"Washerwoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sentence requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after to-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or only the ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thought of all the various little articles of dress that would be needed. A journey from San Jose to Southampton cannot in truth be made as easily as one from London to Liverpool. Let us think of a month to be passed without any aid from the washerwoman, and the greatest part of that month amidst the sweltering heats ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... children were playing at their usual game on the turnpike road, and waiting for nurse, who had gone into a cottage near by to speak to the washerwoman. Nurse was a long time, and Ralph, who was horse, was quite out of breath with his long trot on the hard road. Lily touched him up with the whip, but all to no avail—he could run ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... doggie, so you have lost your master and have had nothing to eat since God knows when, and I've just chased out my wife, yes, yes, and she went away yesterday. Yes, yes, she's going to try to shift for herself as a washerwoman down in Winnipeg this winter, yes, yes, that's how it is now. Yes, yes, we packed up and left a fairly decent living there at home and came here into this damnable log-cabin existence, yes, yes. ... Well, try that in your chops, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... of my wrongs. Sprucehill shall have redress for the insult put upon her favorite daughter. In all that General Grant has done in the way of omission, nothing approaches the inactivity which has wrung my heart, as wet blankets are twisted in the strong hands of a washerwoman. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... starlit supper elsewhere. Later, my hostess took me downstairs and introduced her English visitor to a merry but strictly decorous party having a special bit of sward to themselves, bailiff, vintagers, stockmen, dairywoman, washerwoman and odd hands making up a round dozen of men, women and boys. All seemed quite at home, and chatted easily with their employer and the visitor, by no means perturbed, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... noble because more full of mercy; namely, his halting his little army in full retreat in Ireland in the face of the English host under Roger Mortimer, that proper care and attendance might be given to one sick and suffering washerwoman and her new-born babe. Well may his old Scotch ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his arms bared, and the flowing, o'er-ample legs of his Aradan-Lasgird pantaloons tucked up at his waist, like a washerwoman's skirt, a bunch of raw cotton in lieu of lint under his left arm, and his keen-edged razor, looks like a man who thoroughly realizes and enjoys the importance of the office he is performing, as from the bared ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... irresistibly comic, and I question if Liston, Munden, or Joey Knight, was ever greeted with such merriment; for Romeo dragged the unfortunate Juliet from the tomb, much in the same manner as a washerwoman thrusts into her cart the bag of foul linen. But how shall I describe his death? Out came a dirty silk handkerchief from his pocket, with which he carefully swept the ground; then his opera hat was carefully placed for a pillow, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... relates the adventures of the son of a Fairy woman, who took service with Ossian, the king of the Fians.[25] One of the Fians (Caoilte) had a Fairy sweet-heart.[26] Another of them (Oscar) has an interview with a washerwoman who is a Fairy.[27] A Fenian story recounts how one day the Fians were working in the harvest-field, in the Argyleshire island of Tiree, and on that occasion they had "left their weapons of war in the armoury of the Fairy Hill of Caolas";[28] from which one is to infer that the ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... Blanche, "I, allow you to chap your pretty little hands in soap-suds! Pooh! don't a soldier on a campaign always wash his own linen? Clumsy as you see me, I was the best washerwoman in my squadron—and what a hand at ironing! Not to make ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... when I give you the one for the noodles. Bella says it's the best she ever ate. My husband gets so mad when I go down in the kitchen—me with two grand girls and washerwoman two days a week! But the girls can't cook ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... you in with woodland green, has smiles and graces that you never saw before, yet the houseboater soon learns that each delightful, new-found pocket in the watery world means necessity for several other new-found things. There must be a new-found washerwoman, and new-found somebodies who can supply meats, eggs, vegetables, ice, milk, and water—the last two separate if possible. True, the little harbour is beautiful; but as you lie there day after day ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... grumbled he. "I'm to wait on niggers, black their boots, and drive them out, too, I suppose. I'd leave at once if it wasn't such a good situation. Drat the old picture—what has come over her I wonder—she'll be asking old Aunt Charity, the black washerwoman to dine with her next. She has either gone crazy or turned abolitionist, I don't know which; something has happened to ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... some time happened. How many families here have been called to mourning since we have! I have not taken up a paper in which I have not seen a record of two or three accidental deaths; some of them even more bitter and cruel than what has befallen us. I read this morning of a poor washerwoman, whose house was burned, and all her children consumed, while she was away working for her bread. I read the other day of a blind man whose only son was drowned in his very presence, while he could do nothing to help him. I was visiting yesterday that poor dress-maker whom you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... have seen it coming, but I didn't. For a moment, as a washerwoman might say, I was struck all of a heap. Then the delicious thought that I—by nature a vagabond, though by decree of the High Gods the father of a family and a Justice of the Peace—had to face the charge of being ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... I'se de washerwoman's little girl, an' mama, she sent me to say, would you please to len' her a dime. She got to ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Margaret's first glimpse of it, was the swarming negro population pervading every part of it—the slouching plantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and mincing step, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain eye, the washerwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing strollers of both sexes—carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain picturesqueness and irresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of moral relaxation in a too ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... my case being "a womanly woman"! What this means I scarcely apprehend, but I fancy it is intended to signify (in an actress) something sweet, pretty, soft, appealing, gentle and underdone. Is it possible that I convey that impression when I try to assume the character of a washerwoman or a fisherwoman? If so I am a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... sect. During her attendance upon the Wesleyan rites, she became intimate with one Sanderson, who, whether a designing rogue, or only a very fanatical believer, pretended that he had discovered in the good washerwoman a Bible prodigy; and it was not long before the poor creature began literally, to "see sights" and dream dreams of the most preternatural description, for which Sanderson always had ready some very telling interpretation. Her visions were of the most thoroughly "mixed" character ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... and he thought, blushing beneath the bedclothes, of the unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to office, down the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather strap between an Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of his guests had seen him then they would have said: "How distinctly American!" and—Wilton did not care for that tone. He had schooled himself to an English walk, and, so long as he did not raise it, an English voice. He did not gesticulate ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... ever mingle his own private feelings, his own pride of race and name, his own ideas of what was due to his ancient rank with the political creed by which his conduct in public life was governed. The peer who sat next to him in the House of Lords, whose grandmother had been a washerwoman and whose father an innkeeper, was to him every whit as good a peer as himself. And he would as soon sit in counsel with Mr. Monk, whose father had risen from a mechanic to be a merchant, as with any nobleman who could count ancestors against himself. But there was an inner feeling ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... with a pair of fleece-lined gloves, I was sure, if I ever lost that pair, that they were irreplaceable. I lost them. I lost article after article, and was freed from the clinging. I lost a pin for the bodice. I left my laundry with a washerwoman. Her village was bombarded, and we had to move on. I lost my kit. A woman has a tie-in with those material things, and the new life ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... city bore the charge of his meals. In some respects I am like him, for I am furnished by the labors of a multitude. A wig has fed me two days; the trimming of a waistcoat as long; a pair of velvet breeches paid my washerwoman, and a ruffled shirt has found me in shaving. My coats I swallowed by degrees. The sleeves I breakfasted upon for weeks; the body, skirts, etc., served me for dinner two months. My silk stocking have ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... away to her children what she had received for the sale of her two houses (that never brought her anything because of her simplicity, while they were in her possession) she had grown tired of "being a burden to them," as she phrased it, and had hired herself out here and there as scrubwoman, washerwoman, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... her patron saint," exclaimed the picture dealer, "why don't she get the robe made white again at the expense of a few baiocchi to her washerwoman? No, no, my dear Panini. The picture being now my property, I shall call it 'The Signorina's Vengeance.' She has stabbed her lover overnight, and is repenting it betimes the next morning. So interpreted, the picture becomes an intelligible and very natural representation ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... woman?" said the male. "I come for a leech, and ye proffer me a washerwoman;" and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Messieurs les Connaisseurs, and Michel Angelo's fame, I would die in it at the stake: for instance, here is the Blessed Virgin, not the "Vergine Santa, d'ogni grazia piena," but a Virgin, whose brick-dust coloured face, harsh unfeminine features, and muscular, masculine arms, give me the idea of a washerwoman, (con rispetto parlando!) an infant Saviour with the proportions of a giant: and what shall we say of the nudity of the figures in the back-ground; profaning the subject and shocking at once good taste and good sense? A little farther on, the eye rests on the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a strange capacity for refining stage characters as well as for making them colorless. Giordano could not do himself justice as a composer without refining the expression of Caterina Huebscher, and so his Duchess of Dantzic talks a musical language at least which Sardou's washerwoman could not talk and remain within the dramatic verities. Therefore we have "Madame Sans-Gene" with a difference, but not one that gave any more offence than operatic treatment of other fine plays have ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Browne, "but couldn't you at the same time manage to save a drowning washerwoman? she would be as great an acquisition as the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... in effect a native of Ireland; her station I do not pretend to fix: she boldly declared that she had "had the bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis." I think myself, she might possibly have been a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue, curiously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. By some means or other she had acquired, and now held in possession, a wardrobe of rather suspicious splendour—gowns of stiff and costly silk, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... or in the unclean revelations of Zola. Leave the description of the drains and cesspools to the hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to the physician, the details of the laundry to the washerwoman. If we are to have realism in its tedious descriptions of unimportant particulars, let it be of particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the description of the vegetables in Zola's "Ventre de Paris," where, if one ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... entering his hired castle with a broad oval wicker-basket covered with a white cloth, which burden she bore round to the back door. Of course, she washed for his own household: he had not thought of that. In the morning sunlight she appeared rather as a sylph than as a washerwoman; and he could not but think that the slightness of her figure was as ill adapted to this occupation as her mother's ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... Once, having earned ten Louis from some literary work, he took the poor mother aside and forced her to accept one hundred francs. The unfortunate woman, trembling with emotion, while two large tears rolled down her cheeks, admitted that the night before, in order to pay the washerwoman, they had pawned the only clock ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to balk the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time—a smart, lively young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a lovely washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have something more than mere flames and sentiment;—a washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps, and a necklace every now and then, and a few handkerchiefs and silk stockings, and a treat ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... granddaughter of the proud Otoo, went into the laundry business, publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging to officers of ships touching in her harbours." Into the court of this washerwoman-queen, Typee and Long Ghost were exceedingly anxious to penetrate. Vague ideas of favour and preferment haunted their brains. During their Polynesian cruise, they had seen many instances of rapid advancement; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Agreements were valid only until he should repent All Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed Happy to glass themselves ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... Dilly Danforth, the poor washerwoman, had seen better days; but the drunken dissipation of a husband, who was now in his grave, had reduced her to abject, despairing poverty. Her unfortunate marriage and persistence in clinging to the man of her choice, and enduring all his abuses, excited ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... practised a washerwoman as our authoress doubtless knew that by this time the web must have become such a wreck that it would have gone to pieces ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... pocket. Here you have it! no, that's my washerwoman's bill. Ah, here it is!" and Jack pulled out a crumpled note, and placed it before ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the rain like Heine's couple in the old stage- coach, with Cupid, the blind passenger, between them. They ran into the church under the last bucketfuls of shower. Jim produced the license he had carried so long in vain. The washerwoman consented to be one witness; ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... I found you at last? Are these your tricks, madam? When will you get rid of your idiocies, and conduct yourself like a decent woman? Is my family name and house to be disgraced by acts that would be a scandal to a washerwoman's daughter? Come ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... dress; but for his dusty boots you would not have guessed he had been travelling. Poor Nino. When he had not a penny in the world but what he earned by copying music, he used to spend it all with the washerwoman, so that Mariuccia was often horrified, and I reproved him ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... many things in the course of her life, and everything had brought her gradually downward, from servant-girl to waitress, down past washerwoman ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... for a plain rough life among a crowd. She recalled vividly that far-away time when she used to be called Anyutka, when she was a little girl and used to lie under the same quilt with her mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children's crying, the accordion, and the ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... you make that out?" I asked. "He's got three girls, to my knowledge, and, as for being deaf, why, he gasses more than any man in the town, and knows more of what's going on than old Mother Brindle the washerwoman." ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... lips moved in silence. As a man the boy knew she was thinking of her long journey, of the tragedy that came of it, and praying for those who passed into the West. Then she would bend to her work again; and the washerwoman's child who took the clothes she washed in his little wagon with the cottonwood log wheels, across the commons into the town, was not made to feel an inferior place in the social system until he was in his early teens. For all the Sycamore Ridge women worked hard in those days. But ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Burgundy and Count of Charolois. The disasters at Granson and Morat were repeated. At nightfall Charles could not be found. I supposed that he had escaped, but the next morning his body was found by a washerwoman, frozen in the ice of a pond. He had been killed through the machinations of Campo-Basso. Duke Rene magnanimously gave Charles regal burial, and dismissed his followers without ransom. You may be sure I was eager to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... there were twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... laughed hugely, but stopped on perceiving tears in Pecuchet's eyes—for he had not been without attachments, having by turns been smitten by a rope-dancer, the sister-in-law of an architect, a bar-maid, and a young washerwoman; and the marriage had even been arranged when he had discovered that she was ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... aged 40, washerwoman, applied to me on July the 10th, 1820, with severe inflammation and ulceration of the middle finger, arising from a puncture by a pin or needle some time before; there was much painful tumefaction, and the integuments ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... The washerwoman was pleased with the softness of her lover's manner, but dreadfully scandalized at his insinuation. She, however, preserved her temper, and with the quickness of her own country's people, rejoined, "And would the divil have paid for the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... better, just as bad if it wasn't worse, and just as new if it wasn't worn out. Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time than would blow the lid off a washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thousands of miles higher than the moon as naught nix naught, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over. Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the lot? Two shillings, a ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... somethin', but I couldn't see what it all was till my eyes got used to the darkness. There was a row of nails goin' all round the wall, and old clothes hangin' on every one of 'em. And down on the floor there was piles of old clothes, folded smooth and laid one on top o' the other jest like a washerwoman would fold 'em and pile 'em up. Harvey's old clothes and Mary's and the children's, things that any right-minded person would 'a' put in the rag-bag or given away to anybody that could make use of 'em; there they was, ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... my washerwoman," went on the thin, nasal voice, "said this morning that John had told her little boy he had to sell papers because your husband had had trouble with his employer and had lost his position." She would have added further ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Marquis de Bacqueville, who, in 1742, attached to his arms and legs planes of his own design, and launched himself from an upper story of his house in Paris, in the attempt to fly across the river Seine to the Tuileries, about two hundred yards away. He glided some distance, and then fell on a washerwoman's barge in the stream, breaking his leg in the fall. These and other disastrous attempts might be defended in the words of Wilbur Wright, written in 1901, while he was experimenting with his own gliders. 'There ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... washerwoman has 'all her sins blotted out' in the twinkling of an eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of all that ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... girl's mother was a washerwoman." She did the heavy washing for a very rich man's family. They put her into an open shed, on a cold, damp pavement. This work she had been doing for them for several years, in the same bleak place, and in all weathers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... said at last, sitting down on the edge of the hole they had dug. "Gold is the most gambly stuff imaginable. We know a lady who was as poor as a washerwoman one day, and then at breakfast one morning she got a letter to say her goldmine shares had struck a reef, and she got so rich she simply didn't know what to do with her money. She came to see Papa about it. She was an old maid, so naturally there wasn't much she wanted. You never know who is going ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will not willingly take either goods or labor without payment; and it may be hard to prove that he who takes the latter ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... said Mr. Dooley. "'Tis this way. Ye see, this here Sagasta is a boonco steerer like Canada Bill, an' th' likes iv him. A smart man is this Sagasta, an' wan that can put a crimp in th' ca-ards that ye cudden't take out with a washerwoman's wringer. He's been through manny a ha-ard game. Talk about th' County Dimocracy picnic, where a three-ca-ard man goes in debt ivry time he hurls th' broads, 'tis nawthin' to what this here Spanish onion has been again an' beat. F'r years an' years he's played on'y profissionals. Th' ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... Nanking; they have to look after our houses there, so they can't pay frequent visits to the capital. Her brother is the Wen-hsiang, who acts at present as our senior's accountant; but her sister-in-law too is employed in our worthy ancestor's yonder as head washerwoman." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... lead-pencil and backs of letters. When she had learned to draw pretty well, she was on fire to paint her pictures, but was long puzzled to procure the colors. Having obtained in some way a cake of gamboge, she begged of a washerwoman a piece of indigo, and by combining these two ingredients she could make different shades of yellow, blue, and green. The trunks of her trees she painted with coffee-grounds, and a mixture of India ink and indigo ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... discern that, broad and tolerant as he was, he saw things as they were (except in the case of his wife), never misstated and rarely overstated. For all that, she set out on Saturday afternoon prepared to meet the typical washerwoman of fiction—worn, bedraggled, shapeless, and forlorn. She was prepared to go into a steaming kitchen with puddles on the floor and dirty children all about, and have this red-faced personage take a scarlet hand out of the tub, dry it on a dirty apron, and hold it out to her. And for her ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... inability to find him. And just now he was away on important business. "I reckon he's got back," said the man dryly. "I didn't know he had a lock-box at the post-office, but I can give you his other address. He lives at the Presidio, at Washerwoman's Bay." He stopped and looked with a satirical smile at Uncle Billy. But the latter, familiar with Californian mining-camp nomenclature, saw nothing strange in it, and merely repeated his ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... obeyed it. A woman was bending over a pile of straw and rags, and an object lying on top of them; and a squalid child, curled in one corner, with a wild, frightened look in his eyes. The woman turned as the door opened, and John Birge recognized her as his mother's washerwoman. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... which they won't. 'Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.' If they wouldn't, you are bound to respect their right of choice. Your drunken ruffian will keep on breaking the furniture, till another like him breaks his skull. His wife, the washerwoman with six small children, will continue getting more and making things worse. This part of it at least ought to be regulated by law: but that would be a restriction of personal liberty, which is the idol of this age, and not without reason. We're between ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... see, sar," said Billy, peering over his shoulder. "Yes, sar, all right—I count em. Tell washerwoman put plenty of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... seen his master fall, and could easily find the spot again. Under his guidance a move was made towards a pond hard by the town; and there, half buried in the slush of the pond, were some dead bodies, lying stripped. A poor washerwoman, amongst the rest, had joined in the search; she saw the glitter of a jewel in the ring upon one of the fingers of a corpse whose face was not visible; she went forward, turned the body over, and at once cried, "Ah! my prince!" There ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... meant mischief, I confess—but I could have had him, I give you my word; he asked me himself. But I thought, no! it's not worthwhile to take such advantage of him. No! I had better go on to the streets, or accept Rogojin, or become a washerwoman or something—for I have nothing of my own, you know. I shall go away and leave everything behind, to the last rag—he shall have it all back. And who would take me without anything? Ask Gania, there, whether he would. Why, even ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, "for every day"; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were black. He had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, and the third in the washerwoman's hands. He renewed them as they wore out. They were always ragged, which caused him to button his ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... come back year after year, and study his subject and compile his impressions of the Quarter in the very atmosphere of the place itself; within a stone's throw of the Luxembourg Gardens and the Pantheon; near the cafes and the Bullier; next door, if you please, to the public laundry where his washerwoman pays a few sous for the privilege of pounding his ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... quarrel she had once had with a girl at school. It all came back in a flash of rage that lit up this forgotten corner of her memory! The cause of the quarrel did not appear in the record, but that the girl had flung it at her that her people were nothing and nobody—her mother a washerwoman and her father a section hand—now stood out in letters of flame! Pearl had not been angry at the time—and she remembered that her only reason for taking out the miserable little shrimp and washing her face ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... utterances, and Lincoln's character. One of the golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October grass, driving an old red cow to the barn lot, but we bring McKinley to the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the two weeks I was there, he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for failing to pay for ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... The steps (or path) which lead down to a watering-place. Hence the Hindi saying concerning the "rolling stone"—Dhobi-ka kutta; na Gharka na Ghat-ka, a washerwoman's tyke, nor of the house ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... elegant. He knew at a glance what Jennie needed, and bought for her with discrimination and care. And Jennie, a woman, took a keen pleasure in the handsome gowns and pretty fripperies that he lavished upon her. Could this be really Jennie Gerhardt, the washerwoman's daughter, she asked herself, as she gazed in her mirror at the figure of a girl clad in blue velvet, with yellow French lace at her throat and upon her arms? Could these be her feet, clad in soft shapely shoes at ten dollars a pair, these her hands adorned with flashing jewels? What wonderful ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... stay in Turin, no amorous fancy disturbed the peace of my soul, except an accident which happened to me with the daughter of my washerwoman, and which increased my knowledge in physics in a singular manner. That girl was very pretty, and, without being what might be called in love with her, I wished to obtain her favours. Piqued at my not being able to obtain an appointment ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... meantime the consultation was continued between Smallbones and the corporal. The latter had received instruction to take on shore Mr Vanslyperken's dirty linen to the washerwoman, and of course, as a corporal, he was not obliged to carry it, and would take Smallbones for that purpose. Then he could easily excuse taking the dog on shore, upon the plea of taking care of it. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... lived with us. Mother was at Governor Manly's. He said father was a high-headed fellow and said he was livin' on his lot and in his house and that he didn't do anything for him, and that he ought to keep up his family. Mother was the washerwoman for the governor and his family. Missus Manly, the Governor's wife, I forget her first name, did not take any particular interest in her servants. She had slave servants for everything: a wash and ironer, a drawing room and parlor ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the pace for the younger guests. But her words did not ring true, and amidst the hearty plaudits of the rest she took the doctor's arm. The others fell in line as if by magic, and then the fiddles began with vim. Oh, how they danced! Everyone, old and young—quadrilles, reels, polkas, Irish Washerwoman, Old Dan Tucker, and all. Even Mrs. Conors, after much persuasion, did a jig as it was performed "whin I was a gal in ould Ireland," and Patrick Flynn, the aspiring County Member, was her partner. How the old tavern creaked and groaned with the unusual tax ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... but very little bread to start with; and it was possible, of course, the baker might smell a rat, and get up a rescue. It would be better, on that account, to defer action till after the baker's visit on Wednesday. But then the washerwoman generally came on the Thursday. We all voted the washerwoman a nuisance. We must either take her a prisoner and keep her in the house, or run the risk of her finding out that something was wrong and going back to the village ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... McNally, the washerwoman, had come over to take care of the washing. I remember I was just on my way out to the wood pile for a few sticks of birch when I heard wheels turn in at the gate. There was one of the fattest white horses I ever saw, and a queer wagon, shaped like a van. A funny-looking ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... wetting of the skin will considerably facilitate this operation. Constant scraping and hard hand-rubbing, similar to a washerwoman's "rubbing" of clothes, is necessary. In the cases of some skins which are obstinate, thick, or have been simply sun-dried, as are many tigers' and leopards' skins sent from India, it will be found necessary to fix them over a sloping board or on the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... get through without money; she did not beg. And then came naturally enough the rest of the little artless narrative, as it generally happens among the simple annals of the poor: how she had been for forty years a washerwoman, and had a letter ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... declared that if it were Mr. Darby's it must tally therewith, which on a comparison it did exactly) granted a warrant. It appeared also at the same time, upon the oath of Mr. Willoughby, that the day Mr. Darby was murdered, Fisher borrowed half-a-crown of him to pay his washerwoman, and was in the utmost ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... or washermen stand outside at work. But I'm told that in some parts of Europe the washerwomen themselves get into the tubs. They do this to keep their feet dry. The tubs or barrels are empty, and are set along the river banks in the water, and each washerwoman stands in her tub and washes the clothes in the river, pounding, and soaping, and rinsing them, on a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... buzzed and disturbed his slumbers. And now when the fly thought he slept he had caught and crushed it—so. President Ham clinched his great fist convulsively and, with delight in his pantomime, opened his fingers one by one, and held out his pink palm, wrinkled and crossed like the hand of a washerwoman, as though to show Billy that in it lay ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... remembers an aged colored woman, who was employed as a washerwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this woman married a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by her industry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised nine hundred dollars for her husband's freedom, which she ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Consternation reigned; and when it was reported that a woman had been killed in Dutoitspan Road, the excitement was at its height. The fatality sent a thrill of horror through the people, who awaited in dread anticipation the news of further massacres. The victim was a poor washerwoman, and the possibilities it conjured up before the mind's eye made her death doubly unfortunate. But, happily, no further damage to life or limb was to be recorded. A good many houses were hit, though ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... replied, in a low voice. My friend gave me a look, and told me afterwards that Abednego had ran away, and that his family considered it a disgrace, and never spoke of him. I hear of a negro boy who absconded, and when he was found and being brought home, an old washerwoman watched him as he went up the street. 'La,' said she, 'who'd a thought he'd a beginned to act bad so young,' But let us leave off Abolition and take a walk. Our cigars are out and we will resume the subject to-morrow afternoon, when we ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... trickling over the tops of our shoes, while they poured into our ears their impressions of the Sphinx. Miss H. B. thought that She (with a capital S) was a combination of Goddess, Prophetess, and Mystery. Enid thought she was like an Irish washerwoman making a face; and Elaine said she was the image of their bulldog at home. Monny (after a sandy introduction) listened to these verbal vandalisms in horrified silence. I could see that she was exerting herself, for my sake, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "Anne, are you mad? You, a queen to quarrel like a washerwoman! And do you not perceive that in the person of this priest is represented the whole people of Paris and that it is dangerous to insult him at this moment, and if this priest wished it, in an hour ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The washerwoman at Streatley said she felt she owed it to herself to charge us just three times the usual prices for that wash. She said it had not been like washing, it had been more ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to the shrine. But I have a clear notion of woman. In all of them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark. And when there is a spark there can always ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... oak dining room, quite a glitter of new cut glass on the sideboard and the round table white and immaculately spread. There was a little maidservant, Lena Obendorfer, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Kemble washerwoman, shy and red rims about her eyes from ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... unmistakably like a monstrous grey old man, with a vast snow-white beard, and a world of disordered white hair floating over and around its head. At all events it was white for a moment, then it looked green—a great green beard which the old man took with his two hands and twisted just as a washerwoman twists a blanket or counterpane, so as to wring the water ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... suffer Association to be merged in mere partisanship for any class or calling, or blind hostility to any abuse or oppression. We are not the champions of the slave or the hired servant, the factory girl or the housemaid, the seamstress or the washerwoman. We are not the advocates merely of labor against capital, of the employers as opposed to the employed. Ours is the cause of all classes and vocations, and our success is the triumph of all. We are in danger of becoming partial and one-sided; ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... starts from the Place du Pantheon, and finishes abruptly at the Rue des Feuillantines. The shops are unassuming, and so few that one can easily count them. There is a wine-shop on the left-hand side, at the corner of the Rue de la Vieille-Estrapade; then a little toy-shop, then a washerwoman's and then a book-binder's establishment; while on the right-hand you will find the office of the Bulletin, with a locksmith's, a fruiterer's, and a baker's—that is all. Along the rest of the street ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... etc., of passage, came over by degrees to their opinion, on much the same grounds that a Turk in England would condemn the nation by wholesale, because he was wronged by his lacquey, and overcharged by his washerwoman. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... few prominent pages in the books of a neighboring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had even started a boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and slavery to whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family), and had clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those horrible requirements ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the thrilling voices of poor hunted colored people went up, in an agony of supplication, to the Lord, from Zion's church. Many families, who had lived in the city for twenty years, fled from it now. Many a poor washerwoman, who, by hard labor, had made herself a comfortable home, was obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada. Many a wife discovered a ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... of labor with as little apparent concern or interest, as the horses or mules which they drive before them. There are, I admit, exceptions, but as a general rule, my remarks hold good. I never owned a negro, but I frequently employed them as cooks, washerwoman, &c., and many years observation satisfied me, that as a general rule, that when left to themselves, they consumed, or rather wasted, one-third more precisions than would have sufficed for my family under the management and supervision of an ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... brave, Pat," said Mrs. O'Callaghan. Then a rough little hand was laid on his head—the hand of an honest washerwoman—and in a reverent tone came the words, "Your ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... Langrish, who had evidently been on the look-out for his chance; "no more do we want pretty Sarah's washerwoman; do we, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... to the water, in line with a dozen other women below the Ponte Navi; and if no one thought any the worse of her, none, unhappily, thought any the better—at least in the way of marriage. It is probable that no one thought of her at all. Giovanna was a beauty and a very good girl; but she was a washerwoman for all that, whose ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... while my friend paused at one of the fishily-fragrant houses by the way, to interview her washerwoman, I went on to the hill-top, where a nautical old gentleman with a spy-glass, welcomed me ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... "That will do." Immediately one of the assistants seizes the wet canvas, crumples it up without more ado, as if it were dirty linen, and takes it off to a wooden washing trough, where it is kneaded and washed in true washerwoman fashion. Water in plenty is sluiced over it, and after more vigorous manipulation still, it is passed from trough to trough until deemed sufficiently free from soluble salts to tone. The toning—done ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... place, I went out one day to hunt someone to wash my clothes for me. I never was a good washerwoman. I could cook, bring water and cut wood, but never was much on the wash. In fact, it was an uphill business for me to wash up "the things" after "grub time" in ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... on the alert, for the dowager Princess had heard from her maid, who had heard it from her sister in Rome, who had learned it from the washerwoman, who had been told the secret by the porter's wife, that the celebrated Malipieri was exploring the north-west foundations of the palace. The Princess had repeated the story, and the legend which accounted for it, to her brother Prince ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... washing. I spend my time in this uncertain weather watching the clouds on the days when the clothes are to come home, for it would be altogether too great a trial if one's starched garments, borne aloft on Jack's head, were to be caught in a thunder-shower. If the washerwoman takes pains with anything, it is with gentlemen's shirts, though even then she insists on ironing the collars ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... I know that when I was a very young man (many, many years ago, as the story-books say) and wanted cheering up, I used to go and dress myself in all my best clothes. If I had been annoyed in any manner—if my washerwoman had discharged me, for instance; or my blank-verse poem had been returned for the tenth time, with the editor's compliments "and regrets that owing to want of space he is unable to avail himself of kind offer;" or I had been snubbed by the woman ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... coats, seven pairs of trousers, and a gentleman in bed. Washerwoman called—gave notice of detaining linen unless settled with—two coats and one pair of trousers ordered for consumption. Lots drawn—Smith the victim for coat and trousers—Brown for the continuations only. Smith ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... only takes the Lamnissa home with him, but he takes the gold-fish too, and keeps it in his room, "for he loved it dearly." The Lamnissa never rests till he gives her the fish to eat. Its bones are thrown into a garden and from them springs a rose bush on which blooms a rose which the king's old washerwoman wishes to break off to sell it at the castle. From out of the bush springs the beautiful citron-maiden, and tells the old woman her story. She also gives her the rose for the king's son, and in the basket with the rose she lays a ring he ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... coolee, her petticoat wrapped snugly around her limbs, and a limp sunbonnet hiding her nut-brown face, pounding her washing with a wooden paddle. She was her own housekeeper, chambermaid, cook, washerwoman, gooseherd, seamstress, nurse, and all the rest. Her floors, they said, were always bien fourbis (well scrubbed); her beds were high, soft, snug, and covered with the white mesh of her ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... make-believe, games, and they had much fun this way. Now they turned one chair on the side, and put another in front. The turned-over chair was to be the wagon, and the other chair, standing on its four legs, was the horse. Bunny got some string for reins, and the stick the washerwoman used to punch the clothes down in the boiler made a good whip, when another piece of string was tied on the end ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... the table, while its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's peak, an eye. Secretly I take stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety. Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it was too damned dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the grocer's. One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like sheep. "And although you ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to himself. It is not like asking him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... German! Fiddlesticks! There are more fools teaching those languages now than there are idiots to learn them. Why, my washerwoman's daughter is teaching French at twenty-five cents a lesson, though she can no more speak it than a jackdaw. French, indeed! You must try something else, or you will never earn that two hundred and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... been afraid that Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on her way to the laundry. All the sport people had gone, the streets were half empty, and most of the tourist shops were shut. Only the very ill had reappeared; they crept aimlessly ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... minutes. The next and last train for Greenfields was to leave at ten-fifty-nine. Maitland with assumed nonchalance composed himself upon a bench in the waiting-room to endure the thirty-seven minute interval. Five minutes later an able-bodied washerwoman with six children in quarter sizes descended upon the same bench; and the young man in desperation allowed himself to be dispossessed. The news-stand next attracting him, he garnered a fugitive amusement and two dozen copper ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... removing their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... They seem to be a separate race of beings, for they all have large arms, and shoulders that would do honor to Tom Sayers. I have seen negro slave women at work in the field, with a muscular development that would be the envy of a Bowery boy. The washerwoman and the field slave show what can be done by cultivation. I know that their style of figure is not quite so attractive as I have seen, and I know that wherever there is an extraordinary tax upon muscle there is an extraordinary repression of mind and blunting of the sensibilities, but it ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... washerwoman to whom you send your assortment at the end of the voyage is an honest woman, she will probably give information to the police that you must be a receiver of stolen property, as your garments are all marked with ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... their stakes, and let a few close friends into the secret,—Harney, Welse, Trethaway, a Dutch chechaquo who had forfeited both feet to the frost, a couple of the mounted police, an old pal with whom Del had prospected through the Black Hills Country, the washerwoman at the Forks, and last, and notably, Lucile. Corliss was responsible for her getting in on the lay, and he drove and marked her stakes himself, though it fell to the colonel to deliver the invitation to her to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... lest his papers should be asked for. As they coasted down through Lake Ladoga and the Neva, they took in some women as passengers, who were servants, and had been home to see their parents. One of them, an aged washerwoman, was so teased by the others, that Piotrowski took her part, and in return she offered him some very ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Jones offered to lend Mr. Hopkins any of the new books, with which his library was rather well stocked, and promised to send over the Pall Mall Review, to which he was a subscriber, every week. Mr. Hopkins told Mr. Jones the name of the best washerwoman in the village, one of his own new parishioners, as it happened, and proposed to put him up at once for membership in the Golf Club. In fact the conversation went off ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... to Inverness—a distance of nineteen miles—to bid her farewell; but I found, on my arrival, her house shut up, and learned that she had left the place for some sailing port on the west coast two days before. She was a humble washerwoman; but I am convinced that in the other world, which she must have entered long ere ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and time, and expressive of deep thought and active intellect, and you have before you the General Jackson who has lived in my memory from my childhood. Side by side with him stands a coarse-looking, stout little old woman, whom you might easily mistake for his washerwoman, were it not for the marked attention he pays her, and the love and admiration she manifests for him. Her eyes are bright, and express great kindness of heart; her face is rather broad, her features plain, her complexion so dark as almost to suggest a mingling ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... cracked teapot in the poorest room, or the morning-glory planted in a box and twined about the window? Do not these show that the human heart yearns for the beautiful in all ranks of life? You remember, Kate, how our washerwoman sat up a whole night, after a hard day's work, to make her first baby a pretty dress to be baptized in." "Yes, and I remember how I laughed at you for making such a tasteful little ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... gin-and-water philosophers who would fain extenuate their unpleasant vices by the plea that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,—as if the path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be written only at the painful sacrifice of bilking your washerwoman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... his master. His master, or should I say, his employer, pays him certain wages to do certain work, and he does it, but outside the bounds of this contract, they are still man and man, citizen and citizen. It is all beautifully, delightfully legal. The washerwoman is the "wash-lady", and is just as much a lady as her mistress. The word "servant" is not applied to domestics, "help" is used instead, very much in the same way that Canada and Australia are no longer ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... stand, he would bound away sideways on his four little legs; but the moment the visitor went on his way again, Snap was at his heels—"Yap! yap! yap!" He barked at the milkman, the butcher's boy, and the baker, though he saw them every day. He never got used to the washerwoman, and she never got used to him. She said he "put her in mind of that there black dog in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'" He sat at the gate in summer, and yapped at every vehicle and every pedestrian who ventured to pass on the high road. He never but once had the chance of barking at burglars; and ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the ordinary washerwoman kind, because of a deeper and more vicious ignorance—had it that one time when August was punished by a teacher (or beaten by her sister or aunt-by-marriage) she "took to the bush" for three days, at the expiration of which time she ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... he is reminded of it now! He cannot work, he has no craft nor profession; he knew enough to pass for an educated gentleman; not enough to earn a franc a day. He is the protege at present of his washerwoman, and can say, with some governments, that his debts are impartially distributed. He has only two fears—those of starvation in France, and a soldier's ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... suit of armor for any length of time without becoming repugnant to the nose of his lady when brought-into the opportunity for an embrace,—yet the heroes of this day have sore need of occasional aid from the washerwoman, and even the tailor becomes necessary for the replenishing of worn-out and faded garments. John Crawford the Zouave—the truth must be told—though he showed very little shirt, showed that little in an unclean condition; and the baggy red of his trousers and the hanging blue ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... she kept it, why she kept it, and what a good time she had playing cook, and washerwoman, and ironer, is told as only Sophie May can tell stories. All the funny sayings and doings of the queerest and cunningest little woman ever tucked away in the covers of a book will please little folks ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... converted in Rio through the agency of his washerwoman. This faithful woman is a member of the First Baptist Church. She decided she would attempt to lead Thomaz to Christ. So on Saturday when she would bring his laundry she would invite him to come to her house ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... to make a plain man sick to hear pity lavished on a family reduced by losses to exchange a fine house for a snug cottage; and when condolence was demanded for a lady of rank in mourning for a baby, he contrasted her with a washerwoman with half-a-dozen children dependent on her daily labour for ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... but it was select. It included a washerwoman with very red arms; a care-taker who had obviously failed to take care of herself; a couple of chimney-sweeps with partially washed faces; a charwoman with her friend the female greengrocer, who had been burned out of the opposite side of the court; two or three coster-mongers, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... Our Landlady and Washerwoman. The Einsiedlerstein. Its Dungeons and Hall. Its History. Inscription over the Hermit's Grave. Lose our Way. Guided by a Peasant. His Conversation. Mistaken for Italian ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... back!" said Maria, grimly; her excited respiration shook the steps. "All to save the washing of four pair o' curtains! And you know you beat the washerwoman down to tenpence a pair last March! Three and fo'pence, that is! For the sake o' three and fo'pence you're willing for all Toft End to point their ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... chop-fallen and melancholy a party as ever took possession of a newly-discovered country. Marble affected to whistle, for he was secretly furious at the nonchalance manifested by Captain Le Compte; but I detected him in getting parts of Monny Musk and the Irish Washerwoman, into the same strain. To own the truth, the ex-mate was morally much disturbed. As for myself, I considered the affair as an incident of ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... sandy break in the bush, and the bank sloped gradually to the water's edge. Three or four wash-tubs, grouped together in a semicircle, stood on wooden trestles, and a quaint-looking little man was bending over one of them washing clothes, rubbing and beating a handful of garments on a board like any washerwoman. His back was turned to the path, and he faced the river. On his right stood an iron furnace and boiler, with steam escaping from under the lid. And all around him the bushes were hung with ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... the fisher people lived, and the sights and smells in the hot summer air were hard to bear even for those who were well. Poor little Dick, lying day after day on his hard bed, with no care except what the kind-hearted washerwoman could give him, felt that life was an ill thing at best, and he was fast hastening out of it, with the assistance of ill nutrition and bad ventilation. Dick's own mother and father were dead, and his stepmother, a rough-looking creature, when she remembered him at all, looked upon him ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... employ, as a rule, too few servants, such as they are. It is considered altogether sensible and becoming for the mechanic's wife to do her own housework as a bride and as a matron of years. Unless her husband prospers rapidly she is accounted "shiftless" should she hire a washerwoman, while to "keep a girl" is extravagance, or a significant stride toward gentility. The wife of the English joiner or mason or small farmer, if brisk, notable and healthy, may dispense with the stated service of a maid ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... an opera. I should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in a sustained and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and wide-awake as he took his seat near the table and the county papers. He squirmed on the cushions, smoked hard and complained of the tobacco, the weather, the police magistrates, his tight shoes, the careless washerwoman and a string of matters incidental to the world's work and its burdens that he had never mentioned before so long as I had lived with him, and that was pretty close to ten years. It was easy to see that this was no ordinary case. Several ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Fashion is a greater transgression of the laws of woman's nature, a greater injury to her physical and mental constitution, than the hardships of poverty and neglect. The slave-woman at her tasks will live and grow old and see two or three generations of her mistresses fade and pass away. The washerwoman, with scarce a ray of hope to cheer her in her toils, will live to see her fashionable sisters all die around her. The kitchen-maid is hearty and strong, when her lady has to be nursed like a sick baby. It is a sad truth, that Fashion-pampered ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... was cold, and covered by a clammy sweat—the features completely sunk—the lips blue, the face discoloured—tongue moist and very cold—the hands and feet blue, cold, and as if steeped in water, like a washerwoman's hand; the extremities cold to the axillae and groins, and no pulse discoverable lower; the voice changed, and the speech short and laborious. He answered with reluctance, and in monosyllables." This man had the pale dejections, and several other symptoms, considered so characteristic of ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... tordi. Warrant (money) mandato, monmandato. Warrant (justify) pravigi. Warrant (assure) certigi. Warrantable pravigebla. Warren kuniklejo. Warrior militisto. Wart veruko. Wary atenta, singardema. Wash lavi. Wash one's self sin lavi. Washerwoman lavistino. Wash-house lavejo. Washstand lavtablo. Wasp vespo. Wasp's nest vespejo. Waspish malgxentila, ekkolerema. Waste (squander) malsxpari. Waste (grow thin) konsumigxi, malgrasigxi. Waste (rubbish) forjxetajxo, difektajxo. Waste ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... his sister's, a washerwoman; honest girl, she may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it. The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... already great talent for drawing, and in almost every letter came two or three childish but spirited little pictures, all labelled "Drawn for papa!" "The true picture of our courier in a rage, for papa to see." "The washerwoman's dog, for papa," etc., etc. Again and again I sat by, almost trembling with delight, and saw John spend an entire evening in looking over these little missives and reading Ellen's letters. Then again I sat alone ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Susan did not see a single familiar face, and she had supposed she knew, by sight at least, everyone in Sutherland. From fear lest she should see someone she knew, her mind changed to longing. At last she was rewarded. Down the aisle swaggered Redney King, son of the washerwoman, a big hulking bully who used to tease her by pulling her hair during recess and by kicking at her shins when they happened to be next each other in the class standing in long line against the wall of the schoolroom for recitation. From her security she smiled at Redney as representative ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... as particularly dangerous the vulgar French farce where papa is caught in some extraordinary and buffoonlike situation with the washerwoman. Safety lies in exaggeration. But it is a different matter with the ordinary Broadway show, where virtue is made—at least inferentially—the object of ridicule, and sexuality is the underlying purpose of the production. During the present New York theatrical season several plays have ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... for a week, as his wife told after; but she didn't trouble about his vagaries and never loved him better than when he went off to catch some trout for her that dark afternoon in March. But he didn't return, and when she came down after dark to her aunt, Maria Pardoe, the washerwoman at Little Silver, and made a fearful stir about the missing man, the people felt sorry for her, and a dozen chaps went down the river to find Spider and fetch him along. His rod they found, and his basket and his bottle of lob-worms on the ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... demean myself in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?" ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Some one had noticed that the white beach sand at Santa Cruz turned pink when heated. Seizing upon this fact, McLaren and Guerin used it to give a final touch to their scheme of color. They drew another lesson from the washerwoman. A familiar laundry device was used to give sparkle and brilliance to the waters of the pools and lagoons. They were blued, not by dumping indigo into the water, but by tinting the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... she has a great deal of hard work before her, and had better have been born a washerwoman, and stood over a tub all day; but, you see, people cannot always choose ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... know," returned the washerwoman—"too young to be confined down as much as she is. But then she is a very patient child, and knows that her mother has a great deal to do. I often wish it was easier for her; though, as it can't be helped, ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... allowed Mrs. Haywood for her persistent efforts to regain her footing as a woman of letters, for during this time she had little encouragement. Pope's attack did destroy her best asset, her growing reputation as an author, but instead of following Savage's ill-natured advice to turn washerwoman, she remained loyal to her profession and in her later novels gained greater success than she had ever before enjoyed. But it was only her dexterity that saved her from ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... I went on from Sunday to Sunday. And the number of people that slept grew less and less, until, at last, it was reduced to the churchwarden, Mr Brownrigg, and an old washerwoman, who, poor thing, stood so much all the week, that sitting down with her was like going to bed, and she never could do it, as she told me, without going to sleep. I, therefore, called upon her every Monday morning, and had five minutes' chat with her as she stood at her ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Miniver never stated an argument clearly, that she was never embarrassed by a sense of self-contradiction, and had little more respect for consistency of statement than a washerwoman has for wisps of vapor, which made Ann Veronica critical and hostile at their first encounter in Morningside Park, became at last with constant association the secret of Miss Miniver's growing influence. The brain tires of resistance, and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Never make love to another man's wife. Remember this when you are a great man, for with them it is become a fashion. Let ruffians go their own way. Let gentlemen be your companions, and never fail to show them that you can at least be their equal in courteous demeanor. Always pay your washerwoman; be not ashamed to acknowledge your father, and remember that the fonder you speak of your mother, the more you will be beloved by strangers. Avoid politicians, who are come to be great vagabonds, who drink bad liquor and give their ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... along talking to himself and people would follow him on the street to hear what he was saying. He threatened often to kill his wife. He deserted her at times for months together. He only partially supported his family and his wife worked as a washerwoman. She left him once, but later went ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... see that Lucy was not listening. 'And Cecile was a fairy, with spangled wings—the sweetest thing you ever saw. We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but as nobody took any notice of Madame de C—she has behaved like a washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
