"Linsey-woolsey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the time that he had become a young man, most self-respecting men had suits of jeans. The ugly butcher's knife and tomahawk, which had been essential as was the rapier to the costume of gentlemen two centuries earlier, began now to be more rarely seen at the belt about the waist. The women wore linsey-woolsey gowns, of home manufacture, and dyed according to the taste or skill of the wearer in stripes and bars with the brown juice of the butternut. In the towns it was not long before calico was seen, and calfskin shoes; and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... worst of the matter was, that the first energetic movement essential to one downright stroke of real labor was sure to put a finish to these poor habiliments. So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil,—"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "—which as Silas Foster remarked, when I translated the maxim, would be apt ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... afflict the digestive apparatus of to-day. This kitchen of the forest epoch is naturally of logs, and logs in their natural condition, with the bark on. The planking of that period is represented by clap-boards or slabs. Garnished with ropes of onions, dried apples, linsey-woolsey garments and similar drapery, the aspect of the walls will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... along amid these new scenes, a singular figure appeared in the way. It was a woman in a linsey-woolsey dress, corn sun-bonnet, and a huge cane. She looked at the Tunker suspiciously, yet seemed to retard her steps ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... a very large, fair, and credulous creature, rising twenty. Florid and slow-speaking, she had impulses of daring that covered her broad face with immense blushes. She was dressed in grey linsey-woolsey, and wore a black hood after the manner of the stricter Protestants, but she had round her neck a gilt medallion on a gold chain that Katharine Howard had given her already. She was, it was true, the daughter of ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... would seem, from the remnants of rusty crape with which it was here and there tricked out, to represent the garb of widowhood, and held in her arms a sleeping infant, swathed in the folds of a linsey-woolsey shawl. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... up by the women; or else of wool sheared from the flocks, carded and spun by hand, and knit into stockings, or woven into blankets or rugs, or into flannel, to be fulled for men's wear; or into linsey-woolsey, for the women and children. To the material for men's garments must be added buckskin for breeches and leggins. Shoes were often made of untanned hide, moccasin fashion, a method borrowed from the Indians. Thorns took the place of pins in woman's gear, and thongs did duty ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... was richer than his fellows, and there was no aristocracy; the women wore linsey-woolsey of home manufacture, and dyed them in accordance with the tastes of the wearers; calico was rarely seen, and a woman wearing a dress of that material was the envy of ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... linsey-woolsey dresses, and the boys tow suits that consisted of two pieces, which in Winter were further added to by hat and boots. If the weather was very cold, the suits were simply duplicated—a boy wearing two or three pairs of trousers ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the time being, either in the fine silk of the pond weed or in the linsey-woolsey supplied by the roots of the watercress, the caddis worm begins to think of building a more solid sheath. The present casing will serve as a foundation for the stronger building. But the necessary materials are seldom near at hand: you have to ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Anderson was thrust out of a Gothic hole—you could not call it a window. His uncut hair, rather darker than auburn, fell down to his waist, and his shaggy red beard lay upon his bosom. Instead of a coat he wore that unique garment of linsey-woolsey known in the West as wa'mus (warm us?), a sort of over-shirt. He was forty-five, but there were streaks of gray in his hair and board, and he looked ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... magnificent buildings erected by King Robert and described by Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What has become of the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his marriage? the garden where he administered justice, "clad in a coat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves, and a sur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with Joinville?" Where is the chamber of the Emperor Sigismond? and that of Charles IV.? that of Jean the Landless? Where is the staircase, from which Charles VI. promulgated ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... a little piece of red and green linsey-woolsey for a frock for the little girl and some brown strong stuff for the boy's suit; and then white muslin to make things for the girl, and blue ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... emigrant and before his purse is opened for the fourth time, the trick is done. And with what ceremony, you shall see. From the steamer the emigrant is led to a dealer in frippery, where he is required to doff his baggy trousers and crimson cap, and put on a suit of linsey-woolsey and a hat of hispid felt: end of First Act; open the purse. From the dealer of frippery, spick and span from top to toe, he is taken to the hostelry, where he is detained a fortnight, sometimes a month, on the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... is it to describe her? How can I impress upon moderns how enlivening and refreshing was her aspect, as she spun, or scoured pans, in a linsey-woolsey petticoat and white short gown, wearing her pretty curls in a crop? George Tucker knew it all without telling; and so did half a dozen of the Westbury boys, who haunted the picket fence round 'Zekiel's garden every moonlight night in summer, or scraped their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... lay tossed by misery and shame, Nora O'Grady, with her kilted linsey-woolsey skirt turned up, her white kerchief loosened over her bosom, and her brogans twinkling in her haste, came running along the road, her face twitching with sorrow. Ever and anon in her speed she dried her eyes on her apron and a ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... daughter, Fanny Kemble, since well known as Mrs. Robert Arkwright, an inseparable friend and companion. My aunt lived with Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Kemble, who were excellent, worthy people. They took good care of the two young girls under their charge, this linsey-woolsey Rosalind and Celia—their own beautiful and most rarely endowed daughter, and her light-hearted, lively companion; and I suppose that a merrier life than that of these lasses, in the midst of their quaint theatrical tasks and homely ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... which Lady Audley rang was answered by the smart lady's-maid who wore rose-colored ribbons, and black silk gowns, and other adornments which were unknown to the humble people who sat below the salt in the good old days when servants wore linsey-woolsey. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... it was, thought the young girl, that she had doffed her bed-gown and linsey-woolsey petticoat, her working-dress, and made herself smart in her stuff gown, when she sate down to work ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to the full morning sun. It broke through the branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose from the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey "linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and her hands were finer than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did not hesitate on great occasions to submit to the pomp required by the regal position which he held. "Sometimes," says the Sire de Joinville, "he went into his garden dressed in a camel's-hair coat, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey without sleeves, a black silk cloak without a hood, and a hat trimmed with peacocks' feathers. At other times he was dressed in a coat of blue silk, a surcoat and mantle of scarlet ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... before this to remark with pleasure the change in the dress of the people of Illinois: the gradual disappearance of leather and, linsey-woolsey, the hunting-knife and tomahawk, from the garb of men; the deerskin moccasin supplanted by the leather boot and shoe; the leather breeches tied around the ankle replaced by the modern pantaloons; and the still greater improvement in the adornment of women, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... quietus here in England and brought the Wars of the Roses to their finale:—a little chubby Boy, the son of poor parents at Eisleben in Saxony, Martin Luther the name of him, was looking into this abtruse Universe, with those strange eyes of his, in what rough woollen or linsey-woolsey short-clothes we do not know. [Born ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... passengers were dressed in jeans; others in linsey-woolsey dyed blue. As we stopped along the way I had an opportunity to study the faces of the Illinoisians. Their jaws were thin, their eyes, deeply sunk, had a far-away melancholy in them. They were swarthy. Their voices were keyed to a drawl. They sprawled, were free and easy in their movements. They ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters |
