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Washerwoman

noun
(pl. washerwomen)
1.
A working woman who takes in washing.  Synonyms: laundress, laundrywoman, washwoman.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Washerwoman" Quotes from Famous Books



... I'se Ophelia. I'se de washerwoman's little girl, an' mama, she sent me to say, would you please to len' her a dime. She got to ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... the Lamnissa home with him, but he takes the gold-fish too, and keeps it in his room, "for he loved it dearly." The Lamnissa never rests till he gives her the fish to eat. Its bones are thrown into a garden and from them springs a rose bush on which blooms a rose which the king's old washerwoman wishes to break off to sell it at the castle. From out of the bush springs the beautiful citron-maiden, and tells the old woman her story. She also gives her the rose for the king's son, and in the basket with the ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... and told me afterwards that Abednego had ran away, and that his family considered it a disgrace, and never spoke of him. I hear of a negro boy who absconded, and when he was found and being brought home, an old washerwoman watched him as he went up the street. 'La,' said she, 'who'd a thought he'd a beginned to act bad so young,' But let us leave off Abolition and take a walk. Our cigars are out and we will resume the subject to-morrow afternoon, when we ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... pocket. Here you have it! no, that's my washerwoman's bill. Ah, here it is!" and Jack pulled out a crumpled note, and placed it before ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... was on the alert, for the dowager Princess had heard from her maid, who had heard it from her sister in Rome, who had learned it from the washerwoman, who had been told the secret by the porter's wife, that the celebrated Malipieri was exploring the north-west foundations of the palace. The Princess had repeated the story, and the legend which accounted for it, to her brother Prince ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... received for the sale of her two houses (that never brought her anything because of her simplicity, while they were in her possession) she had grown tired of "being a burden to them," as she phrased it, and had hired herself out here and there as scrubwoman, washerwoman, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... Popes, tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... will observe, that, when I first saw these ingenious contrivances to escape the washerwoman's bill, as well as the cuffs made by the same process for ladies' use, they both struck me so favorably, while their cheapness was so surprising, that my curiosity was inflamed to see and know how they were made. In company with my sister, I visited the manufactory. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... before the Revolution, a journeyman printer, and married to a washerwoman, whose industry and labour alone prevented him from starving, for he was as vicious as idle. The money he gained when he chose to work was generally squandered away in brothels, among prostitutes. To supply his excesses ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... should like to live in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in a sustained ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have heerd tell of him, sir, a young and gallant naval ossifer like yerself, 'specially that yarn consarnin' him and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin' when he were a-spyin' ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... a poor and widowed washerwoman brings him her sick child, whom she does not want to take to the hospital because her two oldest children died there. The child is a weak boy of eight years who has caught scarlet-fever. At first, the inside of the throat begins to swell, and, to prevent an abscess, the doctor orders ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... Nature, as she tucks you in with woodland green, has smiles and graces that you never saw before, yet the houseboater soon learns that each delightful, new-found pocket in the watery world means necessity for several other new-found things. There must be a new-found washerwoman, and new-found somebodies who can supply meats, eggs, vegetables, ice, milk, and water—the last two separate if possible. True, the little harbour is beautiful; but as you lie there day after day watching waving trees and rippling water, the soiled-clothes bags are growing fatter; and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... left there, we passed the place where Madame's washerwoman lives. A little girl peeped out at us through the hedge. Madame told her to show the American ladies the doll that she had in her arms. She held it out, and then snatched it back as if she were jealous of our even looking at it. Madame told us that it was the one ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... washerwoman replied that it was perhaps a very good plan of Miss or Mrs. Fawley's (as they called her indifferently) to have him with her—"to kip 'ee company in your loneliness, fetch water, shet the winder-shetters o' nights, and help in the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... restless young son[2] was stimulated, and circumstances fed the flame. In the last year of the government of Andros [1688], a daughter, thirteen years old, of John Goodwin,—a mason living at the South End of Boston,—had a quarrel with an Irish washerwoman about some missing clothes. The woman's mother took it up, and scolded provokingly. Thereupon the wicked child, profiting, as it seems, by what she had been hearing and reading on the mysterious subject, "cried out upon her," as the phrase was, as ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... new, a small blonde who could turn her head. Florence's skilful fingers kept this lady most beautifully gowned. And Split—whose favorite of the small-fry dolls she had once been—still remembered her fondly, and passed over to Fom the most wonderful patches. These she got from Jack Cody, the washerwoman's son, who bribed his mother by promises of good conduct to beg samples of their gowns from her ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... from another, and was unwilling to go away. They made a dreadful uproar, and from that day they constantly kept cursing and abusing me. I was obliged to wash, though I was very ill. Mrs. Wood, indeed once hired a washerwoman, but she was not well treated, ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... approached an elderly woman, poorly clad, blind of one eye, lame on one leg, and with her hair brushed into one large curl to hide the blind eye—but in vain, the defect was only the more conspicuous. This was "Lame Maren," as the neighbors called her, a friend of the washerwoman's. "Poor thing, slaving and toiling away in the cold water! it is hard that you should be called names"—for Maren had overheard the sheriff speaking to the child about his own mother— "hard that your boy should be ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... listening. 'And Cecile was a fairy, with spangled wings—the sweetest thing you ever saw. We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but as nobody took any notice of Madame de C—she has behaved like a washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help her ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... leave that to my sister. Mamma is my district. And do you know, her headaches are as painful as any washerwoman's.' ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... were playing "Here we go round the mulberry bush" in the woods near the house, little Ikey, our colored washerwoman's boy, came along with a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... passed the Sweet Gum Spring they saw Delphy, the washerwoman, standing in her doorway, quarrelling with her son-in-law, Moses, who was hoeing a small garden patch in the rear of an adjoining cabin. Delphy was a large mulatto woman, with a broad, flat bosom and enormous hands that ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... old bachelor was apparently open to all eyes, though in fact it was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second floor of a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest washerwoman in the town. This circumstance will explain the excessive nicety of his linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came when Alencon was guilty of believing that the chevalier had not always comported himself as a gentleman should, and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... statesmen of the day. I shall not call them "Shaving Papers from Downing Street," nor adopt the pseudonym of "The Man with the Hot Water (or the Morning Tea)," nor shall I roundly assert that I have been the private secretary, the doctor, the dentist or the washerwoman of the great men of whom I speak. Nevertheless I have sources of information which I do not mean to disclose, except to say that heavy persons who sit down carelessly on sofas may unknowingly inflict considerable pain, through the sharp ends of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various

... had forged through the crowd and brought his stumbling beast to a stand not a rod away from Axel Peterson's side. Peterson had viewed the proceeding with a disturbing qualm. Boyle, as talkative before as a washerwoman, now grew suddenly silent. His mouth stood open impotently; the gray of a sinking heart came over his face as he looked long at the battered man, who had dropped the reins to the ground and was coming toward them ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... are in Nanking; they have to look after our houses there, so they can't pay frequent visits to the capital. Her brother is the Wen-hsiang, who acts at present as our senior's accountant; but her sister-in-law too is employed in our worthy ancestor's yonder as head washerwoman." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... amuse you (for a last word) to hear that our precentress—she is the washerwoman—is our shame. She is a good, healthy, comely, strapping young wench, full of energy and seriousness, a splendid workwoman, delighting to train our chorus, delighting in the poetry of the hymns, which she reads aloud ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... steps (or path) which lead down to a watering-place. Hence the Hindi saying concerning the "rolling stone"—Dhobi-ka kutta; na Gharka na Ghat-ka, a washerwoman's tyke, nor of the house nor of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... been afraid that Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on her way to the laundry. All the sport people had gone, the streets were half empty, and most of the tourist shops were shut. Only the very ill had reappeared; they crept aimlessly ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... drowning washerwoman; in youth he nursed men dying of cholera; as a veteran soldier he passed the night among the rocks of Caprera hunting for a lamb that was lost. No amount of habit could remove the repugnance he felt ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... happened. How many families here have been called to mourning since we have! I have not taken up a paper in which I have not seen a record of two or three accidental deaths; some of them even more bitter and cruel than what has befallen us. I read this morning of a poor washerwoman, whose house was burned, and all her children consumed, while she was away working for her bread. I read the other day of a blind man whose only son was drowned in his very presence, while he could do nothing to help him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... Rosalie had such a horror of Paris was that her mother was guillotined there,—the same day as Madame Elizabeth. Madame Rosalie was only a child at that time, and was discovered in the home of a washerwoman. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... no curtain back!" said Maria, grimly; her excited respiration shook the steps. "All to save the washing of four pair o' curtains! And you know you beat the washerwoman down to tenpence a pair last March! Three and fo'pence, that is! For the sake o' three and fo'pence you're willing for all Toft End to point their ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... treats of the experiences of a pretty mill-girl, the daughter of a washerwoman, who becomes the protegee of a wealthy and capricious woman of the world, who educates her, introduces her to society, then finally drops her and permits her to seek her native obscurity, where she withers and dies of a broken heart. The story is very well told, but with a good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... make-believe, games, and they had much fun this way. Now they turned one chair on the side, and put another in front. The turned-over chair was to be the wagon, and the other chair, standing on its four legs, was the horse. Bunny got some string for reins, and the stick the washerwoman used to punch the clothes down in the boiler made a good whip, when another piece of string was tied on the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope

... it is intended to signify (in an actress) something sweet, pretty, soft, appealing, gentle and underdone. Is it possible that I convey that impression when I try to assume the character of a washerwoman or a fisherwoman? If so I am a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... mounds.[24] A Sutherlandshire story relates the adventures of the son of a Fairy woman, who took service with Ossian, the king of the Fians.[25] One of the Fians (Caoilte) had a Fairy sweet-heart.[26] Another of them (Oscar) has an interview with a washerwoman who is a Fairy.[27] A Fenian story recounts how one day the Fians were working in the harvest-field, in the Argyleshire island of Tiree, and on that occasion they had "left their weapons of war in the armoury of the Fairy ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie

... a board at the edge of a coolee, her petticoat wrapped snugly around her limbs, and a limp sunbonnet hiding her nut-brown face, pounding her washing with a wooden paddle. She was her own housekeeper, chambermaid, cook, washerwoman, gooseherd, seamstress, nurse, and all the rest. Her floors, they said, were always bien fourbis (well scrubbed); her beds were high, soft, snug, and covered with the white mesh ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... became one of the Lady-Patronesses of that admirable institution, "The Washerwoman's-Orphans' Home;" Lady de Sudley was the great projector of it; and the manager and chaplain, the excellent and Reverend Sidney Slopper. His salary, as chaplain, and that of Doctor Leitch, the physician (both cousins of her ladyship's), ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... wife. Remember this when you are a great man, for with them it is become a fashion. Let ruffians go their own way. Let gentlemen be your companions, and never fail to show them that you can at least be their equal in courteous demeanor. Always pay your washerwoman; be not ashamed to acknowledge your father, and remember that the fonder you speak of your mother, the more you will be beloved by strangers. Avoid politicians, who are come to be great vagabonds, who drink bad liquor and give their thoughts to base designs against the nation's gold. If you become ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... against realism, old or recent, whether in the brutal paintings of Spagnoletto or in the unclean revelations of Zola. Leave the description of the drains and cesspools to the hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to the physician, the details of the laundry to the washerwoman. If we are to have realism in its tedious descriptions of unimportant particulars, let it be of particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the description of the vegetables in Zola's "Ventre de Paris," where, if one wishes to see the apotheosis of turnips, beets, and cabbages, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the exquisite young creature before her. Zoie had certainly never looked more irresistible. "Can't you get some of that colour out of your cheeks," asked Aggie in despair. "You look like a washerwoman." ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... too few servants, such as they are. It is considered altogether sensible and becoming for the mechanic's wife to do her own housework as a bride and as a matron of years. Unless her husband prospers rapidly she is accounted "shiftless" should she hire a washerwoman, while to "keep a girl" is extravagance, or a significant stride toward gentility. The wife of the English joiner or mason or small farmer, if brisk, notable and healthy, may dispense with the stated service of a maid of all work, but she calls in a charwoman on ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... contribution plate filled with envelopes and bank bills. The isolated coin caught the eye of the young rector as he received the offerings, and his gaze wandered wonderingly over his fashionable congregation. It finally rested upon the small, eager-eyed face of his washerwoman's daughter, and a look of angelic sweetness came into his brown eyes with the thought: "Even ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... to be played and replayed in different parts of the country, and she went in for slumming quite as seriously as if it was a sport. With her, I suppose, it was. She belonged to the Guild of the Poor Dear Souls, and they hold the record for having nearly reformed a washerwoman. No one has ever really reformed a washerwoman, and that is why the competition is so keen. You can rescue charwomen by fifties with a little tea and personal magnetism, but with washerwomen it's different; wages ...
— Reginald • Saki

... red-haired man; the little monsters are as black as the mother, and have RED wool—you never saw so diabolical an appearance. Some of the coloured people are very pretty; for example, a coal-black girl of seventeen, and my washerwoman, who is brown. They are wonderfully slender and agile, and quite old hard-working women have waists you could span. They never grow thick and square, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... came under my notice when I was a student of medicine in 1819. I boarded at a good old Frenchman's, whose few domestics were French creoles. One of these was the washerwoman. When quite young she had left St. Domingo with her old mistress, who had been kind to her in the days of prosperity on the island. The old lady managed to save a small portion of her wealth, and lived quietly with her former servant, now her faithful friend. Madame Curchon, as she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... lavender of the court alway: a "lavender" is a washerwoman or laundress; the word represents "meretrice"in Dante's original — meaning a courtezan; but we can well understand that Chaucer thought it prudent, and at the same time more true to the moral state of the English Court, to change the character assigned ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... queer to me!" she would say, confidentially, "All those girls together, and no person to have any authority over them! Not a married woman in the house but that washerwoman,—and her ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... a pile of straw and rags, and an object lying on top of them; and a squalid child, curled in one corner, with a wild, frightened look in his eyes. The woman turned as the door opened, and John Birge recognized her as his mother's washerwoman. ...
— Three People • Pansy

... in providing from day to day, during their imprisonment. The poor woman who did their washing, a generous-hearted mulatto, had brought them many things, for which she asked no compensation. Her name was Jane Bee, and when the rules of the jail made every man his own washerwoman, she frequently washed for those who had nothing to pay her. But her means were small, and she worked hard for a small pittance, and had nothing to bring them for several days. They were forced to take the allowance of bread, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... or washermen stand outside at work. But I'm told that in some parts of Europe the washerwomen themselves get into the tubs. They do this to keep their feet dry. The tubs or barrels are empty, and are set along the river banks in the water, and each washerwoman stands in her tub and washes the clothes in the river, pounding, and soaping, and rinsing them, on a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... was recommended to us as "muy honrado;" not from his last place, but from one before. He was a well-dressed, sad-looking individual; and at the same time we took his wife as washerwoman, and his brother as valet to our attache, thus having the whole family under our roof, wisely taking it for granted that he being recommended as particularly honest, his relations were "all honourable men." An English lady happened to call on me, and a short time after I went to return ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... behind us—Fanny Meyrick's voice. She was just coming out of one of the small houses on the roadside. "Don't you want some company? I've been to call on my washerwoman, and I'm so glad I've met you. Such an English morning! Shall I walk ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell

... "that girl's mother was a washerwoman." She did the heavy washing for a very rich man's family. They put her into an open shed, on a cold, damp pavement. This work she had been doing for them for several years, in the same bleak place, and in all weathers. While warm and comfortable herself, the pampered mistress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... oval wicker-basket covered with a white cloth, which burden she bore round to the back door. Of course, she washed for his own household: he had not thought of that. In the morning sunlight she appeared rather as a sylph than as a washerwoman; and he could not but think that the slightness of her figure was as ill adapted to this occupation as ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... shadow as if lifted by indignation but there was the flicker of a smile on his lips. "You say I don't know women. Maybe. It's just as well not to come too close to the shrine. But I have a clear notion of woman. In all of them, termagant, flirt, crank, washerwoman, blue-stocking, outcast and even in the ordinary fool of the ordinary commerce there is something left, if only a spark. And when there is a spark there can ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... the iron. The clock chimed twelve, and still the poor washerwoman smoothed and folded, though her heavy eyes almost refused to keep open, and the room began to feel the chill ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... in Shelley's serious verses, by which they became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they now bethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should the poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, be fathered? Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had recently attempted George the Third's life with a carving-knife. No more fitting author could be found. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited by an admiring nephew. The printer appreciated the joke ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... conceal the vulgarity of their subject. I remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stuart: and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth—though she did it very well—I could not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion at all. The same part was incomparably better played by the Italian ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... light fell over the water, lying dormant here, flashing there, making the silvery streaks in the shadow of the boats tremble, touching up a mast or a rudder, or resting on the orange-coloured handkerchief or pink jacket of a washerwoman. The country, the outskirts of the town, and the suburbs all met together on both sides of the river. There were rows of poplar trees to be seen between the houses, which were few and far between, as at the extreme limit ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... only until he should repent All Protestants were beheaded, burned, or buried alive Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Believed in the blessed advent of peace Compassing a country's emancipation through a series of defeats Don John of Austria Don John was at liberty to be King of England and Scotland Ferocity which even Christians could not have surpassed Happy to glass themselves in so brilliant ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... the stairs, a coloured washerwoman, accompanied by a bright mulatto boy, who carried an empty clothes basket on his head, waited humbly in the shadow for the two men to pass. She was a dark glistening creature, with ox-like eyes, and the remains of a handsome figure, now running ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... rail and smoked for three hours! Eight eyes, watching him from below, failed to find anything in his face but contemplation; eight hands puckered like a washerwoman's; eight feet turned from medium to clean, from clean to bleached—and still the Chief smoked on. He watched the scolding tugs and the ferryboats that crawled over the top of the water; he stood in rapt contemplation of the electric signs in Jersey, while the ship's ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... was overwhelmed. She had a hundred thousand dollars, and her sister was a—washerwoman! It was intolerable. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... for all. When I first went to Belgium with a pair of fleece-lined gloves, I was sure, if I ever lost that pair, that they were irreplaceable. I lost them. I lost article after article, and was freed from the clinging. I lost a pin for the bodice. I left my laundry with a washerwoman. Her village was bombarded, and we had to move on. I lost my kit. A woman has a tie-in with those material things, and the new life brought freedom ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason

... brought to my house a basket somewhat larger than that now before us; it was as full as it could hold of fine linen, and, on my life and soul, it was still wet and covered with soap, just as they had taken it from under the nose of the washerwoman, so that the poor fellows were perspiring and breathless beneath its weight. It would have melted your heart to see them as they came in, with the water streaming from their faces, and they as red as a couple of cherubs. They told me, besides, that they were in pursuit of a cattle-dealer, who had ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... clouds on the days when the clothes are to come home, for it would be altogether too great a trial if one's starched garments, borne aloft on Jack's head, were to be caught in a thunder-shower. If the washerwoman takes pains with anything, it is with gentlemen's shirts, though even then she insists on ironing the collars into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... newspaper chatter aimed at me then, and now, by God, you've done worse than the fellow who ruined poor Thomson. Look up there, and you'll see your father's portrait. He was a merry lad in his day, but he wouldn't have intrigued with a washerwoman. That's about what you have done. However, we'll have no more scolding. Of course, you understand that the affair is ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... his sister's, a washerwoman; honest girl, she may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it. The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put them back ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... days and nights when he could not produce. And now Tolstoy tells us that Uncle Tom's Cabin is greater than Shakespeare. Is it any wonder Turgenieff remonstrated with him? Is it any wonder if, after reading one of his latter-day tracts, we are reminded of The Washerwoman of Finchley Common, that classic in the polemics of sniffling piety? The truth is that Tolstoy, a wonderful artist in plastic portraiture, consciously or unconsciously fashioned the Tolstoy legend, as did Richard Wagner the Wagner legend, Victor Hugo the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... thing;" an' I walks along from the store to a nate little cabin back from the river, that had flowers growin' in the front; an' sure enough, the floor was as clane as a dhrawin' room, an' a dacent tidy little woman kneadin' a cake on the table. "Ma'am," sez I, "I'm obliged to turn washerwoman, an' I don't know how;" but she only curtseyed, and said ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... it, Monsieur Piquedent, I met the little washerwoman! You know the one I mean, the woman who had the basket, and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... schooner sailed by, and lifting her face skyward for an instant, as her lips moved in silence. As a man the boy knew she was thinking of her long journey, of the tragedy that came of it, and praying for those who passed into the West. Then she would bend to her work again; and the washerwoman's child who took the clothes she washed in his little wagon with the cottonwood log wheels, across the commons into the town, was not made to feel an inferior place in the social system until he was in his early teens. For all the Sycamore Ridge women worked hard in those days. But there ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... streets; the fence was low, and the publicity obtained by the washable portion of the family apparel, on Mondays, had often been painful to Penrod; for boys have a peculiar sensitiveness in these matters. A plain, matter-of-fact washerwoman' employed by Mrs. Schofield, never left anything to the imagination of the passer-by; and of all her calm display the scarlet flaunting of his father's winter wear had most abashed Penrod. One day Marjorie Jones, all gold and starch, had passed when the dreadful things were on the line: ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... mean it! And it is flattering—very flattering—for me, as your daughter, to feel that you look upon me as so peculiarly suited for the washerwoman's post! None of that ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... 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|, malkin|, handkerchief, towel, sudary[obs3]; doyley[obs3], doily, duster, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... but very little bread to start with; and it was possible, of course, the baker might smell a rat, and get up a rescue. It would be better, on that account, to defer action till after the baker's visit on Wednesday. But then the washerwoman generally came on the Thursday. We all voted the washerwoman a nuisance. We must either take her a prisoner and keep her in the house, or run the risk of her finding out that something was wrong and going back to the village ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... washerwoman has 'all her sins blotted out' in the twinkling of an eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of all that ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... thing in every phase. The event that robbed Rudd of his wife, his child, his hope, had taken also his companion, his cook, his chambermaid, his washerwoman, the mender of his things; and in their place had left an appalling monument of bills. The only people he had permitted himself to owe money to were the gruesome committee that brought him his grief; the doctor, the druggist, the casket-maker, the sexton, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... packed just as if I was going to leave London, excepting my linen, which I sent to my washerwoman who lived at a distance of six miles from town, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... washerwoman who lived outside Coleby on the common, and gained her income by acting as laundress generally for all who would intrust her with their family linen; but she called herself in yellow letters on a brilliant scarlet ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... of a London washerwoman by trade who makes vastly more money by falling into trances than by her legitimate calling, to which she ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... have I found you at last? Are these your tricks, madam? When will you get rid of your idiocies, and conduct yourself like a decent woman? Is my family name and house to be disgraced by acts that would be a scandal to a washerwoman's daughter? ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... and he thought, blushing beneath the bedclothes, of the unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to office, down the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather strap between an Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of his guests had seen him then they would have said: "How distinctly American!" and—Wilton did not care for that tone. He had schooled himself to an English walk, and, so long as he did not raise it, an English voice. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... an old washerwoman, watched the dead and the dying of the neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sown her customers into that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went and took up her iron to smooth the linen of the living. Wrinkled like a last year's ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... that time a washerwoman, patted her bruises and repeated with symptoms of losing her patience, "Fe-li-pe, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... reading the New Testament in the English language. Among the polished Greeks, they were held in little estimation. Homer degrades all his females: he makes the Grecian princesses weave the web, spin, and do all the drudgery of a modern washerwoman; and rarely allows them any share of social intercourse with the other sex. Yet the very foundations on which he has constructed his two matchless poems are women. It appears also from all the dramatic writers of ancient Greece, whose aim was "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... this he used to make a rapid note on his shirt-cuff; but that is a dangerous practice. Wives might resent the face if it were too pretty, and your washerwoman might recognise a Member of Parliament as her intimate friend. The incident which cured him of using his shirt-cuff for sketching happened at a large dinner, where he was introduced to the wife of a well-known public man, who soon showed she was not altogether pleased by the introduction, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... the apron—making little waves (our maids couldn't think what had happened to their white aprons the first time they came back from the wash—thought there had been some mistake and they had some one's else clothes—they had to explain to the washerwoman that they liked their aprons ironed straight); long gold earrings and gold chains. They are handsome women, dark with straight features, a serious look in their eyes. Certainly people who live by the sea have a different expression—there is something grave, ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... intellect, and you have before you the General Jackson who has lived in my memory from my childhood. Side by side with him stands a coarse-looking, stout little old woman, whom you might easily mistake for his washerwoman, were it not for the marked attention he pays her, and the love and admiration she manifests for him. Her eyes are bright, and express great kindness of heart; her face is rather broad, her features plain, her ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... aged colored woman, who was employed as a washerwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this woman married a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by her industry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... week, as his wife told after; but she didn't trouble about his vagaries and never loved him better than when he went off to catch some trout for her that dark afternoon in March. But he didn't return, and when she came down after dark to her aunt, Maria Pardoe, the washerwoman at Little Silver, and made a fearful stir about the missing man, the people felt sorry for her, and a dozen chaps went down the river to find Spider and fetch him along. His rod they found, and his basket and his bottle of lob-worms on the bank above a deep pool, but ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... very fair to look at, but there was about her no feminine softness. Do not laugh, reader, unless you have already stopped to think, and, thinking, have decided that a girl of eighteen, being a washerwoman, must therefore be without feminine softness. I would not myself say that it is so. But here at least there was no feminine softness, no tenderness in the eye, no young shame at being gazed at. She paused for a moment in her work, and gave back to ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... perhaps right I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to himself. It is not like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... the same hazard. Her accouchment was preceded by great suffering, and her strength seemed totally exhausted. The attendants were in a state of extreme alarm, when Lord Thurlow said, in his usual rough way, "Don't think of princesses here: treat her like the washerwoman, and give her a glass of brandy." The advice was followed, and the Princess ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... bad as his wife; that an equally good President and President's wife could be picked up in any corner-grocery between the Lakes and the Ohio; and that no inducement should ever make her go near that coarse washerwoman again. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... first in Bayham Street. "A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow Street officer over the way." It was a shabby district, chosen by the elder Dickens because the rent was low. As he neglected to pay the rent, one wonders why he did not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... a small laundry she was keeping, her aunt supported her children as well as her husband. She offered Maslova work as a washerwoman, but seeing what a hard life the washerwomen at her aunt's establishment were leading, she searched through the intelligence offices for a position as servant. She found such a place with a lady who was living with her two student boys. A week ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... already great talent for drawing, and in almost every letter came two or three childish but spirited little pictures, all labelled "Drawn for papa!" "The true picture of our courier in a rage, for papa to see." "The washerwoman's dog, for papa," etc., etc. Again and again I sat by, almost trembling with delight, and saw John spend an entire evening in looking over these little missives and reading Ellen's letters. Then again I sat alone ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... things in the course of her life, and everything had brought her gradually downward, from servant-girl to waitress, down past washerwoman to what she ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... the poorest part of the London suburbs then, and the house was a mean small tenement, with a wretched little back-garden abutting on a squalid court. Here was no place for new acquaintances to him: no boys were near with whom he might hope to become in any way familiar. A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow-Street officer lived over the way. Many, many times has he spoken to me of this, and how he seemed at once to fall into a solitary condition apart from all other boys ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... as he took his seat near the table and the county papers. He squirmed on the cushions, smoked hard and complained of the tobacco, the weather, the police magistrates, his tight shoes, the careless washerwoman and a string of matters incidental to the world's work and its burdens that he had never mentioned before so long as I had lived with him, and that was pretty close to ten years. It was easy to see that this was no ordinary case. Several times I had suffered the same sort of misery; ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... demean myself in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?" ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... post, a chief share in administering the town charities, and his private charities were both minute and abundant. He would take a great deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the shoemaker's son, and he would watch over Tegg's church-going; he would defend Mrs. Strype the washerwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of her drying-ground, and he would himself-scrutinize a calumny against Mrs. Strype. His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire strictly into the circumstances both before and after. In this way a man gathers a domain ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had even started a boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and slavery to whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family), and had clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those horrible requirements ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... some rudimentary indications. Millet seems even to have desired to omit technical beauty, so that he might concentrate all thought on the poetic synthesis he was gathering from the earth. Degas, on the contrary, draws for the sake of the drawing-The Ballet Girl, The Washerwoman, The Fat Housewife bathing herself, is only a pretext for drawing; and Degas chose these extraordinary themes because the drawing of the ballet girl and the fat housewife is less known than that of the nymph and the Spartan youth. Painters will understand what I mean by the drawing ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... Winter cried out sharply, "That will do." Immediately one of the assistants seizes the wet canvas, crumples it up without more ado, as if it were dirty linen, and takes it off to a wooden washing trough, where it is kneaded and washed in true washerwoman fashion. Water in plenty is sluiced over it, and after more vigorous manipulation still, it is passed from trough to trough until deemed sufficiently free from soluble salts to tone. The toning—done in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... any of the new books, with which his library was rather well stocked, and promised to send over the Pall Mall Review, to which he was a subscriber, every week. Mr. Hopkins told Mr. Jones the name of the best washerwoman in the village, one of his own new parishioners, as it happened, and proposed to put him up at once for membership in the Golf Club. In fact the conversation went off ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... is not the sort your worship is thinking of," said the galley slave; "mine was that I loved a washerwoman's basket of clean linen so well, and held it so close in my embrace, that if the arm of the law had not forced it from me, I should never have let it go of my own will to this moment; I was caught in the act, there was no occasion ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... returned the washerwoman—"too young to be confined down as much as she is. But then she is a very patient child, and knows that her mother has a great deal to do. I often wish it was easier for her; though, as it can't be helped, I don't let it fret me, for you know that ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... upwards; then he cried: "Master, I cannot give that message, I am a poor unlearn'd man. And if I should go to England and cry aloud, they would say, 'Who is this, who comes preaching to a great people? Is not his mother with us, and a washerwoman; and was not his father a day labourer at two shillings a day?' and they would laugh me to scorn. And, in truth, the message is so long I could not well remember it; give me ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner

... This is Sunday evening, and a Sunday in Paris always puts me in mind of your story about somebody who said, "Bless you! they make such a noise that the Devil couldn't meditate." All the extra work and odd jobs of life are put into Sunday. Your washerwoman comes Sunday, with her innocent, good-humored face, and would be infinitely at a loss to know why she shouldn't. Your bonnet, cloak, shoes, and everything are sent home Sunday morning, and all the way to church there is such whirligiging and pirouetting ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... is this Josie O'Gorman?" asked a smartly dressed woman, "and why? Isn't she a kind of a washerwoman?" ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... called in the ministers of Boston and Charlestown, who fasted and prayed, and succeeded in delivering the youngest, who was five. Meanwhile, one of the daughters had "cried out upon" an unfortunate Irish washerwoman, with whom she had quarrelled. Cotton Mather was now in his element. He took the eldest girl home with him and tried a great number of interesting experiments as to the relative power of Satan and the Lord; among others he gravely relates how when the sufferer ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... a miracle, and he works at it quite seriously, with the patience of a man. Between one tower and another he told me about his family: they live in a garret; his father goes to the evening school to learn to read, and his mother is a washerwoman. And they must love him, of course, for he is clad like a poor boy, but he is well protected from the cold, with neatly mended clothes, and with his necktie nicely tied by his mother's hands. His father, he told me, is a fine man,—a ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... scholars." Artisans, countrymen, and merchants—the ideal had been already accepted in France, Malesherbes striving to use no word that was not in the vocabulary of the day labourers of Paris, Moliere making his washerwoman first critic of his comedies. It meant for England the disuse of the turgidities and involutions which had marked the prose of the preachers and moralists of the times of James and Charles I.; scholars and men of letters were arising ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... evil, had struck off his fetters and led him back to his long-forfeited liberty and light. And no countess or lady of high degree could have welcomed a long-lost earl home more joyfully than the tired little washerwoman had welcomed the erring husband of ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the hands of his persecutors. The garments that had been starched and ironed with such scrupulous care were scattered along the wharf, and trampled under the feet of the thoughtless young mob. The old washerwoman on whose errand Hal had been sent forth, was too indignant at the destruction which had befallen her handiwork, to give one kindly thought to the poor boy who had so honorably striven to spare her the misfortune over which she lamented so dolorously. Her Sunday thoughts strayed far ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... world of intellect to that of ordinary life the same charm haunts our footsteps. Everything is so well done, so gracefully and so winningly presented! The exquisite perfume of refinement hangs about every trivial detail. Your washerwoman is a lady, and your coalman a Chesterfield. If a Frenchman is ever rude, he is rude with malice prepense and aforethought. He knows better, we may be sure. Patrick may err on the score of politeness from ignorance, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... Fortune had turned her back for all and all on this cruel Duke of Burgundy and Count of Charolois. The disasters at Granson and Morat were repeated. At nightfall Charles could not be found. I supposed that he had escaped, but the next morning his body was found by a washerwoman, frozen in the ice of a pond. He had been killed through the machinations of Campo-Basso. Duke Rene magnanimously gave Charles regal burial, and dismissed his followers without ransom. You may be sure I was eager to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... plaudits of the rest she took the doctor's arm. The others fell in line as if by magic, and then the fiddles began with vim. Oh, how they danced! Everyone, old and young—quadrilles, reels, polkas, Irish Washerwoman, Old Dan Tucker, and all. Even Mrs. Conors, after much persuasion, did a jig as it was performed "whin I was a gal in ould Ireland," and Patrick Flynn, the aspiring County Member, was her partner. How the old tavern ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... Pickwick continued to reside constantly, and without interruption or intermission, at Mrs. Bardell's house. I shall show you that Mrs. Bar-dell, during the whole of that time, waited on him, attended to his comforts, cooked his meals, looked out his linen for the washerwoman when it went abroad, darned, aired, and prepared it for wear when it came home, and, in short, enjoyed his fullest trust and confidence. I shall show you that, on many occasions, he gave half-pence, and on some occasions even sixpences, to her little boy; and I shall prove to you, by a witness ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... their boots, and drive them out, too, I suppose. I'd leave at once if it wasn't such a good situation. Drat the old picture—what has come over her I wonder—she'll be asking old Aunt Charity, the black washerwoman to dine with her next. She has either gone crazy or turned abolitionist, I don't know which; something has happened ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time—a smart, lively young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a lovely washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have something more than mere flames and sentiment;—a washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps, and a necklace every ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... where we sat for some time, and beneath the windows of which the one stream of the island runs, was comparatively cool. Outside, the negro washerwomen were busy washing clothes in large turtle-shell tubs, assisted, or hindered, by the 'washerwoman-bird,' a kind of white crane, who appeared quite tame, playing about just like a kitten, pecking at the clothes or the women's feet, and then running away and hiding behind a tree. The stream was full of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... the old washerwoman up the lane," said the mother, as she looked out of the window; "the poor woman can hardly drag herself along, and now she had to drag a pail of water from the well. Be a good boy, Tuk, and run across and help the old woman, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... days of failure, what they gave out acquired a special poignancy from its contrast to his present cherished state. His shirts were all in round dozens now, and washed as carefully as old lace. As for his socks, she knew the pattern of every pair, and would have liked to see the washerwoman who dared to mislay one, or bring it home with the colors "run"! And in these homely tokens of his well-being she saw the symbol of what her tenderness had brought him. He was safe in it, encompassed by it, morally and materially, and she ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... little woman, her eyes brightening. She caught at the word as though she had descried a new star in the firmament. "I wish I could have them. They cost so much to buy. I might have my washerwoman come and help with the cooking. She cooks pretty well, and I could help her beforehand, but she couldn't wait on table, to save her life. I wonder if you know much about menus. Could you help me fix out the courses and say what you think I ought to have, or don't you know ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill

... lady—only far better company in general. But Mr Graham would leave Plato himself—yes, or St. Paul either, though he were sitting beside him in the flesh, to go and help any old washerwoman ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... washerwomen were busy at their ceaseless occupation. "Voila!" exclaimed our hostess, in exultation, and with an air which said, You must be gratified now; "Voila! this is the famous fountain where all the linen of La Rochelle is washed! and there is the chateau where my washerwoman lives,—a very respectable mother of a family;—and there are her turkeys and her farm-yard; and there is her market-garden! Oh! it ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... maxim at less discount than the witty but improper epigram. Essays inculcating the most superior virtues failed to counterbalance a day's charing, and the finest spiritualistic soft soap would not wash clothes. Even the washerwoman deemed her work more real and valuable than the manufacture of moralities too fine for use, and the deliberate effusion of sentiments too good ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... about his dress; but for his dusty boots you would not have guessed he had been travelling. Poor Nino. When he had not a penny in the world but what he earned by copying music, he used to spend it all with the washerwoman, so that Mariuccia was often horrified, and I reproved him for ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... on chattering in a style which sometimes did not lack bluntness. He hardly listened; he heard only the sound of their merry voices, mingling with the noise of their washing pots, and with the distant lowing of the cows in the meadows, and he was dreaming, never taking his eyes off the beautiful washerwoman. A bright young face would make him glad for a whole day. It was not long before the girls made out which of them he was looking at; and they made caustic remarks to each other; the girl he preferred was not the least cutting in the observations she threw at him. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... picnic Mr Cheesacre came down to Montpelier Parade with Captain Bellfield, whose linen on that occasion certainly gave no outward sign of any quarrel between him and his washerwoman. He was got up wonderfully, and was prepared at all points for the day's work. He had on a pseudo-sailor's jacket, very liberally ornamented with brass buttons, which displayed with great judgement the exquisite ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... William Durgin, a school-mate. This Durgin was a sallow, brooding boy, a year older than himself. The two lads were antipodal in disposition, intelligence, and social standing; for though Richard went poorly clad, the reflection of his cousin's wealth gilded him. Durgin was the son of a washerwoman. An intimacy between the two would perhaps have been unlikely but for one fact: it was Durgin's mother who had given little Dick a shelter at the period of his parents' death. Though the circumstance did not lie within the pale of Richard's personal memory, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... lady who in her day had been the best washerwoman on Cherry Hill. She was, moreover, completely lacking in all the qualities which go to make up the patroness of sport. Steve had been injudicious enough to pay her a visit the day after his celebrated unpleasantness with that rugged warrior, Pat O'Flaherty (ne ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... gin-and-water philosophers who would fain extenuate their unpleasant vices by the plea that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,—as if the path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be written only at the painful sacrifice of bilking your washerwoman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... Washerman. There is no such person as a washerwoman amongst the Hindoos. Men do the washing in India, and their manner of doing it is very different from the English mode. Instead of using wash-tubs, etcetera, etcetera, as an English washerwoman does, the Indian washerman loads a donkey or two with the dirty clothes, takes them to a tank of good clean water, and there, in the open air, he performs all his purifying operations. Close to the water's edge there is placed a sloping piece of ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson

... footing as a woman of letters, for during this time she had little encouragement. Pope's attack did destroy her best asset, her growing reputation as an author, but instead of following Savage's ill-natured advice to turn washerwoman, she remained loyal to her profession and in her later novels gained greater success than she had ever before enjoyed. But it was only her dexterity that saved her from ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... cold carrying the clothes!" Teddy's eyes fell to his own hands, which were always snug and warm in their red mittens. The washerwoman's ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey

... which Mrs. Horton mentioned, of the same animal, proves him equally sagacious. He was one day passing through a field, where a washerwoman had hung out her linen to dry; he stopped, and surveyed one particular shirt with attention, then seizing it, he dragged it through the dirt to his master, whose shirt it proved to be. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... station I do not pretend to fix: she boldly declared that she had "had the bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis." I think myself, she might possibly have been a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue, curiously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. By some means or other she had acquired, and now held in possession, a wardrobe of rather suspicious splendour—gowns ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... soon appeared who said he had seen him fall and could lead to the spot. He did so, conducting a party to a pond near the town, where, half buried in the mud, lay several dead bodies lately stripped. Among the searchers was a poor washerwoman, who, seeing the glitter of a ring on the finger of one of the corpses, turned it over, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris



Words linked to "Washerwoman" :   laundrywoman, washwoman, washer, laundress



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