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More "Sewing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but instinctively felt that such action on the part of a guest would be indecorous. She hoped Mrs. Barry would suggest it, but such a move was evidently far from that lady's thought. She sat in her white silken gown, with sewing in her lap, the picture of ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... were sitting over the fire In the growing dusk of a February evening. Their sewing lay on the table; some home dresses they were making for themselves, for they had never too much superfluous cash for dressmakers, with fashionable patterns and fashionable prices. It had grown too dark to work, and they had turned to the fire for ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... "up-stairs," to wait upon and take care of. Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good deal; her daughters took it with more outward calmness. Although baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation, born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of society out of the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... its membership increased to seventy-five, congregations large and growing, a nourishing Sunday-school and mission school, two preaching services on the Lord's day, and a vigorous Y.P.S.C.E.; a wide-awake mid-week service, a woman's missionary society, and a sewing-school for girls. The church edifice has been renovated at a cost of three hundred dollars, and a parsonage is being erected. For intelligence, Christian character and progressive work, this church is considered the best among ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... of an efficient person to assist you in taking charge of your domestic affairs, Enna," said a maiden aunt of mine to me one evening. I pulled my little sewing-table toward me with a slight degree of impatience, and began very earnestly to examine the contents of my work-box, that I might not express aloud my weariness of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... my maid, for I was nervous at being so far away from anyone. M. and Mme. A. and all the servants were at the other end of the house, and there were no bells in our wing (nor anywhere else in the house except in the dining-room). When I wanted a work-woman who was sewing in the lingerie I had to go up a steep little winding staircase, which connected our wing with the main building, and walk the whole length of the gallery to the lingerie, which was at the extreme ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... or Brokennose get the map now, without getting me; and, I reckon, you fellers will see that they have their hands full if they tackle that job," and his eyes glanced proudly around the little circle of men, who had gathered close about him while he was performing his interesting little feat in sewing. ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... a small room, well shielded from the draughts which raged through the building in winter; and here Sergeant Archelaus had lit a fire to-night and sat before it, sewing an artilleryman's stripe upon ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... than devout. In this game Mrs. Brenton often joined him, lending her thin soprano voice to help out his quavering childish notes, and doing her conscientious best, the while, to keep the songs attuned to the key of proper piety. To be sure, she did insist upon bringing her sewing into church and, on one occasion, she patched her young son's trousers into a hideous pucker, by reason of her greater interest in the method ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Mrs. Burtwell was wont to explain in a deprecatory tone; "only we should have preferred to have Madge graduate first, before devoting herself to a mere accomplishment. It seems a little like putting the trimming on a dress before sewing the seams up," she would add; "I did it once when I was a girl, and the dress ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... ready; and it struck Hawksley forcibly that he was hungry, that he had not touched food since the night before. Gregor, valeting in a hotel, pressing coats and trousers and sewing on buttons! Groggy old world, wasn't it? Gregor, pressing the trousers of the hoi polloi! Gregor, who could have sent New York mad with that old Stradivarius of his! But Gregor was wise. Safety for him lay in obscurity; and what was more ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... puff sleeve close to the shoulder was the last of the dainty dress to be put on. Mrs. Bilter took eager pleasure in dressing her pretty sister in the daintiest of gowns. When she looked up she saw her husband coming through the gate for his noon dinner. She put down her sewing and moved to meet ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... the Manor House did not get their dresses from London, a dressmaker came from Brighton to help them, and all together they sat sewing and chattering in the work-room. Maggie would take a bow or a flower, and moving it quickly, guided by the instinct of a bird building its nest, would find the place where it decorated the hat or bonnet best. Neither Sally nor Grace could do this, nor could they drape a skirt ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... other pupils scattered far and wide to their various homes, Nita had remained at the convent, roaming at will through the deserted class-room and beautiful grounds. She was the pet and darling of the entire community. In the long summer afternoons when the nuns carried their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river, Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her snatches of song ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... 1716, taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of Fine Works as Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a new Way, Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses, flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing, Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking children and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery on gauze, Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels, embroidery, silks, and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers. Many of the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... although we found it much more difficult than to make cordage of our old cables, after they had been converted into junk, which was an expedient that we had been obliged to practise long before. We had also long before used all our sewing sail-twine, and if, knowing that the quantity with which I had been supplied was altogether inadequate to the wants of such a voyage, I had not taken the whole quantity that had been put on board to repair the seine into my own custody, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... woman had constituted herself the "mother of the Circus Boys," as she expressed it. She always insisted on doing their sewing for them, helped them to plan their costumes and gave them friendly advice on ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... but a moment for Jerry to reach the house and in another she had reached the room where her mother sat sewing. ...
— A Day at the County Fair • Alice Hale Burnett
... years ago the cotton gin, the steamship, the railroad, the telegraph, the reaping, sewing, and modern printing machines, and numerous other inventions of scarcely less value to our business and happiness were ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... in the river, the children were swimming to school, blue smoke curled up into the still air, kalo was baking among the stones, and a group of women sat sewing and making leis on the ground. The Waimanu day had begun; and it was odd to think that through the long summer years days dawned like this, and that the people of the valley grew grey and old in ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... sat in the house all day long, occupied solely with her ornaments and her rouge, and did not concern herself with sewing and stitching. So Sia Kung-Schong's mother still had to look out for ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... to be dreaded by them, on account of the inevitable discomforts and dangers of it. While the ship is lying in the docks, waiting for the appointed day of sailing to arrive, they can pass their time very pleasantly, sitting upon the decks, reading, writing, or sewing; but as soon as the voyage has fairly commenced, all these enjoyments are at once at an end; for even if the wind is fair, and the water is tolerably smooth, they are at first nearly all sick, and are confined to their berths below; so that, even when there are hundreds ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... Tom Davis, brother of Bertha and Agnes, asked for a half-day's vacation and helped Algernon whitewash. Bert had impressed Max into carpentering, and the work of bookcase-building went on noisily inside the shed. The girls sat on the weedy patch of ground outside, sewing ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... In sewing up the wounds in the abdominal walls, advantage will be gained by putting in a certain number of stitches so deeply as to include the whole thickness of the muscles, and in the intervals between these deep ones to insert others less deeply, so as accurately ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... sit and dream. She would gradually cease sewing and, with her hands idle, and forgetting her surroundings, she would weave one of those romances of her girlhood and be lost in some enchanting adventure. But suddenly Julien's voice giving some orders to old Simon would snatch her ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a large amount of industrial work done by the inmates. This chiefly consisted of sewing and embroidery. A feature of the exhibit was an oak cabinet containing a series of specimens showing cross sections of the brain prepared at the Pathological Institute in New York city. It was of decided scientific value and interest. ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... of course, her mother had to get her another needle, and then thread it for her. She went to sewing again till she pricked her finger, and the sight of the wee drop ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... was growing strong that like Him in whose memory the day was honored, she and her little ones might soon not know where to lay their heads. She succeeded in getting the small sum owed to her and payment also for some sewing just finished. More work she could not readily obtain, for every one was busy and preoccupied by ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... not learn that father left anything, and we were compelled to get long as we could. Mother obtained sewing to do at low prices, ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... noted the contrast it made with the bare, unkempt posts of the State. It was the Catholic mission at Wombali, and it was a beauty spot of flowers, thatched houses, grass, and vegetables. There was a brickyard, and schools, and sewing-machines, and the blacks, instead of scowling at us, nodded and smiled and looked happy and contented. The Father was a great red-bearded giant, who seemed to have still stored up in him all the energy of the North. While the steamer was unloaded he raced me over the vegetable garden and ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother's arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... out of the country hied, His breast with love and valour glowing. In cloister they have placed his bride, Instruction to receive in sewing. ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... were as empty as possible they shut the doors and sprinkled bran on the carpets just as though they were sewing garden seeds, which ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... her ways with them, she watched their work, and made them those pretty speeches that seem like the flowers of childhood, and which her cousin had already silenced, for that gaunt woman loved to impress those under her with salutary awe. The sewing-women were delighted with Pierrette. Their work, however, was not carried on without many and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... interesting employment she thought proper to be so much engaged as not to remark the entrance of our hero. To Joseph's accustomed "Good evening, Miss Silence," she replied merely by looking up with a cold nod, and went on with her sewing. It appeared that she had determined on a literal version of her promise not to say any thing to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stitches, and knit 78 rows: this is for the coloured part, and in sewing it together at the elbow, it must be rather tightened; and for the cuff, which is done in white, cast on 18 stitches and knit 66 rows, and sew it very nicely to the ...
— Exercises in Knitting • Cornelia Mee
... without stint to her husband's people, with never a thought of self-pity or self-praise. By day and by night she labored for her husband and family and for her people, for she thought them hers. She taught the women how to adorn their rude homes, gathered them into Bible classes and sewing circles, where she read and talked and wrought and prayed with them till they grew to adore her as a saint, and to trust her as a leader and friend, and to be a little like her. And not the women only, but the men, too, loved and trusted her, and the big boys found ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... people who talked, with many intimate pauses of silence, were all Bostonians, though of widely different types. The hostess, sitting in an easy chair and engaged with some sewing, was a girl of about twenty-six. She wore a brown skirt of an ugly cut and shade and a white silk shirt, adorned with a high linen collar, a brown tie and an old-fashioned gold watch-chain. Her forehead was too large, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... garden, with its surrounding railings and locked gates, nurses in uniforms were pushing prams. Toddlers were tossing a ball across the lawn and tottering after it with excited shouts. Beneath a tree in the clear sunshine a young mother sat sewing. Other men's women! Other men's babies! He would have to set out in search of his kingdom afresh; all his old quests had been mistaken. But he was older now and lame; he lacked the energy for a new journey. It seemed to him that ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... then framed by him before delivery, the rule laid down in the Robbins case was held to apply throughout, with the result that North Carolina could tax or license no part of the transaction described;[583] so also as to a sewing machine ordered by a customer in North Carolina and sent to her C.O.D.;[584] so also as to brooms sent in quantity for the fulfillment of a number of orders, and subject to rejection by the purchaser if deemed by him not up ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... who were either supported by, or supported, the ten old men were kept busy by their aged relatives hunting shirt studs and collar buttons, pressing broadcloth trousers, letting out waistcoats or taking them up, sewing on buttons and laundering white ties. The barber had to call in extra help, because of the trimming of beards and shaving of chins and cutting of hair that ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... few days, Charles and Louis called again. Minnie was crocheting, and her adopted mother was occupied with sewing; while Thomas engaged them in conversation, the subject being the impending conflict; Louis, taking a decided stand in favor of the South, and Thomas being equally strong in ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... if they was mine; but they do seem sort of different. Sort of lovin'er, like they was when they was little. I can't say, Ben, that I ain't missed it. Seems real pleasant to have 'em let on how much they think. It makes me feel reel good. Dear me suz!" said Mrs. Potter simply. She took up her sewing and sat busily working. Once in awhile she ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... linings, and thread, and sewing silk, and hooks and eyes! Why, David Dunne, it can't be true! How did he know—David, you blessed boy, you must ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... information about the usual operations in binding books; folding; gathering, collating, sewing, forwarding, finishing. Case making and cased-in books. Hand work and machine work. Job and blank-book binding. Illustrated; ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... out he sat for a moment in deep thought. Elsie's list of articles bought with her last month's allowance consisted almost entirely of gifts for others, generally the servants. There were some beads and sewing-silk for making a purse, and a few drawing materials; but with the exception of the candy, she had bought nothing else for herself. This was what ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... a bright afternoon in early autumn, that Annie sat sewing by a window in the luxuriously furnished parlor of Colonel Stuart, her uncle, who was the practicing physician of the village, that she was started by a loud ringing of the door bell. Supposing it was some one after her uncle, she paid little heed till she ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... the rind becomes soft, and then scraped smooth with a case-knife; then rinse, and wipe and dry it, and return it to the cheese-room, and turn it often until dry enough for market. Rich cheeses are apt to spread in warm weather; this is prevented by sewing them in common cheap cotton, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... drew near, the under-master perspired up the sunny road with another object than that of refreshing himself at the familiar little inn. He entered by the ivied porch, and within, as usual, found Miss Fouracres, who sat behind the bar sewing. Miss Fouracres wore a long white apron, which protected her dress from neck to feet, and gave her an appearance of great neatness and coolness. She had a fresh complexion, and features which made no disagreeable ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... to let her stay longer in the Industrial School than was usual with the young girls of the neighborhood. Even up to the day of her confirmation, she had taken sewing lessons twice from a most accomplished teacher. A short time before Easter, the teacher had assured Gertrude that Veronica had made such extraordinary progress, that she was already prepared to ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... intelligence in a community tends to quicken invention, and leads to the discovery of those scientific principles and of those ingenious labor-saving machines, by which the productive power of the community is so greatly multiplied. The cotton-gin, the steam-engine, the sewing-machine, and the reaping-machine would never have been invented in a nation of boors. It is not asserted that every boy who goes to school will become an inventor. But it is as certain as the laws of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... completed her nest, sewing together the leaves by passing through them a cotton thread twisted by the creature herself, leaps from branch to branch to testify her happiness by a clear and merry note; and the Indian weaver[2], a still more ingenious artist, having ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... extra work which is thrown upon the nervous system through seeing, reading, writing, and sewing with defective eyes is recognized by all physicians as an important cause of disease. The tax made upon the nervous system by the defective eye lessens the supply of energy available for other bodily use, and the general health ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... laid with split boards, for dressed lumber is costly in the Bush. Looking through the open door into the general living-room, which was also lighted, he could see a red twinkle beneath the register of the stove, beside which a woman was sitting sewing. She was a hard-featured, homely person in coarsely fashioned garments, which did not seem to fit her well, and Nasmyth felt slightly disconcerted when he glanced at her, for she was not the woman whom he had expected to see. Then his glance rested on a ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... to myself, "I wonder what this means. It can't be a male sewing society, I suppose. It can hardly be a prayer-meeting at Jim Wheaton's house. Male members! eh? I thought the female members carried on this church." In my perplexity, I handed the note to my wife. She read it with care. "Well," said she, "I am glad the people are waking up at ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... congressional district, and it would really be doing his people a great favor to give them more. After setting forth the mutual benefits to accrue from trusting him, he appealed to Wogan & Co. with the vehemence and energy of the sewing-machine man, or life-insurance agent, to send on the goods without further delay. They should never regret dealing with him, his character and standing being a sufficient guaranty that he could not play false. He was acting in good faith, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... tea in Tish's parlor, but she kept us out of the bedroom, where we could hear Miss Swift running the sewing machine. Finally Aggie said out of a ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and a small washstand, has a door opening into the side yard near the stable, and another into the wash shed, besides the one connecting it with the dining room, making three doors in all, and one window. The fourth room is very small, and is used as a sewing room; it adjoins the dining room, and the parlor, and has a door opening into each. Besides the four rooms on the first floor, there is a large pantry, having a small window about four feet from the floor, the ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... 1st length twisted round the little finger work 2 D, L, 2 D, then put the second round the little finger, leave a little space, and work 2 R D, L, 2 R D; repeat until there are 66 Ls on each side. Fasten it neatly into a circle, by untying the first knot and sewing ...
— The Bath Tatting Book • P. P.
... chile was bruk aff that habit," observed the mother, as she seated herself beside the table with some sewing. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... named Graciosa. She was all her mother's joy. Every day she had given her a different dress, of gold brocade, velvet, or satin; yet she was neither conceited nor boastful. She used to pass her mornings in study, and in the afternoon she sat sewing by the queen's side. She had, however, plenty of play-time, and sweetmeats without end, so that she was altogether the happiest ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... "Afterwards—well, it was downhill all the way. I didn't know how to work, and by that time I had learned my health was going. Since then, I've lived on the proceeds of the pawnshop—I had my jewels, you know—and on the odd bits of money I could scrape together by taking in sewing." ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... impossibility of clearing it of the seeds!" But the foot-gin appeared on the scene, and indigo went down before cotton. Ranged along the walls of the room are some twenty rough wooden frames, looking like a compromise between a straw-cutter and a sewing-machine, each furnished with two strong rollers operated by a treadle and acting precisely like those of a clothes-wringer. Behind each of these machines stands a man or woman with one ever-moving foot upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... little one in both her own, and said, smiling, yet with meaning in her eyes, as she tapped the small fore-finger, rough with impatient and unskilful sewing— ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... very interesting to Lily-toes. No baby could be more comfortably situated on a hot summer day; at least, so her mamma thought, as she tied Lily-toes securely in her chair with a soft scarf, and went back to the sitting-room and the busy sewing and talking with her dear old girlhood friends. I presume if Lily-toes had been a first baby, her mamma would have hesitated about leaving her there. She would have feared—may be—that the chickens would eat ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... properly arranged, and so forth. Everything was going on well; the house was in exquisite order from attic to cellar. Ogden shut up with Mr. Richards, the servants quietly busy, and Danton Hall as still as a church on a week-day. Grace, humming a little tune, took her sewing into the dining-room, where she liked best to sit, and began stitching away industriously. The ticking of a clock on the mantel making its way to twelve, the rattling of the stripped trees in the fresh morning wind, were, for a time, the only sounds outdoor or in. Then wheels rattled rapidly over ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... maid's room sat three or four young girls who sat all day long sewing, or making bobbin lace, without once stretching their limbs all day, because the mistress did not like to see idle hands. In the ante-room there sat idly the melancholy Yakob, Egorka, who was sixteen and always laughing, with two or three lackeys. Yakob did nothing but wait at table, where ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... now turned his attention to matters touching the souls of his people. He appeared in church; he took a leading part in prayer meetings; he met and encouraged the temperance societies; he graced the sewing circles of the ladies with his presence, and even took a needle now and then and made a stitch or two upon a calico shirt for some poor Bibleless pagan of the South Seas, and this act enchanted the ladies, who regarded the garments thus honored as in a manner sanctified. The Senator ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... theatre goes no farther than the proscenium. Beyond that, you have a parlor, with one wall removed for your better view. It is Asmodeus's show improved. I went to a Paris theatre with a friend. The play began with half a dozen milliners chattering and sewing round a table. After a few moments, my friend gave a prodigious yawn, and declared he was going home, "for you might as well sit down and see a parcel of real milliners at work as this play." Tastes differ; and I did not find this an objection. But what a compliment that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... say," was the answer of the chief engineer. "We were running along all right, and we got your word to switch on more power, after the turn. We did that all right, and she was running as smooth as a sewing-machine, when, all of a sudden, she short-circuited, and the storage ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... against the coming of Winter. Life can be adjusted to its simplest forms. From his fortieth to his fiftieth year, Socrates worked every other Thursday; then he retired from active life, and Xantippe took in plain sewing. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... stupid mood!" laughed Hsi Jen. "Can it be that you don't know that our sewing in these quarters mayn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... occasionally were. Now on what slender circumstances do the fates of dogs and mortals hang. Only that afternoon Mr. Jellybrand, in the innocent self-confidence of his heart, had agreed with Miss Maple, an elderly and bitter spinster, that the next sewing meeting of the Dorcas Sisterhood should be held in her house and not at the Rectory. He had told Mrs. Cole of this on his way upstairs to the nursery. Now Mrs. Cole liked the Dorcas meetings at the Rectory; she liked the cheerful chatter, the hospitality, the gentle scandal ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... try our faith. In the course of the morning came from some sisters in Dublin, 18 yards of calico, 34 yards of print, 43 balls of cotton, and a pair of worn lady's boots. This donation came most seasonably, as we had been mentioning repeatedly the need of calico and print in our prayers; and the sewing cotton and the pair of boots came at once into use. Moreover, this donation was a sweet encouragement to me to continue waiting upon the Lord. Evening was now approaching, and no money had yet come in for provisions, etc., which would be needed on the Lord's day. About six o'clock, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... me with sharp and severe parents and a gentle schoolmaster; for when I am in the presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even as perfectly as the world was made, or else I am so sharply taunted and cruelly threatened—yea, presently sometimes with pinches, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... pretty lips of Oldfield. No wonder that Londoners thought the character bewitching; no wonder that Cibber wrote so enthusiastically of the actress in that wonderful Apology. "Had her birth plac'd her in a higher rank of life," he notes, perhaps forgetting that her very descent entitled the poor sewing-girl to a position which poverty denied her, "she had certainly appear'd in reality what in this play she only excellently acted, an agreeably gay woman of quality a little too conscious of her natural attractions. I have often seen her in private societies where women of the best rank might ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... in the fervor of his feelings he held his pipe between his teeth to free the hand which held it, and deliberately squeezed both of her hands in his, still she did not appear embarrassed, nor vexed; and when he had released it, quietly went on with her sewing, as composedly as if what he had just done was quite usual, and a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... fighting; white and black, all were at work, and all were eager; the servants contended for the honor of going with their master; the women flocked to the house to assist in the work of preparation, cutting out and making under-clothes, knitting socks, picking lint, preparing bandages, and sewing on uniforms; for many of the men who had enlisted were of the poorest class, far too poor to furnish anything themselves, and their equipment had to be contributed mainly by wealthier neighbors. The work was carried on at night as well as by day, for the occasion was urgent. Meantime the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Martin, I'm right down sorry for her, and poor little Miss Maudie," said Lucy. "Now, Miss Hoodie, I'm going to take you out into the garden a little, and when we come in I'm going to stay with you in the sewing-room." ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... see, it's not every trade that deserves to have a cat about the place. My first master was a shoemaker, and I lived with him happily enough, until one morning in winter, when I found the wicked man sewing strips of—let me whisper—cat's fur on ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... making cheese. In like manner, they go to the gardens near to the outskirts of the city both for collecting the plants and for cultivating them. In fact, all sedentary and stationary pursuits are practised by the women, such as weaving, spinning, sewing, cutting the hair, shaving, dispensing medicines, and making all kinds of garments. They are, however, excluded from working in wood and the manufacture of arms. If a woman is fit to paint, she is not prevented from doing so; nevertheless, music is given over to the women alone, because ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... he said suddenly, smiling, but the hated nickname to-night was almost a caress. "Tell me," Ralph's voice was very grave—"You've been sewing? Mother ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... she sat absorbed in her work, sewing her heart into it, for every stitch in it delighted not only her skilled artistic sense but her religious feeling, little waves of anxious thought swept across her one after another. She was a person of timid and brooding temperament, and her father's eccentricities and past ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... etc. Occasionally, for the "open day," or as a special exercise, a favorite play may be given by the children with the simplest kind of costuming and stage-setting. These can well be made in the school as a part of the manual training and sewing work. In giving the play, it will generally be better not to have pupils memorize the exact words of the book, but to depend upon the impromptu rendering of their parts. This method will contribute more largely ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... evening dress in the dining-room at night, and did honor to the place; but otherwise he was to be seen only in our corridor, or in the cold, dark chamber at the stair head where the camareras sat sewing, kept in check by his decorum. Without being explicitly advised of the fact, I am sure he was the best of Catholics, and that he would have burnt me for a heretic if necessary; but he would have done it from his conscience and for my soul's ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... was always on her legs from morning to night, and never seemed fatigued. Indeed, when she sat still she was rather uncomfortable; and this was her weak point, for her restlessness interfered with sewing and mending, which ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... reverent fear of intruding by a look than I should have at the door of a king's chamber. A narrow rough ledge added to the window-sill is his bench. Behind this he sits from six in the morning till seven at night, bent over, sewing slowly and painfully on the coarsest shoes. His face looks old enough for sixty years; but he cannot be so old. Yet he wears glasses and walks feebly; he has probably never had in any one day of his life ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... home, too, matters had settled into their usual routine. Miss Jane had returned, and the days, for Genevieve, were full of study, practice, and the usual number of lessons in cooking and sewing. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... case in her kamik, so it would not be lost. She could do wonderful sewing with the needles. Koolee was very proud of her sewing. No one else in the whole village could sew so well, because they had not such good needles to do it with. Koolee used them only for her very ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... on each side of the hearth, with their toes on the fender. Meg had been sewing at an overall for little Fay, but at that moment she laid it on her knee and ran her hands through her cropped hair, then about two inches long all over her head, so that it stood on end in broken spirals and feathery curls above her bright eyes. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... essentials; but, along with these, Crabbe gives you the complexity and detail of life which surrounded them. Hood presents you with the picture of a lonely woman at midnight toiling and starving in the slavery of sewing; but Crabbe would trace her from her quiet country-home, through the follies which led her to a London garret. Hood, in his "Lay of the Laborer," makes you listen to the wail of a strong man imploring leave to toil; Crabbe would find him drunk in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Aquileia, as soon as the weather was warm enough, as we meant to pass ourselves off for runaway slaves, if we were arrested and questioned gold coins in our possession would have been most dangerous to us. We agitated the idea of sewing a few into the hems of our tunics and into the ends of our belts; but we came to the conclusion that any attempt to exchange a gold coin for silver would be very dangerous and much ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... while, girls, if you please," said Alice, "till I just tell you what I want to have done. In the first place, I think it will be so pleasant to form a sewing Society, to meet on Saturday afternoons, and make bags and needle-cases and collars and many other things to sell; and I know my father will be delighted to have us put a box, with these things, in his store. Then, while we sew, I propose that one reads aloud from some interesting book ...
— Self-Denial - or, Alice Wood, and Her Missionary Society • American Sunday-School Union
... the Busy Bee Sewing and Civic Club, cool, starchy and unhatted, clicked past on slim, trim heels, all radiated by the reflection from a pink parasol, gay embroidery ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... one of the oldest towns in New Jersey," remarked Andy, as they walked around the depots and down Broad Street, the main thoroughfare. "Down along the water front is one of the largest sewing machine factories in the world. I was through it once and I can tell you it was a sight ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... worry neither. Everything we had was made by my folks. My aunt done de carding and spinning and my mammy done de weaving and cutting and sewing, and my pappy could make cowhide shoes wid wooden pegs. Dey ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... I had for some time been familiar with that tree, and all my surroundings, for I had been breathing two and a half years, and had made some progress in the art of reading and sewing, saying catechism and prayers. I knew the gray kitten which walked away; knew that the girl who brought it back and reproved me for not holding it was Adaline, my nurse; knew that the young lady who stood near was ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... hunting habits and the simple agriculture of his people, nor with their ways of doing other things. He has started an orange grove, and in a short time will have a hundred trees, so he says, bearing fruit. He has bought and uses a sewing machine, and he was intelligent enough, so the report goes, when the machine had been taken to pieces in his presence, to put it together again without mistake. He once called off for me from a newspaper the names of the ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... sewing resembles shoemakers' or saddlers' work; but, the leaf being like fine cloth and not like leather, perhaps the name "tailor-bird" is the most appropriate for the little worker. The bag is lined with soft, downy material, and in this the tiny eggs are laid—tiny indeed, for the ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... Leonard placidly sewing, with Johnnie and Ned playing about the room. "You, evidently, are not afraid," ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... must who is to earn her living by it, entails consumption or curvature of the spine. Engraving music is one of the most laborious, by the care, the minute exactitude, and the intelligence it demands. Sewing and white embroidery do not earn thirty sous a day. But the making of flowers and light articles of wear necessitates a variety of movements, gestures, ideas even, which do not take a pretty woman out of her sphere; she is still herself; she may ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... Press your thumb on its closed edges; for this casket opens with a spring, and, if it is ripe and ready, it will unclose with a touch, and show you a little fish, with silver scales laid over a covering of long, silken threads, finer and more delicate than any of the sewing-silk in your mother's work-box. This silk is really a wing-like float for each scale; and the scales are seeds, which will not stay upon the little fish, but long to float away with their silken trails, and, ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... its antimacassars, its upholstered furniture, its flower-pots and canary-bird, its sewing-machine in the window, was more like an old maid's best parlour than a soldier's sitting-room. The small, neat-featured mistress herself, who was not very strong, and always, even in summer, wore a little shawl round her shoulders, suited ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Sophomore Select Sewing Society met at the home of Miss Jane Bartley. A pleasant time was had by all, making rackets and nightcaps for ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... "Barbara the sewing-woman—" began a young voice, which immediately collapsed, the speaker retreating with great impetuosity behind her mother or aunt, whichever it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... compromising herself; so the only thing she said was that she had noticed that he had been acting a bit peculiar lately, now they mentioned it. As time went on, the scarlet porch became the talk of the town. It was duly discussed at the sewing society, and the reading club, and the general sentiment was practically unanimous that Jackson must be suffering from incipient cataract or senile dementia, and needed a guardian. Even Mary McGuire remarked to Mrs. Burke that she was afraid "that there front porch would sure set the ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... somehow, already as if she belonged with the place. She sat upon the doorstone and hemmed small muslin curtains which were to go in the bedrooms upstairs, and Martha, Winifred, and Ellen, seeing this, sent for their sewing materials and helped her, while ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... running machine, and in the second by a much larger number of men very poorly trained and ill-fitted for this work, and each of whom while doing it is taken away from some other job for which he is well trained. The work which is now done by one sewing machine, intricate in its appearance, was formerly done by a number of women with no apparatus beyond ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... a heavy heart she took herself up-stairs for the afternoon. This tete-a-tete had become their custom every day; she with her sewing, and the sick man luxuriating in a pipe. Tresler was still bandaged, but it was only lightly, for the wound ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... I took a book and sat down by the little fire to read; but though I kept on turning over the pages, I did not follow the text; for I was either thinking about Mrs Dean's needle as it darted in and out of the stuff she was sewing, or else about Mr John Dempster and our meeting that day—of how I had promised to go up and see him on Sunday, and how different he was to ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... All that now remained to be done was to polish them off, and Erik worked at this while Father Mikko told his stories. The children had enough to do to watch 'Pappa' Mikko's face and listen to the wonderful tales, and Mother Stina was busy with some sewing—she couldn't spin because the noise of the wheel would have ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... years of such care and attention as the mother would be sure to bestow. Milly, as she was familiarly called, reared the children, tilled the garden, and, being especially handy with the needle, turned off many a job of sewing for the family of her mistress. She was entirely ignorant so far as books go, but Paul read the Bible to her when visiting his loved ones on Sunday and what he explained she remembered and treasured up for comfort in her ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... arisen at the entrance of Toulan, and laid their sewing-work aside. A ball of white cotton had fallen to the ground from the lap of one of them, and rolled through ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... godmother,' said Miss Wren, 'I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but it's the trying-on by the great ladies that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... uncommon thing in these sweatshops for men to sit bent over a sewing-machine continuously from eleven to fifteen hours a day in July weather, operating a sewing-machine by foot-power, and often so driven that they could not stop for lunch. The seasonal character of the work meant demoralizing toil for a few months in the year, and a not less demoralizing ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... matter," people say, "whether I do my little work well or not. Of course I must not steal, nor lie, nor commit forgery, nor break the Sabbath. These are moral things. But there is no sin in my sewing up this seam carelessly, or in my using bad mortar in this wall, or in my putting inferior timber in this house, or a piece of flawed iron in this bridge." But we need to learn that the moral law applies ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... superintendent exhibits an engraving, and the several members of the class then write any thing they please which is suggested to them by the engraving. For example, suppose the picture thus exhibited were to represent a girl sewing in an attic. The compositions to which it would give rise might be very various. One pupil would perhaps simply give an account of the picture itself, describing the arrangements of the room, and specifying the particular articles of furniture contained in it. Another ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... would like to make the boys learn to do tatting and sewing to let them in on that sort of kitten gatherings," said Sam, with a laugh that was not so nice ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at my home now, the only souvenir I have of that house at St. Yvon, which I have since learnt is no more, the Germans having reduced it to a powdered up mound of brick-dust and charred straw. Outside, and lying all around, were a miscellaneous collection of goods. Half a sewing machine, a gaudy cheap metal clock, a sort of mangle with strange wooden blades (which I subsequently cut off to make shelves with), and a host of other dirty, rain-soaked odds ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... home that afternoon, I found Silvia sitting on the shaded porch serenely sewing. A Sabbath-like stillness pervaded. Not a Polydore in ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... crazy about it. She broke down and cried in the local, and she went around to the churches—they have women's sewing-circles, you know, and things for the Red Cross, and her and Comrade Mary Allen gets up and makes speeches an' drives the women crazy. They arrested 'em once, but they turned 'em loose—they didn't want it to ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... to Mr Lacey's quarters this morning. I was sewing on buttons in the next room, and couldn't help hearing something about odds; and that set me up sharp, for I knows ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... IV., Classes 400-459, covers sculpture, painting, photography, engraving and lithography, industrial and architectural designs, ceramic decorations, mosaics, etc. V., Classes 509-599, takes charge of machines and tools for mining, chemistry, weaving, sewing, printing, working metal, wood and stone; motors; hydraulic and pneumatic apparatus; railway stock or "plant;" machinery for preparing agricultural products; "aerial, pneumatic and water transportation," and "machinery and apparatus especially adapted to the requirements ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... however, for the family had just received in a box-case a sewing-machine—a real English sewing-machine. A "traveller" had been round even to this sequestered spot, possessed of sufficient eloquence to persuade the farmer to buy his goods, and it certainly did ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... forth. Everything was going on well; the house was in exquisite order from attic to cellar. Ogden shut up with Mr. Richards, the servants quietly busy, and Danton Hall as still as a church on a week-day. Grace, humming a little tune, took her sewing into the dining-room, where she liked best to sit, and began stitching away industriously. The ticking of a clock on the mantel making its way to twelve, the rattling of the stripped trees in the ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... in an unpretentious part of the Rue St. Honore—known just then as the Rue Honore, for the saints had been abolished, together with the terrestrial aristocracy—a young woman was sitting one late July afternoon employed in sewing. She was pale, thin, and poorly clad. Her fingers were very nervous as she hurried on ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Farwell," the minister explained. "It was a school of home life, not only cooking and sewing and scrubbing, and what all you think of as domestic science, but a school of the home spirit—just the thing my people need. Thayer was, and is, a place where the girl students of Clark University learn how to make real homes. And in the college classes they ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... cheeks, and a new head covering of lovely, wavy yellow hair. On her lips she wore the same sweet, old smiles, however, and I knew her well by these. Since her recovery from the fever the hands of the sisters had not been idle, and they had become expert at sewing furs. This had kept them busy as bees all winter, and many were the caps, coats, mittens and capes made by their industrious fingers, which brought them a good income, while their rooms were always ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... fails. Now and then it may beguile; but much oftener the attention is languid, the thoughts wander, and associations with the subject of grief are awakened. Women who find that reading will not do, will obtain no relief from sewing. Sewing is pleasant enough in moderation to those whose minds are at ease the while; but it is an employment which is trying to the nerves when long continued, at the best; and nothing can be worse for ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... overlook a part of the little room: and there the happy youth would often stay till after midnight as if charmed to the spot, watching every motion of her hand, every look of her beloved face. It was a joy to see her teaching the child to read, or giving her lessons in sewing and knitting. On inquiry he had learnt that the little girl was a poor orphan, whom his fair maiden had charitably taken into the house, to ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... have you doing the actual work, the cutting out and sewing, I mean," he answered decidedly; "the head work, calculating how much material is needed, what it will cost, etc., may be yours; but you have servants enough to do ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... valley of the Meuse, between Neufchateau and Vaucouleurs, on the edge of the frontier from Champagne to Lorraine, the young daughter of simple tillers of the soil, "of good life and repute, herself a good, simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied hitherto in sewing or spinning with her mother, or driving afield her parent's sheep, and sometimes, even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune," was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neighbors called Joannette. She was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... room with a low bed in one corner, and a black stove, and pots and dishes hanging on the walls; a cradle with a baby in it, and by the cradle a pleasant-faced young woman sitting in a wicker chair sewing busily—so busily that it was quite a minute before she raised her eyes and saw the little grey-coated figure standing at the door with the ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... time was sitting intent on her work, not lifting her face from the shirt she was sewing. But an observer might have seen from her forehead and eye that she was not only listening to what was said, but thinking and meditating on the scene ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... o'clock in the afternoon, as Mrs. Frost was sewing at a front window, she exclaimed to Frank, who was making a kite for his little brother Charlie, "Frank, there's Squire Haynes coming up ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... were the topic of Kingsborough. They were discussed at the post-office, at sewing societies, at church festivals. Not a soul in the congregation but knew the number of times he had accompanied her to evening services; not an inhabitant of the town but was aware of the hour and the afternoon upon which they had ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... people of the north hated him. While he was earning the applause of the archbishop and the king, and entitling himself to new honors and increased power, he was sewing the seeds of the bitterest animosity in the hearts of the people every where. Still he enjoyed all the external marks of consideration and honor. The President of the North was a sort of king. He was clothed with great powers, and lived in great ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... once; but I never met one,—not one. I have seen women, through love of gossip, through indolence, through sheer famine of mental pabulum, leave undone things that ought to be done,—rush to the assembly, the lecture-room, the sewing-circle, or vegetate in squalid, shabby, unwholesome homes; but I never saw education run to ruin. So it seems to me that we are needlessly alarmed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... thoroughfare we had noticed warerooms where 'Singer' sewing machines are sold; at an agency of the 'Eastman Company' we had restocked our kodaks with films; and we could not avoid seeing on a large sign, in letters that could be read a block away, the words 'American Dentist.' Consequently when we passed the American Consulate it was with ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... passed her later years at Edgewater, the home of her grandson. Her death was typical of her life of piety. On a certain afternoon seventy-five women were assembled for Lenten sewing. After greeting them all in the drawing-room Aunt Pomeroy ascended the stairs to her room, stretched herself upon the bed, and quietly drew her last breath. In accordance with the old custom the clock in the death-chamber was stopped, and a sheet was drawn over the mirror. Down stairs ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... knocking on the door. Quinn was sitting by the little stove with his head untidily bandaged. One pale, undamaged eye glared fiercely from the bandages. The woman was seated close to the only window, sewing, and the children were playing on the floor. All movement was arrested on the instant of the skipper's entrance. The children crouched motionless and the woman's needle stuck idle in the cloth. Quinn sat like an image of wood, showing life only in ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... remarks which Juan de Ayolas, the Alguazil Mayor (Chief Constable), seems to have taken up as an order for instant execution. This he performed upon the spot, plunging his dagger repeatedly into Osorio, or, as Hulderico Schmidel has it, 'sewing him up with cuts' ('cosiendole a punaladas'). This murder or execution — for who shall tell when murder finishes and its legal counterpart begins? — rendered Don Pedro very unpopular with all the fleet; for, as Schmidel has it in his history,* 'the soldiers loved ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... brothers free, even though it should cost her her life. She left the hut, and going into the middle of the wood, she climbed a tree, and there passed the night. The next morning she set to work and gathered asters and began sewing them together: as for speaking, there was no one to speak to, and as for laughing, she had no mind to it; so she sat on and looked at nothing but her work. When she had been going on like this for a long time, it happened that the king of that country ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... in want of an efficient person to assist you in taking charge of your domestic affairs, Enna," said a maiden aunt of mine to me one evening. I pulled my little sewing-table toward me with a slight degree of impatience, and began very earnestly to examine the contents of my work-box, that I might not express aloud my weariness of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... opened the nursery door at home, she found Jennie building block houses, to Flyaway's great delight, while at the other end of the room sat Dotty Dimple, resolutely sewing patchwork. ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... this fashion, though doubtless, in many cases, some dressmaking or plain sewing is done somewhere out of sight. The plan is for the mistress to spend half-an-hour in the morning in giving her orders and looking over accounts; beyond this, for the women of the family to be exempt from ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... some employment to occupy our attention. But she stopped every now and then, when her eyes were too full of tears to allow her to see her needle, and sobbed as if her dear heart would break. Then on she went again, sewing as fast as she could, anxious to please old Tom by showing him how much she had done. At length Nancy arrived with a big bundle on her back. "I've brought away all I could," she said, as she deposited her load on the floor. "I'd a hard job to get them, and shouldn't ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... Victoire ceased sewing and raised her head. She was a servant girl by calling, one of those unlucky creatures who are overtaken by trouble when they have scarce arrived in the great city from their native village. "Well," said she, "it's quite certain that one won't be able to ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the corner, and a green sapling club laid in readiness on the dresser by her side; also her sewing basket and a copy of the Young Ladies' Journal. She has brought the dog into ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... king also mend and patch his clothes? Did he not repair with sealing-wax his scabbard, because he did not want to buy a new one? Well, I believe little Louisa will be allowed to do as the great Frederick did, and need not be ashamed of it. On the contrary, my husband, when I sat there sewing, my heart was glad, for the memories of my early years revived in my mind: I saw myself at the side of my venerable grandmother, the Landgravine of Hesse-Darmstadt, and I lived again in those sunny days that I spent with her in Hanover. My grandmother taught me how ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... blotches on the ceiling, lamps that smoked. The iron stove in the middle of the floor gave out warmth and coal gas. All the places were filled in a moment. Nearest the platform sat the women, demure as if in church, and back of them workmen and sewing-women. Farthest away sat the boys on one another's knees, and in the door-way there was a fight among those who could not ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... fact, as she had been asked. "I am proud, a little, of very fine rolls of butter, or a particularly good cheese. I think I am proud of my carnations, and perhaps—" she went on colouring—"of being so good a baker as I am. And perhaps—I think I am—of such things as sewing and dressmaking;—but I don't think there is much harm in all that. I know myself sometimes proud of other things, where I know ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... adding fresh strands by slipping the root ends of the new blades up between those already in the coil. When we begin to sew we do not wrap the grasses as we wrapped the strands of raffia, but simply use as a sewing thread raffia of a contrasting or blending color. To form the button, wrap the threads three or four times around the root ends of the bunch, fasten tightly, then coil to form the center. Take the ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... the regular meeting of the Ladies Sewing Society in the little village of Chicopee, and at the usual hour groups of ladies were seen wending their way towards the stately mansion of Mrs. Campbell, the wealthiest and proudest ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... sealed glass vessels, or bulbs, which we were using, exhausted to a high vacuum. Separate lamps were made in this way independent of the air-pump, and, in October, 1879, we made lamps of paper carbon, and with carbons of common sewing thread, placed in a receiver or bulb made entirely of glass, with the leading-in wires sealed in by fusion. The whole thing was exhausted by the Sprengel pump to nearly one-millionth of an atmosphere. The filaments of carbon, although naturally quite fragile owing to their length and small ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the hotel were all our own countrywomen, as we see them at home and abroad. I have already spoken of their diligence in sewing, and of their enthusiasm in shopping. Their other distinctive features are too familiar to us to require illustration. Yet upon one trait I will adventure. A group of them sat peaceably together, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... tell you. Mrs. Blake does my white sewing. I was there this morning; and just as I went into her room, I saw Ruth leaving another farther down the hall. Naturally I asked Mrs. Blake who had the room, and she told me ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... Lapp nurse sat in the window, sewing busily. She looked up, and smiled meaningly. But as she saw Torfrida unlock the further door with one of the keys which hung at her ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... room, and then came out into the cabin with some sewing at which she sat and stitched by the lamp. The captain was writing in his log-book; Dunham and Hicks were playing checkers together. Staniford, from a corner of a locker, looked musingly upon this curious family circle. It ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... would not listen. Now she invited them to her new house. She showed them the things she had and how useful they were. The chiefs looked at the door and windows. They liked them. The women looked at the clothes and at the sewing machine. They liked them. They looked at the clock on the mantel. They ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann
... over which those mystics passed who had to walk through fire, there lay plenty of charcoal, and yonder hung robes of every description. The next moment she had thrown off her own, in order to blacken her glistening white limbs and her face with soot. Among the sewing materials which the lady Euryale had laid beside the scrolls was a pair of scissors. These the girl seized, and with quick, remorseless hand cut off the long, thick locks that were her brother's and her lover's delight. Then she chose out a chiton, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nine, then half-past, from the village behind. The children would be asleep. His wife was sitting sewing some little frock. He went lingering down the garden path, stooping to lift the fallen carnations, to see how they were. There were many flowers, but small. He broke one off, then threw it away. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... help me cut out some underclothes and get 'em basted together." She never attempted any sort of housework, being pathetically vain of her one beauty—her small, white hands. Even the family sewing she did under protest. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... musical devotees, the Saturday night Symphony concert, where a handful of people gathered to hear the music, and all the rest of the world crowded for the sake of having been there. She had been taken by Miss Mott to a select sewing-circle—that peculiar institution by means of which exclusive Boston society keeps tally of the standing of all its young women. She was somewhat bewildered, but enjoyed what might be called a hallowed consciousness that she was doing exactly the right thing; and it was, perhaps, only ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... us that Scheffer's wife was intelligent and devoted—in fact, she was too devoted. She would bring her sewing and watch the artist at his work. If the great man grew oblivious of her presence she gently chided him for it; she was jealous of his brothers, jealous of his daughter, even jealous of his art. She insisted not only that he should love her, but demanded ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... dear! Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch—stitch—stitch, In poverty, hunger, and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, A Shroud as ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Philip Sterling," said Ruth one day as the girls sat at their sewing. Ruth never embroidered, and never sewed when she could avoid ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... conditions, however, Chauliac's anticipation of modern views is most surprising. He recognized that wounds of the intestines were surely fatal unless leakage could be prevented. Accordingly he suggested the opening of the abdomen and the sewing up of such intestinal wounds as could be located. He describes a method of suture for these cases and seems, like many another abdominal surgeon, even to have invented a ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... went for a walk after that, and coming back with a bored air stood on the hearthrug in the living-room and watched Miss Rose sewing. ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... us". They were given their allowance of "rations" every week and cooked their own meals in their cabins. They had good, plain, home-raised things to eat—"and we was glad to get it too. We didn't have no fancy fixings, jest plain food". Their clothes were made by Negro sewing women out of cloth spun and woven right there in the Quarters. All the little dresses were made alike. "When they took a notion to give us striped dresses we sho' was dressed up. I never will forget long as I live, a hickory stripe—(that's what ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... eye—"it would be too unconventional, and we must be conventional or die, after we reach what is supposed to be a dignified age. But I'd LIKE to do it. I'd like to call a meeting of the Ladies Aid and W.M.S. and the Girls Sewing Society, and include in the audience all and any Methodists who have been criticizing the Merediths—although I do think if we Presbyterians stopped criticizing and excusing we would find that other denominations would trouble themselves very ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... put written paper to vulgar uses: such conduct would offend the god of calligraphy. Nor were women ruled less religiously than men in their various occupations: the spinners and weaving-maidens were bound to revere the Weaving-goddess and the Goddess of Silkworms; the sewing-girl was taught to respect her needles; and in all homes there was observed a certain holiday upon which offerings were made to the Spirits of Needles. In Samurai families the warrior was commanded to consider his armour and his weapons as holy things: to keep them in ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... under my superintendency, the girls undertaking the housework and the boys the outside "chores." Apparently from all I hear my predecessor was a strict disciplinarian, an economical manager, an expert needlewoman, and everything I should be and am not. The sewing simply appalls me! I confess that stitching for three dozen children of all sizes had not entered into my calculations as one of the duties of a "missionary"! Yet of course I realize they must be clad as well ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... themselves. A form was on the table, with head shaved. She was to go into his cerebellum and take out a tumor which had caused deafness, dumbness, and blindness. She would probably have to make two hundred stitches or more in sewing him up, but she always had been good at needlework, and it gave her no concern. She picked up her saw—but to her horror she found she couldn't ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... round my wrist, and a rotten white thread draggling after me through the wood, or tickling my nose, as if Ariadne and Arachne had lost their wits together. I go home, invoking the universe against sewing-machines; and beg the charity of a sound stitch or two from any of the maids who know their woman's art; and thenceforward the life of the glove proper begins. Wow, it is not possible for any people that put up with this sort of thing, to learn to ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to the legend, on the spot where the church now stands, there lived in the time of St. Genevroc, a young girl, whom the saint found, when passing her house on the fete of our Lady, employed at her needle. He reproached her gently with her impiety, yet she went on sewing, saying "she required food on Sundays as well as on work days." But the girl has hardly finished speaking, when all her body became cold and motionless as a stone. She was completely paralysed. Asking pardon of St. Genevroc, he made the sign ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... a conclusion, the men were relentless. They hired sewing-girls, and skirmished back and forth between Boomtown and the farm like mad. Their steady zeal made up for her moody and fitful enthusiasm. However, she grew more resigned to the idea as the days wore on toward the departure, ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... head, and went on again with her work. About five minutes afterwards she looked out again—the young officer was still standing in the same place. Not being in the habit of coquetting with passing officers, she did not continue to gaze out into the street, but went on sewing for a couple of hours, without raising her head. Dinner was announced. She rose up and began to put her embroidery away, but glancing casually out of the window, she perceived the officer again. This seemed to her very strange. After dinner she went to the window with a certain ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... man is still jealous of them. To-day, as in the ages when he sheltered under a rock, he values furs greatly for the winter. At all seasons he holds them in high esteem as ornamental accessories; he glories in sewing on his attire a shred of some wretched flayed beast. The ermine of kings and judges, the white rabbit-tails with which the university graduate adorns his left shoulder on solemn occasions carry us back in thought to ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... beauty, which tended to increase Lucy's vexation. Lucy knew that in her own circle there was none to dispute her claim; but she knew, too, that in a low-roofed house, in the outskirts of the town, there dwelt a poor sewing woman, whose only daughter was famed for her wondrous beauty. Lucy had frequently seen Ada in the streets, but never before had she met her, and she now determined to treat her with the ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... the servants contended for the honor of going with their master; the women flocked to the house to assist in the work of preparation, cutting out and making under-clothes, knitting socks, picking lint, preparing bandages, and sewing on uniforms; for many of the men who had enlisted were of the poorest class, far too poor to furnish anything themselves, and their equipment had to be contributed mainly by wealthier neighbors. The work was carried on at night as well as by day, for the occasion was urgent. Meantime ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... the bird aside, while Susan watched carefully to see just how the stew was made. When it began to boil, her mother picked up the sewing and told her to run ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... atmosphere. Throughout the whole expanse, only two human dwellings were visible. These were small log-cabins, each with a clump of trees near it, and the rose of the prairies climbing over the roof. In the rustic piazza of one of these cabins a woman was sewing busily, occasionally moving a cradle gently with her foot. On the steps of the piazza was seated a man, who now and then read aloud some paragraph from a newspaper. From time to time, the woman raised her eyes from her work, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... cook, a second girl, and a matrona. This third servant was better educated than the others, and it was her duty, outside of the house, to keep her mistress company, whether she rode in her carriage or went about on foot. At home, she did the sewing and the mending, and generally dressed her mistress and combed her hair. For this work the matrona received a salary of six or seven dollars a month, and it seems to have been usual for her employers to arrange a good marriage for her after several ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... and, if carefully put on, will do service for years. Silk, of course, is the ideal material; but its costliness puts it beyond ordinary means, and common silesia, such as is used in dress linings, is almost as good. Whatever the material, the kite should be fortified at the corners by pasting or sewing on quadrants of paper or cloth, so as to give double thickness at the points most liable to injury. A finished six-footer should not weigh over twenty ounces, if covered with paper; or twenty-five ounces, if covered with cloth. Mr. Eddy has made a six-footer for calm flying as light ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... the summer vacation drew near, the under-master perspired up the sunny road with another object than that of refreshing himself at the familiar little inn. He entered by the ivied porch, and within, as usual, found Miss Fouracres, who sat behind the bar sewing. Miss Fouracres wore a long white apron, which protected her dress from neck to feet, and gave her an appearance of great neatness and coolness. She had a fresh complexion, and features which made no disagreeable impression. At ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... to come to look over the morning papers, and chat about the news, the stocks, and the degeneracy of the times. What a club is to an idle man of fashion,—what a sewing-society is to a scandal-loving woman,—what a billiard-room is to a man about town,—what the Athenaeum is to the sober and steadfast bibliolater,—that is the Insurance Office to the retired merchant, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... lathe. The engine is necessarily single-acting, but it is effective nevertheless, being about 1-20 H. P., with suitable steam supply. It is of sufficient size to run a foot lathe, scroll saw, or two or three sewing machines. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... death of her husband, a French Canadian, and had come to live in the tiny cottage which stood near Mrs. Minot's big house, separated only by an arbor-vitae hedge. A sad, silent person, who had seen better days, but said nothing about them, and earned her bread by sewing, nursing, work in the factory, or anything that came in her way, being anxious to educate her little girl. Now, as she sat beside the bed in the small, poor room, that hope almost died within her, for here was the child laid up for months, probably, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... sure to take the third; Mary 'Liza was knitting a pair of shell-pattern, openwork stockings as fine as a cobweb, in which there would not be a knot or a dropped stitch, and Paulina Hobson was putting her eyes out over a linen-cambric handkerchief under Miss Davidson's direction. Fine sewing and embroidery were taught by governesses then. Sarah Hobson had pieced a crib quilt containing one thousand and twelve tiny squares. I was supposed to be left out in the cold. I would not knit, and to sew I was ashamed because I did it so badly. Nobody paid any attention to me when ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... pretentious in subject but even more severely simple in treatment, was that of a woman of fashion, seated by a table on which stood a lighted lamp, the glow from which shone full upon her joy-lit face, on the sewing-materials scattered about her, and on the little garment, newly finished, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... moreover, in the presence of the peasant witnesses, passed his fingers along the collar, the cuffs, and all the seams of the coat and trousers, obviously looking for something—money, of course. He didn't even hide from Mitya his suspicion that he was capable of sewing ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... gloomy meditation. He gazed at the mound now bare of tulips, at the windows of his wife's chamber; he shuddered, no doubt, as he thought of all that his search had cost him: his movements betrayed that his thoughts were busy outside of Science. Marguerite brought her sewing and sat beside him ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... regarded as a machine. Why not make it a strong machine, and as perfect as possible? Its efficiency means everything. If you had an engine, a motorcycle, a sewing machine or a printing press that was a very poor machine, you would like to exchange it for a better one, would you not? You would even spend large sums of money to secure a better machine to take the place of the poor one. But if your body is imperfect, ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... sitting on the porch sewing on a pair of leather chaps, indulged in a grin. "I see this is where we go out of the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... kitchen, and some fresh milk or vegetables. After all had taken supper that night they all sat down and made themselves quiet with their books, and the children were as still as mice till an early bed time when all retired. When Sunday evening came the women got out their work—their sewing and their knitting, and the children romped and played and made as much noise as they could, seeming as anxious to break the Sabbath as they had been to have a pious Saturday night. I had never seen that way before ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him. She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend. She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... which has been opened in Knowsley Street, for the employment of female factory operatives out of work. This workroom is managed by a committee of ladies, some of whom are in attendance every day. The young women are employed upon plain sewing. They have two days' work a week, at one shilling a day, and the Relief Committee adds sixpence to this 2s. in each case. Most of them are merely learning to sew. Many of them prove to be wholly untrained to this simple domestic accomplishment. The work is not remunerative, nor is it expected ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... There were a good many things I should have liked to say, but I did not know how, unless she gave me the opportunity. But she did not, and so it happened that we talked only about something she was sewing—I do not know whether it was a shirt-waist or an army blanket. In fact, I did not hear one word she said about her stupid work, whatever it was, I was so busy re-studying her face, her character, and everything about her. I now found ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... to know where he is?" replied Mark, looking sly. "However, as you can't stop him now, I'll tell you. He is just about this time sewing up Briggs's coat-sleeves, putting copperas into his water jug, and powdered galls on his towel, and making various other little returns for ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... earl's little wheel-chair, which was an occasional substitute for Malcolm's arms. In it he sat, with a book on his lap, and with the aspect of entire content which was so very touching. Helen sat beside him on the grass, sewing—she was always sewing; and, indeed, she had need, if her needle were to keep pace with its requirements in the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... disdained to give any answer. Still, as she sat sewing and thinking the matter over, she acknowledged to herself that she really could not see any good and efficient reason why boys should be beaten, any more ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... from the station; Norma almost ran them. Other houses, she noted, were still brightly lighted at quarter to eleven o'clock, and Rose's might be. Aunt Kate was there, and she and Rose might well be sitting up, with the restless smaller baby, or to finish some bit of sewing. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... be expected of a poor sewing-girl, young and pretty, about eighteen, with a romantic affair on her hands that is purely a question of love; with little knowledge of life and no idea of morals; eternally sewing near a window before which processions were not allowed to ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... too, matters had settled into their usual routine. Miss Jane had returned, and the days, for Genevieve, were full of study, practice, and the usual number of lessons in cooking and sewing. ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... so, then. Somebody might overhear you and think it was queer. Miranda Joy is in the south parlour sewing, you know." ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... shrivel and wither up in an hour's time as much as if it had been kept for a whole winter in a dry room. They are born with tails; although the parents are cunning enough to pinch them off immediately. Do you doubt this? If it is not true, why do the children of the pure race delight in sewing on sheep's tails to the dress of any Cagot who is so absorbed in his work as not to perceive them? And their bodily smell is so horrible and detestable that it shows that they must be heretics of some vile and pernicious description, for do we not read ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to read a great deal to me. There is so much fine sewing to do, I thought as we worked together one of us could have a needle, the other ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... can't rest," Aunt Trudy complained. "I should think you could tell them to play quietly, Rosemary. And I wish you wouldn't practise this morning, dearie; my head is splitting and the piano does annoy me so. This afternoon I'll take my sewing out under the tree and you may have two hours to yourself, ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... said Miss Wren, "I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but it's the trying-on by the great ladies that ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... with it came a nervous bashfulness. I should never dare to go over to see him. No, I would wait quietly until night, when he would surely come himself to see me. Still I could watch his boat. And nervously did I stand, my face pressed against the window-pane, through the long morning hours, my sewing dropped neglected in my lap at the risk of a scolding from my mother, watching the slow-passing river, and the leaves hanging motionless over it in the stillness of the summer noon. At last there was a stir on the opposite shore. Yes, the boat must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... a bright example of all that is holy and good in the Christian character. She assisted Mrs. Weston greatly in the many cares that devolved on the mistress of a plantation, especially in instructing the young female servants in knitting and sewing, and in such household duties as would make them useful in that state of life in which it had pleased God to place them. Her heart was full of love to all God's creatures; the servants came to her with their little ailings and grievances, ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... continued: "You see, it's only come out lately what a bad state Elwell's affairs were in. His wife's a proud woman, and she fought on as long as she could, going out to work, and taking sewing at home, when she got too sick—something with the heart, I believe. But she had his bedridden mother to look after, and the children, and she broke down under it, and finally had to ask for help. That attracted attention to the case, and the papers took it up, and a subscription was started. Everybody ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... without things is practised. The Frenchwoman leaning in the door of her empty boutique still wears the smile with which she used to calm the impatience of crowding shoppers. The seam-stress living on the meagre pay of a charity work-room gives her day's sewing as faithfully as if she were working for full wages in a fashionable atelier, and never tries, by the least hint of private difficulties, to extract additional help. The habitual cheerfulness of the Parisian workwoman rises, in moments of sorrow, to the finest fortitude. In a work-room where ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... ready to drop through. Through a half-open door he could see into the kitchen, where his brother had gone to give some orders to a timid-looking old woman. In one corner of the room, half hidden, was a sewing machine. Luna had seen his niece working at it the last time he came to the Cathedral. It was the permanent remembrance the "little one" had left behind her after that catastrophe which had filled her father with such gloomy sadness. Through a back window ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not reply to these words. She was sitting by her father's side sewing, and she went on calmly with her work. But she was thinking of the great change that had come over her father since his illness. He was so gentle and considerate, and was more companionable than she had ever known him to be. It caused her great ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... leaned there in doubt whether to proceed or not. Summoning up my resolution, however, I went on, turning in the direction of the orchard, where I knew she often sat of a morning to read or make a pretence of sewing. ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... you, Lynn, I was happy. I sang in the choir and attended the sewing society, and recited that 'Annie Laurie' thing with the whistling stunt in it, 'in a manner bordering upon the professional,' as the weekly village paper reported it. And Arthur and I went rowing, and walking in the woods, and clamming, and that poky little village ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... his mother, "until he tells me so himself. You didn't, did you, back out of a fight, and let that Bob Bennett, whose mother used to be my sewing girl, and whom I supported for months after he was born, and his father died with the cholera and left her nothing, by giving her work and paying her cash, and who is now putting on all sorts of airs because everybody's congratulating her on having such a wonderful ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... Jean went to spend the day with some of her artist friends, but at noon she dashed into the room where Clara and Lucy sat sewing, her dark face blotched red, and ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... regular fonda, or even casa, but there is a shop where they sell wine, and black tumour-covered sausages, and white bread, and algobra beans, and Scotch sewing cotton. The whole village knew of their arrival, and were gathered in this shop to meet them when they came in. Few questions were asked. The Spaniard of the lower orders has a most Hibernian weakness for anything smacking of conspiracy, or any enterprise which is "agin' the Government." Pether ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... various homes, Nita had remained at the convent, roaming at will through the deserted class-room and beautiful grounds. She was the pet and darling of the entire community. In the long summer afternoons when the nuns carried their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river, Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her snatches of song and merry laughter made ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... suitable to that colony. At Carvel Hall we had, to be sure, the cool spring house under the willows for sultry days, with its pool dished out for bathing; and a trellised arbour, and octagonal summer house with seats where my mother was wont to sit sewing while my grandfather dreamed over his pipe. On the lawn stood the oaks and walnuts and sycamores which still cast their shade over it, and under them of a summer's evening Mr. Carvel would have his tea alone; save oftentimes ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... veal about an inch thick, over this put a layer of bits of marinated bacon, slices of truffle, pistacchio nuts, cooked ham, and some of the flesh of the pig, then another layer of forcemeat until the pig's skin is fairly filled. Keep its shape by sewing it lightly together, then rub it all over with lemon juice and cover it with slices of fat bacon, roll it up and stitch it in a pudding cloth. Then put the bones and cuttings into a stewpan with bits of bacon and veal steak cut up, two bay leaves, salt, a carrot, an onion, a shallot, ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... stitching away industriously backwards, just because Jessie is left-handed herself. Mother Elsie laughed until she lost her breath and Mr. Goodloe had to help unloosen her belt for her. The meeting broke up with ice cream on Jessie for everybody. We all belong to home mission societies and sewing circles and—" ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... two ladies were sewing or visiting on the porch across from our quarters, and a colonel was reading at the end of our own porch. Lee came out and went to the telephone and kept saying hello so many times that they all noticed him. The ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... would imagine that these delicate hands could busy themselves with other things than sewing, piano-playing, and the turning over of gold-bordered leaves. Have you read the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... from the low, broad brow, and put away so carefully beneath a small cap, whose delicate lace, and rich, white satin, were the only articles of dress in which Aunt Mabel was a little fastidious. She kept her sewing in her hand as she commenced her story, and stitched away most industriously at first, but gradually as she proceeded the work fell upon her lap, and she seemed to be lost in abstracted recollections, speaking as though impelled by some uncontrollable ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... wasn't going to answer. I felt too comfortable. You stayed with Nan and her nurse for a little, and then went away; and I heard Nan's nurse say to her: 'Sit here, missy, till I come back to you; I am going to fetch another reel of sewing cotton from the house. Sit still, missy; I'll be back directly.' She went away, and Nan went on picking her daisies. All on a sudden I heard Nan give a sharp little cry, and I looked over the hammock, and there was a tall, dark woman, with such a wicked face, and she snatched up Nan in ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... hours I might save!" and I resolved that, on the coming Saturday, I would make the desirable change. On the afternoon of that day, I was engaged to ride home with one of the teachers, and the morning I had intended to devote to sewing and study: "but no matter," thought I; "by a little extra effort I can accomplish all." Accordingly, when Saturday came I commenced operations; but, after removing the bed and mattress I discovered, to my great concern, that, although the bedstead would stand as I wished, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... weaving, shaping and sewing," said Friedel, coming near to let the housewife examine ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bible reading. If the life is more than meat, then the time taken by the father or mother to select fascinating Bible biographies and stories, and tactfully to supervise the reading, is at least as wisely expended as that used in training a grape vine or sewing a lace edge on a ruffle. Is it not strange that there is such distorted perspective and false balance of values in regard to what is worth while? The cares of this world crowd out so many supreme things. Many a temptation ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... lasted until "sun down". In the middle of the day the big bell was rung to summon the workers from the field, for their mid-day lunch. After work hours slaves were then free to do work around their own cabins, such as sewing, cooking (etc.) ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... with sharp and severe parents and a gentle schoolmaster; for when I am in the presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even as perfectly as the world was made, or else I am so sharply taunted and cruelly threatened—yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and so cruelly ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... to do what I can," said Tavia, "but I never was much good at sewing. However, I'll do the very best I ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... last, the brave little woman took in plain sewing, greatly to Digby's anguish and mortification. Never had he felt so little like a man as when she showed so plainly that it was necessary for her to assist in the maintenance of the little household over which he presided. The few dollars that she could ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... attention to the claims of the slave, and urging them to sign petitions for his emancipation. Mrs. Elizabeth Heyrick's well-known pamphlet, entitled "Immediate, not Gradual Emancipation," was during the same year republished by the "Anti-Slavery Sewing Society," a body composed of some of the members of this Association, but not identical with it, which met weekly at the house of our Vice-President, Sidney Ann Lewis. Another event, important and far-reaching ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... host of his Ixionides, leaving them early for a drive at night Eastward, and a chat with old Mr. Woodseer over his punching and sewing of his bootleather. Another honest soul. Mr. Woodseer thankfully consented to mount his coach-box next day, and astonish Gower with a drop on his head from the skies about the time of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... decision was made, and the daily life went on as usual. The sons worked in the fields by day, and in the evening played at pitching horseshoes on the bare circle where the children romped. The women went on baking, sewing, and singing. August Naab's prayers were more fervent than ever, and he even prayed for the soul of the man who had robbed him. Mescal's cheeks soon rounded out to their old contour and her eyes shone with a happier ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... shut up, and employed in sewing and embroidery; and parents arrange marriages without the couple having even seen each other. The poorer sort, however, are allowed to serve in their shops. We heard the people generally well spoken of, as being ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... King." A year after, when the Queen brought her first-born son into the world, the old woman took him away. Then she went to the King and complained that the Queen was a murderess. The King, however, would not believe it, and suffered no one to do any injury to his wife, who sat composedly sewing at her shirts and paying attention to nothing else. When a second child was born, the false stepmother used the same deceit, but the King again would not listen to her words, but said, "She is too pious and good to act so: could she but speak and defend herself, her innocence ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Mrs. Halifax sat sewing. She seemed to take no note of his comings and goings—his restless starts—his fits of dark musing, when his face grew like the face of some stranger, some one whom he would have shrunk from—any one but our own ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Brother. "Nobody cares what we do. Louise and Grace are sewing, and Mother is going to make strawberry jam. ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... three in the morning, he says, preparing his speech; and would have done all kinds of things with the affidavits. It certainly was a splendid subject. We have heard nothing from the vagabonds yet. I once thought of printing the affidavits without a word of comment, and sewing them up with Chuzzlewit. Talfourd is strongly disinclined to compromise with the printers on any terms. In which case it would be referred to the master to ascertain what profits had been made by the piracy, and to order the same to be paid to me. But wear and tear of law ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Counteract Womans Party Campaign Inez Milholland Boissevain Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol Scenes on the Picket Line Monster Picket-March 4, 1917 Officer Arrests Pickets Women Put into Police Patrol Suffragists in Prison Costume Fellow Prisoners Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse Riotous Scenes on Picket Line Dudley Field Malone Lucy Burns Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket Forty-One Women Face Jail Prisoners Released Lafayette We Are Here Wholesale Arrests Suffragists March to LaFayette ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... valise, which was to have been her own traveling companion in her long journey to and through the "Great American Desert," and which was well packed with several changes of clothes and with small dressing, sewing and writing cases, supplied all her wants during the three months of her ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... seemed as if they were hearing the voices of their loved ones. But, notwithstanding her learning, she was well versed in every sort of work that beseemed a woman. None in the village could prepare more delightful dishes than she; no one could equal her beautiful, rapid sewing and knitting. Anna Sophia learned all these things from her mother, who had lived and worked for many long years in Brunen. Her father had been the village school-teacher, and it was owing to his diligence and ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... over her white sewing, was a small, prettily-made little woman, with silky hair trimly braided, and a rather pale, small face with charming and regular features. She was not considered exactly pretty; perhaps the contrast with Cherry's unusual ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... certainly do carry practical industry farther than I ever saw it in America. Every body knows that an anniversary meeting is something of a siege, and I observed many good ladies below had made regular provision therefor, by bringing knitting work, sewing, crochet, or embroidery. I thought it was an improvement, and mean to recommend it when I get home. I am sure many of our Marthas in America will be very grateful for ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... the steep black alleys. I do not talk much to these people; I fear my illusions being dispelled. At the corner of a street, opposite Francesco di Giorgio's beautiful little portico, is a great blue and red advertisement, representing an angel descending to crown Elias Howe, on account of his sewing-machines; and the clerks of the Vice-Prefecture, who dine at the place where I get my dinner, yell politics, Minghetti, Cairoli, Tunis, ironclads, &c., at each other, and sing snatches of La Fille de Mme. Angot, which I imagine they have been ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing of the sort. She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that to expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an impertinence; it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in any event, she had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate attention. Accordingly she settled down to her needlework, while the Regent of England leaned his head against her knee, and his mother told him that ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near Babylon encountered the King of Faery, and subsequently bereaved ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... from others had opened a Sunday-school and simple Sunday services in the heart of it. A branch of the Women's Mission was established in the same spot, and soon women were "putting by" their pence and sewing quietly round the lady superintendent as she read to them ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... up and looked at it curiously: "Well, they are nicely done: no sewing-machine work here. And see, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... is a current account. There is a great river in Arabia called Corys, and this runs out into the Sea which is called Erythraian. From this river then it is said that the king of the Arabians, having got a conduit pipe made by sewing together raw ox-hides and other skins, of such a length as to reach to the waterless region, conducted the water through these forsooth, 9 and had great cisterns dug in the waterless region, that they might receive the water and preserve it. Now it is a journey of twelve ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... in the correct representation of the surface of the globe. I have said nothing about rifled-guns and armored ships, nor of the revolution that has been made in the art of war; nothing of that gift to women, the sewing-machine; nothing of the noble contentions and triumphs of the arts of peace—the industrial exhibitions and ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... he came to where two old women were sewing and he begged them to let him live with ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
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