"Housekeeping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... served every age and sex. But Martha's department was, perforce, the unwed male section. No self-respecting wife or mother would allow laundry-darned hose or shirts to reflect on her housekeeping habits. And what woman, ultra-modern though she be, would permit machine-mended stockings to desecrate her bureau drawers? So it was that Martha ministered, for the most part, to those boarding house bachelors living within delivery-wagon proximity ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... Kirkbright a cup of tea when she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs. Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... had said that girls were of little use in the world, anyway—unless they settled down to housekeeping. The times Ruth had been of aid to him were, as he said, ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... decided to make two cakes of it. They looked lovely when baked, and just right, and smelled so good, too! I wrapped them in nice white paper that had been wet with brandy, and put them carefully away—one in a stone jar, the other in a tin box—and felt that I had done a remarkably fine bit of housekeeping. The bachelors have been exceedingly kind to me, and I rejoiced at having a nice cake to send them Christmas morning. But alas! I forgot that the little house was fragrant with the odor of spice and fruit, and that there was a man about who was ever on the lookout for good things to eat. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... every detail of housekeeping was complete and very carefully looked after, while at the Barlows' everything went along in a slipshod, ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... dealer in bric-a-brac. It was not a monotonous display, after the manner of the Parisian dealer, of a stock-in-trade the like of which one has seen many times over, but a discriminate collection of real curiosities. One seemed to recognise a provincial school of taste in various relics of the housekeeping of the last century, with many a gem of earlier times from the old churches and religious houses of the neighbourhood. Among them was a large and brilliant fragment of stained glass which might have come from the cathedral ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... themselves, taking them out with her on expeditions and showing them how to catch smaller animals, such as young calves or pigs, until they are strong enough to hunt larger ones, when they leave her and begin housekeeping on their own account. A great many tigers live in India, and many a wretched native has ended his life by being caught by one of them. You would think, to look at the royal tiger, with his reddish markings and black stripes, that he could be easily seen at a great distance, but this is not ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... out of a job, I'd like to hire him," he said. "They're good, steady workers, and born cooks. He can have the room back of the store and do his own housekeeping. I'll stop in at Jake's ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... a lovely young lady who once worked an entire piano cover with worsted. They had commenced housekeeping but a few months, when one morning the husband informed his wife that he should invite a friend to dine with him ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... birds that morning; and they sang and sang so loudly and sweetly that the master of the garden opened his window and sat down to listen to them. But they had something else to do besides sing; there was courting, and wedding, and building, and housekeeping, going on all over the garden. Mr and Mrs Redbreast were just married, and shocking as it may seem, were quarrelling about the place where they should live. Mr Robin wanted the snug quarters in the ivy, down by the melon pits; while Mrs Redbreast said ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... freedom of a certain small but desirable Club and who wanted to show Mr. Drury one place where he could have a quiet time of an evening, he went to have dinner. As neither of the gentlemen was known to the housekeeping department a member of the Club—a well-known newspaperman—was asked to inquire their identity. The result was that the Premier of Ontario and his friend left the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... grew better. The doctor ceased his visits. She was able to get on her feet again. She took over their pinched housekeeping. But her step was heavy; the gaunt, grim straight- backed woman, with her thin grey hair and set mouth, was no more than a spectre of her former self. The doctor was right. There was nothing before her ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... at lunch next day, for the reason that, as cold beef, the upper cut is unapproachable. I have never heard that the kitchen hankers after it inordinately; indeed, its ultimate destination is one of the unexplained mysteries of housekeeping. I hold that never, under any circumstances, should it be cooked with the sirloin, but always cut off and marinated and braized as we had it yesterday. Thus you get two hot dishes; our particular sirloin has given us three. ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... come home although the painters have not finished their work, and we are very inconveniently housed. At the end of next week, she will have a companion who will relieve me in this foolish business of housekeeping. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... were still killed near the fort once or twice a week.[21] Calk in his journal quoted above, in the midst of entries about his domestic work—such as, on April 29th "we git our house kivered with bark and move our things into it at Night and Begin housekeeping," and on May 2d, "went and sot in to clearing for corn,"—mentions occasionally killing deer and turkey; and once, while looking for a strayed mare, he saw four "bofelos." He wounded one, but failed to get ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... soul above dust and housekeeping, a faded woman, not very tidy, with an exalted air, pouring out tea from a Britannia metal ware teapot and talking all the time about Willy Yeates, the Irish Players and Lady Gregory's last play, fascinated the girl, who did not ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... educate, establish properly; and my own life to fulfil as properly,—all just as she would require were she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years—go to London for a few days' talk with Arabel—then go to my father and begin to try leisurely what will be the best for Peni—but no more 'housekeeping' for me, even with my family. I shall grow, still, I hope—but my root is ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Wolf—always ready to protect her, always good and big and affectionate, and ready to laugh at her silliest jokes, and ready to meet any of her problems sympathetically and generously. Her beauty, her irresistible charm as she hung on his arm and chattered of what they would do when they started housekeeping, almost dizzied him. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... a miner whose whole existence is indissolubly connected with that of his mine. He had lived there from his birth, and now that the works were abandoned he wished to live there still. His son Harry foraged for the subterranean housekeeping; as for himself, during those ten years he had not been ten times ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... an envelope and addressed it,—then making sure that everything was ready, she took a few sovereigns from the little pile of housekeeping money which Priscilla always brought to her to count over every week and ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... enough for women to do if they are housekeeping, and with sewing, knitting and what recreation we take out of doors, we fill in the time very well. It is much better and pleasanter to be employed, and the time passes much more rapidly than when one is idle, and I for one enjoy the change of work and the winter's ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... when I first entered on the duties of a housekeeping life, from the want of books sufficiently clear and concise to impart knowledge to a Tyro, compelled me to study the subject, and by actual experiment to reduce every thing in the culinary line, to proper weights and measures. This method I found not only ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... furnished with excellent beds, bedding, bureaus, tables, chairs, and all needful housekeeping furniture. A competent landlady, who, like the rest, had a few weeks before floated down over the same ground on the roof of her house in thirty feet of water, was placed in charge, with instructions to keep a good house, make ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... hurriedly. It would have taken strong horses to drag any black-skinned resident of Chickaloosa to the portals of the little three-roomed frame cottage in the outskirts of the town which Uncle Tobe tenanted. Therefore he lived by himself, doing his own skimpy marketing and his own simple housekeeping. Loneliness was a part of the penalty he paid for following the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... bit the end of her pen, and sighed again. She was deep in her housekeeping accounts, adding and subtracting and, between whiles, regarding the result with ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... to purchase unnecessary delicacies, such as fish, only when they were cheap; to be well informed as to the price current of groceries and provisions, so as to buy when prices are low in anticipation of a rise,—all this housekeeping skill is in Paris essential to domestic economy. As Mathurine got good wages and many presents, she liked the house well enough to be glad to drive good bargains. And by this time Lisbeth had made her quite a match for herself, sufficiently experienced and trustworthy ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... man; he was frightfully thin and pale and very nervous; so was his wife, a delicate lady of good French family. She did the hard work of a planter's wife with admirable courage, and, while she had never taken an active part in housekeeping in France, here she was standing all day long behind a smoky kitchen fire, cooking or washing dishes, assisted only by a very incapable ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... her humble household the subject. She seemed sensible, however, that he had made an escape, and at once acquiesced in my suggestion, that all that should now be done would be to get every expense her son had been at in his preparations for housekeeping and the wedding transferred to the shoulders of the other party. And such an arrangement could, I thought, be easily effected through the bride's brother, who seemed to be a reasonable man, and who would be aware also that a suit at law could be instituted in the case against his sister; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... unamiable, ungraceful, and untidy; ignorant of all domestic accomplishments and truly feminine acquirements, and ambitious of appearing very learned; a woman whose fingers are more frequently adorned with ink-spots than thimble; who holds housekeeping in detestation, and talks loudly about politics, science, and philosophy; who is ugly, and learned, and cross; whose hair is never smooth and whose ruffles are never fluted. Is ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... always smoked his after-dinner cigar in a little room just off the library. It was filled up with the plain cheap furniture and the chromos and mottoes which he and his wife had bought when they first went to housekeeping—in their early days of poverty and struggle. On the south wall was a crude and cheap, but startlingly large enlargement of an old daguerreotype of Letitia Hastings at twenty-four—the year after her marriage and the year before the birth of the oldest child, Robert, called Dock, now piling up a ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the next morning I went down to the offices of the West India Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and made inquiries about the boats for Barbados. I spent the afternoon at my club making out a list of things to be taken out as aids to comfortable housekeeping in a semi-tropical country—a list which swelled amazingly as I turned over the fascinating pages of the Army and ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... plain sewing and cutting out of household linen. The person in question made up all sorts of household linen, sheets, pillow-cases, shirts, and other things; in fact, a great variety of articles. Through an old acquaintance he got them introduced there, avowedly to prepare them for housekeeping. It was a sensible step, and answered well. At spring, to cut short opposition from his own relatives, which began to show itself, for these things did not fail to be talked of, James Cheshire got a license, and proceeding to Manchester, was then and there married, and came home with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... artistic elements in school education have been, in general, more thoroughly developed of late years since they were put into a secondary place. This is as it should be. Such subjects as music, drawing, cooking, housekeeping, wood-carving, nursing, needlework, when they are studied at all, are studied more professionally and thoroughly and intelligently, and less in the spirit of the amateur and dabbler. So I would say to you, both now and when you leave, show ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... field mice, and the Twins had made another nest, as much like the first as possible, to put the homeless field babies in, hoping that their mother would find them again and resume her interrupted housekeeping. ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the village were mostly engaged, though not very strenuously, in the rice paddies or in fishing. The women looked after the housekeeping, washing, tending the stores, etc., and their position of respect and authority in the homes and in society was in marked contrast to that of other oriental and ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... lovers and dreamers were in their home-making! Their housekeeping and furnishings were the simplest, but love made everything beautiful and sufficient. They had a garden in which they planted all their favorite flowers and to which came the birds—the birds with whom they had discovered a sudden kinship, for they too, were ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... those who had tried it in flats, and had reverted to their natural condition of boarding. They advised Lemuel not to take a flat, whatever he did, unless he wanted to perish at once. Other lady boarders had broken up housekeeping during the first years of the war, and had been boarding round ever since, going from hotels in the city to hotels in the country, and back again with the change of the seasons; these mostly had husbands who had horses, and they talked with ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... young couple choose to keep as friends, or perhaps only those whom they can afford to retain. This is a suitable opportunity to carefully re-arrange one's social list, and their list of old acquaintances may be sifted at the time of the beginning of housekeeping. This custom of arranging a fresh list is admitted as a social ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... that ends well, and only that is well, then this story fails at the finish, for we never caught the cannibals, so never taught them the lesson in housekeeping and economics that they needed. But there is ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... easy, indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... anxious after a year with the Allies, to work for the British, but as I could not be spared from housekeeping to go to England I was dubious as to whether I could pass the test or not. Though I had come out originally with the idea of being a chauffeur, I had only done odd work from time to time at Lamarck. "Uncle," however, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... thus clarified with blood, the glittering frosted-work of colonial splendor rose. A few great planters debauched the housekeeping of the whole island. Beneath were debts, distrust, shiftlessness, the rapacity of imported officials, the discontent of resident planters with the customs of the mother-country, the indifference of absentees, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... turned with energy to practical affairs—arrangements for giving up the flat, dismissing some servants, despatching others to Maumsey. She had something of a gift for housekeeping, and on this evening of all others she blessed its tasks. When they met at dinner, Gertrude was perfectly placid and amiable. She went to bed early, and Delia spent the hours after dinner in packing, with her maid. In the middle of it came a line from Winnington—"Good news indeed! ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... told it, and then their visitor set them all laughing by relating some queer housekeeping experiences that she and a school friend had had while camping at Chautauqua. Somehow each one felt at home with her. As Captain Eri said afterwards, "She didn't giggle, and then ag'in she didn't talk ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... wood of Vincennes for booty, was pretty nearly every day. For in addition to her labors as a rag-picker Fouchette was compelled to wait upon customers in the wine-shop and run errands and perform pretty much all the work of housekeeping for the Podvins. Her foraging expeditions merely filled in the time ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... every week if she could get such nice ones as yours; and the butcher—guess what the butcher asked me yesterday! I went in his shop on my way home from the minister's, and he asked me when we were going to break up housekeeping here." ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... bide within doors while their husbands did not only the legitimate field-work, but the work of the garden, and even the milking of the cows as well. The "Yankee" wives in their turn shrugged their shoulders at the thought of what the housekeeping must be that was left to children, or left altogether, while the women were in the hay or harvest-field as regularly and almost as constantly as their husbands and brothers. Of course they did not speak their minds to one another about all this, but they knew enough about one another's opinions ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Africa, with their magnificent crimson tails, are the chief glory of the country. The children of my grandfather were very numerous, and no father was kinder or more skillful than he in providing them with an independent establishment, for he believed that young people should always set up housekeeping for themselves as soon as possible. As soon, therefore, as my father was old enough to be married, and grandpa saw that he had already selected a pretty wife, he immediately found him a convenient hollow tree on the very shore of our beautiful river, ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... exercise the married woman's prerogative of letting her husband support her. She rented the upper floor of a small house in an Irish neighborhood. The newly wedded pair furnished their rooms on the installment plan and began housekeeping. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... occurred, but they could not understand the tense atmosphere; and when Mercedes heroically tried to fill Tabitha's place the other members of the brood resented her authority, frankly found fault with her badly cooked oatmeal and unsalted potatoes, and insulted her attempts at housekeeping in such a heartless, unfeeling manner that she finally dissolved in tears and refused to do anything further toward their comfort. Susie and Inez quarreled over the dishes and had the sulks all day. The boys, still fearful of the consequences ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the house and her reward is to sit at the head of the table. But she pays Kirsty infinitely more for the privilege than any but Kirsty can know, in the form of leisure for things she likes far better than housekeeping—among the rest, for the discovery of such songs as this, the last of ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... while looking for the signs of spring, but they were now occupied with their nests. There are several within a short distance, easily distinguished in winter, but somewhat hidden now by the young leaves. Just before they settled down to housekeeping there was a great chattering and fluttering and excitement, as they chased each other from ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... were a good deal afraid of him; while Violet sat under the verandah, feasting her eyes upon Helvellyn, and enjoying the talk with her sisters as much as she could, while uneasy at the lengthened housekeeping labours that her mother was undergoing. They were to retrace one of their memorable walks by the river-side in the afternoon, but were prevented by the visit expected all the morning, but deferred to that fashionable hour, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... constitute a woman. In short, she was a mother, a stout, commonplace mother, the human layer and brood mare, that machine of flesh which procreates without any other mental preoccupation, except her children and her housekeeping book. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... maids of Picardy, before setting up housekeeping, are accustomed honestly to gain their linen, vessels, and chests; in short, all the needed household utensils. To accomplish this, they go into service in Peronne, Abbeville, Amiens, and other towns, where they are tire-women, wash up glasses, clean ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... kept and sorted over their filthy rags; to dingy attic spaces where artists made their studios, turning queer, dilapidated corners into what they called their homes. The third story of the Randolph house had been let for "light housekeeping apartments"; Keineth herself had helped tack the little black and gilt sign at the door. The tenants used the side door that let into the brick-paved alley. Keineth had always felt a great pride in their home—it was always neatly painted, ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... the lover of the picturesque. There used to be a particular type of typhoid known as Roman fever, but now quite unknown, thanks to the Tiber Embankments and to the light and air let into the purlieus of that mediaeval Rome for which the injudicious grieve so loudly. The perfect municipal housekeeping of our time leaves no darkest and narrowest lane or alley unswept; every morning the shovel and broom go over the surfaces formerly almost impassable to the foot and quite ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... country hotels, in order to be within driving distance of his party; now left for months at a time in the busy solitude of a great city hotel, while Mr. Burnam was far away in unexplored forests, and often, as now, settled near him for a few months of housekeeping which should give her children at least a slight knowledge of home life ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... As for that photograph, it probably fell off the mantel-piece to the tea-table, instead of falling, as usual, into the coal-hod. To sum up, my dear Clarry, if you had remembered the extreme emotionalism of your sister Lorraine's temperament and the—er—eccentricity of her housekeeping, you would not have permitted yourself to be so sadly misled. Not remembering it, you've done a lot of mischief. All these things being so, no one will believe them. And to-night, when you are safely tucked into your little bed, if you hear the tramping ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the patched philosopher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of the portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped to fatten. Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's housekeeping had so greatly improved, since Clifford became a member of the family, that her share of the banquet would have been no lean one; and Uncle Venner, accordingly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the large earthen pan, full of fragmentary eatables, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he wishes to succeed, cannot afford to hamper himself with a wife and contend with the endless sordid details of housekeeping conducted on a necessarily economical scale. It slowly but surely deadens the artist in him—the delicate creative inspiration that is so easily smothered by material cares and worries. Nan refused to blame Maryon simply because he had not married her then and there. But she could not forgive ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... invite each other to "five o'clocks" and dinners. In the end they both were amused greatly and Nell wanted at once to inspect her new dwelling, but Stas, who with each day acquired more experience and prudence, restrained her from too sudden housekeeping. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... help was needed in earnest, and she did not fail. They were soon in possession of a nice little house of their own, with a garden about it, and no matter how much work she might have to do in the shop, everything in her own province of housekeeping was as well and carefully ordered as if Gertrude had no other business to occupy her time and thoughts. And Steffan, Gertrude and their little Dieterli lived simple, useful and contented lives and were a good example ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... ghost!' It needs no treasured hoard left behind, no floor stained with the blood of the murdered child, no wickedly hidden parchment of landed rights! An old account-book is enough for the hell of the housekeeping gentlewoman! ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... pretty girl of her early age. He was a man that might have been handsome, had it not been for a certain strange expression of covert wickedness. It was as if some vile evil spirit, walking, as the Scriptures say, through dry places, had lighted on a comely man's body, in which he had set up housekeeping, making it look like a fair house abused by ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... head-dress was a tall and narrow cap of white wool, in the shape of a sugar-loaf, since that time the Ryhanlu have left off wearing it, but I remember to have seen a headdress of this kind during my stay with the Turkmans near Tarsus. The Turkman women are very laborious; besides the care of housekeeping, they work the tent coverings of goats hair, and the woollen carpets, which are inferior only to those of Persian manufacture. Their looms are of primitive simplicity; they do not make use of the shuttle, but pass the woof with their hands. They seem ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... any more for a month, you see. Now, take the next item. 'Champagne wafers, ten pounds.' I'm fond of those. But that is the only time I broke my rule. See—'flour, two pounds; roast beef, two pounds,' and so on. Oh, I mean to be quite systematic in my housekeeping!" ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... is a grand old oak tree, standing alone and majestic, like a king on his throne; and a lovely flower garden, at the side of the house, is so bright in colors that one would suppose a company of rainbows had gone to housekeeping there. ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... letters to be discussed, news of Bevis on board H.M.S. Relentless, of Leonard in the trenches, and Larry in the training-camp, hurried scrawls from Father, looking after commissariat business "somewhere in France", accounts of Nora's new housekeeping, picture post cards from Peter and Cyril, brief, laborious, round-hand epistles from Joan, and delightful chatty notes from Mother, who sent a kind of family chronicle round to the absent members of ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... that, as I said, I was perfectly contented with it. We had been engaged since the previous Christmas, and were to be married in the early summer, as soon as a trip through Switzerland would be agreeable. We were to set up housekeeping for ourselves; that was a point Julia was bent upon. A suitable house had fallen vacant in one of the higher streets of St. Peter-Port, which commanded a noble view of the sea and the surrounding islands. We had taken it, though it was farther ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... this crude housekeeping, from the chipped enamel dishpan to the broom that was all one-sided, and the pillow slips which were nothing more nor less than sugar sacks. She hated it even more than she had hated the Casa ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... her own affairs that when George grew up she had been glad to resign them to his keeping, taking what he told her was her income. As for Diane, her fortune was so small as to be a negligible quantity in such housekeeping as they maintained—a poverty of dot which had been the chief reason why her noble kinsfolk had consented to her marriage with an American. Looking round the splendid house, Mrs. Eveleth was aware that her husband could never have lived in it, still less have built it; while she wondered more ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... a house, Peter could hear him bumping and rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping arrangements. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... strictly and were never allowed to appear at Court until a comparatively late age. They were all taught to use their hands as well as their heads, and at Osborne, in the Swiss cottage, the boys worked at carpentering and gardening, while the girls were employed in learning cooking and housekeeping. Christmas was always celebrated in splendid fashion by the family, and the royal children were always encouraged to give as presents something which they had made with their own hands. Lessons in riding, driving, and swimming also formed part of their training, for the ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... is apt to be too great for the value of the material, and the work will now and then come in pieces for lack of being thoroughly finished; teachers who infuse brightness and quickness into their scholars, but whose instructions are more showy than solid. In their housekeeping they understand "putting the best foot foremost," and making a great deal of ornament where there may be but little of anything else; but they lack the practical skill that makes a housekeeper successful in the essentials that constitute comfort. They will seek to make ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... said this, but he would not look in a quarter where his words struck home,—he hoped that some one of Quebec's fair daughters would assist Pierre in the menage of his home and enable him to do honor to his housekeeping. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... kept one,—and why not, in a few years?—and a fine healthy air, at a reasonable distance from 'Change; all for 30l. a year. I had described this little spot to Mary as enthusiastically as Sancho describes Lizias to Don Quixote; and my dear wife was delighted with the prospect of housekeeping there, vowed she would cook all the best dishes herself (especially jam-pudding, of which I confess I am very fond), and promised Gus that he should dine with us at Clematis Bower every Sunday: only he must not smoke those horrid cigars. As ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with her father in it and coax him to allow her to drive. Everybody felt that it was ideal to have Mrs. Ramsay at Bridge House. She took the place of a daughter to Aunt Nellie, who was somewhat of an invalid, and would nurse her and manage the housekeeping for her instead of Jessop. She had always loved her native county of Devon, and rejoiced to return there instead of living ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... worse," says our implacable critic; "when women were content with looking pretty before marriage, and with good housekeeping after, they were uninteresting certainly, but they were respectable. Now they dabble in all things; are weakly aesthetic, weakly scientific, weakly controversial, and wholly prosy, and contemptible." Dabbling is pitiful, certainly, and weakness has few allies, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Brangwen, did not feel? How was Mrs. Hardy's nature different from that of the common women of Cossethay, in what was it beyond them? All the women of Cossethay talked eagerly about Mrs. Hardy, of her husband, her children, her guests, her dress, of her servants and her housekeeping. The lady of the Hall was the living dream of their lives, her life was the epic that inspired their lives. In her they lived imaginatively, and in gossiping of her husband who drank, of her scandalous brother, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... "Advice,"—a poem which breathes the same manly indignation at the abuses, evils, and public charlatans of the day. This year also he married Miss Lascelles, by whom he expected a fortune of three thousand pounds. This sum, however, was never fully realised; and his generous housekeeping, and the expenses of a litigation to which he was compelled, in connection with Miss Lascelles' money, embarrassed his circumstances, and, much to the advantage of the world, drove him to literature. In 1748, he gave to the world his novel of ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... two added years of pleasure, walking, driving, and riding on horseback with my sisters. Madge and Kate were dearer to me than ever, as I saw the inevitable separation awaiting us in the near future. In due time they were married and commenced housekeeping—Madge in her husband's house near by, and Kate in Buffalo. All my sisters were peculiarly fortunate in their marriages; their husbands being men of fine presence, liberal education, high moral character, and marked ability. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... prolific sources of matrimonial difficulties is the lack of knowledge on the part of wives of the duties of housekeeping. In these days there are a hundred young ladies who can drum on the piano to one who can make a ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Felicien came to see her, that she was able to sit upright, to bring her thoughts back to her surroundings, and to appear as if she were regaining her health, laughing pleasantly while she talked of their years of happy housekeeping far away, in the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... garden," old lady Chia smilingly said, "and call our Pao-yue here, so that these four housekeeping dames should see how he compares with their ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... homes were cleaned and, with furniture which could be salvaged and that supplied by the Relief Committee, the owners were able to resume housekeeping. Relief funds were still increasing and all persons who lost homes or furniture in the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... some time after dinner on the night of Abigail's departure that Mrs. Prim, following a habit achieved by years of housekeeping, set forth upon her rounds to see that doors and windows were properly secured for the night. A French window and its screen opening upon the verandah from the library she found open. "The house will be full ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wrecked on an island of the South Seas, we could scarcely have felt ourselves farther from civilisation and comfort; but, where the sun shines, the latter becomes an unnecessary luxury, and we had enough society among ourselves. Yet I confess housekeeping became rather a toilsome task, especially as I was suffering in my health, and could not ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... them money upon pledges of merchandise, the two elder partners, Pierpont and Lord, lost no time in following their junior. He had opened on South Calvert Street; they took the whole of a large building opposite, opened below their wholesale business, and after a few months went to housekeeping overhead, both families living together. Then, to get rid of our stock, Mr. Pierpont went off to Charleston, S.C., where he had served his time as a tutor, and there set up a retail establishment, under the charge of a former clerk in their service, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... you sit under a sure shadow," said the youth; "and I suppose you wept yourself blind when Saint Catherine broke up housekeeping before you had taken arles [Footnote: Anglice— ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... would like that. The place was not exactly pleasant; and the house accommodations did very well for me, but would not have been comfortable for you. So I have set up housekeeping in another locality. Do you know where a ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... could not have been her father's daughter without having that virtue. There was no "lick and a promise" in Nan Sherwood's housekeeping. She did not sweep the dust under the bureau, or behind the door, or forget to wipe the rounds of the chairs and the baseboard all ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... of Mrs. Bright's confidence in her faithful Kareem Majid, she never neglected to supervise those details of housekeeping in India that make all the difference between sickness and health, economy and extravagance. "For, however wonderful the dear servants are, they do want watching," she would explain to inquiring friends. "You simply have to see what they are up to, or run terrible ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... hearkened and the pictures came as he talked; It was many a day that we longed, and we lingered late at eve Ere speech from speech was sundered, and my hand his hand could leave. Then I wept when I was alone, and I longed till the daylight came; And down the stairs I stole, and there was our housekeeping dame (No mother of me, the foundling) kindling the fire betimes Ere the haymaking folk went forth to the meadows down by the limes; All things I saw at a glance; the quickening fire-tongues leapt ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... sense as Miss Jacky; but, as no kingdom can maintain two kings, so no family can admit of two sensible women; and Nicky was therefore obliged to confine hers to the narrowest possible channels of housekeeping, mantua-making, etc., and to sit down for life (or at least till Miss Jacky should be married) with the dubious character of "not wanting for sense either." With all these little peccadilloes the sisters possessed some good properties. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... that she does not take a delight in doing; but lace-making is her favourite occupation, because there is nothing which requires such a pleasing attitude, nothing which calls for such grace and dexterity of finger. She has also studied all the details of housekeeping; she understands cooking and cleaning; she knows the prices of food, and also how to choose it; she can keep accounts accurately, she is her mother's housekeeper. Some day she will be the mother of a family; by managing her father's house she is preparing to manage her own; she can take the place ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... judgment, a lively temper, and a natural disposition to understand everything curious which she saw done, and everything laudable which she heard talked of. She learned the things that concern agriculture, gardening, housekeeping, cooking, and a life in the country; also the causes and effects of maladies, the composition of an infinite number of remedies, perfumes, scented waters and distillations useful or agreeable. She wished to play the lute, and took some lessons with ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... o'clock in the morning. Alice enters her drawing-room. You see her: a tall, spare woman with kind eyes, who carries her arms stiffly. She has just finished her housekeeping, she puts down her basket of keys, and with all the beautiful movement of the young mother she takes up the crawling mass of white frock, kisses her son and settles his blue sash. And when she has talked to him for a few minutes she rings the bell for nurse; then she sits down to write. As usual, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... to do, mamma," she explained, in a clear, cool voice. "We have had hundreds of things to buy and to arrange about. All the responsibility for the housekeeping rests upon me—and Alfred has his studio to do. But of course we should have looked in upon you sooner—and much oftener—if we had thought you wanted us. But really, when we came to you, the very day after our ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... two ridiculous birds set up housekeeping without any house. Mother Nomer just settled herself on the bare pebbles in a satisfied way, and that was all there was to it. Not a stick or a wisp of hay or a feather to mark the place! And as she sat there quietly, a queer thing happened. She disappeared ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... know anything about cattle and things like that," said Norah. "And when it comes to the house side, I don't think you'll find I can teach you much—if anyone brought up to know French cooking and French housekeeping has much to learn from a backblocks Australian, I'll ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... problem. Scheme after scheme did Ranny throw on the paper from his seething brain. In the fifth—no, the thoroughly revised and definitive seventh, he made out that, by a trifling reduction in his personal expenditure, housekeeping on the two-room system would leave him with a considerable margin. (In the first rough draft—even in the second—he had allowed absurdly too much for food and clothing.) But, mind you, that margin existed solely and strictly on the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... am settled, my dear," said Kathryn blandly, "and I'm not fond of housekeeping. You don't get any time for ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Gaylord said, "Won't you take a chair?" and herself sank into the rocker, with a deep feather cushion in the seat, and a thinner feather cushion tied half-way up the back. After the more active duties of her housekeeping were done, she sat every day in this chair with her knitting or sewing, and let the clock tick the long hours of her life away, with no more apparent impatience of them, or sense of their dulness, than the cat on the braided rug at her feet, or the geraniums in the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... and the house in the Close, and as to which Mr Cheesacre was very pointed in his inquiries with Jeannette. Then behind the cream there were two or three heads of broccoli, and a stick of celery as thick as a man's wrist. Altogether the tribute was a very comfortable assistance to the housekeeping of a lady living in ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... from housekeeping, and our queer old inn is very comfortable," I said. "Besides, being here, would it not be a pity to go away without seeing anything of the ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... either. Miss Preston never bothers with the housekeeping or the housekeeper, although she is always just as lovely to her as she can be—she is to everybody, for ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... between them as should make her the envy of all Silverton. This was Katy's idea, and she opposed her lover with all her strength, telling him she was so young, not eighteen till July, and she knew so little of housekeeping. He must let her stay at home until she learned at least the ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... "Great housekeeping," he said, grinning. "When I get back home I guess my mother'll make me do all the kitchen work. Ain't war what General Sherman said ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... to his own affectionate heart. At this repast the boys began a fresh series of questions, and drew from Tom a full, complete, and exhaustive history of his island life, more particularly with regard to his experience in house-building, and housekeeping; and with each one, without exception, it was a matter of sincere regret that it had not been his lot to be Tom's companion in the boat and ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... was reasonable. In theory, perhaps, the women should have been refined by their housekeeping work; in practice that work necessitated their being very tough. Cook, scullery-maid, bed-maker, charwoman, laundress, children's nurse—it fell to every mother of a family to play all the parts in turn every day, and if that were all, there ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... work, (1) Cooking, (2) Housekeeping, and (3) Sewing, are carried on in rotation, a girl spending one entire afternoon at cooking, the next at sewing and a third at housework. Thus each girl does an afternoon's job in each subject. The cooking class studies successively "breakfast," "lunch" and "dinner," ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... took you on purpose. Your charity's getting simply awful. Those two this morning cleared out all my housekeeping money. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had dreamed what their first meal together in that room would be like. This morning when she insisted upon pouring the coffee and scorched her hand in the attempt and chided him for careless housekeeping, pain showed in his smile. But she did not immediately understand. She only realized how sombre he was; how thin he looked and tired. Again her eyes went to the bandage around his head. It had a fascination for her, even though it filled her with repulsion for a decision which, she ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... year and a wife and half-a-dozen small brats to support on it," exclaimed Aunt Deb in an indignant tone. "The wife is sure to be delicate, and know nothing about housekeeping, and she and the children will constantly be requiring the ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... said; "you have more than convinced me that no one who has any regard for his immortal soul would deal anywhere but at Octavius Smith's. Let us go on and swell Larkin's commission at once. You are probably better up in housekeeping than I am, Lynn,—if I forget any item you must jog my memory. My sister will be quite delighted that we have ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... not. You see, at first it wasn't a tombstone but a marble-top dresser. Ma had always wanted one so badly; for she always thought that housekeeping would be so much easier if she had just one pretty thing to keep house toward. If I had not been so selfish, she could have had the dresser before she died. I had fifteen dollars,—enough to buy it,—but when I came ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... more joyous," said his mamma. "He is very happy just now, for he and his mate are preparing for housekeeping. Later on, he will shed his lemon-yellow coat, and then you won't be able to tell him from his ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... beautiful valleys of the Tyrol, leaving the snow behind, though the white peaks of the mountains were continually in sight. At Bruneck, in an inn resplendent with neatness—so at least it seemed to our eyes accustomed to the negligence and dirt of Italian housekeeping—we had the first specimen of a German bed. It is narrow and short, and made so high at the head, by a number of huge square bolsters and pillows, that you rather sit than lie. The principal covering is a bag of down, very properly denominated the upper bed, and ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... more dishes and how many more wines do we put on the table than our ancestors afforded. Pope writes of Balaam's housekeeping:— ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith |
