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Washerwoman   Listen
noun
Washerwoman  n.  (pl. washerwomen)  
1.
A woman who washes clothes, especially for hire, or for others.
2.
(Zool.) The pied wagtail; so called in allusion to its beating the water with its tail while tripping along the leaves of water plants. (Prov. Eng.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Washerwoman" Quotes from Famous Books



... pieces at his sister's, a washerwoman; honest girl, she may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it. The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... "Shaving Papers from Downing Street," nor adopt the pseudonym of "The Man with the Hot Water (or the Morning Tea)," nor shall I roundly assert that I have been the private secretary, the doctor, the dentist or the washerwoman of the great men of whom I speak. Nevertheless I have sources of information which I do not mean to disclose, except to say that heavy persons who sit down carelessly on sofas may unknowingly inflict considerable pain, through the sharp ends of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various

... skyward for an instant, as her lips moved in silence. As a man the boy knew she was thinking of her long journey, of the tragedy that came of it, and praying for those who passed into the West. Then she would bend to her work again; and the washerwoman's child who took the clothes she washed in his little wagon with the cottonwood log wheels, across the commons into the town, was not made to feel an inferior place in the social system until he was in his early ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... on about the office in the two weeks I was there, he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for failing to pay for the washing of his shirts, I rightly ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... hide her bad teeth. Aunt Anniky lifts her turkey-tail! It really seems that human beings should be classed by strata, as if they were metals in the earth. Instead of dividing by nations, let us class by quality. So we might find Turk, Jew, Christian, fashionable lady and washerwoman, master and slave, hanging together like cats on a clothes-line by ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... rapid succession, met with the same fate; struck by the thought, that he might have carried contagion in his clothes, he instantly changed them, and 'met with no more cases of the kind.' A woman in the country, who was employed as washerwoman and nurse, washed the linen of one who had died of puerperal fever; the next lying-in patient she nursed died of the same disease; a third nursed by her met with the same fate, till the neighborhood, getting afraid of her, ceased ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... fortress of Hohenasberg, or of Hohenhaufen. Smarting under some foul indignity, he had just left the private apartment of the king, when an old woman met him in the passage, and asked him where she could find the room of the court washerwoman. 'There!' said the reckless youth, pointing to the door of the royal cabinet. The old woman entered, and was violently assailed by the king, who had a horror of old women; in her terror, she stammered out that a young gentleman ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... The steps (or path) which lead down to a watering-place. Hence the Hindi saying concerning the "rolling stone"—Dhobi-ka kutta; na Gharka na Ghat-ka, a washerwoman's tyke, nor of the house nor ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... been startled to hear the orotund accents in which we vouched for that property, sewage, messuage, and all. Here, we cried, is the front door (facing the sunset) where the postman will call with checks from your publishers; and here are the porcelain laundry tubs that will make glad the heart of the washerwoman (when you can ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... you to suspect that at the bottom of the pan to be poison?—I found it very gritty, and had no smell. When I went down and saw the old washerwoman, that she had tasted of the water gruel and was affected with the same symptoms as Mr. Blandy, I then suspected he was poisoned, and said I was afraid Mr. Blandy had had foul play; but I did not tell either him or Miss Blandy ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... and the river Neva. Sometimes poor people got a lift in the boat: toward the end of the voyage they took aboard a number of women-servants returning to their situations in town from a visit to their country homes. Among them was an elderly woman going to see her daughter, who was a washerwoman at St. Petersburg. Piotrowski showed her some small kindnesses, which won her fervent gratitude. As they landed in the great capital, which seemed the very focus of his dangers, and he stood on the wharf wholly at a loss what should be his next step, the poor woman came up with her daughter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... them perform their round of labor with as little apparent concern or interest, as the horses or mules which they drive before them. There are, I admit, exceptions, but as a general rule, my remarks hold good. I never owned a negro, but I frequently employed them as cooks, washerwoman, &c., and many years observation satisfied me, that as a general rule, that when left to themselves, they consumed, or rather wasted, one-third more precisions than would have sufficed for my family under the management and supervision of ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... a literary gentleman, in a remarkably neat nightcap and pinafore, who has just had his finger in the pudding); the genius who is at work on the slate, and the two honest lads who are hugging the good-humored washerwoman, their mother,—all, all, save, this worthy woman, have noses of the largest size. Not handsome certainly are they, and yet everybody must be charmed with the picture. It is full of grotesque beauty. The ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... expensive thing in every phase. The event that robbed Rudd of his wife, his child, his hope, had taken also his companion, his cook, his chambermaid, his washerwoman, the mender of his things; and in their place had left an appalling monument of bills. The only people he had permitted himself to owe money to were the gruesome committee that brought him his grief; the doctor, the druggist, the casket-maker, the sexton, and the dealer in the unreal estate ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... it; then he laughed hugely, but stopped on perceiving tears in Pecuchet's eyes—for he had not been without attachments, having by turns been smitten by a rope-dancer, the sister-in-law of an architect, a bar-maid, and a young washerwoman; and the marriage had even been arranged when he had discovered that she was enceinte ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... rebound against the sides. But still Martha had near neighbours; and until now she had hardly even tasted the luxury of a thorough gossip, which she could enjoy in any one of the cottages throughout Botfield. Moreover, she could get work for herself on three days in the week, to help a washerwoman, who gave her ninepence a day, besides letting little Nan go with her, and have, as she said, 'the run of her teeth.' She had her admirers, too—young collier lads, who told her truly enough she was the cleanest, neatest, tidiest ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... tolerant as he was, he saw things as they were (except in the case of his wife), never misstated and rarely overstated. For all that, she set out on Saturday afternoon prepared to meet the typical washerwoman of fiction—worn, bedraggled, shapeless, and forlorn. She was prepared to go into a steaming kitchen with puddles on the floor and dirty children all about, and have this red-faced personage take a scarlet hand out ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... Pickwick continued to reside constantly, and without interruption or intermission, at Mrs. Bardell's house. I shall show you that Mrs. Bar-dell, during the whole of that time, waited on him, attended to his comforts, cooked his meals, looked out his linen for the washerwoman when it went abroad, darned, aired, and prepared it for wear when it came home, and, in short, enjoyed his fullest trust and confidence. I shall show you that, on many occasions, he gave half-pence, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... himself as presentable as a gallant signor. He gives himself the airs of a young dandy, tries to be lithe and frisky and to disguise his ugly face; he might try all he knew, he always smelt of the musty lawyer. He was not so clever as the pretty washerwoman of Portillon who one day wishing to appear at her best before one of her lovers, got rid of a disagreeable odour in a manner well known to young women of an inventive turn of mind. But our crafty fellow fancied himself the nicest man in the world, although in spite of his drugs and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in a ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... scarcely apprehend, but I fancy it is intended to signify (in an actress) something sweet, pretty, soft, appealing, gentle and underdone. Is it possible that I convey that impression when I try to assume the character of a washerwoman or a fisherwoman? If so I am a very ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... Testament in the English language. Among the polished Greeks, they were held in little estimation. Homer degrades all his females: he makes the Grecian princesses weave the web, spin, and do all the drudgery of a modern washerwoman; and rarely allows them any share of social intercourse with the other sex. Yet the very foundations on which he has constructed his two matchless poems are women. It appears also from all the dramatic writers of ancient Greece, whose ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... Greenfields was to leave at ten-fifty-nine. Maitland with assumed nonchalance composed himself upon a bench in the waiting-room to endure the thirty-seven minute interval. Five minutes later an able-bodied washerwoman with six children in quarter sizes descended upon the same bench; and the young man in desperation allowed himself to be dispossessed. The news-stand next attracting him, he garnered a fugitive amusement and ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... converted in Rio through the agency of his washerwoman. This faithful woman is a member of the First Baptist Church. She decided she would attempt to lead Thomaz to Christ. So on Saturday when she would bring his laundry she would invite him to come to her ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... washerwoman, patted her bruises and repeated with symptoms of losing her patience, "Fe-li-pe, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... B. Unwin, aged 40, washerwoman, applied to me on July the 10th, 1820, with severe inflammation and ulceration of the middle finger, arising from a puncture by a pin or needle some time before; there was much painful tumefaction, and the integuments had burst along nearly half ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom

... the cold, with the violence of the wind and rain. The rain drops were pelted or slung against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and I felt as if every drop cut my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up like a washerwoman's, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my stick under my arm. O, it was a wild business! Such hurry skurry of clouds, such volleys of sound! In spite of the wet and the cold, I should have had some pleasure ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... was recommended to us as "muy honrado;" not from his last place, but from one before. He was a well-dressed, sad-looking individual; and at the same time we took his wife as washerwoman, and his brother as valet to our attache, thus having the whole family under our roof, wisely taking it for granted that he being recommended as particularly honest, his relations were "all honourable men." An English lady happened to call on me, and a short ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... yet night and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens,"' he quoted. 'She is apt to be more industrious than her husband. She works all day and often a part of the night. She is weaver, knitter, spinner, tailor, cook, washerwoman, teacher, doctor, nurse. While she is awake her hands are never idle, and their most important work is that of slowly building up the manhood of America. Ours is to be largely a ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... to disturb her prematurely. Then, his hone in one hand and his scythe in the other, he stood and watched Meldon, The handkerchief waved again, and Meldon started walking briskly across the lawn. The hone rasped harshly against the scythe blade, and "The Irish Washerwoman" rang out shrilly. Miss King woke with a start. Callaghan turned away from her, and still whistling vigorously, began ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... burst over bounds at some unusual indignity; and he played a practical joke on the king. Meeting an old woman in the palace one day near the door of the royal sanctum, she asked him where she could find the court-washerwoman. "There," said the reckless Weber, pointing to the door of the king's cabinet. The king, who hated old women, was in a transport of rage, and, on her terror-stricken explanation of the intrusion, had no difficulty in fixing the mischief in the right ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... another in epigrammatic witticisms, endeavor to conceal the vulgarity of their subject. I remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stuart: and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth—though she did it very well—I could not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion at all. The same part was incomparably better played by the Italian Ristori; and, in fact, the Italian nature, though in many respects very different ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... town for a day's sport. Susan did not see a single familiar face, and she had supposed she knew, by sight at least, everyone in Sutherland. From fear lest she should see someone she knew, her mind changed to longing. At last she was rewarded. Down the aisle swaggered Redney King, son of the washerwoman, a big hulking bully who used to tease her by pulling her hair during recess and by kicking at her shins when they happened to be next each other in the class standing in long line against the wall of the schoolroom for recitation. From her security she smiled at ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... meet to-day but Meredith! My washerwoman, Ellen Blount, is ill, So ill I fear she never will be well. 'Tis the old story, every day renewed: A little humble, tender-hearted woman, Tied to a husband whom to call a brute Would be to vilify the quadrupeds! A fellow, who must have his pipe, his whiskey, And his good dinner, let what may ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... before the Revolution, a journeyman printer, and married to a washerwoman, whose industry and labour alone prevented him from starving, for he was as vicious as idle. The money he gained when he chose to work was generally squandered away in brothels, among prostitutes. To supply his excesses he had even recourse to dishonest means, and was ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... communion-table, actually lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry! He began to preach extempore sermons, and even grave papas caught the infection. He got out of bed at half-past twelve o'clock one winter's night, to half-baptise a washerwoman's child in a slop-basin, and the gratitude of the parishioners knew no bounds—the very churchwardens grew generous, and insisted on the parish defraying the expense of the watch-box on wheels, which the new curate had ordered for himself, to perform the funeral service in, in wet weather. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... and, when Archibald went to the play, the servant dressed himself in the stained waistcoat, to appear at a ball, which was given that night in the neighbourhood, by some "gentleman's gentleman." The waistcoat was rather too tight for the servant: he tore it, and instead of sending it to the washerwoman's, to have the stain washed out, as his master had desired, he was now obliged to send it to the tailor's to have ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... London washerwoman by trade who makes vastly more money by falling into trances than by her legitimate calling, to which she ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... Their scenery, vulgarized by crude daylight, their dusty trees standing out against a sky of washerwoman's blue, have no charm for me; as to the natives, hairy and noisy, with a blue bar under their nostrils if they ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... why she kept it, and what a good time she had playing cook, and washerwoman, and ironer, is told as only Sophie May can tell stories. All the funny sayings and doings of the queerest and cunningest little woman ever tucked away in the covers of a book will please little folks ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... Alyosha," he said, reddening. "It was to her I meant to ride. Yesterday evening when the washerwoman gave me that damned tunic, the one I was wearing then, and it smelt of jasmine, why . . . I ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... a washerwoman does THIS one turn out to be?" he asked, after they were seated, and he had invoked a blessing and was cutting ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... poor washerwoman, had seen better days; but the drunken dissipation of a husband, who was now in his grave, had reduced her to abject, despairing poverty. Her unfortunate marriage and persistence in clinging to the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... consists, for the most part, of extracts from a supposed Diary by Swift, and contains such passages as these: "Friday. Go to the Club... Am treated. Expenses one shilling." "Saturday. Bid my servant get all things ready for a journey to the country: mend my breeches; hire a washerwoman, making her allow for old shirts, socks, dabbs and markees, which she bought of me... Six coaches of quality, and nine hacks, this day called at my lodgings." "Thursday. The Earl looked queerly: left him ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... the town, after all, in Margaret's first glimpse of it, was the swarming negro population pervading every part of it—the slouching plantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and mincing step, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain eye, the washerwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing strollers of both sexes—carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain picturesqueness and irresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of moral relaxation in a too ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... I know," returned the washerwoman—"too young to be confined down as much as she is. But then she is a very patient child, and knows that her mother has a great deal to do. I often wish it was easier for her; though, as it can't be helped, I don't let it fret me, for you know ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... Ponte Navi; and if no one thought any the worse of her, none, unhappily, thought any the better—at least in the way of marriage. It is probable that no one thought of her at all. Giovanna was a beauty and a very good girl; but she was a washerwoman for all that, whose toil ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... means, she admitted that they were exhausted, but that she could get through without money; she did not beg. And then came naturally enough the rest of the little artless narrative, as it generally happens among the simple annals of the poor: how she had been for forty years a washerwoman, and had a letter ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... Bayham Street. "A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow Street officer over the way." It was a shabby district, chosen by the elder Dickens because the rent was low. As he neglected to pay the rent, one wonders why he did not take ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... man, visibly frightened at this suggestion; "I wait for my wife, Nicole Friard, who has gone to take twenty-four tablecloths to the priory of the Jacobins, having the honor to be washerwoman to Dom. Modeste ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... at the opposite side, now. It is not likely I should ever be obliged to work at severe manual labor; but the annoyances and privations of a limited income seem to me almost worse than that. I think I would rather be a washerwoman, provided I could acquire the strength, than the wife of a struggling man who has all the refined tastes and sensitive nerves of a gentleman, without a gentleman's income. I should see him growing more and more careless, more and more haggard, day after day; I should ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I need hardly tell you that to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind like that which gleams—if I may be allowed the expression—which gleams—in your friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, who exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlour-window, dwelling next door, and a Bow-street officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his society is a source of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I am at present, my ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... treats of the experiences of a pretty mill-girl, the daughter of a washerwoman, who becomes the protegee of a wealthy and capricious woman of the world, who educates her, introduces her to society, then finally drops her and permits her to seek her native obscurity, where she withers and dies of a broken heart. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... say. Bet you she's empty—broke away from her moorings and riding down with the current. Bet you half a dollar. My second bet," he said, warming to the work, "is an old washerwoman and her little boy, out on their rounds collecting clothes. It's Monday. In case both firsts are wrong, second choices get ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... her father always carried her a good Sunday dinner. Thomas W. Higginson, in Eminent Women of the Age, mentions in this connection that, according to an established custom, on the night before Thanksgiving "all the humble friends of the Francis household—Marm Betty, the washerwoman, wood-sawyer, and journeymen, some twenty or thirty in all—were summoned to a preliminary entertainment. They there partook of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pie made in milk- pans, and heaps of doughnuts. They feasted in the large, old-fashioned ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... rags, and an object lying on top of them; and a squalid child, curled in one corner, with a wild, frightened look in his eyes. The woman turned as the door opened, and John Birge recognized her as his mother's washerwoman. ...
— Three People • Pansy

... which Mrs. Horton mentioned, of the same animal, proves him equally sagacious. He was one day passing through a field, where a washerwoman had hung out her linen to dry; he stopped, and surveyed one particular shirt with attention, then seizing it, he dragged it through the dirt to his master, whose shirt it proved to be. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... supply of meat but very little bread to start with; and it was possible, of course, the baker might smell a rat, and get up a rescue. It would be better, on that account, to defer action till after the baker's visit on Wednesday. But then the washerwoman generally came on the Thursday. We all voted the washerwoman a nuisance. We must either take her a prisoner and keep her in the house, or run the risk of her finding out that something was wrong and going back to the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... settlers degraded the name to its present form, and that so hopelessly, that the other day an old Negress in Port of Spain puzzled the officer of Crown property by informing him that she wanted to buy 'a carre in what you call de washerwoman's.' It had been described to me as possibly the remotest, loneliest, and unhealthiest spot in Her Majesty's tropical dominions. No white man can live there for more than two or three years without ruin to his ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... a stone, fifty yards from the house. 'Dang my buttons,' said he, 'if here is not master's snake. He came back and told my wife, who told him to go and kill it. It happened to be washing-day: the washerwoman gave him a pailful of scalding soapsuds to throw on it; but whether he was most afraid of me or of the snake is still a question: however, the washerwoman brought it home with the tongs, and dropped it into the dolly-tub. It dashed round the tub ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various

... and young people, and she suddenly felt a longing for a plain rough life among a crowd. She recalled vividly that far-away time when she used to be called Anyutka, when she was a little girl and used to lie under the same quilt with her mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children's crying, the accordion, and the whirr of carpenters' lathes and sewing-machines; ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... me for a rich English Coelebs in search of a wife. I am an unfortunate scapegrace, have run out all my means, and am not worth a York shilling to jingle on a tombstone. I was obliged to borrow money of my landlord—he's a capital fellow—to pay my washerwoman's bill this morning. So don't fall in love with me. I assure you, on my honour, it would ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the needs of clean linen, and able to wear one surcoat and one suit of armor for any length of time without becoming repugnant to the nose of his lady when brought-into the opportunity for an embrace,—yet the heroes of this day have sore need of occasional aid from the washerwoman, and even the tailor becomes necessary for the replenishing of worn-out and faded garments. John Crawford the Zouave—the truth must be told—though he showed very little shirt, showed that little in an unclean condition; and the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... influencing children to share their fruits and flowers with friends and neighbors, as well as to distribute roots and seeds to those who have not the means of procuring them. A woman or a child, by giving seeds or slips or roots to a washerwoman, or a farmer's boy, thus inciting them to love and cultivate fruits and flowers, awakens a new and refining source of enjoyment in minds which have few resources more elevated than mere physical enjoyments. Our Saviour directs us in making ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... I found you at last? Are these your tricks, madam? When will you get rid of your idiocies, and conduct yourself like a decent woman? Is my family name and house to be disgraced by acts that would be a scandal to a washerwoman's ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... volubility is great, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never—the utmost they reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk! The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dream of asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion! The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, ever yet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... complete suits of clothes, the one old, "for every day"; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were black. He had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, and the third in the washerwoman's hands. He renewed them as they wore out. They were always ragged, which caused him to button his coat to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... pilfering wholesale so long as Mrs. Staines and her sloppy-headed maids counted the linen, and then forgot it, was brought up with a run, by triplicate forms, and by Staines counting the things before two witnesses, and compelling the washerwoman to count them as well, and verify or dispute on the spot. The laundress gave warning—a plain confession that stealing had ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... give her one, I saved her the trouble by placing one in her hand. In time we became quite good friends. Twice I paid her board bill in order to rescue her wardrobe from the clutches of her landlord, and once I saved her from the hands of an irate washerwoman. When, after a time, I left Wiesbaden, I left her as gay, as prosperous and as extravagant ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... said Schaunard, opening his bundle, "these are not hairs, they are shirts, and I am taking them to my washerwoman, who lives next door to the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... Carlyle, respectable people were those who kept a gig. In some towns the credential is that the family shall employ a "hired girl." In Fairhaven the condition was that you should have a washerwoman one day in the week. The soapy wash-water was saved for scrubbing purposes—this was in Massachusetts—and if the man of the house occasionally smoked a pipe he was requested to blow the smoke on the plants in the south ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... the new books, with which his library was rather well stocked, and promised to send over the Pall Mall Review, to which he was a subscriber, every week. Mr. Hopkins told Mr. Jones the name of the best washerwoman in the village, one of his own new parishioners, as it happened, and proposed to put him up at once for membership in the Golf Club. In fact the conversation went ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... plots to discover, it invents them. Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic who has listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has found a scrap of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'etat, makes examinations, domiciliary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... three little brats of my son's to feed, for his wife, who was a washerwoman, was eaten by a crocodile while she was at work. Poor folks must work for themselves, and not for others. If the princess did not pay us, I could not think of the wounds of the soldiers, who do not belong to me. I am no longer strong, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... plea that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,—as if the path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be written only at the painful sacrifice of bilking your washerwoman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... heerd tell of him, sir, a young and gallant naval ossifer like yerself, 'specially that yarn consarnin' him and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin' when he ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Roman page who, he said, had from a distance seen his master fall, and could easily find the spot again. Under his guidance a move was made towards a pond hard by the town; and there, half buried in the slush of the pond, were some dead bodies, lying stripped. A poor washerwoman, amongst the rest, had joined in the search; she saw the glitter of a jewel in the ring upon one of the fingers of a corpse whose face was not visible; she went forward, turned the body over, and at once cried, "Ah! my prince!" There was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... so carefully nursed in the old cracked teapot in the poorest room, or the morning-glory planted in a box and twined about the window? Do not these show that the human heart yearns for the beautiful in all ranks of life? You remember, Kate, how our washerwoman sat up a whole night, after a hard day's work, to make her first baby a pretty dress to be baptized in." "Yes, and I remember how I laughed at you for making such a tasteful little ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... most convenient to Mr. Spraggon—and then the introduction of the neatly-headed sheet-list. It was lucky that Viney was so easily satisfied, for poor Jack had only thirty shillings, of which he owed his washerwoman eight, and he was very glad to stuff Viney's bill into his stunner jacket-pocket, and apply himself exclusively to the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... at the edge of a coolee, her petticoat wrapped snugly around her limbs, and a limp sunbonnet hiding her nut-brown face, pounding her washing with a wooden paddle. She was her own housekeeper, chambermaid, cook, washerwoman, gooseherd, seamstress, nurse, and all the rest. Her floors, they said, were always bien fourbis (well scrubbed); her beds were high, soft, snug, and covered with the white mesh ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on her way to the laundry. All the sport people had gone, the streets were half empty, and most of the tourist shops were shut. Only the very ill had reappeared; they crept aimlessly about ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... "Ah—getting late! Very agreeable exchanging amenities with old schoolfellows. But I have an appointment in the Palace Gardens, at the time they feed the muggers. That is a sight you should see, Mr Sinclair—when the beasts are hungry and have not lately snapped up a washerwoman or an ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... both for Punch and its readers), I should have done my best to illustrate the lower walks and phases of London existence, which attracts me as much as any other. It is just as easy to draw a costermonger or a washerwoman as it is a gentleman or lady—perhaps a little easier—but it is by no means so easy to draw them as Keene did! And to draw a cab or an omnibus after him (though I have sometimes been obliged to do so) ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier

... she could run about among the stables in a pair of Emil's old boots. Though she was bent almost double, she was as spry as a gopher. Her face was as brown as if it had been varnished, and as full of wrinkles as a washerwoman's hands. She had three jolly old teeth left in the front of her mouth, and when she grinned she looked very knowing, as if when you found out how to take it, life wasn't half bad. While she and Alexandra patched and pieced and quilted, she ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... of its grandmother's society." The assertion of her dishonourable conduct in employing a spy (p.645, l.7, etc.): "A Mrs. C. (now a kind of housekeeper and spy of Lady N's), who, in her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be—by the learned—very much the occult cause of our domestic discrepancies." The seeming exculpation of myself in the extract (p.646), with the words immediately following it, "Her nearest relations ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of the court alway: a "lavender" is a washerwoman or laundress; the word represents "meretrice"in Dante's original — meaning a courtezan; but we can well understand that Chaucer thought it prudent, and at the same time more true to the moral state of the English Court, to change the character assigned to Envy. He means that Envy is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... is a pretty one, and no mistake! You don't know that my idol is worth more than the whole lot of your things! A draper's shopman wouldn't have selected that pink stuff. Was it your idea to fascinate your washerwoman?" ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... washerwoman like a navigator? Because she spreads her sheets, crosses the line and goes ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... the picnic Mr Cheesacre came down to Montpelier Parade with Captain Bellfield, whose linen on that occasion certainly gave no outward sign of any quarrel between him and his washerwoman. He was got up wonderfully, and was prepared at all points for the day's work. He had on a pseudo-sailor's jacket, very liberally ornamented with brass buttons, which displayed with great judgement the exquisite shapes ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... on the tips of their dainty toes, half by their filmy purple wings, their delicate bodies swaying in time, that they could be anything but fairies. It seemed absurd to imagine that they were Johnny Mullens, the washerwoman's son, and Polly Flinders, the charwoman's little girl, and ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... mantle tied over one shoulder, and passed under the opposite arm, with a full petticoat, is a favourite dress. Some wrap a long cloth round them, like the Hindoos; and some wear an ugly European frock, with a most ungraceful sort of bib tied before them. Round the washerwoman's plain, hedges of acacia and mimosa fence the gardens of plantains, oranges, and other fruits which surround every villa; and beyond these, the coffee plantations extend far up the mountain, whose picturesque head closes ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... afterward—that business with the gun. It was a mad thing to do. It was not worth while any way, and it served no purpose, only kept me tied down to the hut for weeks. I remember distinctly even now all the discomfort and annoyance it caused; my washerwoman had to come every day and stay there nearly all the time, making purchases of food, looking after my housekeeping, for several weeks. Well, ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... aimed again at the spittoon, missed it, rubbed the ragged crown of his forlorn hat with his shining elbow, buttoned up his coat over a shirt-bosom which last saw the washerwoman during the presidency of General Harrison, and sauntered out and down stairs. The impression that he left was that he would be more available to the Fish Commission as bait ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... appearance of half-baked images of clay molded by human hands, instead of sandstone rocks fashioned by wind and weather. Each grotesque and fantastic shape has received a name. One is here introduced to the "Washerwoman," the "Lady of the Garden," the "Siamese Twins," and the "Ute God," and besides these may be seen the "Wreck," the "Baggage Room," the "Eagle," and the "Mushroom." The predominating tone is everywhere red, but black, brown, drab, white, yellow, buff, and pink rocks add their quota to make up ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... I never thought once of Fanny Meyrick's going to Europe too until she joined us on the road that day—you remember?—at the washerwoman's gate." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... if it wasn't better, just as bad if it wasn't worse, and just as new if it wasn't worn out. Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time than would blow the lid off a washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thousands of miles higher than the moon as naught nix naught, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over. Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the lot? Two shillings, ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens

... social order. It was something new for German poetry to find inspiration in the wrath of a beggar who cannot pay his dog-tax, the sardonic piety of an old widow reduced to penury by the exactions of the "gracious prince," or the laborious resignation of an aged washerwoman.—The Silesian nobleman JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF (1788-1857), Prussian officer and civil official, was a consistent conservative in his political attitude, a pious Catholic, and a romanticist in every fibre of his poetic soul. His lyrics are the purest echoes of folk-song ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... them, my lady—only far better company in general. But Mr Graham would leave Plato himself—yes, or St. Paul either, though he were sitting beside him in the flesh, to go and help any old washerwoman that ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... with his arms bared, and the flowing, o'er-ample legs of his Aradan-Lasgird pantaloons tucked up at his waist, like a washerwoman's skirt, a bunch of raw cotton in lieu of lint under his left arm, and his keen-edged razor, looks like a man who thoroughly realizes and enjoys the importance of the office he is performing, as from the bared arm or open mouth of one after the other ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... the injured eye, and the native crew who had acted so gallantly; and then with Levi standing by my side, holding my ponderous bag of my beloved Mexican dollars in one hand, and a few articles of clothing in the other, I told Captain ——— that I considered him to be an anthropoid ape, an old washerwoman, and a person who should be generally despised and rejected by all people, even those of the dullest intellects, such as those of the members of the firm who employed him. And then recalling to my memory the sarcastic remark of the mate of the Rimitara, to the pompous captain of the Tuitoga ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... animals, and go on much the same principles, as no doubt we all do, more or less. I saw a colored boy come into a public office one day, and ask to see a man with red hair; the name was utterly gone from him. The man had red whiskers, which was as near as he had come to the mark. Ask your washerwoman what street she lives on, or where such a one has moved to, and the chances are that she cannot tell you, except that it is a "right smart distance" this way or that, or near Mr. So-and-so, or by such and such a place, describing ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... old bachelor was apparently open to all eyes, though in fact it was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second floor of a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest washerwoman in the town. This circumstance will explain the excessive nicety of his linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came when Alencon was guilty of believing that the chevalier had not always comported ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... pay frequent visits to the capital. Her brother is the Wen-hsiang, who acts at present as our senior's accountant; but her sister-in-law too is employed in our worthy ancestor's yonder as head washerwoman." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... old black woman who once had been a very attached servant in Mr. Rossitur's family, and having married and become a widow years ago, had set up for herself in the trade of a washerwoman, occupying an obscure little tenement out towards Chelsea. Fleda had rather a shadowy idea of the locality, though remembering very well sundry journeys of kindness she and Hugh had made to it in days gone by. But she recollected it was in Sloman-street and she knew she could find ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... expression, to wrong a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will not willingly take either goods or labor without payment; ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... Lincoln's character. One of the golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October grass, driving ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... came first, and while my friend paused at one of the fishily-fragrant houses by the way, to interview her washerwoman, I went on to the hill-top, where a nautical old gentleman with a spy-glass, welcomed me with ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... sermon. Never make love to another man's wife. Remember this when you are a great man, for with them it is become a fashion. Let ruffians go their own way. Let gentlemen be your companions, and never fail to show them that you can at least be their equal in courteous demeanor. Always pay your washerwoman; be not ashamed to acknowledge your father, and remember that the fonder you speak of your mother, the more you will be beloved by strangers. Avoid politicians, who are come to be great vagabonds, who drink bad liquor and give their thoughts ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... chopping her up, he began to wash the pieces. And each piece, as he washed it, called out, "The King scours and scrubs like a washerwoman, but he is not ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... said Mr. Dooley. "'Tis this way. Ye see, this here Sagasta is a boonco steerer like Canada Bill, an' th' likes iv him. A smart man is this Sagasta, an' wan that can put a crimp in th' ca-ards that ye cudden't take out with a washerwoman's wringer. He's been through manny a ha-ard game. Talk about th' County Dimocracy picnic, where a three-ca-ard man goes in debt ivry time he hurls th' broads, 'tis nawthin' to what this here Spanish onion has been again an' beat. F'r years an' years he's played on'y profissionals. Th' la-ads ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... "And I gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas's wife ten old wool dresses and a shawl and three old cloaks. All the ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... old or recent, whether in the brutal paintings of Spagnoletto or in the unclean revelations of Zola. Leave the description of the drains and cesspools to the hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to the physician, the details of the laundry to the washerwoman. If we are to have realism in its tedious descriptions of unimportant particulars, let it be of particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the description of the vegetables in Zola's "Ventre de Paris," where, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... after, and a dozen more are in a shocking way. In short, it is horrid to think what the poor creatures suffered: several of them were beggars, who, from having no lodging, were necessarily found in the street, and others honest labouring women. One of the dead was a poor washerwoman, big with child, who was returning home late from washing. One of the constables is taken, and others absconded; but I question(676) if any of them will suffer death, though the greatest criminals in this town are the officers ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... is a good deal like our friend Doc Graver, who'd cut out the washerwoman's appendix for five dollars, but would charge a thousand for showing me mine—he wants all the money that's coming to him, but he really doesn't give a cuss how much it is, just so he ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... described; the father, who was a pious man, called in the ministers of Boston and Charlestown, who fasted and prayed, and succeeded in delivering the youngest, who was five. Meanwhile, one of the daughters had "cried out upon" an unfortunate Irish washerwoman, with whom she had quarrelled. Cotton Mather was now in his element. He took the eldest girl home with him and tried a great number of interesting experiments as to the relative power of Satan and the Lord; among others he gravely relates how when the sufferer was tormented ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... clutching and throwing to the earth any gods that came to her rescue. (Iliad, XV., 15-24.) Rank does not exempt the women of the heroic age from slavish toil. Nausicaea, though a princess, does the work of a washerwoman and drives her own chariot to the laundry on the banks of the river, her only advantage over her maids being that they have to walk.[296] Her mother, too, queen of the Phoeaceans, spends her time sitting among the waiting maids spinning yarn, while her ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... the places they visited. Louise had already great talent for drawing, and in almost every letter came two or three childish but spirited little pictures, all labelled "Drawn for papa!" "The true picture of our courier in a rage, for papa to see." "The washerwoman's dog, for papa," etc., etc. Again and again I sat by, almost trembling with delight, and saw John spend an entire evening in looking over these little missives and reading Ellen's letters. Then again ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... with a vast snow-white beard, and a world of disordered white hair floating over and around its head. At all events it was white for a moment, then it looked green—a great green beard which the old man took with his two hands and twisted just as a washerwoman twists a blanket or counterpane, so as to wring ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.

... out?" I asked. "He's got three girls, to my knowledge, and, as for being deaf, why, he gasses more than any man in the town, and knows more of what's going on than old Mother Brindle the washerwoman." ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... what the washerwomen have done for themselves. They seem to be a separate race of beings, for they all have large arms, and shoulders that would do honor to Tom Sayers. I have seen negro slave women at work in the field, with a muscular development that would be the envy of a Bowery boy. The washerwoman and the field slave show what can be done by cultivation. I know that their style of figure is not quite so attractive as I have seen, and I know that wherever there is an extraordinary tax upon muscle there is an extraordinary repression ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... really manage me," she had once confided to Delphy, the washerwoman, "but I jes' ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... should repent All Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... fell over the water, lying dormant here, flashing there, making the silvery streaks in the shadow of the boats tremble, touching up a mast or a rudder, or resting on the orange-coloured handkerchief or pink jacket of a washerwoman. The country, the outskirts of the town, and the suburbs all met together on both sides of the river. There were rows of poplar trees to be seen between the houses, which were few and far between, as at the extreme ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... she as well as she could. "I'm not a washerwoman nor a barber. So take that for your washing ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... the narrator, the latter undoubtedly the author himself, is a strange being. Like the guide of Gil Bias on his adventures, he is called a demon, and he glares and emits smoke and fire. But he proves amenable to argument, and quotes the story of the washerwoman, to show how it was that he became a reformed character. This devil quotes the Rabbis, and is easily convinced that it is unwise for him to wed an ignorant bride. It would seem as though Zabara were, on the one hand, hurling a covert attack against some one who had advised him to leave ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... other Golden Deed, more truly noble because more full of mercy; namely, his halting his little army in full retreat in Ireland in the face of the English host under Roger Mortimer, that proper care and attendance might be given to one sick and suffering washerwoman and her new-born babe. Well may his ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and widowed washerwoman brings him her sick child, whom she does not want to take to the hospital because her two oldest children died there. The child is a weak boy of eight years who has caught scarlet-fever. At first, the inside of the throat begins to swell, and, to prevent ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... passed the Sweet Gum Spring they saw Delphy, the washerwoman, standing in her doorway, quarrelling with her son-in-law, Moses, who was hoeing a small garden patch in the rear of an adjoining cabin. Delphy was a large mulatto woman, with a broad, flat bosom and enormous hands that ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... spotlessness about his dress; but for his dusty boots you would not have guessed he had been travelling. Poor Nino. When he had not a penny in the world but what he earned by copying music, he used to spend it all with the washerwoman, so that Mariuccia was often horrified, and I ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... break in the bush, and the bank sloped gradually to the water's edge. Three or four wash-tubs, grouped together in a semicircle, stood on wooden trestles, and a quaint-looking little man was bending over one of them washing clothes, rubbing and beating a handful of garments on a board like any washerwoman. His back was turned to the path, and he faced the river. On his right stood an iron furnace and boiler, with steam escaping from under the lid. And all around him the bushes were hung with ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... here, Aunt Ellen—you used to play the 'Irish Washerwoman: Mind playing it now? Miss Mathewson and I are going to ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... "There goes the old washerwoman over the way," said his mother, as she looked out of the window. "The poor woman can hardly drag herself along, and she must now drag the pail home from the fountain: be a good boy, Tukey, and run across and help ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... of letters, for during this time she had little encouragement. Pope's attack did destroy her best asset, her growing reputation as an author, but instead of following Savage's ill-natured advice to turn washerwoman, she remained loyal to her profession and in her later novels gained greater success than she had ever before enjoyed. But it was only her dexterity that saved her from ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... printed with them—beads, bugles, flaring sashes, and above all, little fanciful aprons, which finish these incongruous toilets with a sort of airy grace, which I assure you is perfectly indescribable. One young man, the eldest son and heir of our washerwoman Hannah, came to pay his respects to me in a magnificent black satin waistcoat, shirt gills which absolutely engulphed his black visage, and neither shoes ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... father notice to quit the cottage after her. I got some newspaper chatter aimed at me then, and now, by God, you've done worse than the fellow who ruined poor Thomson. Look up there, and you'll see your father's portrait. He was a merry lad in his day, but he wouldn't have intrigued with a washerwoman. That's about what you have done. However, we'll have no more scolding. Of course, you understand that the affair is ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... that owned a fine Dog, and by a careful selection of its mate had bred a number of animals but a little lower than the angels, fell in love with his washerwoman, married her, and reared a family ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... fine day—the two children were playing at their usual game on the turnpike road, and waiting for nurse, who had gone into a cottage near by to speak to the washerwoman. Nurse was a long time, and Ralph, who was horse, was quite out of breath with his long trot on the hard road. Lily touched him up with the whip, but all to no avail—he could run ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... left there, we passed the place where Madame's washerwoman lives. A little girl peeped out at us through the hedge. Madame told her to show the American ladies the doll that she had in her arms. She held it out, and then snatched it back as if she were jealous ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... "There goes the old washerwoman up the lane," said the mother, as she looked out of the window; "the poor woman can hardly drag herself along, and now she had to drag a pail of water from the well. Be a good boy, Tuk, and run across and help the old woman, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... cleanliness &c. adj.; purity; cleaning &c. v.; purification, defecation &c. v.; purgation, lustration[obs3]; detersion[obs3], abstersion[obs3]; epuration[obs3], mundation|; ablution, lavation[obs3], colature|; disinfection &c. v.; drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse[obs3]; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi[obs3], laundryman, washerman[obs3]; scavenger, dustman[obs3], sweep; white wings brush[Local U. S.]; broom, besom[obs3], mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... without that provision for the future which necessitates the employment of one's time for one's own ends. But they were happy, and had no enemies; and each year saw some mild improvements in their studiously clean house and tiny back garden. Mrs. Gerhardt, who was cook, seamstress, washerwoman, besides being wife and mother, was almost notorious in that street of semi-detached houses for being at the disposal of any one in sickness or trouble. She was not strong in body, for things had gone wrong when she bore her first, but her spirit had that peculiar power of seeing things as they ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... your mother to a Kaffir washerwoman," Captain Bingo blurts out. "Better you should, than go hanging about a Convent-bred schoolgirl and telling her you'll never care for anybody else, when you've got a legal wife, and, for all you know, a family of twins ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... correspondents but to have me declare that the majority of ballet-dancers have villas in the Regent's Park, and to convict me of "deliberate falsehood." Suppose, for instance, I had chosen to introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story? I might get an expostulatory letter saying, "Sir, in stating that the majority of washerwomen are red-haired, you are a liar! and you had best not speak of ladies who are immeasurably your superiors." ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... money and comforted Tomas, telling him that he could make interest with persons of great influence in Toledo, especially a nun, a relation of the corregidor's, who could do anything she pleased with him. Now the washerwoman of the convent in which the nun lived had a daughter, who was very thick indeed with the sister of a friar, who was hand and glove with the said nun's confessor. All he had to do, then, was to get the washerwoman to ask her daughter to get the monk's sister ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... poor creature determined once more to set aside the judgment of the public, and show Dr. Goldsmith in his true colours. The letter is a wretched production, full of personalities only fit for an angry washerwoman, and of rancour without point. But there was one passage in it that effectually roused Goldsmith's rage; for here the Jessamy Bride was introduced as "the lovely H——k." The letter was anonymous; but the publisher of the print, a man called Evans, ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... rose pinned on in front." "There are the three Long sisters, one pink, one white, and one blue. Pink and white are fluffy goods. But Ruth'll not care how girls are dressed. It's the women." "Here's a queen in black. Who is it? Oh, Lord! I am sorry I saw her face. It's Mrs. May ——, the Irish washerwoman, as Ruth calls her. And who's the Cleopatra with the silver snake around her arm, and the silver do-funnies around her waist? Oh, Bess Smith! I am getting so many details I'll have 'em all mixed up the first thing I know. Let me see, who had on the red dress? Ding, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... silver,' she said, looking quickly behind her to see that Lucy was not listening. 'And Cecile was a fairy, with spangled wings—the sweetest thing you ever saw. We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but as nobody took any notice of Madame de C—she has behaved like a washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help her complexion ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... it will amuse you (for a last word) to hear that our precentress—she is the washerwoman—is our shame. She is a good, healthy, comely, strapping young wench, full of energy and seriousness, a splendid workwoman, delighting to train our chorus, delighting in the poetry of the hymns, which she reads aloud (on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... no amorous fancy disturbed the peace of my soul, except an accident which happened to me with the daughter of my washerwoman, and which increased my knowledge in physics in a singular manner. That girl was very pretty, and, without being what might be called in love with her, I wished to obtain her favours. Piqued at my not being able to obtain an appointment from her, I contrived one day ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... not being famous enough, or rich enough, or clever enough to excite the hatred of mankind. He was simply an intelligent young man, who worked excellently when supervised by me. His mother is a washerwoman in this village, and the lad brought washing to my house. Noting that he was intelligent and was anxious to rise above his station, I engaged him as my assistant and trained him to ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... said he had seen him fall and could lead to the spot. He did so, conducting a party to a pond near the town, where, half buried in the mud, lay several dead bodies lately stripped. Among the searchers was a poor washerwoman, who, seeing the glitter of a ring on the finger of one of the corpses, turned it over, and cried, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... I won't be one. A woman wears dirty clothes and a check apron and a sun-bonnet. We've had a charwoman like that in our house, and a washerwoman; and in Collingwood there's a fish-woman and an apple-woman. I've seen them with my very own eyes. I don't think it a bit nice of you, Mr. Brown, to call me ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... dawn a piece of the atmosphere and a patch of the table, while its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's peak, an eye. Secretly I take stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety. Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it was too damned dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the grocer's. One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like sheep. "And ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... lifted by indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to the shrine. But I have a clear notion of woman. In all of them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark. And when there is a spark there can always be a flame ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Washerwoman" :   laundress, washwoman, laundrywoman



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