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More "Darning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swearers, as their names betoken. They were terrible looking fellows, clad in broad-skirted gaberdines, of that curious colored cloth called thunder and lightning,—and bore as a standard three devil's darning-needles, volant, in ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... he was cussin' and swearin', and his granddaughter was jawing back very vicious. Sez I, 'Who'? Sez she, 'His granddaughter; that is Ellice's chile'. Sez I, 'How do you know so much'? Sez she, 'I was darning them liberry curtains, and I couldn't help hearing the wrangle'. Sez I, 'You picked a oncommon handy time to tackle them curtains; they must be mighty good to cure the ear-itch'. She axed me if I didn't see the family favor in the 'oman's face; and I tole her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... an inch nearer to the nose of the peering giantess. This movement made the old lady see where it was, and, her finger popping into it, it vanished from the eyes of Tricksey-Wee, buried in the folds of a white stocking, like a cloud in the sky, which Mrs. Giant was busy darning. For it was Saturday night, and her husband would wear nothing ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... piece of bone, split as near as possible to the required size, was carefully rubbed down upon a brick, and then had an eye laboriously worked through it with a bit of wire or something else available for the purpose. The needles were about the size of ordinary darning needles, and answered the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... marry him. You must understand, gentlemen, that I was sent into the world, not to act, which I abominate, but to chronicle small beer and teach an army of little brats their letters; so this word 'wife,' and that word 'chimney-corner,' took possession of my mind, and a vision of darning stockings for a large party, all my own, filled my heart, and really I felt quite grateful to the little brute that was to give me all this, and he would have had such a wife as men never do have, still less deserve. But one fine day that the ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... window, making lace, on a cushion, at which she realizes about a dollar a week; Christine, the eldest girl, who still goes to school, was crocheting a baby's hood,—she does a good deal of work for Mrs. Burnett's fancy-store, and yet is a very smart scholar; Amelie, the next one, was darning the stockings; the boy, who comes third, was out-doors, tidying up the chicken-house; and the two little girls were in the corner, cutting and sewing patchwork, with a doll in the cradle between them. The house is always clean, the children are well and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... importance. Even after I had done my best to explain the technicalities of male politics, and fancied that I had made some impression, the answer would be: "Well, I'd go, I'm sure, just to oblige you, but then there's the tomatoes to be canned"—or, "I'm so behindhand with my darning and patching"—or, "John'll be sure to go, and there's no need of two from the same house"—and so on, until I was mightily discouraged. There were just nine of us, all told, to about a hundred men. I won't deny that our situation ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... be accentuated in this budget—the striking cost of stockings, due to the daily walk to and from work and the ill little worker's lack of strength and time for darning. The outlay for footwear in all the budgets of the operators is heavy, in spite of the fact that much of their work ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... said Miss Sally Ruth tartly, "that it's my last chance to make a born fool of myself. Why, you old gasbag, if I had to stay in the same house with you I'd be tempted to stick a darning needle in you to hear you explode! Appleby, I'm like that woman that had a chimney that smoked, a dog that growled, a parrot that swore, and a cat that stayed out nights; she didn't need a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... and Sarah was setting up and darning stockings and Sarah sed well George did you wurry the poar man out of his wits and father sed piece woman i treeted him with the uttmost kindness and was a grate cumfort to him. of coarse i was cairful not to under estimait the dainger for ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... new revelations of Gypsy's intelligence. Missy took to spending every spare minute at Tess's. Under this new captivation her own pet, Poppy, was thoughtlessly neglected. And duties such as practicing, dusting and darning were deliberately shirked. Even reading had lost much of its wonted charm: the haunting, soul-swelling rhythms of poetry, or the oddly phrased medieval romances which somehow carried you back through the centuries—into the very presence of those queenly heroines who trail their robes ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... hour ago," replied she; and she went on darning her stocking, and singing a merry song which she had interrupted ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... it is very hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You know he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he comes ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... lady's chagrin, therefore, was excessive, when, the next Saturday morning but one after her daughters' return, Amelia came into her bedroom, where she sat darning a stocking by the window, and after so much hesitation that her mother began to wonder, suddenly put her arms about her neck, hid her blushing face upon her shoulder, and in that position softly whispered a confession, that a certain young gentleman, with whom she had become acquainted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... There was only one way to advance, and that was to wade in the middle of the brook, stooping low, lifting up the pendulous alder-branches, threading a tortuous course, now under and now over the innumerable obstacles, as a darning-needle is pushed in and out through the yarn of a ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... Nightingale, nor of the host of women who have been walking worthily in her footsteps, but of nameless saints of more retired and private state,—domestic saints, who have tended children not their own through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of fretful invalids,—stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,—saints who wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,—saints ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... but I am not sure about that,' However, he removed the lid from a glass case containing several lively little creatures just about as large as a fresh-water eel at the age at which it is known to the small boy who tries to catch it in his hands as the 'darning needle.' After groping about in the sand at the bottom of the case he found the specimen required and handed it over to Mr. Bartlett, who held it in his hand and allowed it to make savage darts at his fingers. 'You see,' ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... better for her mending. A brief examination of his wardrobe showed her that her surmise was accurate: there was at least a month's hard mending to be done before that wardrobe would contain garments really worthy of the name of underclothing. She decided to begin by darning his socks, for she chanced to have some black darning wool in her workbox. She brought three pairs of them into the studio, and began to darn. Nature had been generous, even lavish, to Hilary Vance ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... This sounds queer, but nevertheless it is true. The Schiskines had just bought a darning-machine. They paid eighty-six dollars for it; but to darn, one must have holes, and no holes could be found in a single decent stocking, so they had to cut holes, and then we darned. The Grand Duke was so enchanted ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... came in and gently fanned the curtains to and fro; and the princess had baked her best cakes for the occasion, inwardly deploring, as she did so, that such cakes should be offered to such people. When she had seen that all was as it should be, she withdrew into her own room, where she remained darning sheets, for she had asked Anna to excuse her from being present at the arrival. "It is better that you should make their acquaintance by yourself," she said. "The presence of too many strangers at first might disconcert them under ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... door. "Come in," answered a gruff voice. I found the lieutenant with his shirt-sleeves tucked up, he having just completed his morning ablutions, an old stocking on one fist and a needle and thread in the other, engaged in darning it. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... Mr. K., with his red face and his white hair, and his heels flying in every direction. (I am ashamed of you for laughing at Mr. K., Mrs. Weston, when I am trying to impress upon Alice's mind the folly of such a scene.) I dare say Mr. K.'s wife was at that very moment, five hundred miles off, darning her children's stockings. ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... coke-ovens; by throwing themselves into craters of volcanoes; by shooting themselves with ingenious combinations of a rifle with a sewing-machine; by strangling themselves with their hair; by swallowing poisonous spiders; by piercing their hearts with corkscrews and darning-needles; by cutting their throats with hand-saws and sheep-shears; by hanging themselves with grape vines; by swallowing strips of under-clothing and buckles of suspenders; by forcing teams of horses to tear their heads off; by drowning themselves in vats of soft soap; by plunging ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... basket of sewing with her which she set upon the table. Then she took from it a bundle of socks and stockings and began to overhaul them with a view to darning. Seth watched the slight figure bending over its work, and the bright eyes peering through the black-rimmed glasses which hooked over her ears. His look was one of deep affection. Surely Nature had made a mistake in not making them mother and ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... right. Immejately afther th' prayer th' Hon'rable Clarence Gumdhrop iv Matsachoosetts offered th' suffrage bill f'r passage. 'Th' motion is out iv ordher,' began th' Speaker. At this minyit a lady standin' behind th' chair dhrove a darning needle through his coat tails. 'But,' continued th' Speaker, reachin' behind him with an agnized ex'pression, 'I will let it go annyhow.' 'Mr. Speaker, I protest,' began th' Hon'rable Attila Sthrong, 'I ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... Her darning-needle quilted the yawning heel of Tommy Sutton's sock with precision and celerity, and she ruminated silently upon the vicissitudes and failures of mortal life until she was interrupted ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... inanimate things. His hens and ducks and donkeys speak as hens and ducks and donkeys would speak if they could speak. Their temperaments and characters are scrupulously respected. Even shirt-collars, gingerbread men, darning-needles, flowers, and sunbeams, he endowed with physiognomies and speech, fairly consistent with their ruling characteristics. This personification, especially of inanimate objects, may at first appear ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hard every day to put the linen in order. I didn't want Pauline to take away a single piece of torn linen with her, I worked hard with my darning-needle, as Bonne Justine had taught me, and I folded every piece ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... scraping every ha'penny. I used to help in the house, of course, when I came from work and I was always getting into trouble for reading books, that I borrowed, at odd minutes when aunt thought I ought to be knitting or darning or slaving away somehow at keeping uncomfortable. I used to tell Mary and Mary used to wish that I could come to work where she did. We used to see each other every dinner hour and in the evening she'd come round ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... box of your own when you go back, and keep it in the nursery. You don't know how many times a day you will be able to help the others out. A little darning yarn, an odd thimble, a bit of soft linen, and all the things that clutter and would be thrown away, go to fill up a handy box. You can be the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Mrs. Willis were seated in the cool, shaded living-room with their mending. It was an intensely warm afternoon and several degrees cooler inside the house than on the porch. Winnie insisted on helping with the darning—she would have felt hurt had she been denied the task of mating and sorting and mending the stockings and socks for the family each week—and she took pride in assisting Mrs. Willis to keep Doctor ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... about the piece of goods beside you—she ain't worth it. The miller's a good fellow, and what he says is true, and the watchman's right too. A plain tradesman can hardly venture to marry now. All the women wish to marry above their station. Instead of darning stockings, they read romances; instead of working in the kitchen, they run after comedies and concerts. Their houses are dirty, and they are walking out, dressed like princesses; all they bring a husband as a dowry are handsome dresses, lace ribbons, intrigues, romances, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... you!" she cried. "What a fright you gave me! I couldn't think who it could be. Come in! Sit down! Can you find a free chair? Saturday is my work day. I've been darning stockings, and trimming a hat, and ironing a blouse, and washing lace, and writing letters all in a rush. I love a muddle on Saturdays. It's such a change after routine all the week. What do you think of the hat? ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... creatures brought? Bitter-sweet, gooseberries, with thorns like darning needles! Why, Mr. Sharp, what can you mean by bringing such things here to stain the ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... fill into the fish. Sew the opening with a stout string and a darning needle. Pat the flour into the fish. Place in a baking pan and bake in a hot oven for one hour. Baste every fifteen minutes with one cup of boiling water. Now, if you place a strip of cheesecloth under the fish you will be able to lift it without breaking. Use the leftover portions for shad ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... text-book on mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and exercises on the little parlour organ which her husband had bought her after fifteen years during which she had not so much as seen a musical instrument. She would sit beside me by the hour, darning and counting, while I struggled with the "Joyous Farmer." She seldom talked to me about music, and I understood why. Once when I had been doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of Euryanthe I had found among her music books, she came up to me and, putting her ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... was a long pause. Saunners sat looking into the fire, sighing now and then, and clearing his throat as if he were ready to begin again. When he turned toward her, Allison took to her stocking-darning. She longed to ask him a question—but she dared not do it, even if she could have uttered ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... your innocence, sir, and meaning no disrespect," said Mrs. Bundle, "but there ain't no mending in your linen. There was some darning in the tutor's socks, but you give away half-a-dozen pair last Monday, sir, as hadn't a darn in 'em no bigger ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gradually brought Martinez into the family, making his relations with sina Tona more and more intimate. He got his meals now at the tavern, and spent most of his time there; and the mistress finally had the pleasure of darning his stockings and sewing the buttons on his underwear. Poor sinor Martines! What would happen to a fine young man like him without a woman around? He would get to be as shabby and disreputable as a stray cat. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a little above the camp. The moonlight destroyed nothing. The moor accepted everything. Tom Gage cries aloud so long as his tombstone endures. The Roman skeletons are in safe keeping. Betty Flanders's darning needles are safe too and her garnet brooch. And sometimes at midday, in the sunshine, the moor seems to hoard these little treasures, like a nurse. But at midnight when no one speaks or gallops, and the thorn tree is perfectly still, it would be foolish to vex the moor with ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... as he looks before he gets his wings. He lives on the bottoms of ponds when he is young; but at a certain age he ascends to the surface, and crawling out of his old clothes, comes forth an unmistakable darning-needle. When he lived under the water he had very large and long jaws, folded up on the under side of his head. If a fish came within reach, he would dart out this curious trunk, and seizing it, convey it to his mouth. He also has the power of ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a little old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid upward of sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that same chimney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter's grandfather had taken her from the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to Worcester some day, and get acquainted. Don't you remember the two handsome young men whom we saw five years ago in Douglas' store, and how they winked at each other when grandma ran down their goods and said there were not any darning needles fit to use this side ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the felicity of the name 'windhover,' or sometimes 'windfanner,' which it popularly bears. [Footnote: ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... whatever we long to do. Tell me your perfect day." Said one, "Why, to fly to an island Far away in a deep blue lagoon; One would never be tired in my land Nor ever get up too soon." "Every time," cried the girl darning stockings, "We'd surf-ride and bathe in the sea, We'd wear nothing but little blue smockings And eat mangoes and crabs for our tea." "Oh no!" said a third, "that's a rotten Idea of a perfect day; I long to see mountains forgotten, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... found her friend alone in the "settin'-room," darning away at a perfect stack of socks, as she creaked comfortably to and fro ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Mrs. Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... what it costs to produce it, and men will always try to protect property because that is what they themselves produce. At Antwerp our wounded men were begging us to go up to the hospital to fetch their purses from under their pillows! At present women are only repairers, darning socks, cleaning, washing up after men, bringing up reinforcements in the way of fresh life, and patching up wounded men, but some day they must and will have to say, "The life I produce has as much right to protection as the property you produce, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... anyway. We'll have no more of Blank's outfits, after this," we said, as we pulled and pinched them apart. "Oh, damn! I forgot about that stitchin' on the leg of my sea-boot," said one. "Wish I'd had time t' put a patch on here," said another, ruefully holding out his rubbers. "Too far gone for darning," said Eccles. "Here goes," and he snipped the feet part from a pair of stockings and tied ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... good, gradually became so deaf as not to be able to hear common conversation; after suffering some months, the patient thought of trying the following remedy:) of honey, brandy and sweet oil, each a tea-spoonful, warm and mix well together; sew a soft linen rag to the eye of a strong darning needle; dip this mop in the mixture while warm, and put it in the ear; hold it in till cold, when renew and move it gently about; by so doing, wax that had accumulated, hardened, and stopped the cavity, was discharged, ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children's and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. That's how I spend my nights!... What's the use of talking of forgiveness! I have forgiven ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... last only two shillings left; and he was obliged to turn out of the fine rooms in which he had dwelt, and had to live in a little garret under the roof, and clean his boots for himself, and mend them with a darning-needle. None of his friends came to see him, for there were too many stairs ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... the rest. We'll start in together, up there, and—we'll keep the sewing-machine for home use. You see my socks 'll sure need darning." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... do my darning now," he said. "My girls are all at school, except two that's married. So—" He finished his knot, took the reins in his left hand and the whip ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of housekeeping was her clear and speedy attainment in that new scene. Strange how she made the desert blossom for herself and me there; what a fairy palace she had made of that wild moorland home of the poor man! From the baking of a loaf, or the darning of a stocking, up to comporting herself in the highest scenes or most intricate emergencies, all was insight, veracity, graceful success (if you could judge it), fidelity to insight ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... seated on stool in window darning. The Count with Falcon on his hand comes down through the door at back. A withered wreath ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... son," answered the old man, and taking a big darning needle, he made a top to it of sealing wax, and gave ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... attempt to hide the most obvious stains on the wall-paper, served only to accentuate the contrast of a past evidently diversified by foreign travel and the enjoyment of the arts. Even Mrs. Fontage's dress had the air of being a last expedient, the ultimate outcome of a much-taxed ingenuity in darning and turning. One felt that all the poor lady's barriers were falling save that ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... coffee out the window, Judy," she begged—"that's Miss Watson doing laundry—she's in Joan's room now." And with amazing swiftness she emptied her laundry bag on the bed, covered the contents with her eiderdown, spread out two dainty sets of immaculate French underwear, and was seated with a darning-basket and a pair of stockings in her hand, before the astonished Judith could take in ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... they had gathered round the kitchen fire as being the most agreeable place. The children were long gone to bed; the rest of the family had at length followed them; Elizabeth and Mrs. Landholm alone kept their place. The one was darning some desperate-looking socks; the other, as usual, deep in a book. They had been very still and busy for a long time; and then as Elizabeth looked up for a moment and glanced at the stocking- covered hand of her neighbour, Mrs. Landholm ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... goes out through the vestibule door, followed by Johnny. Mrs Tarleton sits down at the worktable and takes out her darning materials and one of her husband's socks. Hypatia is at the other side of the table, on her mother's right. They ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... poor dear! But then if it was really her head that I sliced off last May—or if her temper is not any better—Still, it is an interminable nuisance washing your own dishes: and I appear to have no aptitude whatever for sewing and darning things. But, to the other hand, Lisa nags so: and she does ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... wheedle. To coax a pair of stockings; to pull down the part soiled into the shoes, so as to give a dirty pair of stockings the appearance of clean ones. Coaxing is also used, instead of darning, to hide ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... consciousness gave him courage. Picture in hand, he passed the familiar fence this time and knocked boldly on the door. His heart was thumping terribly; but he must do it! In a moment he stood before Femke. The lady of his heart was quietly darning stockings. It is hard on the writer; but this little detail was a matter of indifference ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... with the troopers in the village. Lady Woodley and her children had closed around the wood fire which had been lighted on the hearth at the approach of evening, and Rose was trying by the bad light to continue her darning of stockings, when a loud hasty knocking was heard at the door, and all, in a general vague impression of dread, ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were caught, he went back, and the dull days and the long nights, the cooking, darning, mending began again, and went on until madness would have been a relief. It was the old story of the Sleeping Beauty waiting for the prince to come, and wake her into life and love with his kiss. Only in this instance the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Late to Mend,'" chanted Emma, flourishing a large darning needle and attacking her rags anew. A shout arose from the little circle of girls who had formed about her. "There is another still harder to guess than mine. Over there," pointed Emma. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... propitiation of Mammon, the sending forth of her sacrificial lamb properly decked for the sacrifice. There never had been such a hauling and overhauling of clothes, such folding and unfolding, such stitching and darning and cleansing and pressing, such dragging out and packing of heavy portmanteaus, such a getting up of shirts that ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... to find Nathaniel, and get him to help her move the stove. As soon as the business was over, Nathaniel came into the kitchen, and held up his sooty hands for Patty to see. She was stabbing the turkey with a darning-needle. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... the division of the cabin which was intended to be used as a sitting and dining room in bad weather, and applied herself to some sewing and darning, which had been reserved for just such a day as this. Mr. Archibald, in a water-proof suit, tried fishing for half an hour or so, but finding it both unpleasant and unprofitable, he joined his wife, made himself as comfortable as possible on two chairs, ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... beautiful darning, miss? It is the finest darning I ever met with—not to say it was lace." Mrs. Betts spoke more seriously, as she held up to view a pair of filmy Lille thread stockings which had ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... whom I could love and serve, and be rewarded with a smile and a kind word in return. Mothers shook their heads, and daughters laughed at me. Have we time to be sentimental? Haven't we enough to do, darning and mending, and turning our dresses, and making the joint last as long as possible, and keeping the children clean, and doing the washing at home—and tea and sugar rising, and my husband grumbling every week when I have to ask him for the house-money. Oh, no more of it! no more of it! People ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... rarely. This time, however, she was successful, and did call to mind one that she had not thought of before. It had not only grown very dusty, but was full of little holes, which she at once set about darning up with the needle and thread of her imagination, so that, by the time Willie arrived, she had a treat, as she thought, ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... again, feeling rather guilty; but Ursula took little notice of her. The dinner was ordered and everything settled for the day. She was busy with her week's mending and darning, with the stockings and other things in a big basket beside her. When she came to some articles belonging to Janey, she threw them out with ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... sofa, and Nell leaned back in her cozy chair with some useful and necessary darning, and—with unconscious cruelty—thought of Drake and Shorne Mills, as the exquisite strains filled the ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... isn't," laughed Arkwright. "Oh, she taught music, but that was only because of necessity, I take it. She's domestic through and through, with an overwhelming passion for making puddings and darning socks, I hear. Alice says she believes Mrs. Cyril knows every dish and spoon by its Christian name, and that there's never so much as a spool of thread out of order in ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... they give to mere words the construction of plural nouns, are in the habit of writing them in the form of possessives singular; as, "They have of late, 'tis true, reformed, in some measure, the gouty joints and darning work of whereunto's, whereby's, thereof's, therewith's, and the rest of this kind."—Shaftesbury. "Here," says Dr. Crombie, "the genitive singular is improperly used for the objective case plural. It should be, whereuntos, wherebys, thereofs, therewiths."— Treatise on ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... ordinary image; I refer Mr. Bowles to the stanza, and ask if these three lines about "needles" are not worth all the boasted twaddling about trees, so triumphantly re-quoted? and yet, in fact, what do they convey? A homely collection of images and ideas, associated with the darning of stockings, and the hemming of shirts, and the mending of breeches; but will any one deny that they are eminently poetical and pathetic as addressed by Cowper to his nurse? The trash of trees reminds me of a saying of Sheridan's. Soon ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the north pole, or about the President's message when the dog had a rat cornered under the corn-crib and was barking like mad. But, then, parents can't see things in their right relations and proportions. And there sat mother, too, darning stockings, and the dog just stark crazy about that rat. 'Tis enough to make a boy lose faith in parents forevermore. A dog, a rat, and a boy—there's a combination that recks not of the fall of empires or the tottering of thrones. ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... labour not strictly domestic; because, if once owning herself a praedial servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, M. D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that: Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her father should have mended his own stockings, since ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... sit up at this hour of the night darning your stockings?" said mother, sharply; "don't you know ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... designated the "devil's beard," and a Norfolk name for the stinkhorn is "devil's horn." Of further plants related to his Satanic majesty is the clematis, termed "devil's thread," the toad-flax is his ribbon, the indigo his dye, while the scandix forms his darning-needles. The tritoma, with its brilliant red blossom, is familiar in most localities as the "devil's poker," and the ground ivy has been nicknamed the "devil's candlestick," the mandrake supplying his ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Binswanger, sliding her darning-egg down the length of a silken stocking. "I wish that name we had never heard. All of a sudden now education like those girls you think you got to ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... of his closet. He found it, opened it wide in the air and would have uttered a cry of joy but for the changed look of it. Even this had not escaped Mata's desecrating hands! It was mended everywhere. The white darning threads grinned at him like teeth. Also it was washed and ironed, and smelled of foreign soap. For an instant he tore at it angrily, and was minded to destroy it, but the sense of familiarity held him. He wrapped it about him slowly and, with bent head, ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... remained in bed reading an agreeable novel. Once more the four friends retired to the library where Mary read aloud and the others engaged in various characteristic pursuits. Elinor was embroidering a royal coat-of-arms in colored silks on a cushion cover; Nancy was darning a rent in a lace flounce and Billie was darning her father's socks. This task she undertook each week with extraordinary cheerfulness, although Onoye had offered to do it for her, and O'Haru had almost taken the darning needle and egg ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... handed in the cress, exchanged a few laughing words with the cook, and then presented herself at the door of the summerhouse. Inside, his books and papers spread over a worktable, sat Donald Whiting. One side of him his mother was busy darning his socks; on the other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk and small squares of gaily colored linen. Linda entered with exactly the same self-possession that characterized her at home. She shook hands with Mrs. Whiting, Mary Louise, and Donald, and then she said quietly: "Eileen ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... comfortably until the sun came out in the spring, and the seeds began to sprout, and the army was thawed out, and could move. In the silence on this hilltop, where nothing happens but dishwashing and bedmaking and darning stockings, it is a long way to springtime, even if ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... the far distance when it is rumoured that the battalion will deploy. He sits now at leisure, but even at leisure he is not at ease: silent, with every nerve and fibre strained to the utmost tension, he crouches over his work. He is at his darning; ay, with real wool and a real needle he is darning his socks. The colour of his work may not be harmonious, but it is a thorough job; he has done what even few women would do, he has darned not only the hole in his hosiery but his left ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... cook, with Miss Phoebe to run errands, do the marketing, visit the needy, and supervise generally. Some one must have done the mending and darning and laundry work, but I ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... door in the side the guests were to pass to the sixth room, where there were nuns engaged in household duties, mending the linen, darning the stockings, and so on. One was working a sewing-machine, and in the ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... no mood to listen to anything about airships after that; and Dot took her first lesson in darning, there and then. The old lady and the little girl came down to dinner that evening in a rather sober frame of mind, for the occasion had been wearing upon both ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... cavity, and stuff the cavity of the chicken, as shown in Fig. 27, with any desirable stuffing. Directions for preparing stuffing are given later. Also, fill with stuffing the space from which the crop was removed, inserting it through the slit in the neck. Thread a large darning needle with white cord and sew up the slit in the neck, as well as the one between the legs, as in Fig. 28, so that the stuffing will not fall out. Also, force the neck inside of the skin, and tie the skin with a piece of string, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... temporal cares of any one man's time. But this restless Proteus masqueraded through a score of other characters—as seedsman, harvester, hedger and ditcher, etc. We have no doubt that he would have taken a job of paving; he would have contracted for darning old Christopher's silk stockings, or for a mile of sewerage; or he would have contracted to dispose by night of the sewage (which the careful reader must not confound with the sewerage, that being the ship and the sewage the freight). ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... smoke-jack indulging in supernatural groans, and the whole lonely house full of undefined terrors, with an unlimited space of the like solitude before her. She would even have been glad to be sure of an evening of Mrs. Martha's good advice, and of darning stockings! She sat down by the round table to Mr. James's wristbands; but every creak or crack of the furniture made her start, and think of death-watches. She might have learnt to contemn superstition, but that did not prevent it from affecting ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... counter, and staring at it, as if I was only scribbling or drawing figures for her amusement. Sometimes, indeed, she will take a needle; but as she always works at the door, or in the middle of the shop, she has so many interruptions, that she is longer hemming a towel, or darning a stocking, than I am in breaking forty loaves of sugar, and making it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... sitting-room, the sour-faced governess was darning a hole in a small stocking. She was as close as possible to the green-tile stove, and she was looking very unpleasant; for the egg-shaped darner only slipped through the hole, which was a large one. With an irritable gesture she took off her slipper, and, putting one coarse-stockinged ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... early age we were able to make and dress our own dolls, hem our handkerchiefs and aprons, and in due time were promoted to the darning of father's stockings and the patching of his working-clothes. We thought the being able to do these things for him a very great affair, and mother praised us for our work. But when sister Jane once put a patch over a hole in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... grave over the rents and holes and threadbare places, sure as she was that, however shabby they had become, they must in some way or other be made to serve for a long time yet. It looked like a hopeless task, the attempt to transform by darning and turning, by patching and eking, the poor remnants of last winter's frocks and petticoats into garments suitable ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... ever tried to do was to be good at a watering-place. The air is bewitched with "the world, the flesh, and the devil." There are Christians who in three or four weeks in such a place have had such terrible rents made in their Christian robe that they had to keep darning it until Christmas to get it mended! The health of a great many people makes an annual visit to some mineral spring an absolute necessity; but, my dear people, take your Bible along with you, and take an hour ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... going to sit up. His clothing had been washed and ironed and pressed, and Auntie Sue was making some little repairs in the way of darning and buttons. She had finished, and was putting her needle and scissors in the sewing-basket on the table beside her, when she noticed the ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... with her own hands, gathered up the candle ends, and cut the cabbage for the brose; all which being done, and the servants' dinner seen to, and it must be confessed, it was seldom that they had a very sumptuous regale, she dressed herself as a lady should be dressed, and sate down to her darning, which was her principal work, in the oval window in the chief room in the castle. Darning, we say, was her principal work, because there was scarcely an article in the house which she did not darn occasionally, from the floor-cloth to her own best ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... the pattern and the edge with French cotton in tambour-stitch, and fill in the spaces with the sewing-cotton in the same stitch, or, if preferred, in darning-stitch; work dots in the places indicated in the design, and, after washing the scarf, sew a ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... FOWL.—Begin at the neck, stuff the breast full, draw the neck skin together, double it over on the back and fasten with a darning needle threaded with fine twine. Put the remainder of the stuffing into the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... with good eyes, that the edges of his shirt had been trimmed with the scissors until the hem narrowed close to the line of stitching; and his evening clothes in a strong light would have revealed not only the fatal gloss of long use, but also careful darning. The old saying that "Clothes make the man" was refuted in his case, however, as his arrogance was proclaimed ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... for the family she must do, the mending and darning for the household is her task, the children must be washed and clothed and properly cared for by her. Of her many duties there ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Harley," said Mother Blossom, bringing out her darning basket after lunch to one of the pretty trees where the family were fond ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... officer on board ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two amphibious petty officers darning ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Remus—adjusting his spectacles so as to be able to see how to thread a large darning-needle with which he was patching his coat—"one time, way back yander, 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed—way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs sorter 'lecshuneer roun' ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... millstone which is broken; and I require of thee that thou sew up the rent." Accordingly the Envoy looked about him and, seeing there another stone, said to Pharaoh, "O my lord, here am I a stranger man nor have I with me aught of darning-gear; but I would have thee bid thy confidants amongst the cobblers to provide me out of this other stone with shoemaker's awls and needles and scissors wherewith I may sew up for thee the breach in yon millstone." Hereat Pharaoh the King fell a-laughing, he and his Grandees, and cried, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... doorway, painfully enchained just then to her stocking- darning, first sighted the trio, and announced in an ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... comfortably around the table in the living-room. The lamps were lighted, and Mr. Stanley, in slippers, was smoking his pipe and Mrs. Stanley was darning socks over a mending-gourd, and the two young Stanleys were whispering and giggling about some matter of supreme consequence to youth. The windows were open, and we could smell the sweet scent of the lilacs from the yard and hear the drumming of the rain as it ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... REPRISE.—This stitch is worked by darning over and under two threads forming a triangle. The space is filled by parallel and crosswise bars placed at equal distances, and on the triangles thus produced ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... but most contrary mother would glance up from her book or her darning and remark, with ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... a club from which Cupid can never be blackballed. I notice that Struthers, who seems intent on the capture of a soul-mate, has taken to darning Whinstane Sandy's socks for him. And Whinnie, who is a bit of a cobbler as well as being a bit of renegade to the ranks of the misogynists, has put new heels and soles on the number sevens which Struthers wears at the extremities of her heron-like limbs. Thus ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... of yarn from the darning-basket to roll after the white kitten. He did not mean to be mischievous any more than the white kitten did, but the ball was part of Grandma Dearborn's knitting work. When she found the needles pulled out and the stitches dropped, she scolded him sharply. All her children had ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... allowed space to take up neglected threads, he would have had to expose the boundless innovation, the unfathomed gulf produced by American independence, and there would be no opening to back the Jeffersonian shears against the darning-needle of the great chief-justice. My misgiving lies in the line of thought of Riehl and the elder Cherbuliez. The first of those eminent conservatives writes: "Die Extreme, nicht deren Vermittelungen und Abschwaechungen, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... sat down-stairs darning stockings. The girls' intentions had been the best in the world, but in less than a year the family darning had fallen entirely into the capable and willing hands of the ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... Needleworks viz: point, Brussels, Dresden Gold, Silver, and silk Embroidery of every kind. Tambour Feather, India & Darning, Spriggings with a Variety of Open-work to each. Tapestry plain, lined, and drawn. Catgut, black & white, with a number of beautiful Stitches. Diaper and Plain Darnings. French Quiltings, Knitting, Various Sorts ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... stood wide open and in the porch his mother was sitting. She had a piece of old English lace in her hand, which she was carefully darning. Suddenly she heard John's footsteps and she lifted her head and listened intently. Then with a radiant face she stood upright just as John came from behind the laurel hedge into the golden rays of the setting sun, and her face ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... complete, must possess certain qualifications. As Dr. Mason has well said: "In any style of mechanical weaving, however simple or complex, even in darning, the following operations are performed: First, raising and lowering alternately different sets of warp filaments to form the 'sheds'; second, throwing the shuttle, or performing some operation that amounts to the same thing; third, after inserting the weft thread, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... Sandys was about to bestow on her a present with which her Christian name was to be connected. Miss Sandys' eyes had failed through long looking over lessons, and she no longer did any handiwork, save coarse knitting, hemming, and darning. But she had a fuller purse than her companion, and shops, even metropolitan shops, were to be reached by letter ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the "Rafu-gar" or fine-drawer in India, who does this artistic style of darning, is famed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... after the injury she was found swathed in rags wet with a compound solution of whiskey and camphor, with a decoction of tobacco. The intestines were cold to the touch and dirty, but were washed and replaced. The abdomen was sewed up with a darning needle and black linen thread; the woman recovered and bore a healthy child at the full maturity of her gestation. Crowdace speaks of a female pauper, six months pregnant, who was attacked by a buffalo, and suffered a wound about 1 1/2 inch long and 1/2 inch wide just above the umbilicus. Through ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... at least a dozen wee things! Yes—I see her darning corduroys, Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things, For a ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... were told, Its heel confessed the need of darning; "Gods!" low-bred Vulcan cried, "behold! There! that's what comes of too ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the shop she turned on to the moors for a last walk before going to Paris, for there would be plenty to do at home such as darning stockings, mending clothes, etc: She called for Nelly Reeves (a friend of hers); it would be a good chance to outdo her thought Beatrice, for Nelly had been to Italy the year before and did nothing but boast of it all day. So ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
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