"Ironing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Out of mother's ironing-board," was the answer. "It's down in the kitchen. I'll get it. Don't you know how we used to put it up on a chair and then slide ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... washerwoman's cottage, it had a little garden in front of it. Through the window I saw the girls ironing by candle-light, I walked about till quite dark, then knocked at the door. The short one opened it, and seeing me shut the door saying, "Oh! you musn't call." So I ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... then it was taken out of the washing-tub. It was starched, hung over the back of a chair in the sunshine, and was then laid on the ironing-blanket; then came the warm box-iron. "Dear lady!" said the collar. "Dear widow-lady! I feel quite hot. I am quite changed. I begin to unfold myself. You will burn a hole in me. Oh! ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... amount of money, and money Alice had not—not even enough to pay a Chinaman for "doing up" one of her pretty muslins. Neither had she the facilities for doing them herself, had she been skilled in that sort of labor; for even to do your own washing and ironing pre-supposes the usual conveniences of a laundry, and these did not belong to the furniture of the outside kitchen. She had not worn her linen lawn since the visit to the mill. The dust which blew freely ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... gone downstairs to do some ironing," says Lina. "Oh, Uncle Horace, we were having such ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... was to die on the pavement, and it would not take long if, on getting into her room, she could only screw up enough courage to fling herself out of the window. What increased her ugly laugh was the remembrance of her grand hope of retiring into the country after twenty years spent in ironing. Well! she was on her way to the country. She was about to have her green corner ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... During that time the Home Assistant works steadily and specialization is done away with. She is there to do your work and she does whatever may be called for. If she is asked to take care of the baby for a few hours, she does it willingly, as part of her duties; or if she is called upon to do some ironing left in the basket, she assumes that it is part of her work, and doesn't say, "No, Madam, I wasn't hired to do that," at the same time putting on her hat and leaving as under ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Present samples of seaming, hemming, darning, and either knitting or crocheting, and press out a Scout uniform, as sample of ironing. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... all put in order, the hearth swept, the irons at the fire, and Miss Fortune just pinning her ironing blanket on the table. "Well, what's the matter?" she said, when she saw Ellen's face; but as her glance reached the floor, her brow darkened. "Mercy on me!" she exclaimed, with slow emphasis, "what on earth have you been about? where have ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... tired with her search, Lucy returned to the house, and there found Deborah ironing at the long table in the hall, and crooning away her one dismal song ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after the same manner in clean water. When the lace is clean, apply a very weak solution of gum arabic and stand the bottle in the sunshine to dry. Take off the lace very carefully when perfectly dry. Instead of ironing, lay it between the white leaves of a heavy book; or, if you are in a hurry, iron on flannel between a few thicknesses of fine muslin. Done up in this way, lace collars will wear longer, stay clean longer, and have a rich, new, lacy look that ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... conductor into the small but cosy living-room behind, which the large number of its occupants caused to appear even smaller than it was. John Dudgeon was there, and Mrs. John, and several offshoots of the Dudgeon tree. Mrs. Dudgeon was ironing at a table beneath the one small window, in the fading light. She was a staid and dapper matron, with here and there the faintest line of care upon her comely face. A couple of the children were rolling upon the hearthrug in the ruddy glow of the fire, and two or three others were doing their home-lessons ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... to see a servant dressed as a servant. Minna is the perfection of neatness, and her plain stuff or print gowns are sans reproche in their freshness. In the matter of aprons she must be quite reckless, for they always look as if just from the ironing-table. They are made, too, in an especially pretty fashion that I have never before seen out of Munich. Scorning chignons, Minna appears with her own luxuriant hair in massive braids wound about her well-shaped head, and as to-day is Sunday and a Fest-tag, she ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... old black mammy was ironing in the sitting room, Kintchin came in at the door which always stood open, and looking about, slowly went up to the old woman and inquired if she ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... towels. 2 floor cloths. 12 holders. Cheese cloth. Pudding cloth. Needles. Twine. Scissors. Skewers. Screw driver. Corkscrew. 1 doz. knives and forks. Hammer. Tacks and Nails. Ironing sheet and holder. Coal scuttle. Fire shovel. Coal sieve. Ash hod. Flat irons. Paper for cake tins. Wrapping paper. Small tub for laundry work. 6 tablespoons. ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... any pupils," she confessed. "And I couldn't bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... reason to think herself far more fortunate than her associates. Her intelligence was great. Ambition was awakened in her before she was ten years of age, when she began to learn and to recite poems—learning them, as has been said, "between the wash-tub and the ironing-board," and reciting them to the admiration of older and wiser people than she. Even at ten she was a very beautiful child, with great lambent eyes, an exquisite complexion, and a lovely form, while she had the further gift of a voice that thrilled the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... her ironing-table, as if she didn't care for company; and Dumps and Tot, seeing that she was tired of them, went back to the ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... in the summer, except during the Sabbath and occasionally at evening; so that though this diminished the labor of cooking, it left her with her children wholly on her hands, and a great deal of unavoidable labor, such as washing and ironing. The latter work she did for her husband, as well as for her children and herself: and it was therefore an item of considerable moment—especially as she was obliged to bring water for this and all her domestic purposes in pails, the distance of twenty-five or thirty ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... dawn. When broad daylight came she felt as though her bones were water and her body a wisp of straw. She could not bear to meet Shiel Crozier's eyes, and thus it was she had an early breakfast on the plea that she had ironing to do. She was not, however, prepared to see Jesse Bulrush drive up with a buggy after breakfast and take Crozier away. When she did see them at the gate the impulse came to cry out to Crozier; what to say she did not know, but still to cry out. The cry on her lips was that which she had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... matter? You been overworking again, ironing my shirts and collars when they ought to go to ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... seam and many a patch; many a soil and many a stain. And then also you will be found walking abroad in comeliness and at liberty, while others, less careful, are at home mending and washing and ironing because they went without a girdle when you girt up your garments well off the ground. Wherefore always gird well up the ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... consoled herself by giving the apprentice, who was ironing hose and towels by her side, a little push. Gervaise had a cap belonging to Mme Boche in her hand and was ironing the crown with a round ball, when a tall, bony woman came in. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Robinson liked it; but hoped she "would not ask that family o'niggers,—that would make it so vulgar;" and she took a large pinch of Scotch snuff, and waddled off to finish her ironing. Mrs. Deacon Jackson—she was a second wife, with no children—hoped that "Sally Bright would not be asked, because her father was in the State Prison for passing counterfeit money; and the example would be bad, not friendly to law and order." But as Aunt Kindly went out, she met the ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... know, Jaffray. I remember when my sister used to send Josiah out in the morning to work, he would come back in the evening with his pay that he had earned in the blacksmith shop and give it to her, and Aunt Caroline would bring her money, too, that she had made by a hard day's, washing and ironing. Oh, yes, it is all wrong and dreadful, but we will treat them well and wait for the day to ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... he visited his lovely and all unconscious mistress the next day, but the fair lady was busy ironing.—"I shall see her again this evening," thought he, as he turned slowly towards the town; and see her that evening he did. They rambled out towards the cape, or promontory, almost invariably the scene of their summer evening ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... ironing.] Yes, yes, that'll be it. If he wants two hundred, six hundred's sure to have come. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... moment Nicholas saw on a chair a large woolen coverlet, which was used for the ironing-table; he seized it, and adroitly threw it over the head of Francois, who, in spite of all his efforts, finding himself entangled in its thick folds, could make no use of his arms. Then Nicholas threw himself ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... again I recall That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill Watching together the curving thunderous fall Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until My mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that wound On the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turning In the humming dark rooms of the mill: all sense and discerning By the stunning and dazzling oblivion of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... coopery, dairying, domestic science, drawing, dress-making, electricity, embroidery, engineering, fancy work, farming, floriculture, gardening, glazing, harness-making, house decoration, half-tone engraving, housework, horticulture, ironing, knife work, knitting, lace-making, laundering, leather work, manual training, mattress-making, millinery, needlework, nursing, painting, paper-hanging, photography, plastering, plate-engraving, plumbing, pottery, poultry-farming, printing, pyrography, raffia, rug-weaving, sewing, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn, as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her blue-grey ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... know—mebbe she would of put her away, she was that frightened little Margery would get Junior killed off in some horrible manner, like the time she got him to see how high he dast jump out of the apple tree from, or like the time she told him, one ironing day, that if he drank a whole bowlful of starch it would make him have whiskers like his pa in fifteen minutes. Things like that—not fatal, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... cold, Nance?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for working in that old store for $8. a week! I made $18.50 last week. Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I don't know that it's any less ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... finally settled in what appears to have been then a wilderness, "the woods of Watervliet, near Niskeyuna, about seven miles northwest of Albany." In the mean time Ann Lee had supported herself by washing and ironing in New York, and her husband had misconducted himself so grossly toward her that they finally separated, he going ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... set leading harness; 2 tressels and ironing board; 2 fenders; fire-irons and fire-dogs; 1 old oak chest; 1 wardrobe; 1 Brussels carpet ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... from nine to twelve in the forenoon and from one till four in the afternoon was that of any ordinary school, except that the girls who prepared the meals were excused earlier than the others. One day in the week was devoted to washing and ironing down on the river-bank and in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... blindly felt our way, and at the extreme end of which were hung dark red plush curtains, as if before a shrine. We pulled aside these trappings of gloom, and there were two iron cots, not over a foot and a half wide, about the shape and feeling of an ironing-board, covered with what appeared to be gray army blankets, I looked to see "U.S." stamped on them. I have seen them in museums ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... clear-starching and ironing domestic drudgery, and to better the matter turning to type-setting in a grimy printing-office! Call the care of china and silver, the sweeping of carpets, the arrangement of parlors and sitting rooms, drudgery; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... treated on terms of equality, a field was to be brought into cultivation as soon as any labour could be had. Minna was looking infinitely better already, and Averil and Cora were full of designs for rival housewifery, Averil taking lessons meantime in ironing, dusting, and the arts of the kitchen, and trusting that in the two years' time, the skeletons would have given place—if not indeed to houses, to well-kept ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... temper like a steel-trap, who remained with me just one week, and then went off in a fit of spite. To her succeeded a rosy, good-natured, merry lass, who broke the crockery, burned the dinner, tore the clothes in ironing, and knocked down every thing that stood in her way about the house, without at all discomposing herself about the matter. One night she took the stopper from a barrel of molasses, and came singing off up stairs, while the molasses ran soberly ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with her basket of clothes along the streets, Mandy finally reached her home where she did the washing and ironing. Her children were waiting for her to come to supper. Liza Ann, the oldest girl, had set the table, and Jim, the next oldest boy, was out on the steps watching for his mother, just as Arnold and Mirabell watched for ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... by the front window, with her darning. She had persuaded Mr. Dyer to wait till Wednesday; for as for having all the people tramping through the yard when the clean clothes were out, she couldn't think of it; and she might as well get through the ironing, then she could have an eye on them. And how provoked they'd all be to come down all that way to Cranberry Hollow, to find only a bin of potatoes to divide ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... practice work.) 2. Clearing the table. 3. Washing the dishes. 4. Sweeping the kitchen. Sweeping the piazza. 5. Dusting. 6. Making beds and caring for bedrooms. 7. Arranging her own bureau drawers and closets. 8. Simple cooking. 9. Hemming towels and table linen. 10. Ironing handkerchiefs and napkins. ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... door and went over the way. Here she found a somewhat tidy woman at work ironing. Nobody else in the room. She made known her errand. The ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... some people who "make" time for everything, and this remarkable mother was one. That winter she baked bread for every English bachelor ranchman within ten miles. She did their washing and ironing, and never neglected her own, either. She knitted socks for them, and made and sold quantities of Saskatoon berry jam. When spring came she had over fifty dollars of her own, with which she promptly bought a cow. Then late in March they made a small first payment of a team of horses, and "broke ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... sons of an ironing-woman, were apprentices in a foundry of the near-by Ronda. The younger passed his days in a continuous capering, indulging in death-defying leaps, climbing trees, walking on his hands and performing acrobatic stunts from all ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... It was ironing day, and a hot fire still burned in the empty kitchen, for the maids were upstairs resting. Nan put a slender poker to heat, and as she sat waiting for it, covered her face with her hands, asking help in this sudden need for strength, courage, and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... took her knitting, and went to tell as many of her neighbours as it was possible to see during the short afternoon, about the silk gown her Christina was to be married in; and Christina spread her ironing table, and began to damp, and fold, and smooth the clean linen. And as she did so, she sang a verse or two of 'Hunting Tower,' and then she thought awhile, and then she sang again. And she was so happy, that her form swayed to ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... the alleys. During August and September the substantiated reports of violations of the law sent in from Hull-House to the health department were one thousand and thirty-seven. For the club woman who had finished a long day's work of washing or ironing followed by the cooking of a hot supper, it would have been much easier to sit on her doorstep during a summer evening than to go up and down ill-kept alleys and get into trouble with her neighbors over the condition of their garbage ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... caused her mother some anxious days. Miss Sherwin, going in one evening to ask Zenobia about the patient, found Mrs. Morrison herself in the kitchen, crying as if her heart would break, her face buried in one of her little daughter's white aprons that lay on the ironing-board. ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... Phillis was at her ironing early in the morning, for she liked to hurry it over before the heat of the day. Her cabin doors were open, and her flowers, which had been watered by a slight rain that fell about daybreak, looked fresh and beautiful. Her house could be hardly called a cabin, for ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... have just been to put some flowers on her grave, and I took it off afore going that the damp mid not spoil the crape. You see, she was bad a long time, and I have to be careful, and do washing and ironing for a living. She hurt her side with wringing up the large sheets she had to wash for the Castle ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... totally different from Chelsea, or Derby, or Worcestershire, or Staffordshire. This I admit. One peculiarity Mr. S. Martin observed. The bottoms of the saucers have very slight undulations, looking, as he said, like a ribbon that requires ironing to be perfectly flat and smooth. This, when he showed me, I also noticed; and, I must add, I have seen the same in real Chinese china; but he told me he could distinguish better, and that it was not the same. Also, there is a uniformity in certain ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... washing and ironing the child's things to make her fine for to-morrow, when her father comes. He is a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... are dining early to-day, and having nothing but cold meat, in order that the servants may get on with their ironing; and yet, of course, we must ask him to dinner—Edith's brother-in-law and all. And your papa is in such low spirits this morning about something—I don't know what. I went into the study just now, and he had his face on the table, covering ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of their business affairs, merely saw her aunts grow more and more saving, pinching here and there, cutting off this and that relentlessly. Less meat and fish were bought; the woman who had lately been coming two days a week for washing, ironing, and scrubbing was dismissed; the old bonnets of the season before were brushed up and retrimmed; there were no drives to Moderation or trips to Portland. Economy was carried to its very extreme; but though Miranda was well-nigh as gloomy and uncompromising in her manner and conversation as ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... receptiveness. And it was so sad and so beautiful, so full of an ecstatic melancholy, that I dropped the curtain. And my thought ranged lovingly over our household—prim, regular, and perfect: my old aunt embroidering in the breakfast-room, and Rebecca and Lucy ironing in the impeachable kitchen, and not one of them with the least suspicion that Adam had not really waked up one morning minus a rib. I wandered in fancy all over the house—the attics, my aunt's bedroom so miraculously neat, and mine so unkempt, and ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... little person made a bob-curtsey—"Oh, yes, if you please'm; my name is Mrs. Tiggy-winkle; oh, yes if you please'm, I'm an excellent clear-starcher!" And she took something out of a clothes- basket, and spread it on the ironing-blanket. ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle • Beatrix Potter
... Gloyd and Lola attended to the chamber work, and little Charlien was the one who did the buying for the house. I would often wash out my tablecloths at night myself and iron them in the morning before breakfast. I would take boarders' washing, hire a woman to wash, then do the ironing myself. Columbia was a small village of not more than five hundred people. It was the terminal of a railroad called the Columbia Tap. Mr. Painter, the conductor, began boarding with us right off and in three or four ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... domestic gaps into which her mother always steps; and she comforts herself with the thought, 'I don't know how; I can't; I haven't the strength. I cant' sweep; it blisters my hands. If I should stand at the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week. As to cooking, I don't know anything about it.' And so, when the cook, or the chambermaid, or nurse, or all together, vacate the premises, it is the mamma who is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse; and this is the reason ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Wed., 9 days out. Ironing day; blowing a gale of wind; women are making hard work of it and getting seasick—Hove to at 8 bells this morning; lays easy; kicked Ham away from the wheel and steered his trick; afraid I can't make a sailor of ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... under a cloud soon after breakfast, and a cold drizzling rain began to fall. It gave me the rheumatism, and I was glad to curl up in a big market-basket on the shelf behind the stove, and enjoy the heat of the roaring fire. Nora was ironing, and singing as she worked. Not since I left the warm California garden had I been as peaceful and as comfortable. The heat made me so drowsy that not even the thump, bump of Nora's iron on the ironing-board, or the sound of her shrill singing could keep me awake. I dreamed and dozed, and dozed ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... wekness has made it a perfect failure. I am a widow for 9 years. I have very pore learning altho it would not make much diffrent if I would be throughly edacated for I could not get any better work to do, such as house work, washing and ironing and all such work that are injering to a woman with femail wekness and they pay so little for so hard work that it is just enough to pay room rent and a little some thing to eat. I have found a very good remady that I really feeling to belive would cure me if I only ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Kitty conquer by want of clothes: not that Love sat in judgment; it was Plutus turned the scale. But, to leave metaphor and classic illustration, and go back to Mat Riley's cabin—the girls were washing, and starching, and ironing all night, and the morning saw them arrayed for conquest. Flanagan came, and breakfasted, and saw the three girls. A flashy silk handkerchief which Nancy wore put her hors de combat very soon; she was set down at once, in his mind, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... miles and miles in London. In one a man sat smoking in his shirtsleeves, from another a slavey leaned out watching a fourwheeler that had stopped next door, in a third a woman sat sewing, and in a fourth a woman was ironing, with a glimpse of a bedstead behind her. And all outside was gloom ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... added to the Windom menage,—a parlour-maid she was called. This was too much. It was rank injustice. General housework girls began to complain of having too much work to do,—getting up at five in the morning, cooking for half a dozen "hands," doing all the washing and ironing, milking, sweeping and so on, and not getting to bed till nine or ten o'clock at night,—to say nothing of family dinners on Sunday and the preacher in every now and then, and all that. Moreover, Mrs. Windom herself never looked bedraggled. She took care of her hair, wore good ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... attendants. Piles of wet linen lay on the ground, but a quantity had not yet seen the water. After a considerable amount of jabbering and talking, it was agreed that the task could be accomplished. The sun was hot, and the gentlemen must not be very particular about the ironing. While one half of the damsels set to work again in the stream, the rest, headed by the mistress, began to hang up the washed articles, a young girl being despatched apparently for further assistance. This looked like being ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... underneath it, and above his head a linnet hopped and twittered in a green cage. Kit's perambulator occupied one corner, while Kit herself, seated at the table in a high chair, was busily engaged in ironing out some ragged doll-garments with a tiny bent flat-iron. Anna regarded her pitifully—the small shrunken figure and sunken chest, and the thin white face with its halo of red curls. But Kit was almost too absorbed with her endeavour to get the creases ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the kitchen this morning to get warm," Jill observed later in the evening, "I found Bridget ironing; the stove was red-hot, the bath boiler was bubbling and shaking with the imprisoned steam, and the outside door was wide open. It struck me that there was heat enough going out of doors, not to mention the superheated air of the kitchen itself, to have ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... to listen. No sound came from the interior of H. Cragg's apartment. Farther along she found a similar door on which was a card reading: "Miss Huckins, Dressmaker and Milliner." Listening again, she heard the sound of a flatiron thumping an ironing board. ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... upon [she was only sixteen years old], and we are four boys and three girls, grandma, mama, the baby, and himself; so it is hard for him, and I haven't the heart to ask them for anything, no matter how bad I need it. I take in washing from the boarders at the two hotels, also sewing and ironing, or go out to do ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... for five years and eleven months. During her sojourn there she was sent to the Matteawan Hospital for Criminal Insane, where she remained forty-five days. Upon being discharged she returned to her home and lived with her mother, assisting her with washing and ironing, following which she led the life of a prostitute for about two years. In 1901 she was sentenced to thirty months imprisonment at Moundsville, Virginia, for theft. Previous to this she had been ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... went to the hotel to see a traveling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards, with their white throats and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Alix said. "If Peter's a stranger," she added animatedly, "what is an intimate friend? Peter walks through this house at all hours; you can't wash your hair or do a little ironing without having Peter under your feet; he borrows money from me; he bullies Hong about ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... kind," Arnold answered, with a laugh. "You see your Lamb has wheels on her, and she can roll right down the ironing board hill, just like Dick made an old roller skate ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... room it was as usual spotlessly clean and smelt of flowers. The windows were open, and a young woman was busy shirt-ironing on a table in the centre of the room. Both she and her mother looked up with smiles as Marcella entered. Then, they introduced her with some ceremony to a "lady," who was sitting beside the patient, a long-faced melancholy woman employed at the moment in marking ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and I went down there to his shanty and gave him his medicine, and read to him all day, and he cried 'cause he knew I ought to have mauled him, and that night I sat up with him while his Ma did the ironing, and Duffy was so glad that I went down every day and stayed there every night, and fired medicine down him, and let his Ma sleep, and Duffy has got mashed on me, and he says I will be an angel when I die. Last ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... which he sat down, was an extremely poor and homely place, but with that air of comfort about it, nevertheless, which cleanliness and order can always impart in some degree. Late as the Dutch clock showed it to be, Kit's mother was still hard at work at an ironing-table; a young child lay sleeping in a cradle near the fire; and another, a sturdy boy of two or three years old, very wide awake, was sitting bolt upright in a clothes-basket, staring over the rim with his great round eyes. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... and emptied its contents into the basin, and then began washing in a very unartistic, rough way, evidently tearing them; and one, before wetting it, he held up to the candle, and carelessly set it on fire. Then he spread a blanket, and took them out, and began ironing them; but the iron was too hot, and he was evidently singeing them horribly. "Never mind," he exclaimed, "I have a magic ironing machine, which will do the work in a moment." He produced a box, with a handle ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... The daughter was busy at some ironing in the outer room; she was a dull, lack-lustre creature, and though she comprehended the gifts that had been brought her, seemed hardly to have life enough to thank the donor. That wasn't quite like ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... she prescribed and bandaged, cut out garments, superintended washing, and initiated women into the secrets of starching and ironing. Day by day she held a morning and evening service, and it was with difficulty that she prevented the one from merging into the other. On Sabbath the yard became strangely quiet: all connected with it were clothed ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... ugly one was ironing in his shop in the basement of 263 1/2 Main street, he looked up and saw a crowd of childish faces pressed against the window. Most Chinamen make friends with children; this one hated them and ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... finished a large ironing for one of the families in the village, and having placed the clothes-frame where the dust from the open fire-place could not fall on the fine starched linens and muslins, she began to set her table for tea, at the same time counting over the gains of the week. Not a trifle in her ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... and the technicalities of ironing out the final details of the contract. Then, dealer in millions and the possessor of nothing, Houston went ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... plenty of warm and good quality, though not white, blankets. Sheets are flannel or cotton as preferred. Pillow cases are linen, towels of the "bath" variety because washing can be done by "natives" near by, but ironing is difficult. Let no one, however, think that this is a "simple" (by that meaning either easy or inexpensive) form of entertainment! Imagine the budget! A dozen guides, teams and drivers, natives to wash and clean and to help the cook; food for two or three dozen people sent hundreds ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... live in. I knew that she was not there; yet I was disappointed and annoyed when I heard merry laughter within. I looked in, for the door was open; in the corner where my mother used to sit, there was a mangle, and two women busily at work; others were ironing at a large table; and when they cried out to me, 'What do you want?' and laughed at me, I turned away in disgust, and went to a neighbouring cottage, the inmates of which had been very intimate with my mother. I found the wife at home, but she did not know me; and I told ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a boy," continued Wallace, "who came down early one winter morning, and after warming himself a moment by the sitting-room fire, he went out in the kitchen. It happened to be ironing day, and the girl was engaged in ironing at a great table by the kitchen fire. We will call the girl's ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... no such foreign body as a nurse. It employs one maid of all work, who helps the housewife wherever help is needed, whether it is in the kitchen or the nursery. The mother spends her time with her children, playing with them when she has leisure, cooking and ironing and saving for them, and for her husband all through her busy day. Modern Germans like to tell you that young women no longer devote themselves to these simple duties, but if you use your eyes you will see that most women do their work as faithfully as ever. There is an idle, pleasure-loving, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... that Nanny was a slattern, but only because she married into slavery. She was kept so busy washing and ironing for Sanders that she ceased to care how she looked herself. What did it matter whether her mutch was clean? Weaving and washing and cooking, doing the work of a breadwinner as well as of a housewife, hers was soon a body prematurely old, on which no wrapper would sit becomingly. Before her ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... in household work, washing, ironing, and sewing, and two hours of schooling. When the nature of the work will permit, instructive books are read aloud, or the deaconesses give pleasant talks on different subjects that will keep the thoughts of the workers ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... O. K.," Hugh told him, smilingly. "We're pushing along pretty fairly, and ironing out some of the wrinkles as we go. Lots still to be done before we're ready to try conclusions with your team at Belleville; but with such a capable coach as Mr. Leonard, we believe we'll get there ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... in a charitable light, Nan consented, and went cheerfully on with her work, wondering how she could have thought ironing an infliction, and been so ungrateful for the blessings ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... interjected, raising her head from the ironing-board where, Sphinx-like, magnificent, she swung a splendid arm above her ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... go and hang this up in the kitchen where it is warm, on that nail on the outside door, and maybe some of the creases will come out. I've heard they would. I hope so, for I've got about all I want to do without ironing this dress ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... my wife calls the cook's delight. It's an ironing-board on wash-days, a supper table at supper-time, and on the cook's reception days it can be ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... of a fiend. She brought but few slaves with her; and those few were of course compelled to perform additional labor. One faithful negro woman nursed the twins of her mistress, and did all the washing, ironing, and scouring. If, after a sleepless night with the restless babes, (driven from the bosom of their mother,) she performed her toilsome avocations with diminished activity, her mistress, with her own lady-like hands, applied the cowskin, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... flannel called double-mill, used for ironing blankets, is a good material for a jelly-bag. Take care that the seam of the bag be stitched twice, to secure the jelly against unequal filtration. The bag may, of course, be made any size, but one of twelve or fourteen inches deep, and seven or eight across the mouth, will ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... wife must not sit up washing and ironing all night again. She ought to have help in her sympathy and labors for the poor fugitives, and, I should think there are many there ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... found amongst it; but this if wetted makes the strongest fire for the back of the grate, where it should remain untouched till it is formed into a cake. Cinders lightly wetted give a great degree of heat, and are better than coal for furnaces, ironing stoves, and ovens. They should be carefully preserved and sifted in a covered tin bucket, which prevents ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... my elder brother tom, who, as I have said, was almost a man when I was a little child, came into the nursery where I was playing, and where the maids were ironing. Upon some slight provocation or contradiction from him, I flew into a violent passion; and, snatching up one of the boxirons which the maid had just laid down, I flung it across the table at my brother. He stooped instantly; and, thank God! it missed him. ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... got nearly to the scullery door with her wringing and splashing and wiping; and she had dirtied even her face. As Hilda absently looked at her, she thought somehow of Mr. Cannon's white wristbands. She saw the washing and the ironing of those wristbands, and a slatternly woman or two sighing and grumbling amid wreaths of steam, and a background of cinders and suds and sloppiness.... All that, so that the grand creature might have a rim of pure white to his coat-sleeves for a day! It ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett |
