"Housewife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... musk-ox they make also very good spoons much like ours in shape; and I must not omit to mention their marrow spoons (pattēkniuk, from pāttĕk, marrow), made out of long, narrow, hollowed pieces of bone, of which every housewife has a bunch of half a dozen or more tied together, and generally attached to ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... minutes would certainly bring them up with the bar, and five more fairly within the river. The question now arose, where the party was to be concealed during the stay of the savages. Dolly, as was perhaps natural for the housewife, wished to remain by her worldly goods, and pretty Margery had a strong feminine leaning to do the same. But neither of the men approved of the plan. It was risking too much in one spot; and a suggestion that the bee-hunter was not long in ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... to investigations and experiments into the questions of pure food, household economy and employments suited to woman, is now directed more than ever before to the uplifting of American homes and the assistance of the homemakers. These researches are at the call of every housewife. However, to save her the bewilderment of selection from so many useful suggestions, and the digesting of voluminous directions, the fundamental principles of food and household economy as published by the government departments, are here presented, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing. Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving soul. The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... women stood clacking the news just as though it were a week-day and the boats had brought in a famous haul. Feminine gossip in Polpier is not conducted in groups, as the men conduct theirs on the Quay. By tradition each housewife takes post on her own threshold-slate, and knits while she talks with her neighbours to right and left and across the road; thus a bit of news, with comment and embellishment zigzags from door to door through the town like a postal delivery. To-day being Sunday, the women had no knitting; ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... to be past eighty. She was a big woman—thrifty and domestic—big enough to take "Granther" up in her arms and walk off with him. She did more to bring up her family than he did; was a practical housewife, and prolific. She had ten children and made every one of them toe the mark. I don't know whether she ever took "Granther" across her knee or not, but he probably deserved it. She was quite uneducated. Her maiden name was ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... knocked away for firewood, and when it was low-water, one old post, redolent of mud, marked the spot where the bridge had been. The interior was far more inviting. Mrs Beazeley was a clean person and frugal housewife, and every article in the kitchen, which was the first room you entered, was as clean and as bright as industry could make it. There was a parlour also, seldom used; both of the inmates, when they did meet, which was not above a day or two in three weeks, during the time that old Beazeley ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... it—there's a hole in it—and carve." Then she whipped to the other end of the table and stitched like wild-fire. "Be pleased to cast your eyes on that, Mrs. Triplet. Pass it to the lady, young gentleman. Fire away, Mr. Triplet, never mind us women. Woffington's housewife, ma'am, fearful to the eye, only it holds everything in the world, and there is a small space for everything else—to be returned by the bearer. Thank you, sir." (Stitches away like lightning at the coat.) "Eat away, children! now is your time; ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... good and noble actions. It may be spent in learning, in study, in art, in science, in literature. Time can be economized by system. System is an arrangement to secure certain ends, so that no time may be lost in accomplishing them. Every business man must be systematic and orderly. So must every housewife. There must be a place for everything, and everything in its place. There must also be a time for everything, and everything must be done ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... tender ways That emphasized the courting days, The housewife in her apron blue, As mistress of her new abode, By frequent lachrymations showed Her grief and ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... "Home, housewife—home!" exclaimed her husband, the old huntsman, who was weary of this public exhibition of his domestic termagant —"home, or I will give you a taste of my dog lash—Here are both the confessor and Wilkin Flammock ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Interruption to the Business or Discourse of the Family. The Maid will ask her Mistress (tho' I am by) whether the Gentleman is ready to go to Dinner, as the Mistress (who is indeed an excellent Housewife) scolds at the Servants as heartily before my Face as behind my Back. In short, I move up and down the House and enter into all Companies, with the same Liberty as a Cat or any other domestick Animal, and am as little suspected of telling anything ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural. Also, it must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her resistance to what she held to be follies: the passage from governess into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family dinner, and darned all the stockings. She had sometimes ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... marching feet could be heard and the Hun came down from the bedroom looking as pale as death. He opened the door and stood there listening. The insolent crunch, crunch, crunch of heavy nail-studded service boots came nearer, and a khaki column appeared on the winding road. The housewife, whose aching eyes had searched the road for Boudru ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... an occasion of idleness. Indeed, they would never have got breakfast if Mrs. Darnell, who had the instincts of the housewife, had not awoke and seen the bright sunshine, and felt that the house was too still. She lay quiet for five minutes, while her husband slept beside her, and listened intently, waiting for the sound of Alice stirring down ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... didn't hesitate to stop at a house and ask for food. "I know mother would give a boy food if one should come to our door," he said to himself, "so I do not think it wrong for me to ask for food here." He was fortunate enough to strike a pleasant housewife, who took him in and made him sit down at the kitchen table, which she covered with good things to eat. There was cold roast beef, some fried potatoes and a glass of good fresh milk. And then she gave him some ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... neighbouring island, and this the majority of them did very regularly. Stores were brought twice a year from the town of Lerwick; and it seldom happened that these ran short, for Miss Adiesen was a shrewd housewife and James Harrison a notable manager; also the Laird was somewhat eccentric, and objecting strongly to all society outside of Boden, did not like that "provisions short" should be made an excuse for frequent ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... seemed delicious, if it was "hot," to J.W.'s healthy appetite, and if he had not seen over how tiny a fire it had been prepared he would have credited the smiling housewife with ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... maiden of bashful fifteen; Here's to the widow of fifty; Here's to the flaunting, extravagant quean, And here's to the housewife that's thrifty. Let the toast pass; Drink to the lass; I'll warrant she'll prove ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... make my return all the more joyful. It is great pain to me to be absent from you so long, who art all my life and happiness. But as I must, it falls to you to guard our honour and property, and to care for our family. This, Jerome says, is the part of a prudent housewife, and to cherish her own chastity. Bide then at home, most loving wife, and be not tempted by such amusements as delight the vulgar; but patiently and modestly await my return. I too will be a faithful husband to you in everything. Be a chaste and honoured mother to our boy and ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... of a two pronged fish spear, a fisherman's knife in its sheath with belt, a paternoster, invaluable for the fathoms of fishing line attached, a small American axe with the head vaselined, a canvas housewife with sail-needles, a few darning needles and some pack thread, and a number of odds and ends including some extra ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... its climax. David went panting up-stairs to his room at dawn. He did not wish Sarah Dean to know that he had sat up all night. He opened his bed, tidily, as was his wont. Through living alone he had acquired many of the habits of an orderly housewife. He went down-stairs, and Sarah was in ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with that dear spouse of mine in the forest? Separated from her, this my home appears to me empty! A house-holder's home, even if filled with sons and grandsons and daughters-in-law and servants, is regarded empty if destitute of the housewife. One's house is not one's home; one's wife only is one's home. A house without the wife is as desolate as the wilderness. If that dear wife of mine, of eyes fringed with red, of variegated plumes, and of sweet voice, does not come back today, my life ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... sooth, be bliss and rapture; and perchance, was her humble thought, she might see it from afar, and hear of it. And when they went to court, and Clorinda had a great mansion in town, and many servants who needed a housewife's eye upon their doings to restrain them from wastefulness and riot, might it not chance to be that if she served well now, and had the courage to plead with her then, she might be permitted to serve her there, living quite apart ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... day. She looked so droll and funny that Granny forgot her cares and worries and laughed with little Gretchen over her new snow-dance. The days passed on, and the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the little room—for Granny had taught her to be a careful little housewife—was off to the forest, singing a birdlike song, almost as happy and free as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day, preparing a surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most beautiful of the fir ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the course in nursing had been abandoned, not for lack of enthusiasm but because each housewife had more than she could attend to at home. The chateau was not the only place where refugees halted, and all the villagers had done their best to make the travelers comfortable. From where I stood overlooking the two valleys, I could see the interminable line of carts on all roads within scope ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... up into the air, catching and throwing so rapidly that Bab and Betty stood with their mouths open, as if to swallow the plates should they fall, while Mrs. Moss, with her dish-cloth suspended, watched the antics of her crockery with a housewife's anxiety. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... who appeared to be a plain, simple, and somewhat jolly sort of man, now presented me to his wife, who came from the Austrian aide of the Save, and spoke German. She seemed, and indeed was, a trim methodical housewife, as the order of her domestic arrangements clearly showed. Another female, whom I afterwards learned to be the wife of an individual of the neighbourhood who was absent, attracted my attention. Her age was about four ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily condone fratricide or ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the shell, The chirp, the chickens wet and bare, The untried proud paternal swell; And you with housewife-matron air Enacting ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... I went for an afternoon's rest into the cottage of one of our country people of old statesman class; cottage lying nearly midway between two village churches, but more conveniently for downhill walk towards one than the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea for me, that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. "Why do not you go to the nearer church?" I asked. "Don't you like the clergyman?" "Oh no, sir," she answered, "it isn't that; but you know I couldn't ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... house was banked up with earth above the foundations, the cracks and intersections of windows and doors filled with cloth from the village looms; and wood was for the chopping far and near. Within these air-tight cubes these simple folk baked and were happy, content if now and then the housewife opened the one pane of glass which hung on a hinge, or the slit in the sash, to let in the cold air. As a rule, the occasional opening of the outer door to admit some one sufficed, for out rushed the hot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The housewife came to the door, scanned us for a second, and replied in the affirmative. As we sat down to table, our host bowed his head and said a simple grace for the bacon and cabbage, pumpkin-pie, cheese and tea we were about to receive; and the unexpected ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... for their undoers before the destroyer returned to its base. Despite her battles with heavy seas and high winds, the destroyer was as fit as any of her sister craft lying at anchor near by. Her brass-work glistened in the sunshine, and her decks were as clean as a good housewife's kitchen. The crew, a majority of them mere boys, were going about their work with every manifestation ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... had shown excellent judgment when he compared her to a family portrait. She was, in fact, exactly the person a painter would select to represent some old burgher's wife—a chaste and loving spouse, a devoted mother, an incomparable housewife—in one phrase, the faithful guardian of her husband's domestic happiness. She had just passed her fiftieth birthday, and looked fully her age. She had suffered. A close observer would have detected traces of weeping about her wrinkled eyelids; and the twinge of ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... heavy meals, no week-end parties, none of the entertainments so prevalent in our own day. The wife and mother was therefore spared the heavy tasks of Sunday so commonly expected of the typical twentieth-century housewife. But it is doubtful whether the alternative—attendance at church almost the entire day—would appear one whit more desirable to the modern woman. The Sabbath of those times was verily a period of religious worship. No one must leave town, and no one must travel to town save for the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... shutting down, I was forced to await the rising of the moon, and given an opportunity to speculate on the question of the wisdom of my chase. Possibly I had conjured up impossible dangers, like some nervous old housewife, and when I should catch up with Powell would get a good laugh for my pains. However, I am not prone to sensitiveness, and the following of a sense of duty, wherever it may lead, has always been a kind of fetich with me throughout my life; which may account for ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not she give coffee-parties? And a coffee-bibber is always a bad housewife; and as Baroness Rosenhjelm ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... advent of every newcomer. The atmosphere always reeked with the fumes of tobacco. Nowhere else was smoking more constant than at the Coffee House. And why any one would leave his own home and fireside to sit amid such eternal fog, was a mystery to every good housewife. But every man of the upper or the middle class went daily to the Coffee House to learn and discuss the news ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... him, under the overhanging stones, mixed up with the remains of other victuals, an assortment of empty shells, sometimes plentiful enough to remind me of the heap of Snails which, cooked with spinach and eaten country-fashion on Christmas Eve, are flung away next day by the housewife. This gives the Three-horned Osmia a handsome collection of tenements; and she does not fail to profit by them. Then again, even if the Field-mouse's conchological museum be lacking, the same broken stones serve ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... 1620; some kinds were not yet made, and pewter, wood, and leather largely filled their places. Wooden trenchers (taking the place of plates), trays, "noggins" (jug or pitcher-like cups), cups, and "lossets" (flat dishes like the bread-plates of to day), were of course part of every housewife's providings. Some few of Pilgrim origin possibly still exist. As neither coffee, tea, nor china had come into use, the cups and saucers which another century brought in—to delight their owners in that day and the ceramic ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... Smith and his little account in the morning, symbolise duty, difficulty, struggle, which you will meet, let us hope, friend, with a manly and honest heart.—And you think of him, as the children are slumbering once more in their own beds, and the watchful housewife tenderly pretends ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the doctor, again "and make them yourself, if you are a good housewife. Come, Lucy," said he, taking her hand, "do you know how the wild fowl do on the Chesapeake? duck and swim under water till they can show their heads with safety. 'T wont spoil your eyes to see ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... made in England, of its numbers from 6 to 100, it may be worth while to state, that this perfection appears to arise, from the systematic perfection of all the machines, and from the astonishing cleanness of every part of this great factory. The wheels are as bright as the grate of a good housewife's drawing-room; every action is complete in its way, and though cotton is a dusty article, yet I no where saw either dirt or dust. At the same time, order prevails throughout, for as the main shaft gives no respite to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... account, that Annie prepared to leave the place, to live with an aunt that resided a few miles distant. She collected together her little stock of goods, which she had prepared for house-keeping, consisting of table linen, bedding and such like things that the careful housewife knows so well how ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... invited to Mademoiselle Hulot's wedding. To enable him to receive his future mistress in his drawing-room, the great official was obliged to invite all the clerks of his division down to the deputy head-clerks inclusive. Thus a grand ball was a necessity. The Baroness, as a prudent housewife, calculated that an evening party would cost less than a dinner, and allow of a larger number of invitations; so Hortense's wedding was much ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... answering your eye with the boldness of an outcast girl, broken tables, pictures of the Virgin, overturned stoves, and all the dear mantlepiece trash which but an hour before had been the pride of the toiling housewife, and the ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... tracks and gathered their toll of the sea from fishing boats here and there until the Bluebird rode deep with cargo, fresh fish to be served on many tables far inland. MacRae often wondered if the housewife who ordered her weekly ration of fish and those who picked daintily at the savory morsels with silver forks ever thought how they came by this food. Men till the sea with pain and risk and infinite labor, as they till the land; only the fisherman with his nets ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... handy enough, Daddy;—for a vagrant, as one may say." Daddy Darwin was smoking over his garden wall, and Mrs. Shaw, from the neighboring farm, had paused in her walk for a chat. She was a notable housewife, and there was just a touch of envy in her sense of the improved appearance of the doorsteps and other visible points of the Dovecot. Daddy Darwin took his pipe out of his mouth to make way for the force of ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Rose is to all these people whose lives I can picture around me. Two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. A little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her finery down one of the walks; a priest passes and, while his lips mumble prayers, his eyes, held in leash by fear, prowl around me; one of his ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... not lodged between them as the former had done. So Marshal took the opportunity and secretly conveyed that away, thinking one lamentation might serve for both. Upon turning the pocket out, he found only a thread paper, a housewife and a crown piece. Upon this crown piece he lived a fortnight at a milk-house, coming twice a day for milk, and hiding himself at nights in some of the grass ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... still continued the great object of desire, particularly in the eyes of the old housewife, who produced a pot of parched flour and a string of biscuit roots. These procured her some trifle in return; but could not command the purchase of the mirror. The salmon being now completely cooked, they ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... also that every one who creates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the nations; and that every housewife who practises strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and extravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure as a ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... said, exorcising the ghost of a blush that had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's apron, "what are you doin', and company expected ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... face was very pale, and her features were good without being distinguished. She had quiet gray eyes. She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even pretty. But when Stroeve spoke of Chardin it was not without reason, and she reminded me curiously of that pleasant housewife in her mob-cap and apron whom the great painter has immortalised. I could imagine her sedately busy among her pots and pans, making a ritual of her household duties, so that they acquired a moral significance; I did not suppose that she was clever or could ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... deal more, was related by Dick Moy with the wonted enthusiasm and energy of his big nature, and with much gesticulation of his tremendous fist—to the evident anxiety of Nora, who, like an economical housewife as she was, had a feeling of tenderness for the crockery, even although it was not her own. Dick wound up by saying that if he was a rich man, "'ee'd give some of 'is superfloous cash to that there Grotto, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... a housewife, as she rewarded the singers, dropped a silent tear, wondering whether another spring would see the innocents anywhere save in a Persian slave-pen, or, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... announcement, "Smith's Inn—Refreshments for Man or Beast," stood a more modest structure. Brown, unpainted, unclapboarded, it stood by the wayside. Its log walls were stuccoed with mud, and in the wide mouth of the doorway was the brawny housewife, bare-armed, peering from beneath a slatternly red sun-bonnet, while over the doorway the passer-by read the letters in red chalk upon ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... though comparatively expensively furnished bedroom. By the side of the doctor's bed was a round pillar, which looked for all the world like one of those conventional and useless articles of furniture which the suburban housewife employs ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... was almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within the soul of the housewife who achieves it—the lace-edged shelves, the scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the white sink, hand-polished; the bland ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... "CASSELL'S BOOK OF THE HOUSEHOLD is another book, of a class of which many have been issued, and good books too; but this one, by the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of its arrangement, will go far to render the housewife who possesses it independent of all the rest.... Many a housewife will find the articles interesting enough to be taken up at any ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... were most cautious as day came. They hid for a time, then decided to go to some homely cottage and see what manner of folk they would find. Stealthily approaching a simple home, they waited until they caught sight of the housewife who was ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... And this night's effort promise future fame, She shall proceed—but if some bar you find, And that my fondness made my judgment blind, Discern no voice, no feeling she possess, Nor fire that can the passions well express; Then, then forever, shall she quit this scene, Be the plain housewife, not the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... dim consciousness of the fact, she underwent a marvelous schooling in adaptation, self-restraint. She had work of a sort, tasks such as every housewife finds self-imposed in her own home. She was seldom lonely. She marveled at that. It was unique in her experience. All her old dread of the profound silence, the pathless forests which infolded like ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... readily consented to spare his housekeeper, but the housekeeper was untoward, she was "busied in her housewife skep," and would not stir. Alick was gone to Timber End, and Rachel was just talking of getting the schoolmaster's wife as an escort, when ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Coffee Roasters' Association tells how to make good coffee the housewife is naturally interested, no matter how fervently the family may praise her own brew. Coffee is the business of these gentlemen. They know it from the scientific standpoint as well as practically. Their opinion ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... physical man and also "divert and make mirth." Into these we can not carry our teaching and our preaching and our making of social calls. The goods of the merchant, the notes of the banker, the briefs of the lawyer, the annoyances of the teacher, and the cares of the housewife, alike, would all have to be left behind. The mind could rest while the body and the spirit are being recreated. An hour a day, in the open air, with fears and anxieties and schemes all cast aside, in companionship with ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... I said, deciding to feed his stomach before I really tried to convince him. "It all comes under the heading of the drab, routine duties of a housewife. Come on ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne
... requirement for the happiness of a nation is that it should understand the function in this world of these two great instruments: a happy nation may be defined as one in which the husband's hand is on the plough, and the housewife's on the needle; so in due time reaping its golden harvest, and shining in golden vesture: and an unhappy nation is one which, acknowledging no use of plough nor needle, will assuredly at last ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... gives more than twenty varieties of toothsome and wholesome vegetables in profusion. The whole fruit and vegetable product of the temperate zone is at his door, and he has but to put forth his hand and take it. The skilled housewife makes wonderful provision against winter from the opulence of summer, and her storehouse is crowded with innumerable glass cells rich in the spoils of orchard and garden. There is scant use for the grocer and ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... consisted of the few boards which bridged the lath and plaster. A great, mysterious brick tower climbed up through it,—it was the chimney, but it looked like a horrible cell to put criminals into. The whole place was festooned with cobwebs,—not light films, such as the housewife's broom sweeps away before they have become a permanent residence, but vast gray draperies, loaded with dust, sprinkled with yellow powder from the beams where the worms were gnawing day and night, the home of old, hairy spiders who had, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... will," said Lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill- made housewife that Cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling "L" upon ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... now began to flame The star of love; while o'er the northern sky That, which has oft raised Juno's jealousy, Pour'd forth its beauteous scintillating beam: Beside her kindled hearth the housewife dame, Half-dress'd, and slipshod, 'gan her distaff ply: And now the wonted hour of woe drew nigh, That wakes to tears the lover from his dream: When my sweet hope unto my mind appear'd, Not in the custom'd way unto my ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... may be as well to mention that the "purgatory" in Mr. Jabez Gum's kitchen consisted of an excavation, two feet square, under the hearth, covered with a grating through which the ashes and the small cinders fell; thereby enabling the economical housewife to throw the larger ones on the fire again. Such wells or "purgatories," as they are called, are common enough in the old-fashioned kitchens of certain ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... on the move, running hither and thither, can't keep still a moment, but trot about, worrying, hurrying, chattering, and clattering, and had nothing in them to keep them steady, but are so light that they run after a gastric zephyr as after their quintessence. No; on the contrary, she was a good housewife, always sitting in her chair or sleeping in her bed, ready as a candlestick, waiting for her lover when her husband went out, receiving the husband when the lover had gone. This dear woman never thought of dressing herself only to annoy and make other wives ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... and fascinating personality. A ready story was always on his lips; a smile shone constantly on his face. It was said of him that he could hypnotize the most unresponsive housewife into buying articles she never needed. Up and down the highways he trudged, unmindful ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... twisted together on a slubbing frame. This last drawing reduces the roll to about the thickness of zephyr yarn. After being further doubled and twisted, the yarn, or roll, is ready for the mule spinner, which accomplishes by means of hundreds of spindles and wheels what the housewife once did with her spinning wheel. The mule, however, does the work of more than 1,000 hand spinners and takes up much less space. On this machine 900 spindles take the yarn from 1,800 bobbins, and by means of accelerating rollers and a carriage ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... the blazing hearth shall burn, Nor busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... confined to what we call proverbs. The first nine chapters constitute a continuous discourse, almost in the manner of a sermon; and of the last two chapters, ch. xxx. is largely made up of enigmas, and xxxi. is in part a description of the good housewife. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... practical instinct of the housewife, accustomed to be thoughtful about many things, revived in the ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... which the women had just left was anything but an inviting one. The place was miserably dirty. Margaret had never been a particularly neat housewife, even in her well days. The old rag carpet which disfigured the floor was worn into shreds and blotched with grease, for the chamber was cooking- and dining- as well as sleeping-room. A stove, red with rust, struggled to send forth some heat. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and is determined to comport herself according to ancestral precedents. You will have no fault to find with her respectfulness towards you and Herrania or with her behavior as a wife. She will be circumspect in her deportment towards all men and is sure to turn out an excellent housewife. She has lofty inherited standards to live up to and she ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Patricia O'Gara had no pretensions to the housewife's art herself, but she sniffed when she saw the condition of the living room. There was a dirty shirt drooped over the sofa back and beside the chair which faced the TV set were half a dozen empty beer cans. The ashtrays hadn't been emptied for at least days and the floor had obviously not been ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... but the practice is to whew the tableware of all kinds into the kitchen, whether there be a sink in the butler's pantry or not. My grandmother (and my mother, too) never suffered a servant to wash the fine porcelain or the cut glass; that responsible task was always reserved for the housewife herself, and the result was that no porcelain was chipped and no cut glass cracked. They sent me an old willow teapot from Biddeford, and it had n't been with us three weeks before our Celtic cook marred its symmetry by chipping off its ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... return, for her daughter-in-law to awake, or for the great joy of embracing her grandchildren. Nothing could be better adapted than what she saw around her to give her an idea of the confusion of a household given over to servants, where the oversight of the housewife and her far-seeing activity are lacking. In huge wardrobes, all wide open, linen was heaped up pell-mell in shapeless, bulging, tottering piles,—fine sheets, Saxony table linen crumbled and torn, and the locks prevented from working by ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... fire-places and queer andirons, the huge four-posters, the prim portraits on the wall, the great brass-clamped coffers and carved armories for the ruffs and starched collars and stiff farthingales of the women. In one picture you may see the careful housewife mournfully inspecting a moth-eaten garment which she has just taken from a chest that Wardour Street might envy; in another she is energetically cuffing the 'foolish fat scullion,' who has let the spotted Dalmatian coach-dog overturn the cauldron at the fire. Here ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... year after year, speaking poetry without knowing it, as Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain found he had been speaking prose all his life without knowing it. But the conception of the sun as God's flat-iron, smoothing out and warming the moist earth, as a housewife smooths and warms the yet damp shirts, stockings, and bed-linen brought into the house from the clothes-lines in the yard, is an astounding illustration of that "familiar grasp of things divine," which obtains in so many of our rustic households. Dante or Chaucer, two of the greatest poets of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Thurida, the housewife at Frida, was envious and covetous of these precious goods, and received Thorgunna into her home in hopes, by some means, to possess herself of them, especially the embroidered hangings of a bed; but Thorgunna refused to part with them. "I will ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... friendly light, Plies her task with busy sleight, Come, show thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces: Backward coiled and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe, The housewife's spindle whirling round, Or thread or straw that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly Held out to lure thy roving eye; Then stealing onward, fiercely spring Upon the tempting, faithless thing. Now, wheeling round with bootless skill, Thy bo-peep tail ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... a good Housewife sees a Rat In her Trap in the Morning taken, With Pleasure her Heart goes pit-a-pat, In Revenge for her Loss of Bacon. Then she throws him To the Dog or Cat, To be worried, crush'd ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... S. H. 4019, Path. 218) Housewife, 37 years always cheerful, became the happiest woman in the world, hearing God's voice and being specially under God's direction. "Acute mania." Death from bilateral phthisis with numerous cavities and bilateral pleuritis. There were no other lesions except a small sacral bed-sore, a small ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... of the industrious burgher for the haughty, pleasure-loving, idle, careless man of blood and high estate. In the bourgeois household described by Pandolfini no one can be indolent. The men have to work outside and collect wealth, the women to stay at home and preserve it. The character of a good housewife is sketched very minutely. Pandolfini describes how, when he was first married, he took his wife over the house, and gave up to her care all its contents. Then he went into their bedroom, and made her kneel with him before Madonna, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... of the movement may be better appreciated by considering the condition of woman in earlier periods. Having practically no position except that of housewife or mother, she was merely a source of pleasure for man, for whom she had little or no respect. The precieuses, on the contrary, exacted respect, honor, and a place beside man, as rights that belonged ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... planting, we've machines to reap and thrash, and the housewife has an engine that will grind up meat for hash; we've machines to do our washing and to wring the laundered duds, we've machines for making cider and to dig the Burbank spuds; all about the modern farmstead you may hear the levers clink, but we're shy of a contrivance that will teach ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... Later they all tried to come with us on the train. It looked so attractive with electric lights in each seat, and observation car and library. A reporter interviewed us and Mr. Clark gave us a box of segars and a bottle of whiskey. But they will not last, as will Dad's razors and your housewife. I've used Dad's razors twice a day, and they still are perfect. It's snowing again, but we don't care. They all came to the station to see us off but no one cried this time as they did when we went to South Africa. Somehow we cannot take ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... all less costly than heavy joints of meat; if hunger can be partly satisfied on them, and it is true that a thick slice of bread and a bowl of soup will content the hungriest stomach, less meat will be required, and consequently less expense incurred. This is an excellent reason why the housewife should not spend the bulk of her market money on a large roast of beef, or a leg of mutton, but should rather divide the amount among the different dishes of soup, fish, a ragout, or stew of some cheap cut of meat, and a few vegetables; and now and then indulge in a plain pudding, ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... The housewife is advised to procure the cooked patty cases at the baker's shops, ready to be heated and filled with the following ragout. For a dozen patties remove the bones and skin from a pint bowlful of the white ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... down from the unfinished roof, or left their bench with work half finished. The student who had left his school on the Friday before never recited his Monday's lesson. The country doctor left his patients to the care of the good housewife. Many people had gone to church and in places the bells were still tolling, calling the worshippers together to listen to the good and faithful teachings of the Bible, but the sermon was never delivered or listened to. Hasty preparations ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... in country places, where there is little matter for gossip and no street sights. Housework becomes an art; and at evening, when the cottage interior shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the housewife folds her hands and contemplates her finished picture; the snow and the wind may do their worst, she has made herself a pleasant corner in the world. The city might be a thousand miles away: and yet it was close by that Mr. Bough painted the distant view of Edinburgh ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some readin' is all right. Some folks has just moved over to the Ridge and the postmaster's wife was a-showin' me some papers they get, every week. One is The Metropolitan Weekly, and the other The Housewife's Companion. I must say, the stories in those ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... kind to its favorites, is cruel to others. The pale little, lovable cockroach has been given no show. If a housewife would call to her roaches as she does to her hens, "Here chick-chick, here cock-cock, here roaches," how they would come scampering! They would eat from her hand and lay eggs for ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... details had audited and found it correct by entering up a memorandum to that effect in each man's pay-book. Though how the O.C. completes his inventory of a whole draft, and certifies that nothing from a housewife to thirty pairs of laces per man is missing, is one of those things that no one has ever been able to understand. Perhaps he has radiographic eyes, and sees through the opaque integument of a ground-sheet at ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... all the talents of a good housewife, but she has lived as the plants live. Ignorance, monseigneur, is as sacred a thing as knowledge. Knowledge and ignorance are only two ways of living, for the human creature. Both preserve the soul and envelop it; knowledge is your existence, ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... which she hands to you from her mouth, where she has already lighted it by a live ember of charcoal taken from the fire with a spoon. Matches can be bought, but they cost about ten cents a hundred. If you tell the housewife you do not smoke she will stare at you in gaping wonder. Their children use the weed, and I have seen a mother urge her three-year-old boy to ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... Saturday morning and the next day was Easter Sunday. The little town of Kirkwall was in a state of happy, busy excitement, for though the particular house cleaning of the great occasion was finished, every housewife was full laden with the heavy responsibility of feeding the guests sure to arrive for the Easter service. Even Rahal Ragnor had both hands full. She was expecting her sister-in-law, Madame Barbara Brodie by that day's boat, and nobody ever knew how many guests Aunt Barbara would bring with ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... allowed to sleep until he woke up at ten o'clock, and when he went downstairs at eleven he found a warm breakfast awaiting him, and the little housewife, Bee, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... emphasising the hospitality by leaning over the counter and gripping a chair back in a spasmodic manner, and so proceeded to obtain, unfold, and exhibit his goods for your consideration. Under which happier circumstances you might—if of an observing turn of mind and not too much of a housewife to be inhuman—have given the central figure of this story ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... worries that arise out of knowing Micawber. It is better to have a bad debt and a good friend. In the same way it is better to marry a human and healthy personality which happens to attract you than to marry a mere housewife; for a mere housewife is a mere housekeeper. All this was what Dickens stood for; that the very people who are most irritating in small business circumstances are often the people who are most delightful in long stretches of experience of life. It is just the man who is maddening when he is ordering ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... apparently in jest, but really in sober, earnest, wiled instruction from the old woman; and made her experiments, between smiles and blushes, and merrily glorying in results that promised that she would be a notable housewife. Whether it were novelty or not, she certainly had an aptitude and delight in domestic details, such as Ethel never could attain; and, as Dr. May said, the one performed by a little finger what the other laboured at with a ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... poor old fellow's lunacy became less harmless as he grew older. It developed into a kind of kleptomania. Should a housewife have a family wash hanging on her clothes-lines, it was not infrequently the case that many of the articles would mysteriously disappear. The most extraordinary objects would vanish from the houses—chimney ornaments, cups, spoons, flatirons, buttons, photographs, and such like gear. For a time ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... detests. To found a meek and docile nation, the German is the very architect wanted; but to found a go-ahead nation quite another race is called for, other blood and other training. And, again, when I hear a notable housewife exclaiming, 'Many are the poor servant girls that have been led into temptation and ruin by dressing above their station,' I feel that she says no more than the truth; and I grieve that it should be so. Out of tenderness, therefore, and pity towards the poor girls, if I personally ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... were accordingly brought us, but with such a kind of unwillingness, as if they would much rather been rid of our company; for their tables were so very neat, and shined with rubbing like the upper-leathers of an alderman's shoes, and as brown as the top of a country housewife's cupboard. The floor was as clean swept as a Sir Courtly's dining room, which made us look round to see if there were no orders hung up to impose the forfeiture of so much mop-money upon any person that should spit out of the chimney-corner. Notwithstanding ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... results of the Great War has been the teaching of thrift to the American housewife. For patriotic reasons and for reasons of economy, more attention has been bestowed upon the preparing and cooking of food that is to be at once ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile
... these telegrams a cipher is used—as much, we presume, to ensure accuracy in the figures as for purposes of secresy. In this cipher the fickle winds are given the names of women with a covert sarcasm quite out of place in the respectable old weather-prophet whom every housewife consults before the day's work begins. Thus, when the telegraph operator receives the mysterious message, "Francisco Emily alone barge churning did frosty guarding hungry," how is he to know that it means "San Francisco Evening. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... is calm, but dreary. The moon is in a cloud in the west. Slow moves that pale beam along the shaded hill. The distant wave is heard. The torrent murmurs on the rock. The cock is heard from the booth. More than half the night is past. The housewife, groping in the gloom, rekindles the settled fire. The hunter thinks the day approaches, and calls his bounding dogs. He ascends the hill, and whistles on his way. A blast removes the clouds. He sees the starry plough of the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... so habituated herself to this way of speaking, that it was difficult for her to avoid it. As a housewife she was unexceptionable. She was careful to have everything in the most cleanly and orderly condition. She was an excellent cook, and the Squire an excellent provider, so that their table was always well spread, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... quite an air of cheerfulness that he rose at last to lock up the house and make such preparations as were necessary for his dismal ride over the mountains to Fairbanks. She had the supper dishes to wash up in Tennie's absence, and as she was a busy little housewife she found herself singing a snatch of song as she passed back and forth from dining-room to kitchen. He heard it, too, and smiled to himself as he bolted the windows on the ground floor and examined the locks of the three lower doors, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... cannot go yourself, To win the berries from the thickets wild, And housewife skill, instead, has filled the shelf With blackberry jam, "by best receipts compiled,— Not made with country sugar, for too strong The flavors that to maple juice belong; But foreign sugar, nicely mixed 'to suit The taste,' spoils not the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... was the best—whether in flocks or herds, or farm products—may be greatly improved, and his ambition and pride, as well as his interest, are at once excited to make an advance. At the same time the industrious housewife, and the blushing Miss, by an examination of the cloths and flannels—the carpets and quilts—the embroidered skirts and capes—the collars and slippers, discover that these articles are worthy not only ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... the return of Marelle. Her mood had changed. A glow of cordial humanity chased away her melancholy. The hostess that lurks in every woman—that housewife-hostess sense which goes hand-in-hand with the mother sense—was alive in her. She was keenly anxious to play the good fairy simply, unostentatiously, to these exhausted men who had come to Mogar ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... wife to one husband; and the wife to look neither to the right nor to the left, to the east nor to the west, to the north nor to the south, but to remain, and be constant in remaining, the helpmeet, the housewife, the sole property of her husband, no matter what that husband might be— vinous, vicious, vagrant, vengeful or any other things, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all these problems of large concerns, in transportation and factory work and complex industries, ought not to make us overlook the fact that on principle the same problems can be found in the simplest industrial establishment. Even the housewife or the cook destroys economic values if daily she has to spend useless minutes or hours on account of arrangements in the household which are badly adjusted to the psychological conditions. She sacrifices her energy in vain and she wastes her means where she herself is under the illusion of especial ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... a very handsome woman, and still retained much of her good looks. She was a most exemplary housewife and manager. I was often astonished to witness the incessant toil she had to ensure in attending to the wants of such ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... farmhouse and made themselves at home while the trembling farmer and his people swept the larder clean to furnish a breakfast for them. They chucked the housewife and her daughters under the chin whilst receiving the food from their hands, and made coarse jests about them, accompanied with insulting epithets and bursts of horse-laughter. They threw bones and vegetables at the farmer and his sons, kept them dodging all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hoped in the tenebrous depths of her soul, what she expected that great gift of money to bring about, is difficult to imagine. She was being bent by her environment into a grotesque similitude of a housewife. She who until three years before had never made coffee, prepared sometimes three meals a day. She walked a great deal in the afternoons, and in the evenings she read—books, magazines, anything she found ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... piece by piece, full of relics of past struggles, whose contents grow finer little by little, the first token of comfort, of wealth, in the house. Besides, she had held the distaff from morning till night, and if the housewife in her was angry, the spinner could have wept at the profanation. At last, unable to contain herself longer, she rose, and actively, her little shawl displaced at each movement, she set herself to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet |
