"Maidenhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life pilot. And this pilot should be her own conscience, hedged about with the learning, the good breeding, the fine character that she herself, under proper guidance, must cultivate through the impressionable years of childhood and maidenhood. If she so wills it, beauty and grace and true worth are all hers. And let her greet and go forth in the freshness of each golden day, as indeed, she must greet life, itself, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... encircled her. And now there was a strange unwillingness to go back to the dreams at all, a lingering longing for the joys into whose glory she had been for a moment permitted to look. She drew back from all thoughts and tried to close the door upon them. They seemed too sacred to enter. Her maidenhood was but just begun and she had much yet to learn of life. She was glad, glad for Kate that such wonderfulness was coming to her. Kate would be sweeter, softer in her ways now. She could not help it with a love like ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... tells her, "is a country that hath yet her maidenhood. The face of the earth hath not been torn, the graves have not been opened for gold. It hath never been entered by any army of strength, and never conquered by any Christian prince. Men shall find here more rich ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... 'neath a sabre's stroke; Her mother, broken-hearted, gave to God The life in which no joys could now evoke The wonted happiness. The harem of the Turk Enfolds Haripsime's fresh maidenhood, And there where danger and corruption lurk, Where Shitan's nameless and befouling brood Surround each Georgian and Armenian pearl, She weeps and weeps, shunning the shallow joys Of trinkets, robes, of music, or the whirl Of joyous dance, of singing girls and boys, And murmurs always in a sobbing ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... witnesses from Domremy, and the Queen of Sicily and other great ladies to whom Joan was entrusted, the clergy found nothing in her but 'goodness, humility, frank maidenhood, piety, honesty, and simplicity.' As for her wearing a man's dress, the Archbishop of Embrun said to the king, 'It is more becoming to do these things in man's gear, since they have ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... look of the home where his life had been passed; the house in which his eyes first saw the light; where a mother, many years in her grave, had caressed him; where a father had guided his toddling steps; the home to which he had brought his bride in the bloom of a beautiful maidenhood; where Ruth had come to them as the blessing of God to make the house resound with prattle and laughter, and fill it with the sunlight of her presence; make it attractive by her grace and beauty,—the soul beauty that looked out from loving eyes and became, as it were, a benediction. He ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... terrified and down-stricken to take heed of empires or patriots; they only thought of Louis and Jean and Andre and Valentin; and they collected round Reine Allix, who said to them, "My children, for love of money all our fairest fruits and flowers—yea, even to the best blossoms of our maidenhood—were sent to be bought and sold in Paris. We sinned therein, and this is the will ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... as the sun full clear doth pass, Without a break, through shining glass, Thy Maidenhood unblemished was For bearing of the Lord: Now, sweetest Comfort of our race, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... Maidenhood Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick To Mistress Margaret Hussey John Skelton On Her Coming To London Edmund Waller "O, Saw Ye Bonny Lesley" Robert Burns To a Young Lady William Cowper Ruth Thomas Hood The Solitary Reaper ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... lyrics, entitled "The Songs of Seven," which picture seven stages in a woman's life. For the first of the series, "Seven Times One," see page 44 of the Fourth Reader. Read it in connection with this. "Seven Times Two" shows the girl standing at the entrance to maidenhood, books closed and lessons said, longing for the years to go faster to bring to her the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... reception. Their manners are easy, dignified, and lady-like; totally free from all affectation, and in nowise marked by that frigid stateliness and pedantic formality, which a censorious world proverbially attributes to a state of elderly maidenhood. In all its characteristic particulars, the cottage remains in the same condition as in the days of Lady Eleanor and Miss Ponsonby; but its present possessors have introduced several judicious alterations in the interior, which, ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... trembling with weakness and depressed in spirits as he was after his recent sharp attack of fever, he completely broke down, and, laying his head upon my shoulder, sobbed like a child. Poor Daphne! it seemed hard that she should thus, in the first bright flush and glory of her maidenhood, be struck down, and the light of her life extinguished by the ruthless hand of a murderer; and yet, perhaps, after all, it was better so, better that she should enjoy the bliss of laying down her life for the sake of the man she loved, rather than that, living on, she should see the day when all ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the heritage of youth—its gay and adventurous longing for experience—had been filched from her before she was old enough to know its value. In time she would perhaps recover her self-esteem, but she would never know in its fullness that divine right of American maidenhood to rule its environment ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... I felt her to stir in mine arms; and I loost her somewhat; for I did be always very mindful that I impose not upon her dear liberty of maidenhood. Yet she made not to go from me, but only to gather the cloak about her; so that we did both be in the cloak. And she askt why this might not be; for surely it did be madness that one should starve and the other be very nice in warmth. And, indeed, this did be but wisdom; yet it might ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... by the force of beauty, swayed about Like seaweed moved by the deep winds of water: For it is all the news of love to me. Through paths pine-fragrant, where the shaded ground Is strewn with fruits of scarlet husk, I come, As if through maidenhood's uncertainty, Its darkness coloured with strange untried thoughts; Hither I come, here to the flowery peak Of this white cliff, high up in golden air, Where glowing earth and sea and divine light Are in mine eyes like ardour, and like love Are in my soul: love's glowing ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... envy of a score of men That die for her as I do. Make her mine, And when the last "Amen!" declares complete The mystic tying of the holy knot, And 'fore the priest a blushing wife she stands, Be thine the right to claim the second kiss She pays for change from maidenhood to wifehood. ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... that this one sacred spot might be consecrated alone to him. Here were the books from which her thin and tremulous fingers had pointed out to him the rudiments of that knowledge which his spirit so longed to compass. Here were gathered the few mementoes of her maidenhood—the trinkets from her early schoolmates, and the love-tokens from her rough but kind and affectionate husband—all disposed by her own hand, within the tiny cupboard, that came to be a sealed place to every eye but that of the child, whose mature mind could take in ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... they stared at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but clearly defined—a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood, a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above her eyes—she had not discerned that, at first—there was a lack of fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to her, others with ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... sound" may enhance the charms of maidenhood, is it too much to expect that sunburn, fervently desired, may not only permanently darken the complexion, but affect the mien of the race? And thus in years to come the white Australian may be of the past—transformed physically by the supremacy of soil and sun, and improved ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... terrible fact is the other, that woman must marry in India anyhow. No disgrace and misfortune can befall a woman, according to Hindu ideas, equal to that of spending her whole life in maidenhood. This, of course, is connected with the idea that she has no social status or religious destiny apart from man. Hence it is that a host of loving parents, who are unable to find a suitable match for their daughters, rather than leave them unmarried, stupidly ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... sons, had agreed by letter, while their children were still young, that the older son of the one was to marry the older daughter of the other, and the younger son the younger daughter. When Leah grew to maidenhood, and inquired about her future husband, all her tidings spoke of his villainous character, and she wept over her fate until her eyelashes dropped from their lids. But Rachel grew more and more beautiful day by day, for all who spoke of Jacob praised ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... her standing alone, her face to the shore, her hands resting on the parapet. The light breeze which blew off the land stirred loose ringlets of her hair, and flattened the thin robe against her sunlit figure. So had she stood a thousand times in old days, in her youth, in her maidenhood. So in her father's time had she stood to see her lover come riding along the sands to woo her! So had she stood to welcome him on the eve of that fatal journey to Paris! Thence had others watched her go with him. The men remembered—remembered all; and one by ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... taller than Paula, although hinting of a plus roundness to come, was a sun-healthy, clear blonde, her skin sprayed with the almost transparent flush of maidenhood at eighteen. To the eye, it seemed almost that one could see through the pink daintiness of fingers, hand, wrist, and forearm, neck and cheek. And to this delicious transparency of rose and pink, was added a warmth of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... himself. And beholding them all, the girl became frightened and her face was suffused with blushes of shame. And then she addressed Surya, saying, 'O lord of rays, go thou back to thy own region. On account of my maidenhood, this outrage of thine is fraught with woe to me! It is only one's father, mother, and other superiors, that are capable of giving away their daughter's body. Virtue I shall never sacrifice, seeing that in this world ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the promise of what she will be in the careless school-girl, that makes her attractive, the undeveloped maidenhood, or the mere natural, careless sweetness of childhood. If Laura at twelve was beginning to be a beauty, the thought of it had never entered her head. No, indeed. Her mind wad filled with more important thoughts. To her simple school-girl dress she was beginning to add those mysterious ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... her being, as she watched the woman moving about the room, to know of her former life-the life of her maidenhood,—and learn if others beside herself had loved ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... significance that, "a very strict law was in force prohibiting brides from wearing chaplets or garlands in the church, or at any time during the wedding feast, if they had previously in any way forfeited their rights to the privileges of maidenhood."[5] With the Swiss maiden the edelweiss is almost a sacred flower, being regarded as a proof of the devotion of her lover, by whom it is often gathered with much risk from growing in inaccessible spots. ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... When the girls had been left in poverty he only thought of their trying for the nice quiet situations that every one recommended, but which seemed so hard to obtain, and then sinking into obscure old maidenhood in the bosom of a respectable family. When Jane mentioned the matronship, Mr. MacFarlane strongly advised her to apply for it, for the salary was more than she could look for in a situation, and she would probably ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... excuse by virtue of her ignorance. Insensate mother, who allowed the forfeiture of her child's chastity in order to avenge her own; caring nought for the purity of her own blood, so she might stain with incest the man who had cost her her own maidenhood at first! Infamous-hearted woman, who, to punish her defiler, measured out as it were a second defilement to herself, whereas she clearly by the selfsame act rather swelled than lessened the transgression! Surely, by the very act wherewith she thought ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... I would succeed in breaking through that charmed circle in which she lived, in making her yield up to me the spiritual maidenhood which, as it ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... man high in Chicago financial circles. Men tip their hats to him on the streets. His name appears on the prospectuses and in the lists of directors in many powerful institutions. He is a prominent figure at many social functions. His hair is white with age, but he still has a lust for tender maidenhood. This man has served a term in the penitentiary for stealing from his government. As a result of that theft he ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... her seem older than the twenty-two years with which the inscription on the portrait credits her. But the face is that of one who has just passed from maidenhood to young womanhood. Life lies before her, and with sweet seriousness she builds her air castles of the future. Thus far she has been carefully guarded from the evil of the world, and her heart is as pure as that of "the lily maid of Astolat." ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... death With all his children, as Abel and Seth: Yet, Ecce virgo concipiet![215] Lo, where a remedy shall rise! Behold a maid shall conceive a child, And get us more grace than ever man had. And her maidenhood nothing defiled: She is deputed to bear the Son, Almighty God. Lo, sovereignties now may you be glad, For of this maiden all we may be fain;[216] For Adam that now lies in sorrows full sad, Her glorious birth shall redeem him ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... his daughter's wedding was sent with the others, and the remaining days of Rachel's maidenhood slipped away in a whirl of preparation and excitement in which her mother reveled, but which was ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... beside her. I instantly recognized the infant—a popular organism known as "Baby Buckly"—the prodigy of the Greyport Hotel, the pet of its enthusiastic womanhood. Fat and featureless, pink and pincushiony, it was borrowed by gushing maidenhood, exchanged by idiotic maternity, and had grown unctuous and tumefacient under the kisses and embraces of half the hotel. Even in its present repose it looked moist and shiny ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... the young and listen to the kindly voice of age, who can hold cheerful converse with one whom years have deprived of charms. Show me the man of generous impulses, who is always ready to help the poor and needy; who treats unprotected maidenhood as he would the heiress surrounded by the protection of rank, riches and family; who never forgets for an instant the delicacy, the respect, that is due a woman in any condition or class. Show me such a man and ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... behalf of the Earl of Leicester, loosed an arrow at Queen Elizabeth; but the Virgin Queen's maidenhood was so unassailable that the bolt missed her, hitting the Countess of ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... was now of the susceptible age of "sweet seventeen," an age that not only feels warmly but thinks deeply; and, who shall say what feelings and thoughts may lie beneath the pure waters of that sea of maidenhood whose surface is so still and calm? Love alone can tell: - Love, the bold diver, who can cleave that still surface, and bring up into the light of heaven the rich treasures that are of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... to resist (O Maid!) such bridegroom opposing, Right it is not to resist whereto consigned thee a father, Father and mother of thee unto whom obedience is owing. Not is that maidenhood all thine own, but partly thy parents! Owneth thy sire one third, one third is right of thy mother, Only the third is thine: stint thee to strive with the others, Who to the stranger son have yielded their ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... she said, a faint sad smile flitting across her pallid lips. "Why I should feel abased and self-degraded, I can well comprehend. I, who have fallen from the high estate, the purity, the wealth, the consciousness of chaste and virtuous maidenhood! I, the despised, the castaway, the fallen! But thou, thou!—from thee I looked but for reproaches—the just reproaches I have earned by my faithless folly! I thought, indeed, to have found you wretched, writhing in the dark bonds ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... drinker, then, the farms and cattle; And on the miser, rude and rough, The robes and lace did Aesop settle; For thus, he said, 'an early date Would see the sisters alienate Their several shares of the estate. No motive now in maidenhood to tarry, They all would seek, post haste, to marry; And, having each a splendid bait, Each soon would find a well-bred mate; And, leaving thus their father's goods intact, Would to their mother pay them all, in fact,'— Which of the testament Was plainly ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... to conceal her chagrin; she had started out with bright hopes of securing a brilliant match, and now, though not yet twenty, began to be haunted with the terrible, boding fear of old maidenhood. ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... bloom, by sun and wind unwooed, Seems to expand and blossom 'mid the snows, A lily sceptreless, a scentless rose, For dainty listlessness of maidenhood. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... to me after I was married but never in my maidenhood. I awoke in the night, sat up in bed and did not know what was the matter with me. I could not think consciously, I was quite incapable of thought. I knew neither where I was nor what was happening to me; I could ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning. The faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at all events, had not been given to the public ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... her very cradle Lovely and witty and good; And at last, in the course of years, had blossomed Into full sweet maidenhood. ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... if the matter were exceedingly amusing to them, when the fact is that their pride is very sore in that particular spot. A woman who has passed her hour of bloom, and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous iteration, about the usefulness of old maids, and the independence of their lot—determined to cover up the galled spot that burns upon the surface of her personal pride. The trick of ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... natural mail and face brightened with ear-rings, took up his bow and girded on his sword, and then entered the spacious lists, like a walking cliff. That far-famed destroyer of hostile hosts, the large-eyed Karna, was born of Pritha in her maidenhood. He was a portion of the hot-beamed Sun and his energy and prowess were like unto those of the lion, or the bull, or the leader of a herd of elephants. In splendour he resembled the Sun, in loveliness the Moon, and in energy the fire. Begotten by the Sun himself, he was tall in stature like ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... maidenhood with, seemingly, the same features, the same voices, the same tastes, and with an unbounded love for and confidence in each other. As they always dressed alike nobody could be sure which was Dora and ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... drummer, the sales-lady, and ladies unsaleable and damaged by carping years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt out with the weariness of a ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... lie spoken that converted all her frank, proud maidenhood to a memory. In its place there was now something false and sullied. While Dubova was dressing herself, Sina glanced furtively at her from time to time. Her friend seemed to her bright and pure, and she herself as repulsive as a crushed reptile. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... unruffled, but with evidence of unbending character behind it, in some way conjured something out of the past, and he saw her again, the greying locks restored to their youthful glory and the careworn cheek abloom with the colour of young maidenhood as they had been in the gathering shadows that night when they swore to build their own home, and live their own lives, and love each other, always, only, for ever and ever...And yet, to let her defiance go unchecked, to have his authority ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... proud, tempestuous daughter of "bluff King Hal." Already an old woman, she yet affected the dress and carriage of young maidenhood, possessing unimpaired the vanity of a youthful beauty, and, despite her growing ugliness, commanding the gallant attentions that ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... shaved—cheeks, ears, brows, chin, even nose! What is here to shave? Only that peachy floss which is the velvet of the finest human skin, but which Japanese taste removes. There is, however, another use for the razor. All maidens bear the signs of their maidenhood in the form of a little round spot, about an inch in diameter, shaven clean upon the very top of the head. This is only partially concealed by a band of hair brought back from the forehead across it, and ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... and coteries know not how to mix. A barrier more impassable than Styx Is Philistine stupidity. Were mutual amusement meeting's aim, Mind must move maidenhood inert and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... displayed by Mordecai in Esther's physical and spiritual welfare is not wholly attributable to an uncle's and guardian's solicitude in behalf of an orphaned niece. A much closer bond, the bond between husband and wife, united them, for when Esther had grown to maidenhood, Mordecai had espoused her. (79) Naturally, Esther would have been ready to defend her conjugal honor with her life. She would gladly have suffered death at the hands of the king's bailiffs rather than yield herself to a man not her husband. Luckily, there was no ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... husband's presence she had nothing to say, and Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural reticence and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about "the silent and insensate" wife. The girl was being deprived ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Laurentine men, and King Latinus' wall, Then upon Turnus' sister's ear her words of God did fall: A goddess she, the queen of mere and sounding river-wave; Which worship Jupiter the King, the Heaven-Abider gave 140 A hallowed gift to pay her back for ravished maidenhood: ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... maidenhood made itself master of this old man and subdued him, for in the name of the sweet face of Venus, Blanche, endowed with the natural artfulness of women, made her old Bruyn come and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... be mad? For filling my soul with God's utmost glory of earth and sea and sky? For filling my heart with purest pleasure in the intimate companionship of fresh and fragrant maidenhood? For giving myself up for once to a dream of sense clouded by never a thought that ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... abstracted, answering these questions. She looked at him again, with some maidenhood opening in her eyes. He felt he could not move, neither towards her nor away from her. Something about her presence hurt him, till he was almost rigid before her. He saw the girl's wondering ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... only, to stay longer; and, if after this they still seemed bent on going, she would do all in her power to speed them on their journey. With so many traits betokening strength of mind and character, she had but one weakness; and this was her excessive dread of thunder, caused in early maidenhood by seeing a young lady struck dead ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... both Christiana's best life, all our interest in her, and all our information about her, dates, sad to say, not from her espousal, nor from her marriage day, nor from any part of her married life, but from her husband's death. Her maidenhood has no interest for us; all our interest is fixed on her widowhood. This work of fiction now in our hands begins where all other works of fiction end; for in the life of religion, you must know, our best is always before us. Well, scarcely was her husband dead when ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... meeting at which Harry had signed the recruiting roll, he had taken her home up the long, sloping hill, through moonlight as soft, as inspiring, as glorifying as that which had melted even the frosty Goddess of Maidenhood, so that she stooped from her heavenly unapproachableness, and kissed the handsome Endymion as ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... has been already said, Artegal, or Justice, makes conquest of Britomartis or Elizabeth. It is no earthly love that follows, but the declaration of the queen that in her continued maidenhood justice to her people shall be her only spouse. Such, whatever the honest historian may think, was the poet's conceit of what would best please ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... welcoming such an opportunity, from clasping it to her in ecstasy and flinging herself madly into the whirl of pleasure it held out, was not so much her conscience and the ideals which she had formed more or less vaguely from the novels and poems she had read, as the instinct of her maidenhood, which made her shrink from the thought of marriage with a man whom she did not love. So strong was this feeling in her that at first she felt that she could not even bear to be introduced to him with such an idea ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... soon after, the lady and Merlin departed, and by the way Merlin showed her many wonders, and came into Cornwall. And always Merlin lay about the lady to have her maidenhood, and she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would have been delivered of him, for she was afeard of him because he was a devil's son, and she could not beskift him by no mean. And so on a time ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... who's gwaine to say gude-bye to maidenhood so soon," declared Mr. Lyddon. "I've thought 'bout her tears a deal. God knaws they hurt me more 'n they do her, or you either; but such sad whims and cloudy hours is proper to the time. Love for me's got a share in her sorrow, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... open at the rounded throat, she saw with woman's unerring eye the unspoken approval if not open admiration in his face. Not yet nineteen, she had lived a busy, earnest, thoughtful life. The Cranstons had known her from early maidenhood. She was a child in the Southern garrison in the days of the great epidemic, when the young captain owed his life to the doctor's skill and assiduous care. It was this that led to the deep friendship between the two men, and to Cranston's assuming the duties of guardian and protector after ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... recollections which on the magic wings of Nature and Night came wafted over her mind, she bent down her head upon her lute, pressed her round, dimpled cheek against its smooth frame, and drawing her fingers mechanically over its strings, abandoned herself unreservedly to the reveries of maidenhood and youth. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... a young and innocent girl married to this remorseless gambler, scarred with the gun and the knife, was a profanation of maidenhood—and yet, as he fell now and then into a dream, he took on a kind of savage beauty which might allure and destroy a woman. Whatever else he was, he was neither commonplace nor mean. The visitors to whom he was pointed ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... away, and press thine eyes To darkness in the strings of dusty heather, Since that loose globe of orange pallor totters, Racked with the fires of anarchy, and sheds The embers of thy glory; and the cradles Of thy imperial maidenhood are foul With sulphur and the craterous ash of hell. O gaze not, sister, on the loathsome wreck Of what was once thy moon. Yet, if thou must With tear-fed eyes visit thine ancient realm, Bend down until the fringe of thy faint lids Hides all save what ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... prospect of a seventh share in a man, she resolved upon trying her matrimonial fortunes in the country. She was plain, this lady, as she was poor; nor could she rightly be said to be in the first flush of maidenhood. In all matters other than that of man-catching she was shallow past belief. Still, she did hope, by dint of some brisk campaigning in the diocese of Beorminster, to capture a whole ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... known it. She had lived all these years with a heart as virgin as mountain snows. When the one sweet dream which comes to most in early maidenhood—the dream of loving and being loved—was crushed, her heart drew back within itself, and, after a time of suffering almost as deep as if for the loss of a real object instead of a mere ideal, she prepared herself for her destiny. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... from the mountain, gave them away to them in his words, and shared his benefits among them. And there was joy again in the mountains, and zeal for improvement, and comfort through their faith in each other. And he too rejoiced, seeing the willingness of the monks, and his sister grown old in maidenhood, and herself the leader of other virgins. And so after certain days he went back again to ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... wings soar upward duskily. This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead That sparkled so the day I saw it first, And darkened slowly after. I am she Who loves all beauty—yet I wither it. Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath— Forever since my maidenhood to sow Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep Their bitter care above me even now. It was the gods who led me to this lair, That tho' the burning winds should make me weak, They should not snatch the life from out my lips. Olympus let the other women die; They shall be quiet when the day is done ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... progress that he had already become the favourite pupil of his celebrated namesake Lopez, the best painter of modern Spain. Such was Maria Diaz, who, according to a custom formerly universal in Spain, and still very prevalent, retained the name of her maidenhood though married. Such was Maria Diaz ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... She had been won in her girlhood by a man thoroughly fitted to make her happy—a man of wealth and talent, and honorable service in the State; who, within a week of their marriage day, had been thrown from his horse and killed. Edith had not in so many words devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood; but that was the outcome of the great sorrow of her youth. She had remained single without growing morose, and her sweet and gentle moods endeared her to all ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... violets as though they were indeed not blooms insensitive but actually 'poor girls neglected.' His pages breathe their clean and innocent perfumes, and are beautiful with the chaste beauty of their colour, just as they carry with them something of the sweetness and simplicity of maidenhood itself. And from both he extracts the same pathetic little moral: both are lovely and both must die. And so, between his virgins that are for love indeed and those that sit silent and delicious in the 'flowery nunnery,' the old singer finds ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... "And for the modest lore of maidenhood, Bids me not sojourn with these armed men, O whither shall I fly, what secret wood Shall hide me from the tyrant? or what den, What rock, what vault, what cave can do me good? No, no, where death is sure, it resteth then To scorn his power and be it therefore seen, Armida lived, and died, both ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the spiritual lily that she held. Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes—away: For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush As hardly tints the blossom of the quince Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.' ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... how Yseult came to her husband already the paramour of Tristram; how Brangwaine, her damsel, feeling that this unhallowed passion was due to her having left-within reach the potion intended for the King and Queen of Cornwall, devoted herself, at the price of her maidenhood, to connive in the amours of the lovers whom she had made; how King Mark was deceived, and doubted, and was deceived again; how Tristram fled to Brittany, but how, despite his seeming marriage with another and equally lovely Yseult, he remained faithful to the Queen of Cornwall. One version tells ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... on as in a meditation. "Poor Kate! poor Kate! We were bairns together, M. Montaiglon, innocent bairns, and happy, twenty years syne, and I will not say but what in her maidenhood there was some warmth between us, so that I know her well. She was compelled by her relatives to marriage with our parchment friend yonder, and there you have the start of what has been hell on earth for her. The man has not the soul of a louse, and as for her, she's ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... unusually good to look at had hardly ever before occurred to her. She flushed slightly, pleased and wondering, with a new seed of gentle vanity planted in her simple nature, a child on the threshold of the womanly inheritance of maidenhood. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... flower to her somewhat full mouth, and filling the infinite of her dark and fathomless eyes with a radiance as of heaven. And in this gay return of youth and happiness, an exquisite instinct had prompted her to put on a white gown, a plain girlish gown which symbolised her maidenhood, which told that she had remained through all a pure untarnished lily for the husband of her choice. And nothing of her form was to be seen, not a glimpse of bosom or shoulder. It was as if the impenetrable, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... girls and young men. You waste your life with people already settled. You have taken on the full airs and speech of a married woman, in advance of having a husband—and that is folly bordering on insanity. You have discarded everything that men—marrying men—the right sort of men—demand in maidenhood. I repeat, you ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... of evening inviting her, she climbed into the bed; and as the night was far advanced, behold a sound of a certain clemency approaches her. Then, fearing for her maidenhood in so great solitude, she trembled, and more than any evil she knew dreaded that she knew not. And now the husband, that unknown husband, drew near, and ascended the couch, and made her his wife; ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... are sufficiently portrayed without any set description. What could be more delicate than the intimation of the foregone 'good-night' between the sisters, or the scene of Lyddy plaiting Thyrza's hair? The delineation of the upper middle class culture by which this exquisite flower of maidenhood is first caressed and transplanted, then slighted and left to wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing had very few means of observation. But this defect, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... expression of her lineaments and that of the countenances around her was not a little surprising, and was productive of hypotheses without measure as to how she came there. She was, in fact, emphatically a modern type of maidenhood, and she looked ultra-modern by reason of her environment: a presumably sophisticated being among the simple ones—not wickedly so, but one who knew life fairly well for her age. Her hair, of good English brown, neither light nor dark, was abundant—too abundant for convenience in tying, as ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... veteran representative of the Methodist Preacher of the olden time. He entered the work when Illinois was yet in her maidenhood, and from the first was a recognized power in the land. Genial in spirit, full of anecdote, abundant in labors, an able Preacher, a faithful administrator, and a devoted servant of the Master, he enjoyed the esteem of all. But I need not enlarge, as doubtless a record will be made of ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... who had made his pile in the wheat-pit) was a busy person. Scenting social prestige, of which she was avid, in connection with Cecily Wayne, she had sought to establish herself as the natural protectress of unchaperoned maidenhood and had met with a well-bred, well-timed, ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... seventh day he awoke and looked at Ruth. He was feeling almost well, but had no inclination to stir. It was pleasant enough just to lie there and look at her, and let his gaze wander around her chamber. This white shrine of maidenhood! He had felt its influence before he was able to understand, and the reverential awe had grown with his returning strength. How dainty it was, for all its rough board floor and rude log walls! Even those were as white as the driven snow. The bed was like the warm, soft breast of a snow-white ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... it struck him like a blow in the face that she in some way symbolized all that he had always longed for—his unattainable ideal; for she seemed young—immortally young, and sweet. The grace of maidenhood shone from her and she turned an eager but infinitely wistful face up to his, and for a second the picture of the slim, white-clad figure, enveloping and radiating the gentle eagerness of a beautiful soul, came to him like the disturbing memory of ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... one would have said, And locks, and bolts, and iron bars, And guards as strict as in the heat of wars Might have preserved one innocent maidenhood. The jealous father thought he well might spare All further jealous care; And as he walked, to himself alone he smiled To think how Venus' arts he had beguiled; And when he slept his rest was deep, But Venus ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... private room every silk, satin, and gauze within the range of pale pink, pale crocus, pale green, silver and azure. Then came chromatic scales of colour; combinations meant to vulgarise the rainbow; sinfonies and fugues; the twittering of birds and the great peace of dewy nature; maidenhood in her awakening innocence; "The Dawn in June." The ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... in all things; and, without verging to the extreme of our Transatlantic cousins, our conventionalities might be so tempered by the introduction of a little genuine human nature, as to admit of a trifling freer intercourse between our youth and young maidenhood ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of womanhood were evolved from the face of the Mary of the Assumption, of the Susannah of Mieris, and of that Angel in the blue coif whose face has a light as of the sun,—to her who had dreamed her way into vague perceptions of her own sex's maidenhood and maternity by help of those great pictures which had been before her sight from infancy, there was some taint, some artifice, some want, some harshness in these jewelled women; she could not have reasoned about it, but she felt it, ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... he promised me. I took his name then, as we do in the Cold Country. They still call me Tara! Years I have waited, true to my promise—with even my name of maidenhood relinquished. His name—Tara! And now he tosses me aside—because you, only an Earth woman, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... little self- sacrifice, the interest in this girl so far removed from their usual world, their girlish desire to gain her liking, and the womanly tact which was needed to win her from her rough shyness, all these had their influence on their young maidenhood, an influence which lasted far on through ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... who have never yielded to the pleading of man, who have not destroyed your innocency, you alone are invited, to proclaim anew before the Sun and the Earth, before your companions and in the sight of the Great Mystery, the chastity and purity of your maidenhood. Come ye, all who have not ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... silver frame on the dressing-table. This, too, was a fine countenance, possessed of well-cut features and refined expression. This was the prince who had won Lucy Bossier from her home. I looked around my pretty bedroom—it had been my mother's in the days of her maidenhood. In an exclusive city boarding-school, and amid the pleasant surroundings of this home, her ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... appraised by the prospective parents-in-law. If the negotiations go off smoothly, the marriage contract is written, presents are exchanged between the engaged couple, through their respective parents, and all that is left the girl of her maidenhood is a period of busy preparation ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... romancists for nothing. Perhaps Broussard would say more to her—at that thought a lovely light came into Anita's innocent eyes. Perhaps he had forgotten everything. Then Anita's eyes were troubled. The pride of maidenhood was born, as it should be, with love, and Anita no longer ran to the window to see Broussard, but when he was present he filled the room; when he spoke she heard ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... She was too content with her lot to have the slightest inclination to change it; therefore she was in no hurry to marry. She had completed twenty-four years of her existence, had refused several desirable offers, and wished nothing better than to retain her maidenhood. It was the sole article concerning which this heiress had discussions with those around her. When her father took it into his head to grow angry and cry, "You must!" she would burst out laughing; whereupon he would laugh also, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... through the tint of brown, lay the blush and flush of maidenhood, the indescribable sacred something that makes a maiden holy to every man of a manly and chivalrous nature; that makes a man utterly unselfish and perfectly content to love and be silent, to worship at a distance, as turning to the holy ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Martina—who during Wolf's absence had grown to maidenhood—were sincerely glad to see him; he had been the favourite schoolmate of her adopted son, Erasmus Eckhart, and a frequent guest in her household. Yet she only confirmed to the modest young man, who shrank from asking her more minute questions, that the matter ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... motionless, lying on her back like a person wrapped in profound and undisturbed slumber. Carefully managing my advance, as if I were afraid of waking her up, I begin by gently gratifying her senses, and I ascertain the delightful fact that, like her sister, she is still in possession of her maidenhood. As soon as a natural movement proves to me that love accepts the offering, I take my measures to consummate the sacrifice. At that moment, giving way suddenly to the violence of her feelings, and tired of her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of Jesus is shown to have been pure and to have "kept her maidenhood"[90]; it was the Jews who spoke against Mary "a grievous calumny."[91] Jesus Himself is described as "strengthened with the Holy Spirit," and the Jews are reproached for rejecting "the Apostle of God,"[92] to whom was given "the Evangel with its ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the lounge, the young man never looked at her, but he saw nobody else. Brought up in a saddle on the range, he had never before met a girl like her. It was not only that she was beautiful and fragrant as apple-blossoms, a mystery of maidenhood whose presence awed his simple soul. It was not only that she seemed so delicately precious, a princess of the blood royal set apart by reason of her buoyant grace, the soft rustle of her skirts, the fine texture of the satiny skin. What took him by the throat was her goodness. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... The set of The Lady and the Unicorn is one of infinite charm. (Plates facing pages 44 and 45.) In its enchanted wood lives a noble lady tall and fair, lithe, young and elegant, with attendant maid and two faithful, fabulous beasts that uphold the standards of maidenhood. A simple circle denotes the boundary of the enchanted land wherein she dwells, a park with noble trees and lovely flowers, among which disport the little animals that associate themselves with mankind. For four centuries these hangings have delighted ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... the attention with which his stepmother's social duties might interfere. It was hardly likely that her aunt entertained any hope of marriage; indeed, Miss Laura had long since professed herself resigned to old maidenhood. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... birds. Quickly he seized paper and wrote down the theme that flowed out at the point of his pen—a reverie full of the haunting magic of quiet waters and woodland sunsets and the gracious innocence of maidenhood. When it was done he felt he must give it a distinctive name. He cast about for one, pondering and rejecting titles innumerable. Countless lines of poetry ran through his head, from which he sought to pick a word or two as one plucks a violet from a posy. At last a half-tender, half-whimsical ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... the mast, others swinging slowly, from their fast anchors. And queen of all this peaceful scene-appeared the metropolis of Australia, with its white houses, lofty spires, and thronged wharves-thus she appeared-sitting in the prime of youth, laying aside her maidenhood to wed the world. ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... value was, or is, attached to maidenhood in all Polynesia, the young woman being left to her own whims without blame or care. Only deep and sincere attachment holds her at last to the man she has chosen, and she then follows his wishes in matters of fidelity, though still to a large ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... fourth, Hippomedon, Sent by his father Talaues, and the fifth Is Capancus, who brags he will destroy Thebe with desolating fire. The sixth, Parthonopaeus, from the Arcadian glen Comes bravely down, swift Atalanta's child, Named from his mother's lingering maidenhood Ere she conceived him. And the seventh am I, Thy son, or if not thine, but the dire birth Of evil Destiny, yet named thy son, Who lead this dauntless host from Argolis Against the Theban land. Now one and all We pray thee on our knees, conjuring ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... who plays the part of Antigone, climbs up to the top floors, makes herself general messenger and drudge to the Academicians and their wives, corrects proofs, nurses the rheumatic, and spends her forlorn maidenhood in running after the Academic chair which her father will never get. Dressed quietly in black, with an unbecoming bonnet, she stood in the doorway; and near her was Dalzon, very much excited, between two members of the Academie who looked judicial. He was protesting violently ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal." It was, perhaps, because she was so happy in the love of her brothers and sisters, as well as because she was wedded to literature, that she was content, in spite of her good looks, to assume the symbolic cap of perpetual maidenhood at an ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... share of the receipts which fell to the minor members was small—but it was full of variety and sometimes of excitement. If the work did not entirely drive away the remembrance of Lancelot Vane it enabled her to look upon the romance of her early maidenhood with equanimity. Her love affair had become a regret ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... feet and made thee hideous. Yet, even then, men with the eagle power of vision said to thee in a glance, 'Thou shalt perish ingloriously, because thou hast fallen away, because thou hast broken the vows of thy maidenhood. The angel with peace written on her forehead, who should have shed light and joy along her path, has been a Messalina, delighting in the circus, in debauchery, and abuse of power. The days of thy ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It was not possible to be mistaken in so ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... great world than the rude, chaotic civilization she saw from the cabin windows or met in the persons of her father's lodgers. Shut up for days in this quaint tenement, she had seen it change from the enchanted playground of her childish fancy to the theater of her active maidenhood, but without losing her ideal romance in it. She had translated its history in her own way, read its quaint nautical hieroglyphics after her own fashion, and possessed herself of its secrets. She had in fancy made voyages in it to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Friendly Society. Sir John Shaftesbury, somewhat late in life, had married a wife many years his junior; a dazzling beauty, a dashing horsewoman, and moreover a lady who, having spent the years of her eligible maidenhood largely among politicians and racehorses, had acquired the knack and habit of living in the public eye. She adored her husband, as did everyone who knew him: but life at Shaftesbury Court had its longueurs even in the hunting season. Sir John would (he steadily declared) as lief any day go to prison ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... proud, flashing maidenhood; and Bertram felt, as he looked on her handsome, glowing countenance, that he had never loved her so sincerely, and at the same time so ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... of nineteen the latter alternative seems more appalling than to a woman of thirty, whose eyes have grown strong in the gray, cold, sunless light of confirmed old-maidenhood; even as the vision of those who live in dim caverns requires not the lamps needed by new-comers fresh from the dazzling ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... be naught without you. You are your business. Remove yourself from it, and the residue is negligible. Your son, left alone with it, would wreck it in a year through simple ignorance and clumsiness; for you have kept him in his inexperience like a maiden in her maidenhood. You say that you desired to spare him. Nothing of the kind. You were merely jealous, of your authority, and your indispensability. You desired fervently that all and ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... the calm, unconscious lethargy of her maidenhood's untroubled dreams the soul of Vera had awakened at length to the realization of the strong, passionate woman's heart that ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... you might see in the upper corner of each cheek a slight touch of red. For though I would not call the little lady coquettish—that is too coarse and obvious a word—yet there was in her that inalienable consciousness of maidenhood, that sentiment, at once of attraction and of recoil, towards creatures of the opposite sex, that gentle hope of pleasing man, that secret emotion of being pleased by him, that tremor at the idea of being desired, and that ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... her soft white muslin gown and garnitures of lilies, with the dew still glistening on their green leaves and golden hearts, Dainty made a picture of pure and lovely maidenhood that thrilled her lover's heart with admiration, and every feminine heart ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... Jacques with a paternal air; "continue on your way, and present my most respectful regards to Mrs. White and every body. Learn your lessons, jump the rope, and never conjugate the verb amo, amas; get a poodle dog, and hideous china, and prepare yourself for the noble state of elderly maidenhood: so shall you pass serenely through this vale of tears, and be for ever great, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... is good. But the Cordial Liquor is doubtful; and then are there no girls in the sweet bloom of maidenhood left to Comfort up ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... dress these ruffians attempted to violate the prisoner: so, sooner than suffer this, although she knew that to return to her former dress would be equivalent to meeting certain death, she did not hesitate to save her maidenhood at the ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... relatives. He did not trouble about what had become of Kate Dennis. He was careless whether she was in heaven or hell. Not once, apparently, did it cross his mind that he had destroyed her young life after nameless horror; that he had killed her in the bloom of maidenhood; that at one fell swoop he had extinguished all that she might have been—perhaps a happy wife and mother, living to a white old age, with the prattle of grandchildren soothing her last steps to the grave. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... spread a film of confusion that robbed it of its potency. In him, in his mood, in his words, in his manner, was something that called out in direct appeal the more primitive instincts hitherto dormant beneath her sense of maidenhood, so that even at this vexed moment of conscious opposition, her heart was ranging itself on his side. Overpoweringly the feeling swept her that she was not acting in accordance with her sense of fitness. She knew she should strike, ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... when a Hopi mother, whose daughter has reached maidenhood, is located in the Hopi House, one may chance to find her engaged in turning the heavy black hair of her "mana" into the big whorls on the side of her head which are the Hopi emblem of maidenhood and purity. The mother herself wears her ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... every interested consideration, he found himself at the end of fifteen years five thousand pounds worse than he was when he first took possession of his father's effects. Convinced by the admonitions of his only sister, Miss Grizzle, then in the thirtieth year of her maidenhood, he withdrew his money from the trade, and removed to a house in the country, which his father ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... envied him his power over unsophisticated maidenhood—a power which seemed sometimes to have a touch of the weird and wizardly in it. Personally he was not ill-favoured, though rather un- English, his complexion being a rich olive, his rank hair dark and rather clammy—made still clammier by secret ointments, which, when he came ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the time to nearly three weeks; and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the girl whom he had succoured. I will call my mother Lucy. Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is one you would know well. By what series of undeserved calamities this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you. Let it suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart worthy of her own. The ardour ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... thy day-dreams to thy sister, Leave thou kindness for thy mother, To thy brother leave thy labors, Take all else that thou desirest. Throw away thine incantations, Cast thy sighing to the pine-trees, And thy maidenhood to zephyrs, Thy rejoicings to the couches, Cast thy trinkets to the children, And thy leisure to the gray-beards, Cast all pleasures to thy playmates, Let them take them to the woodlands, Bury them beneath the mountain. ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... moment; she had seen visions of it in the daytime; she had told herself again and again what it would be, how it must be; but the reality was beyond her dreams and her visions and her imaginings, for she had to the full what few women have in any century, and what few have ever had in the blush of maidenhood,—the sight of the man she loved, and who loved her with all his heart, coming home in triumph from a hard-fought war, himself the leader and the victor, himself in youth's first spring, the young idol of a warlike nation, and the centre of ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford |
