points in the art of sewing. Shoes were given to the slaves as often as they were needed. Green's step-father was afflicted and could not help with the work in the field. Since he was a skilled shoe maker his job was to make shoes in the winter. In summer, however, he was required to sit in the large ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Badger-mother with some plain sewing, while five of the young Badger-children played about on the ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... Mamma Bushytail. "But I hardly know what to do," she went on. "My husband is away this evening, or he would take you home, and Billie and Johnnie are over at Grandpa Lightfoot's, and I'm so busy getting through my spring housecleaning, and sewing a new dress for Sister Sallie, that I don't believe I could spare the time ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... was removed from the body (not the hand or legs), Quonab carefully cut out the-broad sheath of tendon that cover the muscles, beginning at the hip bones on the back and extending up to the shoulders; this is the sewing sinew. Then he cut out the two long fillets of meat that lie on each side of the spine outside (the loin) and the two smaller ones inside ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... this regard. Sister Silvia loved not the town with its busy streets, nor the front windows with their gossiping heads thrust out or in. She had her own chamber on the Campagna side, and there she sat the livelong day with knitting or sewing, never going out, except at early morning to hear mass. There her mother accompanied her—a large, self-satisfied woman beside a pallid little maiden who never raised her eyes. Or, if her mother could not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... head would be near the table, how many hours I might save!" and I resolved that, on the coming Saturday, I would make the desirable change. On the afternoon of that day, I was engaged to ride home with one of the teachers, and the morning I had intended to devote to sewing and study: "but no matter," thought I; "by a little extra effort I can accomplish all." Accordingly, when Saturday came I commenced operations; but, after removing the bed and mattress I discovered, to my great concern, that, although the bedstead would stand as I wished, yet I could not turn it ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... ever be able to do that down hear for the time is getting worse evry day. I am going to ask if you peple hear could aid me in geting over her in Chicago and seeking out a position of some kind. I can also do plain sewing. Please good peple dont refuse to help me out in my trouble for I am in gret need of help God will bless you. I am going to do my very best after I get over here if God spair me to get work I will pay the expance back. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... there is a custom, at least in Antwerp, that the child who gets out of bed last is called a "Sylvester," and must give the best of its toys to its brothers and sisters. If one of the older girls in a family does not finish any sewing or fancy-work she may have on hand by the end of the day, she is afraid of being haunted by evil spirits. Some people say that a young woman who does not finish her work before sunset has no chance of being married for a year. So they all ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... that was as rare as it was tender. They both felt it keenly. Their talk was all of him, his affairs, his music. He played to her for hours in the evenings he was not at the orchestra; when he was teaching in the mornings she would steal into the room, and sit, sewing, in a corner, listening gratefully to the dreary routine of his pupils' exercises. She seemed never to tire of "being near Leonard." And always she was asking, "Won't you play a little from the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... her mother when Mrs. Brown matched sewing silk in this way, and the little girl pulled out the shallow drawer of small spools. She saw the sample and knew the lady needed red sewing silk; so she at once pulled out the right drawer. Then she helped the customer match her sample until she ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store • Laura Lee Hope
... duties. Englishwomen always wonder what there is in a Japanese house for servants to do. There are no fires to lay, no furniture to polish and clean, no carpets to sweep, and no linen to wash and mend; so Japanese servants spend much time chatting to each other, or sewing new kimonos together, or playing chess. As a rule, there are many more servants than are necessary to do the work. This is because servants are very cheap. There are always plenty of girls who are ready to fill the lower places if they can obtain food and clothes ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... though somewhat reluctantly, had accompanied them—had remained with them ever since—and was now, notwithstanding her former lady-like mode of life, through the tuition of Mrs. Younker, regularly installed into all the mysteries of milking, churning, sewing, baking, spinning and weaving. With this brief outline of her past history, we shall proceed to describe her personal appearance, at the time of her introduction to the reader, and then leave her to speak and act for herself during the progress of ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... unexpected and overwhelming thing happened. Mother was sitting with her work on the little raised platform in the drawing-room, in front of the sewing-table with its many little compartments, in which, under the loose mahogany lid, there lay so many beautiful and wonderful things—rings and lovely earrings, with pearls in them—when the door to the kitchen opened and the maid came in. "Has Madame heard? The Christian VIII. has been blown up ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Land, Dr. Boas tells us that the children, "when about twelve years old, begin to help their parents; the girls sewing and preparing skins, the boys accompanying their fathers in hunting expeditions" (402. 566). Mr. Powers records that he has seen a Wailakki Indian boy of fourteen "run a rabbit to cover in ten minutes, split a stick fine at one end, thrust it down the hole, twist it into its ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... she can be carried with ease by five men; her form is as complete as could be wished; very strong, and will carry at least eight thousand pounds with her complement of hands. Besides our want of tar, we have been unlucky in sewing the skins with a needle which had sharp edges instead of a point merely, although a large thong was used in order to fill the hole, yet it shrinks in drying and leaves the hole open, so that we fear the boat ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Jean went to spend the day with some of her artist friends, but at noon she dashed into the room where Clara and Lucy sat sewing, her dark face blotched red, and her voice stuttering ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... closed the door against him. Government departments usually prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, to be content with honest administration along existing lines, and to distrust innovation. To bring a new idea into a government department is little less dangerous than to bring a live mouse into a sewing circle. A government department wishes for honest and able men; but the kind of ability it {129} desires is the ability which will run in harness, an unoriginative industry, a mind plastic to the will of its superiors. The Colonial Office had no fancy for a turbulent, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... all the time, to keep my inquisitorial eye from fastening itself on Dunkie's face, for I knew that he was playing up to me, that he was acting a part which wasn't coming any too easy. But he stuck to his role. When I put down my sewing, because my eyes were tired, he even inquired if I hadn't done about enough for ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... and that; and got all my pots and kettles put away; and picked over all that lot o' berries, I think I'd make preserves of 'em, Diana; when folks come to sewing meeting for the missionaries they needn't have all creation to eat, seems to me. They don't sew no better for it. I believe in fasting, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... and he contributed freely to churches of every name and to good purposes of every sort. He had quaint ways at times in making such gifts, and from the many stories showing these I select one as characteristic. During the Civil War, the young women of the village held large sewing-circles, doing work for the soldiers. When Mr. Cornell was asked to contribute to their funds, he declined, to the great surprise of those who asked him, and said dryly: "Of course these women don't really come together to sew for the soldiers; they come together to gossip.'' This was said, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in armchair, resting her face upon her hand, and looking into the fire. EDITH is on a low stool at her side, sewing ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... his bench, stitching away for dear life. He pursed his lips and screwed up his mouth into all sorts of odd shapes with the effort, for it was an effort. He was only eight, and you would scarcely have imagined him over six, as he sat there sewing like a real little tailor; only Paolo knew but one seam, and that a hard one. Yet he held the needle and felt the edge with it in quite a grown-up way, and pulled the thread just as far as his short arm would reach. His mother ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... you know; so we must put up with it," said Mrs. Hill; "besides, I can mostly find some cool place about the house; I keep my sewing here on the porch, and, as I bake my bread or cook my dinner, manage to catch it up sometimes, and so keep from getting overheated; and then, too, I get a good many stitches taken in the course ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... that the Duke had gone by with twenty men, riding down toward the convent at the border. And I flung my sewing-bag straight at her head because she had not ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... appeared upon my father's purely classical horizon—seen by him only at the Friday's general review of English and history, and taught for the rest of the week by little Mr. Stephen, by myself—and in sewing, fancy-work, and the despised samplers by Miss Huntingdon, the ever diligent, who, to say the truth, acted in this matter as jackal ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... clothes,—paper-cap and white apron scarcely to be distinguished from the rest of the dress, as far as color and dustiness went. Here, too, when her father drove out the cart every afternoon, sitting in front of the counter with her sewing or her knitting, Dely German, the baker's pretty daughter, dealt out the cakes and rattled the pennies in her apron-pocket with so good a grace, that not a young farmer came into Hanerford with grain or potatoes or live stock, who did not cast a glance in at the shop-door, going toward town, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Public well. I have never been lonely, wherever I went. I tried to make myself of use. Where I was of use I found society. The ministers have been kind to me. I always offered my services in the Sunday schools and sewing-rooms. The school committees have been kind to me. They are the Public's high chamberlains for poor girls. I have written for the journals. I won one of Sartain's ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... an entirely new vacuum-cleaner would compel him to a reluctant reconciliation with his wife. It would be found, I fancy, that human nature abhors that vacuum. Reasonably spirited human beings will not be ordered about by bicycles and sewing-machines; and a sane man will not be made good, let alone bad, by the things he has himself made. I have occasionally dictated to a typewriter, but I will not be dictated to by a typewriter, even of the newest and most complicated mechanism; nor have I ever ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... moist, one over the other; she was always wetting her lips, and coughed with a little dry cough. But in her these signs of nervous exhaustion suggested overwork in a close atmosphere, bending too close over the sewing-machine. Her uninteresting hair, like a rat's pelt, was eked out with a false addition of another color. Some threads had got into her ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the gentleman hot-tempered. We must make no mistakes. Come, your eye is truer and your hands have become nimbler than mine, so you take this measure and cut out the boots. I will finish off the sewing of ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... finish any sewing she may have commenced before she became enceinte. There is a similar prohibition regarding the finishing of the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... portion of the severed lasso, he drew it round the hind and one of the fore feet of his horse, and threw him to the ground with a dexterous jerk; then, binding him there, performed the operations of sewing up the wound in about ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... in the parish of a pious clergyman he would probably embrace the opportunity of teaching them. Much might be done by a pious schoolmaster and schoolmistress, by whom the girls might be taught different kinds of work, knitting, sewing, &c. Should these suggestions be deemed worthy of your insertion, they might, perhaps, awaken the attention of some benevolent persons, whose superior talents and experience in the ways of beneficence would enable them to perfect and carry into execution a plan for the effectual benefit of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... get home, and find his family well! Tim brought him his primer, and proudly pointed to the pages he could read. Bella showed her first attempts at sewing; and, as for baby, she showed how well she could crow ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... he work so hard?" demanded Hugh John, whom the appearance of fifty hands diligently writing would not have annoyed—no, not if they had all worked like sewing-machines. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the spiritual interests of the soldier receive attention—the workers bore in mind that he had a body as well as a soul. All Christian South Africa bore that in mind. From far and near came presents for the soldiers. Churches gave collections for that purpose; ladies' sewing circles sewed to buy them comforts; business firms sent donations of goods; comforts, aye, and even luxuries, poured into the camp, and while in other parts of the field our men were on half or quarter rations, in the camp at Sterkstroom ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... reading, and sewing were all over, the children were allowed to play with the new kittens, and Granny presented a kitten to each child, Turly choosing the black and Terry the white one. They were each of a very aristocratic ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below. From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The coming and going of a human life were no mystery to her. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Sunday, Lee rode with Claire Morris. Fanny, disinclined to activity, stayed by the open fire, with the illustrated sections of the newspapers and her ornamental sewing. Claire was on, a tall bright bay always a little ahead of Lee, and he was constantly urging his horse forward. "Peyton went to the Green Spring Valley for a hunt party last night," she told him; "he said he'd be back." Why, then, he almost exclaimed, he, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... upon a softly-cushioned sofa, her tasteful lace morning-cap half falling from her head, and her rich cashmere gown flowing open, so as to reveal the flounced cambric skirt which her sewing-girl had sat up till midnight to finish. A pair of delicate French slippers pinched rather than graced her fat feet, one of which angrily beat the carpet, as if keeping time to its mistress' thoughts. Nervous and uncomfortable was the lady of Woodlawn this morning, for she had just passed ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... been, its essence was long since exhaled: there was nothing in his whole nature now but the stalest dregs, surely? Perhaps she thought differently: she looked at the man keenly, and then gave a quick, warning glance to her husband, as she sat down to her sewing. Soule did not heed it as he usually did: he was choked and sick to see what a wreck his brother really was. God help us! to think of the time when Stephen and he were boys together, and this was the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... letter of the law in the superlative degree, which says, "A suit of cheap clothing,"—he obtaining the cheapest, the most miserably poor. To illustrate, a man left prison in one of those suits, and, before walking a mile, was obliged to call and borrow sewing implements to repair them. The day after, another left, and had worn the shirt furnished him about one day, when, taking him to a shop for the purpose of trying on a coat, I found that one sleeve of the shirt had wholly parted from the ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... well out with it now as later," she observed, as she took up her sewing. "What has been bothering ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... demands of other machines in accordance with the amount of work which is to be performed. A plowman, other things being equal, consumes more than a watchmaker; just as a locomotive burns more fuel than the little engine that runs a sewing machine; the strong able-bodied active man, one who works his brains and muscles up to their full power, eats more than the weak, emaciated and inactive girl, who passes all her time in the recumbent ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... Violet, with a tenderly affectionate air, "you are not to exert yourself in the least with shopping, sewing, or packing. I positively forbid it," he added, with ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... not! I know you wouldn't do such a thing," returned his aunt. "Here, little dog, I'll cut it off for you," and she took her scissors out of her apron pocket, for she had been sewing just before coming out to look at the lemonade stand. "I'll cut it off ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... kept coming in so persistently and so often. Why, the Major wanted to know, could they not be filed and paid in a lump sum at some convenient period—say when the Anecdotes and Reminiscences had been published and paid for? Miss Lydia would calmly go on with her sewing and say, "We'll pay as we go as long as the money lasts, and then perhaps they'll have to ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... and the chase are different in different languages. Such facts appear to prove that the Asiatic invaders followed a nomadic and pastoral life. Many of the terms connected with such an avocation are widely diffused. This is the case with ploughing, grinding, weaving, cooking, baking, sewing, spinning; with such objects as corn, flesh, meat, vestment; with wild animals common to Europe and Asia, as the bear and the wolf. So, too, of words connected with social organization, despot, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... from the prosperous Blue-Grass section, headed by Miss Katherine Pettit and Miss May Stone, went up into the mountains, several days' journey from a railroad, and, pitching their tents, spent three successive summers holding singing, sewing, cooking and kindergarten classes, giving entertainments, visiting homes, and generally establishing friendly relations with the men, women, ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... the whole ant-heap at its most ebullient moment. They knew their Whitman and their Dostoievsky sufficiently to be aware that they ought to love and delight in everything—in the gentleman walking down Piccadilly with a flower in his buttonhole, and in the lady sewing that buttonhole in Bethnal Green; in the orator bawling himself hoarse close to the Marble Arch, the coster loading his barrow in Covent Garden; and in Uncle John Freeland rejecting petitions in Whitehall. All these things, of course, together with the long lines of little gray ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of them, that his mind was not itself. He never slighted his work,—that was like the breath he drew,—but when it was done, he would sit for hours brooding by the fireplace, looking at the little empty chair where my mother used to sit and sing at her sewing. And sitting so and brooding, now and again there would come over him as it were a blindness, and a forgetting of all about him, so that when he came out of it he would cry out, asking where he was, and what had been done to him. He would forget, too, that my mother ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... has been used for a sewing or sitting room during the day, it should be thoroughly aired before bedtime. Open the bathroom window frequently, top and bottom, for a few minutes, so as to allow the air to escape out of doors instead of into other parts of the house. A nursery, sitting room or school room, which has been occupied ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... immediately stepped into the dining-room and the gloomy thoughts fled, for there sat Juliet near the window, sewing. She greeted him with a smile and ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... must have been from 70 to 100, all young people, varying from 15 to 30 years of age. All (both men and women) were well dressed, to set them off to the best advantage, as is always the case at these sales. Several of the coloured girls—evidently the daughters of white men—had their sewing-work with them, as evidence of their skill in that department. The whole were arranged under a kind of verandah, having a foot-bench (about six inches high) to stand upon, and their backs resting against ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... the distinction to George. As a matter of fact, with our unkempt hair and beards and our rags, we now formed as tough looking a party of tramps as ever "came down the pike." That night in camp I cut up my canvas leggings and used pieces of the canvas to rebottom my moccasins, sewing it on ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the host of his Ixionides, leaving them early for a drive at night Eastward, and a chat with old Mr. Woodseer over his punching and sewing of his bootleather. Another honest soul. Mr. Woodseer thankfully consented to mount his coach-box next day, and astonish Gower with a drop on his head from the skies about the time ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... narrated, is the "Clever King's Daughter", who evidently in the original story had to choose her suitor by his feet (as the giantess in the prose Edda chooses her husband), and was able to do so by the device she had practised of sewing up her ring in his leg sometime before, so that when she touched the flesh she could feel the hardness of the ring beneath ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... constituted nearly all the furniture of this room. Before that cheerful fire in one of those chairs, often sat one making and mending garments, little and big. This she did with her own hands, never having heard of a sewing machine, as there were none in existence then. She had to make every stitch with her fingers. We were not so fortunate as the favored people of ancient times; our garments would ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... could give me no references, she told me her husband was living, but was sick and could do nothing for his family,—in fact, that she and three children were kept alive by her efforts of various sorts. These were, sewing when she could get it, washing and scrubbing when she could not. She was very poorly dressed, but had a Yankee, go-ahead expression, as if she would get a living on the top of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... them to ask us to sit down; but our Eskimoes are pleased if one takes a seat in their houses without the asking. Jonatan's grandchild was sleeping on one of the beds, and its young mother sat in a corner sewing. The little harmonium by the wall belonged to her husband, who lives with his parents. The older people thanked me for the visit, and desired their greetings to the great teachers over ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... your eyes look so?" and wanted to rig a machine up and look at 'em, but I told him what the matter was, and that he needn't fix up his peeking contrivances on my account,—anyhow she's a nice young woman as ever lived, and as industrious with that pen of hers as if she was at work with a sewing-machine,—and there ain't much difference, for that matter, between sewing on shirts and writing on stories,—one way you work with your foot, and the other way you work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thoroughfare we had noticed warerooms where 'Singer' sewing machines are sold; at an agency of the 'Eastman Company' we had restocked our kodaks with films; and we could not avoid seeing on a large sign, in letters that could be read a block away, the words 'American Dentist.' Consequently when we passed the American Consulate ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... she has too much to do. She'd get away from the farm, too, if she could. She was willing for me to come. After I learn to do sewing, I can make money ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... the country hied, His breast with love and valour glowing. In cloister they have placed his bride, Instruction to receive in sewing. ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... and his Nibs put to bed, Tims proceeded to enjoy his pipe and evening paper, whilst Mrs. Tims got out her sewing. From time to time Tims's eyes would wander over towards the ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... see, I'm old—seventy-six years, and when I were little we were very poor and I couldn't get no schooling. I've got these glasses to do my sewing, and only put them on to get this stuff out so's you could read it. I'd like ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... wanted a carpet for my parlor. I went to the store of a well-known carpet-dealer, and asked to be shown some of his goods. While I was going through the establishment I came across a man who was industriously sewing together the lengths of a cut carpet, and I recognized in him one of my fellow convicts at Windsor. He, however, did not know me, and I doubt if he could have been convinced of my identity as the wretch who plied the broom in the halls ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... on the sand and trying to occupy their minds with sewing or reading, yet always with an eye to the road in readiness to rush to their red-headed combination of delivery boy and postman whenever he saw fit to put ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... and Louis called again. Minnie was crocheting, and her adopted mother was occupied with sewing; while Thomas engaged them in conversation, the subject being the impending conflict; Louis, taking a decided stand in favor of the South, and Thomas being equally strong in ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... some intricate sewing, and did not quite catch the first part of Marjorie's remark. But the last words sent a shock ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... corrected Baker. "But it's sufficient, so Erbe tells me, to discover a ledge. Ledges? Hell! They're easier to find than an old maid at a sewing circle! That's what the country is made of—ledges! You can dig one out every ten feet. Well, I've got people out finding ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... diplomatic manner, ingratiate themselves in his favor by making him some sort of a present—Owen had hinted that the factor's one weakness was a love for tea, which he used at every meal with quite as much pleasure as the veriest old maid gossip at a sewing circle; and as luck would have it this happened to coincide with a leaning of his own, for he had made sure to fetch considerable of the very finest that money could purchase in New York—Ceylon, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... employed on Dot's behalf. She had Dot's stockings to mend, and to add insignificant things like buttons and tapes and hooks and eyes to those of her garments which had an insufficiency of such trifles. And she was sewing away industriously as she brooded over ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... Jane had been telling of a Japanese woman, who, handicapped by the loss of an arm, and no longer being useful in field work, trudged every morning eight miles to school where she could learn sewing so as to ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... and it was one of the earliest accomplishments of my infancy to thread my poor, half-blind Aunt Stanley's needles for her. We were close neighbors and gossips until my fourth year. Many an hour I sat by her side drawing a needle and thread through a bit of calico, under the delusion that I was sewing, while she repeated all sorts of juvenile singsongs of which her memory seemed full, for my entertainment. There used to be a legend current among my brothers and sisters that this aunt unwittingly taught ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... be allowed to wash the plates and dishes and put them away in the tiny kitchen. She was in a mood to bear anything better than the idleness that left room for her own sad thoughts, and she wished that they would let her do some sewing. "I am not good at needlework, but I can hem and put on buttons," ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... sitter. The lively Miss Bowles, as we see, is totally unlike the demure Miss Boothby. They are both charming children; but, while Penelope would love to nestle in her mother's arms, Miss Bowles would dance coyly away. While Penelope would sit in doors by the hour, contented with her sewing, Miss Bowles would be skipping about the park like a little hoyden. The picture of Miss Bowles is, therefore, full of action; both child and dog pause only an instant, caught, as it were, in the midst of their play. The ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... six lengths from his new rope, drawing the pieces through his belt in the manner of a man carrying string for sewing grain sacks. He took the rifle from the saddle, filled its magazine, and started toward Peden's place, which was on the next corner beyond the hotel, on the same side of the square. When he had gone a few rods, halting on his lame feet, alert as a hunter who expects the game ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... were driven down, and the poles placed upon the forks; but sewing the cloth together for the covering was found to be so tedious a job that it was abandoned. The strips were drawn over the frame of the tent, and fastened by driving pins through it into the ground. Then it was found that there was only cloth enough to cover ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... in the same manner in the boat itself. Afterwards, with long strings of the rattan, which we split up and made fine, we sewed the little plank to the boat, just as one would a piece of cloth on a coat; we covered the sewing with the elemi gum, and were sure the water could not pass through. The rattan served instead of hemp, and supplied all our ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... sultry afternoon, Mr. Chrysler found her sitting, book and sewing on her lap and only a rosary about her neck to relieve the modest black ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... over-haste—had judiciously studied how to manage every detail of our lives. Now all at once there seemed a little lassitude upon her: she left all questions concerning the housekeeping for her domestic, Ann, to decide; she would drop her sewing in her lap and fall into reverie, her cheeks crimsoning, her eyes growing dark and misty, and emerge into reality presently with a beautiful trembling smile on her lips. I grudged her those reveries and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... her elbows on the window-ledge, turned her head over her shoulder; 'Toinette, tying Tod's sleeves with red ribbon, looked up; Aimee went on with her sewing, the two little straight lines making themselves visible on her forehead between her eyebrows. The fact of something being "up" with any one of their circle was enough to ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had been watching him laid aside her sewing, rose, and bent over him. Suddenly her pale face flushed and one hand flew to ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... did not even mention Bunny in my letter. Now we must go on sewing these mosquito curtains; your uncle says that in the rainy season the mosquitoes nearly eat one alive, so I am going to make six, as I am sure he has none at Ocho Rios. He says they don't bite him, as his skin ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... alus sewing up them books for, Mister Grannis?" asked Maria, as she began rummaging about in Old Grannis's closet shelves. "There's just hundreds of 'em in here on yer shelves; they ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... tell you, Lynn, I was happy. I sang in the choir and attended the sewing society, and recited that 'Annie Laurie' thing with the whistling stunt in it, 'in a manner bordering upon the professional,' as the weekly village paper reported it. And Arthur and I went rowing, and walking in the woods, and clamming, and that poky ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... charge of medical matters, arrange for the admission of children or adults to the hospitals, etc.; others organise entertainments, teach singing, drawing, needlework, and cooking classes. The premises are used in turn by working-girls learning sewing, or others rehearsing some play or opera chorus. Almost all the Sisterhoods possess a permanent Kindergarten for the children of women who are obliged to work outside their homes, and an employment bureau. All the ladies, except the Directress, give their services gratis. For all help given ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Boissevain Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol Scenes on the Picket Line Monster Picket-March 4, 1917 Officer Arrests Pickets Women Put into Police Patrol Suffragists in Prison Costume Fellow Prisoners Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse Riotous Scenes on Picket Line Dudley Field Malone Lucy Burns Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket Forty-One Women Face Jail Prisoners Released Lafayette We Are Here Wholesale Arrests Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... for yourself, and there is no despatch at all. Looting, again, is one of his perpetual joys. Not merely looting for profit, though I have seen Tommies take possession of the most ridiculous things—perambulators and sewing machines, with a vague idea of carting them home somehow—but looting for the sheer fun of the destruction; tearing down pictures to kick their boots through them; smashing furniture for the fun of smashing it, and may be dressing up in women's clothes to finish with, and ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... was a social event quite without precedent in Wahaskan annals, Miss Grierson's leadership was tacitly acknowledged by a majority of the ex-farmers' wives and daughters, though they still discussed her with more or less frankness in the sewing-circles and at neighborhood tea-drinkings. Crystallized into accusation, there was little to be urged against her save that she was pretty and rich, and that her leaning toward modernity was sometimes a little startling. But being human, the missionary seamstresses ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... catching insects will prove effective where nothing better is available, but any child can easily make a small insect net by attaching a loop of fairly stiff wire to a broom handle or other stick and sewing a bag of mosquito netting or other thin cloth to the wire. By means of such a net one can catch insects more easily and at the same time there is less danger of tearing such insects as butterflies. Care must be taken in handling the ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... Eliza Melvyn, dropping her work in her lap, and looking up discontentedly to her mother; "why should not I be rich as well as Clara Payson? There she passes in her father's carriage, with her fine clothes, and haughty ways; while I sit here—sew—sewing—all day long. I don't see what use ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... it gives me something to do, and I never could endure painting or sewing, so I work out pretty tunes and put them on paper. Sometimes they send them to the printers ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... Machine?—Do you know what a machine is? Men make machines to help them work and to do many useful things. A wheelbarrow or a wagon is a machine to carry loads. A sewing-machine helps to make garments for us to wear. Clocks and watches ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... he was doing nothing. In this realm there was a dingy bed, two chairs, and a washstand, with one lame leg, supported by an aged footstool. Clothes and garments were hanging on nails, pans lay about the hearth, a sewing-machine stood on a bare deal table. Over the bed was hung an oleograph, from a Christmas supplement, of the birth of Jesus, and above it a bayonet, under which was printed in an illiterate hand on a rough scroll of paper: "Gave ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... hills through the then dense forest of beech, oak, and elm, to the waters of Lake Chautauqua, where now many thousands gather every summer, from children to white-haired men and women, to study history, language, sciences, cooking, sewing, etc., and to attend ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... a belt on 'em, same as the belt on mother's sewing-machine. Don't you know? That has a round leather belt on the big wheel, and when you turn the big wheel the little wheel goes. Same as on our tricycle, only there are ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... compelled to hire a wrapper, or the pawnbroker refuses to advance. The wrapper is simply a dirty piece of old muslin. The hire of one of these wrappers has been known to have amounted to over five dollars in one year. Upon trunks, valises, beds, pillows, carpets, tool-chests, musical instruments, sewing machines, clocks, pictures, etc., etc., in proportion to their bulk, from one dollar to five dollars is charged for storage. A still greater profit to the pawnbrokers is the penny fraud. They buy pennies, getting from 104 to 108 for one dollar. These they pay out, and on every $100 thus paid out ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... away industriously backwards, just because Jessie is left-handed herself. Mother Elsie laughed until she lost her breath and Mr. Goodloe had to help unloosen her belt for her. The meeting broke up with ice cream on Jessie for everybody. We all belong to home mission societies and sewing circles and—" ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... said Miss Wren, 'I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but it's the trying-on by the great ladies that takes it ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... became Mrs. Beckard. Susan brisked up a little for the occasion, and looked very pretty as bridesmaid. She was serviceable too in arranging household matters, hemming linen and sewing table-cloths; though of course in these matters she did not do a tenth of what ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... invaded many of the trades and some of the professions. Sewing, to the present killing extent, they cannot long bear. Factories seem likely to afford them permanent employment. In the culture of fruit, flowers, and vegetables, even in the sale of them, we rejoice to see them engaged. In ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of a small hall on the next floor, a woman sat before her sewing-machine, bending so close to her work that she did not see the tall form, which paused before her, until a hand was laid on the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... still sat sewing by the window when I returned. "Have a pleasant time?" she asked, a gleam of curiosity in her cold eyes. "Seems to me you didn't ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... but little Polly did not laugh, because she was afraid that she was too small to help. But after a while the father said: "I shall be away in the great forest cutting down the trees; Mother will be washing and sewing and baking; Tom will be at work in the carpenter's shop; and who will take care ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... asleep Calista came back to the porch with some sewing. Conrad appeared from the barn, stood about for a moment, and strolled toward the orchard; then he walked in the garden for a while; finally he sat on the step with his back to her, saying nothing and looking at the sky. She preserved the silence ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the smashed window of one of these houses a bright red geranium blossomed. It seemed to cry for water, but I dared not turn aside, for fear of a bullet from a lurking sentry. In another a sewing-machine of American make testified to the thrift and progressiveness of one household. In the last house as I left the village a rocking-horse with its head stuck through the open door smiled its wooden smile, as if at any rate it could keep good cheer ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... over her sewing. She was a woman of thirty-five, with a pathetically slender figure, thin blond hair painstakingly crimped, and anxious blue eyes. Something deprecating lay in her expression; her days had been uncomplainingly sacrificed ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... eagles' claws, and fawns' red hoofs; whistles made of cane; two rattlesnakes' skins, one having on it fourteen rattles; coronets for the head, made of erect feathers of rooks and eagles; smooth needles of horn and bone, some of them crooked like sail-needles; deers' sinews, for sewing, and a parcel of three-corded thread, resembling twine. I believe one of these mummies is now in the British Museum. From Mummy Hall you pass into Gothic Avenue, where the resemblance to Gothic architecture very perceptibly increases. The wall juts out in pointed arches, and pillars, on the sides ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... sat three or four young girls who sat all day long sewing, or making bobbin lace, without once stretching their limbs all day, because the mistress did not like to see idle hands. In the ante-room there sat idly the melancholy Yakob, Egorka, who was sixteen and always laughing, with two or three lackeys. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Knowsley Street, for the employment of female factory operatives out of work. This workroom is managed by a committee of ladies, some of whom are in attendance every day. The young women are employed upon plain sewing. They have two days' work a week, at one shilling a day, and the Relief Committee adds sixpence to this 2s. in each case. Most of them are merely learning to sew. Many of them prove to be wholly untrained to this simple domestic accomplishment. The work is not remunerative, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... "mazes of the intricate schottische, the subtle mazourka, or the stately quadrille," as Will Cummings remarked in the Journal. Fanchon, Virginia, and five or six others, spent their afternoons mournfully, and yet proudly, sewing and cutting large pieces of colored silk, fashioning a great flag for their sweethearts and brothers to bear southward and plant where stood the palace of ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... has no sort of interest in the fish. The negro story of how Brother Rabbit nailed Brother Fox's tail to the roof of the house, and thus succeeded in getting the Fox's dinner, is identical with Hlakanyana's feat of sewing the Hyena's tail to the thatch. When this had been accomplished, Hlakanyana ate all the meat in the pot, and threw the bones at ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris |
