"Seamstress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clothes. I never have clothes in that sense," said Karen. "A little seamstress down here makes most of them and Louise helps her sometimes if she has time. Tante gave me twenty pounds before she went away; would twenty pounds do ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... To the primitive old fogies. Tallow candles were supplanted, By the lamp and spermaceti, Linsey woolsey, jeans and cotton, Long suspended from the weaving, Changed to silk and print and muslin, Changed to cassimere and broadcloth. Now the seamstress plied her sewing, With machine and modern patterns; Now the drudge of toil domestic, Sought out many new inventions, Soon rejoiced in work made easy, By the labor saving structures. And the turnpikes of ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... that he was a TAPPER. No one had ever heard of such a thing before; the officials were filled with curiosity; they besought an explanation. It appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection. Hence the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to insolence. Old companions, who, a very few years before, had punned and rhymed with him in garrets, had dined with him at cheap ordinaries, had sate with him in the pit, and had lent him some silver to pay his seamstress's bill, hardly knew their friend Charles in the great man who could not forget for one moment that he was First Lord of the Treasury, that he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he had been a Regent of the kingdom, that he had founded the Bank of England and the new East India Company, that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in. Information had been received at the police-office, that one Fossard, who had several times effected escapes from jail, was living with his mistress in a certain district of Paris; that the windows of his apartment had yellow curtains; and that a hump-backed seamstress lived in the same house. This was very indefinite; for neither the street, nor the number of the house was known, and curtains might be changed. However, Vidocq was not deterred from undertaking a search; accordingly, disguised as an old-fashioned ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... was it fitting for Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu to play the spy. I had sunk to the level of the gutter, by the side of courtesans, opera-dancers, mere creatures of instinct; even the vulgar shop-girl or humble seamstress might look ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... is an expert seamstress. She is finishing men's coats at six cents apiece; and with nothing to bother her, working sixteen hours a day, she makes fifty-four cents. The rent for the narrow little back room is one dollar and thirty-five ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... with lucent tints of age and the warm South, outlined with the statuesque purity of classic scenery and classic diction: but I myself never for a moment believed that Ariadne was a particle more unhappy or pitiable than Nancy Bunker, our seamstress, was, when Hiram Fenn went West to peddle essences, and married a female Hoosier whose father owned half a prairie. They would by no means make as lovely a picture; for Nancy's upper jaw projects, and she has ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... engrossed over an apple-parer; another snatches the needle from the weary fingers of the seamstress, and offers her in return the sewing-machine. That man yonder has turned himself into an armory, and he brings out the deadliest instrument he can produce, something perhaps that can shoot you at sight, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... are the things on which our destiny seems to hang! In a moment I was remembering what Mrs. Oliver had said about my being a good seamstress; and, almost before I knew what I was about, I was hurrying up the side street and knocking with my knuckles at ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... that many occupations for which women are admirably calculated are carried on by men, and I hope that some day a more manly public opinion will make all such persons as ridiculous as a male seamstress is now. I do not envy the feelings of men who can invent, manufacture or sell baby-jumpers, dress elevators, hoop-skirts, or those cosmetics I see "indorsed by pure and high-toned females." But when you and your friend seek the positions of "night-patrols ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... for your mutton and beef. I require a far better thing. A seamstress you're wanting for stockings and shirts, I look for a man ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... shall dress the seamstress in one of my own dresses, and let her go to the table with you. Mr. Campbell will naturally suppose that she is Miss Ida Sinclair, ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... martyrs, and Christendom fared very well. But now it amounts to nothing more than praying and singing. Ought not, indeed, every Christian at the age of nine or ten years know the entire holy Gospel, in which his name and life is written? Does not the spinner and the seamstress teach the same handicraft to her daughter when she is still young? But now even the great men, the learned prelates and bishops, do not know the Gospel. How unjustly do we deal with the poor youth ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... dressing-rooms at balls until four and five and even six in the morning, is then allowed to go to bed and to sleep until luncheon is merely humane. And it can easily be seen that it is more likely that she will need the help of a seamstress to refurbish dance-frocks, than that she will have any time to devote to her young lady's mother—who in "mid-season," therefore, is forced to have a maid of her own, ridiculous as it sounds, that two maids for two ladies should be necessary! Sometimes this is ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... her without much interest, supposing that she might be a seamstress, or laundress, or some applicant for charity. So many years had passed since he had met with this woman that she had ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... flowers and lace and dresses do not grow of themselves, but are made by people, it would seem that she could not help knowing what sort of people make all these things, and under what conditions, and why they do it. She cannot fail to know that the seamstress, with whom she has already quarrelled, did not make her dress in the least out of love for her; therefore, she cannot help knowing that all these things were made for her as a matter of necessity, that her laces, flowers, and velvet ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... get together quite a number of things for the child," Tom went on to explain. "A pair of fairly decent shoes and some material that one of the nurses will make into a dress, for she used to be a seamstress over in the good old U. S. A. before the call came. Best of all, Nellie has found just the family ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... led to a little conversation, by which I learned that he was a street candy merchant, and that some young thief had run off with all his stock in trade. He was then in hot pursuit. Learning that his mother was a seamstress and a worthy woman, I employed her to make me some shirts. I have followed the fortunes of the family, and have been Paul's adviser since then, and latterly his banker. He is now proprietor of a street-stand, and ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... brought about these changes in home life, we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the maintenance of the home, and for which, in part, the home ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... settled. My establishment consists of a housekeeper, cook, and chambermaid, seamstress, and two footmen. There are, besides, two fishermen and four bargemen always at command. The department of laundress is done abroad. The plantation affords plenty of milk, cream, and butter; turkeys, fowls, kids, pigs, geese, and mutton; fish, of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... as I had left school, my mother installed me as her assistant seamstress. She had at intervals continued to work for the slop-shops, in spite of the low prices and the discourteous treatment she received; and now, when established as her regular helper, I saw and learned more of the trials inseparable from such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... living, often on the brink of despair. His only help was a small stipend from the king of Denmark, which enabled him to spend two years in Paris and Rome, and the meager pennies that his devoted friend Elise Lensing, a poor seamstress in Hamburg, sent him. His short stories, his dramas, although they brought him fame, were of little avail in this struggle that seemed all too hopeless. Then a sudden change for the better came. Stopping at Vienna on his return ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... the Oligarchy. It was the case of General Lampton that revived crucifixion as a legal method of execution. But in the end the condemned man found his executioner in the form of a slender girl of seventeen, Madeline Provence, who, to accomplish her purpose, served two years in his palace as a seamstress to the household. She died in solitary confinement after horrible and prolonged torture; but to-day she stands in imperishable bronze in the Pantheon of Brotherhood in the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... seamstress of Paris, had among her customers the Duchesse Cataneo, Louise de Chaulieu, and, probably, Madame de Bargeton. [Massimilla Doni. Lost Illusions. Letters of Two Brides.] Her successors assumed and handed down her name; Victorine IV.'s "intelligent scissors" were praised ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... also an active member of all the parish benevolent societies, a zealous teacher in the Sunday-school, an industrious seamstress in the sewing-circle, and a regular visitor of the poor ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... or hypocritical exhibitions of spite, kicks that bruised her legs, and progressive movements of the body by which she gradually forced her companion out of bed—it was a cold winter's night—to the floor of the fireless room. During the day, the seamstress took Germinie in hand, catechized her, preached at her, and by detailing the tortures of the other life, inspired in her mind a horrible fear of the hell whose flames she caused her ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... from? He might, to be sure, depend, in part, upon his present at Christmas; but that money had long been allotted beforehand. He must have some new trousers, and pay a debt of long standing to the shoemaker for putting new tops to his old boots, and he must order three shirts from the seamstress, and a couple of pieces of linen. In short, all his money must be spent; and even if the director should be so kind as to order him to receive forty-five rubles instead of forty, or even fifty, it would be a mere nothing, a mere drop in the ocean ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... does not write to a Moorish girl in Algiers in the same way as to a seamstress of Beaucaire. It was a very lucky thing that our hero had in mind his numerous readings, which allowed him, by amalgamating the Red Indian eloquence of Gustave Aimard's Apaches with Lamartine's rhetorical flourishes ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... found that the prices were impossible for them; but at last, upon the edge of a tenement district, they found a corner flat-house, with a saloon underneath, where there were two tiny bedrooms for rent in an apartment. The woman, who was a seamstress, was away a good deal in the day, and Corydon learned with delight that she might use the piano in the parlor. The rooms were the smallest they had ever seen, but they were clean, and the price was only fifty cents a day—a dollar and a half a week for Thyrsis' and two dollars for Corydon's, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... likely Mulatto Negress, aged twenty-two years,—she is a first-rate cook, and a good washer and ironer, besides being a tolerable good seamstress. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... seamstress, Anna May. Her days in this world are nearly numbered. I was to see her yesterday, and found her very low. She cannot long remain on this side the river of death. I am now on my way to her mother's house. Will you ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... seemed! Annie had carried Baby down stairs to feed him. She heard no sound but the murmur of the sewing-machine in the next room, where Jane Kennedy, the seamstress, was working. She felt drowsy and sleepy. Slowly her head sank down among the cushions of the lounge, and the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... night the little dark-eyed seamstress sits and enjoys her ice at the same tin-topped table at the Gambrinus where the foreign Princess has sat in April. In winter Florence is a city of the wealthy; in summer it is given over entirely to the populace. So great is the ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... operas and theatres, she was a very busy woman. Her young family was much neglected and she was only too glad to transfer to her old mother what little care she did give them. The restful days were gone, one would have supposed that Mrs. Sinclair had engaged, in her mother, a maid and seamstress. "It's so nice," she told her friends. "Mother takes the entire charge of them, and relieves me; children are such a responsibility." It was news to her friends, the fact that she ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... other for the mutual sustenance of all. The husbandman tills the ground and provides food; the manufacturer weaves tissues, which the tailor and seamstress make into clothes; the mason and the bricklayer build the houses in which we enjoy household life. Numbers of workmen thus contribute and help to create ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... homes the true spiritual service that it is their part to do. Plan for a few minutes rest with the daily routine of care. But how is one to do this with so many demands made upon her? For she is expected to be seamstress, laundress, maid, cook, hostess, a companion to her husband, a trainer of her children, a social being, and a helper in the Church. If it is impossible or impracticable for one to have a servant, she will find these few ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... there is hardly a spot where sunshine cannot come, and the hideous squalor of London is absolutely unknown. One quarter alone is to be excepted in this statement, and with that we are to deal farther on. The seamstress in a London garret or the shop-worker in the narrow rooms of the East End lives in a gloom for which there is neither outward nor inward alleviation. Soot is king of the great city, and his prime ministers, Smoke and Fog, work together to darken every haunt of man, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... frequent scenes and rehearsals in her family. After many trials, she at last engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect treasure,—neat, dapper, nimble, skilful, and spirited. The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss! The new-comer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and the domestic fates ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... passed him over to Bessie, who had come without Falkner, he having made some silly excuse at the last moment,—"just cross," as Bessie confided to Isabelle. She was looking very fresh in a gown that she and Isabelle's seamstress had contrived, and she smiled up into the Senator's face with her blandest child-manner. The Senator, who liked all women, even those who asked his views on public questions, was especially fond of what he called the "unsophisticated" ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... night I sat at a table with a housekeeper, a parlor maid, and a seamstress, and listened to much talk. Mainly, it was a discussion of where the most desirable jobs were to be had in their respective lines. There was complete unanimity of opinion. Clubs headed the list, and the cream of cream were men's clubs. The housekeeper and parlor maid together painted a picture ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... or children be well, and the mother desires some one to attend to them at night, she should engage a woman who has no occupation during the day and who is willing to work at night. She should make a point of choosing one who sews well, so that the services of a seamstress might be combined with the duties of a night nurse. There is always some mending to do in all families and a woman who is clever with her needle might make herself very useful to her employer. Thousands of women sew by artificial light in dressmaking ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... Solomon Hall, the shoemaker. But Solomon had, the month before, given up his fight with debt and illness and was sleeping quietly in Trumet's most populous center, the graveyard. And Keziah, left alone, had decided that the rent and living expenses were more than her precarious earnings as a seamstress would warrant, and, having bargained with the furniture dealer in Wellmouth for the sale of her household effects, was now busy getting them ready for the morrow, when the dealer's wagon was to call. She was going to Boston, where a distant and condescending rich ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which the pariahs of society fall and on which the inexperienced so cheerfully comment. Neglected by her own set, shunned by the respectable, her fortune quite gone, she was nevertheless determined that she would not be a back-street seamstress or a pensioner upon the bounty of quondam friends. By insensible degrees came first unhallowed relationships through friendship and passing passion, then a curious intermediate state between the high ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... away with that respectable ruffian." Mrs Fyne moved her shoulders slightly—"What else could she have done?" I agreed with her by another hopeless gesture. It isn't so easy for a girl like Flora de Barral to become a factory hand, a pathetic seamstress or even a barmaid. She wouldn't have known how to begin. She was the captive of the meanest conceivable fate. And she wasn't mean enough for it. It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate awaiting ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... her thinking to some purpose. One day she walked over to the farm and made her way quietly to the back door. By good fortune she found blind Nora hemming napkins and in a mood to converse. Nora was an especially neat seamstress, but required some one to thread her needles. Mary the cook had been doing this, but now Mrs. Clark sat down beside Nora to "hev a little talk" and keep the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... as midwife, Green's grandmother Betsy Willis, was also a skilled seamstress and able to show the other women different points in the art of sewing. Shoes were given to the slaves as often as they were needed. Green's step-father was afflicted and could not help with the work in the field. Since he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... The seamstress was now summoned, and the orders were given for Priscilla's dress, to be made to fit Daisy. It was very amusing, the strait-cut brown gown, the plain broad vandyke of white muslin, and etceteras that ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... manger, several were perched on a ladder, and one was sitting cross-legged on a huge pumpkin. Johnny was going around as Grand Inquisitor from one to another. If a seam was puckered, he gave the unlucky seamstress what they called a "hickey,"—a tremendous thump on the head with his thumb and middle finger. If the stitches were big and uneven, he gave two hickeys and a pinch, and one boy got half a dozen, because Johnny said his dirty hands made the thread gray. Mrs. Marshall ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... about twenty-four he went into the country for his health, which was never very robust, and while there he met Helen Crayton. It was a case of love at first sight, but none the less pure and steadfast account. Helen was an orphan—a poor seamstress, but beautiful and intelligent beyond any woman he had ever met. They loved, and they would not be cheated out of their happiness by any worldly opposition. Hubert wrote to his father, informing him of his love for ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... freak for you!" continued Madame Boche in a lower tone of voice. "She never does any laundry, not even a pair of cuffs. A seamstress who doesn't even sew on a loose button! She's just like her sister, the brass burnisher, that hussy Adele, who stays away from her job two days out of three. Nobody knows who their folks are or how they make a living. Though, if I wanted to talk . . . What on earth is she scrubbing ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Lateau who had the stigmata. We have the most positive proof of it, as you may see in the accounts of her life now published. Her wounds caused her great pain and bled every Friday for many years. She was a delicate seamstress, and lived with her mother and sisters in almost continual poverty. She had always been remarkable for her true piety, patience in suffering, and charity to the sick. I mention this young girl because she lived in our own time, and is ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... pocket to gratify all his inclinations. Rigby did not take much advantage of his educational opportunities. His Latinity laid him open to derision in the House of Commons, and there were times when his spelling would have reflected little credit upon a seamstress. But he was quite capable of learning abroad all the evil that the great school of evil was able to teach a willing student. He returned to England, and began his life there with three pronounced tastes: for gambling, for wine, and for the baser uses of politics. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to deport itself in the conventional field, Miss Grierson took a maid and a chaperon with her when she went to Florida. But when she returned in April, the maid had been left behind to marry the gamekeeper of one of the millionaire estates on Lake Worth, and little Miss Matthews, the ex-seamstress chaperon, had been dropped off in Illinois ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... course of each month passed a lot of very tainted money, stood a large photograph of Mrs. Hogan, and another of the three little Hogans in ornamented silver frames, and his face would soften tenderly at the sight of their self-conscious faces, even at a moment when he might be relieving a widowed seamstress of her entire savings-bank account. After five o'clock this hyena purred at his wife and licked his cubs; the rest of the time he ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... born in poverty, and would not exchange its sacred memories with the richest millionaire's son who ever breathed. What does he know about mother or father? They are mere names to him. Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune. Some men think that poverty is a dreadful burden, and that wealth leads to happiness. They have lived only one side; they imagine the other. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... in July that Holm Oaks, as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best. For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season. It was their good pleasure not to. A week or fortnight of it satisfied them. They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even after her presentation two ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... comparatively well she spoke to him alone. Since she was forbidden to walk and bustle about, and, indeed, could not do so, it became her duty to leave. She could very well work at something sitting down, and she had an aunt a seamstress. ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... meanness. When she was alone, her table was of a Spartan austerity; she exacted a great deal from her servants, and paid them as small wages as she could. After that she did not mind lavishing money upon them in kindness. A seamstress whom she had once employed fell sick, and Miss Kingsbury sent her to the Bahamas and kept her there till she was well, and then made her a guest in her house till the girl could get back her work. She watched her cook through the measles, caring for her like a mother; and, as Olive Halleck ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... wright, manufacturer, architect, builder, mason, bricklayer, smith, forger, Vulcan; carpenter; ganger, platelayer; blacksmith, locksmith, sailmaker, wheelwright. machinist, mechanician, engineer. sempstress[obs3], semstress[obs3], seamstress; needlewoman[obs3], workwoman; tailor, cordwainer[obs3]. minister &c. (instrument) 631; servant &c. 746; representative &c. (commissioner) 758, (deputy) 759. coworker, party to, participator in, particeps criminis[Lat], dramatis personae[Lat]; personnel. Phr. quorum pars magna ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the money to my sister," Sylvester chuckled at their surprise. "My sister was taught in a French convent, and she is an excellent seamstress, when she isn't drunk, as ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... studied the girl at first a bit quizzically. Released from Salpetriere, eh? Was she the same sweet, pure Henriette she knew? Yes, the little Girard—la petite Girard—looked to be the same hard-working, respectable seamstress person of yore, only that she seemed very ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... account of the demand for their services decreasing—the milk trade and cheap foreign cheese having rendered common sorts of cheese unprofitable. They are usually cottagers. Of the married labouring women and the indoor servants something has already been said. In most villages a seamstress or two may be found, and has plenty of work to do for the farmers' families. The better class of housekeepers, and those professional dairymaids who superintend the making of superior cheese, are generally more or less nearly related to the families ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... tell you what was your ideal—how you would have liked to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during the four years, had lived in hunger and need—but respectably, that is the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you deny that you ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... I have been looking in vain for a seamstress for the last three or four weeks. And I thought I really should have to go to the trouble and expense of sending to Baltimore or Washington for one; for all our spring and summer sewing is yet to do. I am sure I could keep one ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... little seamstress is one of the most capable of the Japanese espionage agents operating in the Canal Zone area. Lola Osawa is not her right name. She is Chiyo Morasawa, who arrived at Balboa from Yokahama on the Japanese steamship "Anyo Maru" on May 24, 1929, and ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... of whom you speak," she said, "an old maid without any relatives or any friends in particular. She was a seamstress here before the war. It was said that she went North at its outbreak, and as she was a Northern sympathizer it would seem likely; but she was a good seamstress; she made me a mantle once and I never saw ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... youth in constant loving contact with father and mother, to each they are all in all, no third person coming between. The child that has in his father a teacher, companion, and counselor, and whose mother is to him a nurse, seamstress, governess, teacher, companion, heroine, and saint all in one, has a heritage to which the child of wealth ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... a fashionable world, ye, who have seen laid bare, the hearts full of secrets of pampered ladies, and pretentious dames, say, are they so guileless, so spotless, so blameless as society would have them? Is it only the poor seamstress, or the working-girl that is human enough to err? Is it only the breast which heaves under tatters and rags, that bears the impress of the trembling hand that has struck the "mea culpa" in its woe? O, I doubt it, I for one deny it. True it is, painfully, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Miller's bridesmaid's dress. It was the most beautiful dress Miss Lena Carlson ever made. Miss Lena goes out sewing for a dollar and a half a day." And she described the wedding at which Miss Lucy Miller had worn the frock made by the dollar and a half a day seamstress with an enthusiasm that was undimmed by Mother Johnson's lack of interest. From the wedding and Miss Lucy it was but a step to other Mifflin happenings. They found themselves in the ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... musical voice, "far away in a little street there is a poor house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen's maids-of-honor to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... dollars a month constitute our whole fortune, and if you were not the most skilful hair-dresser in Potsdam—if I could not besides earn a few dollars by making baskets, and if Leonora were not the best seamstress in town, I should like to know how we could live and send Charles to the Lyceum. But if we are to nurse the wounded, and devote our labor to them alone, we shall unfortunately soon lack the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... one of the most intelligent and interesting among them, I may here relate. Some time before, Iligliuk, who, from the superior neatness and cleanliness with which she performed her work, was by this time in great request as a seamstress, had promised to cover for me a little model of a canoe, and had, in fact, sent it to me by the sergeant of marines, though I had not rightly understood from the latter from which of the women it came. Believing that she had failed in her promise, I now taxed her with it, when she immediately defended ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread; There the single sordid attic holds the living and the dead; There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Her painting materials had been put meekly aside, and, as a further precaution at old Mata's hands, hidden under the kitchen flooring. Toward the last it was found necessary to employ an assistant, a seamstress, known of old to Mata. Her companionship, as well as her sewing, proved a boon. Seated upon the springy matting, with waves of shimmering silk tumultuous about them, the old dames chatted incessantly of other brides and other wedding outfits they had known. ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... day she was not half so wretched and lamentable as was expected of her. She even showed a brisk and pleasant air to the chief seamstress, and bade her keep some pretty things for the time of her own wedding. Even to her father she behaved as if there had been nothing more than happens every day. The worthy baron went to fold her in his arms, and let her cry there; but she only gave him a kiss, and asked the maid for ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... experienced it. His next companion was a popular orator who had lost his voice, and—as it was pretty much all that he had to lose— had fallen into a state of hopeless melancholy. The table was likewise graced by two of the gentler sex,—one, a half-starved, consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in the world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even to suffer. She had, therefore, driven ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I recognised this jacket by a certain coquetry? If she has a way with her skirts that always advertises me of her presence, quite possibly she is as cunning with jackets. Or perhaps she is her own seamstress, and puts in ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... where she stood half hook-and-eyed at her glass in her new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. Before he shut his door ho caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before the long mirror in HER new dress, followed by the seamstress on her knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she made Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. It made Lapham sick, and he despised himself and all his brood for the trouble they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... less," answered Zenobia, "than a seamstress from the city; and she has probably no more transcendental purpose than to do my miscellaneous sewing, for I suppose she will hardly expect to make ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... other. Persons desirous of purchasing them passed up and down between the lines looking the poor creatures over, and questioning them in about the following manner: "What can you do?" "Are you a good cook? seamstress? dairymaid?"—this to the women, while the men would be questioned as to their line of work: "Can you plow? Are you a blacksmith? Have you ever cared for horses? Can you pick cotton rapidly?" Sometimes the slave would be required to open his mouth that the purchaser might examine the teeth and form ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... dwelling on the same floor. However, without having exchanged a word, they were already acquainted with one another. Francine knew that her neighbor was a poor devil of an artist, and Jacques had learned that his was a little seamstress who had quitted her family to escape the ill-usage of a stepmother. She accomplished miracles of economy to make both ends meet, and, as she had never known pleasure, had no longing for it. This is how the pair came under the common law of partition walls. One evening in April, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... whole pile of the same lay on the unoccupied bed, and Gladys vaguely wondered whether the same fingers must reduce the number, but she did not presume to ask. She did not feel drawn to the melancholy seamstress, whose thin lips had ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... survey. I am angry still about the red fiddle, and I look scrutinizingly at her dress, and think how ugly is the mode. The skirt is white silk,—a brocade, I believe,—at any rate, stiff, and, though probably full to overflowing in the hands of the seamstress, who must compress it within prescribed limits about the waist, looks scanty and straight. Why should she not, she who comes before us tonight, not as a fashion, but an inspiration,—why should she not assume that immortal classic drapery ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... comes rompin' home miles ahead. But th' judges say: 'Hold on, there; yell have to weigh out,' an' a little later a notice is posted up that Dorgan is disqualified f'r ridin' undherweight in th' matther iv soul. On th' other hand, there's little Miss Maddigan, th' seamstress. She's all but left at th' post; she's jostled all th' way around, an' comes in lame, a bad last. But she's th' only wan iv th' lot that's kept th' weight. She weighs ninety-six pounds—six iv it bein' tea an' toast an ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... said Mary listlessly, to whom the word "waiting" brought up the figure of an unfortunate little seamstress who had spent a large part of her life ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... her husband left Washington, where he had been employed some time, and has never since been heard of. He was her only means of support, as the rest of the family were out of employment. Her daughter is a very interesting young woman, and would like a situation as seamstress and nurse. I would have no fear in recommending her to any one who ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... see both the chess-players and the singers, waited in a state of bliss to be summoned to the sewing-room. Only that morning it had been discovered that there was enough pink chiffon left, after the bridesmaids' gowns were completed, to make her a dress, and the seamstress was at work upon it now. So it was a gay, rose-colored world to Mary this morning, despite the leaden skies and pouring rain outside. Not only was she to have a dress, the material for which had actually been brought from Paris, but she was to have little pink satin slippers like the bridesmaids, ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is done for her!" she protested. "Why, I have never yet seen all the servants in this house! And you know there is a housekeeper? Lizzie sees her a little while in the morning, that's all. And she never sews a stitch—there's a seamstress here all the time, you know, and that has nothing to do with the clothes that come home in boxes. And little Dudley has his tutor, and his old nurse that looks after his clothes. What is it that she does to make ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... story told in La Medecine Moderne of a seamstress of Berlin who was in the habit of allowing her dog to lick her face. She was attacked with a severe inflammation of the right eye, which had to be enucleated, and was found full of tenia echinococcus, evidently derived ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... distribution, however, lies one of his own greatest safeguards against either criminal or civil prosecution. Scattered over the country are his investors—the mill hand, the poor seamstress, the humble artisan, whose total investments, comprising perhaps all their savings, seldom exceed one hundred dollars each; and, with their savings gone, there isn't money left to pay carfare to the office of the financial agent, let ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the chosen receptacles for the numerous oddments which are required in the practice and pursuit of every home handicraft, and especially those connected with plying the needle. There was a time, however, when the fabrics used in the making up of clothing were home-made, when the seamstress and the needleworker stitched and embroidered upon cloths spun if not actually woven by the housewife and her handmaidens. In the barrows containing remains of people of the Stone Age, and the peoples of the ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... in the story you have been in the very heart of the Black Forest, the companion of its people, the observer of their most intimate talk and ways. You have heard the women gossip at the well, you have made friends with Leegart the seamstress, who believes that quite against her will she is gifted with supernatural powers. There is Haespele, too, who made Joseph his new boots, and would marry Martina if he could; and there is David, the father of Martina, who was hardly kept from murdering his ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... lower front chamber, and immediately ushered her companion into the room. It was large and elegant, and in exquisite order. One really beautiful girl was driving a sewing-machine before a window with the industry of a seamstress. Another was engaged in trimming a tiny pair of satin boots with beads of every color. She was short, small, and swarthy, her chief beauty being a languishing pair of black eyes. A third lay at full length on a small bed in an alcove, reading Harper's ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... village dwellings and gregarious habits of the females who ply their rural labors in bands among the rich fields of the Lowlands, or for the unwholesome backroom and weary task-work of the city seamstress. The sunlight was fading from the higher hill-tops of Skye and Glenelg as we bade farewell to the lonely shieling and the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... has steadily stitched away for hours together every working day since the siege began, heedless of shells. There are tailors, too, who have done their best to keep officers and civilians clothed, not even quitting their benches when shrapnels burst near them, and I know of at least one poor seamstress who, by working night and day, has earned enough to buy something more than bare rations even at famine prices. Cynics do not look for heroes or heroines among such as these. They toil for gain, that is all. But they have ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... them; her clothes were not made by a seamstress, but came from city shops, and had shorter skirts, and stuck out in different places. She could not do what they did; Mollie called for her at nine at evening parties, and she usually had to go to bed half an hour after dinner, before it was dark. She had to do things that they did not do: make ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... scrubbing and window-washing. You do not mind ripping up an old gown while John reads to you under the evening lamp, but you are positively cross in the reflection that you must sew all of to-morrow with the seamstress who is to put ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... of Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has been thought that Zenobia ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... paid occupation. A native of Savoy, he possessed the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Freres. This marriage gave to French letters Henry Murger. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... living by undertakings too trivial for a contracting carpenter and joiner to bid on and too complicated for an amateur to attempt. The mother, Martha by name, took in plain sewing to help out. She had about her the air of the needle drudge, with shoulders bowed in and the pricked, scored fingers of a seamstress, and a permanent pucker at one corner of her mouth from holding pins there. The daughter showed trim, slender limbs and a bodily grace and a piquant face which generations of breeding and wealth so very often ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Dudley had had the dress made by a seamstress, it would have been equally useful to Mrs. Carter; but Mary would have lost the reward which she now enjoys in the consciousness of relieving the sufferings of the destitute. I hope Mary will always be benevolent, and never ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... mother soon after I was born. We weren't much good, I guess. It was when I was a baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I got my runaway nature from him. But I've outgrown that. Anyway, he left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother was a seamstress in a little town out West—an awful hole it was. I was a tiny little girl when they took me to my mother's funeral. I remember that, but I can't remember her. That was my first death. And now this! I've lost a mother and father twice. That ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... cardinal cloth was come to its usefulness at last. It was inevitable that Sukey Kittredge, the village seamstress, should be taken into confidence. It was no small thing to take Sukey into confidence, for she was the legitimate successor in more ways than one of Speedy Bates, and much of Cynthia and the artist's ingenuity was spent upon devising a form of oath which would ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out; and people began to think that topsy-turvy Louisa would amount to something after all, since she could do so well as housemaid, teacher, seamstress, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... courage, and the viciousness of a character in which, among faults and diseases of various sorts, covetousness bore the chief place. There is a statement also of his not being true born; that the wife of king Philip took him from his mother Gnathaenion (a woman of Argos, that earned her living as a seamstress), as soon as he was born, and passed him upon her husband as her own. And this might be the chief cause of his contriving the death of Demetrius; as he might well fear, that so long as there was a lawful successor in the family, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... hard at work, the mother cutting and the daughter sewing, but, as progress could not be too rapid, I told the mother that she would oblige us if she could procure another seamstress who ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... stability of the substances they encounter, and that there is no more quality of Energy, though much less quality of Art, in the swiftly penetrating shot, or crushing ball, than in the deliberately contemplative and administrative puncture by a gnat's proboscis, or a seamstress' needle. ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... this beginning, which led to the dancing-master's continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child to try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the fulness of time a milliner came in, and to her she repaired ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... said Mr. Devins, looking after him with contracted brow. "He has spent two Christmas days of twenty-three out of jail. He is a burglar, or was. His daughter has brought him round. She is a seamstress. For three months, now, she has been keeping him and the home, working nights. If I could only get him a job! He won't stay honest long without it; but who wants a burglar for a watchman? And how can I ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... with whom. It is, in the strictest sense of the word, the people in arms. Among its officers there is a large percentage of the intellectual elite of the country; its rank and file embrace every occupation and every class of society, from the scion of royal blood down to the son of the seamstress. Although it is based upon the unconditional acceptance of the monarchical creed, nothing is farther removed from it than the spirit of servility. On the contrary, one of the very first teachings which are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Machine, awakens sympathy for the printer of Christmas story books and reveals Gibson as the twentieth-century Thomas Hood of The Song of the Shirt. One of the most richly human of his poems is The Crane, the story of the seamstress mother and her lame boy. His realistic volume of verse bearing the significant title, Daily Bread (1910), contains a number of narrative poems, which endeavor to set to music the "one measure" to which all life moves,—the earning of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... opposite to them, and who earned a scanty living by working for cheap tailors. Often had the child looked from the window, and across the Court watched the poor girl bending her pale face over her work, never pausing to rest, but for ever stitch, stitch. However, the young seamstress had seen her little neighbour watching her, and once or twice had nodded to her, and so a sort of acquaintance had sprung up between them; indeed, on several occasions they had met, and the child's prattle had ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... associates, the low women of the quarter; the daughter of an emigre, of a marquis, or of an imprisoned mother, ought not to be allowed the honor of their company;.... it was all wrong that she was not made an apprentice.... Hortense de Beauharnais was apprenticed to her mother's seamstress, while Eugene was put with a carpenter in the Faubourg St. Germain." The prevailing dogmatism has a singular effect with simple-minded people. (Archives Nationals, AF. II., 135. petition of Ursule Riesler, servant to citizen Estreich and arrested along with him, addressed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... bad seamstress, and the two friends began to make Lottie little frocks; and, as Hopewell only had to supply the material out of the store, Lottie was more prettily dressed—and for ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... qualified to earn my living as a seamstress. I went to the city, advertised for such a place, and obtained it. I visited the child secretly, sometimes, and left money for its support and clothing. But the idea of detection and exposure troubled me greatly. One day, I read an ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... hundred francs for Pierrette's clothes. During the first week her time was wholly taken up, and Pierrette's too, by frocks to order and try on, chemises and petticoats to cut out and have made by a seamstress who went out by the day. Pierrette did ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... kingdoms; and they came from all classes of the community. To mention one interesting case, Sweden sent in 2296 subscriptions "from all sorts of people," as the distinguished man of science who transmitted them wrote, "from the bishop to the seamstress, and in sums from five pounds ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's Spoil? Lord! what a Goodly Thing is want of Shirts! How a Scotch Stomach and no Meat converts! They wanted Food and Raiment, so they took Religion for their Seamstress and their Cook. Unmask them well; their Honours and Estate, As well as Conscience, are Sophisticate. Shrive but their Titles, and their Money poise; A Laird and Twenty Pence,[27] pronounc'd with Noise, When constru'd, but for a ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor's on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are to be gone any length of time, she will not stay there at all, simply because she is afraid of your men ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... honey and pollen; but its special art will remain an utter secret, notwithstanding all the scrutiny of the microscope. In our own industries, the plane denotes the joiner, the trowel the mason, the scissors the tailor, the needle the seamstress. Are things the same in animal industry? Just show us, if you please, the trowel that is a certain sign of the mason-insect, the chisel that is a positive characteristic of the carpenter-insect, the iron that is an authentic mark of the pinking-insect; ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... of great virtue and merit, him, through jealousy and envy at the honor the Romans had for him, he caused to be murdered, and left his kingdom to Perseus, who, as some say, was not his own child, but supposititious, born of a seamstress called Gnathaenion. This was he whom Paulus Aemilius led in triumph, and in whom ended the succession of Antigonus's line and kingdom. But the posterity of Aratus continued still in our days ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... delivered by the Chapter contrary to the expressed wish of Louis XI., after he had killed a man who had insulted him. But in 1483 the element of romance appears again. A priest called Robert Clerot, with a sword beneath his cloak, was accustomed to pester with his attentions a pretty seamstress in the parish of St. Eloi. Her legitimate lover interfered, and, when the priest drew his sword, called in help and killed him with his dagger. Twice more in this period is a "couturiere" the heroine of the Fierte. ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... towards improving what they call the "conditions" of their workers; but a worker might have his conditions as carefully arranged as a racehorse has, and still have no more personal property than a racehorse. If you take an average poor seamstress or factory girl, you will find that the power of chastising her through her property has very considerable limits; it is almost as hard for the employer of labour to tax her for punishment as it is for the Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... commonplace is the highest place." Or rather, there are no hierarchies of the soul. Artist or seamstress or carpenter, we live by the glory that flows to us through whatever curtains of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... over some of the sewing that Mrs. Clare had done and soon learned that the woman was a clever seamstress. ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... and surveyed the work critically. Luckily there was no fault to find, for Mrs. Hoffman was a skillful seamstress. ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... by making love to a seamstress when I'm over the Potomac," remarked Welch, getting upon his feet. "I'm decidedly in need of ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Hall and moved across to the Abbey. Young Russell, by mischievousness or carelessness, contrived to tear his master's train from the ermine cape which surmounted it; and the procession was delayed till a seamstress could be found to repair the damage. "I contrived to keep that old rascal George IV. off the throne for half an hour," was Lord ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Apparently she could not shake off the habit. Building up a resistance to the action of the drug, her system became accustomed to enormous quantities of it. She could not eat, nor sleep, nor work without it. Most of her scanty earnings went to purchase it. She was a seamstress, and by toiling many hours a day managed to get enough money to buy it. Some years back she had been a happy wife and mother. Her husband loved her; she was devoted to him and to their two children. She lost him; she lost the care of her children; rapidly she drifted ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... the actress, "you can buy them ready made. Now I have a little seamstress who works like an angel and is not dear; I'll send her ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... stockings, or any of the costly, flimsy, all but unlaunderable underwear she affected, became not quite perfect, she put it aside against that vague day when she should have leisure or inclination for superintending a seamstress. Within two hours of her decision she had a seamstress in the house, and they and her mother were at work. There was no necessity to bother about new dresses. She would soon be putting off black, and she could get in Paris ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women, in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework. A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun a review of her early studies in the New England ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... abused term, catholic. We must not suffer Association to be merged in mere partisanship for any class or calling, or blind hostility to any abuse or oppression. We are not the champions of the slave or the hired servant, the factory girl or the housemaid, the seamstress or the washerwoman. We are not the advocates merely of labor against capital, of the employers as opposed to the employed. Ours is the cause of all classes and vocations, and our success is the triumph of all. We are in danger of becoming partial and one-sided; ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... the cabin she noticed, near the door, the print of a man's skin-boot in the snow. It was an exceedingly large print; such as is made by a careless white man who buys the first badly-made skin-boots offered to him by a native seamstress. The college boy could not have made that track. His skin-boots had been made by some Eskimo woman of no mean ability. She had fitted them to his high-arched and shapely feet, as she might have done had he been ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... one of the factory towns of Massachusetts recently agreed to take charge of a little girl while her mother, a seamstress, went to another ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... since we met; A patient little seamstress yet, With small means striving, Have you a Lilliputian spouse? And do you dwell in some doll's ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker |
