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Laundress   Listen
verb
Laundress  v. i.  To act as a laundress. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Laundress" Quotes from Famous Books



... on a comic basis alone meets with rivals in all its sober-minded contemporaries, and comes to grief. The difficulty it has to contend with is, in short, very like that which the professional laundress or baker has to contend with, owing to the fact that families are accustomed to do their own washing and bake their own bread. And, indeed, it is not unlike that with which professional writers of all kinds have to contend, owing ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... came to think of the faithful woman as one of her choicest friends. Working with her over a little ironing board, Barbara quickly became expert in all the finer and more delicate operation of her art, or as the laundress ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... sha'n't!" cried her twin. "You shall not be sacrificed. If Mary goes, we'll divide the work between us, and hire a laundress once a week to ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison

... is a suburb of Prague, there lived about twenty years ago, two poor but honest people, who earned their bread by the sweat of their brow; he worked in a large printing establishment, and his wife employed her spare time as a laundress. Their pride, and their only pleasure, was their daughter Viteska, who was a vigorous, voluptuous-looking, handsome girl of eighteen, whom they brought up very well and carefully. She worked for a dress-maker, and was thus able to help her parents a little, and she made use of her leisure ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... Rorie quickly, for he knew that when the floodgates of Miss McCroke's eloquence were once loosened the tide ran strong, "when house and lands are gone and spent a man may turn usher in an academy, and earn fifty pounds a year and his laundress's bill by grinding Caesar's Commentaries into small boys. But I shouldn't lay in a stock of learning with that view. When my house and lands are gone I'll go after them—emigrate, and go into the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... he might rehabilitate himself by formally abjuring his indiscretions. Both scholars and others of the Privilege frequently appeared before the Chancellor in the character of penitents. In 1443 a certain Christina, laundress of St. Martin's parish, swore that she would no longer exercise her trade for any scholar or scholars of the University, because under colour of it many evils had been perpetrated, wherefore she was imprisoned and freely abjured the aforesaid evils in ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... questions, Eveley, I am so nervous anyhow I hardly know what I am saying. You remember my laundress, don't you? She is so nice and motherly and a Methodist and respectable and all that,—only old and hard up. She is coming to live with us,—she will have the den for her room, and is closing her cottage. She is to keep house and look after the babies ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... bank-clerk complained in extreme displeasure of the way the laundress had of late dressed his collars—these were so high that, as Laura was not slow to notice, he had to look straight down the two sides of his nose to see his plate—and announced that he would not be home for tea, as he had an appointment ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... of our little bit of pleasure-ground. On the other side of it there is a cottage standing on the edge of the common. The most good-natured woman in the world lives here. She is our laundress—married to a stupid young fellow named Molly, and blessed with a plump baby as sweet-tempered at herself. Thinking it likely that the piteous voice which had disturbed me might be the voice of ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... wristband here absorbed the attention of the laundress; and, while smoothing it out, she forgot to continue what she had been saying, but, as she once more ironed briskly upon the sleeve, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... the philosophic Augustus; "but I think there is an instinct in tradesmen by which they can tell a rogue at first sight; and I can get (dress I ever so well) no more credit with my laundress than my friends the Whigs ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that I'd like to enlist in the Navy or move to Alaska, or go over and work in the Mills. I'd buy a black shirt to work in and use a bandana—when I used anything—and take the nice extra room my laundress has in Whitmanville. She says her clothesline goes out fifty feet, and they have a phonograph. Don't you think that would be more attractive than trying to teach a lot ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... give me money, but I would not take it, and they had been trying to find a laundress for their finer linen—their old serving-woman was ill. They could find one for the heavier things, but they are very particular, and I was sure I could manage, and so I begged them to let me have the work, and they did, and overpaid me, I fear. And ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the elegant bonnets and dresses I speak of are laid aside on week days, and that nowhere in France do people work harder than here. But when not at work they like to wear good clothes and read the newspapers as well as their neighbours. Take our laundress, for instance, an admirable young woman, who gets up clothes to perfection, and who on Sunday exchanges her cotton gown and apron for the smartest of Parisian costumes. The amount of underclothes these countrywomen ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... not a lady, my dear," said the woman, smiling,—"only a laundress as does for some of the gentlemen in the Temple. There now, you both go home; for I can see that you don't belong to this part of the town. I dare say, if the truth was known, he brought ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... with the present granny first. My good old creature, you can't of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom your mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith, author of a "History of England," the "Vicar of Wakefield," and many diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sir," he said. "I don't want to shove you down into that hole. Looks just like my old mother's washus used to on heavy days. She was a laundress out at Starch Green, she ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... and they made him decorate the chapel. When the work was done, he called them in. To their amazement and horror, the saints and angels, instead of being ideal faces, were the living portraits of the familiar figures about the cloister. "Why, there's the iceman! there's the laundress!" He rebelled when they told him this was wicked: he said it was all a part of God's world, that the business of the artist was to interpret life; he wished they would let him enter the pulpit, take the Prior's place, and preach a sermon ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... answered Sister Anne. "Poor, poor Mr. Sly! He made a will leaving you all, except five pounds a year to his laundress: he made his will, locked his door, took heart-rending leave of his uncle at night, and this morning was found hanging at his bedpost when Sambo, the black servant, took him up his water to shave. 'Let me be buried,' he said, 'with the pincushion ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... reported a small part of the conversation I had with the Literary Celebrity. He was so much taken up with his pleasing self-contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his linen on the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to him that he had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found himself exposed to the wind and sunshine in full dimensions in the columns of The People's ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Mr. Cord. He was standing in the middle of the room in his shirt sleeves and gloomily contemplating the shirt he wore. "What's this laundress, anyhow? A Bolshevist or a pastry-cook?" he said. "Did you ever ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller

... Mario Carlo would receive all three of us as passengers, that he would furnish a room simply but comfortably, that papa would share this room with us, that Mario would supply our table, and that his wife would serve as maid and laundress. It remained to be seen now whether our other fellow-travelers were married, and, if so, what sort ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... gave it loose to the zephyrs which plentifully insinuate their tiny bodies through every crevice, door, window or wainscot, expressly formed for the exclusion of such impertinents. Then he caught at a proof sheet, and catched up a laundress's bill instead—made a dart at Blomfield's Poems, and threw them in agony aside. I could not bring him to one direct reply; he could not maintain his jumping mind in a right line for the tithe of a moment by Clifford's Inn clock. He must go to the printer's immediately—the most unlucky accident—he ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... that my laundress," he shouted back, "can't bring in breakfast things for more than one on that particular tray. She's always complaining it's too small, and says I ought to buy ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... ankles, the turn of a plump calf, such as Ben Cohen had never even thought of before, the realisation of which was like wine: freshly tasted, red, fruity, running through his veins, mounting to his head. He had known that women had legs; his mother, the laundress, suffered from hers—complainingly, devoted woman as she was—swollen with much standing, and "them there dratted veins": stocky legs, with loose ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... however;—they came walking back together, still demurely hand in hand, and settled themselves quietly in a corner to study their tasks for the next day. Babette's doll, once attired as a fashionable Parisienne, and now degenerated into a one- eyed laundress with a rather soiled cap and apron, stuck out its composite arms in vain from the bench where it sat all askew, drooping its head forlornly over a dustpan,—and Henri's drum, wherewith he was wont to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... forty-five or fifty francs I earn, there remain to me ten or fifteen francs for wood and oil during winter, as well as for my dress and washing—that is to say for soap—as, excepting my sheets, I wash for myself: that is another luxury—a laundress would pretty well ruin me; and as I also iron very well, I thereby save my money. During the five winter months I burn a load and a half of wood, and four or five sous-worth of oil in the day for my lamp; that makes ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... far and near, and soiled her white gowns, to the despair of the Otter servant who did up the master's shirts and managed the mistress's clear-starching, but who never dreamt, in those days of frills, robes, and flounces, of styling herself a laundress. Leslie filled her apron with mosses and lichens: she stole out after the reapers had left the patch of oats which was not within sight of the house, and gathered among the sheaves like a Ruth. She grew stout and hardy, and, in spite of her gipsy bonnet, as ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... the house indicated. He saw the lady, and, on delivering the ring, received from her a sealed cabinet. It was a box of diamonds and other jewels, chiefly broken Georges and Garters, which had been deposited with the lady, who was the King's laundress and wife of Sir William Wheeler. Returning with it to St. James's, Herbert found Juxon just gone to his lodging near, and the King alone. Herbert slept that night in the King's chamber, as he had done since the beginning of the trial, a pallet-bed having been brought in for the purpose ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... .095 as much heat as an equal weight of water; a lead weight only .031 as much heat as water. Flatirons are made of iron because of the relatively high specific heat of iron. The flatiron heats slowly and cools slowly, and, because of its high specific heat, not only supplies the laundress with considerable heat, but eliminates for her the ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... individuality is dying out in the human race and that we are all more or less alike. If we were, we should find our daily practical wants met by such little books. Mine gives me a sentence requesting the laundress to return the clothes three days hence, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after to-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... only been nine days and twenty-two hours, the quickest on record at that time, yet it was long enough. I waited nearly three hours before my name was called, and when it was, I unlocked my trunks and handed them over to one of the officers, whose dirty hands made no improvement on the work of the laundress. First one article was taken out, and then another, till an Iron Collar that had been worn by a female slave on the banks of the Mississippi, was hauled out, and this democratic instrument of torture became the centre of attraction; so much so, that ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... laundress to tell her I shall be there to-morrow, and one to Mary Snow to say that I'll see ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... snarls at beggars. He who is quick to make room for a doctor of divinity, will, of course, see to it that he never runs against a porter; and he who clears the way for a lady, will be sure never to rub against a market woman, or jostle an apple-seller's board. If accused of beating down his laundress to the lowest fraction, of making his boot-black call a dozen times for his pay, of higgling and screwing a fish boy till he takes off two cents, or of threatening to discharge his seamstress unless she will work for a shilling ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... have been to the full as intellectual as their descendants. "I have had," observes the philosophic statesman, "several servants far gone in divinity, others in poetry; have known, in the families of some friends; a keeper deep in the Rosicrucian mysteries and a laundress firm in ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Madisons, and you didn't interdict your daughters' marrying them. The Mastertons ate no meat, and didn't believe in banks. They kept their money in queer corners, and there was so much of it that they couldn't always remember where, and the laundress had orders to turn all stockings before wetting, and did indeed often find bills in the toe. But the laundress, being also of Addington, though of another stratum, recognised this as a Masterton habit, and faithfully sought their hoarded treasure ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... a while yet, dear," replied mother, "because this is wash morning and I have a new laundress to look after. Didn't you see her come around the house when we were at breakfast? I have to go downstairs and show her how we like our clothes washed and starched. Don't ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson

... read a note of music, but that he has received no education of any kind! Born at Tipperusalem, Oklahoma, on the 15th of March, 1912, he has for parents a clerk in the Eagle Bakery and a Lithuanian laundress. He never touches meat, not even baked eagles, but subsists entirely on peaches and popcorn. He has been compared to MOZART, but the comparison is ridiculous, for MOZART was carefully trained by his father, and at the age of four was a finished executant. But it is quite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... a clean-shaven, white-haired man, meticulously dressed in black—black swallowtail coat, open waistcoat, and frilled shirt-front, on which his laundress must have spent hours of labour; closely fitting black knee-breeches, black silk stockings, black polished shoes. They silhouetted, too, in the moment before he swung round on me, an enormous nose, like a punchinello's, and the outline of a shapely head, sufficiently ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... awkward question of his relatives by marriage. At first glance it would have seemed rather necessary to head the list with Grandmother Kunkel, but the fact that she was also the hotel laundress at the time made it a subject for debate. Once, just once, he was willing to test the social possibilities of his brother-in-law, so Symes magnanimously gave him his chance and the name of Adolph ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... most important and welcome, was "The paymaster's coming!" The paymaster, indeed, after weeks of detention, was scheduled to be at the post by nightfall of the coming Tuesday or Wednesday, and Wednesday would usher in the old-time saturnalia of the south-western frontier, the joy of the laundress, soldier and sutler, the dread of every post and company commander from Her Majesty's dominion to ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... much to acquaint Serigny with, much perchance he knew already. Paris swarmed with rumors. Every lip was busy with second-hand gossip coming, as each relator declared, from the most reliable sources. "My cousin, who is laundress to the Countess de Lanois, says," and upon this immaculate authority the butcher upon his morning rounds detailed the most delightful and impossible ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... the editors denounced what they termed the snobbishness of the army, and denounced West Point for producing snobs, claiming that the ladies of the post, had they been real ladies, would have called on a respectable laundress even if she had been the sergeant's wife. I refer to this to show the intricacies of American etiquette. The point is that nearly all the editors who knew anything, believed that the ladies were right, but did not dare to say so on account of the fact that the majority of their readers ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... his eyes, he was surprised to feel himself extraordinarily vigorous. He jumped up at once and dressed quickly; then dragged out his trunk and began packing immediately. His linen had come back from the laundress the previous morning. Ivan positively smiled at the thought that everything was helping his sudden departure. And his departure certainly was sudden. Though Ivan had said the day before (to Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov) that he was leaving ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... was vastly pleased. His scheme for evading the tedious responsibilities of sovereignty had been executed without a hitch; he was officially dead; and, on the whole, standing bareheaded between a miller and laundress, he had found his funeral ceremonies to be unimpeachably conducted. He assumed the name of Paul Vanderhoffen, selected at random from the novel he was reading when his postchaise conveyed him past the frontier of Saxe-Kesselberg. Freed, penniless, and thoroughly content, he set about ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... her Familey very cold with her. But she had loned a girl at school five dollars and was going to write for it at once, and thought she could sell a last year's sweater for three dollars to their laundress's ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... about in the country, choose wool fabrics that will not crease easily, or show dust, and for summer, cotton materials that will come bright and fresh from the hands of the laundress. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... them, and then use their knowledge of your domestic unhappiness to blackmail you; there will be threats of law-suits from people who will claim that they have contracted a disease from you or your child—your laundress, perhaps, or your maid, or one ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... of Calabria, a nurse was sought for the infant among the most handsome women of the people. After inspecting many women of equal merit as regards beauty, youth and health, the princess's choice lighted on Philippa, a young Catanese woman, the wife of a fisherman of Trapani, and by condition a laundress. This young woman, as she washed her linen on the bank of a stream, had dreamed strange dreams: she had fancied herself summoned to court, wedded to a great personage, and receiving the honours of a great lady. Thus when she was called ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... lore—this was of course, for he was a student by nature; but other things that he learned were, upon the whole, more noteworthy in the development of his character. He became fastidious as to the fit of his coat and as to the work of the laundress upon his shirt-fronts. He learned to sit in easy attitude by gauzily-dressed damsels under sparkling gaslight, and to curl his fair moustache between his now white fingers as he talked to them, and yet to moderate the extent of the attention that he paid to each, not wishing that ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... out on a search expedition," continued my informant, after a cup of tea and a cigarette to subdue his emotions, "you insist on having the number of the house. Do you get it? Oh yes! and with a safeguard added, 'Inquire of the laundress.' [This was a parody on, "Inquire of the Swiss," or "of the yard-porter."] You start off in high feather; number and guide are provided, only a fool could fail to find it, and you know that you are a person who is considered rather above the average in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... nose too," said another girl. "And he has not a morsel of starch in his shirt ruffles, I declare," said a third, who officiated as laundress to the Mayor ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... spouse, reproaches on her frightened child, and invocations to all the blessed saints in heaven to reward the gintleman who had saved her hoarded money,—a smoking packet that she hugged to her breast,—Mrs. Clancy, "the saynior laundress of Company B," as she had long styled herself, was prancing up and down through the gathering crowd, her shrill voice overmastering all other clamor. The vigorous efforts of the men, directed by cool-headed ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... as a rule, pretend to be what they are not, and I have found them splendid workers in their own department. They are not half-trained nurses but fully trained ambulance workers, ready to do probationer's work under the fully trained sisters, or if necessary to be wardmaid, laundress, charwoman, or cook, as the case may be. The difficulty does not lie with them, but with the women who have a few weeks' or months' training, who blossom out into full uniform and call themselves Sister Rose, or Sister Mabel, and are taken at their own ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan

... observed, as you know, the wonderful effects produced by diet upon the imagination. My lodgings cost me three sous daily; I burnt three sous more in oil at night; I did my own housework, and wore flannel shirts so as to reduce the laundress' bill to two sous per day. The money I spent yearly in coal, if divided up, never cost more than two sous for each day. I had three years' supply of clothing, and I only dressed when going out to some library or public lecture. These expenses, all told, only amounted to eighteen ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... he had worn from Sherrill's lay conspicuously upon the bed, washed and ironed and beautifully mended up the slashed sleeve and along the shoulder. As a laundress of parts, Johnny was a jewel, but ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... she quickly moved the needle round over the whole twenty-four points, but none of them suited the case. She stopped it at "porter," moved it to "bootblack," carried it around to "ice water," and successively to "coupe," "laundress," and "messenger-boy," and then gave up in despair, and jerked open the door that led to the hall. Miss Wakefield had just come up to the next apartment to inquire after a little girl ill from a cold, and was returning toward the elevator when Mrs. Drupe's ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... replied a dirty old woman with an inflamed countenance, emerging from the bedroom, with a barrel of dirt and cinders.—This was the laundress. 'Did you ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... neighboring city, he had committed a forgery, drawn some four or five thousand dollars, had the greater part of the notes exchanged—and, with the exception of the five large bills hurriedly thrust into the vest pocket, and which he had sent to the poor laundress, there was little available evidence of the forgery in his possession. The widow's son had scarcely left the traveller's room with the clothes, when in came two policemen. The forger was not arrested as a principal, but certain barely suspicious circumstances had ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... this to you, only to introduce George Selwyn's account of this woman who, he says, is mother to the Princess of Montauban, grandmother to Madame de Brionne, sister to General Oglethorpe, and was laundress ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... feeble nonentity, held out bravely, but after watching a few nights broke down entirely and was to have been carried to St. Catharine's hospital, but the Italian steward, who is not a bad fellow, objected and had her taken to a Catholic laundress. He has followed to nurse her. No one is left in the deserted house to attend to the young lady, except Sister Gonzaga, a good little nun, one of the three who were allowed to remain in the old convent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... this interview, but one must live.—I do not see the necessity (v. Anecdotes in Appendix).—The Necessity is the mother of the inventory.—Who is the Caretaker?—She is the great-grandmother of the superannuated laundress. She becomes sleepy during the Winter. Shall we send her to your house?—Not if I know it (expletive). Receive the assurance (insurance) of my highest consideration. By the bye (interjection), which is the topmost storey?—The topmost story is the last thing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... bed I was surprised to hear a voice in the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire. She had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... luxury. Still, they are most of them accustomed to a daily supply of food—plain, perhaps, but sufficient—and will look for as much in the homes of their husbands. A girl like Marion Beecher does not expect to secure a position which will enable her to send her own clothes to a laundress or hire a cook who can make pastry; but it is not fair to ask her to wash the family's blankets or to boil potatoes for a pig. Probably her friends would think her lucky in marrying a curate or a dispensary ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... dearly. And the little girls loved them, particularly "Mammy," who had nursed their mother, and now had entire charge of the children; and Aunt Milly, a lame yellow woman, who helped Mammy in the nursery; and Aunt Edy, the head laundress, who was never too busy to amuse them. Then there was Aunt Nancy, the "tender," who attended to the children for the field-hands, and old Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who could scarcely walk at all, because he had been bitten by a snake when ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... packing of all the conveniences for cooking and such arrangements as shall save time and steps. Washing-day may be divested of its terrors by suitable provisions for water, hot and cold, by wringers, which save at once the strength of the linen and of the laundress, and by drying-closets connected with ranges, where articles can in a few moments be perfectly dried. These, with the use of a small mangle, such as is now common in America, reduce the labors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... [Footnote: "one for superfluity and one other for use." The cap was probably that which he wore when he laid aside his wig. His hose, of colored silk, probably made only "semi-occasional" visits to the laundress.] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... Person interviewed: Hannah Brooks Wright W. 17th, Highland Addition, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 85 Occupation: Laundress ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... by her science can convert My best and most expensive shirt Into a miracle of dirt? My Laundress! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various

... the watchman on the block. The watchman remembered. He knows everything that goes on in the Bowery. Maggie was the wayward daughter of a decent laundress, and killed herself by drinking carbolic acid less than a month before. She had wearied of the Bowery. Nigger Martha was her one friend. And now she had ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... who was a laundress, entered, in a short blue cotton wrapper, wiping the suds from her shrunken but sinewy arms with her apron, and on seeing the captain, her countenance, which was ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... little acquaintance with modern ethical novels; but real mediaeval knights, and still more the knights of mediaeval romance, were capable of very ethical actions. To halt an army for the protection and comfort of a laundress was a highly ethical action. Perhaps Sir Redvers Buller would do it: Bruce did. Mr Harrison accuses the ladies of the Idylls of soul-bewildering casuistry, like that of women in Middlemarch or Helbeck ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... artist in the next block expects me to pose for him, and his laundress comes at 3. He is ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... laundry is part of the service wing depends, of course, on how much of that type of work is to be done at home. There are two points of view here. Some households prefer to scoop the family linen into a bag, make a list, and hand it over to a commercial laundry. Others find a dependable laundress nearby or provide facilities for doing the work at home. The clear air of the country and easy drying conditions influence many towards the ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... given you everything—that I am dressed in clothes fit for the rag-bag—that I have not bought a bonnet for three years—that Corentine washes my linen in the kitchen because I should blush to give such rubbish to the laundress; and you know also that my worst misery is to refuse what you ask. Then why do you ask?' And this mute address of his mother's was so eloquent that ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... if one were sufficiently earnest one could go through closed doors and see into solids. In the former ambition she was unsuccessful, obtaining only bruises and disappointment; but she did develop the latter to a certain extent, for she met the laundress going out one day and, without a conscious effort, she knew that she had the best table napkins pinned to her petticoat. She accused the woman ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the Baron; "as Dufresny said, when he married his laundress, because he could not pay her bill. Hewas the author, as you know, of the opera of Lot; at whose representation the great pun was made;—I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, 'L'amour a vaincu ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the restaurant dedicated to the 'Guardian Angel,' who had no customers except hack-drivers and bricklayers, was caught by our innocent intrigues. On this same second of November we paid an immense sum of money to the laundress,—one whole dollar. I crossed the Pont des Arts, proud as a member of the Institute, and entered with a stiff upper-lip the Cafe Momus. You remember this beneficent establishment, which we discovered, gave half a cup of coffee for five cents, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... in order, as he said, to "do his washing," consoling himself for the hardship of being obliged to do laundress' work, with the reflection that the necessity for such a task would soon cease, as our clothes being in constant use, without the benefit of a change, could not last long. Browne and I followed this example, and having spread our garments in the sun to dry, resumed our aquatic ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... be the first man of his year;" but the honour was dearly purchased at the expense of "dreadful palpitations in the heart, nights of sleeplessness and horrors, and spirits depressed to the very depths of wretchedness." In July, 1806, his laundress on coming into his room at College, saw him fallen down in a convulsive fit, bleeding and insensible. His great anxiety was to conceal from his mother the state to which he was reduced. At the end of September, he went to London in search of relaxation and amusement; and in the next month, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... do; put its finger in its eye and weep. Ha! ha! ha! poor Risberg! how would he laugh to see these compassionate tears! It seem she has written in a very doleful strain to thee,—talked very pathetically about his debts to his laundress and his landlady. I have a good mind to leave thee in this amiable ignorance; but I'll prove for once a kind brother, by telling you that Risberg is a profligate and prodigal; that he neglects every study but that of dice; that this is the true reason why I have stood in the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... is my laundress, you know, and at times brings back the clothes herself. My servant is usually in, though. I see what you mean. That she might have received the manuscript from Bolton, and have left it ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... that you have an understanding with the laundress (to whom you say that you are all-powerful with me), threatening to take away my practice from her, unless she gets up gratis some of ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... though still so imperfectly arranged, that the stockings, being quite wet, we were obliged to sling outside our knapsacks, while the damp shirts were left to dry, as they best might, within. But the precious time which our dilatory laundress had wasted, nothing could recall. We therefore felt ourselves under the necessity of confining our day's operations to the inspection of a hermitage, or einsiedlerstein, near Burgstein, with what was described to us as a ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... laundresses referred to above (as a trained and skilful laundress she was in charge of the fine linen only), was a woman of twenty-eight, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek. Moles on the left cheek are regarded as of evil omen in Russia—a token of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... "Tell the laundress to be sure and bring her children around to-morrow, and be sure you make them have a good time," he said to James, as he rose ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... There's no such thing in nature. I confess, gentlemen, I have a cook, a laundress, a house-drudge, that serves my necessary turns, and goes under that title: but he's an ass that will be so uxorious to tie his affections to one circle. Come, the name dulls appetite. Here, replenish again: another bout. [FILLS THE ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... sandstone. In each compartment a flat grinding stone is firmly set, inclining at an angle of forty-five degrees. These slabs are of different degrees of smoothness, graduated successively from coarse to fine. The squaws, who alone work at the mills, kneel before them and bend over them as a laundress does over the wash-tub, holding in their hands long stones of volcanic lava, which they rub up and down the slanting slabs, stopping at intervals to place the grain between the stones. As the grinding proceeds the grist ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... for the woods, take with you only those things which seem to be absolutely necessary; remember that you will carry your own pack and be your own laundress, so hesitate about including too many washable garments. Make out your list, then consider the matter carefully and realize that every one of the articles, even the very smallest, has a way of growing ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... daughter of the gallant out-pensioner of Greenwich Hospital. Should the wedding take place, the bridegroom will be given away by Mr. Levy, the great toll-contractor; while the blushing bride will be attended to the altar by her mother-in-law, the well-known laundress of Tash-street. The trousseau, consisting of a selection from a bankrupt's stock of damaged de laines, has been purchased at Lambeth House; and a parasol carefully chosen from a lot of 500, all at one-and-ninepence, will be presented by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... I heard a knock at the door and found it was the milkman. Mrs. Doncaster [his laundress] was not there, so I took in the milk myself. The milkman is a very nice man, and, by way of making himself pleasant, said, rather complainingly, that the weather kept ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... very shaky indeed—crimpled, pierced with pinholes, corner creases torn, soft, tarnished, decrepit while yet young. Some have been half-burned; one has been found half-digested in the stomach of a goat, and one boiled in a waistcoat-pocket by a laundress. No matter; the cashier at the bank will do his best to decipher it; he will indeed take an infinity of trouble to put together the ashes of a burned note, and will give the owner a new note or ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... —the laundress' assistant; warranted not to injure the finest fabric. No acid; no potash. In the wash room it saves time, labor, expense, muscle, temper, and hands. The clothes will come out cleaned and white, without wear or tear or rubbing on washboards, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... shoddy; so the next day Larry pottered about the studio, acting as maid-of-all-work, while the clothes in his trunk which had been stored with the Duchess were being sponged and pressed by the little tailor down the street, and while a laundress, driven by the Duchess, was preparing the rest of his outfit for his debut. In his capacity of maid, with a basket on his arm, he went out into the little street, where in his shabby clothes he was recognized ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... roadside and fence in the land. There are few little people who have not stained their lips and fingers, not to mention their clothes, with this homely favorite. I can recall the days when, to the horror of the laundress, I filled my pockets with the juicy caps. It is scarcely necessary to recall its long, rambling, purple shoots, its light-green foliage, silvery on the under side, its sharp and abundant spines, from which we have received many a vicious scratch. Its cultivation ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... about his bile and his secretions, the efficacy of licorice in producing a certain effect, and the expediency of changing one's linen at least three times a day; though had he changed his six, I should have said that the purification of the last shirt would have been no sinecure to the laundress. His accent was decidedly Scotch: he spoke familiarly of Scott and one or two other Scotch worthies, and more than once insinuated that he was a member of Parliament. With respect to the rest of the company I say nothing, and for the very sufficient reason that, unlike ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... incidentally, too, what some people thought of him. The third showed him the "shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us." He saw himself dead, uncared for, unwept, unwatched, his effects plundered by the charwoman, laundress, and undertaker's man and realized the end to which he must come unless he led an altered life. Holding up his hands he prayed to have his fate reversed and saw the Ghost shrink and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... to a neighbouring dealer's to crack almonds; she there earned ten sous a day, which her father pocketed right royally, without even a question from Fine as to what became of the money. The young girl was next apprenticed to a laundress, and as soon as she received two francs a day for her work, the two francs strayed in a similar manner into Macquart's hands. Jean, who had learnt the trade of a carpenter, was likewise despoiled on pay-days, whenever Macquart succeeded in catching him before ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... was a woman of economies, keeping vigilant watch over all expenditures, great and small, and employing one servant only, who was cook, housemaid, and laundress all in one, and expected to give every moment of her time to the service of her mistress, and be content with smaller wages than many ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley

... not the most curious feature of those chambers; that, consisted in the profound conviction entertained by my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain. But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question. Now, they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it for a few moments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... it is that is anglicising Europe. For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow on winter evenings to attend the English class open in every village. For him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and the laundress, pore over their English grammars and colloquial phrase books. For him the foreign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in their thousands to study in every English town. For him it is that every foreign hotel- and restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement: "Only ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... society which intended to accept Mis' Sykes's invitation hastened with relieved eagerness to follow with flowers its regrets to the "comen out recep." For every one was genuinely attached to the little laundress and interested in her welfare—up to the point of sacrificing social interests in the eyes of the Sykeses. Friendship gardens were rich with Autumn, cosmos and salvia and opulent asters, and on the morning of the two parties this store of sweetness was rifled for the debutante. By noon ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... just as if he was laying it into Miss Wrinkleton, so that by the time he got home he had established a considerable lather on the old nag, which his master resenting a row ensued, the sequel of which may readily be imagined. After assisting Mrs. Clearstarch, the Kilburn laundress, in getting in and taking out her washing, for a few weeks, chance at last landed him at Mr. Benjamin Buckram's, from whence he is now about to be removed to become our hero Mr. Sponge's Sancho Panza, in his fox-hunting, fortune-hunting career, and disseminate ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... those events was the destruction of the most celebrated palace in which the sovereigns of England have ever dwelt. On the evening of the 4th of January, a woman,—the patriotic journalists and pamphleteers of that time did not fail to note that she was a Dutchwoman,—who was employed as a laundress at Whitehall, lighted a charcoal fire in her room and placed some linen round it. The linen caught fire and burned furiously. The tapestry, the bedding, the wainscots were soon in a blaze. The unhappy woman who had done the mischief perished. Soon the flames ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Sheridan seem at all fly to it; and even slang Grose has no touch of its extensive signification. The squeamish Fair One who takes it on the sly, merely to cure the vapours, politely names it to her friends as White Wine. The Swell chaffs it as Blue Ruin, to elevate his notions. The Laundress loves dearly a drain of Ould Tom, from its strength to comfort her inside. The drag Fiddler can toss off a quartern of Max without making a wry mug. The Costermonger illumines his ideas with a flash ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... And sue to thee! I tell thee, shameless girl, Thou shalt be laundress to my waiting-maid.— How lik'st thou ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe

... lady in the land. Amongst her other fancies, she has taken a violent affection for a most hideous stray dog, who made his appearance here about six months ago, and contrived to pick up a living in the village, one can hardly tell how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the laundress—a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the light-footed and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his hind-legs to extort, by sheer beggary, a scanty morsel from some pair of "drowthy cronies," or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... twenty-thousandth part communicates a perceptible azure tint. In common with cobalt blue, the name Azure has sometimes been given to it. Varying exceedingly in quality and colour, the rougher kinds have been employed by the laundress, and in the making of porcelain, pottery, stained glass, encaustic tiles, &c.; as well as to cover the yellow tinge of paper. For this last purpose, however, smalt is not perfectly adapted, the colour ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... may pass, Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass. But spurn those paltry Cisatlantic lies That round his breast the shabby rustic ties; Breathe not the name profaned to hallow things The indignant laundress blushes when ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... commodious to allow of their hospitalities. This made it impossible for them to keep any servant save a little girl who washed the dishes, and consequently Grisell acted as cook, housekeeper, housemaid, washerwoman, laundress, dressmaker, and tailoress. Twice a week she sat up at night to do the family accounts. Daily she rose before six, went to the market and to the mill to see their own corn ground, and—in the words of her daughter, who proudly tells the tale—"dressed ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... regards fees. Twenty-eight pounds yearly cover the expense of board, education, and medical attendance at the upper school; twenty-four at the lower; day boarders pay from twelve to fifteen pounds a year; books, the use of the school omnibus, and laundress being extras. Three hundred scholars in all attended during the scholastic year ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... ladies' robes. Chriemhild in the Nibelungenlied was an industrious and skillful milliner. In the corresponding period of Grecian and Roman history, we find Penelope and Lucretia at the loom, Nausicaa, a laundress, the daughter of the king of the Lestrigons, fetching water from the spring, Odysseus, a carpenter, a queen of Macedonia as a cook, and finally the distaff of Tanaquil.(348) In the highlands of Scotland, in 1797, there were a great many ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... employer had paid her a week's wages and dismissed her. Her first astonished questions having been met with silence by the honest but hard-grained woman who kept the laundry, Ida had not condescended to any further appeal. The fact was that the laundress had received a visit from a certain Mrs. Sprowl, who, under pretence of making inquiries for the protection of a young female friend, revealed the damaging points of Ida's story, and gained the end plotted ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... I can tell you most of the conversation, Doctor," put in Mr. Campbell. "The patient asked Alberdina if she were one of the maids at the palace. She answered at great length that she was laundress at Sunrise Camp. 'This was not a palace,' she explained, ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... "I was 'ead laundress at Podmore 'Ouse," says she, "and I thought it was all up when he saw me here. I never should have tried to do it. I'm a good 'ousekeeper, if I do say it; but I'm getting to be an old woman now, and this will end me. It was ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... consent of the Head of the College, and paying privately for the entertainment, but no such guest might sleep in College, and the permission is carefully restricted to the male sex. Women were, as (p. 073) a rule, not allowed within a College gate; if it was impossible to find a man to wash clothes, a laundress might be employed, but she must be old and of unprepossessing appearance. A scholar or Fellow of a college had not, however, committed himself irrevocably to a celibate life, for marriage is included among the "causas rationabiles et honestas" which vacated a fellowship. ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... observe was that of four children of a person called John Goodwin, a mason. The eldest, a girl, had quarrelled with the laundress of the family about some linen which was amissing. The mother of the laundress, an ignorant, testy, and choleric old Irishwoman, scolded the accuser; and shortly after, the elder Goodwin, her sister and two brothers, were seized with such strange diseases that all their neighbours concluded ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... that M. Joyeuse were walking through Faubourg Saint-Honore, on the right hand sidewalk—he always chose that side—and espied a heavy laundress's cart going along at a smart trot, driven by a countrywoman whose child, perched on a bundle of linen, was ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... New York, to make arrangements for spending the remainder of the summer at Rockaway. While the laundress was putting the clothes in order, I took an opportunity to go over to Brooklyn to see Ellen. I met her going to a grocery store, and the first words she said, were, "O, mother, don't go to Mrs. Hobbs's. Her brother, Mr. Thorne, has come ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... occasionally to the kitchen of Dr. W.'s house a foul-mouthed Irish laundress who used coarse language to me concerning urination. I loathed the woman, and yet one night I dreamed that I was embracing her naked form and rolling over and over with her on the bed; and in spite of my sight of female genitals a few months before, I thought of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen, replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman a princess,—meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly to his Holiness, who ordered a strict search to be made for the author, but to no purpose. Upon which he stuck up printed papers in all the public places of the city, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... matters of business and I noticed that there were always a number of books and papers on the table. I understood from him that he spent most of his time indoors engaged in study and writing. I know very little about his way of living. He had no laundress to look after his rooms, so I suppose he did his own house-work and cooking; but he told me that he took most of his meals outside, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... lines her hands have laden, A laundress with white hair appears, Alert as many a youthful maiden, Spite of her five-and-seventy years. Bravely she won those white hairs, still Eating the bread hard toil obtain'd her, And laboring truly to fulfil The duties to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... of course, called early next day at her Palace. Her Grand-Chamberlain had appointed me the hour of noon. He now introduced me accordingly: but what was my surprise to find the Princess in bed; in a negligee all new from the laundress, and the gallantest that art could imagine! On a table, ready to her hand, at the DOSSIER or bed-bead, stood a little Basin silver-gilt, filled with Holy Water: the rest was decorated with extremely precious Relics, with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... who spoke was of the shabbiest appearance, wearing an almost napless high hat, a coloured linen shirt which should have been at the laundress's, no neck-tie, a frock-coat with only one button, low shoes terribly down at heel; for all that, the most jovial-looking man, red-nosed, laughing. At length Hood was capable ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... he visited Elsie, he found her more composed and comfortable than she had been for several weeks, and Mrs. Gerome had seemed almost cheerful, as she sat beside the bed, crimping the borders of the invalid's muslin caps which the laundress had sent ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... heard a commotion in the court outside. Dennet had been standing on the steps cleaning her tame starling's cage, when Mistress Headley had suddenly come out on the gallery behind her, hotly scolding her laundress, and waving her cap to show ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... answer the bell, both the door bell and her mistress's bell, and usually assist the latter in dressing. She is expected to do part of the family mending, keeping table linen and bed linen in good condition, and in some households is expected to wash and iron the napkins and dish-towels, unless a laundress is employed. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... save her son the embarrassment of seeing his mother reduced to this humble position, she assumed the name of Madame Charlotte; and persons requiring her services were requested to apply to M. Postel, M. Chardon's successor in the business. Lucien's sister worked for a laundress, a decent woman much respected in L'Houmeau, and earned fifteen daily sous. As Mme. Prieur's forewoman she had a certain position in the workroom, which raised her slightly ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... pleasing story which relates how Robert Bruce, marching with his army in the mountains of Ireland, heard a woman crying during one of the halts. He inquired immediately what was the matter, and was told that it was a camp-follower, a poor laundress, who was taken in child-bed; and as it was impossible to take her with them, she bemoaned her fate in being left behind to die. The king replied that he is no man who will not pity a woman then. He ordered ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... brown and blue, hanging in capacious shapelessness, a waistcoat half open for lack of buttons and with one of the pockets coming unsewn, a pair of bronze-hued trousers which had all run to knee. Necktie he had none, and his linen made distinct appeal to the laundress. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... many. The parents had considerable difficulty in providing for the wants of the family, in food as well as clothing. Besides the father's small earnings as a tailor of the lowest standing, the mother occasionally earned a little money as a laundress. A grandfather, Boe, formed one of the family group. He had been a soldier, but was now too old to serve in the ranks, though France was waging war in Italy and Austria under her new Emperor. Boe, however, helped to earn the family living, by begging with ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... neighbor who has the same; yet every year he gets something ahead and I fall short; why is it? I know all about economy." He thinks he does, but he does not. There are men who think that economy consists in saving cheese-parings and candle-ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill and doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness. The misfortune is, also, that this class of persons let their economy apply in only one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully economical ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum

... pitied her, and became her friend, and he devised this way to assist her to escape. There was a plan devised before this, by his brother. His name was George Douglass. The one who came in the boat was William. George's plan was for Mary to go on shore in the disguise of a laundress. The laundress came over to the island from the shore in a boat, to bring the linen; and while she was in Mary's room Mary exchanged clothes with her, and attempted to go on shore in the boat with the empty basket. But the boatmen ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott

... converse with apparent familiarity with the very humblest of their flock: and seem, from the highest to the lowest, to be cordially received. They are indifferent as to personal appearance. One young man carries a bundle of linen to his laundress, along the streets: another carries a round hat in his hand, having a cocked one upon his head: a kitchen utensil is seen in the hand of a third, and a chair, or small table, in that of a fourth. As these Clergymen pass, they are repeatedly saluted. Till the principal building be finished, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... knock at the door recalled to her the utter lack of privacy that put her at the mercy of laundress, sophomore, and expressman. She regretted that she had not put up the little sign whose "Please do not disturb" was ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam

... coming off to us, which contained a fine dish of delicious honey and some flowers. The order to go ahead again was scarcely given, before a third boat, in, if possible, hotter haste than the two previous ones, put off after us, bringing some things the laundress ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... well. There had been a good deal of talk between the old women of dying, a subject to which their minds had been very prone to revert. Besides Mrs Love there were two other visitors, but they too failed to cheer the old couple up. One of the visitors, a laundress of the Temple called Mrs Oliphant, had done her best, poohpoohing such melancholy talk, and attributing the low spirits in which the old women found themselves to the bleakness of the February weather, and promising them that they would find a new lease of life with the advent of spring. ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... But Jarl seemed to go further. He must have taken me for one of the House of Hanover in disguise; or, haply, for bonneted Charles Edward the Pretender, who, like the Wandering Jew, may yet be a vagrant. At any rate, his loyalty was extreme. Unsolicited, he was my laundress and tailor; a most expert one, too; and when at meal-times my turn came round to look out at the mast-head, or stand at the wheel, he catered for me among the "kids" in the forecastle with unwearied assiduity. Many's the good lump of "duff" ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... day of January, a fire breaking out at Whitehall through the carelessness of a laundress, the whole body of the palace, together with the new gallery, council- chamber, and several adjoining apartments were entirely consumed; but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... most was an immense looking-glass, in which she saw a ragged figure without a fashionable jacket, without a big hat, and without bronze shoes. And it seemed strange to Vanda that, now that she was humbly dressed and looked like a laundress or sewing girl, she felt ashamed, and no trace of her usual boldness and sauciness remained, and in her own mind she no longer thought of herself as Vanda, but as the Nastasya Kanavkin she used to be in the old days. . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... cried, indignantly. "When there's such a good, good woman, Jane's sister Meg-Laundress, what washes for us just 'cause I mend her things. An' tailor-Jake who showed me to do a buttonhole an' him all doubled up with coughin'; an' Billy Buttons who gives us a paper sometimes, only neither of us can read it; an' Nick, the parson, who ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond

... without much interest, supposing that she might be a seamstress, or laundress, or some applicant for charity. So many years had passed since he had met with this woman, that she had passed ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger

... backs of various chairs. Emeline always had a pair or more of silk stockings soaking in a little bowl of cold suds in the bedroom, and occasionally carried a waist or a lace petticoat to the little French laundress on Powell Street, and drove a sharp bargain with her. Julia accepted the situation very cheerfully; she and her mother both enjoyed their lazy, aimless existence, and to Julia, at least, the future was full of hope. She could do any one ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... you set out on a search expedition," continued my informant, after a cup of tea and a cigarette to subdue his emotions, "you insist on having the number of the house. Do you get it? Oh yes! and with a safeguard added, 'Inquire of the laundress.' [This was a parody on, "Inquire of the Swiss," or "of the yard-porter."] You start off in high feather; number and guide are provided, only a fool could fail to find it, and you know that you are a person who is considered rather above the average in cleverness. But that is ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... cleaning &c. v.; purification, defecation &c. v.; purgation, lustration[obs3]; detersion[obs3], abstersion[obs3]; epuration[obs3], mundation|; ablution, lavation[obs3], colature|; disinfection &c. v.; drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse[obs3]; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi[obs3], laundryman, washerman[obs3]; scavenger, dustman[obs3], sweep; white wings brush[Local U. S.]; broom, besom[obs3], mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. napkin, cloth, maukin|, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... for that matter, if we are to accept his own estimate of himself. In any event, he was a treasure. Booth's house was always in order. Try as he would, he couldn't get it out of order. Pat's wife saw to that. She was the cook, housekeeper, steward, seamstress, nurse and everything else except the laundress, and she would have been that if Booth hadn't put his foot down on it. He was rather finicky about his bosoms, it seems—and his ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... for an employer to manage her household industry with a cook, a laundress, a waitress. The difficulties really begin when the family income is so small that but one person can be employed in the household for all these varied functions, and the difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they fall altogether upon the mother ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... physical strength or weakness, personal likes or dislikes, all women were expected to marry and bear children, and to qualify successfully for a vocation which combined the duties of nursemaid, waitress, laundress, seamstress, baker, cook, governess, purchasing agent, dietitian, accountant, and confectioner. In the early days of this country, in addition to these duties, women were also called upon to be butchers, sausage-makers, tailors, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb



Words linked to "Laundress" :   laundrywoman, washerwoman, washwoman



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