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Housewife   Listen
noun
Housewife  n.  
1.
The wife of a householder; the mistress of a family; the female head of a household. "He a good husband, a good housewife she."
2.
A little case or bag for materials used in sewing, and for other articles of female work; called also hussy. (Written also huswife)
3.
A hussy. (R.) (Usually written huswife)
Sailor's housewife, a ditty-bag.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Housewife" Quotes from Famous Books



... back more easily than you. She might listen to words from a woman—a woman, too, who has loved—which she could not hear from men. At least I could mend and wash for you. I suppose it is as easy to play the good housewife afloat as on shore? ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Buckingham Palace and Windsor, entered their new home at Sandringham on March 28th. Here the beautiful personality and character of the Princess soon impressed themselves upon the life of the house and its more public environment. She proved to be a model housewife, later on a model mother, and always and everywhere a model of tactful action and conversation. Pliability and adaptability were useful and important qualities which she found more than serviceable in these early years of her transition from a comparatively humble home to one of ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... woman and a true housewife, it was perhaps inevitable that she should think first, and, after due consideration given to everything else, including pitchforks and cayenne pepper, that she should think last and finally, of the unlimited potentialities ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... of industry Is heard, with varied sounds, thro' all the village. The humming wheel, the thrifty housewife's tongue, Who scolds to keep her maidens at their work, Rough grating cards, and voice of squaling children Issue from every house.—— But, hark!—the sportsman from the neighb'ring hedge His thunder sends!—loud bark each village cur; Up from her ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... I know another housewife who is so dainty and refined that, though her husband's income is strained almost to the breaking point, she must have everything in the house so dainty and fragile that no ordinary servant can be trusted to care for the furniture, wash the dishes, polish the floors, etc., ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... to my aim, And this night's effort promise future fame, She shall proceed—but if some bar you find, And that my fondness made my judgment blind, Discern no voice, no feeling she possess, Nor fire that can the passions well express; Then, then forever, shall she quit this scene, Be the plain housewife, not the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... guests were flown; Nay, filled with friends, an unobtrusive set, Guiltless of calls and cards and etiquette, Ready to answer, never known to ask, Claiming no service, prompt for every task. On those dark shelves no housewife hand profanes, O'er his mute files the monarch folio reigns; A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time, That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime, Each knows his place, and each may claim his part In some quaint corner ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... how his grandmother, in '61, had put a Bible into one pocket and a housewife into another, and had sent him off to war. Had the fiber of our women weakened since then? But he knew it had not. All day, in the new plant, women were working with high-explosives quite calmly. And there were Audrey ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... substance the same as in all the Indian wars of the backwoods. Men, women, and children were killed or captured; outlying cabins were attacked and burned; the husbandman was shot as he worked in the field, and the housewife as she went for water. The victim was now a militiaman on his way to join his company, now one of a party of immigrants, now a settler on his lonely farm, and now a justice of the peace going to Court, or a Baptist preacher striving ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... to her father's stories or helping her mother with the housework, which, good housewife that Mrs. Barton was, she took great pains to teach her youngest daughter how to do well, Clara was as busy as possible in some other way. In that household there were no drones, and the little girl was not even allowed to waste time ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... and bowed to the ground with age, offers a mossy, shady seat upon one of its branches which has returned to the earth from which it sprung. Some wooden posts grown green and lichen-covered, standing at regular intervals, show where the housewife dries her linen. Right before the very door a great horse-chestnut tree rears itself in all the beauty of its thousands of blossoms, hiding half the house. A small patch of ground in front is railed in with ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... banished, and is now seldom found but in the gardens of cottages and old farmhouses, where it is still prized for its bright and almost everlasting flowers (looking very like a Gazania) and evergreen tuft of leaves, while the careful housewife still picks and carefully stores the petals of the flowers, and uses them in broths and soups, believing them to be of great efficacy, as Gerard said they were, "to strengthen and comfort the heart;" though scarcely ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within the soul of the housewife who achieves it—the lace-edged shelves, the scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... talk to her, and Alda, who, like Geraldine, had dressed herself in soft greys and whites, with her delicate cheeks flushed with pleasure and triumph, looked as beautiful as ever, and far outshone her twin, whose complexion and figure both had become those of the portly housewife. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... interposed the housewife; 'meanwhile, ye had best eat your porridge. Here is Father, in good time with ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... within herself that Primrose had a large share of what she set down as carnal beauty, the loveliness of physical coloring and symmetry. Neither of the Morgan girls would ever be temptingly pretty, and she gave thanks for it. Rachel would make a thrifty and admirable housewife. She could not wish her son a better mate. Andrew would be needed on the farm, which would be his eventually, and she would have no difficulty in living with ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... this poor child is a shoemaker, and his house is next to mine. His wife, though a handsome, was not a healthy woman; but she was a careful and good housewife. It is about seven years since they were married, always lived together on the best terms, and undoubtedly would have been perfectly happy, had their affairs ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... men should go to farming, and another that no man should buy or sell, that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to fermentation. It was in vain urged by the housewife that God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. No; they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... approach the dwelling, the housewife's handy-work is displayed in a pole hung with many a skein of snow white yarn, glistening in the sunlight. Four years have passed since Sybel was a bride—-her cheek has lost the bloom of girlhood, and has already assumed the hollow form of ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... sake of convenience, but because they help to stamp clearly on the mind a most illuminating conception, that of the "margin," which supplies the clue to many complicated problems. The last pound of sugar which the housewife purchased, the fifth pound when the price was 8 cents, or the sixth pound when the price was 7 cents, we call the "marginal" pound of sugar. And the increment of utility which she derives from buying this marginal pound we call the "marginal utility" of sugar to her. We are thus ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... would happen tomorrow if one hundred thousand tramps should become suddenly inspired with an overmastering desire for work? It is a fair question. "Go to work" is preached to the tramp every day of his life. The judge on the bench, the pedestrian in the street, the housewife at the kitchen door, all unite in advising him to go to work. So what would happen tomorrow if one hundred thousand tramps acted upon this advice and strenuously and indomitably sought work? Why, by the end of the week one hundred thousand workers, their places taken by the tramps, would ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... these glowing words. They testify that she was not only brilliant, accomplished, exquisite in manner, but good to every one, kind to the poor, and devoted to her husband and children. She was a faultless housewife, as well as a fearless horsewoman, and she was strong in body as she was active in mind. "She could leap a five-rail fence, walk ten miles at a stretch, and ride with the boldest dragoon. Robed in scarlet broadcloth, with a white beaver hat, on a spirited horse, she might be seen ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... fellows, such as footmen and other menials should be, are obviously more powerful and more expensive than women. They are better fitted for this work, as showing a larger waste of time and of human energy. Hence it comes about that in the economy of the leisure class the busy housewife of the early patriarchal days, with her retinue of hard-working handmaidens, presently gives place to ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... swayed backward against her knee, so absorbed was it in its thumb and the sky, and would have fallen but that she caught it with her housewife's hand, being throughout mindful ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... And many a housewife, as she rewarded the singers, dropped a silent tear, wondering whether another spring would see the innocents anywhere save in a Persian slave-pen, or, better fate, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... the Haneys" while visiting the town. They were, in fact, very curious to study her in her new and splendid setting; and though some of them peeked and peered amid the beds, and thumped the mattresses in vulgar curiosity, the young housewife merely laughed. All her life had been spent among folk of this directly inquisitive sort. She expected them to act as they did, and, being a hearty and generous soul, as well as a very democratic one, she sent them ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... cooked stuff—savoury rice, vermicelli, &c.—so that one can have a dainty savoury with very little trouble. This is of no little importance in an age when so many demands are made upon the time and energy of the average housewife, and one would do well to study while preparing any dish requiring a good deal of care and labour, to have sufficient over to make a fricassee of some sort ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... anything of the sort," she said smiling. "I'll run up Nell's tatters meesilf!" As she spoke she produced from her pocket—a handy little "housewife," containing needles and thread, as well as a thimble, which useful articles the good lady seldom stirred out without; and, sitting down on a shawl which the Captain spread over a bit of turf that he assured her was free from nettles, and ten yards at least from the nearest ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... handkerchief-sized village square, a platoon was drilling. A thin French housewife was hanging sheets on a line behind a shell-twisted hovel. A Red Cross nurse came out of the hospital-church across the street from the estaminet and seated herself on the stone steps with ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... the couch, his long legs comfortably extended. It was no longer the attitude of the invalid but of the well man enjoying earned repose. "I wonder how often I've said to some tired mother or too-busy housewife who longed for rest: 'If you were to become crippled or even forbidden to work any more and made to rest for good, how happy these past years would seem to you when you were tired because you had accomplished something.' ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... sent her a ticket granting the privileges of its library. So great and perhaps unexpected had been its success that for several years, Mrs. Child's books bore the signature, "By the author of Hobomok." Even "The Frugal Housewife" was "By ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... said Dame Brinker, who through all her poverty was ever a tidy housewife. "Have a care, the wine is there at your right and the white ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... open his mouth. So I placed the knapsack on a chair in the middle of the room, all packed and ready, for everyone to see that we're leaving. And I waited for the morning of the next day, and this time the knapsack was observed. No, it wasn't. So I had to wait till the housewife called us to the midday meal, and tell her then, pointing to what was in ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... But now the housewife saw, dismayed, The waste so many mice had made, And did a trap procure. "And if I catch a mouse," said she, "No mercy shall it find from me; From mice my ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown

... foul-tempered and surly, and no man could abide him, Thorhall's wife least of all. So time wore on till Christmas-eve, when Glam called for his meat, but was told that no Christian man would eat meat on that day. He insisted; and the housewife gave it, though prophesying evil would come of it. Glam took the food and went ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... the housewife as well as the camper-out, the more so since one hundred lozenges, weighing a little more than four ounces, will make one ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... for granted, what that word lady meant at first. That it meant she who gave out the loaves, the housewife who provided food and clothes; the stewardess of her household and dependants; the spinner among her maidens; the almsgiver to the poor; the worshipper in the chapel, praying for wild men away in battle. The ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... was threatened with blindness. His hair was grayer now than then, and the years had added a few lines to his kind face, but he was not nearly so grave. He smiled oftener, and she noticed with satisfaction his evident pride in Eugenia since she had blossomed into such a happy, enthusiastic housewife, and his devotion to little Patricia, when she was brought in for awhile just ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... was boiling over, but the housewife paid no attention to it. She shook her clenched ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... Tottering Terrace West. It contains a voluminous list of useful domestic goods, presenting the most enormous bargains, in the way of sheetings, shirtings, flannels, diapers, damasks, dimities, table-cloths, &c. &c. The economical housewife is cautioned by this generous firm, that to disregard the present opportunity would be the utmost excess of folly, as the whole stock is to be peremptorily sold considerably under half the cost price. The following are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various

... to trade with them. There was on board a Hebridean woman named Thorgunna, of whom her shipmates said that she owned some costly things, the like of which would be difficult to find in Iceland. When Thurid, the housewife at Froda, heard of this she was very curious to see the articles, for she was a woman that was fond of show and finery. She went to the ship and asked Thorgunna whether she had any woman's apparel that was finer than the common. Thorgunna said that she had nothing of the kind ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... medley of kitchen, parlor, and hall that carried me back to earlier times, and pleased me. The place, indeed, was humble, but everything had that look of order and neatness which bespeaks the superintendence of a notable English housewife. A group of amphibious-looking beings, who might be either fishermen or sailors, were regaling themselves in one of the boxes. As I was a visitor of rather higher pretensions, I was ushered into a little misshapen back room, having at least nine corners. It was lighted by a sky-light, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... and high estate. In the bourgeois household described by Pandolfini no one can be indolent. The men have to work outside and collect wealth, the women to stay at home and preserve it. The character of a good housewife is sketched very minutely. Pandolfini describes how, when he was first married, he took his wife over the house, and gave up to her care all its contents. Then he went into their bedroom, and made her kneel with him before Madonna, and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... they first appeared,—Lippincott's Magazine, The Metropolitan Magazine, McCall's Magazine, Harper's Magazine, The American Magazine, Progress Magazine, The Arena, The Christian Endeavor World, The Congregationalist and Christian World, The Housewife, Harper's Bazar [Transcriber's note: Bazaar?], Judge's Library Magazine, The New England Magazine, People's Short Story Magazine, The Christian Herald, The ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... had so habituated herself to this way of speaking, that it was difficult for her to avoid it. As a housewife she was unexceptionable. She was careful to have everything in the most cleanly and orderly condition. She was an excellent cook, and the Squire an excellent provider, so that their table was always well spread, whenever good cheer was required. And yet you could not enter the house without being ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... suppose the couple who own the house to be in the condition in which people generally are after they have built a house—having spent more than they could afford on the building itself, and yet feeling themselves under the necessity of getting some furniture. "Now," says the housewife, "I must at least have a parlor-carpet. We must get that to begin with, and other things as we go on." She goes to a store to look at carpets. The clerks are smiling and obliging, and sweetly complacent. The storekeeper, perhaps, is a neighbor or a friend, and after exhibiting various ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... time of Elizabeth and James. There was massive eating done in those days, when the guests dined at eleven, rose from the banquet to go to evening prayers, and returned to a supper at five or six, which was often as substantial as the dinner. Gervase Markham in his "English Housewife," after treating of the ordering of great feasts, gives directions for "a more humble feast of an ordinary proportion." This "humble feast," he says, should consist for the first course of "sixteen full dishes, that is, dishes of meat that are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... golden light should lie, And thick, young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife-bee ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... present day system of education, however, there is too much a disposition to make no such distinction. The boy in the greater number of cases is the bread-winner, and has to rely on his own exertions, whether they be manual or mental. The girl, on the other hand, looks forward to the destiny of housewife. This aspect of the educational problem certainly deserves to have more attention paid to it than it has yet received. Still a step in the light direction has been made by James Platt, the author of many valuable works ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... thy limber bit of a thigh, thrust through that bunch of slashed buckram and tiffany, shows like a housewife's distaff when the flax ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... visible light anywhere in the whole town. "A chunk or two" is always kept smouldering in the center of the house on the clay floor. The housewife is always careful to have a handful of split dry bamboo near, and when anyone is stung by a scorpion or snake (which often happens) they start up a blaze and hunt for the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... will stir about, And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife: Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her; I'll not to bed to-night;—let me alone; I'll play the housewife for this once.—What, ho!— They are all forth: well, I will walk myself To County Paris, to prepare him up Against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light Since this same wayward girl ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... reforms in domestic life is a change to more simple meals on the Sabbath. In many households the Sabbath is the only day in the week when all the members of the family can dine together, and with an aim to making it the most enjoyable day of all, the good housewife provides the most elaborate dinner of the week, for the preparation of which she must either spend an unusual amount of time and labor the day previous or must encroach upon the sacred rest day ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... the native servants are generally industrious. This one, Karlee boasted, was a notable housewife. Before she went out to service as an ayah she had cleaned the rice, pounded the curry, cooked all the meals, brought water from the tank in earthen jars on her head, swept and scrubbed the floor, cultivated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... the morning I took leave of my kind hostess, who, like a truly careful housewife, had wrapped up a roasted fowl, manioc flour, and a cheese for me, so that I was ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... our red cedar as one of the finest woods of the New World, praising its quality and especially its durability. Indeed the heart wood of red cedar seems to hold an oil which makes it proof against vermin and fungi. Every housewife knows the value of red cedar chips or red cedar chests in keeping garments safe from moths. Every old-time farmer knows the value of red cedar as fence-posts. The heart wood seems practically indestructible by rot. Posts set in the ground for a hundred years, in which the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... to the village at last it was to find her mother dead, her brothers gone abroad, and her sisters married, so that she was the only one left at home. As she was pretty and a good housewife she did not want for lovers, and in due time she chose one for a husband. She did not tell her spouse about the purse she had had from the fairies, and if she wanted to give him a piece of gold she withdrew it from the magic purse in secret. She never went back ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... William, where she resides, and found her seated by her fireside, with a favorite cat perched upon her shoulder and purring in her ear. Nanny Smith is a large, good-looking woman, a specimen of the old-fashioned country housewife, combining antiquated notions and prejudices, and very limited information, with natural good sense. She loves to gossip about the Abbey and Lord Byron, and was soon drawn into a course of anecdotes, though mostly of an humble kind, such as suited the meridian of the housekeeper's ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... head of a two pronged fish spear, a fisherman's knife in its sheath with belt, a paternoster, invaluable for the fathoms of fishing line attached, a small American axe with the head vaselined, a canvas housewife with sail-needles, a few darning needles and some pack thread, and a number of odds and ends including some extra ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... kinds into the kitchen, whether there be a sink in the butler's pantry or not. My grandmother (and my mother, too) never suffered a servant to wash the fine porcelain or the cut glass; that responsible task was always reserved for the housewife herself, and the result was that no porcelain was chipped and no cut glass cracked. They sent me an old willow teapot from Biddeford, and it had n't been with us three weeks before our Celtic cook marred its symmetry by chipping off its ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... nothing of my designs to Mistress Pennyquick, foreseeing trouble in that quarter. It was pitiful to see her, who had been such a bustling housewife, sitting the greater part of the day with her hands in her lap, or dabbing the tears from her eyes, and to hear her melancholy plaints, which grew the more frequent as the time drew nearer for leaving the old house. After concluding ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... woman happily cast in a different mould from her husband, was an ancestress of Jane Austen who deserves commemoration. Thrifty, energetic, a careful mother, and a prudent housewife, she managed, though receiving only grudging assistance from the Austen family, to pay off her husband's debts, and to give to all her younger children a decent education at a school at Sevenoaks; the eldest boy (the future ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... the husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is considered respectable. This is the genesis of the Club—out of the Housewife by Respectability. Nowadays every one is respectable—jockeys, betting-men, actors, and even actresses. Mrs. Kendal takes her children to visit a duchess, and has naughty chorus girls to tea, and tells them ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... they meet together for a repast which is an appetizer for the feast to follow. A pipe of tobacco is given to each man and boy present, then they smoke while the feast, the great feature of the day, is being made ready. Fish, poultry, meats, and every variety of food known to the Norwegian housewife is served in courses, between which toasts are given, healths drunk, and the songs of Norway rendered. Among the latter "Old Norway" is always included, for the people never forget the past history of ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... housewife," said the Knight, "you speak like a fool, and meddle with what concerns you not.—Wrong at my hand? The cowardly knave has ever had but even too much right. Had I cudgelled the cur soundly when he first bayed at me, the cowardly mongrel ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... whereon the whole earth swings— The thin milk stream that in the keeler sings; The thin green blade that from the cornfield springs; That thin grey thread the housewife's shuttle flings. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... decided, indomitable, courageous fellow, provincial in his manners, but fully understanding his business, and collected as a housewife ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... from his hand, tried the weight, counted the trout with a housewife's eye, tried the weight again, and ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... jingle of the bells on the baker's cart as it begins its rounds. From innumerable chimneys the curdled smoke gives evidence that the thrifty housewife—or, what is rarer in Stillwater, the hired girl—has ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... good-natured impatience and hurried through the great guard-room to the winding stairs, that were cut out of the core of the massive stones. Up and across another mighty hall, and then up again, and into a great women's-room, full of looms and spinning-wheels, where a buxom English housewife and half-a-dozen red-cheeked maids were gaping over their distaffs at the tale a jolly old monk was telling ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... is welcome to the Mansion now that it's honor has come home! And, servantless almost as I am, I can comfortably feel that there is no room, nor closet even, in the old place that is not fit for the inspection of every Marsden housewife. Yes, thank God! I have never felt myself demeaned by any household task that presented, and cleanliness is part of pure religion. Do as you like, dear, ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... months of steady, fagging work; of cooking, washing, ironing; of mending and caring for the three children, although Jenny was fast becoming a notable little housewife, quick, ready, and capable. They were months in which there had been many a weary night of watching by Aurelia's bedside; of soothing and bandaging and rubbing; of reading and nursing, even of feeding and bathing. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... occasionally made great havoc in the children's fingers and in Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact it was the liveliest piece of furniture in the house, thanks to the petulant brasswork, and could not have been more mischievous if it had been a monkey. Upon the work-table lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors, and skeins of worsted and thread, and little scraps of linen and cloth for patches. But Mrs. Leslie was not actually working,—she was preparing to work; she had been preparing ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... strutting platitude of Bond Street. And when he was at home, he was always about amongst the people. Almost every day he would look in at some door in the Seaton, and call out a salutation to the busy housewife—perhaps go in and sit down for a minute. Now he would be walking with this one, now talking with that—oftenest with Blue Peter; and sometimes both their wives would be with them, upon the shore, or in the grounds. Nor was ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... towns where many houses adjoin, it is a common practice to paint or dye young chickens as soon as they are hatched, so that each housewife may know her own. One woman will colour hers a bright red, another will use blue, another green, and so on, the appearance of these strikingly-coloured little creatures intermingled in the streets being exceedingly droll and ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a lot in a good dinner.' He did his best work after dinner. It was Baynes who built that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which compete with so many others for the title of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... establishment in town, she did not care to spend the money necessary to keep it up, and although she was often an unkind woman, she was not cruel enough to think of inflicting herself as a boarder upon any housewife in the town. No, the toll-gate was the home for her; and if Captain Asher chose to inflict himself upon her for a few years longer, she would ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... with palm leaves, furnished with palm mats, lighted with palm chips, and heated with palm coals. The whole architecture of these countries is fashioned by the date tree. Date wine is the favorite intoxicating beverage. There is a proverb current there that a good housewife can vary the preparation of the date for her guests every day in the month. Even the pulp is eaten. Each tree yields an average of 50-250 lbs. of dates; and a tree may last over 200 years. An acre may contain more than 200 trees. The labor of cultivation is very slight, although ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... mutual love, though of such love she knew so little. But it must, in sooth, be bliss and rapture; and perchance, was her humble thought, she might see it from afar, and hear of it. And when they went to court, and Clorinda had a great mansion in town, and many servants who needed a housewife's eye upon their doings to restrain them from wastefulness and riot, might it not chance to be that if she served well now, and had the courage to plead with her then, she might be permitted to serve ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... personal touch of the mistress, and, as she looked across towards Kate's homely, pleasant face, her heart went out to her in gratitude and love. She could be trusted, this frank, laughing, graceful woman. She represented a most modern union of housewife and intellectual companion. No wonder Dr. Serviss ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... strenuous living, our unsanitary environment, our business activity, our method of pursuing pleasure, take no account of, and resent the time devoted to cultivating, as a hygienic necessity, this toilet requirement. This imperative call of nature is pushed aside by the child at play, by the housewife for a duty which could wait, by the merchant for an engagement. It is particularly an American disease, and it is uniquely an American woman's affliction. It is a curious commentary on the intelligence of the American people, who are ordinarily alert and analytical, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... no more the blazing hearth shall burn Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... assail him with their prayer; Deaf as my friend, he sees them press, Nor makes the hour one moment less. Will you (the Major's with the hounds, The happy tenants share his rounds; Coila's fair Rachel's care to-day, And blooming Keith's engaged with Gray) From housewife cares a minute borrow— That grandchild's cap will do to-morrow— And join with me a moralizing, This day's ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... that flagged area without covering or inclosure, before the third of the three old market-houses, where those dealers in the entire miscellanies of a housewife's equipment, excepting only stoves and furniture, spread their wares and fabrics in the open weather before the Bazar market rose to give them refuge. He ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... from the housewife's idea of cleanliness in that its details seem frivolous, because it aims at the removal of microscopic particles. Stains, such as housewives abhor, if germ-free, are not objected ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... is our man, he mustn't be allowed to stand down by the door, like a beggar," said the old housewife. "In that case, we must make room for him at the table. Him we owe both honour and thanks, for it was he who sent comfort to Bjoern in his last hours, while to me he has brought the only consolation that can lighten my sorrow in the loss of a ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... whate'er gives to a housewife delight. Fine and woollen coverlets, wrought with an ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... housewife, and hast brought Distress and shame upon our head; But know one thing, my gracious King, Thy life to ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... looked so attractive with electric lights in each seat, and observation car and library. A reporter interviewed us and Mr. Clark gave us a box of segars and a bottle of whiskey. But they will not last, as will Dad's razors and your housewife. I've used Dad's razors twice a day, and they still are perfect. It's snowing again, but we don't care. They all came to the station to see us off but no one cried this time as they did when we went to South ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... to spare his housekeeper, but the housekeeper was untoward, she was "busied in her housewife skep," and would not stir. Alick was gone to Timber End, and Rachel was just talking of getting the schoolmaster's wife as an escort, when ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... every article of our equipment in good order. Packs were washed and hung over the rim of the table by our billet fire, web-belts were cleaned, and every speck of mud and grease removed. Our packs, when dry, were loaded with overcoat, mess-tin, housewife, razor, towel, etc., and packed tightly and squarely, showing no crease at side or bulge at corner. Ground-sheets were neatly rolled and fastened on top of pack, no overlapping was allowed; rifles were oiled and polished from muzzle to butt-plate, and swords ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill

... in her native place, might have done well enough. But to live the life of the poor drudge her father—to be at the command and call of every boor for twenty miles round!—why, the labours of a higgler, who travels scores of miles to barter pins, ribbons, snuff and tobacco, against the housewife's private stock of eggs, mort-skins, and tallow, is more profitable, less laborious, and faith I think, equally respectable. No, no,—unless I can find wealth nearer home, I will seek it where every ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... to paint a good housewife upon a snayl; which intimated that she should be as slow from gadding abroad, and when she went she shold carry her house upon her back: that is, she shold make all sure at home. Now, to a good housewife, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various

... hell; for this it is unlearned in the ways of agriculture, never having seen corn except as packing straw and in quartern loaves; for this, on the other hand, it comprehends the mysterious habits of fire and pure, sterile earth; for this it lives crammed together in slippery streets where the housewife must change white window-curtains at least once a fortnight if she wishes to remain respectable; for this it gets up in the mass at six a.m., winter and summer, and goes to bed when the public-houses close; for this it exists—that you may drink tea out of a teacup and toy with a chop ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... and Dora left early this morning. Mother has never gone away from us before for long at a time, so I cried a lot and so did she. Dora cried too, but I know on whose account. Father and I are alone now. At dinner he said to me: "My little housewife." It was so lovely. But it's frightfully quiet in the house, for 2 people don't talk so much as 4. It made me feel quite uncomfortable. To-day I talked several things over with Resi. What I think worst of all is that one saw the whole of his behind, it was really disgusting. ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... I said, deciding to feed his stomach before I really tried to convince him. "It all comes under the heading of the drab, routine duties of a housewife. Come on ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne

... daughter-in-law to awake, or for the great joy of embracing her grandchildren. Nothing could be better adapted than what she saw around her to give her an idea of the confusion of a household given over to servants, where the oversight of the housewife and her far-seeing activity are lacking. In huge wardrobes, all wide open, linen was heaped up pell-mell in shapeless, bulging, tottering piles,—fine sheets, Saxony table linen crumbled and torn, and the locks prevented from working by some stray ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... is useful to have an aunt who has been nurse to a city merchant. The life is not a bad one, though our master is strict with all. But Dame Alice is a good housewife, and has a light hand at confections, and when there are good things on the table she does not, as do most of the wives of the traders, keep them for herself and her husband, but lets us have ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... a variant of a widely spread folk-tale in which a beggarman tricks a provident housewife out of a meal. He pretends a stone that he has, and which he gives her after his meal, makes good broth, but it is her chicken that has made the broth. It is a trifle, amusing enough, but remarkable chiefly for its difference from other work of Mr. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... yearned with admiration, to see so great a man, in his eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself to curry favor with the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap, while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew from her long ghost stories, spun out to the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... comparatively little attention. He is always thinking in terms of the greatest good to the greatest number. He aims to place his inventions within reach of the great mass of the people. As with his touring-car, so with his tractor engine, he has had the same end in view. Nor does he forget the housewife. He has plans afoot for bringing power into every household that will greatly lighten the burden of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... wondered how it had been possible to spare her so long, and always wound up her praises by saying, that Berenger would learn in time how lucky he had been to lose the French puppet, and win the good English housewife. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... practical instinct of the housewife, accustomed to be thoughtful about many things, revived in ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... spot, he might have fancied the whole promontory, its hut and its inhabitants, to be a delusion of magic, but that he still heard in the distance the Fisherman's piteous cries of "Undine!" and the old housewife's loud prayers and hymns, above the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... did not extend beyond Mrs. Finnigan's establishment, where they took two or three rooms and set up housekeeping in a humble way. Margaret, who was a tidy housewife, kept the floor of her apartments as white as your hand, the tin plates on the dresser as bright as your lady-love's eyes, and the cooking-stove as neat as the machinery on a Sound steamer. When she was not rubbing the stove with lamp-black she was cooking upon it some savory dish to tempt the ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... their rude faith was the first in which that veneration for woman arose, which the Western nations may well claim as the brightest jewel in their crown of civilization; that while she was a slave in the East, a toy to the Greeks, and a housewife to the Romans, she was a helpmeet to the Teuton, and that those stern warriors recognized something divine in her nature, and bowed before her clearer insight into heavenly mysteries. The worship of the Virgin Mary was gradually ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... be a plain, simple, and somewhat jolly sort of man, now presented me to his wife, who came from the Austrian aide of the Save, and spoke German. She seemed, and indeed was, a trim methodical housewife, as the order of her domestic arrangements clearly showed. Another female, whom I afterwards learned to be the wife of an individual of the neighbourhood who was absent, attracted my attention. Her age was about four and twenty, when the lines of thinking begin to mingle ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... great scarcity of ducats, I warrant thee.—Well, gossip," he said to his companion, "go before us, and tell them to have some breakfast ready yonder at the Mulberry grove; for this youth will do as much honour to it as a starved mouse to a housewife's cheese. And for ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Irma changed the fashion of her countenance. Pleasure shone scarce concealed. It was certain that up to that moment she had regarded my grandmother somewhat in the light of an intruder, but she could not bear up against such an appeal from housewife to housewife. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... at nothing, my friend; if your care can supply them with food, well; if not, we will find bread enough among the townsfolk. There is not a housewife in Coron, who would refuse me the contents ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... course no American housewife would want to squat on the floor and grind up curry stuff on a stone, as do the women of India. So I hasten to say that very good curry may be made from curry powder. Curry powder may be obtained from almost any grocer. The best in the market is ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core

... are frequently to be found in low stations, and in lowly garb. Electra upbraids her husband for inviting them, knowing as he must that they had nothing in the house to entertain them with; he is of opinion that the strangers will be satisfied with what he has, that a good housewife can always make the most of things, and that they have at least enough for one day. She dispatches him to Orestes' old keeper and preserver who lives hard by them, to bid him come and bring something with him to entertain the strangers, and the peasant departs muttering ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... a deep impression on the boy, as a long letter written next day to his father and mother clearly shows. He went to the house of the printer, where he did not receive the warm welcome he had expected. Deborah Franklin was a fat, hard-working, illiterate, economical housewife. She had a great pride in her husband, but had fallen hopelessly behind him. She regarded with awe and slight understanding the accomplishments of his virile, restless, on-pushing intellect. She did not ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... The busy housewife is ever seeking for something new—for unique ideas for these occasions. This book is full of suggestions—"Ice Breakers, for Getting the Company Started Right," "Sentiments and Quotations for Dinner ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... lifted themselves out of the narrow river beds in groups like giant lions rearing their heads after drinking. The entire region was untamed. In some places east of the Mississippi nature is cosey, intimate, small, and homelike, like a good-natured housewife. In Placer County, California, she is a vast, unconquered brute of the Pliocene epoch, savage, sullen, and ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... 4019, Path. 218) Housewife, 37 years always cheerful, became the happiest woman in the world, hearing God's voice and being specially under God's direction. "Acute mania." Death from bilateral phthisis with numerous cavities and bilateral pleuritis. There were ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10



Words linked to "Housewife" :   homemaker, lady of the house, wife, housewifely, married woman



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