United States or South Korea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She was a forlorn little thing who had just taken the place of scullery maid though, as to being scullery maid, she was everything else besides. She blacked boots and grates, and carried heavy coal-scuttles up and down stairs, and scrubbed floors and cleaned windows, and was ordered about by everybody. She was fourteen years old, but was so stunted in growth that she looked about twelve.
By the time the alarm brought any response, the upper story was full of stifling pine smoke. The yard swarmed with neighbours when Alec reached it. In and out they ran, bumping precious old family portraits against wash-tubs and coal-scuttles, emptying bureau drawers into sheets, and dumping books and dishes in a pile in the orchard, in wildest confusion.
Economy of Materials. The worn-out saucepans and tin-ware of our kitchens, when beyond the reach of the tinker's art, are not utterly worthless. We sometimes meet carts loaded with old tin kettles and worn-out iron coal-scuttles traversing our streets.
When it arrived Jane came to see me in this room, shut the door, and put her back against it 'There's another of them beastly copper coal-scuttles come! You should have seen her eyes blazing. 'And I should like to know, ma'am, who's going to clean it 'cos I can't. And I just had to promise her it might go dirty." "Lazy minx!" said Meadows, good-humouredly, with his mouth full of tea-cake.
As he grows older you can place him in little positions of responsibility to his sisters, sending them out on an expedition or to a party under his care. In a thousand such ways you can see that your boy is not only born but grows up a knight. I was once in a house where the master always brought up the heavy evening water-cans and morning coal-scuttles for the maids.
Late that evening he and Miss Shepperson were in the kitchen together: the one was washing crockery, the other, who had been filling coal-scuttles, stood with dirty hands and melancholy visage, his eyes fixed on the floor. Their looks met; Mr. Rymer took a step forward, smiling with confidential sadness. 'I feel that I ought to speak frankly, he said, in a voice as polite and well-tuned as ever.
And now I think of it, the wonder is, that every working-day pervader of these scenes goes clean away. The man who sells the dogs' collars and the little toy coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar off, as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith.
The firm are members of the Society of Friends. Fortunately their tenets do not prevent them from selling us coal-scuttles of beautiful design, although their wives and daughters are bound, according to the conservative principles of their sect, to wear bonnets of an unvarying and hideous coal-scuttle shape.
Why carry up heavy coal-scuttles from the cellar and bend over hot fires, wearing out nerve and brain and muscle that should be reserved for higher duties? We, we, the men of the race, will perform its mean, its sordid, its grinding toil! For woman is beauty, peace, repose! Your function is to give life, not to support it by labour. The Mother, the Mother! How wonderful it sounds! Toil no more!
There were dozens of almond-eyed Chinese within sight, dozens of black Hindoos in turbans and flowing garments, dozens of Parsees wearing long black coats and hats like inverted coal-scuttles; to say nothing of numerous Portuguese and English, the latter mostly merchants and plantation owners. The roofs of the buildings were slanting, with wooden or galvanized iron walls.
Word Of The Day