"Ironing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nevertheless, which—or the spot must be a wretched one indeed—cleanliness and order can always impart in some degree. Late as the Dutch clock' showed it to be, the poor woman was still hard at work at an ironing-table; a young child lay sleeping in a cradle near the fire; and another, a sturdy boy of two or three years old, very wide awake, with a very tight night-cap on his head, and a night-gown very much ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the side for the confinement which will permit the physician to use his right hand,—that will be the right side of the patient as she lies in bed. One objection to a double bed is its tendency to sag. This tendency can be obviated however by placing an ironing board under the spring from side to side, or by using shelves from a book case. This expedient will support the mattress, thereby rendering the bed firm and free from any sagging tendency. The position of the bed in the room should be such that the patient ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... Ironing day; blowing a gale of wind; women are making hard work of it and getting seasick—Hove to at 8 bells this morning; lays easy; kicked Ham away from the wheel and steered his trick; afraid I can't make a sailor of him; wish I'd saved a few sinners to work ship; could have drowned ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... field was to be brought into cultivation as soon as any labour could be had. Minna was looking infinitely better already, and Averil and Cora were full of designs for rival housewifery, Averil taking lessons meantime in ironing, dusting, and the arts of the kitchen, and trusting that in the two years' time, the skeletons would have given place—if not indeed to houses, to well-kept ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had she her mistress testified the excuse of fearing unreasonable confinement. "I told her she might go when she had done her dishes after dinner," said Mrs Murchison, "and then she had only to come back at six and get tea—what's getting tea? I advised her to finish her ironing yesterday, so as to be free of it today; and she said she would be very glad to. Now, I wonder if she DID finish it!" and Mrs Murchison put down her pan of potatoes with a thump to look in the family clothes basket. "Not ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... If the velvet after steaming is found to be still too imperfect or faded to be used on the hat plain, it may be gathered a half inch apart or more and used either on the crown or the brim, or it may be mirrored by ironing on the right side with a hot iron, always ironing lightly one way, using a sweeping motion. Do not let the iron rest for a second on the material or it will leave ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... little. Then she smiled. Miss Galt had a complete layout on the desk before her—scrap books, cuts, copy, magazines. There was a little smudge on the end of her nose. Grace Galt was writing about magnetos. She was writing about magnetos in a way to make you want to drop your customer, or your ironing, or your game, and go downtown and buy that particular kind of magneto at once. Which is the secretest part of the wizardry of advertising copy. To look at Grace Galt you would have thought that she should have been writing ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... in Honora that compelled Bridget to stop her ironing on Tuesdays in order to make hot waffles for a young woman who was late to breakfast? Bridget, who would have filled the kitchen with righteous wrath if Aunt Mary had transgressed the rules of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... where the proprietress was too much concerned in cooking her dinner (it smelled delicious) to mind our wish for a very cheap green vase, inestimably Spanish after we got it home. However, in another shop where the lady was ironing her week's wash on the counter, a lady friend who was making her an afternoon call got such a vase down for us and transacted the negotiation out of pure good will for both parties ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... By the time the baby was dressed, coated, and hooded, and little Diego buttoned into gaiters and reefer, and Anne herself had changed her house gown for street wear, and pinned on her hat and veil, and Helma, summoned from her ironing, had bumped Virginia's coach down the back porch steps, and around the wet garden path to the front door,—by the time all this was accomplished, the short winter daylight would be almost gone, she knew, and the crowded hour that began with the children's baths, and that ended their little ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... dropped, upon his shoulder. With a sigh of satisfaction he came upon the little cottage of his father and saw his stepmother taking the clothes in from the bushes where they had been spread to dry. It was Saturday, and ironing day, and he hoped for a chance at his lessons before night came, when he was so tired that the facts would not stick in his brain. He thought that it must be very easy to study in the mornings when you were fresh and eager and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... and the technicalities of ironing out the final details of the contract. Then, dealer in millions and the possessor of nothing, Houston went ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... listen. No sound came from the interior of H. Cragg's apartment. Farther along she found a similar door on which was a card reading: "Miss Huckins, Dressmaker and Milliner." Listening again, she heard the sound of a flatiron thumping an ironing board. ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... a good girl, Patty," returned her mother, winking away the moisture in her eyes, as she went on with her ironing. "Amabel, don't you be trampling on Patty's best dress, there's a good little lass. Well, as I was saying, Patty, only the children do interrupt so. There, Joe and Ben, just take your sugar-sticks and be off to play. I think I have found a nice little place for Susan. She is to sleep at home, but ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with the Ladies Aid Society in session. Jimmy was sitting on the grass in his own front yard, in full view of Sarah Jane, who was ironing clothes in her cabin with strict orders to keep him at home. Billy was in the swing ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... Sissy, it wouldn't be nice if Miss Grant were to get her face all puckered and creasy like that, just as if it wanted ironing out, as Susette did with my frock when Murray scrunched it all up under his pillow to hide it. But I suppose you ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... for miles and miles in London. In one a man sat smoking in his shirtsleeves, from another a slavey leaned out watching a fourwheeler that had stopped next door, in a third a woman sat sewing, and in a fourth a woman was ironing, with a glimpse of a bedstead behind her. And all outside was gloom and ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... funeral, but I have just been to put some flowers on her grave, and I took it off afore going that the damp mid not spoil the crape. You see, she was bad a long time, and I have to be careful, and do washing and ironing for a living. She hurt her side with wringing up the large sheets she had to wash for the Castle ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... turned off from the boiled rice, and then strained. Muslins, to look clear, should be starched, and clapped dry, while the starch is hot, then folded in a very damp cloth, and suffered to remain in it till they become quite damp, before ironing them. If muslins are sprinkled, they are apt to look spotted. Garments that are not worn, when laid by, should not be starched, as it rots them when not exposed to ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... "No, I left my last white shirt at Cairo, Clinton. I consulted my soldier-servant about it. He was ready to guarantee the washing, but he did not see his way to starching and ironing; so I had to give them up and take to flannels. They were awful at first, and irritated my skin until they brought on prickly heat, and I was almost out of my mind for a few days. However, I have got over it now. What made you go into ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... odds. 'Also 1 set leading harness; 2 tressels and ironing board; 2 fenders; fire-irons and fire-dogs; 1 old oak chest; 1 wardrobe; 1 Brussels carpet (worn ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... failed to be impressed the clerk turned tail and fled. The ghost returned by a short cut, and the clerk found his wife calmly ironing the parson's surplice. He did not return ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... while the men sat and smoked and spat on the veranda, discussing the drought for an hour, at the end of which time they went to help someone else with their stock. I made up the fire and we continued our ironing, which had been interrupted some hours before. It was hot unpleasant work on such a day. We were forced to keep the doors and windows closed on account of the wind and dust. We were hot and tired, and our feet ached so that we could scarcely ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... with one eye, with disheveled hair, seated on the ground like an Indian idol, ironing clothes. The sad-iron was carefully imitated, being of copper with coals of red tinsel and smoke-wreaths of dirty ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... [At her ironing.] Yes, yes, that'll be it. If he wants two hundred, six hundred's sure to have come. There's no lack ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... girl" was added to the Windom menage,—a parlour-maid she was called. This was too much. It was rank injustice. General housework girls began to complain of having too much work to do,—getting up at five in the morning, cooking for half a dozen "hands," doing all the washing and ironing, milking, sweeping and so on, and not getting to bed till nine or ten o'clock at night,—to say nothing of family dinners on Sunday and the preacher in every now and then, and all that. Moreover, Mrs. Windom herself never looked bedraggled. She took care of her hair, wore good clothes, ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... on a piece of soft flannel, ironing on the wrong side. If flannel is not at hand, try ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... foreign body as a nurse. It employs one maid of all work, who helps the housewife wherever help is needed, whether it is in the kitchen or the nursery. The mother spends her time with her children, playing with them when she has leisure, cooking and ironing and saving for them, and for her husband all through her busy day. Modern Germans like to tell you that young women no longer devote themselves to these simple duties, but if you use your eyes you will see that most women do their ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... wraped it up in a towel that was drying in front of the fire, and laid it on a bundle of clothes ready for ironing that was on the table. Then he went ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... lot," broke in Mrs. Welcome, hurriedly. "They do all their ironing at night. And that's all anyone could ask of them after they come home tired from ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... gymnastic positions that are familiar, such as chargings, head bendings, trunk bendings, arm movements, knee bendings, hopping, jumping, dancing steps, etc.; or imitate familiar actions such as hammering, sawing, washing, ironing, sewing, stone cutting, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... times are a little better. I gits a little ironing and six dollars and commodities. The young generation is taking on funny ways. I think they do very well morally 'cepting their liquor drinking habits. That is worse, I think. They are advancing in learning. I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... the town. She went through the physical exercises of a prayer-meeting with astonishing vigor. It was exhilarating to see her wash a shirt, and a study to watch her do it up. A quick jerk shook out the dampened garment; one pass of her ample palm spread it over the ironing-board, and a few well-directed strokes with the iron accomplished what would have occupied the ordinary laundress ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... it a rinse and starch, and was ironing it when Jack came in, rather unceremoniously, as was his habit now that he came so often. This time he went to the kitchen door, as the other was locked, and found Mrs. Biggs giving the final touches to the apron, which she ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... up" and dressed the baby. Then she did one of "the bits of washing," that came from a family in whose service she had been before she married BOB, and that family's connection. And this occupied her fully, what with soaking, and mangling and ironing, until it was time to carry BOB his dinner. In the pauses of her work she had been able to cook it, and it was quite ready to go with her when she was prepared to take it. It was a long walk (in the rain) to BOB'S place of work, and it seemed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... day Jack DID get out, and, while Mother and Sal were ironing came to the door with the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... see you; he would say something disagreeable; and as you could not submit to that, we should be done for.—That odious Marquise d'Espard told him that your mother had been a monthly nurse and that your sister did ironing——" ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... After ironing the few little things Trudy shampooed her hair with scented soap and by the time its reddish loveliness was dry it was high noon and she repaired to her bedroom to mend and write letters. At one o'clock, in the process of dressing, she rapped at Mary's door ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... husbands going to work on the day shift. We followed one woman home. Tired from the hours in the mill, she nevertheless had to set to work immediately to get the children fed and off to school. Then she had her house to set to rights, washing and ironing to do, and dinner to get for the children and supper to be left for the man when he came back from work as she went on. In the afternoon she snatched a few hours of sleep, and the children who were not in school ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... was distributed amongst the members. In the same way, the co-operative group might arrange for household help. One skilled houseworker might assist with the work of three or four households. Washing, ironing, cleaning, dusting, mending, dressmaking, sewing, shopping, and the care of the telephone, could be carried on either partly or wholly by members of the group in return for other service, or by paid helpers who in every ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... vacation never amounts to much. I know an awfully funny story about old Mr. Davidson. He used to be the minister in Baywater, you know, and he had a large family and his children were very mischievous. One day his wife was ironing and she ironed a great big nightcap with a frill round it. One of the children took it when she wasn't looking and hid it in his father's best beaver hat—the one he wore on Sundays. When Mr. Davidson went to church next Sunday he put the hat on without ever looking into the crown. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with a curious mixture of fierce resentment and proprietorial pride. He spent a good deal of his time trying to think of ways in which he could circumvent the choking sensation that often came to him. Marcella brought some comfort by placing the kitchen ironing board across the bed, resting on the backs of two chairs so that he could lean forward on it. Sometimes he slept so, his grey head jerking forward and ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... As for love, I ought to tell you that living with a woman who has read Spencer and has followed you to the ends of the earth is no more interesting than living with any Anfissa or Akulina. There's the same smell of ironing, of powder, and of medicines, the same curl-papers every morning, the ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... on a still pleasanter object than these; for some of the rays fell on Dinah's finely molded cheek and lit up her pale-red hair to auburn, as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron, and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her blue-gray eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making up the butter, and from the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... it was certainly the most laborious day, as she always did her washing and ironing on Sunday morning, it being, as she said, the only leisure day she had; for on the other days she went about the country telling fortunes, and selling dream-books and wicked songs. Neither her husband's nor her children's ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... walking rapidly away from the front, the housemaid answered merely by moving sighs. The laundress reasoned from past experience that the font had gone dry, and suddenly remembered that she was promised to help with the Bowers's heavy ironing. This was at ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... get most of the ironing done this morning, if you'll see to the dinner,' said Pauline, as she put the irons on the stove and went into another room for the heavy basket ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... house, Miss Robinson liked it; but hoped she "would not ask that family o'niggers,—that would make it so vulgar;" and she took a large pinch of Scotch snuff, and waddled off to finish her ironing. Mrs. Deacon Jackson—she was a second wife, with no children—hoped that "Sally Bright would not be asked, because her father was in the State Prison for passing counterfeit money; and the example would be bad, not friendly to law and order." But as Aunt Kindly went out, she met the old Deacon ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... afternoon he remained in his chair by the window. It was six o'clock, supper time, when he entered the kitchen. Keziah, looking up from the ironing board, saw him. He was white and worn and grim, but he held out his hand ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gradually degenerated into an obsession for cleanliness. Each piece of furniture went through its weekly polishing, rugs were swept and dusted, sponged and sunned—even Mary could not do the table-linen to her taste—and Tuesday afternoon through the years went to immaculate ironing. The obsession for cleanliness bred a fear of uncleanliness, and for years each dish was examined by reflected light, to be condemned by one least streak. The milk and butter especially must receive care equaled only by surgical asepsis. Then there were the doors. The ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Sarah, was killed by lightning. She was ironing and was in a hurry to get through and get the supper on for her master, Early Hurt. I was the oldest child, and I always was scared of lightning. A dreadful storm was goin' on. I was under the bed and I heard the thunder bolt and the crash and the fall. I heard mama scream. I crawled out from under ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... histories the more piquant. If he went to the hotel to see a traveling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards, with their white throats and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... wool, silk, and dresses of all kinds differs from that on underwear and white work. Muslin underwear requires frequent washing and ironing, hence the first essential is durability; close, small stitches, all raw edges carefully turned and stitched securely. Seams that are to come close to the body should lie perfectly flat. A round seam would wear out sooner by coming into frequent ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of wet linen lay on the ground, but a quantity had not yet seen the water. After a considerable amount of jabbering and talking, it was agreed that the task could be accomplished. The sun was hot, and the gentlemen must not be very particular about the ironing. While one half of the damsels set to work again in the stream, the rest, headed by the mistress, began to hang up the washed articles, a young girl being despatched apparently for further assistance. This looked like being in earnest, and the dame assured Norris that the things should be ready ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... domestic gaps into which her mother always steps; and she comforts herself with the thought, 'I don't know how; I can't; I haven't the strength. I cant' sweep; it blisters my hands. If I should stand at the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week. As to cooking, I don't know anything about it.' And so, when the cook, or the chambermaid, or nurse, or all together, vacate the premises, it is the mamma who is successively cook, and chambermaid, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have scolded her, and I have made ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his flannels in the boot cupboard, he came and flung them onto the table where Aggie bent over her ironing-board. A feeble fury ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... stranger?" Alix said. "If Peter's a stranger," she added animatedly, "what is an intimate friend? Peter walks through this house at all hours; you can't wash your hair or do a little ironing without having Peter under your feet; he borrows money from me; he bullies ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... however on making terms with the boy's relations; and with some misgivings on Ambrose's part, the two—since business hours were almost over—walked together to the Temple and to the little house, where Perronel was ironing ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... returned home they found that Mary Erskine had made all the preparations necessary for the commencement of the school. She had made a desk for the two children by means of the ironing-board, which was a long and wide board, made very smooth on both sides. This board Mary Erskine placed across two chairs, having previously laid two blocks of wood upon the chairs in a line with ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... had a reverential affection for her. During the years when I was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking the three meals—the first of which was ready at six o'clock in the morning—and putting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight at her ironing-board, with me at the kitchen table beside her, hearing me recite Latin declensions and conjugations, gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of irregular verbs. It was to her, at her ironing or mending, that I read my first Shakspere, and her old text-book on mythology ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... promises to pay. Joined with this is an establishment for washing clothes, where the poor can go and hire, for almost nothing, good tubs, water ready heated, the use of an apparatus for rinsing, drying, and ironing, all so admirably arranged that a poor woman can in three hours get through an amount of washing and ironing that would, under ordinary circumstances, occupy three or four days. Especially the drying closets I contemplated with great satisfaction, and hope to see in our own country the same arrangements ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... very nice starch, and clap it into them, after they are hung on the line, they iron much better this way, and look almost like new, sometimes to wash the cuffs and lower part carefully, and press it all over, will do without washing the whole dress. For ironing the skirt have a narrow ironing board, covered with a piece of blanket, to ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... it would do Patty to have the Tea Club help her keep house," said Florence Douglass. "But we'll all make her lovely things to go to housekeeping with. I shall be real sensible, and make her sweeping-caps and ironing-holders." ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... woman's calling clear-starching and ironing domestic drudgery, and to better the matter turning to type-setting in a grimy printing-office! Call the care of china and silver, the sweeping of carpets, the arrangement of parlors and sitting rooms, drudgery; and go into a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... little person made a bob-curtsey—"Oh, yes, if you please'm; my name is Mrs. Tiggy-winkle; oh, yes if you please'm, I'm an excellent clear-starcher!" And she took something out of a clothes- basket, and spread it on the ironing-blanket. ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle • Beatrix Potter
... worked very late watering her flowers, and trimming them, and then ironing out a little clean white cap for the morrow; and then sitting down under the open lattice to prick out all old Annemie's designs by the strong light of the full moon that flooded ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... ironing," said Bobbie, taking the clean dry dresses off the line. "I do love to see things come clean. Oh—I don't know how we shall wait till it's time to know what presentation they're ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... cheap down in this region, and by the way, dear, when you go up to Crabtree again, you must start an inquiry for a good colored cook among your lady friends. Tell them you want a good one, who understands washing and ironing and all about cooking. At present we boys do all the cooking down here and we send our laundry up to Crabtree, where there are only three Chinamen to the ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish
... haven't, God be thanked! cost you one penny during the twelve years I've been with you, and you have had the pleasure of my company into the bargain. I could have earned my own living anywhere with the work that I've done here,—washing, ironing, looking after the linen, going to market, cooking, taking care of your interests before everything, slaving myself to death from morning till night,—and this ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... express wagon with her basket of clothes along the streets, Mandy finally reached her home where she did the washing and ironing. Her children were waiting for her to come to supper. Liza Ann, the oldest girl, had set the table, and Jim, the next oldest boy, was out on the steps watching for his mother, just as Arnold and ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... their impudent and sometimes bullying demeanor; and the horror of one occasion I shall never forget, when a stalwart Winnebago, armed with a knife, tomahawk and gun, seized my mother by the shoulder as she stood by her ironing table, and shook her because she said she had no bread for him. I wrapped myself in her skirts and howled in terror. Having been transplanted from the city to the wilderness, she had a mortal fear of Indians, but never ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to interview the milk dealer; Jane was cold and went into the cottage to warm herself. "It is well I'm at ironing today," said Mrs. Brent, "for so I hev a good fire. Come your ways in, ma'am, and sit on the hearth. Let me make you a cup ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the small but cosy living-room behind, which the large number of its occupants caused to appear even smaller than it was. John Dudgeon was there, and Mrs. John, and several offshoots of the Dudgeon tree. Mrs. Dudgeon was ironing at a table beneath the one small window, in the fading light. She was a staid and dapper matron, with here and there the faintest line of care upon her comely face. A couple of the children were rolling upon the hearthrug ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Sunny Boy sat at one end of the ironing board and watched her and ate his sponge cake—which was almost as good as the kind with pink icing which were only for dessert—and drank his milk. Then Harriet gave him the skirt to carry back to Aunt Bessie and he remembered to ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... not appear to so much advantage. These comprised old Karka, young Dam Zeneb, Sallaamto, Fad-el-Kereem, Marrasilla, and Faddeela. They had learnt to wash, but could never properly fold the linen. Ironing and starching were quite out of the question, and would have been as impossible to them as algebra. Some of these girls were rather pretty, and they knew it. In moral character Dam Zeneb and Sallaamto were the best. Fad-el-Kereem was the most intelligent, but she was a young woman of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... prison, fallen, inebriate, and preventive cases. At the time of my visit there were sixty-three inmates, but when a new adjacent building is completed there will be room for more. There is a wonderful laundry in this Home, where the most beautiful washing is done at extremely moderate prices. The ironing and starching room was a busy sight, but what I chiefly remember about it was the spectacle of one melancholy old man, the only male among that crowd of women, seated by a steam-boiler that drove the machinery, to which it was his business to attend. (No woman can be persuaded to look after ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Sabbath and occasionally at evening; so that though this diminished the labor of cooking, it left her with her children wholly on her hands, and a great deal of unavoidable labor, such as washing and ironing. The latter work she did for her husband, as well as for her children and herself: and it was therefore an item of considerable moment—especially as she was obliged to bring water for this and all her domestic purposes in pails, the ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... strange wagons—ludicrous, makeshift things—had been discharging loads of women and children at the Benton ranch, tired mothers and their insistent offspring. To the women this strenuous relaxation came as manna in the wilderness. What was the dreary round of washing, ironing, baking, and the chain of household tasks that must be done as primitively as in Genesis, if only they might dance and forget? So the mothers came early and stayed late, and the primary sessions of the dances fulfilled ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... outfit, I continued on west to the new ranch, while the men began the fall branding at home. On arriving on the Double Mountain range, I found the outfit in the saddle, ironing up a big calf crop, while the improved herd was the joy and pride of my foreman. An altitude of about four thousand feet above sea-level had proved congenial to the thoroughbreds, who had acclimated nicely, the only loss being one ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... certain amount of money, and money Alice had not—not even enough to pay a Chinaman for "doing up" one of her pretty muslins. Neither had she the facilities for doing them herself, had she been skilled in that sort of labor; for even to do your own washing and ironing pre-supposes the usual conveniences of a laundry, and these did not belong to the furniture of the outside kitchen. She had not worn her linen lawn since the visit to the mill. The dust which blew freely ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... obeyed and consoled herself by giving the apprentice, who was ironing hose and towels by her side, a little push. Gervaise had a cap belonging to Mme Boche in her hand and was ironing the crown with a round ball, when a tall, bony woman came in. She ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... way the good people of Bethany imagined. As a matter of fact, a more corrupt Chinaman had never been smuggled into America. Ostensibly in the laundry business, and really a master workman in that line, the astute Chink had long since relinquished the labor over the tubs and ironing-board to Hop Wah, his silent partner. Ah Moy's chief interest in the establishment lay in its cavernous sub-cellar, where he conducted gaming tables and a smoking-'parlor' with flattering success. The gods evidently smiled upon him, for his den seemed to be unknown to the police, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... without being reminded that "Husband held Court yesterday, and she couldn't keep the house decent." If you sat down to eat with them, she was sorry she "hadn't anything fit to eat." She had been scrubbing, or washing, or ironing, or she had been half sick, and she hadn't got such and such things that she ought to have. Nor did it matter how bountiful or how well prepared the repast really was, there was always something deficient, the want of which furnished a text for a disparaging discourse on the occasion. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... he visited his lovely and all unconscious mistress the next day, but the fair lady was busy ironing.—"I shall see her again this evening," thought he, as he turned slowly towards the town; and see her that evening he did. They rambled out towards the cape, or promontory, almost invariably the scene ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... and leaves her washing to steep in lye (coul is the creole word used) during the night. There are watchmen to guard it. Before daybreak it is rinsed in warm water; then it is taken back to the river,—is rinsed again, bleached again, blued and starched. Then it is ready for ironing. To press and iron well is the most difficult part of the trade. When an apprentice is able to iron a gentleman's shirt nicely, and a pair of white pantaloons, she is considered to have finished her time;—she ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... wash-house, or the wash-house consists of a couple of boards, with a post to keep them up, and a piece of netting overhead to keep the sun off. In larger houses, both bath-rooms and wash-houses are much the same as in England. Nearly all families do their washing, and often their ironing also, at home. Of the sanitary arrangements, it is almost impossible to speak too strongly; they are ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... be emphasized is the fact that she did her own washing. The more accurate statement would be that she did her own laundry, including the processes, not only of rubbing the clothes clean, but of boiling, starching, bluing, and ironing. This, after a day of standing in other employment, is a vital strain more severe than may perhaps be readily realized. Saleswomen and shop-girls have not the powerful wrists and muscular waists ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... door she dashed. Wealthy, who was ironing, with a worried frown on her brow, started and exclaimed at the sight of Eyebright, and sat suddenly down on a chair. Before she could speak, Eyebright's arms were ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... matter in a charitable light, Nan consented, and went cheerfully on with her work, wondering how she could have thought ironing an infliction, and been so ungrateful for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I, drawing breath of unfeigned relief. "I bear my Lord Charles no malice, but 'twas a needless precaution, this ironing of a man who was never ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... cried Cornelia, dimpling. "Well, Mury, see here, you nip round and wait upon me the best you know, and I'll give you an elegant present! I wear muslins most all the time in summer, and I can't endoor to have them mussed. You keep carrying them away and ironing them out nice and smooth, without bothering me to tell you. See! I need lots of attention; there's no getting away from that, but I'll make it worth your while. You just put your mind to it, and I guess you'll make a ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... show it was! On one long bench, were half a dozen washtubs; and on a table, near by, were a dozen more washtubs; and on a longer table not far away were six ironing boards, with smoothing irons. A stove, made hot with a peat fire, was to heat the irons. Behind the tubs and tables, stood the twelve elf maidens, all arrayed in shining white garments and caps, as spotless as snow. One might almost think they were white elves of the meadow and not ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... was never fatal, except when inward grief or some moral cause changed its character into one of habitual melancholy, or an unconquerable distaste to life. While some of the women went out into the fields, to gather the samples ordered by the doctor, and others were ironing out her damp clothes in the lower room, I left the house to wander alone among the ruins ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... roof first and the foundation is the last thing they put in. The key in the door turns backward to lock it. The kitchen is in the front while the best room is in the back of the house. When a Chinaman sprinkles clothes for ironing purposes he uses his mouth as the sprinkler. I never had a collar washed in China that was not ironed wrong side out. He pays the doctor when he is well and stops the pay the moment he gets sick. You can almost bank on a Chinaman doing anything the opposite from the way you do it and he laughs ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... impossible for me to seek a position through an employment agency. I had become, you see, one of those characters I had read about in short stories dozens of times before—an unemployed girl in New York, even to the hall-bedroom, the handkerchiefs stuck on my window-pane in process of ironing, the water-bugs around the pipes in the bath-room. It was this consciousness of myself that made many of the hardships bearable—this and the grim determination not ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... me Saturday and Sunday, and before and after school the other days of the week. Saturday he would have to work all day, of course, but Sunday he would have almost nothing to do," said Mrs. Brady. "The washing and ironing I put out," she added as Mrs. ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... by: Eliza Washington Place of Residence: 1517 West Seventeenth Little Rock, Arkansas Occupation: Washing and Ironing (When able) Age: About 77 [TR: Information moved from ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... even when she was walking on level ground. She held herself erect with her arms folded tightly over her bosom. And whatever she was doing, whatever she undertook, if she were only threading a needle or ironing a petticoat—the effect was always beautiful and somehow—you may not believe it—touching. Her Christian name was Raissa, but we used to call her Black-lip: she had on her upper lip a birthmark; a little ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... action performed must be seated. The leader may choose any positions that are familiar, such as arm movements, head bendings, trunk bendings, jumping, hopping, etc., or imitate familiar actions, such as sawing, hammering, washing, ironing, sewing, sweeping, ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... alone will give a good appetite. I wonder how you could expect to relish your food after lounging about doing nothing all the morning! I'll be bound that if you had been in your shop ironing hats or waiting on your customers since breakfast-time, there would have been no complaint ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... comfortable; there are plenty of warm and good quality, though not white, blankets. Sheets are flannel or cotton as preferred. Pillow cases are linen, towels of the "bath" variety because washing can be done by "natives" near by, but ironing is difficult. Let no one, however, think that this is a "simple" (by that meaning either easy or inexpensive) form of entertainment! Imagine the budget! A dozen guides, teams and drivers, natives to wash and clean and to help ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... is the most haphazard institution we have. Everything is done there. (I am speaking now of the homes in the country.) In each of the homes there is a little bit of washing done, a little dressmaking, a little butter-making, a little baking, a little ironing going on, and it is all by hand-power, which is the most expensive power known. It is also being done largely by amateurs, and that adds to the amount of labor expended. Women have worked away at these endless tasks for generations, lovingly, unselfishly, doing their level best to do everything, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... She at length walks proudly from the platform in her completed new gown, while the young dressmaker looks anxiously after her to make sure that it "hangs right behind." Other girls are doing washing and ironing with the drudgery removed in accordance with advanced Tuskegee methods. Still others are hard at work on hats, mats, and dresses, while boys from the tailoring department sit crosslegged working on suits and uniforms. ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... through Norfolk, and one afternoon, to escape a coming thunderstorm, I knocked at the door of a lonely cottage on the outskirts of a common. The woman, a kindly bustling person, asked me in; and hoping I would excuse her, as she was busy ironing, returned to her work in another room. I thought myself alone, and was standing at the window watching the pouring rain. After a while, without knowing why, I turned. And then I saw a child seated on a high chair behind a table in ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... in an undertone of amiable chiding; and the buggy gave a jerk of thankful relief as its principal burden left it for the sidewalk, diffusing the sweet smell of the ironing-table. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... fourth wife and she is much younger dan me. I am unable to work and have to stay in bed lots of de time. My wife works at odd jobs, like washing, ironing and cooking. We rent a two-room house ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... man, as soon as my een lighted on her I minded of my mother at the same job. The crittur was so busy with her work that she looked as if, though the last trumpet had blawn, she would just have cried, 'I canna come till my ironing's done!' Ay, I went ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... white cloth is spread on the table when food is to be eaten. Europeans wear many clothes. All these have to be washed whenever they are dirty, and so one person will be kept busy all day washing and ironing if there are many people living ...
— People of Africa • Edith A. How
... see "her poor dame" so ill. The doctor called in the forenoon and found his patient easier. Later in the day Mary said to Susan that as her master had taken physic, he would require more gruel, but as there was still some left, she need not make it fresh "as she was ironing." Susan replied that the gruel was stale, being then four days old, and, further, that having herself tasted it, she felt very ill, upon which facts Mary made no comment. She thoughtfully warned the cook, however, that if Susan ate more ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... and had spoken casually of her cook and second girl and laundress and "man," as if the quartette were permanent fixtures in the Black establishment. As a matter of fact, the only fixtures were the cook and second girl. The laundress came in on Mondays and Tuesdays to do the washing and ironing, and the "man" acted as janitor's helper at the factory three days of the week. The chauffeur was but a summer flourish; B. Phelps drove his own car eight months in ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hard she could be on us. She gave me all the extra work to do that she could think of, apparently to keep me from helping my wife in the kitchen. She had all the cooking to do for three heavy meals each day, all the washing and ironing of the finest clothes, besides caring for the babies between times. In the morning she would nurse the babies, then hurry off to the kitchen to get breakfast while they were left in charge of a little girl. Again ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... do what I've always done—cooking and cleaning and washing and ironing, and I could carry things ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... busying about, Sewing on buttons, tapes, and strings, Hanging the week's wet washing out Or ironing the children's things, Sweeping and dusting, cleaning grates, Scrubbing the dresser or the floors, Washing the greasy dinner plates, Scouring the brasses on ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... Nance?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for working in that old store for $8. a week! I made $18.50 last week. Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I don't know that it's ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... heavy in his hand for years—it was just as if the gudgeons wanted oiling. That was on the Sunday, as I say. During the week after, it chanced that William's wife was staying up late one night to finish her ironing, she doing the washing for Mr. and Mrs. Hardcome. Her husband had finished his supper and gone to bed as usual some hour or two before. While she ironed she heard him coming down stairs; he stopped to put on his boots at the stair- foot, where he always ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... with her search, Lucy returned to the house, and there found Deborah ironing at the long table in the hall, and crooning away her one dismal song of ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... residents, to carefully investigate the conditions of the alleys. During August and September the substantiated reports of violations of the law sent in from Hull-House to the health department were one thousand and thirty-seven. For the club woman who had finished a long day's work of washing or ironing followed by the cooking of a hot supper, it would have been much easier to sit on her doorstep during a summer evening than to go up and down ill-kept alleys and get into trouble with her neighbors over the condition ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... reluctantly through the small, opaque-looking window. Caleb's bench and tools were placed just underneath it, and above his head a linnet hopped and twittered in a green cage. Kit's perambulator occupied one corner, while Kit herself, seated at the table in a high chair, was busily engaged in ironing out some ragged doll-garments with a tiny bent flat-iron. Anna regarded her pitifully—the small shrunken figure and sunken chest, and the thin white face with its halo of red curls. But Kit was almost too absorbed with her endeavour to get the creases out of a doll's petticoat ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my things," she replied to Mrs. Gartney's advance of assistance. "I've just come over to tell you what I'm going to do. I've made up my mind to take the minister to board. And when the washing and ironing's out of the way, next week, I shall fix up a room for ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... he did, not in so many words, but that was what I thought he meant. It was like this, sir," continued Mrs. Brunton, as they stood face to face on the wet gravel: "just about this time yesterday I was busy ironing, when my nephew, the lad you used to send with letters, who's here again for his summer holidays, comes to me an' says, 'You're wanted.' So I went, and there was a young gentleman looking fit to drop. He'd a ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... rake; a man—or rather a brute—who lives by his wits, abuses me like the pickpocket that he is, half starves me, and expects me to do all the work, cooking, cleaning, and everything else, even to washing and ironing of the few clothes he hasn't pawned; me! a lady brought up to have servants to wait ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... old black mammy was ironing in the sitting room, Kintchin came in at the door which always stood open, and looking about, slowly went up to the old woman and inquired if she ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... but if chance lead him among her western villages, he will rarely find either churches or chapels, prayer or preacher; except, indeed, at that most terrific saturnalia, "a camp-meeting." I was much struck with the answer of a poor woman, whom I saw ironing on a Sunday. "Do you make no difference in your occupations on a Sunday?" I said. "I beant a Christian, Ma'am; we have got no opportunity," was the reply. It occurred to me, that in a country where "all ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... ironing day, and a hot fire still burned in the empty kitchen, for the maids were upstairs resting. Nan put a slender poker to heat, and as she sat waiting for it, covered her face with her hands, asking ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... down on the ironing-board, the white table underneath the window, in the old familiar manner of former days; many and many a time had he perched himself there to talk to her when he was young ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the tug of war; two "colored ladies" made their appearance, for a small bill of seven dollars, for washing and ironing the dickeys and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and a bathroom. The married soldiers have a living-room, scullery, and one, two, or three bedrooms according to the size of their families. A laundry is provided adjacent to the married quarters, equipped with washing-troughs, wringer, drying-closet, and ironing-room; and the women are encouraged to use this in preference to doing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... had traveled. There was marketing to do, and sewing continually on hand, and house-cleaning at stated intervals. In Helen Somers's old home the daily routine had been as inflexible as its ancestor's original Calvinistic creed—Monday, washing; Tuesday, ironing; Wednesday, cleaning the silver; Thursday, at home to visitors; Friday, sweeping; Saturday, baking; and Sunday, the hardest day of all. For, withal, the Puritan sense of observance, that had not been utterly ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... succeeded by a knowing, active, capable damsel, with a temper like a steel-trap, who remained with me just one week, and then went off in a fit of spite. To her succeeded a rosy, good-natured, merry lass, who broke the crockery, burned the dinner, tore the clothes in ironing, and knocked down every thing that stood in her way about the house, without at all discomposing herself about the matter. One night she took the stopper from a barrel of molasses, and came singing off up stairs, while the molasses ran soberly out into the cellar bottom all ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... importunate down in the shrubbery, and red and yellow showing up long since on the wooded hills. Not a soul in the place but is glad to have Fruen at home again; the flag, too, does its part. 'Tis like a Sunday; the maids have put clean aprons on, fresh from the ironing. ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... the child discovers that his own experiences are common to many other lives and homes. This was evidenced by the remark of a small boy who, at the end of a story relating the necessary sequence of activities common to the countless thousands of heroic mothers, washing and ironing the family linen, waggishly shook his finger at the narrator, and with a beaming smile, said: "Now you know that it is my Ma and Tootsie you are telling about!" John had not discovered the fact ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... machine to the water-pipes anywhere and the decomposition of the fluid begins, and you will have floods of light for the mere cost of the machine. I've nearly got the lighting part, but I want to attach to it a heating, cooking, washing and ironing apparatus. It's going to be the great thing, but we'd better keep this appropriation going while I am ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... she did not regard us as quality. On the contrary, she often tried to overbear us with the gentility of her former places; and would tell the lady over whom she reigned that she had lived with folks worth their three and four hundred thousand dollars, who never complained as she did of the ironing. Yet she had a sufficient regard for the literary occupations of the family, Mr. Johnson having been an author. She even professed to have herself written a book, which was still in manuscript and preserved somewhere among her ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... from them. But by constant prayer, believing God would take care of me, I was delivered from them. And I have plenty of washing, ironing, and house-cleaning to do; and I get along so much better than I expected I could. I do want to go to meeting; but so many know of my wicked life I am afraid to ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... door and went over the way. Here she found a somewhat tidy woman at work ironing. Nobody else in the room. She made known her errand. The woman looked ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... burning. She had been cold all day. A sound like the tolling of a bell beat in her ears. The children's voices were choked and distant. She wondered if Biddy were drunk, she seemed to dance about so at her ironing-table, and wondered if she must dismiss her, and who could supply her place. She tried to put my room in order, for she was expecting me that night by the last train, but gave up the undertaking in ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of housekeeping a never-ending process, but John himself laboured steadily toward their accomplishment, and he was so successful in inspiring her with those same ideals that her pride helped her over many a weary day's cleaning. She entered into them week after week and became expert at ironing, baking, and all the little offices of the domestic altar. All her strength was given to her work each day, and for a time she succeeded comfortably, but as the days shortened and the routine became more ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Edy turned to her ironing-table, as if she didn't care for company; and Dumps and Tot, seeing that she was tired of them, went back ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... as she took a turn at the ironing while she told her the news, and Mary washed the dinner things, "I am dreadfully nervous. I wish we had a cook and a parlourmaid, and I wish we were able to buy all the best things that can be got. Granny does so like to have nice food and nice everything. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... needle-woman who has learned her business, and knows milliner's phraseology and the meaning of terms, and how to cut out to the best advantage. She will then be able to use common material, buy smaller quantities of them, and will always look well dressed. Her gown will always be ironed when it wants ironing; it will be mended whenever a stitch has broken loose; the collars and cuffs will always be clean and of the right shape and size; and no one will enquire into the quality and cost of the material of which the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... of them Klu Kluxes and come to town, to Snow Hill. We rented a little house and my mother took in washing and ironing. I went to school and learned to read and write, then worked on farms, and fin'ly went to Columbia, in South Carolina, and worked in the turpentine country. I stayed there ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... charge of a brass-buttoned guardian, to the Ludlow Street flat is easy enough to understand. A more unlovely existence than that in one of these tenements it would be hard to imagine. Everywhere is the stench of the kerosene stove that is forever burning, serving for cooking, heating, and ironing alike, until the last atom of oxygen is burned out of the close air. Oil is cheaper than coal. The air shaft is too busy carrying up smells from below to bring any air down, even if it is not hung full of washing in every story, as it ordinarily is. Enterprising tenants ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... and time, they made compost heaps. Mixed dirt with manure. They hoed cotton and crops. They didn't know what school was. They helped with washing and ironing. Did every kind of work they had strength enough to do till they got big enough to go to the field. That was what ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... any other article has been scorched in ironing, lay it where bright sunshine will fall directly on it. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... dinner he lay down on the sofa, on the warm chintz cushions the children loved. Then he fell into a kind of doze. That afternoon Mrs. Morel was ironing. She listened to the small, restless noise the boy made in his throat as she worked. Again rose in her heart the old, almost weary feeling towards him. She had never expected him to live. And yet he had a great vitality in his young body. Perhaps it would have ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... to the same air for every day of the week and Miss Jones is baking, ironing, or scrubbing. She is then sick or worse and ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... putting dresses on cheap dolls. When a tall girl came by with a pail of water and entered a nearby apartment, Gervaise saw a tumbled bed on which a man was sprawled, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. As the door closed behind her, Gervaise saw the hand-written card: "Mademoiselle Clemence, ironing." ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... are left in paper after ordinary drying, may be prevented by ironing with a moderately hot iron. An electric iron with a temperature control is desirable. If kept too hot it will scorch or wrinkle the paper somewhat. The bottom of the iron should be clean so that unremovable smudges will not be ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... was a slattern, but only because she married into slavery. She was kept so busy washing and ironing for Sanders that she ceased to care how she looked herself. What did it matter whether her mutch was clean? Weaving and washing and cooking, doing the work of a breadwinner as well as of a housewife, hers was soon a body prematurely ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... and I heard her mutter, "So vulgar! so ungenteel!" However, she recovered herself, and appeared to be for some time in deep thought. At last she rose up, ordered me to fetch something extra for supper, and recommenced her ironing. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... that "they are as good as you; that they can get twenty better places by the morrow, and that they don't care a snap for your anger." And away they bounce, leaving you to finish a large wash, or a heavy job of ironing, in the best ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie |
