"Housewife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tramp, who at the back door solicited alms of a suspicious housewife. His nose was large and of a purple hue. The woman stared at it with an accusing ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... they were never heard to lament, either of them. The child's wooden shoes and the dog's four legs would trot manfully together over the frozen fields to the chime of the bells on the harness; and then sometimes, in the streets of Antwerp, some housewife would bring them a bowl of soup and a handful of bread, or some kindly trader would throw some billets of fuel into the little cart as it went homeward, or some woman in their own village would bid them keep some share of the milk they carried for their own food; and then they would run over ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... morning are busy marts. Cargoes of sponge, fruit, vegetables, lumber and other goods are sold in lots to suit purchasers, who range from the dealer who buys by the cargo, or the small merchant who takes a few boxes of pines, oranges, grape-fruit, or tomatoes, to the housewife who wants a watermelon or a bunch of bananas. On the day following their arrival at Key West Captain Wilson handed Dick a roll of bills containing a hundred ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her finery down one of the walks; a priest passes and, while his lips mumble prayers, his eyes, held in leash by fear, prowl around me; one of his flock curtseys ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... year after year, speaking poetry without knowing it, as Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain found he had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it. But the conception of the sun as God's flat-iron, smoothing out and warming the moist earth, as a housewife smooths and warms the yet damp shirts, stockings, and bed-linen brought into the house from the clothes-lines in the yard, is an astounding illustration of that "familiar grasp of things divine," which obtains in so many of our rustic households. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... difference in kind. The naturalist may classify the dog and the fox, the house-cat and the tiger together for certain purposes. The historian of political forms may see in the town meeting a forerunner of direct legislation. But no housewife dare classify the cat and the tiger, the dog and the fox, as the same kind of animal. And no statesman can argue the virtues of the referendum from the successes of the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... 'Histoire Chinoise,' 'Esprit des Croissades,' 'Lettres de Fernand Cortes,' 'Histoire Ancienne' par Rollin, 'Grammaire Anglaise et Francaise,' 'Dictionnaire par l'Academie,' 'Dictionnaire de Commerce,' 'Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences,' 'Smith's Housewife,' 'The Devil on Sticks,' 'Voltaire's Essay on Universal History,' 'Dictionnaire de Cuisine' and several others on various subjects, 'Oeuvres de Rabelais,' 'American Gazetteer,' etc. These, it will be remembered, had remained ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... slender ones whereon the whole earth swings— The thin milk stream that in the keeler sings; The thin green blade that from the cornfield springs; That thin grey thread the housewife's shuttle flings. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... imagination. No wonder that they creep forth from the foul mystery of their interiors, stumble down from their garrets, or scramble up out of their cellars, on the upper step of which you may see the grimy housewife, before the shower is ended, letting the rain-drops gutter down her visage; while her children (an impish progeny of cavernous recesses below the common sphere of humanity) swarm into the daylight and attain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Coralth had shown excellent judgment when he compared her to a family portrait. She was, in fact, exactly the person a painter would select to represent some old burgher's wife—a chaste and loving spouse, a devoted mother, an incomparable housewife—in one phrase, the faithful guardian of her husband's domestic happiness. She had just passed her fiftieth birthday, and looked fully her age. She had suffered. A close observer would have detected traces of weeping about her wrinkled eyelids; and the twinge of her lips was expressive ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... an expression of terror. One of them was an old woman, and the other a damsel of about sixteen. A mass of golden hair fell daintily from a small head, and the oval of her comely face was as shapely as an egg, and white with the transparent whiteness seen when the hands of a housewife hold a new-laid egg to the light to let the sun's rays filter through its shell. The same tint marked the maiden's ears where they glowed in the sunshine, and, in short, what with the tears in her wide-open, arresting eyes, she presented so attractive ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... this volume are here reprinted by the courteous permission of the publishers of the periodicals in which they first appeared,—The Ladies' Home Journal, Ainslee's Magazine, The Scrap Book, The New England Magazine, The Pictorial Review, The Housewife, The Pacific Monthly, The Arena, Lippincott's Magazine, Harper's Bazar, The Century Magazine, Woman, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... still improve. You must become still more steady and collected, and prepare more earnestly and eagerly for your real calling, the only calling of a woman,—I mean the state of a housewife. Women have a difficult task; the constant occupation with apparent trifles, the interception of each drop of rain, that it may not evaporate, but be conducted into the right channel, the unremitting attention ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... poor child is a shoemaker, and his house is next to mine. His wife, though a handsome, was not a healthy woman; but she was a careful and good housewife. It is about seven years since they were married, always lived together on the best terms, and undoubtedly would have been perfectly happy, had their ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... deceitfulness of riches, been thrust on one side, neglected, at last forgotten. How is it with you, dear friends? Are you the man? Are you the woman? Have you put on one side the very treasure of your life,—as some careless housewife might lay aside on a forgotten shelf this parcel or that, once so precious to her? Dear friends, as the year draws to a close, awaken from such neglect! Brush away the dust from these forgotten caskets! Lift them from their hiding-places and set them forth, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... tame her," said Madame Massin. "And besides, uncle," added the good housewife, trying to hide her real motive under a mask of economy, "they tell us the dear girl has such talent for the forte that we are very anxious to hear her. Madame Cremiere and I are inclined to take her music-master for our children. If there were six or eight scholars in a class it would bring the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... every reason to believe that Martha Washington was helpful to her husband in many ways. At home she was a good housewife and when Washington was in public life she played her part well. No brilliant sallies of wit spoken by her on any occasion have come down to us, but we know that at Valley Forge she worked day and night knitting socks, patching garments and making shirts for the loyal band of ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... nearest bar-room, where the most scientific method of "springing the arch" is discussed over a glass of whiskey, at three cents the quart. Springing the arch, though few may be able to interpret the phrase, is a trick by which every housewife has suffered. It is the secret of piling the coal into the measure in such a manner as to make the smaller quantity pass for the larger, or, in other words, to make three pecks go for a bushel. So the Pine Rat vindicates his claim to a common humanity with all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... makes such din this time of night? I am set for to spin: I hope not I might Rise a penny to win: I shrew them on height. So fares A housewife that has been To be raised thus between: There may no note be ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... of cotton, with which that demand is usually answered, with a whole drawerful of skeins peeping from their blue papers —such skeins as in my youth a thrifty maiden would draw into the nicely-stitched compartments of that silken repository, a housewife, or fold into a congeries of graduated thread-papers, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less." The very literature of Hazelby is doled out at the pastry cook's, in a little one-windowed shop kept by Matthew Wise. Tarts occupy one end of the counter, and reviews ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... lane, full of round rough stones, enough to lame any horse unaccustomed to such roads, and had crossed the field by the little dry, hard footpath, which tacked about so as to keep from directly facing the prevailing wind. Mrs. Robson was a Cumberland woman, and as such, was a cleaner housewife than the farmers' wives of that north-eastern coast, and was often shocked at their ways, showing it more by her looks than by her words, for she was not a great talker. This fastidiousness in such matters made her own house extremely comfortable, but did not tend to render her popular among ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... typical patriot is the busy, intelligent, frugal, cultured housewife whose home is her kingdom and who uses her powers to make that kingdom glorious. She regrets neither the time nor the effort that is required to make her home clean, artistic, and comfortable. She places upon it the stamp of her character, industry, and good taste. She supplies it ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... now say without partiality, a good, dear, natural and simple child, born to make an excellent and loving housewife and consort. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... bespoke a mistress of Thompsonian leanings. A stack of oars, seine-sticks, and harpoon-handles leaned against the roof; gill-nets festooned the little piazza, while a great iron caldron, that had evidently done service on a New Bedford whaler, had been utilized by the good housewife to capture the rain-water ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... neighbouring island, and this the majority of them did very regularly. Stores were brought twice a year from the town of Lerwick; and it seldom happened that these ran short, for Miss Adiesen was a shrewd housewife and James Harrison a notable manager; also the Laird was somewhat eccentric, and objecting strongly to all society outside of Boden, did not like that "provisions short" should be made an excuse for frequent expeditions to the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... Police," etc., I., 69 and 91. At Strasbourg a number of women of the lower class are imprisoned as "aristocrats and fanatics," with no other alleged motive. The following are their occupations: dressmaker, upholsteress, housewife, midwife, baker, wives of coffee-house keepers, tailors, potters and chimney-sweeps.—Ibid., II., 216. "Ursule Rath, servant to an emigre arrested for the purpose of knowing what her master had concealed.... Marie Faber, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the fall there are a few cabins inhabited by soeters, or herdsmen, whither we repaired to procure some fresh milk. The house was rude and dirty; but the people received us in a friendly manner. The powerful housewife laid aside her hay-rake, and brought us milk which was actually sweet (a rare thing in Norway,) dirty, but not rancid butter, and tolerable cheese. When my friend asked for water, she dipped a pailful from a neighbouring stream, thick with decayed moss and vegetable mould, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... always thinking in terms of the greatest good to the greatest number. He aims to place his inventions within reach of the great mass of the people. As with his touring-car, so with his tractor engine, he has had the same end in view. Nor does he forget the housewife. He has plans afoot for bringing power into every household that will greatly lighten the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... visiting, no picnicking, no heavy meals, no week-end parties, none of the entertainments so prevalent in our own day. The wife and mother was therefore spared the heavy tasks of Sunday so commonly expected of the typical twentieth-century housewife. But it is doubtful whether the alternative—attendance at church almost the entire day—would appear one whit more desirable to the modern woman. The Sabbath of those times was verily a period of religious worship. No one must leave town, and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... feminine qualities and overlook the very virile additions. We may add to these qualities the intrinsic productivity of old maids. Benneke, in his "Pragmatische Psychologie,'' compares the activity of a very busy housewife with that of an unmarried virgin, and thinks the worth of the former to be higher, while the latter accomplishes more by way of "erotic fancies, intrigues, inheritances, winnings in the lottery, and hypochondriac complaints.'' This is very instructive ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Waverley Novels. Moreover, he is thoroughly acquainted with the Abbey, stone by stone; and it was curious to see him, as we walked among its aisles, and over the grass beneath its roofless portions, pick up the withered leaves that had fallen there, and do other such little things, as a good housewife might do to a parlor. I have met with two or three instances where the guardian of an old edifice seemed really to love it, and this was one, although the old man evidently had a Scotch Covenanter's contempt and dislike ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the housewife makes Her rare preserves, for what's the good? The factory round the corner fakes Raspberry jam with chips ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... from anywhere? everywhere; people who have the music hunger but not the money to satisfy it," he rejoined. "Students, teachers, a little milliner from South Boston, a little dressmaker from Chelsea, a housewife from Cambridge, a stranger from the uttermost parts of the earth; maybe a widow who used to sit down-stairs, or a professor who has seen better days. Really to know that line, you should see it for yourself, Miss Neilson," smiled Arkwright, as he reluctantly rose to go. "Some ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... man, though, I could glean nothing, till finally, a good housewife, overhearing her man and myself conversing, cried out, 'Eh! but by my surely, there's that Red Tom o' the "Fisherman's Rest," nigh to Saltburn, that's new come there, who features him you speak of; but he's nowt but a "fondy," oaf-rocked, they say he is; why, Moll who ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... sternly, to refuse them would be an affront to the cooking of these excellent ladies. A true housewife esteems her cooking only next to her virtue. You must eat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... led the way with housewife pride, Her goodly store disclosing, Full tenderly the golden ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... early days a good cow and calf. Now, that is a great deal to pay; and furthermore, as each small and poorly fed pack-animal can carry but two bushels, salt is a highly prized article. Since it is so expensive and hard to get, it has to be used sparingly by the mountaineers. Therefore the housewife, instead of salting or pickling her meat, preserves or "jerks" it by drying it in the sun or ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... that girl will have everything quietly tucked away in just the right place; not a word said. She is a born housewife; it's in her, as much as it is in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... landscapes in which pretty shepherdesses, impossible sheep, and garlands of roses predominated,—a style much in vogue in the early forties,—indeed the room seemed as if it had been closed and laid away by a tidy housewife years before, and opened and aired for my reception but yesterday. An illumined text,—a "Jonah under his Gourd," elaborately worked in colored silks,—a smirking likeness of "The Father of his Country," and ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... that variety in cooking being a matter of the seasoning introduced by each cook or housewife, the cooking together of a hundredweight of potatoes would not prevent each cook or housewife from dressing and serving them in any way she pleased. And we know that stock made from meat can be converted into a hundred different soups to suit a ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... life Which have meaning to me are home, mother and wife— Or, rather, wife, mother and home. Once I thought Men cared for the women who found home the spot Next to heaven for happiness; women who knew No ambition beyond being loyal and true, And who loved all the tasks of the housewife. I learn, Instead, that from women of that kind men turn, With a yawn, unto those who are useless; who live For the poor hollow world and for what it can give, And who make home the spot where, when other joys cease, One sleeps ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with the help of one of those long well-sweeps still used in some remote districts, or a girl bringing a pail of milk from the cow-shed. In the houses, where one room served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, the housewife cooked the evening meal, children sat at their bowls of mush and milk, and the men of the family, their day's work over, gathered about the fire, while perhaps some village coquette sat in the corner with fingers busy at the spinning-wheel, and ears intent ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... lived a certain housewife who liked to make bargains. She gave away only those things for which she had no use, and then expected always to get ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... when she had bathed and dressed. Each detail of her domestic schedule was given an extra care this morning. The stove was carefully polished, each pot and pan placed in its rack with a precision that spoke an unusual joy within the heart of the housewife. ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... woman was called to account. Within the house, however, woman was not servant but mistress. Exempted from the tasks of corn-grinding and cooking which according to Roman ideas belonged to the menials, the Roman housewife devoted herself in the main to the superintendence of her maid-servants, and to the accompanying labours of the distaff, which was to woman what the plough was to man.(2) In like manner, the moral obligations of parents towards their children were fully ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... she still prefers to build near the house, where hawks and crows and owls rarely come. She knows her friends and takes advantage of their protection, returning year after year to the same old elm, and, like a thrifty little housewife, carefully saving and sorting the good threads of her storm-wrecked old house to be used in building ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... following advertisement for a wife appeared a few years since, in a New York paper:—"Wanted immediately, a young lady, of the following description, (as a wife,) with about 2,000 dollars as a patrimony, sweet temper, spend little, be a good housewife, and born in America; and as I am not more than twenty-five years of age, I hope it will not be difficult to find a good wife. N.B. I take my dwelling in South Second Street, No. 273. Any lady that answers the above description will please ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... warrant thee.—Well, gossip," he said to his companion, "go before us, and tell them to have some breakfast ready yonder at the Mulberry grove; for this youth will do as much honour to it as a starved mouse to a housewife's cheese. And for ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... is the jingle of the bells on the baker's cart as it begins its rounds. From innumerable chimneys the curdled smoke gives evidence that the thrifty housewife—or, what is rarer in Stillwater, the hired girl—has ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the dwelling, the housewife's handy-work is displayed in a pole hung with many a skein of snow white yarn, glistening in the sunlight. Four years have passed since Sybel was a bride—-her cheek has lost the bloom of girlhood, and ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... when our dooryards, our roadsides, our fields and hills shall be shaded by grand nut trees, showering sustenance and wealth on our descendants, and all people, and bearing the names of their originators; when the housewife of the future shall send her wireless call to the grocer for a kilo of Hales' Papershells, the Rush, the Jones, the Pomeroy Persian walnuts, the Black Ben Deming butternut, the Craig Corean chestnut, the Morris Hybrid hickory, the Close black-walnut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... I will be as good a housewife and dairywoman, stir about as briskly, and sing as merrily, as Peggy Curling. Why not? I am as young, as innocent, and enjoy as good health. Alas! she has reason to be merry. She has father, mother, brothers; but I have ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... her children's sanguine adaptability; and, of the three, Cora was the greatest solace to the mother's troubled heart, though Mrs. Madison never recognized this without a sense of injustice to Laura, for Laura now was housewife and housekeeper—that is, she did all the work except the cooking, and on "wash-day" she did that. But Cora's help was to the very spirit itself, for she was sprightly in these hours of trial: with indomitable gayety she cheered her mother, inspiring in her a firmer confidence, and, most stimulating ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... earthenware cooking appliances are used to very great advantage for various forms of preparing food. For the homely pot-au-feu the French housewife has used fireproof earthenware dishes for generations, and does so today. But besides soups, various savory dishes, and all sorts of stews are cooked in stoneware pots. Indeed, so much has this form of cookery come into ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... defies explanation or analysis, but which is a very evident fact none the less. His mere presence leaves the patient with more hopefulness and vitality. The sight of disease affects him as dust does a careful housewife. It makes him angry and impatient. "Tut, tut, this will never do!" he cries, as he takes over a new case. He would shoo Death out of the room as though he were an intrusive hen. But when the intruder refuses to be dislodged, when the blood moves more slowly and ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be noted by you, because, first, the dogwood berry is commonly said to be so bitter that it is not eaten by birds (Loudon, "Arboretum," ii., 497, 1.); and, secondly, because it is a pretty coincidence that this most familiar of household birds should feed fondly from the tree which gives the housewife her spindle,—the proper name of the dogwood in English, French, and German being alike "Spindle-tree." It feeds, however, with us, certainly, most on worms and insects. I am not sure how far the following account of its mode of dressing its dinners may be depended on: I take it from an ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... that Granny forgot her cares and worries and laughed with little Gretchen over her new snow-dance. The days passed on, and the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the little room—for Granny had taught her to be a careful little housewife—was off to the forest, singing a birdlike song, almost as happy and free as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day, preparing a surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most beautiful of the fir branches within her reach to ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... his womenfolk to take a holiday, and they descend upon the books, which he (the humbug) never reads, belabour and bang the dust out of them and flap them with dusters, and all with that vindictiveness which is the good housewife's ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the hens, the rattling of pots and pans by the assiduous housewife in the kitchen, were unheeded by the lovers, "emparadised in one another's arms." The conversation took too wide a range and embraced too many trivial details to be set down here. Only this I may say: they both believed, (as every enamored couple believes,) that, though other people might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... strapped to shoulders and waist in such a way that the weight of it was equally distributed. His pack contained the following articles: A greatcoat, a woolen shirt, two or three pairs of socks, a change of underclothing, a "housewife,"—the soldiers' sewing-kit,—a towel, a cake of soap, and a "hold-all," in which were a knife, fork, spoon, razor, shaving-brush, toothbrush, and comb. All of these were useful and sometimes essential articles, particularly the toothbrush, ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... Broth" is a variant of a widely spread folk-tale in which a beggarman tricks a provident housewife out of a meal. He pretends a stone that he has, and which he gives her after his meal, makes good broth, but it is her chicken that has made the broth. It is a trifle, amusing enough, but remarkable chiefly ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... from the contado. This village lies on the edge of a great oasis in the Sienese desert—an oasis, formed by the waters of the Orcia and Asso sweeping down to join Ombrone, and stretching on to Montalcino. We put up at the sign of the "Two Hares," where a notable housewife gave us a dinner of all we could desire; frittata di cervelle, good fish, roast lamb stuffed with rosemary, salad and cheese, with excellent wine and black coffee, at the rate of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... precedents. You will have no fault to find with her respectfulness towards you and Herrania or with her behavior as a wife. She will be circumspect in her deportment towards all men and is sure to turn out an excellent housewife. She has lofty inherited standards to live up to and she is deeply devoted ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the two sisters, inherited much of her mother's tact and vivacity. When the elder persons of the family were engaged in any domestic employment, she delighted to watch their movements; and they, being pleased with this mark of early promise, never failed to instruct her in the duties of a housewife. She learned rapidly under their tuition, and as she never thought she knew too much to learn, she thrived greatly; so that when she became old enough to be married, she was fully acquainted with all the branches of domestic business. ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... represented to her mind by the man in blue who used to watch over her miserable alley. Before she became accustomed to receiving food at regular intervals, she fairly touched the hearts of her foster-parents by one queer request. The housewife was washing some Brussels sprouts, when the little stray said timidly, "Please, may I eat a bit of that stalk?" Of course the stringy mass was uneatable; but it turned out that the forlorn child had been very glad to worry at the stalks from the gutter as a dog does at an unclean bone. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... with them, declared that she had none. "You speak the truth," said the Saint. "You had some, but if you will now look in your cupboard you will find they have been turned into stone," and when the ungenerous housewife ran to her cupboard she found that this was so! The petrified cheeses were long preserved in the church of Goezenou—being removed during the Revolution, and afterward preserved ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... doctor's accounts, made his pills, and mixed his powders. This left little time for reading and study, and such exercises were still farther limited by the necessity of pursuing them out of sight of the housewife. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... of windows and doors filled with cloth from the village looms; and wood was for the chopping far and near. Within these air-tight cubes these simple folk baked and were happy, content if now and then the housewife opened the one pane of glass which hung on a hinge, or the slit in the sash, to let in the cold air. As a rule, the occasional opening of the outer door to admit some one sufficed, for out rushed the hot blast, and in came the dry, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... life—the type or sign of the generative principle—so the motion produced by the centripetal and centrifugal forces, seems to be that of nature. We are often told of the never-ending domestic duties of the faithful housewife, doomed— ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... still continued the great object of desire, particularly in the eyes of the old housewife, who produced a pot of parched flour and a string of biscuit roots. These procured her some trifle in return; but could not command the purchase of the mirror. The salmon being now completely cooked, they all joined heartily in supper. A bounteous portion was deposited before ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... cut him short by exclaiming with a loud chuckle: "The unripe early pears will probably come from the fruit market to the housewife's hands later; the roses found their way to Countess von Montfort ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... forcing the kitchen door, marched boldly into the well-ordered room to see what they were going to have for dinner. While waiting for this meal, he amused himself by tumbling the pots and pans about. This enraged the thrifty housewife, who seized a double-barreled shotgun standing in the corner and discharged both barrels simultaneously at the intruder. When the smoke cleared away, it was discovered that she had bagged a bear weighing three ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... A housewife in San Rafael was at the moment in a butcher shop buying meat for her family. As the thoughts and images started pouring into her mind, she remained stock-still, her package of meat forgotten on the counter. The butcher, wiping his bloodied hands on his apron froze ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... in the morning, and I told the sergeant-major to have breakfast up at 7.30. There was a cottage opposite the orchard; some French soldiers were inside breakfasting. As I looked through the window I felt I would give anything for a sleep. The old housewife, a woman with a rosy Punch-like face, waited on the men. I asked her if she would let me have a room. She demurred a while, said everything was dirty and in disorder: the French sous-officier was not gone yet. Then I think she noticed how fagged I was. In two minutes ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... only one large room, the atrium, where all members of the family lived together. It was entered by a single door, which was sacred to the god Janus. On the hearth, opposite the doorway, the housewife prepared the meals. The fire that ever blazed upon it gave warmth and nourishment to the inmates. Here dwelt Vesta, the spirit of the kindling flame. The cupboard where the food was kept came under the charge of the Penates, who blessed the family store. The house ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... community a vague sense that millions were there, and a curious expectation of some individual benefit from them. All the young berry-pickers were unusually active, and poured berries into the kitchen door of the inn. There was not a housewife who was not a little more anxious about the product of her churning; not a farmer who did not think that perhaps cord-wood would rise, that there would be a better demand for garden "sass," and more market for chickens, and who did not regard with more interest his promising colt. When he drove to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... side, and butted towards the open door; but he strove in vain to close it, until his son and the General lent their aid. The hall was sown with broken glass and fragments of picture frames, and here and there an engraving lay wet and crumpled, but not even the housewife regarded these things for the ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... new-made bread filled it with cheer. As the girl resumed her apron, Wayland settled into a chair with a sigh of content. "I like this," he said aloud. "There's nothing cowgirl about you now, you're the Anglo-Saxon housewife. You might be a Michigan or Connecticut girl at ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... as Anne described Arline's valiant attempt at making a Spanish omelet from a recipe in a cook-book she had purchased that very day for twenty-five cents at the little book store just below the campus. "It was called the 'Model Housewife,' but the omelet was really a dreadful affair," continued Anne. "Then I let the potatoes boil dry and they scorched on the bottom, and no one knew how to make a cream dressing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the talents of a good housewife, but she has lived as the plants live. Ignorance, monseigneur, is as sacred a thing as knowledge. Knowledge and ignorance are only two ways of living, for the human creature. Both preserve the soul ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... and would bestow them upon them that had need.[144] And Mr. Brisk, not knowing where or how she disposed of what she made, seemed to be greatly taken, for that he found her never idle. I will warrant her a good housewife, quoth he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife-bee and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his stepmother, was good to him and he to her. Above all she encouraged him in his early studies, to which a fretful housewife could have opposed such terrible obstacles. She lived to hope that he might not be elected President for fear that enemies should kill him, and she lived to have her fear fulfilled. His affectionate care over her continued to the end. She lived latterly with her son John Johnston. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... 21st of October, 1772, youngest of many children of the Rev. John Coleridge, Vicar of the Parish and Head Master of the Grammar School of Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. One of the poet's elder brothers was the grandfather of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. Coleridge's mother was a notable housewife, as was needful in the mother of ten children, who had three more transmitted to her from her husband's former wife. Coleridge's father was a kindly and learned man, little sophisticated, and distinguishing himself now and then by comical acts of what is called absence ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... social degradation in the to-morrow. There should be severe child-labor and factory-inspection laws. It is very desirable that married women should not work in factories. The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner; the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances. If a race does not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a contumelious manner, boor a bumptious ill-breeding; not one of these words is any longer confined in its application to a particular social rank. Terms for womankind are soon tainted. Wench meant at first nothing worse than girl or daughter, quean than woman, hussy than housewife; even woman is generally felt to be half-slighting. Terms affirming unacquaintance with sin, or abstention from it, tend to be quickly reft of what praise they are fraught with; none of us likes to be saluted as ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... queer and rather dangerous. A few, indeed, shuffled along between the column and the little hopeless shops and grimy factory sheds, and one or two accompanied their women, carrying the baby. Now and then there passed us some better-to-do citizen-a housewife, or lawyer's clerk, or ironmonger, with lips pressed rather tightly together and an air of taking no notice of this disturbance of traffic, as though the whole thing were a rather poor joke which they ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and Francis Willard (whose father was now in the Assembly) and half a dozen more to court Patty, who would not so much as look at them. And when I twitted her with this she would redden and reply: "I was created for a housewife, sir, and not to make eyes from behind a fan." Indeed, she was at her prettiest and best in the dimity frock, with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... housewife, warring against untidiness, has felt the truth of these lines, though she may not have known that the great poet ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... buying," says Ruskin. "No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable until it has been read and reread, and loved and loved again, and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store." [Footnote: Ruskin's ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... somewhat humbler levels that generation—as Mary Austin has pointed out of American fiction at large—came nearer to reality by its representation of a type peculiar to the United States: the "woman" who is also a "lady"; that is, who combines in herself the functions both of the busy housewife and of the charming ornament of her society. The gradual reduction in America of the servant class has served to develop women who keep books and music beside them at their domestic tasks as pioneer farmers kept ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... course in nursing had been abandoned, not for lack of enthusiasm but because each housewife had more than she could attend to at home. The chateau was not the only place where refugees halted, and all the villagers had done their best to make the travelers comfortable. From where I stood overlooking the two valleys, I could see the interminable line of carts on all roads ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... for the work, and dyed at home with such native tints as butternut and foreign colors as logwood. The rooms were all heated with fireplaces, where wood was burned, and coal was never seen. They were lit at night with tallow-candles, which were mostly made by the housewife herself, or by lard-oil glass lamps. In the winter the oil would get so stiff with the cold that it had to be thawed out at the fire before the lamp would burn. There was no such thing as a hot-air furnace known; and the fire ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Its shelves accumulated dress goods, dry goods, clothing, hardware; its rafters dangled with tinware and kettles, with rope, harness, webbing; its bins overflowed with various food-stuffs unknown to the purveyor of a lumber camp's commissary, but in demand by the housewife; its one glass case shone temptingly with fancy stationery, dollar watches, and even cheap jewelry. There was candy for the children, gum for the bashful maiden, soda pop for the frivolous young. In short, there ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... matter-of-fact housewife she was, and so unruffled by the momentary haste of this rejection, that, an instant afterwards, she was tidily picking up a few leaves which had strayed from between her scissors and her apron, when she had arranged ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... listened to in gloomy silence or received with grunting monosyllables, while the Boers talked among themselves only about home and farming work or the sale of stock. More than once, too, I heard one of the men near me wonder how the housewife would be getting on with the beasts and sheep. The words were spoken in Boer Dutch; but in the course of years I had become pretty well acquainted with the expressions of ordinary life. Thus it seemed as if the men were anything but contented followers ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... prim of face, Who'll duly fill the housewife's place, And with her hard, domestic grace Illusions scatter; But sometimes when the stars are full, While at my season'd pipe I pull, I'll see my little love once more, With brilliant lovers by the score, Whose tributes flatter. And, thinking of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... too sleepy to work for food, invested half of the capital that was to have furnished the swell feed the night before in what two bits would purchase from a generous housewife on a near-by farm, and then, stretching themselves beneath the shade of a tree sufficiently far from the road that they might not attract unnecessary observation, they slept ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... will be useful not only to vegetarians, but also to flesh eaters, who are often at a loss for recipes for non-flesh dishes. Nowadays most people admit that "too much meat is eaten"; but when the housewife tries to put before her family or friends a meal in which meat is to be conspicuous by its absence, she is often at a loss how to ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... Houses are built of palm wood, covered with palm leaves, furnished with palm mats, lighted with palm chips, and heated with palm coals. The whole architecture of these countries is fashioned by the date tree. Date wine is the favorite intoxicating beverage. There is a proverb current there that a good housewife can vary the preparation of the date for her guests every day in the month. Even the pulp is eaten. Each tree yields an average of 50-250 lbs. of dates; and a tree may last over 200 years. An acre may contain more than 200 trees. The labor of cultivation is ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... servant-like black apron, which spoiled everything. On no account would mademoiselle have appeared in her own house without the thick handkerchief and the voluminous apron. The first was a positive matter of morality—it was quite improper not to wear a fichu; the second was the ensign of a good housewife—she appeared to think that by means of it she somehow effected a large saving in her brother's income. She had, with her own hands, made and presented to Caroline similar equipments; and the only serious quarrel they had ever had, and which still left a soreness in the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... not listening to her father's stories or helping her mother with the housework, which, good housewife that Mrs. Barton was, she took great pains to teach her youngest daughter how to do well, Clara was as busy as possible in some other way. In that household there were no drones, and the little girl was not even allowed to waste time in playing with dolls, although she was given time to take ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... hostesses. If so, it must have been a good one. But to say this is to belittle Mary's powers of intuition. It was they, sharpened by her adoration of William, and by her intensity for everything around him, that made her so efficient a housewife. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... "Hold your peace, housewife," said the Knight, "you speak like a fool, and meddle with what concerns you not.—Wrong at my hand? The cowardly knave has ever had but even too much right. Had I cudgelled the cur soundly when he first bayed at me, the cowardly mongrel had ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and warm, yet she could use her hands well, and would herself carry out food to the laborers in the field. After work, came the recreations, dancing and playing in the greenwood, and the "harvest home." She was a thorough housewife. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the meteors which we have been accustomed to consider trivial or incidental matters in planetary and stellar systems, no more important than the dust which the housewife raises from parlor and chamber, are really fundamental and basic elements of the Universe, capable of generating comets, planets, suns ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... why it is that the most skilled hotel chefs cannot fry spring chicken so as to faintly imitate the culinary wonders attained by a capable housewife? ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... Kyllikki, the lovely housewife, Wandered round and gazed about her, 20 Through the home of Lemminkainen, And through Kaukomieli's homestead; On the comb she looked at evening, On the brush she looked at morning, And at length one day it happened, In the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... building for illicit distillery, and I came out of it a more charitable and contented man. All was above board, fair and clean. The meat was fresh and good. The flour was fine and sweet; the butter and lard would grace the neatest housewife's larder; the forms on which the pies were moulded were as pure as spotless marble. The men and boys looked healthy and bright; their hands were smooth and clean, and their aprons white as snow. Not one of them smoked ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... great picture in oils that was to make his fortune, the picture never was painted. He was always too busy at what he called pot-boilers, which had to be sold to dealers for a trifle, in order to enable him to meet the butcher's and baker's bills. He never repented his marriage; Bessy was an admirable housewife, and made a shilling go as far as many women would a half-crown. In the summer they generally went down for a couple of months to Leigh, for her to see her friends, for him to gather a fresh stock ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... to parties, and if she did appear, in her at least ten-times-altered marriage dress, it was generally to sit alone in a corner, or to carry on a tedious conversation with a similarly situated housewife about the dearness of the times and the ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... well-to-do man, anxious to give his children greater advantages than he had enjoyed, and to improve the fine place of which he was justly proud. Mrs. Grant was a notable housewife, as ambitious and industrious as her husband, but too busy to spend any time on the elegancies of life, though always ready to help the poor and sick like a good neighbor and Christian woman. The three sons—Tom, Dick, and Harry—were big fellows of seventeen, nineteen, and ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... tried to come with us on the train. It looked so attractive with electric lights in each seat, and observation car and library. A reporter interviewed us and Mr. Clark gave us a box of segars and a bottle of whiskey. But they will not last, as will Dad's razors and your housewife. I've used Dad's razors twice a day, and they still are perfect. It's snowing again, but we don't care. They all came to the station to see us off but no one cried this time as they did when we went to South Africa. Somehow we cannot ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... destruction; and each man carries only what little articles he can stow away in his saddle-bags and roll up in his blanket. His inventory might run as follows: A shirt, a pair of socks (and often he has only those he wears), a housewife or needle-book, paper and envelopes, a tin cup, and bag which contains his coffee and sugar mixed together. Some men carry a towel and soap. The great effort is to learn to get along with the very ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... were essentially Dutch. New York gets her Santa Claus, her doughnuts, crullers, cookies, and many of her odors, from the Dutch. The New York matron ran to fine linen and a polished door-knocker, while the New England housewife spun linsey-woolsey and knit "yarn mittens" ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... the musk-ox they make also very good spoons much like ours in shape; and I must not omit to mention their marrow spoons (pattēkniuk, from pāttĕk, marrow), made out of long, narrow, hollowed pieces of bone, of which every housewife has a bunch of half a dozen or more tied together, and generally attached to ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry |
