"Maiden aunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lamentable cry. Nevertheless, it troubled her with a vast many tender fears, such as are ready to bestir themselves in every mother's heart, when she finds it necessary to go away from her dear children without leaving them under the care of some maiden aunt, or other such faithful guardian. So she quickly left the field in which she had been so busy; and, as her work was not half done, the grain looked, next day, as if it needed both sun and rain, and as if ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sensualist in a small way, he enlarged his sphere on the day of his dismissal, when he found himself cut off from work and adrift in the world, with five hundred francs in his pocket. In one glorious debauch, which lasted a week, he spent the five hundred francs, and then he settled down to live on a maiden aunt. ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Ginsling to his home; but after his wife had unfolded her plans to him, he approved of them. What had considerable influence with him was the fact that he had learned, through Ginsling's lawyer, that the former had inherited a considerable fortune by the death of a maiden aunt, and, therefore, was not only a gentleman by birth, but would have the wealth to maintain a style essential to that dignity. Neither of the worthy pair ever considered for a moment the pain it would cause the young man whom they had received, ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... me—only it mustn't be when he is there—if I forget about growing up and do stupid things and make myself so that he can't respect me. And perhaps by-and-bye, if you tell me, and I try very hard indeed, I may get to be a real, good, proper, sensible maiden aunt.' ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... you've got a widowed mother, like me," said Benjamin. "Go, and comfort her declining years. Do like me: wipe out the recollection of the good times you've had by acts of filial piety. A widowed mother is good, but if you can rake up a maiden aunt and keep her too, that'll be a work ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... don't believe you were one of those young nuisances that call attention to everything, the grandmother's wig, the maiden aunt's false teeth and the like," chuckled Percival. "Yes, I think you are particularly observant and—hello! what's that?" as a dull sound broke upon ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... desk and discoursed upon the proper respect which all right-thinking young officers have for old typewriters. By the end of the week Hamilton had the confused impression that the very pretty girl who ministered to the literary needs of his partner, combined the qualities of a maiden aunt with the virtues of a grandmother, and that Bones experienced no other emotion than one of reverential wonder, tinctured with ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... still more of one and has experienced it. The idea that a man may have several principles around him that he has not used yet does not occur to them. The average amateur mother, when she belongs to this type, becomes a perfect bigot toward a maiden aunt who advances, perhaps, some harmless little Froebel idea. She swears by the shibboleth of experience, and every new baby she has makes her more disagreeable to people who have not had babies. The only way to get acquainted ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... going out in the lobby with her. Walks like a cat on a wet ash-pile. But—— Oh thunder, he's all right. Neat. I never could mingle with that bunch. I'd be web-footed and butter-fingered. And he seems to know all that bunch—bows to every maiden aunt in the shop. Now if I was following her, I'd never see anybody but her; rest of the folks could all bob their heads silly, and I'd never see one blame thing except that funny little soft spot at the back of her neck. Nope, you're kind to your cat, Milt, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Falmouth, Ferdinand learnt that his father and mother were at Bath, on a visit to his maiden aunt, Miss Grandison, with whom his cousin now resided. As the regiment was quartered at Exeter, he was enabled in a very few days to obtain leave of absence and join them. In the first rapture of meeting all disappointment was forgotten, and in the course of a day or two, when this sentiment had somewhat ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Best. After their decorous stillness at breakfast, it was a contrast to hear the merry voices and laughter outside, but it subsided as soon as she approached, though she did not hear the murmured ripple, "Here comes maiden aunt! Behold—Quite a spicy hat!" ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Roscannon, and our place is Bethwick Castle, in Northumberland. It's a gloomy old place that would give you the creeps. My mother died twenty-two years ago when I was born, and my father doesn't care about anything except archaeology, so I have always been in the clutches of my maiden aunt, Lady Grizel Vernilands, who ruled Bethwick and me as long as I can remember. Everyone called ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... wasn't there. Saw old Fortune and the man Twyning and found them in regard to Sabre about as genial and communicative as a maiden aunt over a married sister's new dress. Old Fortune looking like a walking pulpit in a thundercloud—I should say he'd make about four of me round the equator; and mind you, a chap stopped me in the street the other day and offered me a job as Beefeater outside a moving-picture show: yes, fact, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... town life somewhat sobered me of my intoxication; or rather I was rendered more serious by one of my old complaints—I fell in love. It was with a very pretty, though a very haughty fair one, who had come to London under the care of an old maiden aunt, to enjoy the pleasures of a winter in town, and to get married. There was not a doubt of her commanding a choice of lovers; for she had long been the belle of a little cathedral town; and one of the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... troubled with the vapours, produces infinite disturbances of this kind among her friends and neighbours. I once knew a maiden aunt, of a great family, who is one of these antiquated sybils, that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the year to the other. She is always seeing apparitions, and hearing death-watches; and was the other day almost frightened out of her wits by the great house-dog, ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... away, leaving them eternally unsatisfied, bitter and perverse. This deadly influence is supposed to have some poisonous effect on the pupils; just what is not defined. The unselfish, tireless service of the "maiden aunt" in the home we all know; but set her to teaching school, and some strange ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... had given what help he could in the subsequent investigations, he was even complimented by one of the chiefs of the detective department on the probity and simplicity of his behaviour. Several persons interested themselves in one so unfortunate; and soon after he inherited a sum of money from a maiden aunt in Worcestershire. With this he married Prudence, and set sail for Bendigo, or, according to another account, for Trincomalee, exceedingly content, and with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pet and plague of the good lady's life. Other seaside visitors look after the party from Nelson Lodge, and discuss them freely among themselves; but they do not speak from personal knowledge of Lady Henrietta Jocelyn and her charges. All they know is that Lady Henrietta is the maiden aunt of the two girls, and that they were committed to her care by her ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... slightest intention that the answer shall influence his conduct, why should he inquire whether there be a God or not? Vavasor cared more about the top of his cane than the God whose being he did not take the trouble to deny. He believed a little less than the maiden aunt with whom he lived; she believed less than her mother, and her mother had believed less than hers; so that for generations the faith, so called, of the family had been dying down, simply because all that ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... were Mr. Cornelius Chromatic, the most scientific of all amateurs of the fiddle, with his two blooming daughters, Miss Tenorina and Miss Graziosa; Sir Patrick O'Prism, a dilettante painter of high renown, and his maiden aunt, Miss Philomela Poppyseed, a compounder of novels written for the express purpose of supporting every species of superstition and prejudice; and Mr. Panscope, the chemical, botanical, geological, astronomical, critical philosopher, who had run through the whole circle of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... be conquered, and she was a little sullen on the way home. They parted at the door of Edith's house. Edith went in, to join a cheerful family in a comfortable and commodious room; Emilie, to a scantily furnished, and shabbily genteel apartment, let to her and a maiden aunt by a straw bonnet maker ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... was the camp of Marian and Lucile. The rock-ribbed and heavily wooded island belonged to Lucile's father, a fish canner of Anacortes, Washington. There was, so far as they knew, not another person on the island. They had expected a maiden aunt to join them in their outing. She was to have come down from the north in a fishing smack, but up to this time had not arrived. Not that the girls were much concerned about this; they had lived much in the open and rather welcomed the opportunity to be alone in the wilds. It was good preparation ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... after I came to them, Jack and Carl went to an uncle in Vermont, Miss Laura went to another in New Hampshire, and Ned and Willie went to visit a maiden aunt who ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... that the fellow with the curls that made me think of my maiden aunt, has managed to keep his horse-face above water." He meant Manuel-del-Popolo. "What mischief he may do yet before he runs his head into a noose, it's hard to say. The old Spaniard you brought with you thinks ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... love you, and you have given me reason to believe that I am far from indifferent to you; then why not, my dearest girl, give me the right to protect and provide for you at once, instead of delegating it to a maiden aunt, who, whatever may be her good qualities, has, as you know, always regarded me with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... over in Ames Hall, lost six dollars and a small gold-handled penknife that a maiden aunt had given him; Fred Harper reported the disappearance of a silver trophy of which he was inordinately proud,—a graceful little model of a sailing boat which he and his brother had won during a season of ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... needlessly? They never knew the woman—father, maiden aunt and two boys, clear-eyed, jolly young chaps whom even the horror of this tragedy, perpetrated as it were under their very nose, cannot make serious for ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... indeed, as if all life at its different stages, in its different aspects, even in its different nationalities, met and mingled with a wonderful charm under the one roof-tree. Besides the old parent couple and the maiden aunt, who had seen such changes of fortune, there were three young couples, each with their several careers before them. There was the bride of yesterday, the youngest daughter of the house, Princess Clementine, with her young ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... well-written book tells how a maiden aunt is softened by the influence of two Indian children who are unexpectedly left upon her hands. Mrs. Lysaght's style is ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... was in his own room; and how to draw him out? An hour would soon be gone! I therefore employed an artifice, which, on after recollection, I am convinced was wrong; very wrong! I went into the drawing-room, and bade the footman go to him and announce Miss Wenbourne. I have a maiden aunt of that name, whom I was christened after, who lives in London, and whom I believe you never saw. The trick succeeded, and Sir Arthur came into the drawing-room. He looked disconcerted at seeing me, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Slingsby was my maiden aunt, And lived in a small house near a fashionable square Cared for by servants to the number of four. Now when she died there was silence in heaven And silence at her end of the street. The shutters were drawn ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... sufficed to apply the spark which fired his latent energies, and nascent poetical tendencies: and he henceforward became a different being, elevated far above his former self. He called one evening, after a drinking bout on the previous night, on a maiden aunt, named Robinson, a widow possessed of about L30 a year, by whom he was shown a number of "Sowerby's English Botany," which her son was then purchasing in monthly parts. The plates made a considerable impression on the awkward youth, and he assayed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... maiden aunt, who is ill today with grippe and excitement, and a Miss Knowles, who came for a moment last night to see Mrs. Wilson, was caught in the quarantine (see papers), and, after hiding all night in the basement, is sulking all day in ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... side of your stick and not raise it above your shoulders." He told Teddy, and Teddy said, "I strongly advise you to dress as thinly as you can consistently with decency, and put your collar and tie in your pocket before the game begins. Hockey is properly a winter game." He told the maiden aunt-like lady with the prominent nose, and she said almost enviously, "Every one here is asked to play except me. I assuage the perambulator. I suppose one mustn't be envious. I don't see why I shouldn't play. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... friendly terms. "She is no end of fun," he would have told you; "has no nonsensical young-lady airs about her, is always ready for sport, sings all kinds of songs from grave to gay, knows a good joke when you tell one, and keeps a fellow up to the mark as well as a maiden aunt." ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... her head. "Miles is a bachelor who lives with a maiden aunt—Miss Lavinia. Or, rather, she lives with him and housekeeps for him. 'The Lavender Lady,' I always call her, because she's one of those delightful old-fashioned people who remind one of dimity curtains, and pot-pourri, and little muslin bags of lavender. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... you think, for instance, of his discussing the lengths to which a married woman might let her admiration go for a man who was not her husband, and putting it in his clear-headed witty French way to the maiden aunt of the Vicar of Frizinghall? What do you think, when he shifted to the German side, of his telling the lord of the manor, while that great authority on cattle was quoting his experience in the breeding of bulls, that experience, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... sister-in-law, how much of a home Kate might expect to find with the pair; but even if Agnes should prove—well, more satisfactory than her letters, it was a wretched prospect for Kate,—this living as a mere appendage to happier people. Maiden aunts were very well, but being a maiden aunt was only a last resource, and Kate's first resources had not even ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... There was neither blame nor punishment; but she could not help a certain cold restraint of manner, by which Kate knew that she was greatly displeased, and regarded her as the most hopeless little saucy romp that ever maiden aunt was afflicted with. ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have. Some maiden aunt with a paper covered library must have inflicted her with that. It doesn't suit at all, although she seems ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... before Amy's tart tongue could comment. "She's my maiden aunt, and I've got a lot of things to thank ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... notion of our fathers, that ghosts have an existence outside our own fancy and emotion; and have culled from the experience of some Jemima Jackson, who fifty years ago, being nine years of age, saw her maiden aunt appear six months after decease, abundant proof of this fact. One feels glad to think the maiden aunt should have walked about after death, if it afforded her any satisfaction, poor soul! but one is struck by the extreme uninterestingness of this lady's ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... want of an efficient person to assist you in taking charge of your domestic affairs, Enna," said a maiden aunt of mine to me one evening. I pulled my little sewing-table toward me with a slight degree of impatience, and began very earnestly to examine the contents of my work-box, that I might not express aloud my weariness of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... absolutely impossible for Reverend Finch, under any circumstances whatever, to legally inherit a single farthing of the money—and (secondly), to detach Lucilla from her father's household, and to place her under the care of her maiden aunt, so long as she remained unmarried, for a period of three ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Bristol on the 12th of August, 1774. He was the son of an unprosperous linen-draper, and was cared for in his childhood and youth by two of his mother's relations, a maiden aunt, with whom he lived as a child, and an uncle, the Rev. Herbert Hill, who assisted in providing for his education. Mr. Hill was Chaplain to the British Factory at Lisbon, and had a well-grounded faith in Southey's genius and character. ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... doesn't strike you—does she?—as an undignified or helpless human being. Her manners suggest a person of considerable self-control. And knowing less of me than you do, she probably regards me as almost as safe as—a maiden aunt say. I'm twice her age. We are a party of four. There are conventions, there are considerations.... Aren't you really, my dear Martineau, overdoing all this side of this very pleasant ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... possessed, I am told, of considerable property in her own name. A forceless, nerveless maiden aunt is about the only antecedent we see much of. Her guardian has been here once or twice, but practically she ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... the butchery of rabbits; and the women racked their brains for ideas without revealing the imagination of Scheherezade. They were about to give up this diversion when a young woman, who was idly caressing the hand of an old maiden aunt, noticed a little ring made of blond hair, which she had often seen, without paying any attention ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... this moment," continued Wogan, "there very properly appears the fairy godmother in the person of a romantical maiden aunt." ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Another girl would have done so. I myself might have done so, had I been over eighteen, or, had I not come from the country, where my natural love of romance had been fostered by uncongenial surroundings and a repressed life under the eyes of a severe and unsympathetic maiden aunt. ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... traps; for, as he observes, he has been among the Greeks and pigeons, who have completely rook'd him, and now want to crow over him: he has been at hide and seek for the last two months, and, depending on the death of a rich old maiden aunt who has no other heir, he eventually hopes to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... subject?—Many young men declare they intend to die bachelors, why may not I be permitted to commence old maid at three-and-twenty?—Let me do so, like a kind brother, and there were never nephews and nieces so petted and so scolded, so nursed and so cuffed by a maiden aunt, as your children, when you have them, shall be by ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Review," and gave perhaps more pleasure to Hawthorne than he had hoped for; and in acknowledging it he mentions, with a home-touch that carries more gratitude than a score of golden phrases, the happiness that "my mother, my two sisters, and my old maiden aunt" have had in it. The notice itself is elegant, kindly, warm even, with the old-fashioned academic distinction of manner, through which the young poet's picturesque fancy keeps playing, like a flutter ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... taken the place of that sweet vivacity and confidence which made our little society so pleasing: this odious man has infected us all; he seems rather a spy on our pleasures than a partaker of them; he is more an antidote to joy than a tall maiden aunt. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... foundation, hold its own. "With the best intentions in the world," many an excellent cause has been ruined by the injudicious urgings of a mother; but to talk an engaged girl into mutiny, rely on the infallibility of two women,—a married sister or a maiden aunt. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... town. She called upon Mrs. Witherby, needlessly reminding her of the charity committees they had served on together; and then she went home and actually sent out notes to the plainest daughter and the maiden aunt of two of the most high-born families of her acquaintance. She added to her list an artist and his wife, ("Now I shall have to let him paint me!" she reflected,) a young author whose book had made talk, a teacher of Italian with whom she was pretending to read Dante, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... "The pulpits may insist that Paul was infallible but I prefer to believe that he was human and liable to err." When she had finished Dr. Shaw remarked dryly: "I have often thought that Paul was never equalled in his advice to wife, mother and maiden aunt except by the present occupant of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Plainton, but not one of them seemed to have the qualifications he would desire in a wife. Willy Croup was a good-natured and pleasant woman, and he always liked to talk to her, but she was too old for him. He might like to adopt her as a maiden aunt, but then that would not be practicable, for Mrs. Cliff would not be willing to ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... play, by Catherine Chisholm Cushing, after the novel by Eleanor H. Porter. 5 males, 6 females. 2 interiors. Costumes, modern. Plays 2-1/4 hours. An orphan girl is thrust into the home of a maiden aunt. In spite of the trials that beset her, she manages to find something to be glad about, and brings light into sunless lives. Finally Pollyanna straightens out the love affairs of her elders, and finds happiness for herself in Jimmy. "Pollyanna" gives a better appreciation of people and the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... a string of wedding and funeral rings; the arms of the family curiously blazoned; the same in worsted, by a maiden aunt. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Kaetana! That chest had once been crammed full to overflowing with linen which, like other young women, she had spun for her own dowry, but when the Hofbauerin died Kathi became the housekeeper and mother to the little children. Thus the contents of the chest had gradually decreased, until the maiden aunt drew forth the four last pair of new sheets for these passing strangers. She felt it no sacrifice. It would have grieved her more to touch the piles of fine new linen which she and Moidel had spun ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... maid that is troubled with the vapours produces infinite disturbances of this kind among her friends and neighbours. I know a maiden aunt of a great family, who is one of these antiquated Sibyls, that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the year to the other. She is always seeing apparitions and hearing death-watches; and was the other day almost frighted out of her wits by the great house-dog ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... for the book; though I could not have anticipated how very kindly it would be done. Whether or no the public will agree to the praise which you bestow on me, there are at least five persons who think you the most sagacious critic on earth, viz., my mother and two sisters, my old maiden aunt, and finally the strongest believer of the whole five, my own self. If I doubt the sincerity and correctness of any of my critics, it shall be of those who censure me. Hard would be the lot of a poor scribbler, if he may not have ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... with a cool reserve by all except Melissa. Her father saluted him with a distant and retiring bow, as he passed with Melissa to her room. As soon as they were seated, a maiden aunt, who had doubled her teens, outlived many of her suiters, and who had lately come to reside with the family, entered, and seated herself by the window, alternately humming a tune, and impudently staring at Alonzo, without speaking a word, except snappishly, to contradict Melissa in any ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... walk across the common he cheered up considerably, but the moment we got back to the house door he seemed to recollect himself, and began to sigh again. He ate no dinner whatever, merely sipping a glass of wine and crumbling a piece of bread. I was troubled at noticing this, but his relatives—a maiden aunt, who kept house, two elder sisters, and a weak-eyed female cousin who had left her husband behind her in India—were evidently charmed. They glanced at each other, and nodded and smiled. Once in a fit of abstraction he swallowed a bit of crust, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy oblong in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss Dennant, and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with insufficient lungs, sat twice a day in their own atmosphere. A momentary weakness came on Shelton the first time he saw them sitting there at lunch. What was it gave them their look of strange detachment? Mrs. Dennant was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... your maiden aunt intends to help you to entertain the party. I have not, as you know, the honour of your aunt's acquaintance, yet I think I may with reason surmise that she will organize games—guessing games—in which ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... sticking to the Bank of South Australia. He got small rises in his salary, but the cost of living was so enhanced that at the end of seven years it did not buy much more than the 100 pounds he had begun with. My eldest maiden aunt died, and left to her brother and sister in South Australia all she had in her power. My mother bought a brick cottage in Pulteney street and a Burra share with her legacy—both excellent investments—and my brother left the bank and went into the aerated water ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... the thrilling "Personals" of the "Ledger" and their mysterious meaning, beginning at the matrimonial advertisements last May? or of these letters in his breast-pocket from the widow of an affectionate and generous disposition and easy income on Callowhill, or from the confiding Estelle, whose maiden aunt dragonized her on Ridge Road above Parrish? When he saw them once, fate would speak out. Something in him was made for better things than this flat life: "instincts of chivalry and kindred souls,"—quoting Estelle's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the victim of this insatiable desire, fate alone can decide. I propose some day next week to commence a general fusilade from the windows of my office upon the passers-by. My sole security in this affair, is a maiden aunt now in the Lunatic Asylum. I look with confidence to her malady as my triumphant vindication. My object in writing to you is to ask whether, in your opinion, the fact is sufficient to guarantee a verdict of "Not ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... She had passed most of her life, for what crimes she could not tell, in a sort of prison, ycleped a fashionable boarding-school, and the greater part of the vacations had been spent with a rich maiden aunt and an old bachelor uncle in the city of Brotherly Love. A few days previous to her liberation from this "durance vile," Walter Cunningham had set out for Paris, where he was to remain as long as ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Derwent; and John thought one or two of his encomiums on Lady Harriet Denbigh, the sister of his grace, augured that the unkindness of Emily might in time be forgotten. The dowager and her daughters were at the seat of a maiden aunt in Yorkshire, where as John knew no male animal was allowed admittance, he was tolerably easy at the disposition of things. Nothing but legacy-hunting he knew would induce the dowager to submit to such a banishment from the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... you remember, had a good deal of means, has built himself a house, something quite elegant. It stands on that little knoll on the other side of the town, overlooking the river. I mean to go over and take a look at it some day: it is said to be beautifully furnished, and is kept by an old maiden aunt of our friend. Bruce, by the way, is in Europe, though what took him there I cannot conjecture, unless he means to bring home a European exportation in the shape of a wife. I wish, my dear, you had taken a fancy to him: I always ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... found grandmamma several years older, and many degrees more exacting than she was before. She was so much alarmed lest I should make an unsuitable alliance, that she never suffered me to go out without I was accompanied by herself, or an old maiden aunt, who was more rigid and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... rain; and we much question whether the parasol trade did not rather languish under its influence. But then it had corresponding disadvantages; it was unbearable in a windy day, and rendered any thing like close contact with a friend impossible. To get a kiss from your pretty cousin, or your maiden aunt, if you met them in the street, was quite out of the question, unless you previously doffed your hat; and, as for two young ladies laying their heads together and whispering soft secrets, no such thing was practicable. The downfall, therefore, of such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... they are coming back soon,' said Gideon. 'This business strikes me as excessively unsafe; if it goes on much longer, I could provide you with a maiden aunt of mine, or ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... do night-herding, anything to get them away from that ranch. Finally, when their little tummies got so bad that their overcoats thickened, or wore through, or whatever happens to stomachs' overcoats that are treated unkindly, some one's maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice was the salvation of the human race, as witness the Chinese. Whosever turn it was to cook that week determined to try the old lady's prescription. Rice was procured, about a peck, I think; and the man who was cooking, pro tem, put ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... "alcoholic," as an adjective, would have appeared in both their death certificates; and the worm must have been in the bud, for she died suddenly at twenty-five, following a short, apparently inadequate illness. Thus, three-year-old Francis was left to a busy father's care, a maiden aunt's theoretical incompetence, and to the ministrations of a series of governesses who remained so long as they pleased their youthful lord. The undisciplined father's idea of good times, for both himself and his son, was based upon having ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll |
