"Housework" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The housework had coarsened the mother's hands. Her nose had lost its shape and her temples had fallen in. Constant stooping over the kitchen range had made her a little round-shouldered. Father and mother met ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... all about it. The great sorrow has come upon you, and there's only one comfort—there are others. It falls upon all who try to get out of doing their own housework in New York. And I'll bet you were good enough to the last cook, too—only asked her for one night out a week, came to her meals promptly, didn't demand more than a fair living wage, and let her have the rest. Yes, of course you did. And you're going ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... were formerly self-supporting girls. In most cases wives are dependent upon their husbands in money matters, a situation which is apt to irritate women who were formerly self-supporting. The husband is often inclined to rate the generalized character of housework as being of less importance than his own highly specialized work. The wife's irritation at this may be increased by the fact that often she, too, believes that her domestic duties are less dignified and less ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... said my neighbour Mrs. Jones to me one day, "what shall I do for good help? I am almost worried out of my senses. I wish somebody would invent a machine to cook, wash, scrub, and do housework in general. What a blessing it would be! As for the whole tribe of flesh and blood domestics, they ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... takes place in the convent, I should have made it finer and truer. But my poor friend's chest got worse and worse. The fine weather did not return.... A maid I had brought over from France, and who so far had resigned herself, on condition of enormous wages, to cook and do the housework, began to refuse attendance, as too hard. The moment was coming when after having wielded the broom and managed the pot au feu, I was ready to drop with fatigue—for besides my work as tutor, besides my literary labor, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... that Mother Blossom was to enjoy a real vacation, there was very little unpacking to be done. The Winthrops had left their bungalow fully furnished, and though there was no one on the island to help with the housework, Mother Blossom declared that if they all helped her there would not be much to do. In a few days they felt very much at home and the children voted Apple Tree Island quite ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... aided by her experience in domestic economy was Zetta Weyman, a young woman of twenty-eight, who had begun to work for wages at the age of eleven; at this time she still attended school, but did housework out of school hours. When she was older, she was employed as a maid in the house of a very kind and responsive couple, who gave her free access to their interesting library, where she read eagerly. A trip to Europe had been especially stimulating. ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... yourself like an invalid, as you are. Then change your way of life entirely: go out a good deal in the air, read, and talk, and sing, and play on the piano—you used to be a good player, I remember. Let the housework and the sewing be done by somebody else, except what you can do without a strain upon yourself. Then I should be a little careful about my dress, to have it becoming and all that, and I would invite in a little company once in a while, ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... him a last farewell as he disappeared into the woods, then, to occupy herself, she helped Evangelina with what little housework there was to do, later going with her to the garden patch where the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... to neglect. Nor must we forget that every housewife was something of a physician, and the gathering and drying of herbs, the making of ointments and salve, the distilling of bitters, and the boiling of syrups was then as much a part of housework as it is to-day a part of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... again against two fresh tears. "I spoiled two cakes this afternoon. Elice tried to show me how to make them; and I burned my finger"—she held up a swaddled member for inspection—"horribly. I just can't do this housework, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Mrs. Lovejoy's dresses and do a little mending, but she can not sit down and spend one or two hours going over a dress in the way a specialist maid can. Either Mrs. Lovejoy herself must do the sewing or the housework, or one or the other must ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... eatin' of her up. An' she behaved consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out 'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in my grandparents' employ was known as Jonas, had but one good eye and was half-witted. It modestly refrains from asserting that he had only one arm and one leg. My grandmother did the cooking—her children the housework; but Jonas was their only servant, if servant he can be called. It is said that he could perform wonders with an ax and could whistle the ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... ventilation deemed necessary during the daytime came through the usually open door, by which Maggie Jean was continually passing in and out, bent on domestic duties. (Like other Scottish housewives, she carried out much of her rougher and dirtier housework in the open.) At night, when work was over, the bright lamp and fire of glowing peat and blazing logs kept the house warm and snug; the pungent "reek" from the peat, too, acted ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... she and Mrs. Saunders knelt down and said a prayer together. Then Esther said she would make up her room, and when that was done she insisted on helping her mother with the housework. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... the girl whose acquaintances in her high-school days are in a position to keep well manicured, if not "lily-white," hands does not like to have hers show the effect of housework, when that means scrubbing the floor and cleaning the stove. Gloves? Ah, well, James Nasmyth once wrote: "Kid-gloves are great non-conductors of knowledge." I believe that gloves of any kind are a makeshift in real cleaning of dirty corners; ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... the station, superintending the transportation of the new stock, which had come by the early local; Betty was busy with her housework upstairs; and only ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... got to thinkin' of her; in my great affliction she Was sich a comfert to us, and so kind and neighberly,— She'd come, and leave her housework, fer to he'p out little Jane, And talk of her own mother 'at she'd never see again— Maybe sometimes cry together—though, fer the most part she Would have the child so riconciled and happy-like 'at we Felt lonesomer 'n ever when she'd put her bonnet on ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... recovered rapidly from her illness, and her former shyness and aversion to seeing people were rapidly leaving her. She no longer lay in bed until noon, but was up with the rest of the family, insisting on doing her share in the housework, and proving a very apt pupil in learning that useful and wrongly despised art; when callers came she always dropped in to chat with them a little while, and even the mail-carrier of the "rural delivery, route number two," the errand-boy on the wagon ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... When all the housework was finished, the girls dressed the happy, wriggling baby in his blue highwayman coat and three-cornered hat, and kept him amused while mother changed her dress and got ready to take him over to granny's. Mother always went to granny's every Saturday, and generally some of ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... exhalations of their packed bodies throughout the night, that breakfast is eaten. The father goes to work, the elder children go to school or into the street, and the mother remains with her crawling, toddling youngsters to do her housework—still in the same room. Here she washes the clothes, filling the pent space with soapsuds and the smell of dirty clothes, and overhead she hangs ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... was a bug on fishing. Bill coaxed him to take a day off while they watched the place. He did this, and while Mrs. Royce was strenuously engaged with her housework, the boys got the keys to the radio room. The rest was easy, even to fixing up camouflaged parts that would befool Mr. Royce, if he should enter the room. They got the apparatus in parts to their own room, where ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... of the pioneer days were four maidens who must have been valuable as assistants in housework and care of the children,—Priscilla Mullins, Mary Chilton, Elizabeth Tilley and Constance Hopkins. The first three had been orphaned during that first winter; probably, they became members of the households of Elder Brewster and Governor Carver. All have left names that ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... farmhouse. Passing through the hall, which,—unaltered since the days of its original building,— was vaulted high and heavily timbered, she went first into the kitchen to see Priscilla, who, assisted by a couple of strong rosy-cheeked girls, did all the housework and cooking of the farm. She found that personage rolling out pastry and talking volubly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... our hearts to keep this law." The music ceased. He heard the organist speaking, up in the loft; criticising, no doubt: and it reminded him somehow of the small sounds of home and his mother moving about her housework in the hush between breakfast ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ceased the incessant twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and the worn, white, blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove stalls for protection, would writhe and twist in and out again. Little girls ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... know they use my boy only for the big cases," asserted the mother, and giving him an affectionate pat on the head, she went to her housework, while Morgan took a book from one of the cases, refilled his pipe, and settled down to spend a quiet ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... you that he kneaded the bread, to save Mrs. Lively's back; that he did most of the family washing—that is, he did the rubbing, the wringing, the lifting, the hanging out—and once a week he scrubbed. When he wasn't "doing housework" he was in his office, busy, not with patients, but in writing articles for magazines and papers. Then he set to work upon a book, at which he toiled hopefully during the dreary winter, for he was almost ignored as a physician, although there seemed to be considerable sickness. He heard of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... business of domesticity. She knew that, with her mother in the house, Florrie would never get to bed at half-past eight and very seldom at nine, and that she would never be free in the afternoons. She knew that if her mother would only consent to sit still and not interfere, the housework could be accomplished with half the labour that at present went to it. There were three women in the place, or at any rate, a woman, a young woman, and a girl—and in theory the main preoccupation of all of them ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Pratt, has been equally successful. It has now nearly 200 pupils of both sexes, representing a great variety of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. The pupils in both these institutions receive not only an elementary English education, but are also instructed in housework, agriculture, and useful mechanical pursuits. A similar school was established this year at Forest Grove, Oreg., for the education of Indian youth on the Pacific Coast. In addition to this, thirty-six Indian boys and girls ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... dollars a month, and the table-d'hote dinner runs up to over twenty-two dollars apiece, so with my half of the rent—eighteen dollars—I'd have less than nothing left out of my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons. You see you'd not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but you'd be paying more of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... any more. I'm going to make that money myself. You needn't do anything but take care of father; and I'll help you do the housework," added Leo, cheerfully. ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... she always keeps her promises. There hasn't been any since Mira, and she's three. She was born the day father died. Aunt Miranda wanted Hannah to come to Riverboro instead of me, but mother couldn't spare her; she takes hold of housework better than I do, Hannah does. I told mother last night if there was likely to be any more children while I was away I'd have to be sent for, for when there's a baby it always takes Hannah and me both, for mother has the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... figure, bareheaded, the long yellow curls floating out behind him, as he half knelt, half sat on the sliding plank ready to jump off at the proper moment. She had no thought of danger as she resumed her housework. Neither had Stevie. At length it happened, however, that just as he was nearing the end of the descent, an eagle came sailing low overhead, caught the little fellow's eye, and diverted his attention ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... day was cold and windy, but Marion hurried the housework in a way that made Kate sniff disgustedly, and started out to signal Jack and bring him down to their last meeting place. Flash after flash she sent that way, until the sun went altogether behind the clouds and she ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... and Grizzle with her, making Grizzle do all the housework, and every morning she went to the cubby-hole in which she kept Johnnie and gave him a good breakfast, and later in the day a good dinner, and at night a good supper; but after she gave him his supper she would say ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn. That is why you will never obtain adequate human nourishment from a young girl or boy. Such persons may do for housework, but not in the kitchen. Never in the kitchen! No one can aspire to be a philosopher who is in an incomplete state of physical development. The true cook must be mature; she must know the world form her social point of view, however humble it be; she must have pondered concerning ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to coax you,' said the girl proudly withdrawing her hand. 'It's a very simple thing. Will you let me go and do day work at the new Hospital, just across the park? They want some help in the housework. There are ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... done, dried and replaced, she retired to her bedroom and turned her attention to her hands and nails, minutely solicitous, always in dread of the effects of housework. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... inkstand, locked her bookcase, and went at housework as if it were a five-barred gate; of course she missed the leap, but scrambled bravely through, and appeared much sobered by the exercise. Sally had departed to sit under a vine and fig-tree of her own, so Di had undisputed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and now she was planning for the fall hat—she had seen the cutest feathery toque, that came low down about her face, pushing to all sides little wisps of golden curls and making her look—well, very nice indeed. Then, of course, there had been less housework, and she had had much more time to herself, more time and more freedom. The acquaintance with Flossie, the young wife of the floor-walker in the flat across the landing, had helped a lot. Together they had plunged deep into the intoxication ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... In her housework Ruth had developed a system that would have made a fortune for any man if applied in the same degree to his business. I learned a lot from her. Instead of going at her tasks in the haphazard fashion of most women or doing things just because her grandmother and ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... which probably represented a good deal of looking into windows and pricing; and her gown of the cheapest material, drooping from her round shoulders, is the product of the poor dress-making skill of hands which show only too well who does all the housework at home. The children, a boy of four and a girl of seven, are in their best, too, with faces scrubbed ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... housework, my mother would hum some of the songs of the famous wedding bard, Eliakim Zunzer, who ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... than I could. One thing he did which I thought was very clever. He played ball by himself. He was so crazy about ball play that he could never get enough of it. Miss Laura played all she could with him, but she had to help her mother with the sewing and the housework, and do lessons with her father, for she was only seventeen years old, and had not left off studying. So Billy would take his ball and go off by himself. Sometimes he rolled it over the floor, and sometimes he ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... and had they in the first three days been able to hear of another servant, Mrs. Rexford would have abruptly cancelled her agreement with Eliza. At the end of that time, however, when there came a day on which Mrs. Rexford and Sophia were both too exhausted by unpacking and housework to take their ordinary share of responsibility, Eliza suddenly seemed to awake and shake herself into thought and action. She cleared the house of the litter of packing-cases, set their contents in order, and showed her knowledge of the mysteries of the kitchen in a manner which fed the family ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and he locked her in. She knew then that she was a prisoner. When he was at the mill at night, while he slept during the day, she was to be locked up in her stuffy, airless room. When he was about she would do the housework, always under ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... called on Say occasionally, but only between the periods of the attacks of fever. On such visits she would assist the patient, do the housework, and arrange the hides or covers for her. Say harboured a wish to consult her about her disease; but Shotaye studiously avoided any opportunity for confidential talk. One day, however, when the two were alone in the kitchen, and the invalid felt somewhat relieved, she opened her heart to her ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... nothing disturbs the deep repose; hardly a voice is heard; you catch the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, or the buzzing of a fly in the parlour, all over the house. Miss Bronte sits alone in her parlour; breakfasting with her father in his study at nine o'clock. She helps in the housework; for one of their servants, Tabby, is nearly ninety, and the other only a girl. Then I accompanied her in her walks on the sweeping moors the heather-bloom had been blighted by a thunder-storm a day or two before, and was ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... pleasant change in Mrs. Bagley's routine. It had been a job to keep Martha occupied. Now that Martha was busy, Mrs. Bagley found time on her own hands; without interruption, her housework routine was completed quite early in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... a week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the housework of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men of the creek. Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and hard-bitten, who had been buried so deeply inside the Circle that they did not know there was a Klondike Strike. The news he brought ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... was in the way of recovery, and her husband went to the City as usual. A servant had been engaged—a girl of sixteen, who knew as much of housework as London girls of sixteen generally do; at all events, she could carry coals and wash steps. But the mistress of the house, it was evident, would for a long time be unable to do anything whatever; the real ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Tommy. It would be a great advantage to me to have someone I could send on a message without feeling I was interfering with the housework." ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the run with the men, mustering ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... other, when, after the after-dinner housework was all done, she took her shawl and hood from the peg, and drew some old wool socks of Caleb's over her shoes. She went out without saying a word. Ephraim waited a few minutes after the door shut behind her; then he ran to ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... by the name of Polly assisted about the housework. She was considered one of the family, and always ate at the same table, according to the kindly custom of those primitive times. She always called her mistress "Mammy," and served her until the day of her death; a period of forty years. The children were much attached ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... answered. "Mary is always busy with her housework and her flowers and the poor sick folks she's always a-looking after—just like her mother, if you remember. Charlie, he's working late to-day—some breakdown or something that's keeping him overtime. That brother of yours is a fine manager, Miss Helen, and," he added, with a faint note of something ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... 18th of September, 1889, Miss Starr and I moved into it, with Miss Mary Keyser, who began performing the housework, but who quickly developed into a very important factor in the life of the vicinity as well as that of the household, and whose death five years later was most sincerely mourned by ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Besides general housework, the girls are given special instruction in cooking, nursing and care of health, under their experienced matron. They sew for an hour a day in classes, under the supervision of another lady who also instructs a class in cutting by model and dress-making, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... stockades, nearly every man of family had a farm of his own, land was cleared, fruit trees were set out, attention was given to the raising of hogs, sheep, cattle and horses, and a little Empire of the West began to appear. The women were busy with spinning, weaving and general housework. The men cleared and fenced their land. The fortifications were kept only as a refuge in time of an attack by the Indians—which, however, was not infrequent, because the French in the North coveted the rich lands beyond the Alleghenies, ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... got to thinkin' of her; in my great affliction she Was sich a comfert to us, and so kind and neighberly,— She 'd come, and leave her housework, far to be'p out little Jane, And talk of her own mother 'at she 'd never see again— Maybe sometimes cry together—though, far the most part she Would have the child so riconciled and happy-like 'at we Felt lonesomer 'n ever when she 'd put her bonnet on And say she ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... red leather Cylinder marked "Music," so that people would not take it to be Lunch. Every Morning about 9 o'clock she would wave the Housework to one side ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... twice to thrust her back through the curtain, although clearly determined to do her no injury; but she held her ground easily. At a rough guess it was tennis and boating that had done more for her muscles than ever strenuous housework ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... to one miserable room and the cold mutton of yesterday. I fear getting up and making my own bed and washing my own handkerchiefs and blouses, and renovating last year's hats to make them look like this year's. I fear a poor husband and a procession of children, and doing the housework with an incompetent maid, or maybe without any at all. Those are the ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... giving a holiday, one day at least of pleasure in the year, to more than eight thousand little girls, who are "little mothers, in the sense of having the care of younger children while the parents are at work." In thrifty New England, children perform not a little of the housework, even the cooking; and "little mothers" and "little housekeepers" were sometimes left to themselves for days, while their elders in days gone by visited or went to the nearest town or village ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... kind of weather prevails, a daily brisk walk should be taken, out of doors, on the porch or in a room with open windows. A daily sweat, as well as the daily prayer, is good for the well-being of the expectant mother. All forms of light housework are commendable. Keep out of crowds. Spend more time in the parks than in the department stores. An occasional evening at the concert or theater is diversion and harmless provided the ventilation ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... while Mrs. Osbourne was doing her housework in the little cabin on the hillside, Indians would gather outside and press their faces against the window-panes, their eyes following her about the room. There were blinds, but she was afraid to give offense by pulling them down. The absence of the Indians ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... while the men handle the workers it is the women who do the paying and oversee things generally. They are engaged in all kinds of business for themselves and are employed by scores of thousands. Many thousands carry work home where they can take care of their children, do the housework and be ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... for many years, that the West Side was the quite unfashionable part of town. It did not seem strange to them to see their father sweeping his third-floor study with his own hands, and they were quite used to a family routine which included housework for every one of them. Indeed, a certain amount of this was part of the family fun. "Come on, folks!" Professor Marshall would call, rising up from the breakfast table, "Tuesday—day to clean the living-room—all hands turn to!" In a gay helter-skelter all hands ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... she did not tell me I was good-for-nothing; I was good for something then, it seems, before I had known so much trouble. The wedding was at Candlemastide, and our first year all went well; my husband had apprentices, and you, Maren, helped me in the housework." ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... was a jealousy among some of the islanders of the facts that her father had brought with him a few heavy articles of "real mahogany furnitur," and that her stepmother had always been able to hire others to do her spinning and weaving, and even to "help her at odd spells with the heft o' the housework." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Dick explained. "Greg is chopping it up. Harry is hauling the water supply and Dan is doing the housework ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... Nai-nai had been more wide-awake, she could hardly have failed to notice how quickly the housework and cooking were done next day; but as she was not given to interesting herself in other people's motives (although she was very suspicious when there was the slightest cause for it, and sometimes when there ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... gave quite a good deal of heat and made a cosey appearance with the glow of the burning coal visible; and because the kitchen and pantry contained everything that is necessary for life, and a little more. Frederick refused to have anybody share his quarters with him or help with the housework. As he said, he wanted to settle his accounts and take his trial balance, and the presence of another person might be disturbing to ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... The improvement of housework conditions is largely in the hands of household employees. If a young woman is an excellent cook and a competent household manager, she can make practically her own conditions with women employers. If she prefers to live at home or in a room of her own outside the house where she is employed, ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... mischievous as the perpetration of the wrong. It is vacillation, hesitation, lack of will, feebleness of purpose, imperfect execution, that works ill in all life. Be monarch of all you survey. If a woman decides to do her own housework, let her go in royally among her pots and kettles and set everything a-stewing and baking and broiling and boiling, as a queen might. If she decides not to do housework, but to superintend its doing, let ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her, as she started down the trail. Mrs. Watson lived about a quarter of a mile away. Her husband was a miner, and she had a grown daughter, so it was quite convenient for Mrs. Watson to come over twice a week, or oftener on occasions, and do the housework in the cottage where Mr. Peter Bailey and his son Jack lived. Mrs. Watson would do the sweeping, dusting and as much cooking as she had time for, and then go back to her ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... Mis' Mary kept on with my studies, and taught me to write. As I grew older, she taught me to cook and how to do housework. During this time Mis' Mary had given my mother one dollar a month in return for my services; now as I grew up to young womanhood, I thought I would like a little money of my own. Accordingly, Mis' Mary began to pay me four dollars a month, besides giving me my board and clothes. For ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... a sigh; "now I will dry the dishes for you.... You didn't mention the fact, when you engaged me, that I was also expected to do general housework." ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... hadn't any little sister at all!" Well, her wish had come true: Tilderee was gone. Perhaps she would never live in the log house again. There was no "little plague" to vex or bother Joan now. The lighter chores, which were her part of the housework, could be finished twice as soon, and afterward she would have plenty of time to do as she liked: to play with and sew for Angelina, for instance. Angelina!—how she hated the very name! She never wanted even to see ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... little town. He had gone there in the first place because it was far removed from everyone and everything he knew, and in some ways the experiment had proved a success. The deaf old woman who came in to do his cooking and housework worried him little, and apparently did not gossip about his actions or his habits; whilst the three rooms he had furnished were more than sufficient ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... could earn enough money to build a better house for her; so I set to work harder than ever. But the girl lived with an old woman who did not want her to marry anyone, for she was so lazy she wished the girl to remain with her and do the cooking and the housework. So the old woman went to the Wicked Witch of the East, and promised her two sheep and a cow if she would prevent the marriage. Thereupon the Wicked Witch enchanted my axe, and when I was chopping away at my best one day, for I was anxious to get the new ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... read in the daily papers, you are in no danger of forgetting this), that you are not domestics, and, while in an emergency I would have you shrink from nothing that needs doing, I do not think you should do any washing. Cooking you will very often have to do, but the ordinary housework does not come at all into your province. If your patient is a chronic invalid, I would have you make yourself useful in the house. Do the shopping, order the meals, anything that will show your patient you are ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. 'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... college classrooms; women who made plural nouns the running mates of singular verbs; women who were novices in housework; women drilled in drudgery from childhood—all expanding, all dwelling in a democracy that had begun its life afresh in a new land, and all with the wonder of gardens where there had been only ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Stern. "Well, this room will have to be shut up and left. We've got more than enough, anyhow. Less work for you, dear," he added, with a smile. "We might use only the lower floor, if you like. I don't want you killing yourself with housework, you understand." ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Miss Phinney declared that she knew he had made a mistake as soon as she heard the Beasley woman talk; nobody else, so Angeline declared, could "get a word in edgeways." Mrs. Tripp sighed and affirmed that going out of town for a woman to do housework was ridiculous on the face of it; there were plenty of Bayport ladies, women of capability and sound in their religious views, who might be hired if they were approached in the right way. Keturah gave, as her opinion, that if the captain ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... came with eyes dancing—it was to be an especial day—a fete—and the gods had smiled on her planning and given them perfect weather. Never such sunshine, such crystal air, such high-hung clouds! Breakfast over, they hurried about the miniature housework, and packed the kit for a long day's tramp. Then they started forth, the cat following, tail aloft. Beyond a dim peak, where the clove opens southward, by the side of a tiny lake they lunched and took their noonday rest. She watched ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... until the thrifty sempstress was counted well to do, and held in esteem according. Sometimes, when she got weary, and thought a change of labor would do her good, she would engage with some lucky dame to help do housework for a month or two. She was a famous hand at pickling, preserving, and making all manner of toothsome knick-knacks and dainties. Nor was she deficient in the pleasure walks of the culinary art. Betsey Pratt, the tavernkeeper's wife, a special crony ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... discipline of character, these trials made the pleasant things with which they were mixed up seem doubly pleasant, the disagreeable parts of her life relished the agreeable wonderfully. After spending the whole morning with Miss Fortune in the depths of housework, how delightful it was to forget all in drawing some nice little cottage with a bit of stone wall and a barrel in front; or to go with Alice, in thought, to the south of France, and learn how the peasants manage their vines and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... "I can do housework," said Millicent eagerly. "I always did our room—all of it. And I cooked all our meals. Mother went out such a lot, ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... after the housework had been finished and the dinner dishes put away, Debby Alden dressed and went to call upon ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... savages, and their religion was entirely unfit for publication. Socially they were coarse and repulsive. Slaves did the housework, and serfs each morning changed the straw bedding of the lord and drove the pigs out of the boudoir. The pig was the great social middle class between the serf and the nobility: for the serf slept with the pig by day, and the pig slept with ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... that's Lizy Ann Ez full o' grit ez any man 'T you ever see! She does the chores Days when I can't git out-o'-doors 'Account o' this 'ere rheumatiz, And sees to everything there is To see to here about the place, And never makes a rueful face At housework, like some women do, But does it ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... harden her heart to the clamorous call of the world struggle. She lived so happily and so securely in her Cloud Cote, going to business by day, doing her small bits of housework in between whiles, frolicking with her friends, chumming with Angelo, playing with her sister's babies, running about in her pretty car. It was like living in the clouds indeed, with the world of chaos beneath. For there was the struggle of reconstruction going on, ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... sharpshooter, sent a dart. Mr. Clayton had taken into his service and into his household a poor relation, a sort of cousin several times removed. This boy—his name was Jack—had gone into Mr. Clayton's service at a very youthful age,—twelve or thirteen. He had helped about the housework, washed the dishes, swept the floors, taken care of the lawn and the stable for three or four years, while he attended school. His cousin had then taken him into the store, where he had swept the floor, washed the windows, and done a class of work that kept fully ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... lived in a large old-fashioned house, set back from the street. When the children rang the door bell a deaf woman who did all the housework for him—he was an old bachelor—came to ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... Mr. Dean: "let's go and see Mr. Pembroke at once and inquire about it. He can't do more than throw us out, and it might be he'd be tickled to let us have the cabin. Every hundred dollars' worth of work done on that property, whether it's mine, trail, dam, or housework, is equal to an assessment. If we remodel the house and use it, he can buy the property or, as they say, 'prove up' on it. What do you say? I believe we can make ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... to do all the housework, but she managed to do her duty and found spare time for reading. He gave her the works of Dostoievsky and Tourgenieff to read. Those descriptive of the beauties of nature she liked best. Their conversations were but momentary, when they met in the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... my little girl!" I said, and hobbled away to finish the housework, but my heart seemed to take on a pair of pure white wings, like dove's wings. I forgot withal that ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the young lady will take to housework like a bear-cub to a syrup keg, and old Marthy will potter around with her flowers and be perfectly happy with the two of them. Cheer up, Bill Loo! Lemme have a smile, anyway, before I go. And I wish," he added quizzically, "you'd spare me some of that sympathy you've got going to waste. I'm a poor ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... it has been demeaned. No other honest work in the country so belittles a woman socially as housework performed for money. It is the only field of labor which has scarcely felt the touch of the modern labor movement; the only one where the hours, conditions, and wages are not being attacked generally; the only one in which there is no organization or standardization, no training, no regular ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... good woman. But then there was all the housework to do, and, if she had thoughts, she did not often let them wander outside of the kitchen door. And just now she was baking some gingerbread, which was in danger of getting burned in the oven. So she pinned the shawl around the child's neck again, and left ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... The patient was said always to have been somewhat seclusive, mingling little with other people; this tendency was so strong that she would leave the room when visitors came. She always slept a great deal. It was stated that she was able to do heavy housework quite well, but ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... barracks was in order at Camp Meade. Before the boys answered the first drill formation each morning they did the housework. Everything had to be left spick and span. There was a specific place for everything and everything had to be kept ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... housework, and had all the furniture she had brought from the hill hut moved into the cottage and arranged in one ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the current misconceptions of the Kindergarten. There are still thousands of persons who suppose it is only a superior sort of day-nursery where children may be safely kept and innocently employed while the mother gets the housework done. ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... working early in the morning before she went downstairs, nor after she went to bed at night, except by candlelight, and she could not, of course, burn candles. So Mrs. Perry had to be taken into the secret, and Huldah worked in comfort by the fire in the afternoons, after she had done her housework. ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Marie has got a job at general housework. This gave me the blues—after all our life together, this the end! I'd rather have her do general prostitution, with the chance of having an occasional rest in the hospital. But perhaps her drudgery will kill her enthusiasm for ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood |
