"Washerwoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us as "muy honrado;" not from his last place, but from one before. He was a well-dressed, sad-looking individual; and at the same time we took his wife as washerwoman, and his brother as valet to our attache, thus having the whole family under our roof, wisely taking it for granted that he being recommended as particularly honest, his relations were "all honourable men." An English lady happened to call on me, and a short time after I went to return ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... there, so they can't pay frequent visits to the capital. Her brother is the Wen-hsiang, who acts at present as our senior's accountant; but her sister-in-law too is employed in our worthy ancestor's yonder as head washerwoman." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... paths and avenues to harmonize with other ground colors was not always tinted. Some one had noticed that the white beach sand at Santa Cruz turned pink when heated. Seizing upon this fact, McLaren and Guerin used it to give a final touch to their scheme of color. They drew another lesson from the washerwoman. A familiar laundry device was used to give sparkle and brilliance to the waters of the pools and lagoons. They were blued, not by dumping indigo into the water, but by tinting ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... I think you lost off your coat last night, Larry," smiled Mr. Sparling sweetly. "And, Bad Eye, here's your collar. Better send it to the washerwoman." ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Mr. Winter cried out sharply, "That will do." Immediately one of the assistants seizes the wet canvas, crumples it up without more ado, as if it were dirty linen, and takes it off to a wooden washing trough, where it is kneaded and washed in true washerwoman fashion. Water in plenty is sluiced over it, and after more vigorous manipulation still, it is passed from trough to trough until deemed sufficiently free from soluble salts to tone. The toning—done in the ordinary ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... large, but it was select. It included a washerwoman with very red arms; a care-taker who had obviously failed to take care of herself; a couple of chimney-sweeps with partially washed faces; a charwoman with her friend the female greengrocer, who had been burned out of the opposite side of the court; two or three coster-mongers, a burglar, several ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Voila!" exclaimed our hostess, in exultation, and with an air which said, You must be gratified now; "Voila! this is the famous fountain where all the linen of La Rochelle is washed! and there is the chateau where my washerwoman lives,—a very respectable mother of a family;—and there are her turkeys and her farm-yard; and there is her market-garden! Oh! it ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... found a home for him yet, I assure you," said my mistress. "Our washerwoman wants him, and she is a most kind-hearted and respectable person, but she has got nine ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... occasion to pass on, lest his papers should be asked for. As they coasted down through Lake Ladoga and the Neva, they took in some women as passengers, who were servants, and had been home to see their parents. One of them, an aged washerwoman, was so teased by the others, that Piotrowski took her part, and in return she offered him ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... it would be just as good if it wasn't better, just as bad if it wasn't worse, and just as new if it wasn't worn out. Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time than would blow the lid off a washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thousands of miles higher than the moon as naught nix naught, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over. Now, my hearts of oak and men ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... is not the sort your worship is thinking of," said the galley slave; "mine was that I loved a washerwoman's basket of clean linen so well, and held it so close in my embrace, that if the arm of the law had not forced it from me, I should never have let it go of my own will to this moment; I was caught in the act, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... only rents of Colonel Henry Pendleton! They were contributed by "George Washington Thomson;" his wife, otherwise known as "Aunt Dinah," washerwoman; and "Scipio Thomson," their son, aged fourteen, bootblack. It did not amount to much. But in that happy moisture that dimmed the old man's eyes, God knows it ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... bad name in my case being "a womanly woman"! What this means I scarcely apprehend, but I fancy it is intended to signify (in an actress) something sweet, pretty, soft, appealing, gentle and underdone. Is it possible that I convey that impression when I try to assume the character of a washerwoman or a fisherwoman? If so I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Wesleyan Methodists, as a strict and extreme believer in the doctrines of that sect. During her attendance upon the Wesleyan rites, she became intimate with one Sanderson, who, whether a designing rogue, or only a very fanatical believer, pretended that he had discovered in the good washerwoman a Bible prodigy; and it was not long before the poor creature began literally, to "see sights" and dream dreams of the most preternatural description, for which Sanderson always had ready some very telling interpretation. ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... brutal paintings of Spagnoletto or in the unclean revelations of Zola. Leave the description of the drains and cesspools to the hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to the physician, the details of the laundry to the washerwoman. If we are to have realism in its tedious descriptions of unimportant particulars, let it be of particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the description of the vegetables in Zola's "Ventre de Paris," ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... gallantly; and then with Levi standing by my side, holding my ponderous bag of my beloved Mexican dollars in one hand, and a few articles of clothing in the other, I told Captain ——— that I considered him to be an anthropoid ape, an old washerwoman, and a person who should be generally despised and rejected by all people, even those of the dullest intellects, such as those of the members of the firm who employed him. And then recalling to my memory the sarcastic remark ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... back in her chair, her face very sad, and yet with something like pleasure in her eyes as she looked at her caller. "Your washerwoman," she said, "has a drunken husband and a cripple boy. I have often seen her standing over her tub, washing your delicate muslins and laces, and dropping tears ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... the milliner mother. And there was never the difference between her and Sir Edward Walpole that there is between Maria and a Prince of the Blood. Her birth is impossible. My Lady Mary Coke asking me if the mother were not a washerwoman, says I, "I really cannot determine ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. It was no Venus, or June, or Diana he wanted. He might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the canvas in all the glory of ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... barber, with his arms bared, and the flowing, o'er-ample legs of his Aradan-Lasgird pantaloons tucked up at his waist, like a washerwoman's skirt, a bunch of raw cotton in lieu of lint under his left arm, and his keen-edged razor, looks like a man who thoroughly realizes and enjoys the importance of the office he is performing, as from the bared arm or open mouth of one after ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... not to be regretted. Day follows day with unvaried movement: there is the same level meadow with geese upon it always lying before my eyes: the same pollard oaks: with now and then the butcher or the washerwoman trundling by in their carts. As you have lived in Lincolnshire I will not further describe Suffolk. No new books (except a perfectly insane one of Carlyle, {82} who is becoming very obnoxious now that he is become ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... statesmen of the day. I shall not call them "Shaving Papers from Downing Street," nor adopt the pseudonym of "The Man with the Hot Water (or the Morning Tea)," nor shall I roundly assert that I have been the private secretary, the doctor, the dentist or the washerwoman of the great men of whom I speak. Nevertheless I have sources of information which I do not mean to disclose, except to say that heavy persons who sit down carelessly on sofas may unknowingly inflict considerable pain, through the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... me see, sar," said Billy, peering over his shoulder. "Yes, sar, all right—I count em. Tell washerwoman put plenty of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a washerwoman, so far as I know. She undoubtedly changes with the seasons, but I do not see her, though the clothes are always bleaching on the grass at ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... another, and was unwilling to go away. They made a dreadful uproar, and from that day they constantly kept cursing and abusing me. I was obliged to wash, though I was very ill. Mrs. Wood, indeed once hired a washerwoman, but she was not well treated, and would come ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... ridiculous, at another in epigrammatic witticisms, endeavor to conceal the vulgarity of their subject. I remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stuart: and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth—though she did it very well—I could not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion at all. The same part was incomparably better played by the Italian Ristori; and, in fact, the Italian nature, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... his restless young son[2] was stimulated, and circumstances fed the flame. In the last year of the government of Andros [1688], a daughter, thirteen years old, of John Goodwin,—a mason living at the South End of Boston,—had a quarrel with an Irish washerwoman about some missing clothes. The woman's mother took it up, and scolded provokingly. Thereupon the wicked child, profiting, as it seems, by what she had been hearing and reading on the mysterious subject, "cried out upon her," as the phrase was, as a witch, and proceeded to act the part understood ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Later, my hostess took me downstairs and introduced her English visitor to a merry but strictly decorous party having a special bit of sward to themselves, bailiff, vintagers, stockmen, dairywoman, washerwoman and odd hands making up a round dozen of men, women and boys. All seemed quite at home, and chatted easily with their employer and the visitor, by no means perturbed, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... explains the whole mystery, of course," delightedly shouted Borgert. "Don't you know any more such stories? For it is really high time to call a halt. He has manners like a ploughboy's, and she like a washerwoman's. I'll collect a few more tales of the sort. It is simply shameful that one must submit to the dictation ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... disturb her prematurely. Then, his hone in one hand and his scythe in the other, he stood and watched Meldon, The handkerchief waved again, and Meldon started walking briskly across the lawn. The hone rasped harshly against the scythe blade, and "The Irish Washerwoman" rang out shrilly. Miss King woke with a start. Callaghan turned away from her, and still whistling vigorously, began to mow. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... said Mae. "Nobody but a lady could possibly be one. Did you ever hear of a washerwoman who ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... I know that when I was a very young man (many, many years ago, as the story-books say) and wanted cheering up, I used to go and dress myself in all my best clothes. If I had been annoyed in any manner—if my washerwoman had discharged me, for instance; or my blank-verse poem had been returned for the tenth time, with the editor's compliments "and regrets that owing to want of space he is unable to avail himself of kind offer;" or I had been snubbed ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... perhaps right I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to himself. It is not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... blind of one eye, lame on one leg, and with her hair brushed into one large curl to hide the blind eye—but in vain, the defect was only the more conspicuous. This was "Lame Maren," as the neighbors called her, a friend of the washerwoman's. "Poor thing, slaving and toiling away in the cold water! it is hard that you should be called names"—for Maren had overheard the sheriff speaking to the child about his own mother— "hard that your boy should be told you ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... matters, upon circumstances; whether the gentleman bought fine cambric, or coarse cotton with pink portraits of the reigning Sovereign, to commence with; whether he catches many colds, has his pockets picked, takes snuff, or allows his washerwoman to use washing powders. But why do you want ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... like that," Hugh said at last, sitting down on the edge of the hole they had dug. "Gold is the most gambly stuff imaginable. We know a lady who was as poor as a washerwoman one day, and then at breakfast one morning she got a letter to say her goldmine shares had struck a reef, and she got so rich she simply didn't know what to do with her money. She came to see Papa about it. She ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... washermen stand outside at work. But I'm told that in some parts of Europe the washerwomen themselves get into the tubs. They do this to keep their feet dry. The tubs or barrels are empty, and are set along the river banks in the water, and each washerwoman stands in her tub and washes the clothes in the river, pounding, and soaping, and rinsing them, on a board, without ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... wonderful how large Kicklebury's acquaintance is. He has a word and a joke, in the best German he can muster, for everybody—for the high well-born lady, as for the German peasant maiden, or the pretty little washerwoman, who comes full sail down the streets, a basket on her head and one of Mrs. Fantail's wonderful gowns swelling on each arm. As we were going to the Schloss-Garten I caught a sight of the rogue's grinning face yesterday, close at little Gretel's ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... King had finished chopping her up, he began to wash the pieces. And each piece, as he washed it, called out, "The King scours and scrubs like a washerwoman, but he is ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... rogue hiding himself under a stone, fifty yards from the house. 'Dang my buttons,' said he, 'if here is not master's snake. He came back and told my wife, who told him to go and kill it. It happened to be washing-day: the washerwoman gave him a pailful of scalding soapsuds to throw on it; but whether he was most afraid of me or of the snake is still a question: however, the washerwoman brought it home with the tongs, and dropped it into the dolly-tub. It dashed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... be free, themselves must strike the blow.' If they wouldn't, you are bound to respect their right of choice. Your drunken ruffian will keep on breaking the furniture, till another like him breaks his skull. His wife, the washerwoman with six small children, will continue getting more and making things worse. This part of it at least ought to be regulated by law: but that would be a restriction of personal liberty, which is the idol of this age, and not without reason. We're between ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... convenient to Mr. Spraggon—and then the introduction of the neatly-headed sheet-list. It was lucky that Viney was so easily satisfied, for poor Jack had only thirty shillings, of which he owed his washerwoman eight, and he was very glad to stuff Viney's bill into his stunner jacket-pocket, and apply himself exclusively to the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... near neighbours; and until now she had hardly even tasted the luxury of a thorough gossip, which she could enjoy in any one of the cottages throughout Botfield. Moreover, she could get work for herself on three days in the week, to help a washerwoman, who gave her ninepence a day, besides letting little Nan go with her, and have, as she said, 'the run of her teeth.' She had her admirers, too—young collier lads, who told her truly enough she was the cleanest, neatest, tidiest lass in all Botfield. ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... it. A woman was bending over a pile of straw and rags, and an object lying on top of them; and a squalid child, curled in one corner, with a wild, frightened look in his eyes. The woman turned as the door opened, and John Birge recognized her as his mother's washerwoman. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... "Ghaut" The steps (or path) which lead down to a watering-place. Hence the Hindi saying concerning the "rolling stone"—Dhobi-ka kutta; na Gharka na Ghat-ka, a washerwoman's tyke, nor of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a pass, feeding threshing machines, how to wean a calf from the parent stem, teaching school, bull-whacking, plastering, waltzing, vaccination, autopsy, how to win the affections of your wife's mother, every man his own washerwoman, or how to wash underclothes so they ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... said Mr. Micawber, 'I need hardly tell you that to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind like that which gleams—if I may be allowed the expression—which gleams—in your friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, who exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlour-window, dwelling next door, and a Bow-street officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his society is a source of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon commission. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the white cliffs. The French settlers degraded the name to its present form, and that so hopelessly, that the other day an old Negress in Port of Spain puzzled the officer of Crown property by informing him that she wanted to buy 'a carre in what you call de washerwoman's.' It had been described to me as possibly the remotest, loneliest, and unhealthiest spot in Her Majesty's tropical dominions. No white man can live there for more than two or three years without ruin to his health. In spite of the perpetual trade-wind, and the steepness of the hillsides, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry! He began to preach extempore sermons, and even grave papas caught the infection. He got out of bed at half-past twelve o'clock one winter's night, to half-baptise a washerwoman's child in a slop-basin, and the gratitude of the parishioners knew no bounds—the very churchwardens grew generous, and insisted on the parish defraying the expense of the watch-box on wheels, which the new curate had ordered for himself, to perform the funeral service ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... interim, Miss Fanny had been picked up in the street, for the fourth time, by a benevolent "washerwoman," who happened to be passing by at the moment; had been conveyed to the said washerwoman's lodgings; and now appeared before us, despoiled, at last, of all the glories of the red polka, enveloped from head to foot in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... poor doggie, so you have lost your master and have had nothing to eat since God knows when, and I've just chased out my wife, yes, yes, and she went away yesterday. Yes, yes, she's going to try to shift for herself as a washerwoman down in Winnipeg this winter, yes, yes, that's how it is now. Yes, yes, we packed up and left a fairly decent living there at home and came here into this damnable log-cabin existence, yes, yes. ... Well, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... cold carrying the clothes!" Teddy's eyes fell to his own hands, which were always snug and warm in their red mittens. The washerwoman's little ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... were twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... had taken them to see him. His home was a long way from their cottage, where the fisher people lived, and the sights and smells in the hot summer air were hard to bear even for those who were well. Poor little Dick, lying day after day on his hard bed, with no care except what the kind-hearted washerwoman could give him, felt that life was an ill thing at best, and he was fast hastening out of it, with the assistance of ill nutrition and bad ventilation. Dick's own mother and father were dead, and his stepmother, a rough-looking ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... dressed himself in the stained waistcoat, to appear at a ball, which was given that night in the neighbourhood, by some "gentleman's gentleman." The waistcoat was rather too tight for the servant: he tore it, and instead of sending it to the washerwoman's, to have the stain washed out, as his master had desired, he was now obliged to send it to the ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... that life was an opera. I should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in a sustained ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... manner. But David, although he knew Miggs to be a veteran of the toughs, felt sure of his innocence in this case, and he was determined to battle for him, not for the sake of justice alone, but for the sake of the tired-looking washerwoman he had seen bending over the tubs. This was an occupation she had to resort to only in her husband's times of indulgence, for he was a wage earner in his days ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... leads to the conservatory is violently thrust open, and a peasant woman, her face bluish red with rage, bursts in. She is not much better dressed than a washerwoman: naked, red arms, blue cotton-skirt and bodice, red dotted kerchief. She is in the early forties; her face is hard, sensual, malignant. The whole figure is, otherwise, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... scholars." Artisans, countrymen, and merchants—the ideal had been already accepted in France, Malesherbes striving to use no word that was not in the vocabulary of the day labourers of Paris, Moliere making his washerwoman first critic of his comedies. It meant for England the disuse of the turgidities and involutions which had marked the prose of the preachers and moralists of the times of James and Charles I.; scholars and men of letters were arising who would have ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... the Rue des Feuillantines. The shops are unassuming, and so few that one can easily count them. There is a wine-shop on the left-hand side, at the corner of the Rue de la Vieille-Estrapade; then a little toy-shop, then a washerwoman's and then a book-binder's establishment; while on the right-hand you will find the office of the Bulletin, with a locksmith's, a fruiterer's, and a baker's—that is all. Along the rest of the street run several spacious buildings, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Aunt Anniky lifts her turkey-tail! It really seems that human beings should be classed by strata, as if they were metals in the earth. Instead of dividing by nations, let us class by quality. So we might find Turk, Jew, Christian, fashionable lady and washerwoman, master and slave, hanging together like cats on a clothes-line by some ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... right and splendid, and becoming a publisher of high degree. Mr. Concanen (the translator) will be delighted, and pay his washerwoman; and, in reward for your bountiful behaviour in this instance, I won't ask you to publish any more for Drury Lane, or any lane whatever, again. You will have no tragedy or any thing else from me, I assure you, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... day—the two children were playing at their usual game on the turnpike road, and waiting for nurse, who had gone into a cottage near by to speak to the washerwoman. Nurse was a long time, and Ralph, who was horse, was quite out of breath with his long trot on the hard road. Lily touched him up with the whip, but all to no avail—he ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... wishing for her notice. But he was far from attractive to a woman's eye, ruled as that is so largely by the superficies of things. He was not only a journeyman, unable to appear as he formerly had appeared, but he disdained to appear as well as he might. Everybody else, from the Mayor to the washerwoman, shone in new vesture according to means; but Henchard had doggedly retained the fretted and weather-beaten garments ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... is going to be married. I heard nurse wish her brother success when he was going to marry the washerwoman ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... fixtures, and most of the Englishmen, Germans, Danes, etc., of passage, came over by degrees to their opinion, on much the same grounds that a Turk in England would condemn the nation by wholesale, because he was wronged by his lacquey, and overcharged by his washerwoman. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... who was an old washerwoman, watched the dead and the dying of the neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sown her customers into that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went and took up her iron to smooth the linen of the living. Wrinkled ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... treats of the experiences of a pretty mill-girl, the daughter of a washerwoman, who becomes the protegee of a wealthy and capricious woman of the world, who educates her, introduces her to society, then finally drops her and permits her to seek her native obscurity, where she withers and dies of a broken heart. The story is very well told, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... poor mother aside and forced her to accept one hundred francs. The unfortunate woman, trembling with emotion, while two large tears rolled down her cheeks, admitted that the night before, in order to pay the washerwoman, they had pawned the only clock in ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... done it many a time—on the chart. I know every bluff and reef and shoal and cay around Andros from Morgan's Bluff to Washerwoman's Cut—" ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... in a letter addressed to the London Packet, this poor creature determined once more to set aside the judgment of the public, and show Dr. Goldsmith in his true colours. The letter is a wretched production, full of personalities only fit for an angry washerwoman, and of rancour without point. But there was one passage in it that effectually roused Goldsmith's rage; for here the Jessamy Bride was introduced as "the lovely H——k." The letter was anonymous; but the publisher ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... indignation burst over bounds at some unusual indignity; and he played a practical joke on the king. Meeting an old woman in the palace one day near the door of the royal sanctum, she asked him where she could find the court-washerwoman. "There," said the reckless Weber, pointing to the door of the king's cabinet. The king, who hated old women, was in a transport of rage, and, on her terror-stricken explanation of the intrusion, had no difficulty in fixing ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... and sister-in-law of my wife. The wife of my nephew and the niece of my wife are my nieces by marriage. A woman who treats the sick is a lady doctor; the wife of a doctor is a doctor's wife. Mrs. Dr. A. visited Dr. and Mrs. P. to-day. He is not a laundryman, he is a washerwoman's husband. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will not willingly take either goods or labor without payment; and it may be hard to prove that he who takes the latter is more dishonest than he who ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of each other," he told her, "because they don't know anything about each other. Each ex-washerwoman thinks the other ex- washerwoman must have been at least a duchess at home. It's terribly funny. If they can get hold of six porcelain statuettes, a half-dozen antimacassars, some gilt chairs, and a glass bell of wax ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... about your mother to a Kaffir washerwoman," Captain Bingo blurts out. "Better you should, than go hanging about a Convent-bred schoolgirl and telling her you'll never care for anybody else, when you've got a legal wife, and, for all you know, a family of twins ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in Turin, no amorous fancy disturbed the peace of my soul, except an accident which happened to me with the daughter of my washerwoman, and which increased my knowledge in physics in a singular manner. That girl was very pretty, and, without being what might be called in love with her, I wished to obtain her favours. Piqued at my not being able to obtain an appointment from her, I contrived one day to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Fiddlesticks! There are more fools teaching those languages now than there are idiots to learn them. Why, my washerwoman's daughter is teaching French at twenty-five cents a lesson, though she can no more speak it than a jackdaw. French, indeed! You must try something else, or you will never earn that two hundred ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... else out of him. Judging from the goings on about the office in the two weeks I was there, he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for failing to pay for the washing of his shirts, I rightly concluded that the city editor's ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the colored people that they free, but she said that didn't signify much to her mind. Some time afterwards, she said her father came and carried her and her mother to his master's place. Later, she came to Spartanburg and got a job as a cook and washerwoman. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... murmuring sound came from the band of servants. They began to rock themselves, to strike with the tongue the roof of the mouth, to work toward a camp-meeting excitement. Out on the porch Big Mimy, the washerwoman, made herself heard. "Des' let um dar ter come fightin' Greenwood folk! Des' let me hab at um with er tub er hot water!" Scipio, old and withered as a last year's reed, began to sway violently. Suddenly he broke into a chant. "Ain' I done heard about hit er million times? Dar ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... I was a washerwoman for the white folks. My first husband was Isaac Dixon, who came from some place in Alabama and had been owned by Dr. Lipscomb, the chancelor of the university. Dr. Lipscomb married us in the colored Methodist Church, and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... she had supposed she knew, by sight at least, everyone in Sutherland. From fear lest she should see someone she knew, her mind changed to longing. At last she was rewarded. Down the aisle swaggered Redney King, son of the washerwoman, a big hulking bully who used to tease her by pulling her hair during recess and by kicking at her shins when they happened to be next each other in the class standing in long line against the wall of the schoolroom for recitation. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... many things in the course of her life, and everything had brought her gradually downward, from servant-girl to waitress, down past washerwoman to what she ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... he hadn't, not being famous enough, or rich enough, or clever enough to excite the hatred of mankind. He was simply an intelligent young man, who worked excellently when supervised by me. His mother is a washerwoman in this village, and the lad brought washing to my house. Noting that he was intelligent and was anxious to rise above his station, I engaged him as my assistant and trained him ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... fence was low, and the publicity obtained by the washable portion of the family apparel, on Mondays, had often been painful to Penrod; for boys have a peculiar sensitiveness in these matters. A plain, matter-of-fact washerwoman' employed by Mrs. Schofield, never left anything to the imagination of the passer-by; and of all her calm display the scarlet flaunting of his father's winter wear had most abashed Penrod. One day Marjorie Jones, all gold and starch, had passed when the dreadful things were on the line: Penrod ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... said, for such events; but all that could be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle and the wealthy. A washerwoman, left a widow with nine small children, would not have sobbed herself ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Elsie had had a chance to discern that, broad and tolerant as he was, he saw things as they were (except in the case of his wife), never misstated and rarely overstated. For all that, she set out on Saturday afternoon prepared to meet the typical washerwoman of fiction—worn, bedraggled, shapeless, and forlorn. She was prepared to go into a steaming kitchen with puddles on the floor and dirty children all about, and have this red-faced personage take a scarlet hand ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... should ha' heerd it at the dignity ball we went ashore for at Barbadoes. Did you ever foot the floor with a black washerwoman of eighteen stun, dressed out in muslin the colour of orange ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... numbers, sir, that is my name,' replied the 'prentice. 'They are merely intended as directions to the washerwoman, and have no connection with myself or family. YOUR name, sir,' said Mr Tappertit, looking very hard at his nightcap, 'is Chester, I suppose? You needn't pull it off, sir, thank you. I observe E. C. from here. We will take the rest ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... ring true, and amidst the hearty plaudits of the rest she took the doctor's arm. The others fell in line as if by magic, and then the fiddles began with vim. Oh, how they danced! Everyone, old and young—quadrilles, reels, polkas, Irish Washerwoman, Old Dan Tucker, and all. Even Mrs. Conors, after much persuasion, did a jig as it was performed "whin I was a gal in ould Ireland," and Patrick Flynn, the aspiring County Member, was her partner. How the old tavern ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October grass, driving an old ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... spoons, the ewers and alms mugs and sweetmeat dishes, and to usher the guests to their places; a head waiter and two servitors for each table, a flower girl to make chaplets of flowers for the guests, women to see to the linen and deck the bridal bed,[22] and a washerwoman. The floors were strewn with violets and green herbs and the rooms decked with branches of May (all bought in the market in early morning), and there was a good stock of torches and candles, small candles to stand on the supper tables, and great torches to be set ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Sprucehill shall have redress for the insult put upon her favorite daughter. In all that General Grant has done in the way of omission, nothing approaches the inactivity which has wrung my heart, as wet blankets are twisted in the strong hands of a washerwoman. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the picnic Mr Cheesacre came down to Montpelier Parade with Captain Bellfield, whose linen on that occasion certainly gave no outward sign of any quarrel between him and his washerwoman. He was got up wonderfully, and was prepared at all points for the day's work. He had on a pseudo-sailor's jacket, very liberally ornamented with brass buttons, which displayed with great judgement the exquisite ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... but often as many as eighteen or twenty. Let me tell you of the various persons who composed this outside audience, as I watched them one morning. A native policeman, a business man waiting for his car, three beggars, boys with large trays of bread, fruit and sweetmeats on their heads, a washerwoman with a huge basket of clothes poised securely on her head, the driver of an ox-cart, who stopped his team while we sang "America," three women going to market, a party of daintily dressed, sweet-faced senoritas with their chaperone, a dirty, wild-looking old hag who almost ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... cities—always plenty of work—no need of charity—man got to be blame shiftless if he don't get ahead." But now that the summer mask of leaves and grass was gone, Carol discovered misery and dead hope. In a shack of thin boards covered with tar-paper she saw the washerwoman, Mrs. Steinhof, working in gray steam. Outside, her six-year-old boy chopped wood. He had a torn jacket, muffler of a blue like skimmed milk. His hands were covered with red mittens through which protruded his chapped raw knuckles. He halted to blow ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... with them it is become a fashion. Let ruffians go their own way. Let gentlemen be your companions, and never fail to show them that you can at least be their equal in courteous demeanor. Always pay your washerwoman; be not ashamed to acknowledge your father, and remember that the fonder you speak of your mother, the more you will be beloved by strangers. Avoid politicians, who are come to be great vagabonds, who drink bad liquor and give their thoughts to base designs against the nation's gold. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the boat: toward the end of the voyage they took aboard a number of women-servants returning to their situations in town from a visit to their country homes. Among them was an elderly woman going to see her daughter, who was a washerwoman at St. Petersburg. Piotrowski showed her some small kindnesses, which won her fervent gratitude. As they landed in the great capital, which seemed the very focus of his dangers, and he stood on the wharf wholly at a loss what should be his next step, the poor woman came up with her daughter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... must have heerd tell of him, sir, a young and gallant naval ossifer like yerself, 'specially that yarn consarnin' him and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin' when he were a-spyin' ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a syllable, she ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... in every phase. The event that robbed Rudd of his wife, his child, his hope, had taken also his companion, his cook, his chambermaid, his washerwoman, the mender of his things; and in their place had left an appalling monument of bills. The only people he had permitted himself to owe money to were the gruesome committee that brought him his grief; the doctor, the druggist, the casket-maker, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... look at the opposite side, now. It is not likely I should ever be obliged to work at severe manual labor; but the annoyances and privations of a limited income seem to me almost worse than that. I think I would rather be a washerwoman, provided I could acquire the strength, than the wife of a struggling man who has all the refined tastes and sensitive nerves of a gentleman, without a gentleman's income. I should see him growing more and more careless, more and more haggard, day after day; I should ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... less reliable than the ordinary washerwoman kind, because of a deeper and more vicious ignorance—had it that one time when August was punished by a teacher (or beaten by her sister or aunt-by-marriage) she "took to the bush" for three days, at the expiration of which time she was found on ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... well remembers an aged colored woman, who was employed as a washerwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this woman married a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by her industry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised nine hundred dollars for her ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... heard his jaws, the cracking of bones, shrieks, and the voracious in-and-out of his breath edged with anger. A girl by my side exclaimed, 'It's not the Bench, after all! Would I have run to see a paltry two-story washerwoman's mangling-shed flare up, when six penn'orth of squibs and shavings and a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the atmosphere and a patch of the table, while its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's peak, an eye. Secretly I take stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety. Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it was too damned dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the grocer's. One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like sheep. "And although you were ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... The washerwoman, who one day a week lightened Mrs. Hazen's household labors, waddled into view from behind the billows of wind-swirled clothes. She was an excellent person, and was built for endurance rather than for speed. At sight of Lass ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... enough for one man. I perceived, moreover, that the newly arranged craft would answer for a washing-machine when placed athwartships, and also for a bath-tub. Indeed, for the former office my razeed dory gained such a reputation on the voyage that my washerwoman at Samoa would not take no for an answer. She could see with one eye that it was a new invention which beat any Yankee notion ever brought by missionaries to the islands, and ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... difficulty in believing it; then he laughed hugely, but stopped on perceiving tears in Pecuchet's eyes—for he had not been without attachments, having by turns been smitten by a rope-dancer, the sister-in-law of an architect, a bar-maid, and a young washerwoman; and the marriage had even been arranged when he had discovered that she was enceinte by ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... furnished by his wife, and who lives in a house purchased with his wife's money. Graceful return for her devotion, wasn't it? I suppose he prefers to keep her in her present state of serfdom, as, if she should ever find out that she was of any importance in the world, except as his housekeeper, cook, washerwoman, and waiter-in-general, she might possibly inquire into the stewardship of her lord and master. And it seemed to me if that ever came to pass, a man who could say "no" so cavalierly, without even a "thank you, ma'am," or, "you're quite welcome," both could and would ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to the beginning of the sixties. I well remember, early in the summer of one of them, Gentleman Dick—we called him this because his father had been a tramp, and, although he scarcely justified the maternal strain (his mother had been a washerwoman), he was certainly to all appearances his father's son—rushing in to tell me that "Blue Satin," the prize bull bitch belonging to the proprietor of that well-known tavern—public-houses were scarcely known in those days—"The Seven Sisters," ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... unusually amiable and kind; you are earnest in your search of friends; you shake hands with your office boy, as if he were your second cousin. You joke cheerfully with the stout washerwoman; and give her a shilling overchange, and insist upon her keeping it; and grow quite merry at the recollection of it. You tap your hackman on the shoulder very familiarly, and tell him he is a capital ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... herb is often introduced for scenting newly washed linen when it is put by; from which custom has arisen the expression, "To be laid up in Lavender." During the twelfth century a washerwoman was called "Lavender," ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... flourishing, I hear; but I must see also. I feel no disposition to resign it to the contagion of its grandmother's society." The assertion of her dishonourable conduct in employing a spy (p.645, l.7, etc.): "A Mrs. C. (now a kind of housekeeper and spy of Lady N's), who, in her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be—by the learned—very much the occult cause of our domestic discrepancies." The seeming exculpation of myself in the extract (p.646), with the words immediately following it, "Her nearest relations are a—-;" where the blank clearly implies something too ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fact that you are so self-centred. You must get some constructive work, my dear, if it's only training your baby. You must realize that you are not the only person who has troubles in the world. Why, I know a poor washerwoman, who was left a widow with four children to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... should repent All Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... you the recipe when I give you the one for the noodles. Bella says it's the best she ever ate. My husband gets so mad when I go down in the kitchen—me with two grand girls and washerwoman two days a week! But the girls can't cook ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to the shrine. But I have a clear notion of woman. In all of them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark. And when there is a spark there can always be ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... relief to an unwonted freedom. She was in her sitting-room, busily engaged in taking from a large basket, the plebeian appearance of which contrasted strangely with the magnificent Turkish carpet on which it stood, the folded clothes which the washerwoman had just delivered. The appearance of Madame Mere herself was also in some contrast with the gorgeous surroundings ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... October 12. McLean brought the bird back to the Hut and the newcomer received a great ovation. Stimulated by their success on the previous night and the appearance of the first penguin, the theatrical company added to their number, and, dispensing with a rehearsal, produced an opera, "The Washerwoman's Secret" (Laseron). Part of the Hut was curtained off as a combined green-room and dressing-room; the kitchen was the stage; footlights twinkled on the floor; the acetylene limelight beamed down from the rafters, while the audience crowded on a form behind the dining-table, making tactless ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... vast snow-white beard, and a world of disordered white hair floating over and around its head. At all events it was white for a moment, then it looked green—a great green beard which the old man took with his two hands and twisted just as a washerwoman twists a blanket or counterpane, so as to wring the water out ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... that Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on her way to the laundry. All the sport people had gone, the streets were half empty, and most of the tourist shops were shut. Only the very ill had reappeared; they crept aimlessly about in the sunshine with ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... against the rail and smoked for three hours! Eight eyes, watching him from below, failed to find anything in his face but contemplation; eight hands puckered like a washerwoman's; eight feet turned from medium to clean, from clean to bleached—and still the Chief smoked on. He watched the scolding tugs and the ferryboats that crawled over the top of the water; he stood in rapt contemplation of the electric signs in Jersey, while the ship's bells marked the passage of ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... died of a similar disease; two more of his lying-in patients, in rapid succession, met with the same fate; struck by the thought, that he might have carried contagion in his clothes, he instantly changed them, and 'met with no more cases of the kind.' A woman in the country, who was employed as washerwoman and nurse, washed the linen of one who had died of puerperal fever; the next lying-in patient she nursed died of the same disease; a third nursed by her met with the same fate, till the neighborhood, getting afraid of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was continued between Smallbones and the corporal. The latter had received instruction to take on shore Mr Vanslyperken's dirty linen to the washerwoman, and of course, as a corporal, he was not obliged to carry it, and would take Smallbones for that purpose. Then he could easily excuse taking the dog on shore, upon the plea of taking care of it. It was therefore ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tale concerning the tomb of David runs as follows: A poor but very pious Jewish washerwoman was once persuaded by the keeper of the tomb to enter it. Hardly was she within, when the man nailed up the entrance, and ran to the kadi to inform him that a Jewess had gone in. Incensed, the kadi hastened to the spot, with the intention of having the woman burnt for her ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG |
