"Seamstress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carefully going back two or three threads in order to make a neat, firm line of stitching? The sewing-machine does all this, and does it well, a clever machinist turning out more work in a week than a seamstress in a year. If this were all, it would be no matter for regret, but with the necessity for needlework has vanished the desire. The lady quoted in Green's History is now non-existent. "She was a pattern of sobriety unto many, very seldom seen abroad except ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... Benedictine abbey had often been his guest; it seemed as if the quiet student of human nature took a secret pleasure in the unbridled spirit and the pagan fervor of Nature-worship of the hermit, Bastide; but when he forcibly abducted a seamstress, pretty Charlotte Arlabosse, from Alby, and lived with her in unlawful union, the Benedictine, in obedience to the command of his superiors, was obliged to break off the intercourse. Thenceforth, Bastide ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the first time gather around the table, after the departure of a friend? The breakfast was earlier than usual, and the dishes were suffered to stand and the beds to go unmade, and housemaid, chamber-maid, cook, and seamstress, all engaged in the melee of packing up, and of course came in for their share of 'good-bys.' After the guests were fairly off, 'things took a stand-still' for a while. All hands sat down and rested, and looked very blank, and didn't know just where to begin. Slowly, confusion began ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... on the "Flute Player," in the gallery at Stockholm; the "Seamstress," in The Hague Gallery, and on a picture in ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Lans, fell in love with him. Has trusted and helped him socially. Why, he made his college life easy for him by his own popularity. Quite by accident I discovered the vulgar intrigue of this—this Morley. I saw him go into a house where a little seamstress of mine lives! I inquired; I found him out; and—and, not for any low gain, but gain in the larger, higher sense I pocketed my pride and came to you as helpless women do come to strong men and you make me ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... also been having strange convulsive fits, and absurd beginnings of stigmata: one of them being an old wound, caused by her scissors when she was working as a seamstress, the other an eruptive sore in her side. Her transports suddenly turned to impious despair. She spat upon the crucifix: she cried out against Girard, "that devil of a priest, who had brought a poor girl of two-and-twenty into such ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... and why? Carol would hear it, and it would distress her, she is so full of love and goodness. The boys study with all their might and main. Why? Partly, at least, because they like to teach Carol, and amuse her by telling her what they read. When the seamstress comes, she likes to sew in Miss Carol's room, because there she forgets her own troubles, which, Heaven knows, are sore enough! And as for me, Donald, I am a better woman every day for Carol's sake; I have to be her eyes, ears, feet, hands,—her strength, ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was seething in her mind, and she never took her eyes off the engaged couple. She interested herself in Jeanne's trousseau with a singular eagerness, a feverish activity, working like a simple seamstress in her room, where no ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... on the brink of despair. His only help was a small stipend from the king of Denmark, which enabled him to spend two years in Paris and Rome, and the meager pennies that his devoted friend Elise Lensing, a poor seamstress in Hamburg, sent him. His short stories, his dramas, although they brought him fame, were of little avail in this struggle that seemed all too hopeless. Then a sudden change for the better came. Stopping at Vienna on his return from Rome, he found himself in a small circle of ardent ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... made in Europe for this special purpose, very thin, smooth, and compact,) and floats it evenly on the surface of the albumen. Presently she lifts it very carefully by the turned-up corners and hangs it bias, as a seamstress might say, that is, cornerwise, on a string, to dry. This "albumenized" paper is sold most extensively to photographers, who find it cheaper to buy than to prepare it. It keeps for a long time uninjured, and is "sensitized" when wanted, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... respectable neighborhoods which they tried they found that the prices were impossible for them; but at last, upon the edge of a tenement district, they found a corner flat-house, with a saloon underneath, where there were two tiny bedrooms for rent in an apartment. The woman, who was a seamstress, was away a good deal in the day, and Corydon learned with delight that she might use the piano in the parlor. The rooms were the smallest they had ever seen, but they were clean, and the price was only fifty cents a day—a dollar and a half a week for Thyrsis' and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... claims the monopoly. He would sell his creed for less. Miriam is dying to ask him what he has done with the Confederate uniform he sported before the Yankees came. His son says they are all Union men over there, and will "lemonate" (illuminate) to-night. A starving seamstress opposite has stuck six tallow candles in her window; better put ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the highest bidder and Louisa and the twins were bought by a man living near Cadiz but Mr. Street refused to sell Amy Elizabeth. She showed promise of growing into an excellent house-maid and seamstress and was already a splendid playmate and nurse to the little Street boy and girl. So Louisa lost her child but such grief was shown by both mother and child that the mother was unable to perform her tasks and the child cried continually. Then Mr. Street consented ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... cook. She is my housekeeper, mother, trained nurse, corporation counsel, keeper of the privy purse, chancellor of the exchequer, fighter of exorbitant bills, seamstress, linen woman, doctor of small ills, the acme of perpetual good nature, and ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... her table was of a Spartan austerity; she exacted a great deal from her servants, and paid them as small wages as she could. After that she did not mind lavishing money upon them in kindness. A seamstress whom she had once employed fell sick, and Miss Kingsbury sent her to the Bahamas and kept her there till she was well, and then made her a guest in her house till the girl could get back her work. She watched her cook through the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Detorit and went to work where they sent me to work. I had to stay there until I pay them the sum of $24.92c so I want to leave Mobile for there, if there nothing there for me to make a support for my self and family. My wife is seamstress. We want to get away the 15 or 20 of May so please give this matter your earnest consideration an let me hear from you by return mail as my bro. in law want to get away to. He is a carpenter by trade. so please help us as we are in need of your help as we wanted to go to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... looked over some of the sewing that Mrs. Clare had done and soon learned that the woman was a clever seamstress. Then ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... He inquired for a woman named Lacombe, a cripple living with her goddaughter, who is a seamstress. There is ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... group of mulattoes belonging to Edmond Bellinger, a wealthy plantation owner of Barnwell. With her mother, the plantation seamstress and her father, a driver, she lived in the "big house" quarters, and was known as a "house nigger." She played with the children of her mistress and seldom mixed with the other ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... to the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane Merry's dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even that had had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out from Worth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make over her Paris dresses before she ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... Araminta made a new patchwork quilt. Seven were neatly folded and put away in an old trunk in the attic. The eighth was progressing well, but the young seamstress was becoming sated with quilts. She had never been to school, but Miss Mehitable had taught her all she knew. Unkind critics might have intimated that Araminta had not been taught much, but she could sew nicely, keep house neatly, and write a stilted ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... amused at the shadow cast by her own figure of a gin bottle; an undertaker, in his garb of woe wrung from the pockets of widows and orphans, casts the appropriate shadow of a crocodile; a red-nosed old hospital nurse of a tea-pot; a worn-out seamstress of a skeleton; a mischievous street boy of a monkey; an angry wife sitting up for a truant husband of an extinguisher; a tall, conceited-looking parson, with a long coat, of a pump; while a sweep, with his "machine," to his mortal terror ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... noisy whir of sewing-machines in Madame Levaney's large dressmaking establishment. Cicely Leeds's head ached as she bent over the ruffles she was hemming. She was the youngest seamstress in the room, and wore her hair hanging in ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and two behind, with bits of black crepe round their hats and arms, while Mary and I, and Nancy and Tom, followed as chief mourners all the way to Kingston Cemetery. Nancy, with the help of a friend, a poor seamstress, had managed to make a black frock for Mary and a dress for herself, out of mother's gown, I suspect. They were not very scientifically cut, but she had sat up all night stitching at them, which showed her affection and her desire to do ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place. She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it. I got into that mass of silk and lace—oh, silk on silk, and Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston put on my slippers. Topham, himself, hung me with those gorgeous shining diamonds ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... received at the police-office, that one Fossard, who had several times effected escapes from jail, was living with his mistress in a certain district of Paris; that the windows of his apartment had yellow curtains; and that a hump-backed seamstress lived in the same house. This was very indefinite; for neither the street, nor the number of the house was known, and curtains might be changed. However, Vidocq was not deterred from undertaking a search; accordingly, disguised ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... She was obliged to take in plain sewing, and when she could do so, she gave occasional lessons in French to eke out a livelihood for herself and child. A very short interview resulted in Mrs. Arnold persuading the widow to take a permanent situation with her, as her seamstress. And from that date until her death, which took place five years later, the fortunate widow and her child lived with the Arnolds as full members ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... away. His first action was to learn who were the nurses attending Mrs. Pattmore in her last illness. One of them had left the city, but the other, being an old resident of Greenville, was soon found. She was quite an elderly woman, with no family except one daughter. The latter was a seamstress, and Mr. Miller soon made her acquaintance by employing her to make some shirts for him. He kept up friendly relations with them by taking both mother and daughter out riding occasionally in the summer evenings; and ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... when he had most difficulty in procuring a little bread each day for himself, Diderot conceived a violent passion for a seamstress, Antoinnette Champion by name, who happened to live in his neighbourhood. He instantly became importunate for marriage. The mother long protested with prudent vigour against a young man of such headstrong impetuosity, who did nothing ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... from her sewing, from time to time, neat and dainty, her black hair dressed to perfection, a pathetic expression in the dark eyes with which she regards us from time to time, we think of Marie Claire, and wonder if this little seamstress has not a story of her own to tell, and one which like the story of that other sewing girl, would touch the heart ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... one of the factory towns of Massachusetts recently agreed to take charge of a little girl while her mother, a seamstress, went to another ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... to some purpose. One day she walked over to the farm and made her way quietly to the back door. By good fortune she found blind Nora hemming napkins and in a mood to converse. Nora was an especially neat seamstress, but required some one to thread her needles. Mary the cook had been doing this, but now Mrs. Clark sat down beside Nora to "hev a little talk" and keep the needles ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... bruised her legs, and progressive movements of the body by which she gradually forced her companion out of bed—it was a cold winter's night—to the floor of the fireless room. During the day, the seamstress took Germinie in hand, catechized her, preached at her, and by detailing the tortures of the other life, inspired in her mind a horrible fear of the hell whose flames she ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... purpose. Take your Aunt Jerusha, for instance. Where Mother Eve enjoyed as many different costumes as there were trees in the country without cost, all of them becoming, and wholly adequate, your Aunt Jerusha has to be satisfied with three or four gowns of indifferent fit, made by the village seamstress at an average cost of thirty or forty dollars apiece. A sheath-gown, costing Jerusha seventy-five dollars, in the distance, gives no more of an impression in the matter of figure to an admiring world than your original grandmother used to make without any further sartorial embellishment ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I got my runaway nature from him. But I've outgrown that. Anyway, he left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother was a seamstress in a little town out West—an awful hole it was. I was a tiny little girl when they took me to my mother's funeral. I remember that, but I can't remember her. That was my first death. And now this! I've lost a mother and father twice. That hasn't happened to many people. So you must ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... most valuable stage possession is her Makeup Box. It contains the necessary tools of her trade, without which she would be helpless to carry on. It is to her what the brush and colors and palette are to the painter; the needle and thread to the seamstress; the hammer and saw and plane to the carpenter. Before you enter upon a stage career supply yourself with a complete makeup box equipped with all the needed tools and ingredients for making up for the part you are to assume. This is a necessary purchase, and will ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... farmers in our Wheathedge congregation who don't handle fifteen hundred dollars in money from one year's end to the other. Mr. Hardcap isn't the only man to whom it seems a big sum to pay. Mr. Lapstone the shoemaker, Mrs. Croily the seamstress, Joe Hodgkins the blacksmith, and half-a-dozen others I could name, have to live on less. And you must remember their incomes, Mr. Laicus, as well as yours, and ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... course, was only a rough and ready flag, and Betsy Ross, a seamstress, who lived in Arch Street, Philadelphia, had the honour of making the first real one. While in Philadelphia Washington and some members of council called upon Betsy to ask her to make the flag. Washington had brought a sketch with him, but Betsy suggested some ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... satisfied with that, she wanted me, just now, to advance her the price of three weeks' work. If I had been foolish enough to have done it, it would have been the last I ever should have seen of either money, work, or seamstress." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... chess-players and the singers, waited in a state of bliss to be summoned to the sewing-room. Only that morning it had been discovered that there was enough pink chiffon left, after the bridesmaids' gowns were completed, to make her a dress, and the seamstress was at work upon it now. So it was a gay, rose-colored world to Mary this morning, despite the leaden skies and pouring rain outside. Not only was she to have a dress, the material for which had actually been brought from Paris, but she was ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... relative forms and stability of the substances they encounter, and that there is no more quality of Energy, though much less quality of Art, in the swiftly penetrating shot, or crushing ball, than in the deliberately contemplative and administrative puncture by a gnat's proboscis, or a seamstress' needle. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... food for the mind, that it may be growing all the time by reflection, and thus be saved from falling into a morbid state, such as too often results from long confinement to an occupation demanding little exertion of its powers. The farmer at his plough, the mechanic at his bench, the seamstress at her needle, and a host of others, too often suffer the thoughts to wander into realms of morbid egotism and discontent, when, if they would turn them upon moral or intellectual themes, they might be growing wiser ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... replied, with a sort of fright. "He does not wish it—and he is right. You see, Monsieur, when he married me, five years ago, he was not what he is now; he was a railway clerk. I was a working-girl; yes, I was a seamstress. Then it was all right; we used to walk together, and we went to the theatre; he did not know any one. It is different now. You see, if the Baroness Dinati should see me on his arm, she would not bow to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an old seamstress who came to my parents' house once a week, every Thursday, to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those country houses called chateaux, which are merely old houses with gable roofs, to which are attached three or four ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... for her!" she protested. "Why, I have never yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. And she never sews a stitch—there's a seamstress here all the time, you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks after his clothes. What is it that she does to make ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... "That's true. A seamstress gets done for. When Toussaint was laid up here I myself wanted to go back to my old calling as a needlewoman. But there! I spoilt everything and did no good. Charring's about the only thing that one can always do. Why don't you get some ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... family was much neglected and she was only too glad to transfer to her old mother what little care she did give them. The restful days were gone, one would have supposed that Mrs. Sinclair had engaged, in her mother, a maid and seamstress. "It's so nice," she told her friends. "Mother takes the entire charge of them, and relieves me; children are such a responsibility." It was news to her friends, the fact that she was an ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... girl must become familiar and which she must know how to use—Books, Library, Laboratory and Classroom. Why shouldn't a student be just as able to use her books as a carpenter his plane or saw? One couldn't expect a fumbling carpenter or a clumsy seamstress to accomplish much work or good work. There are times when a girl need not claim to know anything but she must, at least, know where to find what she wants to know. This is the first lesson in the use of books; without ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... have been looking in vain for a seamstress for the last three or four weeks. And I thought I really should have to go to the trouble and expense of sending to Baltimore or Washington for one; for all our spring and summer sewing is yet to do. I am sure I could keep one woman in fine needlework ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the character in "The Mikado" that we referred to her habitually as Katisha. She had been a serf, a member of the serf aristocracy, which consisted of the house servants, and had served always as maid or nurse. She was now struggling on as a seamstress. Her sewing was wonderfully bad, and she found great difficulty in bringing up her two children, who demanded fashionable "European" clothing, and in eking out the starvation wages of her husband, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... I had left school, my mother installed me as her assistant seamstress. She had at intervals continued to work for the slop-shops, in spite of the low prices and the discourteous treatment she received; and now, when established as her regular helper, I saw and learned more of the trials inseparable from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... forced on one when dwelling on the same floor. However, without having exchanged a word, they were already acquainted with one another. Francine knew that her neighbor was a poor devil of an artist, and Jacques had learned that his was a little seamstress who had quitted her family to escape the ill-usage of a stepmother. She accomplished miracles of economy to make both ends meet, and, as she had never known pleasure, had no longing for it. This is how the pair came under the common law of partition walls. One evening in April, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... this you left your leaner Soil, Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's Spoil? Lord! what a Goodly Thing is want of Shirts! How a Scotch Stomach and no Meat converts! They wanted Food and Raiment, so they took Religion for their Seamstress and their Cook. Unmask them well; their Honours and Estate, As well as Conscience, are Sophisticate. Shrive but their Titles, and their Money poise; A Laird and Twenty Pence,[27] pronounc'd with Noise, When constru'd, but ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly from ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... into her new life very happily. She became engrossed in housekeeping for several hours every morning, and was delighted to hear of a seamstress who could come in and work by the day. Deb Howitt was sent for, and she proved a skilful and industrious needlewoman, and amused and interested all who came in contact with ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... be forgiven, if not justified. She ransacked Maxwell's desk for a special delivery stamp, and sent the letter out beyond recall; and then it occurred to her that its opening terms were too much those of a lady addressing a seamstress; but after a good deal of anguish on this point she comforted herself with the hope that a man would not know the form, or at least would not suspect another man of ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... that she should abandon the theater. She had become so deeply rooted there that she could not tear herself away, although Mme. Anna would turn almost yellow from shame over the fact that her mother was a theatrical seamstress. She was disgustingly stingy, ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... weather. Our household, being composed in great measure of children and young people, is generally a cheerful one enough, even in gloomy weather. For a week past we have been especially gladdened with a little seamstress from Boston, about seventeen years old; but of such a petite figure, that, at first view, one would take her to be hardly in her teens. She is very vivacious and smart, laughing and singing and talking all the time,—talking ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... And Mis' Photographer Sturgis, who was an invalid and "very, very seldom got out." (Not, I was to learn, an invalid because of ill health, but by nature. She was an invalid as other people are blond or brunette, and no more to be said about it.) Miss Liddy Ember, the village seamstress, and her beautiful sister Ellen, who was "not quite right," and whom Miss Liddy took about and treated like a child until the times when Ellen "come herself again," and then she quite overshadowed in personality little busy Miss Liddy. Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and Eppleby ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... skim the State Street windows and come away with a mental photograph of every separate tuck, hem, yoke, and ribbon. Heads of departments showed her the things they kept in drawers, and she went home and reproduced them with the aid of a two-dollar-a-day seamstress. Stell, the youngest, was the beauty. They called her Babe. She wasn't really a beauty, but some one had once told her that she looked like Janice Meredith (it was when that work of fiction was at the height of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... give by means of the children evidence of the patriotic sentiments of the parents, Madame Lanoy left with the children the viscount's house, where they had hitherto resided, and occupied with both of them a small shabby house, where she established herself as seamstress. The little eleven-year-old Hortense, the daughter of the Citizeness Beauharnais, was now the assistant of the Citizeness Lanoy, at the trade of seamstress. Eugene was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker; a leather apron was put on, and then with a ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... for you!" continued Madame Boche in a lower tone of voice. "She never does any laundry, not even a pair of cuffs. A seamstress who doesn't even sew on a loose button! She's just like her sister, the brass burnisher, that hussy Adele, who stays away from her job two days out of three. Nobody knows who their folks are or how they ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... a dim lamp in an upper window. It might have been placed there as a signal, or some poor seamstress, in the struggle for a livelihood, might be ruining her health and sight by it. It must, at any rate, have been very constantly there, or it would not so readily have been mentioned to mark a place of meeting. ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... his clutches, and took care not to let them go until he had levied a large tribute. When Paul entered the shop, there were three customers ahead of him. One was a young woman, whose pale face and sunken cheeks showed that she was waging an unequal conflict with disease. She was a seamstress by occupation, and had to work fifteen hours a day to earn the little that was barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Confined in her close little room on the fourth floor, she scarcely dared to snatch time to look out ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... member of all the parish benevolent societies, a zealous teacher in the Sunday-school, an industrious seamstress in the sewing-circle, and a regular visitor ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... owned by Philip St. George Cocke and superintended by S.P. Collier.[4] At the beginning of 1854 the 125 slaves were scheduled as follows: the domestic staff comprised a butler, two waiters, four housemaids, a nurse, a laundress, a seamstress, a dairy maid and a gardener; the field corps had eight plowmen, ten male and twelve female hoe hands, two wagoners and four ox drivers, with two cooks attached to its service; the stable and pasture staff embraced a carriage driver, a hostler, a stable boy, a ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Machine, awakens sympathy for the printer of Christmas story books and reveals Gibson as the twentieth-century Thomas Hood of The Song of the Shirt. One of the most richly human of his poems is The Crane, the story of the seamstress mother and her lame boy. His realistic volume of verse bearing the significant title, Daily Bread (1910), contains a number of narrative poems, which endeavor to set to music the "one measure" to which all life moves,—the earning of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... have brought about these changes in home life, we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... bad seamstress, and the two friends began to make Lottie little frocks; and, as Hopewell only had to supply the material out of the store, Lottie was more prettily dressed—and for ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... extravagantly fond of whiskey, though he was constantly "running it down." I inquired after his wife. "She is dead, poor creature," said he, "and is probably far better off than ever she was here. She was a seamstress, and her greatest enjoyment of happiness in this world was only ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... hook-and-eyed at her glass in her new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. Before he shut his door ho caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before the long mirror in HER new dress, followed by the seamstress on her knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she made Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. It made Lapham sick, and he despised himself and all his brood for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... technically right in excluding Dr. Dolliver from their fraternity. He had never received the degree of any medical school, nor (save it might be for the cure of a toothache, or a child's rash, or a whitlow on a seamstress's finger, or some such trifling malady) had he ever been even a practitioner of the awful science with which his popular designation connected him. Our old friend, in short, even at his highest social ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... officers there is a large percentage of the intellectual elite of the country; its rank and file embrace every occupation and every class of society, from the scion of royal blood down to the son of the seamstress. Although it is based upon the unconditional acceptance of the monarchical creed, nothing is farther removed from it than the spirit of servility. On the contrary, one of the very first teachings which are inculcated upon the German ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... for them. It was the joy of Sydney Carton that he could! He contrived to enter the Conciergerie; made his way to Darnay's cell; changed clothes with him; hurried him forth; and then resigned himself to his fate. Later on, a fellow prisoner, a little seamstress, approached him. She had known Darnay and had learned to trust him. She asked if she might ride with him to ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... warm South, outlined with the statuesque purity of classic scenery and classic diction: but I myself never for a moment believed that Ariadne was a particle more unhappy or pitiable than Nancy Bunker, our seamstress, was, when Hiram Fenn went West to peddle essences, and married a female Hoosier whose father owned half a prairie. They would by no means make as lovely a picture; for Nancy's upper jaw projects, and she ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... her out and give her a good time?" asked Lloyd. "Her being a seamstress oughtn't to make any difference to old family friends, when she's ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that night I sat at a table with a housekeeper, a parlor maid, and a seamstress, and listened to much talk. Mainly, it was a discussion of where the most desirable jobs were to be had in their respective lines. There was complete unanimity of opinion. Clubs headed the list, and ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... the box-office and watch a line of people that stretches to the next block plunk down dollars that they have earned at their own particular combinations of life to see the combination you have made of yours. Why, tears come into my eyes when I see some little, old, dried-up seamstress pay a dollar to sit in the roost to see Gerald Height love the powder off of Violet while she is cursing him under her breath for so doing, and it tickles me under my ribs to see some fat, jolly, lonely, old party buy a front seat two days hand-running ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in La Medecine Moderne of a seamstress of Berlin who was in the habit of allowing her dog to lick her face. She was attacked with a severe inflammation of the right eye, which had to be enucleated, and was found full of tenia echinococcus, evidently derived from ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... business, and he said he guessed he didn't want any more. He is so sensitive about his teeth that he would eat a leather apron if anybody told him he couldn't. When the doctor said Pa's digestion was bad, I told him if he could let Pa swallow a seamstress or a sewing machine, to sew up the cloth, he would get well, and the Doc. says I am going to be the death of Pa some day. But I thought I should split when Pa wanted a drink of water. I asked him if he would druther have mineral water, and he said he guessed it would ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... Miles Merryweather, six children, cook, housemaid and seamstress, two dogs, two cats (at least the basket mewed, so I infer cats), one canary ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... vocation open to women—that of wife and mother. Regardless of aptitudes, physical strength or weakness, personal likes or dislikes, all women were expected to marry and bear children, and to qualify successfully for a vocation which combined the duties of nursemaid, waitress, laundress, seamstress, baker, cook, governess, purchasing agent, dietitian, accountant, and confectioner. In the early days of this country, in addition to these duties, women were also called upon to be butchers, sausage-makers, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... moment's pause, her expression changing to one of gayety and joy, "Now, if you and Lottie will excuse me for a little, I'll run up to my room, and answer papa's letter," she said, rising to her feet. "After which I shall be ready to make myself useful in the capacity of seamstress. Au revoir." And she tripped away with a light, free step, every movement as graceful as those of a ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... slippers, stockings, or any of the costly, flimsy, all but unlaunderable underwear she affected, became not quite perfect, she put it aside against that vague day when she should have leisure or inclination for superintending a seamstress. Within two hours of her decision she had a seamstress in the house, and they and her mother were at work. There was no necessity to bother about new dresses. She would soon be putting off black, and she could get in Paris what she ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... require a cook for your mutton and beef. I require a far better thing. A seamstress you're wanting for stockings and shirts, I look for ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... wide distribution, however, lies one of his own greatest safeguards against either criminal or civil prosecution. Scattered over the country are his investors—the mill hand, the poor seamstress, the humble artisan, whose total investments, comprising perhaps all their savings, seldom exceed one hundred dollars each; and, with their savings gone, there isn't money left to pay carfare to the office of the financial agent, let alone ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... and at once the big bedroom of Mamma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the blossoming, the whir of the machine and the feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress went like mad clockwork, while in and out Mamma's friends came hurrying, at the rumor, to hint of congratulation or suggest a ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... steadily all day. Her painting materials had been put meekly aside, and, as a further precaution at old Mata's hands, hidden under the kitchen flooring. Toward the last it was found necessary to employ an assistant, a seamstress, known of old to Mata. Her companionship, as well as her sewing, proved a boon. Seated upon the springy matting, with waves of shimmering silk tumultuous about them, the old dames chatted incessantly of other brides and other wedding outfits they had known. Marvellous were their tales ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... beginning, which led to the dancing-master's continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child to try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the fulness of time a milliner came in, and to her she repaired on ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... terrifies you so much as the fancy that with the morrow will begin the actual scrubbing and window-washing. You do not mind ripping up an old gown while John reads to you under the evening lamp, but you are positively cross in the reflection that you must sew all of to-morrow with the seamstress who is to put the gown ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... VICTORINE, a celebrated seamstress of Paris, had among her customers the Duchesse Cataneo, Louise de Chaulieu, and, probably, Madame de Bargeton. [Massimilla Doni. Lost Illusions. Letters of Two Brides.] Her successors assumed and handed down her name; Victorine IV.'s "intelligent scissors" were ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... misfortune changed all this. For I chanced one day to fall ill and die (which, of course, might happen to anyone), and as my funeral was leaving the house the cat jumped over my coffin. That was a terrible misfortune to befall a poor dead girl so generally respected, and in wide demand as a seamstress; though, even then, the worst might have been averted had not my sister-in-law been of what they call a humane disposition and foolishly attached to the cat. So they did not kill it, and I, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... compassion for her now. Whatever the drudgery of her life as governess may have been since she left us, long ago, it has been nothing, nothing to the penal servitude of the life upon which she has now entered. The hardest-worked governess, seamstress, or servant has some hours in the twenty-four, and some nook in the house that she can call her own where she can rest and be quiet. But Rose Rockharrt will have no such relief! Do I not remember ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... now it amounts to nothing more than praying and singing. Ought not, indeed, every Christian at the age of nine or ten years know the entire holy Gospel, in which his name and life is written? Does not the spinner and the seamstress teach the same handicraft to her daughter when she is still young? But now even the great men, the learned prelates and bishops, do not know the Gospel. How unjustly do we deal with the poor youth entrusted to us, failing, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... for M'ri's wedding. Rhody Crabbe's needle and fingers flew in rapturous speed, and there was likewise engaged a seamstress from Lafferton. Rhody had begged for the making of the wedding gown, and when it was finished David went to fetch ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... be all of the chil'ens I got left! O, Lord! O, Lord! Do, Massa, buy me, and this one baby! Oh, do Massa!" But the weight of the cow-hide drives her to the auction block, where in mock solemnity she is represented as "an article of excellent breed, a good cook, a good seamstress, and withal a good Christian, a ra'al genewine lamb of the flock!"—and then she is struck off to the highest bidder, who declares that he "won't have the young'un any how, 'cause he's gwine to drive ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Italians. This woman is an expert seamstress. She is finishing men's coats at six cents apiece; and with nothing to bother her, working sixteen hours a day, she makes fifty-four cents. The rent for the narrow little back room is one dollar and ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... little money,—some form of independence which shall give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dress-maker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own. Young women are eagerly rushing into every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best. For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season. It was their good pleasure not to. A week or fortnight of it satisfied them. They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even after her presentation ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in an apartment, and she was not at home. Miss Swift, the seamstress, opened the door and stood in the doorway so ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... received the operation of backing-up from a queer shaped hammer lying upon the floor. The workman at the end of the room is sewing together the sections of a book, for sewing was properly regarded as a man's work, and a scientific operation altogether beyond the capacity of the raw seamstress. The work of the finisher is not represented, but the brushes, the burnishers, the sprinklers and the wheel-shaped gilding tools hanging against the wall leave us no doubt as to their use. There is an air of antiquity about everything connected with this bookbindery which suggests the thought ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... thought of that neglected state into which the pariahs of society fall and on which the inexperienced so cheerfully comment. Neglected by her own set, shunned by the respectable, her fortune quite gone, she was nevertheless determined that she would not be a back-street seamstress or a pensioner upon the bounty of quondam friends. By insensible degrees came first unhallowed relationships through friendship and passing passion, then a curious intermediate state between the high world of fashion and the half world of harlotry, until, finally, in Louisville, she had become, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Georgia. She had two sons what run the factory between Watkinsville and Athens. My aunt, Mila Jackson, made all the thread what they done the weavin' with. Gran'pa worked for a widow lady what was a simster (seamstress) and she just had a little plantation. She was Mist'ess Doolittle. All Gran'pa done was cut wood, 'tend the yard and gyarden. He had rheumatism and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... with a great deal of time on her hands; for it must be remembered that there is no spinning, weaving, or preparing children for school—no butter or cheese making, or a thousand other cares which are inseparable from the agricultural state, to occupy her skill and industry. Even the art of the seamstress is only practised by the Indian woman on a few things. She devotes much of her time to making moccasons and quill-work. Her husband's leggins are carefully ornamented with beads; his shot-pouch and knife-sheath are worked with quills; the hunting-cap is garnished with ribbons; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... named Louise Lateau who had the stigmata. We have the most positive proof of it, as you may see in the accounts of her life now published. Her wounds caused her great pain and bled every Friday for many years. She was a delicate seamstress, and lived with her mother and sisters in almost continual poverty. She had always been remarkable for her true piety, patience in suffering, and charity to the sick. I mention this young girl because she lived in our own time, and ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... of a prosecuting attorney, according to his idea, had to be invested with a social significance, according to the manner of those lawyers who became famous. True, among his hearers were three women; a seamstress, a cook and Simon's sister, also a driver, but that made no difference. Those celebrities also began on a small scale. The prosecutor made it a rule to view the situation from the eminence of his position, i. e., to penetrate into the profound psychological ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny sort of fascination in watching him, as he peered and probed into the mechanism of those ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... explain. I shall dress the seamstress in one of my own dresses, and let her go to the table with you. Mr. Campbell will naturally suppose that she is Miss Ida Sinclair, and ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... Lizay too occupied a halfway place between these and the better-spoken, gentler-mannered house-servants. In the winters, after Christmas, which usually terminated the picking-season, Lizay was called to the place of head assistant of the plantation seamstress. Indeed, she did little field-service except in times of special pressure and during the quarter of cotton-picking. She was so nimble-fingered and swift that she could not be spared from the field in picking-season, especially if, as was the case this year, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... alive. I might be mistaken or I might not, but in neither case was it fitting for Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu to play the spy. I had sunk to the level of the gutter, by the side of courtesans, opera-dancers, mere creatures of instinct; even the vulgar shop-girl or humble seamstress ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... he was a TAPPER. No one had ever heard of such a thing before; the officials were filled with curiosity; they besought an explanation. It appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... here as we are, we must keep an expert cook, you know; we can't send out for bread and cake, and salads and soups, on an emergency, as we did in town." "We must have a seamstress in the house the year round; it is such a bother driving about a ten-mile circuit after one in a hurry;" and now,—"Sylvie ought to have a little vehicle of her own, she is so far away from all her friends; no running in and out and making little daily ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... province are connected by blood; but my untoward fate and the improvidence of my parents, who, I know not how, were unseasonably reduced to poverty, brought me to the court of Madrid, where as a provision and to avoid greater misfortunes, my parents placed me as seamstress in the service of a lady of quality, and I would have you know that for hemming and sewing I have never been surpassed by any all my life. My parents left me in service and returned to their own country, and a few years later went, no doubt, to heaven, for they were excellent good Catholic ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... at her without much interest, supposing that she might be a seamstress, or laundress, or some applicant for charity. So many years had passed since he had met with this woman that she had passed out of ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... week after week devoted women in every grade of life, the wife of the millionaire, the daughter of the day laborer, the gently born, the delicately reared, the social pets and darlings, the humble seamstress, no one too high to stoop to aid the departing soldier, none too poor or low to deny him cheer and sympathy. The war was still young then. Spain had not lowered her riddled standard and sued for peace. Two ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... talking to my cook, had made her dissatisfied with her place. The mother of five little children, I felt that I had a weight of care and responsibility greater than I could support. I was unequal to the task. My spirits fell under its bare contemplation. Then I had been disappointed in a seamstress, and my children were, as the saying is, "in rags." While brooding over these and other disheartening circumstances, Netty, my chambermaid, opened the door of the room where I was sitting, (it was Monday ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... "A seamstress, for example," he says, "can occupy herself for a time in a national factory, and at another time make dresses for private customers at home, then again she can sew for another customer in her own house, and finally ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... man to himself, who made a large part of his living by the sale of under-garments whose every stitch was an untacking of the body from the soul of a seamstress. "Bah!" said some. "A hypocrite, by his own confession!" said others. "Exceedingly improper!" said Mrs. Ramshorn. "Unheard-of and most unclerical behaviour! And actually to confess such paganism!" For Helen, she waked up a little, began to listen, and wondered what he ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... Tripping down stairs with the elastic hop of a bird, she knocked at the door of the lower front chamber, and immediately ushered her companion into the room. It was large and elegant, and in exquisite order. One really beautiful girl was driving a sewing-machine before a window with the industry of a seamstress. Another was engaged in trimming a tiny pair of satin boots with beads of every color. She was short, small, and swarthy, her chief beauty being a languishing pair of black eyes. A third lay at full length on a small bed in an alcove, reading Harper's Bazaar with the avidity of a milliner, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... chosen receptacles for the numerous oddments which are required in the practice and pursuit of every home handicraft, and especially those connected with plying the needle. There was a time, however, when the fabrics used in the making up of clothing were home-made, when the seamstress and the needleworker stitched and embroidered upon cloths spun if not actually woven by the housewife and her handmaidens. In the barrows containing remains of people of the Stone Age, and the peoples of the early Bronze Age, among the few ornaments ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... the poor to help the rich. It is equally important that the rich help the poor. It is impossible to overestimate the value of those visitations of the noble few who leave their homes and seek out the little room of the poor seamstress, and carry sunlight and love and comfort into the abodes of the impoverished ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... hands shall never perform a single menial task! Yet, after marriage, Her Ladyship finds that she is expected to be a cook, nurse, housekeeper, seamstress, chambermaid, waitress, and practical plumber. This is an unconscious tribute to the versatility of woman, since a man thinks he does well if he is a specialist in any ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... forlorn, gray creature, half blind, and she felt her way about gropingly. By the droop in her spine and by the corners of her lips, permanently puckered from holding pins in her mouth, a close observer would have guessed that she had been a seamstress before her eyes gave out on her and she took to keeping lodgers. Of the character of the establishment the innocent old major knew nothing; he knew that it was cheap and that it was on a quiet by-street, and for his purposes ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... with things to tell me, and wanted me to know about her teaching some of the blind girls to sew, which she takes great pride in, threading the needle, and making her pupils pick out their work if it is not done nicely. She is a good seamstress herself, does fancy work, and can run a sewing machine. Next, she caught hold of my hand and led me up two flights of stairs to her room to shew me her things; but the first movement was to take me to the window, where she ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... occupied, and Val had approached the proprietor on the subject of a pension. At present, however, beyond a liberal donation for Christian's benefit, nothing definite had been settled. We had all subscribed to buy her a sewing-machine, and as she was a clever seamstress she was able to make ends meet by dressmaking. She had her cow, and her few hens, so altogether, with the sale of eggs and occasionally of milk, she was able to provide for her little ones for the present. She was such a ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women, in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework. A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun a review ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an apple-parer; another snatches the needle from the weary fingers of the seamstress, and offers her in return the sewing-machine. That man yonder has turned himself into an armory, and he brings out the deadliest instrument he can produce, something perhaps that can shoot you at sight, even though you be a speck in the horizon. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... acts—and Bessie kept their pace, which quickened imperceptibly, ruminating in silence her experiences of the day. Mortification mingled with self-ridicule was uppermost. To be a bridesmaid amongst the grand folks at Fairfield—could anything be more absurdly afflicting? To be a seamstress at Madame Michaud's—the odious idea of it! Poor Bessie, what a blessing to her was her gift of humor, her gift for seeing the laughable side of things and people, and especially the laughable side ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... Sang HOOD, in the "Song of the Shirt," Of the seamstress slave who worked to her grave In poverty, hunger, and dirt. Work, work, work! The Bar-maid, too, can say, Work for ten hours, or more; Oh, for "eight hours" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... securing a worthy public memorial of Darwin. Subscriptions flowed in abundantly, and came from all countries of Europe, the United States, the British Colonies, and Brazil. Sweden sent the astonishing number of 2296 subscriptions; persons of all ranks contributed, from a bishop to a seamstress. Over L4,000 in all was subscribed, and it was resolved, in the first place, to procure the best possible statue. This work was entrusted to Mr. Boehm, R.A., with admirable results. Permission was obtained to place it in the great hall of the British Museum ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... one of the most intelligent and interesting among them, I may here relate. Some time before, Iligliuk, who, from the superior neatness and cleanliness with which she performed her work, was by this time in great request as a seamstress, had promised to cover for me a little model of a canoe, and had, in fact, sent it to me by the sergeant of marines, though I had not rightly understood from the latter from which of the women it came. Believing that she had ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... him alone. Since she was forbidden to walk and bustle about, and, indeed, could not do so, it became her duty to leave. She could very well work at something sitting down, and she had an aunt a seamstress. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... "Yes; the poor seamstress, Anna May. Her days in this world are nearly numbered. I was to see her yesterday, and found her very low. She cannot long remain on this side the river of death. I am now on my way to her mother's house. Will you not ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... by such as have experienced it. His next companion was a popular orator who had lost his voice, and—as it was pretty much all that he had to lose— had fallen into a state of hopeless melancholy. The table was likewise graced by two of the gentler sex,—one, a half-starved, consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in the world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even to suffer. She had, therefore, driven ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by working for cheap tailors. Often had the child looked from the window, and across the Court watched the poor girl bending her pale face over her work, never pausing to rest, but for ever stitch, stitch. However, the young seamstress had seen her little neighbour watching her, and once or twice had nodded to her, and so a sort of acquaintance had sprung up between them; indeed, on several occasions they had met, and the child's prattle had cheered the ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... and could not see that it made the least difference whether she arrived at the beginning of the term or a few weeks later on. Miss Minnitt protested faintly, but soon relapsed into silence, and consoled herself by turning seamstress and helping Bridgie and Joan with the school outfit. It was a case of making new lamps out of old, for little money was forthcoming to buy fresh material, and, with the best will in the world, the workers were still unskilled in ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wear the regular maid's dress of black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor's on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are to be gone any length of time, she will not stay there at all, simply because she is afraid of your men ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... household; and how, after she had sent my two little sisters to bed,—for such had been the increase of the family,—and her hands were set free for the evening, she used to sit up late at night engaged as a seamstress, in making pieces of dress for such of the neighbours as chose to employ her. My father's new house lay untenanted at the time; and though his sloop had been partially insured, the broker with whom ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Seafaring mara. Sea-gull mevo. Sea-horse (walrus) rosmaro. Seal sigeli. Seal sigelo—ilo. Seal (animal) foko. Sealing-wax sigelvakso. Seam kunkudro. Seaman maristo, marano. Seamanship marveturarto. Seamstress kudristino. Sear kauxterizi, bruligi. Search sercxi. Search-warrant trasercxo. Seaside marbordo. Seashore marbordo. Season (food, etc.) spici. Season sezono. Seasonable gxustatempa. Seasoning spicajxo. Seaworthy marirebla, martauxga. Seat segxo. Seat ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... gossip and seamstress, had been called in again, and the girls all had plenty of up-to-date winter frocks made. Miss Titus' breezy conversation vastly interested Dot, who often sat silently nursing her Alice-doll in the sewing room, ogling the seamstress wonderingly as her tongue ran on. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... weeks all was prepared, both apparel and also arms and armour; and there was nothing that was either over-long or over-short, or that could be surpassed for comeliness. Great thanks did the warriors give to each fair seamstress, and to Kriemhild the beautiful the greatest ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Freres. This marriage gave to French letters Henry Murger. It had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... ten months old was amusing herself upon the floor with her playthings. "Would you like to come and live with me, and take care of Dora?" asked she, as Nannie stooped to caress the child, "I need Biddy as seamstress, and you love babies and know how to please them, do ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... a pair of compasses, balanced them for a moment in his fingers, and with the precision of a seamstress threading a needle, dropped the points astride a wavy line known ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... night after night for weeks and even months on end, and sit in the dressing-rooms at balls until four and five and even six in the morning, is then allowed to go to bed and to sleep until luncheon is merely humane. And it can easily be seen that it is more likely that she will need the help of a seamstress to refurbish dance-frocks, than that she will have any time to devote to her young lady's mother—who in "mid-season," therefore, is forced to have a maid of her own, ridiculous as it sounds, that two maids for two ladies should be necessary! ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... ornamented with cretonne roses, carefully applied. She and Sally cut out the flowers, and applied them with buttonhole stitch, sewing until their fingers were sore, their faces flushed, and their hair in frowsy disorder. It was slow work. Miss Pepper, the seamstress, engaged for one day only to do the important work on both Sally's and Martie's gown, kept postponing, as she always did postpone, the day, finally appointing the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day. Pa's cousin, a certain Mrs. Potts, wrote from Portland that she was coming down for the holiday, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... chance, which was the having a son of great virtue and merit, him, through jealousy and envy at the honor the Romans had for him, he caused to be murdered, and left his kingdom to Perseus, who, as some say, was not his own child, but supposititious, born of a seamstress called Gnathaenion. This was he whom Paulus Aemilius led in triumph, and in whom ended the succession of Antigonus's line and kingdom. But the posterity of Aratus continued still in our days ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
