"Housework" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the love of a girl of the people transferred to a loftier level. Bourgeat did all my errands, woke me at night at any fixed hour, trimmed my lamp, cleaned our landing; as good as a servant as he was as a father, and as clean as an English girl. He did all the housework. Like Philopoemen, he sawed our wood, and gave to all he did the grace of simplicity while preserving his dignity, for he seemed to understand that ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. 'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... to vote if they want to. There's nothing to stop 'em voting and doing their housework as well; and the Lord knows it doesn't matter who they vote for, as all the members are only a pack of 'skytes,' after a good billet for themselves. Think I'll have a go for it to see if it would pay better than farmin'," ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... of the woman who had nursed him. He was earning a somewhat precarious living by giving lessons in the use of the rapier, and in teaching German; and gladly accepted the offer to move out to Kilgowrie, where he was established in a cottage close to the house, where his wife aided in the housework. He became a companion of Fergus in his walks and rambles and, being an honest and pleasant fellow, the lad took to him; and after a few months their conversation, at first somewhat disjointed, became easy and animated. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... exploring untold depths below and above, they only succeeded in unearthing Hippolyte. He came up from his bed looking just like that very clever Missing Link that was at Barnum's, do you remember?—the one that sometimes was an Irishwoman, and could do housework in a cage by itself. I don't know exactly what Hippolyte had on, but it ended up with a petticoat of red and black plaid, and a pair of grey linen trousers over his shoulders; his whiskers and hair were standing straight on end, and his shaved bits were bluer than ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... for about a month when I was 21. It happened because I had nothing to do while visiting my mother before returning to University except help with housework and prepare meals. The food available in the backwoods of central B.C. didn't appeal to me because it was mostly canned vegetables, canned milk, canned moose meat and bear meat stews with lots of gravy and greasy potatoes. I decided to pass on it altogether. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... about the factory, and what Mrs. Snawdor says about housework, and what somebody says about everything I start to do. Looks like being a nice girl ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Mediaeval Methods of Industry.—Outside of the tilling of the soil, the early industries were centred in the home, which gave rise to the well-known house system of {431} culture. "Housework" has primary relation to goods which are created for the needs of the household. Much of the early manufacturing industry was carried on within the household. Gradually this has disappeared to a large extent through the multiplication of industries outside the home, power manufacture, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the housework of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men of the creek. Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and hard-bitten, who had been buried so deeply inside the Circle that they did not know there was a Klondike ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... name was Harmony Vickers—was doing her part in that little brick house which the Colonel had taken Lane to see. There she worked and saved, treating her husband's money like a sacred fund to be treasured. When the colonel came home from his weekly trips, he helped in the housework, and nursed the boy through the croup at night, saving his wife where he could. It was long after success had begun to look their way before Mrs. Price would consent to move into the wooden cottage on a quiet cross street that the Colonel wanted to buy, or employ more than one servant. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... "No housework, no cooking! Clothes made for me especial? Not hand-me-downs an' left-overs? No kids to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the house agin. She is out in a minute with a clipping from a newspaper and hands it over to Doctor Kirby, as proud as a kid with copper-toed boots. The doctor reads it all the way through, and then he hands it back without saying a word. The old lady goes away to fiddle around about the housework purty soon and the old man looks at the ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... countenance. Physically they were well proportioned. Some of the men and women had fine figures, strong and robust, and many of the women were powerful and of unusual height. The greater portion of the work fell to the lot of the women, who looked after the housework, tilled the land, laid up a store of wood for the winter, beat the hemp and spun it, and made fishing nets from the thread. They also gathered in the harvest and prepared it for food. The occupation ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... room, nor did she know for what reason. Nor was her next action any impulse of her own. Mechanically she set about the housework of her home. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... free-love affair appeared, but an elderly woman in spectacles who had once been Professor Moreton's cook, and now, doing all the housework for Ben, contrived to make him so comfortable that the editor of a more radical paper than his own had described the flat as "a ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... When all the housework was finished, the girls dressed the happy, wriggling baby in his blue highwayman coat and three-cornered hat, and kept him amused while mother changed her dress and got ready to take him over to granny's. Mother always went to granny's every Saturday, and generally some of the children went with ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... till I became really desperate, and so was in a fit state to agree to a plan proposed by a schoolmate—to run away. She too had troubles at home; her mother made her help in the housework; she had to wash dishes when she wanted to play out ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... Sunday, when solemn feelings almost irresistibly make their way into the heart, almost as on the eve of her confirmation, so Freneli felt on the eve of her wedding. Thoughtfully and seriously she did her housework; perhaps she had never spoken so little as on that day. At times she felt like weeping, and still she had a friendly smile for all she met. Then again she would sink into deep reflection, in which she forgot place and time and everything; she knew nothing of herself, nothing of this brooding. Then ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... was a little wee girl. Well, one day I was reading, and Aunt Caroline happened to come in. She despised reading, and thought it was an utter waste of time, and that I ought to sew or knit all the time, since I could not help Mother with the housework. She was very practical herself, and a famous housekeeper. So she looked at me, and frowned, and said, 'Well, Pink, mooning away over a book as usual? Useless rubbish! yer ma'd ought to keep ye at work.' I didn't say anything; I never said much to Aunt Caroline, because I ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... time playing house." Having nothing else to do, I really enjoyed it. I have swept and dusted, and handled all my little treasures, touching everything with a queer sensation—it had all become so very precious. All the time my thoughts flew back to the past. That is the prettiest thing about housework—one can think of such nice things when one is working with one's hands, and is alone. I don't wonder Burns wrote verses as he followed ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... her bookcase, and went at housework as if it were a five-barred gate; of course she missed the leap, but scrambled bravely through, and appeared much sobered by the exercise. Sally had departed to sit under a vine and fig-tree of her own, so Di had undisputed sway; but if dish-pans and dusters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... but reduce us all—we who are the defenders of the people—to being slaves," he said with some asperity. "Your class has had its innings long enough, it would be the best thing in the world for you to have to come down to doing your own housework." ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... returned from Philadelphia in February, 1853. Miss Mary Walker had taught the school during her absence. Shortly after her return to Mt. Hope, Miss Abigail Peck and Miss Cinderella Britto arrived, the former to teach school, the latter to assist in housework, Miss Thayer to have general supervision as matron of the boarding school. The American Board doubled their appropriation, so that each one of the ladies were to receive one hundred dollars a year, and find their own board. Miss Thayer taking ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... I had Kaetchen to help me in the housework, and whatever we did pleased my brave old father, who was always gentle and indulgent towards us women, though he was stern enough with the apprentices in the mill. Karl, the oldest of these, was his favourite; and I can see now ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... But ma, poor soul, because of that twist her mind had taken through sorrow, was always seeing something wrong in everything we did; she never could be quiet or contented. The boys didn't get so much of it: they were off out of doors and later at their trades; but me, I was kept in to help with the housework, and kept in for company, and kept in for no other reason, I guess, than because my wicked heart longed so to go out and play with the girls and boys. I dare say it was good for me. Ma meant all right, that I know, but ma was all along a sick woman. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... her because she goes to the altar with her head full of book learning, her hands of no earthly use, save for the piano and brush; because she has no conception of the duties and responsibilities of a wife; because she hates housework, hates its everlasting routine and ever recurring duties; because she hates children and will adopt every means to evade motherhood; because she loves her ease, loves to have her will supreme, loves, oh how well, to be free to go and come, to let the days slip ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... equal to applying for the position of general housework man, if I lose my job. I can sew—you ought to see the elegant patch I put on the seat of my old blues—I can 'scrub and wash' clothes, I can sweep beautifully, I can make a bed with neatness and despatch. And I have been known to get on my ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that he did most of the family washing—that is, he did the rubbing, the wringing, the lifting, the hanging out—and once a week he scrubbed. When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although there seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... I suppose, and you see people, and get plenty of time for reading, and the pay is better than I could get at anything else. The fact is," she began to gain confidence as she talked, "I don't want to go on in the old humdrum way forever, doing housework and sewing, and never getting a chance at anything better. I have enough to eat and to wear at home, but the soul has some claims too, and I long for the contact of higher natures than those by whom I am now surrounded. I want opportunities for self-culture, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... unguents healing, or dye for the whiskers, or salve for the corns, or something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or knobs for the cattle to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd better be walking, and let me go on with my housework, I think; you look dissipated, if truth must be stated, and if you had money ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... show my work-card in the stores; I had usually forgotten to bring it, or sometimes I had brought my husband's card, which would not do at all, unless I could say that I had been ill or disabled, for a woman is expected to work quite the same as a man. Of course her housework counts, and as we are on a sort of public mission, they count our hours of travel as working-hours, especially as Aristides has made it a point of good citizenship for us to stop every now and then and join in the Obligatories when the villagers were getting in the farm crops or quarrying ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... one thing sure," she said proudly to Mrs. Reist, "our Amanda ain't lazy. It seems to abody she's workin' more'n ever this here spring. I guess mebbe she thinks she better get all the ins and outs o' housework so as she can do it right ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... "that women nowadays, having been relieved of the burden of housework, have no employment but the cultivation ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... this house where for hours now I have been sitting and writing. She is a tall woman with black hair, turning a little grey. Listen, she is going softly up a flight of stairs. All day she goes softly about, doing the housework in ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... connection with Shenac, for this winter was a very busy time with her. True, her work did not press upon her, so as to make her anxious or impatient, as it sometimes used to do in summer; but she was never idle. There were sewing and housework and a little wool-spinning, and much knitting of stockings and mittens for them all. The knitting was evening work, and, when Hamish was not reading aloud, Shenac's hands and eyes were busy with different matters. She ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... other people knew about the advent of the Mr. Foxleys. Had there been a sister or a daughter, or a wife or a mother, or an aunt or a cousin about the farm, he would have known very quickly. As it was, the girl who did the housework on the farm was as ignorant of gossip, its existence and the laws which govern its nature, as any male farm hand could be. When Farmer Wise put up his horses at the Inn three or four times a year, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... this, though I had a notion that Donna Battestina was of a saving disposition. I had heard the pair of them protest when the Princess offered to make herself useful in the farm-work—for which she was plainly unfit—or, failing that, in the housework. They had made up their minds about us, that we were persons of gentle blood, to whom all ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... solution of the "servant problem" will not be that every woman will do all her own housework, but that domestic work will become, on the one hand, very much simplified and, on the other, will be put on the same footing as teaching, nursing or secretarial work. That we are beginning to move in this direction is evidenced by the coming into existence of schools of domestic economy, ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... concession to the drabness of married life. Alix, after meeting some of the other wives at the mine—there were but five or six—saw that Cherry had been affected by them. There was general sighing over the housework, a mild conviction that men were all selfish and unreasonable. "And I must say," Alix's first letter to her father admitted, "that the men here are all dogs, except the ones ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... from some station on the railroad over toward the pass. She was just about all in; and, of course, Nelly had her into the house and was fixing her up in no time. She wanted to work, but admitted that she had never done much housework. She said, straight out, that they should never know more about her than they knew, then; but insisted that she was not a bad woman. At first, Will and I were against it for, of course, it was easy to see that she was ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... from the rocky farm that the father and mother looked about them to see how they could add to it. Miranda Conwell turned to her needle and often sewed far into the night, making coats, neckties, any work she could obtain that would bring in a few dollars. She was never idle. The moment her housework was done, her needle was flying, and Russell had ever before him the picture of his patient mother, working, ever working, for the family good. The only time her hands rested was when she read her children such stories and pointed such lessons as she knew were needed to develop childish minds and ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... bad for both of us!" Jenny did not think so really; but she said it. She thought Emmy had the bread and butter pudding nature, and that she did not greatly care what she ate as long as it was not too fattening. Jenny thought of Emmy as born for housework and cooking—of stew and bread puddings. For herself she had dreamed a nobler destiny, a destiny of romance, of delicious unknown things, romantic and indescribably exciting. She was to have the adventures, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... if the bristles had a sense of some horror, as if things inanimate still partook of men's dread at men's deeds. If you passed through the corridor and saw in the shadow of the wall that homeliest of instruments cast away and forgotten, you would smile at the slatternly housework. But if you knew that a corpse had been borne down those stairs to the left,—borne along those floors to that marriage-bed,—with the blood oozing and gushing and plashing below as the bearers passed with ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... forget that every housewife was something of a physician, and the gathering and drying of herbs, the making of ointments and salve, the distilling of bitters, and the boiling of syrups was then as much a part of housework as it is to-day a part of a ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... moth was mounted, and the housework finished. Elnora said to her mother, "If you don't mind, I believe I will go into the woods pasture beside Sleepy Snake Creek and see if I can catch some ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... housework would sigh, Till SAPOLIO I urged her to trigh, Now she changes her tune, For she's done work at nune, Which accounts for the light in ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... INDIVIDUAL REWARD UNDER TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT.—As a typical example of disregard of individuality, the worker in the household may be cited, and especially the "general housework girl." Selected with no knowledge of her capabilities, and with little or no scientific or even systematized knowledge of the work that she is expected to do, there is little or no thought of a prescribed and definite task, no teaching specially adapted ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... life quite alone but for the occasional sight of the old negro couple that were waiting on him—Aunt Nancy, who did all his housework, and Uncle Ned, who worked in ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... intimately address her mistress by her Christian name. She enjoyed the right to engage in all conversations; she was, in short, "as good as anybody." The new Mrs. Windom was not long in transporting the general housework "girl" into a totally unexampled state of astonishment. This "girl,"—aged forty-five and a prominent member of the Methodist Church,—announced to everybody in the community except to Mrs. Windom herself ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... tradespeople save milkman and baker being allowed to call, and they remarked that they never once found the area gate unlocked. And while these two women, prim and self-contained, went on with the cooking and housework and kept the doorstep clean, the so-called Miss Adela Mimpriss went on with the woolwork flowers at the dining-room window, where she could get most light, and the world outside had no suspicion of anything being wrong in the staid, old-fashioned house ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... at her father. "What do you think of all this, sir?" she asked. "If I stay at home, dismiss Delia, and do the housework myself, and Lanse finds some suitable position, can't we get on? Charlotte can put off the school of design another year. We will all be very ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... feelings, too, which he could not fathom. His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family lived in careless wastefulness. That five women—for Dora was older than she had been when she began to do housework—should require servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride. That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their brother to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... she knew enough to come home, when she was hungry. Best let her go her ways, then. She would learn to be a little woman, all the sooner; and, in the meantime, it was a great deal easier to do the housework without having a child ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... It couldn't bring anything about. It snatched at the minutes left over from Roddy and the house and Mamma and the piano. You knew what every day would be like. You would get up early to practise. When the cooking and the housework was done Roddy would want you. You would play tennis together with Mr. Sutcliffe and Dorsy Heron. Or you would go up on to the moors and comfort Roddy while he talked about the "things" he had done in Canada and about getting away and about the dog. You would say over and over again, "You ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... and soon her hair was flying in the wind, as she ran into the house for her handled mop. She looked first in the parlor, and then in the front hall; but at last she found it in the wash-room. She was very sly about it, for she was not sure Ruthie would approve of this kind of housework. Then Charlie tugged out a pail of water, and dipped in the mop; and between them both they thrust it through the opening of the pen, upon piggy's back. But the dirty creature did not love clean water. When he felt the mop coming ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... were pleasant and busy ones for Peggy and Sally. True to their resolve to accept with cheerfulness whatever befell, their gay spirits softened and enlivened the gloom which might otherwise have settled upon the family. The mornings were devoted to housework and cookery; the afternoons to quilting the homespun bed-quilt which Sally had noticed in the frames on the night of their arrival. In the evenings all gathered about the great fireplace and indulged in such recreations as the farmhouse afforded. The girls ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... mentioned. The efficient kitchen devised in such an interesting and clever way has no place in it. Its exclusive object is to suggest a satisfactory and workable solution along modern lines of how to get one's housework efficiently performed ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... only did the public stores furnish the public employees with every kind of goods for consumption, but the Government likewise organized all sorts of needful services, such as cooking, laundry work, housework agencies, etc., for the exclusive benefit of public employees—all, of course, conducted absolutely at cost. The result was that the public employee was able to be supplied at home or in restaurants with food prepared by the best skill out of the best material and in the greatest possible variety, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... wonder sometimes at her boundless energy. She would whirl through the housework, help prepare the meals, do a morning's ironing, run the sewing machine all afternoon, and then often, after supper, challenge Norman to some such thing as a bonfire race, to see which could rake up the greatest pile of autumn leaves in the ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... something outside to do if I could. I tried here and there, but without success; at last my eye caught a notice in the Farmer's Friend, just the same kind of notice as that you are speaking of, Lottie: 'Wanted, a capable, steady girl to assist in housework and take care of children. Address, with reference, A. B. C., Dashville.' I talked it over with mother, and she agreed with me; father didn't take so kindly to the idea, naturally; he likes to have us all at home, especially in summer. ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... jewel of a maid—lied to me with every second breath. There have been moments when I've wished I was the daughter of a poor New England minister—living in a little white house under a couple of elms and doing all the housework." ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... your violin, too, uncle Tony, even if the ladies don't faint away in heaps, and if the kitchen doesn't look like a battle-field when you've finished. I'm glad it doesn't, for my part, for I should have more housework to do ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... more attempts to get writing to do, she said to herself, in a fit of humility and good sense: "I'll begin at the beginning, and work my way up. I'll put my pride in my pocket, and go out to service. Housework I like, and can do well, thanks to Aunt Betsey. I never thought it degradation to do it for her, so why should I mind doing it for others if they pay for it? It isn't what I want, but it's better than idleness, so ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... you've got when you sense your power with men first; but that wears off when you get your bearings and find out that it's only a shuffle in the game, anyway. Land of love! if man and woman was all, then when they came face to face with life they would get smashed; but housework tempers the matter powerfully; and man's work out among other men; and then when children come and you have to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child; after ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Women in Society. Parliamentary law. Games. Book-reviewing. Manuscript-reading for publishers. Library work. Teaching music and painting. Home study of professional housework. The unmarried daughter at home. The woman in business. Her relation to her employer. Securing an increase of salary. The woman of independent means. Her ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... before the house is, I presume, who's going to wash them?" Rupert grinned. "This seems to be as good a time as any to put some sort of a working plan in force. There is a certain amount of so-called housework which has to be done. And there are three of us to do it. It's up to us to apportion it fairly. Shall we say, let everyone care for ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... them shoes. It was pitiful to see a nice, interesting girl, like Maria, go about looking as she did, while her father was piling his money into the bank. She wanted to go to school and learn music, and be somebody; but he wouldn't keep a hired girl, and so she was obliged to stay at home and do housework; and she could no more have got a dollar out of him to pay for clothes and tuition than you could squeeze sap ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... was usual to have all the preparations and the housework completed by early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and after an early tea in parlour and kitchen—the servants, clean and neat, piled up the Yule clogs in the rooms, getting the large ones well alight, and keeping them going ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... earned, and were quite content to pass their evenings with her and their little sister. Katie, who was now thirteen, had always attended the public school in the village, of course helping her mother with the housework and sewing. She was a delicate little creature, small for her years, but bright and intelligent, a general favorite with the village children as well as with her Sunday-school teacher, Miss Etta Mountjoy, who was not so very many ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... said, with a sigh; "now I will dry the dishes for you.... You didn't mention the fact, when you engaged me, that I was also expected to do general housework." ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the daughter of a forger who died in prison. Her mother, I believe, died of a broken heart. Sad experience for so young a girl. She seems to be a good little thing. She is working at housework in town, I believe. I understand she has an idea of entering college in the fall. You are entering college here? That will be delightful. My wife and I will take pleasure in calling on you as soon as you are ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... The housework is speeded up with such conveniences as hot and cold water in kitchen and bathroom, and steam heat. The kitchen is an efficient little workshop lined by cupboards and shelves. Mrs. Tupper can sit before her kitchen cabinet and prepare a meal without moving about for ingredients and utensils. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... beam and fell. For a few months he lay sick, and all their household goods found their way to the pawn-shop; then he died, and then they came to the "Ark." Their mother did washing out of doors, but at last she became queer in the head. She could not bear unhappiness, and neglected her housework, to run about seeking consolation from all sorts of religious sects. At last she was quite demented, and one day she disappeared. It was believed that she had drowned herself in the canal. "But things ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... I was so run down that I could not spank the baby. After taking three bottles of your Elegant Elixir I am now able to thrash my husband in addition to my other housework. God bless you!" ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... farewell as he disappeared into the woods, then, to occupy herself, she helped Evangelina with what little housework there was to do, later going with her to the garden patch where the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the other. "A man's hand, Dozier. People has an idea that because women mostly do housework men are out of place in a kitchen. It ain't so. Men just got somethin' more important on their hands most of the time." His eyes glanced sadly toward his gun rack. "Women is a pile overpraised, Dozier. I ask you, man to man, did you ever see ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... men still straggling home through Germany and Belgium—the remnants of Napoleon's Grand Army—ex-prisoners of war, or scattered units who had found their weary way home at last, shoeless, coatless, half starved and perished from cold and privations, unfit for housework, for agriculture, or for industry, fit only to follow their fallen hero, as they had done through a quarter of a century, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... spend whole days in useless shopping. Theirs was a respectable neighborhood of well-paid artisans, bookkeepers, and small shopkeepers. The women did their own housework in drab garments and soiled boudoir caps that hid a multitude of unkempt heads. They seemed to find a great deal of time for amiable, empty gabbling From seven to four you might see a pair of boudoir caps leaning from opposite bedroom windows, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... keep the house looking perfectly spick and span, and I make hot bread twice a day, because Oliver is so fond of it. He is just as sweet and dear as he can be and wants to help about everything, but I hate to see him doing housework. Somehow it doesn't seem to me to look manly. We have had our first quarrel about who is to get up and make the fires in the morning. Oliver insisted that he was to do it, but I wake so much earlier than he does, because I've got the bread on my mind, that I almost ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... accumulated for the setting-up of their housekeeping, but had never invited her to an inspection. No human eye was to behold them till Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever been inside his cottage; he did his own housework, and he guarded his son's privilege so jealously that the small objects of domestic use he bought sometimes in the town were smuggled rapidly across the front garden under his canvas coat. Then, coming out, he would remark apologetically, ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... the housework was done almost entirely by the mother of the family and her daughters, or by a girl taken to "bring up;" but latterly the more troublesome element of an Irish girl in the kitchen has become general, for the daughter of the farmer ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... should never be allowed to do that; I must go to school every day, and then I have my exercises to do, and to help mother with the housework; the baby to mind; and—O I am ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... prophesied before we left England that, after turning the house up-side down and making the men very uncomfortable with our cleanings, we should then go on strike, it has not been altogether fulfilled. We certainly did try to clean up a bit, but we still help in housework, and have to do as the servants at home. If we expect visitors, or on a Sunday, put on a tidy gown; otherwise we generally live in the oldest of frocks (which are more or less stained with either mud ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... their door, To zee em in their pleace, A-doen housework up avore Their smilen mother's feace; You'd cry—"Why if a man would wive An' thrive, 'ithout a dower, Then let en look en out a wife In Blackmwore ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... downstairs, nor after she went to bed at night, except by candlelight, and she could not, of course, burn candles. So Mrs. Perry had to be taken into the secret, and Huldah worked in comfort by the fire in the afternoons, after she had done her housework. ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... girl!" I said, and hobbled away to finish the housework, but my heart seemed to take on a pair of pure white wings, like dove's wings. I forgot withal ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... during those seven years. Agnella had taught her how to do housework. In other things, Ourson had been her teacher. He had taught her to read, write and keep accounts and he often read aloud to her while she was sewing. Instructive and amusing books were found in her room without any one knowing where they came ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... along with her housework, toiling doggedly from five in the morning until half-past nine or ten at night. Beulah's departure had left all the labours of the home upon her hands; her husband had made no suggestion of securing help, and she had not asked any. The new man ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... replied that he thought he knew of one that would suit, and that he would let me know the next day. I also telephoned two "want ads." to a morning paper, one for an experienced farm-hand, the other for a woman to do general housework in the country. Polly was to interview the women who applied, and I was to look after the men. That night I ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... or mother, lending a hand at housework when needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on the whole, through his childhood and soon outstripped his comrades in ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... day most of them found refuge for a time in the doctrines of Swedenborg. My mother was always reticent upon religious subjects. She never mentioned these to me nor did she attend church, for she had no servant in those early days and did all the housework, including cooking our Sunday dinner. A great reader, always, Channing the Unitarian was in those days her special delight. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... stop, a troop of girl scouts was drilling when she stepped off the train. New clothes and a better appearance, the result of that first pay at housework, had converted the mill girl into quite an attractive young lady, and as she waited at the pretty little square, watching the girl scouts drill, ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her regrets which were despairing, and distracted dreams. She thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... danger of forgetting this), that you are not domestics, and, while in an emergency I would have you shrink from nothing that needs doing, I do not think you should do any washing. Cooking you will very often have to do, but the ordinary housework does not come at all into your province. If your patient is a chronic invalid, I would have you make yourself useful in the house. Do the shopping, order the meals, anything that will show your patient ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... go in to tea with her, and, in the course of conversation with Stella, observed, 'If I may be allowed to make a suggestion, I should not get a servant at once; it will be amusing for a short time to do a little housework, and while everything is new and clean there will be no hard work to do. Besides, the Easter holidays are soon coming, and you want to go to the sea for a few days to bring the roses back to ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... sleep they could before dawn waked them to another day of toil. Thursday evening was set for the event. On Wednesday the Lusk girls coming in to discuss, found Judith with shining eyes and crimson cheeks, attacking the simple housework of the cabin. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... successful young literary man had hired a buxom Dutch girl to do the housework. Several weeks passed and from seeing her master constantly about the house, the girl received ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... me have my way for an hour here, will you? I want you to go back to Lottie and do up the housework; I see your breakfast dishes are still unwashed. Leave me alone here and let me do as I like for ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... of co-operative work is so great, that among our women co-operators, there is a general desire to have it utilized to the utmost; especially in all kinds of housework. The introduction of such a wholesale system of house-cleaning, soon demands a better class of sweepers, to take the place of the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... to have soft, white and attractive hands, even though compelled to do housework. Every lady desires to have nice hands, and all may do so by following the directions of this book. The most coarse, rough, red hands will, by following this teaching, become beautifully delicate and white, and it causes very little ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... stopped her boat in its course she was at the Sasso Scritto: a favourite resting-place with her, where, on feast-days, when Joconda let her have liberty from housework and rush-plaiting and spinning of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth had been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal of industry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ardours into housework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty, wordy, and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of her neighbours, and with the others not ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years at eighteen shillings a week. Whenever I made a suggestion concerning the business he was careful to ridicule it. Whenever I tried to break away and start on my own, he prevented it. There were a thousand other things—ways in which he fettered me. My only sister he kept at home to do the housework. He forbade her to marry. She and I never had enough money to do anything, to go anywhere, or to buy anything. Now, to be quite frank, I longed for him to die so that I could get free. To me he was an ogre, a great merciless ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... only person to be considered? What do I care about any pleasure for myself? I'd be willing never to have a maid again; I don't mind doing the work. If we didn't have any children I'd be glad to do your father's cooking and the housework and the washing and ironing, too, for the rest of my life. I wouldn't care. I'm a poor cook and a poor housekeeper; I don't do anything well; but it would be good enough for just him and me. I wouldn't ever utter one ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington |
