"Seamstress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of Aunt Ninette's friends was the teacher of a private school for girls, so that it was soon settled that Dora was to go to her every morning to learn what she could. Also a seamstress was engaged to teach her the art of shirt-making in the afternoon, for it was a theory of Aunt Ninette's that the construction of shirts of all kinds was a most useful branch of knowledge, and she proposed that Dora should learn this art, with a view ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... of sewing-machines in Madame Levaney's large dressmaking establishment. Cicely Leeds's head ached as she bent over the ruffles she was hemming. She was the youngest seamstress in the room, and wore her hair hanging in two ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with which a girl must become familiar and which she must know how to use—Books, Library, Laboratory and Classroom. Why shouldn't a student be just as able to use her books as a carpenter his plane or saw? One couldn't expect a fumbling carpenter or a clumsy seamstress to accomplish much work or good work. There are times when a girl need not claim to know anything but she must, at least, know where to find what she wants to know. This is the first lesson in the use of books; ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... stage possession is her Makeup Box. It contains the necessary tools of her trade, without which she would be helpless to carry on. It is to her what the brush and colors and palette are to the painter; the needle and thread to the seamstress; the hammer and saw and plane to the carpenter. Before you enter upon a stage career supply yourself with a complete makeup box equipped with all the needed tools and ingredients for making up for the part you are to assume. This is a necessary purchase, and will prove one of the best ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... was more dead than alive. I might be mistaken or I might not, but in neither case was it fitting for Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu to play the spy. I had sunk to the level of the gutter, by the side of courtesans, opera-dancers, mere creatures of instinct; even the vulgar shop-girl or humble seamstress might look ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Sowinska, would not so much as listen to any suggestion that she should abandon the theater. She had become so deeply rooted there that she could not tear herself away, although Mme. Anna would turn almost yellow from shame over the fact that her mother was a theatrical seamstress. She was disgustingly ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... her sister, and herself derive their support? Next, she resolved to resort to her needle; yet how small was the likelihood of keeping it employed! and how poor the pittance it could earn as an humble seamstress! True, she might learn a trade; but how was she ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... occasion to verify these observations by personal inquiry in Boston markets. One intelligent meat man gave his experience with a poor seamstress, who insisted on buying tenderloin steak at 60 cents per pound. He tried to persuade her that other parts of the meat were just as nutritive, as they really are, but she would not believe him; and when he urged the wiser economy of using them, she became angry at him for what she ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... of their own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dress-maker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own. Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till female trades ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sympathy for the printer of Christmas story books and reveals Gibson as the twentieth-century Thomas Hood of The Song of the Shirt. One of the most richly human of his poems is The Crane, the story of the seamstress mother and her lame boy. His realistic volume of verse bearing the significant title, Daily Bread (1910), contains a number of narrative poems, which endeavor to set to music the "one measure" to which all life moves,—the earning of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... professional dignity. Nevertheless, these crusty graduates were technically right in excluding Dr. Dolliver from their fraternity. He had never received the degree of any medical school, nor (save it might be for the cure of a toothache, or a child's rash, or a whitlow on a seamstress's finger, or some such trifling malady) had he ever been even a practitioner of the awful science with which his popular designation connected him. Our old friend, in short, even at his highest social ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the surprising sum of one hundred pounds, the singular self-denial and whole-hearted giving exhibited making this a peculiarly sacred offering and a token of God's favour. There was a felt significance in His choice of a poor sickly seamstress as His instrument for laying the foundations for this great work. He who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, passing by the rich, mighty, and noble somethings of this world, chose again the poor, weak, base, despised nothings, that ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... seemed a matter of perfect indifference to me then what I did, or what became of me,—whether I was henceforth to be a teacher, a seamstress, or a servant. Every consideration was swallowed in one,—every fear lost in one absorbing dread. I had but one prayer,—"Let my mother live, or ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... could not help seeing it was for their interest to take care of such a valuable piece of property. She became an indispensable personage in the household, officiating in all capacities, from cook and wet nurse to seamstress. She was much praised for her cooking; and her nice crackers became so famous in the neighborhood that many people were desirous of obtaining them. In consequence of numerous requests of this kind, she asked permission of her mistress to bake ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... 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 ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... that night I sat at a table with a housekeeper, a parlor maid, and a seamstress, and listened to much talk. Mainly, it was a discussion of where the most desirable jobs were to be had in their respective lines. There was complete unanimity of opinion. Clubs headed the list, and the cream of cream were men's clubs. The housekeeper and parlor ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... I knew a French seamstress who had a gutter cat, of which she was very fond. One day the cat fell from the roof of the house. She seemed dead, but her faithful friend put her upon a soft bed, gave her homoeopathic medicine, and watched all night by her to put a drop of something into her mouth if she ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... she wants him herself, but she can't have him,—no, she can't have him,"—and secure in the belief that she was the first and only object of Henry's affection, Ella danced out of the room to attend to the seamstress who ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... husbands do not dress them well 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
... enough of charities. It wants respect and consideration. We desire no longer to be legislated for, it says; we want to be legislated with. Why do you never come to see me but you bring me something? asks the sensitive and poor seamstress. Do you always give some charity to your friends? I want companionship, and not cold pieces; I want to be treated like a human being who has nerves and feelings, and tears too, and as much interest in the sunset, and in the birth of Christ, perhaps as you. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the primitive old fogies. Tallow candles were supplanted, By the lamp and spermaceti, Linsey woolsey, jeans and cotton, Long suspended from the weaving, Changed to silk and print and muslin, Changed to cassimere and broadcloth. Now the seamstress plied her sewing, With machine and modern patterns; Now the drudge of toil domestic, Sought out many new inventions, Soon rejoiced in work made easy, By the labor saving structures. And the turnpikes of the county, Echoed loud to wheels revolving: All the rude, unsightly landmarks, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... those two vile, ill-smelling alleys back of our house, than ever you have in Chestnut Street, though you know every body is half dying to see you; and now, to crown all, you must give this choice little bijou to a seamstress girl, when one of your most intimate friends, in your own class, would value it so highly. What in the world can people in ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The seamstress was now summoned, and the orders were given for Priscilla's dress, to be made to fit Daisy. It was very amusing, the strait-cut brown gown, the plain broad vandyke of white muslin, and etceteras that ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to work again, and then one day is killed in an accident. There is danger of the family breaking up. But the woman rises to the crisis and works miracles. She keeps her head; she takes charge; she toils late into the night; she goes without food, without sleep. Somehow she manages. There was a seamstress in Greenwich Village who pulled her family of three and herself along on two hundred and fifty dollars a year—less than five dollars a week! If luck is with the woman the children grow up, go to work, and for a time ease the burden. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... seamstress of Paris, had among her customers the Duchesse Cataneo, Louise de Chaulieu, and, probably, Madame de Bargeton. [Massimilla Doni. Lost Illusions. Letters of Two Brides.] Her successors assumed and handed down her name; Victorine ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... with that, she wanted me, just now, to advance her the price of three weeks' work. If I had been foolish enough to have done it, it would have been the last I ever should have seen of either money, work, or seamstress." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... 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 in ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... here any more to sew for—" began the seamstress despairingly, but Miss Abigail would not listen, bundling her out of the garden gate and sending her trotting home, cheered unreasonably by the old woman's jovial blustering, "No such kind of talk allowed in ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... down than many a poor girl 'prenticed for her living, and I often wonder if it's not that way with many of the rich ladies you see! I know I was working hard with a dressmaker the first year—before they kept me as seamstress and mender at The Cedars—and I wouldn't have changed with her, except for ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... wear the regular maid's dress of black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor's on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are to be gone any length of time, she will not stay there at all, simply because she is afraid of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... for your mutton and beef. I require a far better thing. A seamstress you're wanting for stockings and shirts, I look for a man and ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... to make her initial venture in shirtwaists, and she approaches them with as much caution as if she were experimenting with tights and trunks. The poor little seamstress who is officiating has, to my certain knowledge, tried one waist on five times, because, as Miss Lavinia does not "feel it," she thinks it ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... subject. His version of "Genevieve" will be issued, upon its completion, by the publishers of The International. We give a specimen of its quality in the following characteristic description, of Marseilles, premising that the work is dedicated to "Mlle. Reine-Garde, seamstress, and formerly a servant, at Aix, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... mother's long fits of weeping, and the general gloom of the widowed household; and how, after she had sent my two little sisters to bed,—for such had been the increase of the family,—and her hands were set free for the evening, she used to sit up late at night engaged as a seamstress, in making pieces of dress for such of the neighbours as chose to employ her. My father's new house lay untenanted at the time; and though his sloop had been partially insured, the broker with ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... influences of which do so much for the health of the character, and carry off what would otherwise be a dangerous accumulation of morbid sensibility. A vast deal of human sympathy runs along this electric line, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humblest seamstress, and keeping high and low in a species of communion with their kindred beings. Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... delicacy of the colour being rather injured by the red damask background. These pictures do not possess any particular merit beyond that of being extremely good likenesses, especially the one of the Marchioness of Ormonde. Over them is hung a picture of a seamstress, pale and vacant-looking, with eyes red from tears and long watchings in the night, hemming a shirt. It is meant to illustrate Hood's familiar poem. As we look on it, a terrible contrast strikes us between this miserable pauper-seamstress ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... beside Mrs. Simons at the table of that good soul's married daughter; the same who had suckled little Sarah. Esther's frequent eulogiums had secured the poor lonely narrow-chested seamstress this enormous concession and privilege. Bobby squatted on the mat in the passage ready to challenge Elijah. At this table there were two pieces of fried fish sent to Mrs. Simons by Esther Ansell. They represented the greatest revenge of Esther's life, and she felt remorseful towards Malka, remembering ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a thing before; the officials were filled with curiosity; they besought an explanation. It appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection. Hence the career of the tapper. He has to do the tapping and keep up an industrious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the next block plunk down dollars that they have earned at their own particular combinations of life to see the combination you have made of yours. Why, tears come into my eyes when I see some little, old, dried-up seamstress pay a dollar to sit in the roost to see Gerald Height love the powder off of Violet while she is cursing him under her breath for so doing, and it tickles me under my ribs to see some fat, jolly, lonely, old party ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and scampered merrily about the kitchen floor. The chorus of clock-ticks sounded drowsily through the silent house, Madam was taking her daily rest on her lounge in the sitting-room, and after a time the seamstress's good intentions passed into a maze of dreams. In them she seemed to be eternally climbing steep stairs into a chamber of horrors tenanted by one starving boy; or she was watching Madam choke to death over ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... from a dim lamp in an upper window. It might have been placed there as a signal, or some poor seamstress, in the struggle for a livelihood, might be ruining her health and sight by it. It must, at any rate, have been very constantly there, or it would not so readily have been mentioned to mark a place of meeting. As they went ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... month before, given up his fight with debt and illness and was sleeping quietly in Trumet's most populous center, the graveyard. And Keziah, left alone, had decided that the rent and living expenses were more than her precarious earnings as a seamstress would warrant, and, having bargained with the furniture dealer in Wellmouth for the sale of her household effects, was now busy getting them ready for the morrow, when the dealer's wagon was to call. She was going to Boston, where a distant and condescending rich relative had interested himself ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a woman named Lacombe, a cripple living with her goddaughter, who is a seamstress. There is ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... related the incident to Miss Tompkins, the seamstress whose directions I had undertaken to follow, and also frankly owned that I was not quite sure which reply had caused that peculiar smile. She assured me there could be no doubt on that point. "The gentleman was amused at the ignorance ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... man to himself, who made a large part of his living by the sale of under-garments whose every stitch was an untacking of the body from the soul of a seamstress. "Bah!" said some. "A hypocrite, by his own confession!" said others. "Exceedingly improper!" said Mrs. Ramshorn. "Unheard-of and most unclerical behaviour! And actually to confess such paganism!" For Helen, she waked up a little, began to listen, and wondered what he had been saying ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... was evidently an accomplished seamstress, and long before four o'clock the curtains were put up, and duly admired by ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... required her to stand long on her feet. As soon as she was comparatively well she spoke to him alone. Since she was forbidden to walk and bustle about, and, indeed, could not do so, it became her duty to leave. She could very well work at something sitting down, and she had an aunt a seamstress. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... a prosecuting attorney, according to his idea, had to be invested with a social significance, according to the manner of those lawyers who became famous. True, among his hearers were three women; a seamstress, a cook and Simon's sister, also a driver, but that made no difference. Those celebrities also began on a small scale. The prosecutor made it a rule to view the situation from the eminence of his position, i. e., to penetrate into ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... pariahs of society fall and on which the inexperienced so cheerfully comment. Neglected by her own set, shunned by the respectable, her fortune quite gone, she was nevertheless determined that she would not be a back-street seamstress or a pensioner upon the bounty of quondam friends. By insensible degrees came first unhallowed relationships through friendship and passing passion, then a curious intermediate state between the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... glass in her new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. Before he shut his door ho caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before the long mirror in HER new dress, followed by the seamstress on her knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she made Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. It made Lapham sick, and he despised himself and all his brood for the trouble they were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and has kindly furnished us with a brief outline of its contents. The hero, who starts life as an artificial raspberry-pip maker and amasses a colossal fortune in the Argentine grain trade, marries a poor seamstress in his struggling days, but deserts her for a brilliant variety actress, who is in turn deposed by (1) the daughter of a dean, (2) the daughter of an earl, and (3) the daughter of a duke. Ultimately Jasper Dando, for that is his name, leads a crusade ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... almost unknown in this house. Why? Carol would hear it, and it would distress her, she is so full of love and goodness. The boys study with all their might and main. Why? Partly, at least, because they like to teach Carol, and amuse her by telling her what they read. When the seamstress comes, she likes to sew in Miss Carol's room, because there she forgets her own troubles, which, Heaven knows, are sore enough! And as for me, Donald, I am a better woman every day for Carol's sake; I have to be her eyes, ears, feet, hands—her strength, her hope; and she, ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 night as well ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... continued Madame Boche in a lower tone of voice. "She never does any laundry, not even a pair of cuffs. A seamstress who doesn't even sew on a loose button! She's just like her sister, the brass burnisher, that hussy Adele, who stays away from her job two days out of three. Nobody knows who their folks are or how they make a living. Though, if I wanted to talk . . . What on earth is she scrubbing ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women, in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework. A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun a review ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on one side of the room and the men on the other. Persons desirous of purchasing them passed up and down between the lines looking the poor creatures over, and questioning them in about the following manner: "What can you do?" "Are you a good cook? seamstress? dairymaid?"—this to the women, while the men would be questioned as to their line of work: "Can you plow? Are you a blacksmith? Have you ever cared for horses? Can you pick cotton rapidly?" Sometimes the slave would be required to open his mouth that the purchaser might examine the teeth and form ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... a venial offense. He was also a common libertine, whose excesses were more like those of a pork-butcher than of a cultivated man. His companions were not disinclined for little amorous adventures—a joke with a pretty seamstress or restaurant waitress were their capital offenses. But the manner in which Pechlar carried on his amours was such as did not commend itself to either the easygoing or cautious ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... a score or more attended, some carrying the coffin, and others walking two and two behind, with bits of black crepe round their hats and arms, while Mary and I, and Nancy and Tom, followed as chief mourners all the way to Kingston Cemetery. Nancy, with the help of a friend, a poor seamstress, had managed to make a black frock for Mary and a dress for herself, out of mother's gown, I suspect. They were not very scientifically cut, but she had sat up all night stitching at them, which showed her affection and her desire to do what ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... changes in home life, we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the maintenance of the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... to his work. From time to time he lifted his head and looked out. The seamstress, who had just moved into Pipman's old den, and who was working away at her snoring machine, looked longingly at him. Of course she must be lonely; perhaps there was nowhere where she ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Rose, yet I feel some compassion for her now. Whatever the drudgery of her life as governess may have been since she left us, long ago, it has been nothing, nothing to the penal servitude of the life upon which she has now entered. The hardest-worked governess, seamstress, or servant has some hours in the twenty-four, and some nook in the house that she can call her own where she can rest and be quiet. But Rose Rockharrt will have no such relief! Do I not remember my dear grandmother's life? And my grandfather really did love her, if he ever loved ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pleasure-seekers, went about this time on a tour to Quebec and the Falls of Montmorency. They decided to shut their house in Boston, and Lulu asked me if I would employ and look after a protegee of hers, in whom she took some interest. The woman was a tolerable seamstress, she said, and would come to me the next day. She knew nothing about her except that she was poor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... a cartman's frock. Stuyvesant had had it made by the seamstress at his mother's house, in New York, before he came away. He was a very neat and tidy boy about his dress, and always felt uncomfortable if his clothes were soiled or torn. He concluded, therefore, that if he had a good, strong, serviceable frock to put on over his other clothes, ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... this extra expense. If the child or children be well, and the mother desires some one to attend to them at night, she should engage a woman who has no occupation during the day and who is willing to work at night. She should make a point of choosing one who sews well, so that the services of a seamstress might be combined with the duties of a night nurse. There is always some mending to do in all families and a woman who is clever with her needle might make herself very useful to her employer. Thousands of women sew by artificial light in dressmaking establishments and factories; in all probability ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... conceived by such as have experienced it. His next companion was a popular orator who had lost his voice, and—as it was pretty much all that he had to lose— had fallen into a state of hopeless melancholy. The table was likewise graced by two of the gentler sex,—one, a half-starved, consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in the world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the verge of madness by dark breedings ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the mutual sustenance of all. The husbandman tills the ground and provides food; the manufacturer weaves tissues, which the tailor and seamstress make into clothes; the mason and the bricklayer build the houses in which we enjoy household life. Numbers of workmen thus contribute and help to create ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... still extravagantly fond of whiskey, though he was constantly "running it down." I inquired after his wife. "She is dead, poor creature," said he, "and is probably far better off than ever she was here. She was a seamstress, and her greatest enjoyment of happiness in this world was ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... absorb a little of the character of their wearer, so that I recognised this jacket by a certain coquetry? If she has a way with her skirts that always advertises me of her presence, quite possibly she is as cunning with jackets. Or perhaps she is her own seamstress, and puts in little tucks ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the brink of despair. His only help was a small stipend from the king of Denmark, which enabled him to spend two years in Paris and Rome, and the meager pennies that his devoted friend Elise Lensing, a poor seamstress in Hamburg, sent him. His short stories, his dramas, although they brought him fame, were of little avail in this struggle that seemed all too hopeless. Then a sudden change for the better came. Stopping ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... swallowed the whole business, and he said he guessed he didn't want any more. He is so sensitive about his teeth that he would eat a leather apron if anybody told him he couldn't. When the doctor said Pa's digestion was bad, I told him if he could let Pa swallow a seamstress or a sewing machine, to sew up the cloth, he would get well, and the Doc. says I am going to be the death of Pa some day. But I thought I should split when Pa wanted a drink of water. I asked him if he would druther have mineral water, and he ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... flax, came the big hard-tack baking, the sheep shearing, and the servants' moving time. In November there were busy slaughter days, with salting of meats, sausage making, baking of blood pudding, and candle steeping. The seamstress who used to make up their homespun dresses had to come at this time, of course, and those were always two pleasant weeks—when the women folk sat together and busied themselves with sewing. The cobbler, who made shoes for the entire household, sat working at the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... of wife and mother. Regardless of aptitudes, physical strength or weakness, personal likes or dislikes, all women were expected to marry and bear children, and to qualify successfully for a vocation which combined the duties of nursemaid, waitress, laundress, seamstress, baker, cook, governess, purchasing agent, dietitian, accountant, and confectioner. In the early days of this country, in addition to these duties, women were also called upon to be butchers, sausage-makers, tailors, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, candle-makers, cheese-makers, soap-makers, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragrance of flowers. Such a gown upon a lovely woman is man's proof that woman is indeed the thing which so often he ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... only a rough and ready flag, and Betsy Ross, a seamstress, who lived in Arch Street, Philadelphia, had the honour of making the first real one. While in Philadelphia Washington and some members of council called upon Betsy to ask her to make the flag. Washington had brought a sketch with ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... both the chess-players and the singers, waited in a state of bliss to be summoned to the sewing-room. Only that morning it had been discovered that there was enough pink chiffon left, after the bridesmaids' gowns were completed, to make her a dress, and the seamstress was at work upon it now. So it was a gay, rose-colored world to Mary this morning, despite the leaden skies and pouring rain outside. Not only was she to have a dress, the material for which had actually been ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... quantity of linen so fine that it might be passed like thread through the eye of a needle. In the spring, after it had been bleached, Vasilissa made a present of it to the old woman with whom she lodged. The crone presented it to the king, who ordered it to be made into shirts. But no seamstress could be found to make them up, until the linen was entrusted to Vasilissa. When a dozen shirts were ready, Vasilissa sent them to the king, and as soon as her carrier had started, "she washed herself, and combed her hair, and dressed ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... you what was your ideal—how you would have liked to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during the four years, had lived in hunger and need—but respectably, that is the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you deny that you have ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... does he follow such godless ways then?" she cried. She stood still a good while, and when she turned about her pale little face made my heart ache. "I'll take home Mrs. Tyson's dress now, grandmother," she said, and went out of the room. I forgot to tell you Susy was a seamstress. Well, the bundle was large, and I offered to carry it for her, as the time for rehearsal did not come till noon. She crept alongside of me without a word, looking weak and done-out: she was always so busy and bright, it was the more noticeable. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... Apparently she could not shake off the habit. Building up a resistance to the action of the drug, her system became accustomed to enormous quantities of it. She could not eat, nor sleep, nor work without it. Most of her scanty earnings went to purchase it. She was a seamstress, and by toiling many hours a day managed to get enough money to buy it. Some years back she had been a happy wife and mother. Her husband loved her; she was devoted to him and to their two children. She lost him; she lost ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... great patent machine erected at Groningen, where they put in raw hemp at one end, and take out ruffled shirts at the other, without the aid of hackle or rippling-comb—loom, shuttle, or weaver—scissors, needle, or seamstress. He had just completed it, by the addition of a piece of machinery to perform the work of the laundress; but when it was exhibited before his honour the burgomaster, it had the inconvenience of heating the smoothing-irons red-hot; ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... thinking to some purpose. One day she walked over to the farm and made her way quietly to the back door. By good fortune she found blind Nora hemming napkins and in a mood to converse. Nora was an especially neat seamstress, but required some one to thread her needles. Mary the cook had been doing this, but now Mrs. Clark sat down beside Nora to "hev a little talk" and keep the needles ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... Eugenia, "I don't know how she does it . . . cook, nurse, teacher, housekeeper, welfare-worker, seamstress, gardener ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... I flew to Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place. She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it. I got into that mass of silk and lace—oh, silk on silk, and Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace Weston put on my slippers. Topham, himself, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... contrary to the expressed wish of Louis XI., after he had killed a man who had insulted him. But in 1483 the element of romance appears again. A priest called Robert Clerot, with a sword beneath his cloak, was accustomed to pester with his attentions a pretty seamstress in the parish of St. Eloi. Her legitimate lover interfered, and, when the priest drew his sword, called in help and killed him with his dagger. Twice more in this period is a "couturiere" the heroine of the Fierte. In the very next year Denise de Gouy, whose previous history is not pleasant ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... appeared to be a canvas jacket. A whole pile of the same lay on the unoccupied bed, and Gladys vaguely wondered whether the same fingers must reduce the number, but she did not presume to ask. She did not feel drawn to the melancholy seamstress, whose thin lips had a hard, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... they could not save those they loved by dying for them. It was the joy of Sydney Carton that he could! He contrived to enter the Conciergerie; made his way to Darnay's cell; changed clothes with him; hurried him forth; and then resigned himself to his fate. Later on, a fellow prisoner, a little seamstress, approached him. She had known Darnay and had learned to trust him. She asked if she might ride with ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... was to supply the food which the farm had hitherto given them? There was literally no way open for a man or a woman to earn money in that little farming village. Each family took care of itself and hired no service, except in the short season of haying. Draxy was an excellent seamstress, but she knew very well that the price of all the sewing hired in the village in a year would not keep them from starving. The Store must be given up, because her father would have no money with which to buy goods. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... boys did the ship's chores, sledging in fresh water from the lake, etc. They were mostly in families; but there were several young, unmarried men, and the unattached, much-married and divorced Miss "Bill," who domiciled herself aboard the ship and did much good work with her needle. She was my seamstress and the thick fur clothes worn on the trip to the Pole were sewn by her. The Esquimos lived as happily as in their own country and carried on their domestic affairs with almost the same care-free irregularity ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... forth among village people to aid a poor seamstress who is to undertake the care of her ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... to be very lasting; but Ellen Eliza, who was really sincere, proceeded at once to put her new resolution into practice. To be sure, her renowned tender heart did not make her all at once an experienced housemaid, seamstress, and nurse, as Charity was; but from that day it made her, at intervals, a willing little hand-maiden, and so gave her sister many a leisure hour for reading and study. More than this, Ellen Eliza and Dorry became close friends in Charity's behalf, and one thing led to ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... pride herself on being happy. It is beyond the narrow limits of our present sphere. The maids that wait upon us envy us and think that in our places they would have nothing left to wish for. The discontented seamstress that stitches away at my expensive dresses fancies they must shelter a happy heart, whose lot she covets; and all the while I am wishing for anything else in the world besides what I have. Whether we marry or remain single, life is a burden to us. We ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... 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. Pa's cousin, a certain Mrs. Potts, wrote from Portland that she was coming down for the holiday, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... they encounter, and that there is no more quality of Energy, though much less quality of Art, in the swiftly penetrating shot, or crushing ball, than in the deliberately contemplative and administrative puncture by a gnat's proboscis, or a seamstress' needle. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... found that the prices were impossible for them; but at last, upon the edge of a tenement district, they found a corner flat-house, with a saloon underneath, where there were two tiny bedrooms for rent in an apartment. The woman, who was a seamstress, was away a good deal in the day, and Corydon learned with delight that she might use the piano in the parlor. The rooms were the smallest they had ever seen, but they were clean, and the price was only fifty ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... crucifixion as a legal method of execution. But in the end the condemned man found his executioner in the form of a slender girl of seventeen, Madeline Provence, who, to accomplish her purpose, served two years in his palace as a seamstress to the household. She died in solitary confinement after horrible and prolonged torture; but to-day she stands in imperishable bronze in the Pantheon of Brotherhood in the wonder ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... 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 domestic fates evolve the catastrophe, as follows. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Aunt Jerusha, for instance. Where Mother Eve enjoyed as many different costumes as there were trees in the country without cost, all of them becoming, and wholly adequate, your Aunt Jerusha has to be satisfied with three or four gowns of indifferent fit, made by the village seamstress at an average cost of thirty or forty dollars apiece. A sheath-gown, costing Jerusha seventy-five dollars, in the distance, gives no more of an impression in the matter of figure to an admiring world than your original grandmother used to make without any further ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... received the operation of backing-up from a queer shaped hammer lying upon the floor. The workman at the end of the room is sewing together the sections of a book, for sewing was properly regarded as a man's work, and a scientific operation altogether beyond the capacity of the raw seamstress. The work of the finisher is not represented, but the brushes, the burnishers, the sprinklers and the wheel-shaped gilding tools hanging against the wall leave us no doubt as to their use. There is an air of antiquity about everything connected with this bookbindery which suggests ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... than from all parts of the three kingdoms; and they came from all classes of the community. To mention one interesting case, Sweden sent in 2296 subscriptions "from all sorts of people," as the distinguished man of science who transmitted them wrote, "from the bishop to the seamstress, and in sums from ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... took a pension; he just came back to his farm and worked on till he died. Now the son has the farm, and he and his sister live there with their mother. The daughter takes in sewing, and in that way they manage to make both ends meet. The girl is really a first-rate seamstress, and so cheap! I give her a good deal of my work in the summer, and we are quite friends. She's very fond of reading; the mother is an invalid, but she reads aloud while the daughter sews, and you've no idea how many books they get through. When ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... seething in her mind, and she never took her eyes off the engaged couple. She interested herself in Jeanne's trousseau with a singular eagerness, a feverish activity, working like a simple seamstress in her room, where no ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... before her. When Sarah Martin told the motive of her visit, the criminal burst into tears, and thanked her. Those tears and thanks shaped the whole course of Sarah Martin's after-life; and the poor seamstress, while maintaining herself by her needle, continued to spend her leisure hours in visiting the prisoners, and endeavouring to alleviate their condition. She constituted herself their chaplain and schoolmistress, for at that time they had neither; she read to them from the Scriptures, and ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... David Zeisberger. Judith Toeltschig, Catherine Riedel, Rosina Haberecht, Regina Demuth, going to join their husbands already in Georgia. Anna Waschke, a widow, to join her son. Juliana Jaeschke, a seamstress.* ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... Belgium a young girl named Louise Lateau who had the stigmata. We have the most positive proof of it, as you may see in the accounts of her life now published. Her wounds caused her great pain and bled every Friday for many years. She was a delicate seamstress, and lived with her mother and sisters in almost continual poverty. She had always been remarkable for her true piety, patience in suffering, and charity to the sick. I mention this young girl because she lived in our own time, and is the ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... led to a little conversation, by which I learned that he was a street candy merchant, and that some young thief had run off with all his stock in trade. He was then in hot pursuit. Learning that his mother was a seamstress and a worthy woman, I employed her to make me some shirts. I have followed the fortunes of the family, and have been Paul's adviser since then, and latterly his banker. He is now proprietor of a street-stand, and making, for a boy ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... I want you at home to-morrow. The seamstress will be cutting your new frock, and you must be here to try it on ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Seafaring mara. Sea-gull mevo. Sea-horse (walrus) rosmaro. Seal sigeli. Seal sigelo—ilo. Seal (animal) foko. Sealing-wax sigelvakso. Seam kunkudro. Seaman maristo, marano. Seamanship marveturarto. Seamstress kudristino. Sear kauxterizi, bruligi. Search sercxi. Search-warrant trasercxo. Seaside marbordo. Seashore marbordo. Season (food, etc.) spici. Season sezono. Seasonable gxustatempa. Seasoning spicajxo. Seaworthy marirebla, martauxga. Seat segxo. Seat sidigi. Seated, to be ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... what she said. "If this labor was as important as that of seamstress or governess why not the same courtesy—Oh she's a most superior and opinionated young ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... Crimea, and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny sort of fascination in watching him, as he peered and probed ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... apartment, and she was not at home. Miss Swift, the seamstress, opened the door and stood in the doorway ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... exchange their solitary life and rude shieling for the village dwellings and gregarious habits of the females who ply their rural labors in bands among the rich fields of the Lowlands, or for the unwholesome backroom and weary task-work of the city seamstress. The sunlight was fading from the higher hill-tops of Skye and Glenelg as we bade farewell to the lonely shieling ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... that, as she was only my housekeeper, and not my wife, I could not have the pleasure of introducing her. In the same way I had instructed her that she was not to let anyone in when I was away. She was working in her room on the linen I had provided for her, aided in her task by a seamstress. Nevertheless, I did not want to make her a slave, so I occasionally took her into the pleasant suburbs of Dresden, where she was at liberty to speak to any of my acquaintances ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... seven-story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived. You could just see the top of her window from the street—the huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story on top of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... asked the poor to help the rich. It is equally important that the rich help the poor. It is impossible to overestimate the value of those visitations of the noble few who leave their homes and seek out the little room of the poor seamstress, and carry sunlight and love and comfort into the abodes of the impoverished and ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread; There the single sordid attic holds the living and the dead; There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly from the image ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... however, to which his detractors would seem to have attached more importance than it was worth, but which must have been sufficiently disturbing to Schopenhauer—we refer to the Marquet affair. It appears on his returning home one day he found three women gossiping outside his door, one of whom was a seamstress who occupied another room in the house. Their presence irritated Schopenhauer (whose sensitiveness in such matters may be estimated from his essay "On Noise"), who, finding them occupying the same position on another occasion, requested them to go away, but the seamstress replied that she ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the highest place." Or rather, there are no hierarchies of the soul. Artist or seamstress or carpenter, we live by the glory that flows to us through whatever curtains ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... "Oh, no, a seamstress made it. You must let me get you cake and a glass of wine." The unwilling hostess crossed over to the hospitable cupboard and Mrs. Abbott amiably accepted a glass of port, the while her eyes could hardly tear themselves from the books on the table by the fire. There were at least ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... to settle into her new life very happily. She became engrossed in housekeeping for several hours every morning, and was delighted to hear of a seamstress who could come in and work by the day. Deb Howitt was sent for, and she proved a skilful and industrious needlewoman, and amused and interested all who came in contact with her by her ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... diseases of various sorts, covetousness bore the chief place. There is a statement also of his not being true born; that the wife of king Philip took him from his mother Gnathaenion (a woman of Argos, that earned her living as a seamstress), as soon as he was born, and passed him upon her husband as her own. And this might be the chief cause of his contriving the death of Demetrius; as he might well fear, that so long as there was a lawful successor in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... joy of true accomplishment is yours. You can look forward always with sublime courage and expectancy. The life of the most humble can thus become an exalted life. Mother, watching over, cleaning, feeding, training, and educating your brood; seamstress, working, with a touch of the Divine in all you do—it must be done by some one—allow it to be done by none better than by you. Farmer, tilling your soil, gathering your crops, caring for your herds; you are helping feed the world. ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... while there was nothing in what he said to which she could in the least object—indeed, she found him rather entertaining at first, and almost forgot, for the time, that she was Ruth Richards, the seamstress, instead of Mona Montague, the heiress, and social equal of any high-toned young man ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and gold of Arabia. In seven weeks all was prepared, both apparel and also arms and armour; and there was nothing that was either over-long or over-short, or that could be surpassed for comeliness. Great thanks did the warriors give to each fair seamstress, and to Kriemhild the beautiful ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the highest bidder and Louisa and the twins were bought by a man living near Cadiz but Mr. Street refused to sell Amy Elizabeth. She showed promise of growing into an excellent house-maid and seamstress and was already a splendid playmate and nurse to the little Street boy and girl. So Louisa lost her child but such grief was shown by both mother and child that the mother was unable to perform her tasks and the child cried continually. Then Mr. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... between these and the better-spoken, gentler-mannered house-servants. In the winters, after Christmas, which usually terminated the picking-season, Lizay was called to the place of head assistant of the plantation seamstress. Indeed, she did little field-service except in times of special pressure and during the quarter of cotton-picking. She was so nimble-fingered and swift that she could not be spared from the field in picking-season, especially ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... new patchwork quilt. Seven were neatly folded and put away in an old trunk in the attic. The eighth was progressing well, but the young seamstress was becoming sated with quilts. She had never been to school, but Miss Mehitable had taught her all she knew. Unkind critics might have intimated that Araminta had not been taught much, but she could sew nicely, keep house neatly, and write ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... once the big bedroom of Mamma blossomed with delicate fabrics, with bright ribbons and frilly laces, and amid the blossoming, the whir of the machine and the feet and hands of the two-lire-a-day seamstress went like mad clockwork, while in and out Mamma's friends came hurrying, at the rumor, to hint of congratulation or suggest a ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... that is what you mean, no vain endeavor to conceal poverty or ignorance, but a delightful Arcadian candor and simplicity that will leave the mistress of the house, who is also housekeeper, nurse, cook, dairymaid, butler, waitress, laundress, seamstress, governess and family physician, abundant time and strength for such other occupations and amusements as may be most congenial. It would be a delightful way of living, and I should not hesitate to try it if I felt certain that I had ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... and five and even six in the morning, is then allowed to go to bed and to sleep until luncheon is merely humane. And it can easily be seen that it is more likely that she will need the help of a seamstress to refurbish dance-frocks, than that she will have any time to devote to her young lady's mother—who in "mid-season," therefore, is forced to have a maid of her own, ridiculous as it sounds, that two maids for two ladies ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... is. She's a little bit humpbacked; that's right. That's the way women is, though, Doctor! A seamstress—that's what she was...! She sewed an' she sewed and saved up a little money...! An' what kind of a bargain is it she's got now. A handsome feller an' sickness an' worry an' no rest no more by day ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... its abdomen will certainly inform us that it collects honey and pollen; but its special art will remain an utter secret, notwithstanding all the scrutiny of the microscope. In our own industries, the plane denotes the joiner, the trowel the mason, the scissors the tailor, the needle the seamstress. Are things the same in animal industry? Just show us, if you please, the trowel that is a certain sign of the mason-insect, the chisel that is a positive characteristic of the carpenter-insect, the iron that ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... ostentatious, pharisaical Christian; gave alms, headed charity lists; was remarkably punctual in her attendance at church, and apparently very devout; yet I accidentally found out that she treated a poor seamstress (whom she hired for a paltry sum) in a manner that shocked my ideas of consistency, of common humanity. The girl was miserably poor, and had aged parents and brothers and sisters dependent on her exertions; but her Christian employer paid her the lowest possible price, and trampled ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... 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
... Miss Mary Ann.' 'Morning Janie.' 'How you this mornin' Miss Mary Ann?' She'd say, 'Death come in and make alterations, and hard living make contrivance.' She'd take any old coat, or anything, and make it over to fit her children, and look good, too. She was a great seamstress. You'd see her children when they turn out on de street and they looked the same as some rich white people's children. Nearly all of her children was girls. Had one boy, as well as ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... 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 ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... fashionable in Surrey. Veronica went with us to one, given by our cousin, Susan Morgeson. She had taken tea out but twice, since she was grown, she told us, then it was with her friend Lois Randall, a seamstress. To this girl she read the contents of her blank-books, and Lois in her turn confided to Veronica her own compositions. Essays were her forte. We met her at Susan Morgeson's, and, as I never saw her without her having on some article given her by Veronica, this ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... with the Morgans! Who was I to be bandied about in such fashion? Couldn't have me! I wasn't a seamstress who went out by the day. House packed with company! Well—what of that? Hadn't I more right there? Wasn't I Alec's own sister? Wasn't I born under the very roof to which I was now asked not to come? Weren't all my things there—my bed, my bureau, my little old white ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... count. Lucette and Perkins, and the cook-maid, and the kitchen girl, four; and two chambermaids, six, and a seamstress, seven." ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... despair which seized the fair princess, commanded by her ugly step-mother to assort a whole garret full of tangled silk threads of every kind and colour, when in comes Prince Percinet with a wand, whisks it over the miscellaneous mass, and lo! all the threads are as nicely arranged as in a seamstress' housewife. It has often happened to me that when I went to bed with my head as ignorant as my shoulders what I was to do next, I have waked in the morning with a distinct and accurate conception of the mode, good or bad, in which the plot ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Juanito Pelaez said to him. "The end justifies the means! I know the seamstress, Matea, for she has a shop where ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... of the very silk that was in Miss Lucy Miller's bridesmaid's dress. It was the most beautiful dress Miss Lena Carlson ever made. Miss Lena goes out sewing for a dollar and a half a day." And she described the wedding at which Miss Lucy Miller had worn the frock made by the dollar and a half a day seamstress with an enthusiasm that was undimmed by Mother Johnson's lack of interest. From the wedding and Miss Lucy it was but a step to other Mifflin happenings. They found themselves in the ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... member of all the parish benevolent societies, a zealous teacher in the Sunday-school, an industrious seamstress in the sewing-circle, and a regular visitor ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... out and told me they were Federal soldiers and I could tell it by their blue uniforms. One of the soldiers reached into his haversack and pulled out a uniform and gave it to me. 'Have your mammy make a suit out of it,' he said. Another soldier gave me a uniform and my mother was a seamstress in the home of the Drennons and she made me two suits out of ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... 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 beholds his ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... soon after I was born. We weren't much good, I guess. It was when I was a baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I got my runaway nature from him. But I've outgrown that. Anyway, he left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother was a seamstress in a little town out West—an awful hole it was. I was a tiny little girl when they took me to my mother's funeral. I remember that, but I can't remember her. That was my first death. And now this! I've lost a mother and father twice. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... and passion, illuminated with lucent tints of age and the warm South, outlined with the statuesque purity of classic scenery and classic diction: but I myself never for a moment believed that Ariadne was a particle more unhappy or pitiable than Nancy Bunker, our seamstress, was, when Hiram Fenn went West to peddle essences, and married a female Hoosier whose father owned half a prairie. They would by no means make as lovely a picture; for Nancy's upper jaw projects, and she has a wart on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... woman of whom you speak," she said, "an old maid without any relatives or any friends in particular. She was a seamstress here before the war. It was said that she went North at its outbreak, and as she was a Northern sympathizer it would seem likely; but she was a good seamstress; she made me a mantle once and I never saw a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler |
