"Spinster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an attack can not be attributed to sectional prejudice may be proved by this extract from a column of vituperation in the Grand Rapids, Mich., Times, during this same trip, headed "Spinster Susan's Suffrage Show:" ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... self-possessed young lady, in a village "down east," received a long call the other day, from a prying old spinster, who, after prolonging her stay beyond even her own conception of the young lady's endurance, came to the main question which brought her thither: "I've been asked a good many times if you was engaged to Dr. C——. Now, if folks enquire again whether you be or not, what shall ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... of an English spinster who said, as she watched a great actress writhing about the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Alexander. Then we have the spinning-wheel, which differs in no important respect from that of England in the thirteenth century, and is similar to, but ruder than, that used by our great-grandmothers, when "spinster" meant something, and a girl brought to the home of her choice a goodly array of linen. This was before cotton was king, and before factories were known either for cotton, flax or wool. Was it a better day than the present, or no? Things work round, and the roller-gin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... full the supreme gift of silence. Finally I mentioned the report of a case of measles in the village, and Ev'leen Ann responded in kind with the news that her Aunt Emma had bought a potato-planter. Ev'leen Ann is an orphan, brought up by a well-to-do spinster aunt, who is strong-minded and runs her own farm. After a time we glided by way of similar transitions to ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... her mimicry was irresistible. "Don't you think I'm a bit lovable, cousin?—not a bit? You discourage me! I'm doomed to be a spinster, I suppose! Ah, me! And I'd far rather be the spinster's cat! Cats aren't worried about the conventions and all that sort of thing. Happy animals! While we poor two-footed ones they call human—only we aren't really more than half so—have to keep our claws well hidden and purr ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... always mindful of the proprieties they have learned at summer hotels. While they are eating their icecream and trying not to twist the spoon in their mouths, a little shriek of laughter breaks from an adjacent table. The twins look up. There sits a spry little old spinster whom they know well. She has a long chin, a long nose, and she is dressed like a young girl, with a pink sash and a lace garden hat with pink rosebuds. She is surrounded by a crowd of boys,—loose and lanky, short and thick,—who are joking with her roughly, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... know by practice what will hit some contemporary tastes; we know the measure of smartness, say, or the delicate flippancy, or the sentence with "a dying fall." But one should also know that these are fancies of the hour—these and the touch of archaism, and the spinster-like and artificial precision, which seem to be points in some styles of the moment. Such reflections as our author bids us make, with a little self-respect added, may render our work less popular and effective, and certainly are not likely to carry it down to remote posterity. But all such ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... seized by a new prospect. Why should she tell her secret? What was the use? There he stood—her Jimmy—good, great, and successful, and she had helped to make him so. Nothing could ever deprive her of that. The truth was hers forever. She was only an elderly spinster. Perhaps he would have forgotten. He was but fifteen when he left her, and he had never written to her during all these years. Very likely he did not realize at all what she had done for him. Nothing which he could do for her now ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... that had come to him from a branch of his mother's family in Virginia—a branch that had gone out with a King's grant when Virginia was a crown colony. The collateral ancestor, Pendleton, had been a justice of the peace in Virginia, and a spinster daughter had written down some of the strange cases with which her ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... happen, if she lived on there with no vent for her full heart and busy mind. She would either marry Joe Butterfield in sheer desperation, and become a farmer's household drudge; settle down into a sour spinster, content to make butter, gossip, and lay up money all her days; or do what poor Matty Stone had done, try to crush and curb her needs and aspirations till the struggle grew too hard, and then in a fit of despair end her life, and leave a tragic story to haunt their ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... that Joel Rae, Elder after the Order of Melchisedek, and Christina Lund, spinster, native of Denmark, were on the following day, after the endowment-rites had been administered, married for ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... all these years, if you do not know that the very first thing a woman wants to do when she has made a good match is to make ones for all her spinster friends. Jane does not mean any harm. She does it out of ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... however, sometimes "gang aft agley." One day I received a letter, evidently written in great consternation, from an elderly spinster of singularly aristocratic connections and an irreproachableness of life which was almost painful. The name sent to her by one of our skippers as a correspondent who needed help and encouragement was one of those which would be characterized as common—let ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... himself with asking the janitor and his wife, who could tell him nothing. He went from tenant to tenant. Few of them remembered even that such a girl had lived there, for tenants in apartment houses change with the months. But one woman, a spinster of the sort who pass their days in their windows and fill their lives meagerly by watching what they can see of their neighbors' activities, gave a hint. She was sure she remembered that particular removal on account of the young woman ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... instructions, and guided by the under-butler found Lady Homartyn hiding away in the walled Dutch garden behind the dairy. She had been giving away the prizes of the flower-show, and she was resting in a deck chair while a spinster relation presided over the tea. Mrs. Britling had fled the outer festival earlier, and was sitting by the tea-things. Lady Meade and two or three visitors had motored out from Hartleytree to assist, and Manning ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Cummins was unmarried by every implication of her being, as Henry James would say: but Samantha Ann Ripley was a spinster purely by accident. She had seldom been exposed to the witcheries of children, or she would have known long before this that, so far as she was personally concerned, they would always prove irresistible. ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to be a widow. At least she had no husband that he had ever seen; and therefore to the Senator's mind she must be a spinster or a widow. From the general style in which she was addressed he concluded that she was the latter. Now if the poor Cica was hopelessly in love, it must be stopped at once. For he was a married man, and his good lady still ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... not at all complimentary to the gentlemen," rejoined a thin, elderly-looking spinster of an uncertain age, dressed in an old-fashioned style, who I should have thought would have been the last person to come to the defence of a sex that had ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... way dependent upon her aunt. Living with her was a matter of personal choice. Mercy Lascelles was her only relative for one thing, and the elder woman being a lonely spinster, it seemed only right that Joan should make her home under her scarcely hospitable roof. Then, too, there was another reason which influenced the girl. It was a purely sentimental reason, such as at her age might ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... up the heavy basket, she hurried quickly down the path, like a startled deer, to escape the volley of wrath the indignant spinster hurled ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... been ever since they had known Dr. Spencer's opinion; and yet he only believed that they were grateful for good advice, and went about among them, easy, good-natured, and utterly unconscious that for him sparkled Mrs. Ledwich's bugles, and for him waved every spinster's ribbon, from Miss ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... knew that this offer had been accepted without hesitation; and thenceforth, accordingly, he threw his daily letters to his wife into the form of communications meant for an imaginary group, consisting of a spinster sister, a statistical laird, a rural clergyman of the Presbyterian Kirk, and a brother, a veteran officer on half-pay. The rank of this last personage corresponded, however, exactly with that of his own elder brother, John Scott, who also, like the Major of the book, had served in the Duke of York's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... comic epithet—hadou mageiros—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to pick our society, so here we must accept what fellowship the fates provide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen describing his jaunt in a gondola from the railway station; a German shopkeeper descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... knocked one morning at the door of an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. The introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy for the old lady," Nares said, "even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as I was going by; I always thought she was a kind of pleasant ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... for a woman to go on so," returned the spinster, shaking her head in vehement agitation; "you may just tell her it's no use, my pa isn't likely to be ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... was a boat—named for the unyielding spinster whom the captain hoped to marry. Through the two Betsy's a delightful ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... therefore ought to be under the guidance of reason; for, although we can not avoid first impressions, we may assuredly place them under guard: and my motives for treating on this subject are to show you, while you remain Eleanor Parke Custis, spinster, and retain the resolution to love with moderation, the propriety of adhering to the latter resolution, at least until you have secured your game, and the way by which it may ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Miss Gailey, a spinster of superior breeding and a teacher of dancing, had in the distant past been an intimate friend of Mrs. Lessways. The friendship was legendary in the house, and the grand quarrel which had finally put an end to it dated in Hilda's ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... directed my attention to a middle-aged, angular-looking woman, whose strong, sharp-featured face betokened a prim spinster, probably at the head of a girls' school, or engaged in some clerical work. However, as I passed her on my way to leave the train I noticed a wedding-ring on her hand, and heard her say to her companion, "No; I think a woman's ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... she was asked to come in, and thus they met, the quick, slim, active little spinster, whose whole life had been work, and the far younger widow, whose vocation had been chiefly home-making. Their first silent ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... widows in the country districts with children of school age to vote for trustees. In 1888 further extensions of School Suffrage were made and in the country districts, including fifth and sixth class cities, i. e., the smallest villages, any widow having a child of school age, and any widow or spinster having a ward of school age, may now vote for school trustees and district school taxes; also taxpaying widows and spinsters may vote for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... maiden sister of aiding and abetting the dangerous 'mocito,' and there is every reason for his suspicion; Dona Lola having persuaded herself that it is she, and not her young niece, who is the object of the 'mocito's' solicitations. Deluded with this notion, the elderly spinster facilitates Ramon's visit to the house, and there is a scene in which she helps to conceal him in a huge barrel used for storing charcoal. One of the chief 'situations' in the farce occurs when Don Gabriel, at the instigation of Mister ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... wind, and the "something" would doubtless bear fruit; for this elderly spinster aunt, with a mania for psychical research, had brains as well as will power, and by hook or by crook she usually managed to accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soon after tea, when she sidled close ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... reverentially, and wondered why old Madam Hyde's eyes followed them as far as they could see. Visitors came now and then to the kitchen-door, and usurped Keery's flag-bottomed chair, while they gossiped with her about village affairs; now and then a friendly spinster with a budget of good advice called Hitty away from her post, and, after an hour's vain effort to get any news worth retailing about the Judge from those pale lips, retired full of disappointed curiosity to tell how stiff that Mehitable Hyde was, and how hard it was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... They 'm a fact, same as the sun in heaven 's a fact. God A'mighty's Self couldn't undo it wi'out some violent invention; an' for that matter I doan't see tu clear how even Him be gwaine to magic a married woman into a spinster again; any more than He could turn a spinster into a married woman, onless some ordinary human man came forrard. You must faace it braave an' strong. But that imp o' Satan—that damn Blanchard bwoy! Theer! I caan't say what I think 'bout him. Arter all that's been done: ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... top of St. James's Street you are hailed simultaneously by two spinster ladies with hand luggage, wishing to be driven to Euston, and by a single unencumbered gentleman whose destination is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... spinster of Plainton. In companies where there were married ladies she was sometimes obliged to take a second place, but never among maidens, old or young. There were very few subjects upon which Miss Shott had not an opinion; and whatever this opinion might be, she considered it ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... door, which, however, was a work of time, and not yet a quarter accomplished. The place had been a fowl-house, and, at the bottom of the door, there was a small hatch for the ingress and egress of these bipeds, the original invention of some thrifty spinster, to prevent the maids from stealing eggs. But this hatch was closed, or Snarleyyow would have escaped through it. Smallbones took up his quarters in another outhouse, that he might not be observed, and commenced ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of course, for such a young girl to live with an old spinster and go to a village school. Her books bore testimony to this; for there was a look of sadness in the faces she drew, and a sense of weariness and longing for some imaginary conditions of blessedness or other, which began to be painful. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Whitehead, the stenographer-in-chief, was big, vigorous, blond—vulgar, energetic, vivid; and Miss Munch, her assistant, a thin, hollow-chested spinster, who loafed upon her job so that she might save her sight for the manufacture of incredible yards of tatting, never missed an opportunity to lift her eyes ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... on the morrow was to be conveyed to the Trenchards', across the county. Wanless had her steadily in its score pair of eyes for twenty-four hours, as Purcell, her maid, had foreseen. "You are doing a strange thing, ma'am, permit me to say." Purcell was an elderly spinster, who only required her own permission to say what she pleased. "You will be watched and reported. I suppose I am not in the servants' hall for nothing." Mrs. Wilmot said feebly that she supposed she was there for meals. Purcell stiffened her wiry neck. "Meals, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... and aristocratic connections; Bianchon, the future great-gun in medicine, at present walking the hospitals and attending lectures and practising dissections; Victorine Taillefer, the rejected daughter of a guilty millionaire; Mademoiselle Michonneau, the soured spinster, who ferrets out the identity of her fellow-boarder Vautrin, and betrays to justice this cynical outlaw installed so quietly, and, to all appearance, safely, in the pension, where Madame Vauquer, the traipsing widow, lords ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... man with the pot of beer. For instance, it was logical to allow some degree of distinction between beer and tea, on the ground that a man may be moved by excess of beer to throw the pot at somebody's head. And it may be said that the spinster is seldom moved by excess of tea to throw the tea-pot at anybody's head. But the whole ground of argument is now changed. For people do not consider what the drunkard does to others by throwing the pot, but what he does to himself by drinking the beer. The ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... daughter from this country,' he wrote, 'lest she should be frightened by the troops lying here. She has got one Betty Burke, an Irish girl, who, she tells me, is a good spinster. If her spinning pleases you, you may keep her till she spins all your lint.' In spite of the gravity of the situation, one cannot help thinking that Flora and her stepfather must have had a good deal of amusement concocting this circumstantial and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... of pushing Olive and the Marquis morally and physically into each other's arms seemed to her the best. Alice was to her but a plain girl, whose misfortune was that she had ever been born. This idea had grown up with Mrs. Barton, and fifteen years ago she had seen in the child's face the spinster of fifty. But since the appearance of Harding, and the manifest interest he had shown in her daughter, Mrs. Barton's convictions that Alice would never be able to find a husband had been somewhat shaken, and she ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... Steve spin around the room was a sight to bring a smile to the lips of the crustiest bachelor or saddest spinster, for happy lovers are always a pleasing spectacle, and two such merry little grigs as these ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... grew tired of hearing herself praised. The men—at least those of high position and great prospects—had no scruple in offering a married woman that homage which might have entailed their own domestic subjugation if laid at a spinster's feet; and the women—all except the very smartest ladies (who liked her for her utter fearlessness and sang-froid as well as for her own sake)—thought it a fine thing to be on intimate terms with "Maud Bearwarden," ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... longer knew what her situation was, and began to lose all control of it, when a sister of her husband, an old maid, pinched and pious, expressed a desire to live with her and use their resources in common. The arrival of this long-toothed spinster strangely frightened the little Clementine, who hid herself under the furniture and nestled among her mother's skirts; but it was the salvation of the house. Mlle. Sambucco was not one of the most spirituelle nor one of the most romantic of women, but she was Order incarnated. She reduced ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... falling from Bernardine's eyes and sobs were trembling on the tender lips, she could restrain her feelings no longer, and, catching up the thin, shriveled-up figure of the dear little old spinster in her arms, she strained her to her heart ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... suddenly roused from oblivion as to forget all their ordinary suburban dignity, probably barely escaping from ruined homes with their lives and a sheet each. There was a very old man, a middle-aged spinster, and then an enormous group of children of ages varying from two months to twenty years, followed by ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... walks, where a few early loiterers were already pacing to and fro. Here a pair of lovers met to quarrel and make up; there a dark-eyed nursery-maid had better eyes for Templars than her charge; on this hand an ancient spinster, with her lapdog in a string, regarded both enormities with scornful sidelong looks; on that a weazen old gentleman, ogling the nursery-maid, looked with like scorn upon the spinster, and wondered she didn't know she was no longer young. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... if he were your mistress, Major Dunwoodie," observed the smiling spinster, glancing her eye at her niece, who sat pale and listening, in a corner ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... And is not this he, or she, this one born of ourselves, of the weird places we have seen, the strange stories we have heard—this one, and not the aunt of Miss Jemima Jackson? For what use, I entreat you to tell me, is that respectable spinster's vision? Was she worth seeing, that aunt of hers, or would she, if followed, have led the way to any interesting brimstone ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... sunshine, and execrated by those in the shade. The fair debutante of eighteen, basking in the bright light of youth, beauty, birth, and connections, has no sort of objection to the freedom of choice in the ball-room. If the mature spinster of forty would divulge her real opinion, what would it be on the same scene of competition? Experience proves that she is glad to retire, in the general case, from the unequal struggle, and finds the system of established precedence and fixed rank at dinner parties, much more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the way they think best, and who endeavour to provide means by which their families can occupy the same position in life which their parents have done. The rate of income tax paid by a bachelor and a spinster is increased if they marry, although their necessary expenses will be enormously increased if they have a family to support. A bachelor with L500 a year may be living in ease and luxury; if he marries and has four ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... shame-faced, sister-hating, commonplace creature that the collective boy thinks it due to himself to be in society,' said Ethel, 'and me from an enjoying sister, into an elderly, care-taking, despised spinster—a burden ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... way they would. On the fourth Sunday after the shot had been fired the banns were read for the first time in Bloomsbury Church, and the future bride was described as Anna Lovel,—commonly called Lady Anna Lovel,—spinster. Neither on that occasion, or on either of the two further callings, did any one get up in church to declare that impediment existed why Daniel Thwaite the tailor and Lady Anna Lovel should not be ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... rowdy dance halls of Old Town were invaded. On Saturday nights the dance at the country club always drew a considerable attendance. There was also a "dancing class" conducted by an estimable and needy spinster named Grimes, who held assembly dances once in two weeks in a little hall which had been built by the Woman's Club. This event always drew a large and very mixed crowd, including some of the "best ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... appears to contain a confused account of some lawsuit in which the elder Munden was engaged; with a circumstantial history of the proceedings on a case of breach of promise of marriage, made to or by (we cannot pick out which) Jemima Munden, spinster, probably the comedian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any sister; with a few dates, rather better preserved, of this great actor's engagements,—as "Cheltenham, [spelt Cheltnam,] 1776," "Bath, 1779," "London, 1789,"—together with stage-anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wilson, Lee, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... for Jenny was stronger because her father was supposed—by his unfortunate wife at least—to have been the scion of a proud and aristocratic family, who had not been too proud, however, to leave her to starve. Altogether, Miss Husted was an exceedingly romantic, high-strung, middle-aged spinster, miles and miles above her station in life, whose heart and purse were open to any foreigner who had discernment enough to see her weakness and tact enough to pander to it by hinting at his noble lineage. This love of things and beings aristocratic was more ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... were established in Massachusetts, and before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth there was at least one public school for both sexes in Virginia. But for the most part the girls of early New England appear to have gone to the "dame's school," taught by some spinster or poverty-stricken widow. We may again turn to Sewall's Diary for bits of evidence concerning the schooling in the seventeenth century: "Tuesday, Oct. 16, 1688. Little Hanah going to School in the morn, being enter'd a little ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... author, and an occasional Edinburgh and Quarterly, as brief chroniclers of the times. Instead of this, here are Johnny Keats's * * poetry, and three novels by God knows whom, except that there is Peg * * *'s name to one of them—a spinster whom I thought we had sent back to her spinning. Crayon is very good; Hogg's Tales rough, but RACY, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... would have established her claim to the title, and have shown herself, mentally speaking, a perfect Samson, by shutting up her brother-in-law in a private madhouse, until he proved his complete sanity by loving her very much. Beside her sat her spinster daughters, three in number, and of gentlemanly deportment, who had so mortified themselves with tight stays, that their tempers were reduced to something less than their waists, and sharp lacing was expressed in their very noses. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... there to slander each other in—in the name of religion.' That's what she'd have said. It's all different now. Gone is her love of adventure; gone is her defiance of convention; gone is—is her independence. What is she now? A mere farmer, a drudging female, spinster farmer, growing cabbages and things, and getting her manicured hands all mussed up, and freckles on her otherwise ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... walks to his own house, with the assured step of a man who is conscious of having accomplished an important duty. It is the very house we just now saw with the ponderous ogees over its front, the balustrade upon its roof, and the dame in spectacles at the window: this latter being the spinster, Miss Meacham, elder sister to the wife of the Squire, and taking upon herself, with active zeal and a neatness that knew no bounds, the office of housekeeper. This was rendered necessary in a manner by the engagement of Mrs. Elderkin with a group of young flax-haired children, and periodic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... instant rise to his lips seizes Luttrell; but she is unhappily so situated that he cannot get at her. Unless he were to summon up fortitude to crush past three grim dowagers, two elaborately-attired girls, and one sour old spinster, it cannot be done; and Tedcastle, at least, has not the sort of pluck necessary to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... license, and my aunt's blessing, to go simpering up to the altar; or perhaps be cried three times in a country church, and have an unmannerly fat clerk ask the consent of every butcher in the parish to join John Absolute and Lydia Languish, spinster! Oh that I should live ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... who looked as if she might be a spinster of the type generally known as "old maid" was doing her best to silence the bird while she fished wildly in her bag ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... were employed, according to the formula, "in virtue of these and subsequent engagements," and among the "subsequent engagements" you are kind enough to reckon one between Mademoiselle Berthe Lorinet, spinster, of no occupation, and M. Fabien Mouillard, lawyer. "Fabien Mouillard, lawyer"—that I may perhaps endure, but "Fabien Mouillard, son-in-law of Lorinet," never! One pays too dear for these rich wives. Mademoiselle ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hasn't had the chance," said Mrs. Amber, with the disbelief of the old married woman in spinster charms. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... from Haverhill last night, Doctor Clark accompanying us, he having business in Newbury. When we came up to the door, Effie met us with a shy look, and told her mistress that Mrs. Prudence (uncle's spinster cousin) had got a braw auld wooer in the east room; and surely enough we found our ancient kinswoman and Deacon Dole, a widower of three years' standing, sitting at the supper-table. We did take note that ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... five hundred dollars were placed in the Allington Savings Bank to the credit of Bessie McPherson Bowen, and the spinster washed her hands of the whole affair, as she expressed it to herself. But she could not quite forget the child, and when on the Monday evening after the christening she sat by her open fire with her round ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the house, started Bill Morrill at the store, and was on the road in search of vengeance and a housekeeper. Old Mrs. Atkins of Deerwander sniffed at the wages offered. Miss Peters, of Union Falls, an aged spinster with weak lungs, had the impertinence to tell him that she feared she couldn't stand the cold in his house; she had heard he was very particular about the amount of wood that was burned. A four-mile drive brought him to the village poetically named the Brick Kiln, where he offered to Mrs. Peter ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... prettily to the captain, Mademoiselle Hortense went out by a glass door, taking with her a withered-looking spinster, who looked older than the Baroness, though she ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... thought whether he was worthy of being loved. He was indeed more worthy of love than many to whom it is freely given; but he knew no more about it, I say, than a chicken in the shell knows of the blue sky. The shabby spinster, living with her cousin the baker in the house opposite, knew a hundred times better than he what the word love meant: she had a ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... each with a certain desperate, even if unsympathetic, affection. As a father he was, naturally, a failure,—hard, domineering, unyielding. His four children reacted characteristically: one was until past middle life a thin spinster, the mental image of her father; one died; one passed over into the white world and her children's children are now white, with no knowledge of their Negro blood; the fourth, my father, bent before grandfather, but did not break—better if he had. He ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... by a narrow tape. The gaping of this garment revealed a breast to be likened only to that of an old peasant woman who cares nothing about her personal ugliness. The fleshless arm was like a stick on which a bit of stuff was hung. Seen at her window, this spinster seemed tall from the length and angularity of her face, which recalled the exaggerated proportions of certain Swiss heads. The character of their countenance—the features being marked by a total want of harmony—was that of hardness in the lines, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... always thought that maiden was a term that implied virgin innocence and purity, whether addressed to the blithe lass of sixteen, or the antiquated spinster of forty," returned the provoking sailor, with ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... having encountered the gray, keen eyes of the spinster. She knew they would read unfailingly the whole extent of the revelation that had dawned upon her. That the spinster herself knew the truth, and had long known it, she was sure; and she recalled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... heard of a man ..." began the spinster, putting down her work, and raising her head with the air they all knew so well, denoting a long rigmarole about some exceedingly uninteresting person, and Diana immediately chimed in with, "Shall you wear a knickerbocker suit, aunty, or just ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... others? Leslie Stephen says his Humour is heavy (Qy is not his Tragedy?), and wonders how Miss Austen could admire him as it appears she did; and you discern a relation between her and him. I find plenty of grave humour in this Book: in the Spinster, the Bachelor, the Widow, etc. All which I pointed out (in the still-born) to L. S. . . . He says too that Crabbe is 'incapable of Epigram,' which also you do not agree in; Epigrams more of Humour than Wit; sometimes only hinted, as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... Adjusting some fancied disorder of hair or bonnet. "Marriage is a fountain of youth for"—with a sigh—"old maids. Susan Duran, spinster! ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... spinster in charge, to whom we complained of this, was astonished and offended at what she considered our interference, and answered that “the children liked it warm,” as for herself she “had a cold and could not think of opening a ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... sense that made their chat as wholesome as the mould they delved in; school children barefooted and blithe, and specimens of womankind, from the buxom housewife who took them under her motherly wing at once, to the sour, snuffy, shoe-binding spinster with "No Admittance" ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... considered, and almost to consider herself, one of the family. The "family" consisted of Mrs. Wyeth, Mary, Miss Pease, the other "paying guest," and Maggie, the maid, and Nora, the cook. Miss Pease was an elderly spinster without near relatives, possessed of an income and a love of travel which she gratified by occasional European trips. She and her closest friend, Mrs. Wyeth, disagreed on many subjects, but they united in the belief that Boston ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... aunt visiting them. This gentle, middle-aged spinster was dozing in the next room. Aroused by the maid's screams, she hurried into the room. But no sooner did this remarkable young man visitor see her than he promptly grabbed her, and covered her face ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... live face to face with big Westmacote without revering the broadness of the American master spirit, to which Big Business is only a part of the Great Game. As for Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, it didn't take Alicia and me long to discover what real depths underlay that Boston-spinster mind of hers. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... her the adjective "motherly." This for the same reason which moved new acquaintances instinctively to address her as "Mrs." For Sue Milo, at forty-five, bore none of the marks of the so-called typical spinster. ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... when she was only three, Columbine had been left to the sole care of her wastrel father. And he, then a skipper of a small cargo steamer plying across the North Sea, had placed her in the charge of a spinster aunt who kept an infants' school in a little Kentish village near the coast. Here, up to the age of seventeen, Columbine had lived and been educated; but the old schoolmistress had worn out at last, and on her death-bed had sent for Mrs. Peck, as being the girl's ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... cooed, "dear Lady Wilde!" I noticed that her glance went towards Willie, who was standing on the other side of his mother, talking to a tall, handsome girl. Willie's friend seemed amused at the lyrical outburst of the green spinster, for smiling a little she ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... was a great flow of tea-table hospitality in the village, and my friends and their friends used to be asked out, by respective parents and by more than one amiable spinster, to faint little entertainments where those sang who were ambitious to sing, and where all played post and forfeits after a rich tea. My Father was constantly exercised in mind as to whether I should or should not accept these glittering invitations. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... New York the other day his plans would have miscarried. I'd never have married that Osborne man; I'd have snubbed Balderstone the moment he spoke to me; and if Stuart Harley had got a book out of my trip to Europe at all, it would have been a series of papers on some such topic as 'The Spinster Abroad, or How to be Happy though Single.' No more shall I take the part he intends me to in this Newport romance, unless he removes Count Bonetti from the scene entirely, and provides me with a different style of hero from his ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... to hear them, whether you want to or not," continued the indomitable spinster, "and I don't see any use in palavering the truth. Master Hightower and Mr. Arthur knows it by this time, and there's no harm in talking before them. Helen's an uncommon child. She's no more like other children, than my ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... she to marry? Camelford would not have her; he did not want her then; he was not going to want her at forty. For practical purposes Camelford was out of the question. She might marry somebody else altogether—and fare worse. She might remain a spinster: she hated the mere name of spinster. The inky-fingered woman journalist that, if all went well, she might become: it was not her idea. Was she acting selfishly? Ought she, in his own interests, to refuse to marry dear ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome
... politics, husbands, children, or good works, had so far escaped her, and Agnes Trevor, who lived with Mrs. Vane, was practically the only representative of the intermediate age with whom she had exchanged a dozen words. But the admirable spinster had taken up the cause of the Vienna children with enthusiasm and raised a good deal of money, besides contributing liberally herself. She was forty-two, and, although she was said to have been a beautiful girl, was now merely patrician in appearance, very tall and thin and spinsterish, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... alone in a Dorsetshire village, asking her advice about the girl. Gladys was disturbed in her solitude by Miss Peck, who came to the door in rather an excited and officious manner. She was a little, wiry spinster, past middle life, eccentric, but kind-hearted. She had bestowed a great deal of gratuitous and genuine kindness on her lodgers, though knowing very well that she would not likely get any return but gratitude for it; but times ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... MLLE. SAINTE-NITOUCHE.—A demure Spinster says she is quite against the Early Closing Movement, and hopes the shops will keep open as late as possible. "'Early closing' means," she explains, "'early shopping,' and I should blush to commence my rounds before the windows are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... week except Thursday," wrote Miss Perry, and this was not the first invitation by any means. Were all Miss Perry's weeks blank with the exception of Thursday, and was her only desire to see her old friend's son? Time is issued to spinster ladies of wealth in long white ribbons. These they wind round and round, round and round, assisted by five female servants, a butler, a fine Mexican parrot, regular meals, Mudie's library, and friends dropping in. A little hurt she was already ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... who, by means of plenty of work, small competition, and high prices, managed to scrape together fifty or sixty thousand dollars, which from time to time he judiciously invested in real estate. Late in life he married a tall, lean, sour-visaged spinster, considerably past thirty, with nothing whatever to recommend her except that she belonged to one of the first families. The fact is, she was a poor relation, and had all her life been passed around ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... waved his handkerchief, and Aunt Hester, who was a spinster, cast down her eyes and fidgeted with some papers which she had taken from ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... friends and acquaintances in Paris. Which of them would be the safest to communicate with? Which would be most useful to her, and would trouble her least? Finally she decided on telephoning to a rich American spinster whom she had known for years, a woman who was what is called "large minded," who was very tolerant, very understanding, and not more curious than a woman has to be. Caroline Briggs could comprehend a hint without demanding ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... of relief that Sara, in obedience to the warning raucously intoned by a hurrying porter, vacated her seat in the railway compartment in which she had travelled from Fallowdene. Her companions on the journey had been an elderly spinster and her maid, and as the former had insisted upon the exclusion of every breath of outside air, Sara felt half-suffocated by the time they ran into Oldhampton Junction. The Monkshaven train was already standing in the station, and, commissioning a porter to transfer her luggage, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... sure of the interest of his audience, and, on this occasion, it was evident that each member of the little group listened with strained attention, but with very different feelings. What they gathered was that Miss Victoria Bench, spinster, being of sound mind, did will and bequeath everything of which she might die possessed to her beloved great-niece, Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth. Should Beth marry, the money was to be settled upon her for her exclusive use. The present income from the property, about fifty ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... literature in any sober sense of the word, God forbid that I should encourage the giving of your young life to such a consuming passion. Happiness and success in the pursuit of any ideal can only come to one who dwells in a sympathetic atmosphere. Do you think a people that lauds Mr. Spinster as a great novelist and Mr. Perchance as a great critic can have any knowledge of that deity you would follow, or any ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... people, who half believe that they may learn from omens at Christmas time what manner of marriages are in store for them. Divinings of this kind are known to all lands, and bear a strong family likeness; but it is, of course, only in a cold country that a spinster can find an opportunity of sitting beside a hole cut in the surface of a frozen river, listening to prophetic sounds proceeding from beneath the ice, and possibly seeing the image of the husband who she is to marry within the year trembling in the freezing ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... is plain now. It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinster-hood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses busy and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... that not very unusual type of spinster who is in a condition of retarded development (and you will find this kind of woman even on County Council's), is completely unconscious of the sexual element in herself and in human nature generally. Nay, though one went from the dead, he could not bring it home to her that unsatisfied ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... grey; Mrs. Knight, once a slim bride of twenty-seven, was now a stout matron of thirty-nine, with a tendency to pant after the most modest feats of stair-climbing; and Aunt Annie, only the other day a pretty girl with a head full of what is wrongly called nonsense, was a spinster—a spinster. Fortunately, they were blind to these obvious facts. Even Mr. Knight, accustomed as he was to survey fundamental truths with the detachment of a philosopher, would have been shocked to learn that his hair was grey. Before the glass, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the plants should be stolen without the knowledge or consent of their owner; otherwise they were quite useless for the purpose of divination. Strictly speaking, too, the neighbour upon whose garden the raid was made should be unmarried, whether a bachelor or a spinster. The stolen kail was taken home and examined, and according to its height, shape, and features would be the height, shape, and features of the future husband or wife. The taste of the custock, that is, the heart ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... to the door which she leaves open. An elderly, richly-dressed spinster, whom KATE has nearly knocked down as she fled, stalks into the room. She glowers ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... as a physician; this woman who seemed all mother while she was holding the baby, and all boy while she was trying, under old Captain Mayhew's guidance to learn to sail a boat; this woman who was a spinster in years, and a child in simplicity and directness; who was beautiful, and never once thought of her beauty; who was alone, and never seemed lonely: she was a perpetual problem and fascination to him. Dr. Eben was not usually given to concerning himself much as to other people's ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... of the Fates? Lachesis, the giver of the lots, is the first of them; Clotho, the spinster, the second; Atropos, the unchanging one, is the third and last, who makes the threads of the web irreversible. And we too want to make our laws irreversible, for the unchangeable quality in them ...
— Laws • Plato
... descriptions, graphic as they undoubtedly are, lack for the most part the final imaginative touch; the kind of inbreathing of life which afterwards gave such individual charm to Dickens' word-painting. The humour is more obvious, less delicate, turns too readily on the claim of the elderly spinster to be considered young, and the desire of all spinsters to get married. The pathos is often spoilt by over-emphasis and declamation. It ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... attire, an eminent Oxford divine, whose life and works commanded reverence, was once mistaken for an ancient New England spinster in emancipated garments. His smoothly shaven face, framed in crinkly, gray locks, was surmounted by a soft, little, round hat, from the up-turned brim of which dangled a broken string. His long frock-coat reached to just above his ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... blessedness; bachelorhood, bachelorship[obs3]; misogamy[obs3], misogyny. virginity, pucelage[obs3]; maidenhood, maidenhead. unmarried man, bachelor, Coelebs, agamist[obs3], old bachelor; misogamist[obs3], misogynist; monogamist; monk. unmarried woman, spinster; maid, maiden;virgin, feme sole[Fr], old maid; bachelor girl, girl-bachelor; nun. V. live single, live alone. Adj. unmarried, unwed, unwedded[obs3]; wifeless, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Ronciere, I enjoy the greatest peace. My old spinster cousin Ermelin pets and coddles me like an invalid. I am getting back my colour and am very well, physically ... so much so, in fact, that I no longer ever think of interesting myself in other people's business. Never again! For instance (I am only telling you this because ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... four worthy gentlemen of fortune and family, who were all in company such a night particularly, at a collation to which they were invited by Robert Lovelace, of Sandoun-hall, in the county of Lancaster, esquire, in company with Magdalen Sinclair, widow, and Priscilla Partington, spinster, and the lady complainant, when the said Robert Lovelace addressed himself to the said lady, on a multitude of occasions, as his wife; as they and others did, as Mrs. Lovelace; every one complimenting and congratulating her upon ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... free verse, has scaled olympian heights, disdaining the customary twaddling topics of the rhymesters. Such an amazing allegory as "On Raiding the Ice Box," which deals, of course, with the experience of a man who attempts to explore the mind of an elderly Boston spinster, marks this powerful poet as a man of unusual satirical ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... shrinking back in his chair as if the red-nosed spinster had suddenly appeared before ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... for a certified copy of the following entry: "August 1, 1856. Philip Caresfoot, bachelor, gentleman, to Hilda von Holtzhausen, spinster (by license). Signed J. Few, curate; as witness, Fred. Natt, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... whispers of conscience, the advantages and the disadvantages of its possession, and the consensus of opinion was of its being quite appropriate in regard to a clergyman, and that it was not altogether out of place on the part of a spinster, provided that she had counteracting virtues; but, on the whole, it was perhaps wiser to leave the conscience ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... for me, ye auld mare, wi' your braw beginnings of the ringbone!" And there was so much glee at the mention of deformity in the thick voice, and so much patience in the movement of the mare's long unshapely head, that the incident was as unpleasing as if it had been an ill-favoured spinster who had been insulted. Yaverland was roused suddenly by the tiniest sound of a ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of the latter, but never dreaming how much those carriages meant to me. As I went timidly into the room I found nearly every seat full, and was greeted with cordial applause. My sister took a seat beside me. My subject was "Spinster Authors of England." My hands trembled so visibly that I laid my manuscript on the table, but after getting in magnetic touch with those before me, I ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... took leave of Miss Osborne we have said that he asked leave to come and pay her another visit, and the spinster expected him for some hours the next day, when, perhaps, had he come, and had he asked her that question which she was prepared to answer, she would have declared herself as her brother's friend, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... holidays with my spinster aunt, my father's sister, who lived at Compiegne, in a house situated at the far end of the town. She had three servants, one of whom was my dear old Julie, who had left us because my mother could not get on with her. My aunt Louise was a little woman of fifty, with countrified looks and ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... small billets, with (if the consulters were young women) bachelors' names on them, and then to draw them out lottery-wise. The bachelor whose name appeared on a billet thus extracted at random, became the valentine of the spinster to whose lot it fell. In this way a bevy of young ladies ascertained, in a few minutes, secrets they were most anxious should be disclosed. When the gentlemen were anxious to discover their valentines, they proceeded in the same way, taking care, however, that the ladies for whom ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant |
