“Sitting there watching the laundry go around in the dryer, I thought about the round world and hygiene. We’ve made a lot of progress, you know. We used to think that disease was an act of God. Then we figured out it was a product of human ignorance, so we’ve been cleaning up our act-literally-ever since. We’ve been getting the excrement off our hands and clothes and bodies and food and houses”
“Her great ambition was to own a laundry too- not a ‘hand’ affair likes mother’s, but a real steam one where she would walk about and tell dozens of girls in white overalls how to work.”