"Seamstress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carefully nursed till health returned, her good humor and native wit made those about her forget her ugly face. She was in a brothel, where she soon took the lead. Her child died, and she once more attempted to earn her living as a seamstress. She was saved from starvation only by her employer, who received her as his mistress. Now her luck changed: she suffered all a woman could; handled poison and the firebrand. 'I thought of stealing,' she said, 'only as an amusement: it was not ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... clothes. I never have clothes in that sense," said Karen. "A little seamstress down here makes most of them and Louise helps her sometimes if she has time. Tante gave me twenty pounds before she went away; would twenty pounds ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... as the fancy that with the morrow will begin the actual scrubbing and window-washing. You do not mind ripping up an old gown while John reads to you under the evening lamp, but you are positively cross in the reflection that you must sew all of to-morrow with the seamstress who is to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Laugier had also been having strange convulsive fits, and absurd beginnings of stigmata: one of them being an old wound, caused by her scissors when she was working as a seamstress, the other an eruptive sore in her side. Her transports suddenly turned to impious despair. She spat upon the crucifix: she cried out against Girard, "that devil of a priest, who had brought a poor girl of two-and-twenty ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... the White Farm, and a late supper was spread upon the hospitable board. (Aunt Hitty was always sure of a bountiful repast. If one were going to economize, one would not choose for that purpose the day when the village seamstress came to sew; especially when the aforesaid lady served the community in the ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the frequent scenes and rehearsals in her family. After many trials, she at last engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect treasure,—neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited. The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss! The new-comer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... less," answered Zenobia, "than a seamstress from the city; and she has probably no more transcendental purpose than to do my miscellaneous sewing, for I suppose she will hardly expect to make ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with cretonne roses, carefully applied. She and Sally cut out the flowers, and applied them with buttonhole stitch, sewing until their fingers were sore, their faces flushed, and their hair in frowsy disorder. It was slow work. Miss Pepper, the seamstress, engaged for one day only to do the important work on both Sally's and Martie's gown, kept postponing, as she always did postpone, the day, finally appointing the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day. ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... to work, just stayed in the house with my mammy. She was a seamstress. I'm tellin' you the truth now. I can tell it at ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... two circumstances about servants, illustrative of the mind and manners of that class of persons in this country. A young woman engaged herself to me, as lady's-maid, immediately before my marriage; she had been a seamstress, and her health had been much injured by constantly stooping at her sedentary employment. I took her into my service at a salary of L25 a year. She had little to do; I took care that every day she should be out walking for at least an hour; she had ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... than cook. She is my housekeeper, mother, trained nurse, corporation counsel, keeper of the privy purse, chancellor of the exchequer, fighter of exorbitant bills, seamstress, linen woman, doctor of small ills, the acme of perpetual good ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... was in July that Holm Oaks, as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best. For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season. It was their good pleasure not to. A week or fortnight of it satisfied them. They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even after her presentation two ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... however, lies one of his own greatest safeguards against either criminal or civil prosecution. Scattered over the country are his investors—the mill hand, the poor seamstress, the humble artisan, whose total investments, comprising perhaps all their savings, seldom exceed one hundred dollars each; and, with their savings gone, there isn't money left to pay carfare to the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... it for this you left your leaner Soil, Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's Spoil? Lord! what a Goodly Thing is want of Shirts! How a Scotch Stomach and no Meat converts! They wanted Food and Raiment, so they took Religion for their Seamstress and their Cook. Unmask them well; their Honours and Estate, As well as Conscience, are Sophisticate. Shrive but their Titles, and their Money poise; A Laird and Twenty Pence,[27] pronounc'd with Noise, When constru'd, but for a plain Yeoman go, And a good sober Two-pence, and well so. Hence then,'you ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... a cook for your mutton and beef. I require a far better thing. A seamstress you're wanting for stockings and shirts, I look for a ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... cast by her own figure of a gin bottle; an undertaker, in his garb of woe wrung from the pockets of widows and orphans, casts the appropriate shadow of a crocodile; a red-nosed old hospital nurse of a tea-pot; a worn-out seamstress of a skeleton; a mischievous street boy of a monkey; an angry wife sitting up for a truant husband of an extinguisher; a tall, conceited-looking parson, with a long coat, of a pump; while a sweep, with his "machine," to his mortal terror ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... look like them; her clothes were not made by a seamstress, but came from city shops, and had shorter skirts, and stuck out in different places. She could not do what they did; Mollie called for her at nine at evening parties, and she usually had to go to bed half an hour after dinner, before it was dark. She had ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... certain points with unexpected meanness. When she was alone, her table was of a Spartan austerity; she exacted a great deal from her servants, and paid them as small wages as she could. After that she did not mind lavishing money upon them in kindness. A seamstress whom she had once employed fell sick, and Miss Kingsbury sent her to the Bahamas and kept her there till she was well, and then made her a guest in her house till the girl could get back her work. She watched her cook through ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... yet of good families. One had a von in front of his name. Brockert, too, had some sort of claim to nobility, although it was said that his mother earned a living for herself and him by working as a seamstress and the boy was known to pay for his own tuition by tutoring backward sons of rich families ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... all day. Her painting materials had been put meekly aside, and, as a further precaution at old Mata's hands, hidden under the kitchen flooring. Toward the last it was found necessary to employ an assistant, a seamstress, known of old to Mata. Her companionship, as well as her sewing, proved a boon. Seated upon the springy matting, with waves of shimmering silk tumultuous about them, the old dames chatted incessantly of other brides and other wedding outfits they had known. Marvellous ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... and live in brown-stone fronts, who are surrounded with all the luxuries that wealth can purchase—fine apparel is no temptation to such. But to less favored—though not less worthy—ones, these magnificent displays of millinery goods and fine trappings are most powerful temptations. The poor seamstress, who can earn by diligent toil hardly enough to pay her board bill, has no legitimate way by which to deck herself with the finery she admires. Plainly dressed as she must be if she remains honest and retains her virtue, she is scornfully ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has been thought that Zenobia was drawn from Margaret Fuller, or from a lady at Brook Farm, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... changing to one of gayety and joy, "Now, if you and Lottie will excuse me for a little, I'll run up to my room, and answer papa's letter," she said, rising to her feet. "After which I shall be ready to make myself useful in the capacity of seamstress. Au revoir." And she tripped away with a light, free step, every movement as graceful as those of a ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... dollars a month constitute our whole fortune, and if you were not the most skilful hair-dresser in Potsdam—if I could not besides earn a few dollars by making baskets, and if Leonora were not the best seamstress in town, I should like to know how we could live and send Charles to the Lyceum. But if we are to nurse the wounded, and devote our labor to them alone, we shall unfortunately soon ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... enough, they will soon receive presents from others. They used to spend whole days on board our vessel, examining the fine clothes and ornaments, and frequently making purchases at a rate which would have made a seamstress or waiting-maid in Boston open ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... was a long succession of petty tortures, brutal or hypocritical exhibitions of spite, kicks that bruised her legs, and progressive movements of the body by which she gradually forced her companion out of bed—it was a cold winter's night—to the floor of the fireless room. During the day, the seamstress took Germinie in hand, catechized her, preached at her, and by detailing the tortures of the other life, inspired in her mind a horrible fear of the hell whose flames she ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt |
