"Darning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Her darning-needle quilted the yawning heel of Tommy Sutton's sock with precision and celerity, and she ruminated silently upon the vicissitudes and failures of mortal life until she was interrupted by ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... woollen stockings over his horse's feet, with the purpose of deadening the sound in riding up a brick-paved entry, common to his own stable and that of a respectable neighbor. Thus far there was a reasonable foundation laid for suspicion; but suspicion of what? Because a man attends to the darning of his horse's stockings, why must he be meditating murder? The fact is—and known from the very first to a select party of amateurs—that X, our superb-looking skeleton, did, about three o'clock on a rainy Wednesday morning, in the dead of winter, ride silently out of Knutsford; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is that the old in years, in sorrow and knowledge, will sit darning the rents and patching the bad places with their trembling hands, as their wise old heads nod and their dear old mouths murmur a prayer, and yet be unable to teach the young how to keep the fabric of life whole, or safeguard it with the lavender ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... watch was over, the two midshipmen went below, where they found Mrs Rumbelow seated on a chest, busily employed in darning her husband's stockings, or in some other feminine occupation, as was her wont: Mrs Rumbelow's ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... well adapted for darning on square netting. In that case the netting may be done in Brooks' Knitting Cord, No. 60, and the darning in Embroidery Cotton, No. 70. The centre only can be done thus—a ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... showed her that her surmise was accurate: there was at least a month's hard mending to be done before that wardrobe would contain garments really worthy of the name of underclothing. She decided to begin by darning his socks, for she chanced to have some black darning wool in her workbox. She brought three pairs of them into the studio, and began to darn. Nature had been generous, even lavish, to Hilary Vance in the matter of feet; and ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... him, it was not in nature to refrain from certain symptoms of agitation. The thoughts she had been indulging in brought suddenly a rush of guilty colour to her face; but she commanded herself as well as she could, and went on darning her stockings, with her heart beating ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the doctor had run it right through his shoulder, and shoved the bullet out on tother side; and so Dr. Todd cured the young manOf a ball that the Judge had shot into himfor all the world as easy as I could pick out a splinter with my darning-needle. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... beside you—she ain't worth it. The miller's a good fellow, and what he says is true, and the watchman's right too. A plain tradesman can hardly venture to marry now. All the women wish to marry above their station. Instead of darning stockings, they read romances; instead of working in the kitchen, they run after comedies and concerts. Their houses are dirty, and they are walking out, dressed like princesses; all they bring a husband as a dowry are handsome dresses, lace ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... of an hour ago," replied she; and she went on darning her stocking, and singing a merry song which she had interrupted to ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... I know I do it well, because I am naturally a good housekeeper; but I ought to take more interest in it. That's the way the good people do in books, and in the end they dote upon the very things they used to hate. There's no saying—I may come to adore darning stockings and wending linen before the year is out! At any rate I shall have the satisfaction of having ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... explain the technicalities of male politics, and fancied that I had made some impression, the answer would be: "Well, I'd go, I'm sure, just to oblige you, but then there's the tomatoes to be canned"—or, "I'm so behindhand with my darning and patching"—or, "John'll be sure to go, and there's no need of two from the same house"—and so on, until I was mightily discouraged. There were just nine of us, all told, to about a hundred men. I won't deny that our situation that night, at ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... manufactured by ourselves from bones. A piece of bone, split as near as possible to the required size, was carefully rubbed down upon a brick, and then had an eye laboriously worked through it with a bit of wire or something else available for the purpose. The needles were about the size of ordinary darning needles, and answered ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... with her own hands, gathered up the candle ends, and cut the cabbage for the brose; all which being done, and the servants' dinner seen to, and it must be confessed, it was seldom that they had a very sumptuous regale, she dressed herself as a lady should be dressed, and sate down to her darning, which was her principal work, in the oval window in the chief room in the castle. Darning, we say, was her principal work, because there was scarcely an article in the house which she did not darn occasionally, from the floor-cloth ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... shilling or half a crown for a straight bar-magnet, or, if you can afford it, purchase a pair of them; or get a smith to cut a length of ten inches from a bar of steel an inch wide and half an inch thick; file its ends smoothly, harden it, and get somebody like myself to magnetise it. Procure some darning needles, and also a little unspun silk, which will give you a suspending fibre void of torsion. Make little loop of paper, or of wire, and attach your fibre to it. Do it neatly. In the loop place a darning-needle, and bring the two ends or poles, as they are called, of your ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... time of life, what a needle-woman! And the darning and mending for the children, it really gets quite beyond me now, Caudle. Now with mother at my hand, there wouldn't be a stitch ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... confidences more and more; and in the end the old lady began to speak without reserve about her past. It came about thus. After Christmas, Dave being culture-bound, and work of a profitable nature for the moment at a low ebb, Aunt M'riar had fallen back on some arrears of stocking-darning. Dolly was engaged on the object to which she gave lifelong attention, that of keeping her doll asleep. I do not fancy that Dolly was very inventive; but then, you may be, at three-and-a-half, seductive ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... her mother kept there in pots. Fanny was passing in and out from the back kitchen, in which the water for their tea was being boiled, and Mrs. Brattle was in her usual place with her spectacles on, and a darning needle in her hand. A minute was allowed to pass by before the miller ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... hard to believe. When I think of the times I've sat in this room of an evening, and seen your husband come in, ma'am, with his battered hat nigh falling off the back of his head, and stuffed with papers that won't go into his pockets, and god-darning some rascal who'd done him about an assignment or a trespass, I can't think he's going up there into the eyes ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... the sour-faced governess was darning a hole in a small stocking. She was as close as possible to the green-tile stove, and she was looking very unpleasant; for the egg-shaped darner only slipped through the hole, which was a large one. With an irritable gesture she took off her ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blinding labor, Aggie applied herself to the propitiation of Mammon, the sending forth of her sacrificial lamb properly decked for the sacrifice. There never had been such a hauling and overhauling of clothes, such folding and unfolding, such stitching and darning and cleansing and pressing, such dragging out and packing of heavy portmanteaus, such a getting up of shirts that should ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... landlady, with a piece of foresight for which I afterwards thanked her, warmed a pot of water, in which my feet were bathed; she then took out a large three-cornered pincushion with tassels, which hung at her side, a darning needle, and having threaded it, she drew a white woollen thread several times along a piece of soap, pressing it down with her thumb until it was quite soapy; this she drew very tenderly through the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... dinner, and all the time after, I devote to writing, sewing, knitting, etc., and if I included darning, repairs, alterations, etc., my list would be tremendous, for I get through with a great deal of sewing. Somewhere in the day, I find half an hour, or more, to spend at the piano. Before sunset I dress, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... brought out the best and the least romantic part of a woman's love—the subtle maternity of it. There is a fine romance in carrying our lady's kerchief in an inner pocket, but there is something higher and greater and much more durable in the darning of a sock; for within the handkerchief there is chiefly gratified vanity, while within the sock there is one of those small infantile boots which have but ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a fearful crop of old bachelors. They swarm around us. They go through life lopsided. Half dressed, they sit round cold mornings, all a-shiver, sewing on buttons and darning socks, and then go down to a long boarding-house table which is bounded on the north and south and east and west by the Great Sahara Desert. We do not pity them at all. May all their buttons be off to-morrow morning! Why do they not set up a plain home of their ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... inward conviction that her sister's leaving Messrs Baines, Jones & Co. was her fault in the first instance, and she made a mental resolution to be more careful in the future what she said. However, Stella met her with no reproachful looks, but was calmly darning a tablecloth as if she had not just thrown up thirty-five shillings, or rather two pounds, a week, which meant a good deal to them at ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... and kissed her, but, without speaking a word to her, he went over to where his mother sat darning the last of her basket of stockings. All the rest were asleep, and having assured himself of this, he drew up a low chair and leaned his elbow on his knee and hi head on his hand, and told the whole adventure of the evening to his mother, and then ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... which was sufficient for ordinary occasions. The chairs, antique in shape, were covered with tapestry representing the fables of La Fontaine; it was necessary, however, to know that writer well to guess at the subjects, for the faded colors and the figures, blurred by much darning, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... in a dull state. We saw only one ball in the market, and even that was not in a dealer's hands, but was being used by a basket-woman, who was darning a stocking. After this, who can be surprised at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... Charms—and I am hers to command, world without end, forever and ever, amen! My eyes cloud up for a rainy spell, and in my throat there comes a lump so big I feel like a coach-whip snake that has inadvertently swallowed a china darning-egg. And when she is through I am the person sitting in the second row down front who applauds until the flooring gives way and the plastering is jarred loose on the next floor. She can sing for me by the hour and I'll sit there by the hour and listen to her, and forget ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a little old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid upward of sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that same chimney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter's grandfather had taken her from ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an easy chair, drawn up to the glowing stove with careful forethought by the old lady. Mrs. Abbot reseated herself in the straight-backed chair she usually affected. She carefully put her book on one side and took up some darning, assiduously inserting the needle but without further attempt at work. It was something to fix her attention on whilst talking. Old Mrs. Abbot always liked to be able to occupy her hands when talking seriously. And Jacky's face told her that ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... to find Nathaniel, and get him to help her move the stove. As soon as the business was over, Nathaniel came into the kitchen, and held up his sooty hands for Patty to see. She was stabbing the turkey with a darning-needle. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... really first-class sister. She did not say a word till she had got out the Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool and the darning-needle and the thimble and the scissors, and by that time she had been able to get the better of her natural wish to be thoroughly disagreeable, and was ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... when he returned, but even the spectacle of his wife laboriously darning her old dress failed to reduce his good-humour in the slightest degree. In a frivolous mood he even took a feather from the dismembered hat on the table and stuck it in his hair. He took the stump of a strong cigar from his lips and, exhaling a final cloud of smoke, ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... these conditions, so favourable to darning, the Epeira does no mending at all. She flings aside her prey, after taking a few sips at it, and resumes her spiral at the point where she interrupted it to attack the Moth. The torn part remains as it is. The machine-shuttle in our looms does ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched into Maida's room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. Maida sat by the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist darning a st—. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... only have been a man—who invented the Klinger darning and mending machine struck a blow at marriage. Martha Eggers, bending over her work in the window of the Elite Hand Laundry (washing delivered same day if left before 8 A.M.) never quite evolved this thought in her mind. When one's job is that of darning six bushels of socks a day, not to speak ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... ease by talking about himself. He described his life on the diggings and the straits to which he was at times reduced: the buttons affixed to his clothing by means of gingerbeer-bottle wire; his periodic onslaughts on sock-darning; the celebrated pudding it had taken him over four hours to make. And Polly, listening to him, forgot her desire to run away. Instead, she could not help laughing at the tales of his masculine shiftlessness. But as soon as they came in view of the others, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... doctors whose work is amongst the poor or in country places must often wish they understood something about the preparation of food. The girls who go to the Lette-Haus are taught the whole art of housekeeping, from the proper way to scour a pan or scrub a floor to fine laundry work and darning, and even how to set and serve a table. An intelligent girl who had been right through the courses at the Lette-Haus could train an inexperienced servant, because she would understand exactly how things ought to be done, how much ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... of the exhibit of every American school was the darning and patching. We hear a good deal about people not learning to sew properly nowadays, since the sewing-machine has come into such common use, but the patches and darns shown by the twelve-year-old pupils of our ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... having formed this astute conviction, walked out of the dining-room, and went down to her snug sitting-room, where, sitting down by the fire, she fell to darning a table-cloth while she thought things over. She had arrived at a conclusion that would have astonished her master, and she chanced to want more cotton, and rose to get it from her work-box. And among the reels and hanks of tape she ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... answered Gertrude. "Your men can have a billiard-room and a smoking-room, while my poor women can't even have a comfortable place for darning the men's stockings and sewing on their shirt-buttons. Oh, men are such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... one afternoon when I was darning stockings by the dining-room table, and the disobedient orphan showed him straight in on the domestic scene. I hurriedly hitched round my chair and drew the casement curtains, making an excuse of "too much sun," then folded the shawl round my shoulders, and sat at attention. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... soldiers (always distinguished by their fine military appearance) take from their cartridge-box or knapsack a housewife, furnished with needles, thread, scissors, buttons, and other such gear, and apply themselves to all kinds of mending and darning, with a zeal that the most industrious ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... all sitting comfortably around the table in the living-room. The lamps were lighted, and Mr. Stanley, in slippers, was smoking his pipe and Mrs. Stanley was darning socks over a mending-gourd, and the two young Stanleys were whispering and giggling about some matter of supreme consequence to youth. The windows were open, and we could smell the sweet scent of the lilacs from the yard and hear the drumming of the rain ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... house asleep, or is he taking his dinner?" I remained quite silent and motionless, and in another moment the voice continued: "What, no answer? what can the gentleman of the house be about that he makes no answer? Perhaps the gentleman of the house may be darning his stockings?" Thereupon a face peered into the door of the tent, at the farther extremity of which I was stretched. It was that of a woman, but owing to the posture in which she stood, with her back to the light, and partly owing to a large straw bonnet, I could distinguish but very ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... watering-place. The air is bewitched with "the world, the flesh, and the devil." There are Christians who in three or four weeks in such a place have had such terrible rents made in their Christian robe that they had to keep darning it until Christmas to get it mended! The health of a great many people makes an annual visit to some mineral spring an absolute necessity; but, my dear people, take your Bible along with you, and take an ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... clicked and Mrs. Moore hurried down the back steps. She was very tall and slender, with Roger's blue eyes and a mass of red hair piled high on her head. She carried one of Roger's stockings with a darning ball in the toe in her left hand and the thimble gleamed on the middle finger of her right hand as she put it ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... Hannah was darning stockings, and she threaded her needle and snipped off the yarn before she answered, "No, thank you, Becky. Mother couldn't do without me, and I hate going to school. I can read and write and cipher as well as anybody now, and that's enough ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... period. He had to devise his own governors for the synchronous mechanism, and here his knowledge of acoustics helped him. Centrifugal governors and pendulums would not do, and he tried vibrators, such as piano-strings and tuning-forks. He at last found what he wanted in two darning needles, borrowed from an old lady in the house where he lived. These steel rods fixed at one end vibrated with equal periods, and could be utilised in such a way that the printing wheel could be corrected into absolute synchronism by ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... it has been the worst time," he said. "If you'll just look at my stockings, I am afraid you will see that there is lots of darning to be done." ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... You know I had no time to put clean curtains up; No time to finish darning all the socks; Nor sew clean frilling in the children's frocks? And do You know about my Baby's cold? And how things are with my sweet three- year-old? Will Jane remember right Their cough mixture at night? ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... said True, darning away with increased speed and importance. 'I'm growing awfully fast, dad, and I'll be able to look after the ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You know he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he comes home tired ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... wind that was getting up. She drew her work-table to her and took out a pair of Shawn's stockings that needed darning. Margaret McKeon's eyes had been failing of late, and Lady O'Gara had taken on joyfully the mending of her husband's things. Her darning was a thing of beauty. She had said it soothed her when Sir Shawn would have taken the stocking from her ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... their large pinions, slowly passed us with their long legs stuck straight out astern, and their longer necks gathered into their crops, when we heard a loud shouting in the direction where the Captain's boat had vanished. Presently the Devil's Darning Needle, as the Scotch part of the crew loved to call the Dragonfly, stuck her long snout round the headland, and came spinning along with a Spanish canoe manned by four negroes, and steered by an elderly gentleman, a sharp acute—looking ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of honor with some men. And Clementine and I, we could not have concealed it much longer. In fact, the truth was crying out everywhere, in the children, in the house, in our own persons, in our faces. The darning did not provide a superfluity, I ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... look nice and the wickedness of laughing and the virtue of scraping every ha'penny. I used to help in the house, of course, when I came from work and I was always getting into trouble for reading books, that I borrowed, at odd minutes when aunt thought I ought to be knitting or darning or slaving away somehow at keeping uncomfortable. I used to tell Mary and Mary used to wish that I could come to work where she did. We used to see each other every dinner hour and in the evening she'd come ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Madame Claes glanced at the children through the windows of her chamber, which looked on the garden, and saw that they were watching one of those insects with shining wings spotted with gold, commonly called "darning-needles." ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... accentuate the contrast of a past evidently diversified by foreign travel and the enjoyment of the arts. Even Mrs. Fontage's dress had the air of being a last expedient, the ultimate outcome of a much-taxed ingenuity in darning and turning. One felt that all the poor lady's barriers were falling save that of her ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... sound about darning; it can, however, be made good use of in embroidery as well as in plain needlework. There are two rather different kinds in use; in both the stitch is a running one and done in much the same way that a thin place would be darned ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... characteristic incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance policy than he could reasonably carry. Of the remaining four dollars she spent more than one on lunches, there were dresses and underclothing, shoes and stockings to buy, in spite of darning and mending; little treats with Eda that mounted up; and occasionally the dentist—for Janet would not neglect her teeth as Lise neglected hers. She managed to save something, but it was very little. And she was desperately unhappy when she contemplated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... broken; and I require of thee that thou sew up the rent." Accordingly the Envoy looked about him and, seeing there another stone, said to Pharaoh, "O my lord, here am I a stranger man nor have I with me aught of darning-gear; but I would have thee bid thy confidants amongst the cobblers to provide me out of this other stone with shoemaker's awls and needles and scissors wherewith I may sew up for thee the breach in yon millstone." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Thumb, and on this account he was always called Thumbling. He had, however, some courage in him, and said to his father, "Father, I must and will go out into the world." "That's right, my son," said the old man, and took a long darning-needle and made a knob of sealing-wax on it at the candle, "and there is a sword for thee to take with thee on the way." Then the little tailor wanted to have one more meal with them, and hopped into the kitchen to see what his lady mother had cooked for the last ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the dragon fly a darning needle, and say it sews up people's ears when they lie on the grass. This is not true. It does not sew up anything. It has ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... by the fire darning stockings, and at this she gave an involuntary alert glance at her niece where she sat with Edna by the round table, her head bent ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... beneficent government. This station embraced a wide prospect of shady street flanked by pleasantly sloping lawns and dwellings of various architectural pretence. Most proximate and most interesting to Mrs. Bowers was the Hilliard house, and while she rocked placidly over her darning, she contrived to hold this gingerbread edifice in a scrutiny which permitted the escape of no slightest movement of chick or child. She saw the newsboy leave the evening city papers; Milicent Hilliard dance down the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... her clear and speedy attainment in that new scene. Strange how she made the desert blossom for herself and me there; what a fairy palace she had made of that wild moorland home of the poor man! From the baking of a loaf, or the darning of a stocking, up to comporting herself in the highest scenes or most intricate emergencies, all was insight, veracity, graceful success (if you could judge it), fidelity to ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... which Cupid can never be blackballed. I notice that Struthers, who seems intent on the capture of a soul-mate, has taken to darning Whinstane Sandy's socks for him. And Whinnie, who is a bit of a cobbler as well as being a bit of renegade to the ranks of the misogynists, has put new heels and soles on the number sevens which Struthers wears at the extremities of her heron-like ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... of Jehanne la Quentine. Consider this picture (how typical a product of the masculine imagination!) of the stout bread-winner, buffeted about in all weathers and amid all discomforts, nobly pursuing the task of earning his living, and fortified by the recollection of a domesticated little wife, darning his stockings at home by the fire, and prepared to lavish her attentions on the weary hero in the evening. The passage is an excellent example of the Menagier's vivid and simple style, and of the use of incidents drawn from everyday life to illustrate his thesis, which ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... rod and the boy looked at it. It was nearly seven feet long, and the whole weight of it, except for the short butt which held the reel, was not more than sixteen ounces. The line was thin enough to be threaded through a big darning-needle, it was known as '21 thread' as it had that number of strands, each strand being tested to a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... entered very little into the spirit of this magnificence. She still sat in her nursery with her younger children as much as possible, darning all the stockings of the family; an occupation which Adeline thought very ungenteel, for she never condescended to use her needle at all. To make Mrs. Taylor a fine lady had been one of the least successful of Mr. Taylor's efforts; she was much too honest by nature ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... is a famous weaver; her grass nest, hung from a crotch, is one of the tidiest bits of basket-making in Birdland, and would do credit to human hands. Yet she has only a beak for a shuttle or darning-needle—whichever you please to call it. I think it is most like the needle of a sewing-machine, with the eye at the point, so that it pokes the thread through as it goes into the cloth, instead of pulling it through ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... property as compared with boys, but that any kind of children are a pretty good investment against one's old age. His increasing wonder is that the whole state of things is so natural. His wife takes comfort in having him in the same room with her. When he is reading and she is darning socks, she is the very embodiment of the fine French expression "I am content." She is not as beautiful as ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... had been darning one of John's gray yarn stockings—the needle was still between her thumb and forefinger—leaned forward. "That's the matter with him, Father, and he'll never be happy until he stops it," she cried. "He don't do nothin' but tramp the streets until I think ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of day socks. A shirt. Tobacco and pipe. Notebook for diary and pencil. Extra balaclava helmet. Extra woollen mitts. Housewife containing buttons, needles, darning needles, thread and wool. Extra pair of finnesko. Big safety-pins with which to hang up our socks. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... household expenses small; and though he entertained many visitors and friends, it was in a quiet way and on a moderate scale. The small regard he had for personal dignity may be inferred from the fact, that to the last he continued the practice, which he had learnt when a working mason, of darning his own stockings.*[9] ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... torn up. No doubt the scamps who did the shabby job fancied that there would be no more travel that way until strawberry-time. They fancied the Yankees would sit down on the fences and begin to whittle white-oak toothpicks, darning the rebels, through their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... was the only woman near the camp, and so all the laundry work fell to her. Laundry work in the pine woods implies mending and darning, as well as washing and ironing, and the poor little woman had her hands full of work surely. It was rub, rub, rub, day after day, over the steaming tub, with the children running about like little ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... simple act, to which no premeditated sin could be attached, and this act was no other, than presenting one of the wives of the sultan secretly, clandestinely, and covertly, with a most valuable article, in the shape of a large darning needle, which he carried about with him, for the purpose of repairing any sudden detriment, that might happen to any part of his habiliments. A female, whether European or African, generally takes a pride in displaying the presents that have ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... lawn. She stopped at the kitchen door, handed in the cress, exchanged a few laughing words with the cook, and then presented herself at the door of the summerhouse. Inside, his books and papers spread over a worktable, sat Donald Whiting. One side of him his mother was busy darning his socks; on the other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk and small squares of gaily colored linen. Linda entered with exactly the same self-possession that characterized her at home. She shook hands ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... time is past as well—and think you she will die? She goes about as if death were a thing did not concern her. When the fishermen are down on the beach, painting their boats or darning nets, comes Gunhild with her vacant eyes, but with a mind as keen as any to ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... seated in the cool, shaded living-room with their mending. It was an intensely warm afternoon and several degrees cooler inside the house than on the porch. Winnie insisted on helping with the darning—she would have felt hurt had she been denied the task of mating and sorting and mending the stockings and socks for the family each week—and she took pride in assisting Mrs. Willis to keep Doctor Hugh's ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... spinsterly accomplishment of darning her own delicate silk stockings to finished perfection, and was promptly importuned by all the young Lawrences to darn theirs. She ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... of it. She had washed the windows and put up clean muslin curtains, and a white towel on the small table, which was further ornamented by a bowl of lovely roses, which filled the room with perfume and seemed to harmonize so perfectly with the fair young girl sitting near the table and darning what would soon have been a hole in the elbow of her father's coat. She had discovered it that morning, and as soon as Neil left her sat down to her task, with her pretty white apron partially covering her linen dress and greatly ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... years more, I should be glad, but of course that is out of the question.... It is easier for you to write often than it is for me. You have not three tearing, growing brothers to mend and make for. I am become quite expert in the arts of patching and darning. I am going to get some pies and cake and raisins and other goodies to send to our girl's sick brother. If I had not so dear and happy a home, I should envy you yours. You say you do not remember whether I love music or not. I love it extravagantly sometimes—but ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... is just a woman who has never been in love with a man who loves her. Lots of them have been married for years," I said, just as innocently as the soft face of a pan of cream, and went on darning one ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... very long needle and carry the raffia from one side of the seat to the other in close lines until the space is covered one way. Then reverse the action and work from front to back, weaving in and out among the cross threads exactly as you do in darning. Be careful to keep the thread even, to prevent sagging. When the seat is woven whip the edge all around with raffia ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... possessions. He had orders to give, rural works to overlook which needed a master's eye,—all of them planned and decided on by his wife and himself. We often went to meet him, the countess and I, with the children, who amused themselves on the way by running after insects, stag-beetles, darning-needles, they too making their bouquets, or to speak more truly, their bundles of flowers. To walk beside the woman we love, to take her on our arm, to guide her steps,—these are illimitable joys that suffice a lifetime. Confidence is then complete. We went alone, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... bought them. Thus, if you wished to consult a certain book on geology, in which subject the library was rich, owing to the scientific tastes of Squire Pritchett, you were told by the librarian for the day, as she looked up from her darning with a friendly smile, that it was in the "Uncle Tom's Cabin section." The Shakespeare set, honorably worn and dog's-eared, dated back to the unnamed mass coming from early days before things were so well systematized, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... going about her daily work with hollow eyes and without the usual glow in her cheeks. Within two weeks, the casual glimpse of Lizzie darning one of Amos' socks gave her a sense of nausea, but she hung on with determination worthy ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... followed her through the low archway, and in a room beyond, very simply furnished, sat a young girl engaged in darning a pair of pink stockings. She was a beautiful girl of about seventeen years of age, not fat like all the rest of the Pinkies but slender and well formed according to our own ideas of beauty. Her complexion was ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... "I don't see how she does it. When she was in the Seminary, she couldn't do anything with her needle but embroidah. I used to have Mom Beck do her mending and darning when ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... them to extract the tannin. The little lady called Katharyne (a fearless forest-maid who roamed the woods in leathern jacket and short blue skirt, followed by an enormous and admiring guide, and caught big fish everywhere) offered to lend us anything in her outfit, from a pack-basket to a darning-needle. It was cheerful to meet with such general encouragement in our small adventure. But the trouble was to decide which ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... room, Papa opened the door of the bedroom, and we entered. The two windows on the right were curtained over, and close to them was seated, Natalia Savishna, spectacles on nose and engaged in darning stockings. She did not approach us to kiss me as she had been used to do, but just rose and looked at us, her tears beginning to flow afresh. Somehow it frightened me to see every one, on beholding us, begin to cry, although they ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... ball of yarn from the darning-basket to roll after the white kitten. He did not mean to be mischievous any more than the white kitten did, but the ball was part of Grandma Dearborn's knitting work. When she found the needles pulled out and the stitches dropped, she scolded him sharply. All her ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... Wasp. He has pretty yellow stripes around his Body, and a darning needle in his tail. If you will Pat the Wasp upon the Tail, we will Give you a nice ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... been a blue something folded on the shelf of his closet. He found it, opened it wide in the air and would have uttered a cry of joy but for the changed look of it. Even this had not escaped Mata's desecrating hands! It was mended everywhere. The white darning threads grinned at him like teeth. Also it was washed and ironed, and smelled of foreign soap. For an instant he tore at it angrily, and was minded to destroy it, but the sense of familiarity held ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... laundry—she's in Joan's room now." And with amazing swiftness she emptied her laundry bag on the bed, covered the contents with her eiderdown, spread out two dainty sets of immaculate French underwear, and was seated with a darning-basket and a pair of stockings in her hand, before the astonished Judith could take in the significance ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... shooting lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the felicity of the name 'windhover,' or ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... at the door. "Come in," answered a gruff voice. I found the lieutenant with his shirt-sleeves tucked up, he having just completed his morning ablutions, an old stocking on one fist and a needle and thread in the other, engaged in darning it. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... knitting-work, a paper of tobacco and a pipe, a few crackers, one or two gilded china saucers with some pomade in them, one or two thin old shoes, a piece of flannel carefully pinned up enclosing some small white onions, several damask table-napkins, some coarse crash towels, some twine and darning-needles, and several broken papers, from which sundry sweet herbs were ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... fair. last nite father told me to cut the eyes out of a lot of potatose to plant. so this noon and after school me and Keene and Cele cut out the eyes of the potatose. we raced to see which wood beet, i had a sharp spoon handel, Keene a darning needle, and Cele a pen-nife. we had 3 cups to put the eyes in and when we got the eyes all dug out we counted the eyes. Cele had 176 Keene 158 and i had 143. jest as we got done father came home, so we showed him the eyes and ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... out the wound with a red-hot wire, or darning needle, instead of cutting, but the treatment is less effective and more painful. Rambaud forbids burning. As to the general condition: if stupor is a prominent symptom the patient must be made to move about and exercise to keep alive his nerve centers. Otherwise one tablespoonful ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... I'll tell you the rest. We'll start in together, up there, and—we'll keep the sewing-machine for home use. You see my socks 'll sure need darning." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... girl may cook like any chef, And know all HALLAM through, May be a dab at darning socks, Or making Irish stew; But what young cubs care for is cash, And not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... attempt an apologue," she said, indignantly. "Upon my word, I think you would insinuate that philanthropy, when forced to manifest itself through embezzlement, is a less womanly employment than the darning ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... that they contain an insult which can be wiped out only with blood or ballots. I sympathize with this feeling, yet, as I said before, there are extenuating circumstances. Wagner was born a hundred years ago. In his time the hand of woman, though white, was flabby and inert from years of darning, patching, stirring the pot, buttoning and unbuttoning, feeding and spanking man's perennial progeny. He had no conception how that frail hand would be steadied and strengthened by dropping the ballot ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... year brought its communal activity: corn shucking in the fall, that was ever followed by a frolic. Bean stringing when the womenfolk pitched in to help each other out stringing beans with a long darning needle on long strands of thread. These were hung up to dry and supplied a tasty dish on cold winter days. There was also apple-butter-making in the fall when long hours were spent in peeling and preparing choicest apples which ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... netting are the most frequently used, and are ornamented with patterns darned on them, in simple darning or in various point stitches. In the latter case it forms a variety of the sort of work ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... get your religion at Bethel rewiwal?" Mrs. Getz quickly asked, glancing up from the little stocking she was darning, to look with some interest at the doctor. "I wanted to go over oncet before the rewiwal's done. But now Tillie's sick, mebbe I won't get to go fur all. When they have rewiwals at Bethel they always make so! And," she added, resuming her darning, "I like ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... to fear that he might, with his rashness, have involved himself in some quarrel with the troopers in the village. Lady Woodley and her children had closed around the wood fire which had been lighted on the hearth at the approach of evening, and Rose was trying by the bad light to continue her darning of stockings, when a loud hasty knocking was heard at the door, and all, in a general vague impression of dread, started and ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... off, and he walked away, not in the best of tempers, into the house, and into Miss Evans's own parlour, where she was seated at her usual employment, darning stockings. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... The young hostess still sat under the limes, severely darning, but Violet and her companion had disappeared unobtrusively into a more secluded part of the garden. For nearly half an hour she had heard no sound of voices. She wondered if she ought to go in search of them, but her pile of work was still somewhat formidable and she ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... yet; and there hadn't been any breadths changed; and the mats saved the hearth-front and the doorway, and she could lay down more. And it would turn, when it came to that, and last on—as long as ever. There was six years in that carpet, without darning, if there was a single day; and Mr. Sparrow always took off his boots and put on his slippers, the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Lillianthals," mimicked Mrs. Binswanger, sliding her darning-egg down the length of a silken stocking. "I wish that name we had never heard. All of a sudden now education like those girls you think you got ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... their full share of industrial training at Tougaloo. They have daily instruction in some branch of household duty, ranging from dish-washing to canning and preserving. Sewing is taught from the plain darning and mending to fitting and dressmaking according to the latest fashion plates. It has come to be well understood that the Mississippi lady of a house who gets one of the trained students from Tougaloo has "a ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... extraordinary fashion. V.a. had the whole of the school premises absolutely and entirely to itself. The Fourth Form room was turned into a temporary surgery, and Dr. Barnes installed himself there with tubes of vaccine and packets of new darning needles. Each girl in turn went first to Miss Bishop and had her arm thoroughly sterilized with boiled water and boracic lotion, and was then passed on to the medical officer for vaccination. The scratch ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... spied a poor little gnat Go toiling along on his nose broad and flat Towards the Rhine, pleasant Rhine; "Aha, tiny friend, I should hate to offend, But your stockings need darning"—which same did he mend, All for ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... her marketing done, Mrs. Nancy sat herself down in her porch to darn her stockings. She had formed the habit, for Willie's sake, of doing all the work possible out in the air and sunshine, and she still clung to all the habits that were associated with him. Her weekly darning was a trifling piece of work, for every hole which ventured to make its appearance in those little gray stockings was promptly nipped ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... could see the dear boy again," sighed his mother, looking up from the stocking she was laboriously darning. ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... transit, he had only the smaller articles which women continually need. Calico, mosquito netting, buttons, needles, thread, tape, ribbons, stationery, hooks and eyes, elastic, shoe laces, sewing silk, darning cotton, pins, skirt binding, and a few small frivolities in the way of neckwear, veils, and belts—these formed Piper Tom's stock in trade. By dint of close packing, he wedged an astonishing number of things into ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... even unwontedly cheery and busy, taking a burned half breadth out of a dark cashmere dress, darning it at the armhole, and pinning the plain ribbon over ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the kitchen sat Darning by the fire, Guileless of what he would be at, Sang sweet as wind ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... precisely the same description, occupied by Sigismond Planus the cashier, and his sister. To Madame Chebe that was a most precious circumstance. When the good woman was bored, she would take a stock of knitting and darning and go and sit in the old maid's arbor, dazzling her with the tale of her past splendors. Unluckily, her husband had not the same ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the profession of journalism. But his pleasure was followed by quick mortification. What should he wear? Still holding the open note in his hand, he looked down ruefully at his clothes—his only ones. For all their brushing and darning they were unmistakably shabby—utterly unfit to grace a dinner-party. Nearly all of the hundred dollars which had seemed such a fortune had already been spent to pay bills incurred during his illness and to buy provisions for the bare little home which had sheltered him in his need and which had ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Peony expanded in breadth rather than height, and rolled along on his short and sturdy legs as substantial as an elephant, though not quite so big. Then the mother resumed her work. What it was I forget; but she was either trimming a silken bonnet for Violet, or darning a pair of stockings for little Peony's short legs. Again, however, and again, and yet other agains, she could not help turning her head to the window to see how the children ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... baby-work within: 'Tis but a clumsy botchery of crime; 'Tis but a tedious darning of old sin— Come out yourself, and stitch up souls in time— It is too late for scouring to begin When virtue's ravell'd out, when all the prime Is worn away, and nothing sound remains; You'll fret the fabric ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... flying in every direction. (I am ashamed of you for laughing at Mr. K., Mrs. Weston, when I am trying to impress upon Alice's mind the folly of such a scene.) I dare say Mr. K.'s wife was at that very moment, five hundred miles off, darning her ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... look after the children, when the others are out having a good time. Her cares never cease. She is responsible for the housework, for the preparation of meals; she has the children's clothes to make or mend, there is company to be entertained, darning to be done, and a score of little duties which must often be attended to at odd moments, snatched from her busy days, and she is often up working at night, long after every one else in the house ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... when the blast came fiercest, and how the smoke would sometimes whirl down the great chimney, I remember well where my father's chair was always placed; and where my mother sat of those winter evenings, when her household cares were over for the day, plying her needle, or knitting, or darning stockings, or mending garments, for such employment was no dishonor to the matrons of those days. With these for the leading figures, I remember how seven brothers and sisters were grouped around, and how the old house dog had a place in the corner, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... nurse had been born without nerves. She was wont to sit serene in a corner, darning innumerable socks, while a tornado was going on around her. Dumps became a sort of continual sacrifice. On all occasions when a criminal was to be decapitated, a burglar hanged, or a martyr burned, Dumps was the victim; ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... clatter of overshoes broke this silence; widow Clemens stood in the kitchen door. On her high forehead, above her gray eyebrows, shone the glass eyes of her spectacles; her left hand was covered with a man's sock which she was darning. She stood in the door and looked at Kranitski, bent, grown old, buried in gloomy silence, and shook her head. Then, as quietly as ever was possible for her, she approached the long-chair, sat on a stool which was near it, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... a suit for you, my lad," said the sailor; "just get your mother to give them a darning up, and they'll serve your purpose, I daresay. Give ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... should feel "as if wind were always coming from your left ear." Try blowing into the ear with the bellows three times a day. It may drive the wind back. For the "fulness, throbbing, &c.," we should advise ramming a good-sized darning-needle as far as it will go into the orifice. After that—or even before—it might be best to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... isn't," laughed Arkwright. "Oh, she taught music, but that was only because of necessity, I take it. She's domestic through and through, with an overwhelming passion for making puddings and darning socks, I hear. Alice says she believes Mrs. Cyril knows every dish and spoon by its Christian name, and that there's never so much as a spool of thread out ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... chambers, the sitting-room and the storeroom; instructions are given for making "blue Monday" less blue; the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are devoted to "Company Days," "Shopping," "Sickness in the House," "Making the best of Things," and "Helps that are Helps," the servant-girl question forming the subject of the closing chapter. The volume is very handsomely brought ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... comfort is the united product of cleanliness, thrift, regularity, industry,—in short, a continuous performance of duties, each in itself apparently trivial. The cooking of a potato, the baking of a loaf, the mending of a shirt, the darning of a pair of stockings, the making of a bed, the scrubbing of a floor, the washing and dressing of a baby, are all matters of no great moment; but a woman ought to know how to do these, before the management ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... to have Sue. Where is Sue?" said Master Popplewell. "Now come you in out of the way of the wind, Debby; you know how your back-sinew ached with the darning ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... summit of the hill we found a rustic table, also a rustic seat on which was seated a comely matron engaged in the very commonplace work of darning socks. She cast on us a sharp and remarkably penetrating glance as we approached. Doubtless our appearance was peculiar, for a pretty maiden in savage costume, a somewhat ragged white man, and a gigantic savage, all mounted on magnificent steeds and ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... and goes out through the vestibule door, followed by Johnny. Mrs Tarleton sits down at the worktable and takes out her darning materials and one of her husband's socks. Hypatia is at the other side of the table, on her mother's right. They ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... your trunk, ma'am?" "Shall I take your baggage?" "Let me 'tend to your baggage, Missis?" "Shan't I carry out these yer, Missis?" rained down upon her unheeded. She sat with grim determination, upright as a darning-needle stuck in a board, holding on her bundle of umbrella and parasols, and replying with a determination that was enough to strike dismay even into a hackman, wondering to Eva, in each interval, "what upon earth her papa could be thinking of; ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Hermione was darning one of Spike's much-mended socks, while Mrs. Trapes sat drinking tea. "Meanin' jest what is wonderful, my dear, and—since ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... heard of it all he was very angry. "Is this how you serve me, child? To fight battles for me? I suppose I should return the compliment by darning your stockings. I had things to say to this woman, many things to learn. You have bungled my ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... kind lady rabbit laugh, for she spent lots of time, let me tell you, darning the holes in her little ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... the family she must do, the mending and darning for the household is her task, the children must be washed and clothed and properly cared for by her. Of her many duties there is ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... of steel wire. In a needle-factory there are hundreds of coils of wire. Some of the wire is thick enough for darning-needles; some very ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... do this beautiful darning, miss? It is the finest darning I ever met with—not to say it was lace." Mrs. Betts spoke more seriously, as she held up to view a pair of filmy Lille thread stockings which had sustained considerable dilapidation ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... aside. If he had guarded less against his own historic faculty, and had allowed space to take up neglected threads, he would have had to expose the boundless innovation, the unfathomed gulf produced by American independence, and there would be no opening to back the Jeffersonian shears against the darning-needle of the great chief-justice. My misgiving lies in the line of thought of Riehl and the elder Cherbuliez. The first of those eminent conservatives writes: "Die Extreme, nicht deren Vermittelungen und Abschwaechungen, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... me. She called me the 'Devil's Egg Bag' for a long time. I used to take a darning needle and punch the eyes out of guineas or chickens just to see em run around. She broke me of that. I know now she never whip me enough, but she made a man of me. I got a good name now. Always been a ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration |
