"Laundress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some underwear herself, at erratic intervals, drying them on windows, or the backs of various chairs. Emeline always had a pair or more of silk stockings soaking in a little bowl of cold suds in the bedroom, and occasionally carried a waist or a lace petticoat to the little French laundress on Powell Street, and drove a sharp bargain with her. Julia accepted the situation very cheerfully; she and her mother both enjoyed their lazy, aimless existence, and to Julia, at least, the future was full of ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His father on his second marriage had settled some property upon him, which brought in some L90 a year. He had to live like a gentleman upon this, and to give four guineas a year to the laundress, four to his barber, and two to his shoeblack. In spite of Jeremy's deviation from the path of preferment, the two were on friendly terms, and when the hopes of the son's professional success grew faint, the father showed sympathy with his literary undertakings. Jeremy ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... out-pensioner of Greenwich Hospital. Should the wedding take place, the bridegroom will be given away by Mr. Levy, the great toll-contractor; while the blushing bride will be attended to the altar by her mother-in-law, the well-known laundress of Tash-street. The trousseau, consisting of a selection from a bankrupt's stock of damaged de laines, has been purchased at Lambeth House; and a parasol carefully chosen from a lot of 500, all at one-and-ninepence, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... shoddy; so the next day Larry pottered about the studio, acting as maid-of-all-work, while the clothes in his trunk which had been stored with the Duchess were being sponged and pressed by the little tailor down the street, and while a laundress, driven by the Duchess, was preparing the rest of his outfit for his debut. In his capacity of maid, with a basket on his arm, he went out into the little street, where in his shabby clothes he was recognized by none and leaned for a time against the mongrel, underfed ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... a certain effect, and the expediency of changing one's linen at least three times a day; though had he changed his six, I should have said that the purification of the last shirt would have been no sinecure to the laundress. His accent was decidedly Scotch: he spoke familiarly of Scott and one or two other Scotch worthies, and more than once insinuated that he was a member of Parliament. With respect to the rest of the company I say nothing, and for the very sufficient reason that, unlike ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Rothchilds says you are a beautiful laundress and that you always return all the things when you promise. I had a nigger doing my work and she was an awful nuisance. I do believe she wore my stockings and my teddy-bears. Mrs. Rothchilds is a friend of mine; we live in adjoining ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... who spoke was of the shabbiest appearance, wearing an almost napless high hat, a coloured linen shirt which should have been at the laundress's, no neck-tie, a frock-coat with only one button, low shoes terribly down at heel; for all that, the most jovial-looking man, red-nosed, laughing. At length Hood ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Child Nurse Citizen*** Cook Craftsman Cyclist Dairy Maid Dancer Dressmaker Drummer Economist Electrician Farmer First Aide*** Flower Finder Gardener Handy Woman Health Guardian*** Health Winner Home Maker Home Nurse*** Horsewoman Hostess Interpreter Journalist**** Laundress Milliner Motorist**** Musician Needlewoman Pathfinder Photographer Pioneer*** Rock Tapper Sailor*** Scribe Signaller ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... comparatively easy for an employer to manage her household industry with a cook, a laundress, a waitress. The difficulties really begin when the family income is so small that but one person can be employed in the household for all these varied functions, and the difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... money does not come into the question. The lady is rather strong-willed. So, Ricky," he laughed, "we'll leave you two to fight it out. But Lucy may be able to find us a laundress." ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... by the butler, and each one flushing painfully in return for the attention. There was Delia, the cook, and Christine, her assistant; Swanson, the furnace man; Lockhart, the chauffeur, and Boyles, the washer; Cora, the laundress; Georgia, the scullery-maid; Edgecomb, the gardener, and his four helpers; Beulah and Emma, the upstairs-maids; Bliss, the lodge-keeper, and Jane, his daughter; Frank, the pony-cart driver, and Joe, the coachman; Matson, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Do you think," said he, "she would have scorned to touch the dirty clothes, saying, that they smelt of grease?" Sophy, touched to the quick, forgot her natural timidity and defended herself eagerly. Her papa knew very well all the smaller things would have had no other laundress if she had been allowed to wash them, and she would gladly have done more had she been set to do it. [Footnote: I own I feel grateful to Sophy's mother for not letting her spoil such pretty hands with soap, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... am inclined on this point to republican opinions: Ratke, a German cook, good—and Germanly bad, he don't make my kitchen; Paul, now working out his debts outdoor; Emma, a strange weird creature—I suspect (from her colour) a quarter white—widow of a white man, ugly, capable, a really good laundress; Java—yes, that is the name—they spell it Siava, but pronounce it, and explain it Java—her assistant, a creature I adore from her plain, wholesome, bread-and-butter beauty. An honest, almost ugly, bright, good-natured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... year;" but the honour was dearly purchased at the expense of "dreadful palpitations in the heart, nights of sleeplessness and horrors, and spirits depressed to the very depths of wretchedness." In July, 1806, his laundress on coming into his room at College, saw him fallen down in a convulsive fit, bleeding and insensible. His great anxiety was to conceal from his mother the state to which he was reduced. At the end of September, he went to London in search of relaxation and amusement; and in the next ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... —the laundress' assistant; warranted not to injure the finest fabric. No acid; no potash. In the wash room it saves time, labor, expense, muscle, temper, and hands. The clothes will come out cleaned and white, without wear or tear or rubbing on ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... so extreme that it became ridiculous. The ears of the Senorita de los Oscos were so chaste that the conversation of an English "Miss" would seem like a serjeant's in her presence. She could not tolerate her brother's under-linen being put with hers when the laundress took it away or brought it home. If she was asked to sew a button on his underclothes, she ran to her room when the task was over, and washed her hands, when, it was said, she sprinkled them with holy water. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... built—was Milly. She lived with an old mother who was a laundress, and the old mother took it very ill when her daughter went to mind the dead woman's little ones; but, as Milly herself said, there was only one man who needed to be considered before she went to her holy task, ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, smoking hot, and bedight with Christmas holly ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... was that the redskin, Laura, official laundress of the Arrowhead, had lately attended an evening affair in the valley at which the hitherto smart tipple of Jamaica ginger had been supplanted by a novel and potent beverage, Nature's own remedy for chills, dyspepsia, deafness, rheumatism, despair, carbuncles, jaundice, and ennui. Laura had ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... are many scholarships open to the girls for further training, (a)for a home course, (b) for domestic service, (c) for the trades of laundress, needlewoman, dressmaker, and cook. These scholarships are held at Technical Institutes, or Trade Schools, and the training given is ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... rose early, and looking at my shirt, found stains still visible, and that I had so mucked it in washing, that an infant could have guessed what I had been doing. I knew that my mother who now did household duties herself, selected the things for the laundress; and in despair hit on a plan: I filled the chamber-pot with piss and soap-suds, making it as dirty as I could, put it near a chair and my shirt hanging over it carelessly, so as to look as if it had dropped into the pot by accident; left it there, and put on a clean shirt. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman. No one has ever really reformed a washerwoman, and that is why the competition is so keen. You can rescue charwomen by fifties with a little tea and personal magnetism, but with washerwomen it's different; wages are too high. This particular laundress, who came from Bermondsey or some such place, was really rather a hopeful venture, and they thought at last that she might be safely put in the window as a specimen of successful work. So they had her paraded at a drawing-room "At Home" ...
— Reginald • Saki
... sausages at home, and living on something like two shillings a day," he remarked in meditation; and then it struck him that Mrs. Lovell's parcel of returned jewels lay in one of his drawers at home—that is, if the laundress ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The Colonel was a man of simple habits. He had learned these when a soldier, and he brought up his sons to live like himself. He ate plain food, drank only water, and slept upon a camp-bed with a buffalo-robe and a blanket. A laundress in Point Coupee kept the linen clean; and Hugot was not near so busy with house affairs as you might suppose. He made daily journeys to the village—to the market, and the post-office, from which ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... a funny thing that my laundress," he shouted back, "can't bring in breakfast things for more than one on that particular tray. She's always complaining it's too small, and says I ought to buy ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... one is offered a choice (if one have the means to take it) between American plutocracy and European militocracy, with an imminent chance of renouncing either for a stultocratic republic with a headsman in the presidential chair and every laundress in exile. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the faithful Jeanette supported this child by her own industry. She was an exquisite laundress, and she throve where the Duke and Duchess would have starved. As the boy grew up she kept him as far as possible from common companions, treated him with as much deference as if he had succeeded to the family honours, and filled his head ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... however;—they came walking back together, still demurely hand in hand, and settled themselves quietly in a corner to study their tasks for the next day. Babette's doll, once attired as a fashionable Parisienne, and now degenerated into a one- eyed laundress with a rather soiled cap and apron, stuck out its composite arms in vain from the bench where it sat all askew, drooping its head forlornly over a dustpan,—and Henri's drum, wherewith he was wont to wake alarming echoes out of the dreamy and historical streets of Rouen, lay on its ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... lived at Upperton, a suburb of Eastbourne, and had accommodation for seventy boys, but during the whole time I remained there we never had more than fifty. His advertisements in local and London papers offering "Commercial training for thirty guineas including laundress and books. Bracing air, gravel soil, diet best and unlimited. Reduction for brothers," were glowing enough, but they never whipped up business sufficiently to attract the required number of boarders. Nevertheless, I must admit that old ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... finger in its eye and weep. Ha! ha! ha! poor Risberg! how would he laugh to see these compassionate tears! It seem she has written in a very doleful strain to thee,—talked very pathetically about his debts to his laundress and his landlady. I have a good mind to leave thee in this amiable ignorance; but I'll prove for once a kind brother, by telling you that Risberg is a profligate and prodigal; that he neglects every study but that of dice; that this is the true reason why I have ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... drying-ground, the fine orchard, and that large field quartered into four different crops. How comfortable this cottage looks, and how well the owners earn their comforts! They are the most prosperous pair in the parish—she a laundress with twenty times more work than she can do, unrivalled in flounces and shirt-frills, and such delicacies of the craft; he, partly a farmer, partly a farmer's man, tilling his own ground, and then tilling other people's;—affording a proof, even in this declining age, when the circumstances ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... than the horse does,—it is uphill nearly all the way,—but time is no longer any object with me. Amelie has a donkey and a little cart to drive me to the station at Couilly when I take that line, or when I want to do an errand or go to the laundress, or ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... clatter of a forge close to them, they had not heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show how ill- starched ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... dropped her glasses and began frantically rearranging the handkerchiefs. Again Jane noted their order—red—two small—one large—three small—two large. Again the laundress resorted to the glasses, and at last, apparently satisfied, began taking down the rest of the laundry and making ready to leave the roof. Trying to act as if she had just ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... laundress to be sure and bring her children around to-morrow, and be sure you make them have a good time," he said to James, as he rose from ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... silk pajamas, and wondering where he could get them washed, when there entered the tent a handsome and stalwart regular. "Washing?" he inquired respectfully. "Oh," asked Lucy hopefully, "are you an agent for some laundress?" "No," said the man, "I wash them myself. I guarantee to return everything tomorrow, properly done." The boy was not merely surprised, but almost shocked. "You do the work?" he asked. Then his native kindness came to his aid, and he was about ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... dismissed her. Her first astonished questions having been met with silence by the honest but hard-grained woman who kept the laundry, Ida had not condescended to any further appeal. The fact was that the laundress had received a visit from a certain Mrs. Sprowl, who, under pretence of making inquiries for the protection of a young female friend, revealed the damaging points of Ida's story, and gained the end ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... hunger comes, Or passing thirst, or lower calls of need; And children's stomach works its own content. And I, though I foresaw this, call to mind, How I was cheated, washing swaddling clothes, And nurse and laundress did the selfsame work. I then with these my double handicrafts, Brought up Orestes for his father dear; And now, woe's me! I learn that he is dead, And go to fetch the man that mars this house; And gladly will he hear these words ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... designer of ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.(348) In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many peasants all of whose clothing was home-made, with the exception ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... laziness, shiftlessness, slovenliness, dirt, and active assertion of Ohio vim. Sick of vermin and slime, I would take pail, scrubbing brush and lye, and fall to; sick of it all, I would get a Summit county breakfast, old fashioned pan cakes for old times' sake; sick of the native laundress who cleansed nothing, I would give an Akron rub myself to my own clothes and have something fit to wear. These attacks of energy depended somewhat on the temperature, somewhat on exhausted patience, ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... The body was so scratched and disfigured that no one noticed the wounds made by the two nails. The ladies, as soon as the news was imparted to them, came out from their rooms, weeping and lamenting in so natural a manner as to disarm any suspicions. The only person who formed any was the laundress to whom Beatrice entrusted the sheet in which her father's body had been wrapped, accounting for its bloody condition by a lame explanation, which the laundress accepted without question, or pretended to do so; and immediately after the funeral, the ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in," said Mr. Cord. He was standing in the middle of the room in his shirt sleeves and gloomily contemplating the shirt he wore. "What's this laundress, anyhow? A Bolshevist or a pastry-cook?" he said. "Did you ever ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... circumstances, who are too fat- headed to realize that those womanly attributes which so charm the sterner sex cannot long withstand continual drudgery. One is tempted to believe that such men married to save the expense of hiring a housekeeper, that they hoped by sleeping with their laundress to avoid wash bills. Take the great middle class of America (which is the social and moral cream of the country) and you will find that, as a rule, the men have abundant leisure in which to recuperate from the exhaustion of labor, and are robust as Jove's Phoenician bull, while their wives ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... yon lines her hands have laden, A laundress with white hair appears, Alert as many a youthful maiden, Spite of her five-and-seventy years. Bravely she won those white hairs, still Eating the bread hard toil obtain'd her, And laboring truly to fulfil The duties to which God ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... O'Donnel, stout and good-natured, an indifferent cook and rather untidy. She was twenty years old and the eldest of a large and impoverished family. Her mother was a laundress— "took in washin'"—and her earnings, with the wages of Jane Gladys, must suffice to feed many hungry mouths. That was why Mrs. Conant had hired Jane Gladys. Aunt Hannah knew the girl was not very competent, but she was ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... it loose to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, window, or wainscot, expressly formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught at a proof-sheet, and catched up a laundress's bill instead; made a dart at Bloomfield's Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I could not bring him to one direct reply; he could not maintain his jumping mind in a right line for the tithe of a moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He must go to the printer's ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... shifted their tent to a convenient position near the claim they were now working, and were camped within two hundred yards of the establishment of Mrs. Ben Kyley, laundress and baker. Mrs. Kyley was a big-limbed, fresh-coloured, dimpled woman, whose native canniness did not, militate in the least against an amazonian joviality that made her hail-fellow-well-met with half the diggers on the field. Her voice was the loudest amid the clamouring tongues ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... sat down and held out her arms to Ailie, who incontinently rushed into them. Propriety fled for the nonce, discomfited. Miss Martha's curls were disarranged beyond repair, and Miss Martha's collar was crushed to such an extent that the very laundress who had washed and starched and ironed it would have utterly failed to recognise it. Miss Jane looked on at these improprieties in perfect indifference—nay, when, after her sister had had enough, the child was handed over to her, she submitted to ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... oh, dear! I wish I had a cook, and laundress, and a housemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... with your old sermons, and Mother with my old dresses! But it was a good sermon," she added. "I have hardly been civil to that German laundress since." ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lore—this was of course, for he was a student by nature; but other things that he learned were, upon the whole, more noteworthy in the development of his character. He became fastidious as to the fit of his coat and as to the work of the laundress upon his shirt-fronts. He learned to sit in easy attitude by gauzily-dressed damsels under sparkling gaslight, and to curl his fair moustache between his now white fingers as he talked to them, and yet to moderate the extent of the attention ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... to be shaken before the evening was over. The first shock came at the very beginning, and Mr. Hapgood was responsible for it. Annette had referred, during the Trumet acquaintanceship, to her "staff of servants," 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 ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... you're a man, that's what you are! That blue thing was worn threadbare in the office, and I gave it to the laundress's niece weeks ago." Small wonder her cheeks took on ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... genuineness of what one does on them, for those unique days are consumed by being used, they do not return, one cannot live them again here when one has lived them elsewhere; I felt that it was towards the week that would begin with the Monday on which the laundress was to bring back the white waistcoat that I had stained with ink, that they were hastening to busy themselves with the duty of emerging from that ideal Time in which they did not, as yet, exist, those two Queen Cities of which I was soon ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... pupils ought not to be kept waiting half an hour while he discussed Schopenhauer with some bearded socialist over a dish of herrings and a spotted tablecloth. She knew that Heinrich ought not to give a dinner on Heine's birthday, when the laundress had not been paid for a month and when he frequently had to ask his mother for carfare. Certainly Caroline had served her apprenticeship to idealism and to all the embarrassing inconsistencies which it sometimes entails, and she decided to deny herself this diffuse, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... a terrible long nose too," said another girl. "And he has not a morsel of starch in his shirt ruffles, I declare," said a third, who officiated as laundress to the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... accents, concealed a delicate irony that was lost on all save me. I asked myself, who is this young woman? The mystery seemed complete. This alone was clear; she was not the daughter of a laundress. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... to care whether a laundress or a lady took her in, she knocked timidly, and, while she waited for an answer to her summons, stood listening ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... weird dreary streets between Soho Square and Regent Street—and had contemplated the gloomy old houses, with a bill of lodgings to let here and there in a parlour-window; anon a working jeweller's humble shop breaking out of a private house; here a cheap restaurant, there a French laundress; everywhere the air of a life which is rather a struggle to live than actual living. In this neighbourhood, which was the only humble quarter of the great city whereof she had any knowledge, Clarissa fancied they might find a temporary ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the kitchen of Dr. W.'s house a foul-mouthed Irish laundress who used coarse language to me concerning urination. I loathed the woman, and yet one night I dreamed that I was embracing her naked form and rolling over and over with her on the bed; and in spite ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... would receive all three of us as passengers, that he would furnish a room simply but comfortably, that papa would share this room with us, that Mario would supply our table, and that his wife would serve as maid and laundress. It remained to be seen now whether our other fellow-travelers were married, and, if so, what sort of creatures ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Washington opened a select primary school in her mother's house, on K Street, between Seventeenth and Eighteenth streets, west. The mother, a widow woman, was a laundress, and by her own labor has given her children good advantages, though she had no such advantages herself. This daughter was educated chiefly under Rev. John E. Cook and Miss Miner, with whom she was a favorite scholar. Her older sister ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... a prominent Judge was making arrangements with the colored laundress of the village to take charge of their washing for the summer. Now, the Judge was pompous and extremely fat. He tipped the scales at ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... infant among the most handsome women of the people. After inspecting many women of equal merit as regards beauty, youth and health, the princess's choice lighted on Philippa, a young Catanese woman, the wife of a fisherman of Trapani, and by condition a laundress. This young woman, as she washed her linen on the bank of a stream, had dreamed strange dreams: she had fancied herself summoned to court, wedded to a great personage, and receiving the honours of a great ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... M. Joyeuse were walking through Faubourg Saint-Honore, on the right hand sidewalk—he always chose that side—and espied a heavy laundress's cart going along at a smart trot, driven by a countrywoman whose child, perched on a bundle of linen, was leaning over ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Mistress when they were both children. Grandmother was nurse to the children; she lived over a hundred years and nursed all the children and grandchildren. She died at the Bissell's home on Rutledge Avenue years and years after slavery. Mother Ellen was laundress; she died first part of the War. My father tended the yard ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... far between that only the shortest of lessons at the longest of intervals were recited on her piano; on the second-floor-front was a wood-engraver who took to photography to pay his rent. On the second-floor-back was a dressmaker who could not collect her bills; while in the rear was a laundress who washed for the tenants. Lastly, there was Mrs. Martha Munger, Stephen Carlin's sister, who occupied the third floor both front and back, over the laundress's quarters, the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that I give up my work, and against all my convictions I have yielded to his wishes. But on my part I have stipulated that I must be permitted to do the housework of our nest, with the occasional help of a laundress. I will be no parasite wife who neither helps her husband in or out of the home. But the little devils must be busy laughing just now. I, who have hardly hung up my own nightgown for years, and whose knowledge of housekeeping is mightily near zero, am to try to make home happy ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... suspicious. It resented its lack of knowledge, and turned cynical where, had it been taken into confidence, it would have been solicitous. It believed that Elizabeth had been jilted, for it knew, via Annie and the Oglethorpe's laundress, that no letters came from Dick. And against Dick its indignation was directed, in a hot ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and fuller's earth. I think, if he could add his imagination to the contents of Mrs. Gill's bucking-basket, and let her boil it in her copper, with rain-water and bleaching-powder (I hope you think me a tolerable laundress), it would do ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... to converse among ladies and men of parts proceedeth from purity of mind, and to their witlessness they give the name of modesty, as if forsooth no woman were modest but she who talketh with her chamberwoman or her laundress or her bake-wench; the which had Nature willed, as they would have it believed, she had assuredly limited unto them their prattle on other wise. It is true that in this, as in other things, it behoveth to have regard to time and place and with ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... practical fact remains; he it is that is anglicising Europe. For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow on winter evenings to attend the English class open in every village. For him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and the laundress, pore over their English grammars and colloquial phrase books. For him the foreign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in their thousands to study in every English town. For him it is that every foreign hotel- and restaurant-keeper ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... sufficient for us all, thus saving us the trouble of assuming any. Lastly, there was Samayana, which was not his name either, from Bombay,—a real, live East-Indian nabob. In his own country he travelled with three tents, a dozen servants, as many horses, and always carried his laundress with him. Yet he never seemed lonely with us,—which we thought very agreeable in him. Crawford had just created Mr. Isaacs, and we fancied there was a resemblance,—barring the wives,—and he told us such graphic stories of life in India that we were not always sure in just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... and soiled her white gowns, to the despair of the Otter servant who did up the master's shirts and managed the mistress's clear-starching, but who never dreamt, in those days of frills, robes, and flounces, of styling herself a laundress. Leslie filled her apron with mosses and lichens: she stole out after the reapers had left the patch of oats which was not within sight of the house, and gathered among the sheaves like a Ruth. She grew stout and hardy, and, in spite of her gipsy ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... trades and the open-air life, the cries, the talk from door to door, which reminded her of the south, where, in the multiplicity of her habitations, she had lived; and most of all, the great amusement, or nearly, of her walk, the enviable baskets of the laundress piled up with frilled and fluted whiteness—the certain luxury, she felt while she passed with quick prevision, of her own dawn of glory. The greatest amusement perhaps was to recognise the pretty sentiment ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the other," answered Sister Anne. "Poor, poor Mr. Sly! He made a will leaving you all, except five pounds a year to his laundress: he made his will, locked his door, took heart-rending leave of his uncle at night, and this morning was found hanging at his bedpost when Sambo, the black servant, took him up his water to shave. 'Let me be buried,' he said, 'with the pincushion she gave me and ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... it; but madame must remember that I have been very much hurried this last month, having to do all the washing and ironing since the laundress——" ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... "Have you forgotten possessing yourself of a little fan which my mistress dropped, quite by accident, from a window on the day of your arrival, and that you were assisted in finding it by the laundress of the villa? The artful jade has a better memory. She does not fail to remind me of the incident and to inquire for you whenever she calls for the linen. I have been obliged to stop her mouth with more than one coin to keep her ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... consisted in the profound conviction entertained by my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain. But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question. Now, they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression of my figure on any article of furniture ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... intended to accept Mis' Sykes's invitation hastened with relieved eagerness to follow with flowers its regrets to the "comen out recep." For every one was genuinely attached to the little laundress and interested in her welfare—up to the point of sacrificing social interests in the eyes of the Sykeses. Friendship gardens were rich with Autumn, cosmos and salvia and opulent asters, and on the morning of the two parties this store of sweetness ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... to offer strange incense to her. For, indeed, he is all for money. Seven or eight years squires him out, some of his nation less standing; and ever since the night of his call, he forgot much what he was at dinner. The next morning his man (in actu or potentia) enjoys his pickadels. His laundress is then shrewdly troubled in fitting him a ruff, his perpetual badge. His love-letters of the last year of his gentlemanship are stuffed with discontinuances, remitters, and uncore priests; but, now being enabled to speak in proper person, he talks ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... broad daylight. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to feel himself extraordinarily vigorous. He jumped up at once and dressed quickly; then dragged out his trunk and began packing immediately. His linen had come back from the laundress the previous morning. Ivan positively smiled at the thought that everything was helping his sudden departure. And his departure certainly was sudden. Though Ivan had said the day before (to Katerina ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the mean time it is, my duty to commit you;" and I was conducted to gaol in a hackney-coach. I immediately summoned one or two of my friends, and after laying open to them the circumstances in which I had been placed, we concerted the best means of defence. My laundress could swear that I was in chambers the whole of the evening when the robbery was committed; and though this was the only direct evidence in my favour, yet I assembled at least a dozen persons, men of repute ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... Dowager-Empress and his Princess sisters, in which Peter declared his intention to make Catherine his wife and commanded them to pay her the respect due to her new rank. Then followed, in brilliant sequence, State dinners, receptions, and balls, at all of which the laundress-bride sat at her husband's right hand and received the homage of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... A laundress does her washing at the house, but rinses her linen at the river. In summer this may be well enough, but it seemed to me that the winter exercise of standing in a keen wind with the thermometer below zero, and rinsing clothes in a hole cut through the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Lady Jean," responded the laundress, rubbing energetically away—yet carefully, too, for the old linen was not so stout as it ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... whom there lay a brilliant future. Restaurateurs, laundresses, confectioners—all trusted him. An instance of the regard people were beginning to have for him is shown in the pathetic interview between Napoleon and Madame Sans Gene, his laundress. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... low tide and a porter seated on the quay. Again in the coach, and afterwards in his chambers, he tried to swallow the laudanum; but his hand was paralysed by "the convincing Spirit," aided by seasonable interruptions from the presence of his laundress and her husband, and at length he threw the laudanum away. On the night before the day appointed for the examination before the Lords, he lay some time with the point of his penknife pressed against his ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... quickly moved the needle round over the whole twenty-four points, but none of them suited the case. She stopped it at "porter," moved it to "bootblack," carried it around to "ice water," and successively to "coupe," "laundress," and "messenger-boy," and then gave up in despair, and jerked open the door that led to the hall. Miss Wakefield had just come up to the next apartment to inquire after a little girl ill from a cold, and was returning toward the elevator when Mrs. Drupe's wild ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... read a note of music, but that he has received no education of any kind! Born at Tipperusalem, Oklahoma, on the 15th of March, 1912, he has for parents a clerk in the Eagle Bakery and a Lithuanian laundress. He never touches meat, not even baked eagles, but subsists entirely on peaches and popcorn. He has been compared to MOZART, but the comparison is ridiculous, for MOZART was carefully trained by his father, and at the age of four was a finished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... all herself; she would trust no one, least of all the laundress. She had only faint old visions of John Hurst's collars to guide her; but she was upheld by an immense relief, born of her will to please, and Arthur, by a blind reliance, born of his utter weariness. At times these preparations well-nigh exasperated him. "If going ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... well as the unrivaled mental suppleness was illustrated early in the war by the highly typical case of a laundress whose business was in one of ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and I have found them splendid workers in their own department. They are not half-trained nurses but fully trained ambulance workers, ready to do probationer's work under the fully trained sisters, or if necessary to be wardmaid, laundress, charwoman, or cook, as the case may be. The difficulty does not lie with them, but with the women who have a few weeks' or months' training, who blossom out into full uniform and call themselves Sister Rose, or Sister Mabel, and are taken at ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... begin with the present granny first. My good old creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom you mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr Goldsmith, author of a "History of England," the "Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... year of the administration of Andros in Massachusetts," says Mr. Bancroft, "the daughter of John Goodwin, a child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with having stolen linen from the family. Glover, the mother of the laundress, a friendless immigrant, almost ignorant of English, like a true woman, with a mother's heart, rebuked the false accusation. Immediately, the girl, to secure revenge, became bewitched. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... [Footnote: "one for superfluity and one other for use." The cap was probably that which he wore when he laid aside his wig. His hose, of colored silk, probably made only "semi-occasional" visits to the laundress.] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... thank ye," answered Higson, cocking his eye, "I've a notion that clean linen would be plentiful aboard the corvette, and by the time it reached us it would be ready again for the laundress." ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... There is great fairness and impartiality in the game. Something was always going up from the foot of this Jacob's ladder called "the Master" to the higher regions called the Court of Appeal. The simplest possible matter, which any old laundress of the Temple ought to have been competent to decide by giving both the parties a box on the ear, was taken before the Master, from the Master to the Judge, from the Judge to the Divisional Court, and from the Divisional ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... starts on a comic basis alone meets with rivals in all its sober-minded contemporaries, and comes to grief. The difficulty it has to contend with is, in short, very like that which the professional laundress or baker has to contend with, owing to the fact that families are accustomed to do their own washing and bake their own bread. And, indeed, it is not unlike that with which professional writers of all kinds have to contend, owing to the readiness of clergymen, lawyers, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... a sanguine gentry, these holders of bills, and I really believe that if they could see him they would embrace him with the warmest affection. In the mean time let us have some dinner, and we will talk about poor Mountjoy when we have got rid of young Pitcher. Young Pitcher is my laundress's son to the use of whose services I have been promoted since I have been known to be ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... all the conveniences for cooking and such arrangements as shall save time and steps. Washing-day may be divested of its terrors by suitable provisions for water, hot and cold, by wringers, which save at once the strength of the linen and of the laundress, and by drying-closets connected with ranges, where articles can in a few moments be perfectly dried. These, with the use of a small mangle, such as is now common in America, reduce the labors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... looked at her without much interest, supposing that she might be a seamstress, or laundress, or some applicant for charity. So many years had passed since he had met with this woman, that she had ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... you, John," she said demurely and without preamble, "to see if you have found a satisfactory laundress yet for ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... is my neighbor who has the same; yet every year he gets something ahead and I fall short; why is it? I know all about economy." He thinks he does, but he does not. There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese-parings and candle-ends, in cutting off twopence from the laundress' bill and doing all sorts of little mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness. The misfortune is, also, that this class of persons let their economy apply in only one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully economical in saving a half-penny ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... saw only Aun' Jinkey ironing, and her niece sitting with her handkerchief to her face. "Ah!" said the old lady to her laundress, "I'm glad you realize the importance of doing my work when it's needed." Then followed a few brief directions in regard to the articles she had brought. "Louise, I wish you to come with me. This is no place for you," concluded Mrs. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... them in sight,— Is always genuine, while your gems may pass, Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass. But spurn those paltry Cisatlantic lies That round his breast the shabby rustic ties; Breathe not the name profaned to hallow things The indignant laundress ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... A laundress was boiling clothing over a fire near by; Ailsa slipped off her gingham overdress, unbound the white turban, and tossed them on the grass near the fire. Then, rolling back her sleeves, she plunged her arms into a basin ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... spirit if not the fact of slavery persisted. When he was three weeks old he had an illness which left him totally blind. As soon as he was old enough to sit up alone and toddle about, another affliction, the nervous motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom young negro wench who was laundress for the d'Arnaults, concluded that her blind baby was "not right" in his head, and she was ashamed of him. She loved him devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his "fidgets," that she hid him away from people. All the dainties she brought down from the "Big House" were for the ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... into bed I was surprised to hear a voice in the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire. She had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently came to ask me if I was ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... cleanliness by simply dropping his soiled clothing into a boiling spring, where it was turned and churned and twisted and finally flung out, a clean and purified testimonial to Mother Nature's ability as a laundress. Or perhaps the pretty pastoral of the peasant girl knee deep in the brook, rubbing her household linen on the stones, hath even greater charms. But the trouble is that we are neither "forty-niners" nor peasants, but just plain, latter-day housekeepers ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... off to us, which contained a fine dish of delicious honey and some flowers. The order to go ahead again was scarcely given, before a third boat, in, if possible, hotter haste than the two previous ones, put off after us, bringing some things the laundress had forgotten. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... cloth at that part. There is another kind of safety skirt which is a combination of breeches and skirt in one; but I consider this a very unsanitary arrangement, for it is obvious that the undergarment must be kept clean, and handed over when necessary to the laundress to be carefully washed, before sending it to a tailor to be pressed and repaired as may be required. It is part of a groom's duty in small households to attend to the cleaning of his mistress's hunting boots and skirt, but a combination garment should ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... his dressing-gown, except to go to his bed-room, which adjoined and opened into his sitting-room. He would even then allow no one to be in his chamber with him during the might! not even his attentive and attached laundress, or his clerk! I once very strongly urged upon him to allow the former to sleep in the chambers. "Either she leaves my chambers at her usual hour," said he, peremptorily, "or I do." We felt it, however, impossible to allow this; and, without his being aware of it, his clerk ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... street car whether the white-clad man at your side is a government clerk at sixty pesos a month or a day laborer at fifteen. I once lost a servant because I commanded him to carry some clothes to my laundress. "Go on the street with a bundle of clothes, and get into the street car with them! I would rather die!" he said; and he quitted rather than ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... many. The parents had considerable difficulty in providing for the wants of the family, in food as well as clothing. Besides the father's small earnings as a tailor of the lowest standing, the mother occasionally earned a little money as a laundress. A grandfather, Boe, formed one of the family group. He had been a soldier, but was now too old to serve in the ranks, though France was waging war in Italy and Austria under her new Emperor. Boe, however, helped to earn the family living, by begging with his wallet ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... he visited Elsie, he found her more composed and comfortable than she had been for several weeks, and Mrs. Gerome had seemed almost cheerful, as she sat beside the bed, crimping the borders of the invalid's muslin caps which the laundress had sent in, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... woman of about twenty-five, opened the door at my somewhat peremptory knock. I recollected her in a moment as a familiar face—some laundress or auxiliary of the Sloman family in some way; and she seemed to recognize me as well: "Why! it's Mr. Munro! Walk in, sir, and sit down," dusting off a chair with her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... was to sweep the floors; the duck was to dust and make the beds; the owl, Too-Too, was to keep the accounts, and the pig was to do the gardening. They made Polynesia, the parrot, housekeeper and laundress, because she ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... perpetual smile and sparkling gray eyes had long been her conception of all that was noble and cultured and aristocratic. He was her Viscount Reginald Vere de Vere, speaking to her as from between yellow paper covers. He was her prince incognito who fell in love with Lily, the Lovely Laundress. He had threaded the mazes of more than one of her palpitating dreams, and in her innermost heart of hearts she had cherished the fond belief that one day their orbs would meet and their souls would rush together in such a head-on collision as is sometimes ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... worked about the station had a pierced nose, and often wore a mouyerh, or bone, through it. A white laundress wore earrings. She said one day ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... to housekeeping, and enjoyed it all. Even washing day—that day so many people dread—had its charms for me. The clean clothes on the lines and on the grass looked so white, and smelled so sweet, that it was to me a pretty sight to contemplate. I inspired my laundress with an ambition to have her clothes look white and to get them out earlier than our neighbors, and to have them ironed and put ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... to thee! I tell thee, shameless girl, Thou shalt be laundress to my waiting-maid.— How lik'st thou her, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... out on a search expedition," continued my informant, after a cup of tea and a cigarette to subdue his emotions, "you insist on having the number of the house. Do you get it? Oh yes! and with a safeguard added, 'Inquire of the laundress.' [This was a parody on, "Inquire of the Swiss," or "of the yard-porter."] You start off in high feather; number and guide are provided, only a fool could fail to find it, and you know that you are a person who is ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... pleasing story which relates how Robert Bruce, marching with his army in the mountains of Ireland, heard a woman crying during one of the halts. He inquired immediately what was the matter, and was told that it was a camp-follower, a poor laundress, who was taken in child-bed; and as it was impossible to take her with them, she bemoaned her fate in being left behind to die. The king replied that he is no man who will not pity a woman then. He ordered that a tent should be pitched for her immediately, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... graveled surfaces with spouts and whirling vents and chimneys. Here are posts and lines for washing, and a scuttle from which once a week a laundress pops her head. Although her coming is timed to the very hour—almost to the minute—yet when the scuttle stirs it is with an appearance of mystery, as if one of the forty thieves were below, boosting at the rocks that guard his cave. But the laundress is of so unromantic and ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... dear," replied mother, "because this is wash morning and I have a new laundress to look after. Didn't you see her come around the house when we were at breakfast? I have to go downstairs and show her how we like our clothes washed and starched. Don't you want to ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... said. "Can you come to me? Cross from Cherbourg to Southampton—train from thence to this place, and ask for Signor Bruno, an Italian refugee, living at the house of Mrs. Potter, a ci-devant laundress." ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... to show the king, simple, patriarchal and valorous, stern to his foes, and gentle to the weak. He makes him halt his army in Ireland, because the screams of a woman have been heard; it is a poor laundress in the pangs of child-birth; the march is interrupted; a tent is spread, under which the poor creature ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... they could read and write well, and they were mistresses of the common rules of arithmetic. After this age they were practised by a writing-master in drawing out bills neatly, keeping accounts, and applying to every-day use their knowledge of arithmetic. Some were taught by a laundress to wash and get up fine linen and lace; others were instructed by a neighbouring traiteur in those culinary mysteries with which Sister Frances was unacquainted. In sweetmeats and confectioneries she yielded to no one; and she made her pupils as expert as herself. Those who were intended for ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... the woods, take with you only those things which seem to be absolutely necessary; remember that you will carry your own pack and be your own laundress, so hesitate about including too many washable garments. Make out your list, then consider the matter carefully and realize that every one of the articles, even the very smallest, has a way of growing heavier and heavier and adding to the ever-increasing weight of your pack the longer you ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... causes, Dearer then ten mens lives; tempt, and thou diest: Goe home, and smile upon my Lord, thine Uncle, Take Mony of the men thou mean'st to Cousin, Drink Wine, and eat good meat, and live discreetly, Talk little, 'tis an antidote against a beating; Keep thy hand from thy sword, and from thy Laundress placket, And thou ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... we have said, was engaged in unpacking the clothes just returned by the laundress. This was an occupation which she never intrusted to any of her attendants, but in which she could generally engage only secretly and at night, after she had dismissed them; for the emperor made it incumbent on his mother's ladies of honor to observe ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... handsome young blacksmith, left in his native hamlet a widowed mother, a good, sensible woman, formerly nurse at the chateau, but who, since the Revolution, had adopted the calling of a blanchisseuse, or laundress. "Mother Moreau," as everybody called her, had another son than Jean, fortunately too young to be drafted as a conscript. Years before, this good woman had taken home a poor little orphan girl, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... were not needed in Miss Martell's room, went down to the kitchen, where she found the half-frozen oarsman-now rigged out in the dress-coat and white vest of the colored waiter—and the brave coachman who had put his old sea-craft to such good use. They were being royally cared for by the cook and laundress. The poor fellow who out in the boat had thought that the hearts of even his neighbors were as cold and hard as the ice that was destroying them had now forgotten his misanthropy, and was making a supper that, considering the hour, would threaten to an ordinary mortal more peril than that from ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... called them in. To their amazement and horror, the saints and angels, instead of being ideal faces, were the living portraits of the familiar figures about the cloister. "Why, there's the iceman! there's the laundress!" He rebelled when they told him this was wicked: he said it was all a part of God's world, that the business of the artist was to interpret life; he wished they would let him enter the pulpit, take the Prior's place, and preach a sermon that would ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... plan. He did not see much of her when she came to London, and there was very little in their tastes which was congenial or compatible; but she kept him straight in the matter of his weekly bills and his laundress, and he had no desire to quarrel with the way in which she managed these affairs ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... forgery, drawn some four or five thousand dollars, had the greater part of the notes exchanged—and, with the exception of the five large bills hurriedly thrust into the vest pocket, and which he had sent to the poor laundress, there was little available evidence of the forgery in his possession. The widow's son had scarcely left the traveller's room with the clothes, when in came two policemen. The forger was not arrested as a principal, but certain barely suspicious circumstances had ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Paris.(386) I should not repeat this to you, only to introduce George Selwyn's account of this woman who, he says, is mother to the Princess of Montauban, grandmother to Madame de Brionne, sister to General Oglethorpe, and was laundress to the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... a small part of the conversation I had with the Literary Celebrity. He was so much taken up with his pleasing self-contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his linen on the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to him that he had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found himself exposed to the wind and sunshine in full dimensions in the columns of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the laundress was married to the coachman Pompey, there was a big time on the plantation. Tamar wore white tarlatan and an orange wreath—although it was her severalth marriage—and she had six bridemaids and ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... breath, shrieking anathemas on her drunken spouse, reproaches on her frightened child, and invocations to all the blessed saints in heaven to reward the gintleman who had saved her hoarded money,—a smoking packet that she hugged to her breast,—Mrs. Clancy, "the saynior laundress of Company B," as she had long styled herself, was prancing up and down through the gathering crowd, her shrill voice overmastering all other clamor. The vigorous efforts of the men, directed by cool-headed officers, soon beat back the flames that were ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... scamp I have in mind, painted. A house, a fence, a barn, even a sign-board? Not at all, but messes he called 'The Sea,' one doesn't know why, save that the things slightly resembled raw oysters. However, the women raved over him. His laundress and his landlady had good ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... came the awkward question of his relatives by marriage. At first glance it would have seemed rather necessary to head the list with Grandmother Kunkel, but the fact that she was also the hotel laundress at the time made it a subject for debate. Once, just once, he was willing to test the social possibilities of his brother-in-law, so Symes magnanimously gave him his chance and the name of Adolph Kunkel headed ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... held our peace. And we make believe, forsooth, that our failure to acquit ourselves in converse with our equals of either sex does but proceed from guilelessness; dignifying stupidity by the name of modesty, as if no lady could be modest and converse with other folk than her maid or laundress or bake-house woman; which if Nature had intended, as we feign she did, she would have set other limits to our garrulousness. True it is that in this, as in other matters, time and place and person are to be regarded; ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... absence of domestic servants from our family circle. Adam was head of the house, general provider, hired-man, stable-boy, head-gardener, coach-man, night-watchman and everything else of the male persuasion on the place; whilst I was cook, laundress, nurse, housekeeper, manicure, stenographer, and general housemaid, as well as the mother of the family—a situation that even though it involved us in no end of hard work, had its compensations. Living off in suburbs as we did, you can have no idea of what a ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... slang Grose has no touch of its extensive signification. The squeamish Fair One who takes it on the sly, merely to cure the vapours, politely names it to her friends as White Wine. The Swell chaffs it as Blue Ruin, to elevate his notions. The Laundress loves dearly a drain of Ould Tom, from its strength to comfort her inside. The drag Fiddler can toss off a quartern of Max without making a wry mug. The Costermonger illumines his ideas with a flash of lightning.' The hoarse ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... beautiful-souled people who will try to get you to confide in them, and then use their knowledge of your domestic unhappiness to blackmail you; there will be threats of law-suits from people who will claim that they have contracted a disease from you or your child—your laundress, perhaps, or your maid, or ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... a "Wonderland-Stamp-Case," Life has been bright and peaceful, and I have used no other. I believe the Queen's Laundress ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... nonentity, held out bravely, but after watching a few nights broke down entirely and was to have been carried to St. Catharine's hospital, but the Italian steward, who is not a bad fellow, objected and had her taken to a Catholic laundress. He has followed to nurse her. No one is left in the deserted house to attend to the young lady, except Sister Gonzaga, a good little nun, one of the three who were allowed to remain in the old convent near you, but early ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of our little bit of pleasure-ground. On the other side of it there is a cottage standing on the edge of the common. The most good-natured woman in the world lives here. She is our laundress—married to a stupid young fellow named Molly, and blessed with a plump baby as sweet-tempered at herself. Thinking it likely that the piteous voice which had disturbed me might be the voice of Mrs. Molly, I was astonished to hear her appealing to anybody (perhaps to me?) to "let her in." So ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... a new vista to her, but many of them, with stupid ignorance, mistook her position and traditions. She was offered occupations as cook, maid, or laundress. She had sense of humour enough to laugh at these, and often wished she dared repeat them ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... bonbon dishes, five nouveau riche sugar shakers (we never use them), three muffineers—in heaven's name, what's that? Solid silver bread dishes, solid silver candlesticks by the dozen, solid silver vegetable dishes, and we expect one servant and an intermittent laundress to do the cooking, washing, make the beds and ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... in the United States, the southern white people found themselves without servants. Women who were accustomed to having a nurse, maid, cook and laundress found themselves without sufficient money to pay wages to all these. There was a great amount of work to be done and the great problem confronting married women who had not been taught to work and who thought it beneath their standing to soil their ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... be the first!" cried she who had entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven't all three met here without ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... I 'appened to be drivin' my cart meself up through Trover on to the cottages just above the dip, and I'd gone in to Mrs. 'Oney's, the laundress, leavin' my cart standin' same as I always do. I 'ad a bit o' gossip, an' when I come out, I see this gentleman walkin' away in front towards the village street. It so 'appens I 'appened to look in the back o' my cart, and I thinks to meself, That's ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... you have an understanding with the laundress (to whom you say that you are all-powerful with me), threatening to take away my practice from her, unless she gets up gratis some of your ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more convenient to put Katavasov, to sleep alone or to share Sergey Ivanovitch's room. And then an idea suddenly struck her, which made her shudder and even disturb Mitya, who glanced severely at her. "I do believe the laundress hasn't sent the washing yet, and all the best sheets are in use. If I don't see to it, Agafea Mihalovna will give Sergey Ivanovitch the wrong sheets," and at the very idea of this the blood ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Fiery-faced matron in the crunched bonnet could have seen them as they walked away, how many years' purchase might Fiery Face have been disposed to take for her situation in Furnival's Inn as laundress to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... him. And the breakfast had not of itself been bad, for Mrs. Whereas had been a daughter of Themis all her life, waiting upon scions of the law since first she had been able to run for a penn'orth of milk. She had been laundress on a stairs for ten years, having married a law stationer's apprentice, and now she owned the dingy house over the covered way, and let her own lodgings with her own furniture; nor was she often without friends who would recommend her ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... my strongest missing noun, When sheets as soft and white as down, Return in colour yellowy-brown? My Laundress! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various |
