"Housewifery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instead of it. This philosophical levity of tranquillity, so to speak, is shown in his easy variety of pursuits. Printer, postmaster, almanac maker, essayist, chemist, orator, tinker, statesman, humorist, philosopher, parlor man, political economist, professor of housewifery, ambassador, projector, maxim-monger, herb-doctor, wit:—Jack of all trades, master of each and mastered by none—the type and genius of his land. Franklin was everything but a poet. But since a soul with many qualities, forming of itself a sort of handy index and pocket ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... interest to the historian) a Secret-Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for aught I know, by her own hand. On examination, however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all such matters of housewifery, the toilet, and domestic quackery, among which we were horrified by the title of one of the nostrums, "How to kill a Fellow quickly"! We never doubted that bloody Queen Bess might often have had occasion for such a recipe, but wondered at her frankness, and at her attending ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... finding that I had done my poor mother an injustice in supposing that she intended to assume the government of the house, for no sooner was I admitted to her room than she gave me up the keys, and indeed I believe she was not sorry to resign them, for she had not loved housewifery in her prosperous days, and there had been a hard struggle with absolute poverty during the last ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... otherwise, that colony might now have been in a far better condition than it is, as to trade and other advantages, which an universal industry would have led them into. The women are the most industrious sex in that place, and, by their good housewifery, make a great deal of cloth of their own cotton, wool and flax; some of them keeping their families, though large, very decently appareled, both with linens and woolens, so that they have no occasion to run ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... it so wildly that you have made your hand black. We always use kettle-holders; didn't you learn housewifery as far as that, Mr. Dewy? Well, never mind the soot on your hand. Come here. I am going to rinse ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... sweet Mistress Celinda here—But, Faith, Sir, you're mistaken, her Fortune shall not go to the Maintenance of your Misses; which being once sure of, she, poor Soul, is sent down to the Country-house, to learn Housewifery, and live without Mankind, unless she can serve her self with the handsom Steward, or so—whilst you tear it away in Town, and live like Man and Wife with your Jilt, and are every Day seen in the Glass Coach, whilst your own natural Lady is hardly worth ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... was but a chapel of ease, yielding an income under one hundred pounds per annum. Yet, with this limited benefice, the Rev. William Douglas was enabled, by the frugal housewifery of the mistress, to maintain a decent, and, in his sphere, even a hospitable household, and to discharge the petty obligations to friends which he had incurred while "out of bread," and preparing to cross the deep to a foreign land. Until this ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Abington's, with some fashionable people whom he named; and he seemed much pleased with having made one in so elegant a circle. Nor did he omit to pique his mistress[1041] a little with jealousy of her housewifery; for he said, (with a smile,) 'Mrs. Abington's jelly, my dear Lady, was better ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... guests had departed, Mother Mabel took the opportunity to read a long practical lecture to Trudchen upon the folly of reading romances, whereby the flaunting ladies of the Court were grown so bold and venturous, that, instead of applying to learn some honest housewifery, they must ride, forsooth, a-damsel erranting through the country, with no better attendant than some idle squire, debauched page, or rake belly archer from foreign parts, to the great danger of their health, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... house-keeping is the best in the world. In comfort, in the smooth running of the household machinery, in good food and drink, perhaps in too lavish and too luxurious hospitality, we are nowadays almost in a class by ourselves in matters of housewifery. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... doctor's wife, full of motherly vanity, and desirous to appear genteel. She could read without much spelling, prided herself on her housewifery, especially on her gooseberry wine, and was really proud of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... who merely acts as a sort of manager for the home. I mean the poor woman who has to do all her own work, or nearly all; I mean her somewhat more fortunate sister who has a maid with whom she wrestles to do her share,—who relieves her somewhat but not sufficiently to remove the major part of housewifery. After all, only one woman in ten has any ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... see, Berwine, these gauds on the neck, and that neck itself uncovered as low as the shoulder—these be the guises which strangers have brought into merry England! and this pouch, like a player's placket, hath but little to do with housewifery, I wot; and that dagger, too, like a glee-man's wife, that rides a mumming in masculine apparel—dost thou ever go to the wars, maiden, that thou wearest ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... her part, thirsted for knowledge, especially for the wisdom that cometh from above. She improved, too, rapidly enough to satisfy a less partial teacher. In the varied arts of housewifery, and in the more intricate use of the needle, she had also become quite expert, and, to use Mrs. Lee's own words, "was quite a treasure in ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... still, I must compare To two fair roses very lately blown; Who, though they lived in the woods, were debonair As any town's girls I have ever known. Their skill in housewifery was clearly shown In the discharge of all their household duties. They both had voices of the sweetest tone— Not shrill nor harsh, but more like what the flute is, And were by all who saw ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... this small farm was all the patrimony my father left me, certain debts and the want of meadows kept me rather low in the beginning of my life; my wife brought me nothing in money, all her riches consisted in her good temper and great knowledge of housewifery. I scarcely know how to trace my steps in the botanical career; they appear to me now like unto a dream: but thee mayest rely on what I shall relate, though I know that some of our friends have laughed at it." I am not one of those ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... a studied expression of the balanced division of her care between the two great objects of utility and splendour: in her right hand, food and flax, for life and clothing; in her left hand, the purple and the needlework, for honour and for beauty. All perfect housewifery or national economy is known by these two divisions; wherever either is wanting, the economy is imperfect. If the motive of pomp prevails, and the care of the national economist is directed only to the accumulation of gold, and of pictures, and of silk and marble, you ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Mistress Lettice farewell, with many compliments on her housewifery and her zeal for the settlement, Pocahontas appeared at the door. She had been, as Mistress Lettice well knew, away with Rolfe, showing him how her people planted tobacco, since he had become much interested in this weed—being the ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... teach you for forty centimes an hour, gather round these ricketty tables, wolf up the thin soup, grumble at the watery coffee, help themselves with unladylike greediness to the potato pie. It must need careful housewifery to keep these poor creatures on two francs a day and make a profit for yourself. So "Madame," the much- grumbled-at, who has gone to bed about twelve, rises a little before five, makes her way down with her basket. Thus a few sous may be saved ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... concerning the long grace at meat happy, and said she was minded of the wife of the good Mr. Ames, who prided herself on her skill in housewifery and cookery; and on one occasion, seeing a nice pair of roasted fowls growing cold under her husband's long grace, was fain to jog his elbow, telling him that if he did not stop soon, she feared they would have small occasion for thankfulness for their ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... as much by Richter's knowledge of their feelings as by the fascination of his personality. Hesperus lays bare many little wiles dear to feminine hearts, and contains some keenly sympathetic satire on German housewifery. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ready for employment in the morning. At midnight the window of her cottage opened, and a loud voice was heard calling up some one within by a strange and uncouth name. The terrified cottager ejaculated a prayer, which, we may suppose, ensured her personal safety; while the enchanted implement of housewifery, tumbling from the bedstead, departed by the window with no small noise and precipitation. In a humorous fugitive tract, Dr. Johnson has been introduced as disputing the authenticity of an apparition, merely because the spirit assumed the shape ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... to set before Royalty! This disgrace to her housewifery affected Mrs. Macdonald almost as feelingly as the danger they were in. The idea, too, of sitting down at supper with her lawful sovereign caused the simple lady the greatest embarrassment. However, she was prevailed upon to take the seat at the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the twenty-four—and never went to bed at all if Vassily Ivanovitch had so much as a headache; she had never read a single book except Alexis or the Cottage in the Forest; she wrote one, or at the most two letters in a year, but was great in housewifery, preserving, and jam-making, though with her own hands she never touched a thing, and was generally disinclined to move from her place. Arina Vlasyevna was very kindhearted, and in her way not at all stupid. She knew that the world is divided ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... was over and the table cleared away the men took to their pipes and discussed their crops, and the women discoursed of carding, and spinning, and housewifery in general. Then there was a dance around the apple-basket, and a dance in which every man kissed every other man's vrow, and in which the Dominie joined, and was as jolly as any of his flock. And they danced to the music of ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... come on; you're pictures out of doors, Bells in your parlours, wild cats in your kitchens, Saints in your injuries, devils being offended, Players in your housewifery, and ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of doing some housewifery as if she lived there. But she seemed timid at his approach, and compunction wrought on him at ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... whirl of domestic excitement incident to the preparing of a hamper for the midnight lunch out on the ridge, which she had entreated Mrs. Matilda to leave entirely to her newly-acquired housewifery, stepped into the middle of the pool political and never knew it, in the innocence of ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... there is one gift that I prize above others, That tinges with brightness whatever I do, And gives to the sombre a roseate hue, 'Tis a legacy mine from the nicest of mothers, Who haply the beauty of housewifery knew, And taught me her neatness ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... housewifery, which my mother used to tell of, shows another side of the Rhode-Islander, which is not less illustrative of the stock. One of the boys of the pastor's family volunteered, or was drawn, in the militia for active service; ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... indicates the thread made from the hairs of the plant, and formerly used among Scandinavian nations. This was likewise employed by Scotch weavers in the seventeenth century. Westmacott, the historian, says, "Scotch cloth is only the [384] housewifery of the Nettle." And the poet Campbell writes in one of his letters, "I have slept in Nettle sheets, and dined off a Nettle table cloth: and I have heard my mother say she thought Nettle cloth more durable than any other linen." Goldsmith has ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... seventy years old, and I don't know who told it me; but it has always seemed to me very characteristic of the good side of cottage life, whether one thinks of the eager rivalry itself in the gardens, where the white clothes flapped, or of the long record implied in it of careful housewifery and quiet needlework. This spirit of joy in proficiency must have sweetened many of the cottage duties, and may well have run through them all. When a woman treated her friends to home-made wine at Christmas, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... instruct others. This he does with much shrewdness and point in his Hundreth Goode Pointes of Husbandrie (1557), expressed in rude but lively verse; thereafter he added Hundreth Goode Pointes of Husserie (Housewifery). The two joined, and with many additions, were repeatedly reprinted as Five Hundredth Pointes of Goode Husbandrie united to as many of Goode Huswifery. Many proverbs may be traced back to the writings of T., who, in spite of all his shrewdness and talent, d. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... whether in town or country, Bulah, the wife of Micajah Warner, was a woman of even temper, untiring industry, and great skill in housewifery. ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... sign, that yet swung before the door of Peter Dealtry; and there, under the shade of the broad tree, now budding into all its tenderest verdure, a pedestrian wayfarer sate enjoying the rest and coolness of his shelter. Our horseman cast a look at the open door, across which, in the bustle of housewifery, female forms now and then glanced and vanished, and presently he saw Peter himself saunter forth to chat with the traveller beneath his tree. And Peter Dealtry was the same as ever, only he seemed perhaps shorter and thinner than of old, as if Time ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on her housewifery cares; but when these were despatched, it was hard to begin anything else on such a day of suspense, when she was living on reports from the sick room. The delirium had returned, more violent than ever; and as she sat at her open window she ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Tuesday should it prove fine. Alick and Fred had been over at Mill Bank Farm, and the younger Fords had agreed to meet them at the ravine, with their contribution of milk and cream, and various other things which Mrs. Ford's zealous housewifery would not be prevented from sending, though Fred assured her that it ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... smile or the sigh called forth by early recollections, that much of their youthful happiness was due to our presence; and some will even go so far as to attribute to our influence many a habit of housewifery, neatness, and industry, ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... Winifred Rexford had been spending part of each morning learning housewifery of Mrs. Martha. That day, because of the rain, Trenholme insisted upon keeping her to dinner with him. He brought her into his dining-room with playful force, and set her at the head of his table. It was a great pleasure to him to have the child. He twitted her with ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... that may be made to mingle in the most homely occupations. I will now quote that of a modern female writer and traveller, who, in her pleasant book, called 'Six Weeks on the Loire,' has thus described the housewifery of the daughter of a French nobleman, residing in a superb chateau on that river. The travellers had just arrived, and been introduced, when the following ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... to obey and support her father. She found she could instruct the ignorant; and though no longer able to furnish materials for clothing the naked, she could cut out garments and sew them for those who were too ill-informed to be expert in female housewifery. Isabel and she gathered herbs; Mrs. Mellicent superintended their distillation, and again consulted "The Family Physician," in forming ointments and compounding cordials; Dr. Beaumont went from house to house, trying to conciliate ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... not merely into words but into pictures, and even into motion pictures. The fly as a carrier of disease is now shown in all its busy and disgusting activity. The lesson of awakened attention by such means is being learned, and soon lessons in botany, in gardening, in housewifery, will be given through the eye, to be the better followed by ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... a violet, fresh as a dewy daisy, and sweet as a bed of thyme and marjoram. 'The style and method of life are quite changed, as well as the language, since the days of our ancestors, simple and plain as they were, courting their wives for their modesty, frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other economical virtues then in reputation. And when the young damsels were taught all these at home in the country at their parents' houses; the portion they brought being more in virtue than money, she being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and nothing else ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... your home?" he asked the woman softly, as he sat down by the patient's pillow. He looked about upon the small, cheaply furnished room, full of the neat makeshifts of cramped housewifery. ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... dress of the Scottish common people with something of an Eastern costume, she spun a thread drawn from wool of three different colours, black, white, and grey, by assistance of those ancient implements of housewifery now almost banished from the land, the distaff and spindle. As she spun, she sung what seemed to be a charm. Mannering, after in vain attempting to make himself master of the exact words of her song, afterwards attempted the following ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... she spent wholly in exhorting Mrs Harrel to shew more fortitude, and conjuring her to study nothing while abroad but oeconomy, prudence and housewifery: a lesson how hard for the thoughtless and negligent Priscilla! she heard the advice with repugnance, and only answered it with helpless complaints that she knew not how to spend less money than ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... were native and numerous. She was a wonderful manager. Every penny of Tommy's thirty-six or thirty-eight shillings a week was bestowed to the greatest advantage, and Tommy never ventured to guess how much of it she saved. Her cleanliness in housewifery was distracting to behold. She met Simmons at the front door whenever he came home, and then and there he changed his boots for slippers, balancing himself painfully on alternate feet on the cold flags. This was because she scrubbed the passage and door-step turn about ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... be visited with her; her precocious housewifery must be admired; her arrangements must be applauded. First she showed me the little 'salle a manger,' dedicated to the meals which would unite us in the intervals of business: to this cause it owed the air of opulence and brightness which Marcelle ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... morning. The feelings of the father mastered David on this occasion. He pressed Butler to spend the evening with him—He produced, most unusual at his meals, one, nay, two bottles of aged strong ale.—He spoke of his daughter—of her merits—her housewifery—her thrift—her affection. He led Butler so decidedly up to a declaration of his feelings towards Jeanie, that, before nightfall, it was distinctly understood she was to be the bride of Reuben Butler; and if they thought it indelicate ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... salaries too great, and that the commonwealth is not housewife enough, whether is it better housewifery that she should keep her family from the snow, or suffer them to burn her house that they may warm themselves? for one of these must be. Do you think that she came off at a cheaper rate when men ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the neighborhood of the water and watched it flowing. Some fishes were sporting briskly in the clear stream and occasionally made a little bound and caught the flies flying on the surface. He stopped crying in order to watch them, for their housewifery interested him vastly. But, at intervals, as in the changes of a tempest, altering suddenly from tremendous gusts of wind, which snap off the trees and then lose themselves in the horizon, this thought would return to him with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... but she was never very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the observant neighbors thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like most people, that service is not necessarily a handicraft. Tommy discovered what they were saying, and to shield Elspeth he took to housewifery with the blind down; but Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the besom from, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie |
