"Maidenhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... keeper, as he was yours. What if he had found a noble-hearted girl who also trusted him entirely—just until she knew she ought not to listen to him a moment longer? who, when his love showed itself less than human, caring but for itself, rose in the royalty of her maidenhood, and looked him in the face? Would he not have been ashamed before her, and so before himself, seeing in the glass of her dignity his own contemptibleness? But instead of such a woman he found you, who let him do as he would. No redemption for him in you. And now he walks the earth the worse ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... be told how on the way Anne's mind was assailed by feminine misgivings whether three and twenty could be as fair in her soldier's eyes as seventeen had been? Old maidenhood came earlier then than in these days, and Anne knew that she was looked upon as an old waiting-gentlewoman or governess by the belles of Winchester. Her glass might tell her that her eyes were as softly brown, her hair as abundant, her cheek as clear and delicately moulded as ever, but there ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cease 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 dues with a dower! 65 Hymen O Hymenaeus: ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... indeed is our childhood, for THEN we are thoughtless; but when we attain maidenhood, lo! we are driven away from our homes, sold as merchandise, and compelled to ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... young 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, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... 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 foreign ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... volcanos boil still beneath a head of snow; and that it is even in the calmest and most moderate characters that passion once enkindled burns fierce, perennial and unquenchable! Thus far, however, had she advanced into the flower of fair maidenhood, undisturbed by any warmer dream than devoted affection toward her parent, whose wayward grief she could understand if she could not appreciate, and whom she strove by every gentle wile to wean from his morbid fancies; and earnest love toward her sister, whom she, indeed, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love—thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... characteristics of the mind, and doubtless many qualities of the thought and feeling of men and women owe their origin to the same source as brilliant plumage, antlers, combs and wattles. Thus the shy, retiring, reticent, self-effacing, languishing, adoring excesses of maidenhood and the peculiar psychological manifestations of the late forties must probably be understood from this point of view. So, also, must the bold, swaggering, assertive, compelling bearing of youth be interpreted. The shy or modish, dandified, lackadaisical cane-carrying ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... baby?" said the proud young mother to the ladies from the white corner house, where she had served four faithful years of her maidenhood, and who came down at once with comforts and congratulations. "They've sint for the praist, an' I've niver bethought of a name. I made so certain 'twould be ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... her maidenhood Margaret has added the serene beauty of motherhood. That is all the change I can see in her, as I put my arms round her and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... old person—you could marry if you liked. There's old Adam—Robin's faithful servant—he loves you with all the frenzy of a boy of fourteen. HAN. Nay—that may never be, for I am pledged! ALL. To whom? HAN. To an eternal maidenhood! Many years ago I was betrothed to a god-like youth who woo'd me under an assumed name. But on the very day upon which our wedding was to have been celebrated, I discovered that he was no other than Sir Roderic Murgatroyd, one of the bad Baronets of Ruddigore, and the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... grew taller, but the cool whiteness of her face was untinged by any flush of young maidenhood. At seventeen she was a slender sprite of a girl, to reach whose unearthly aloofness the warm human hands of her companions strained unavailing. Each winter she descended to the valley and to school and church, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... shoulders, the face and features of childhood on the mature and well-developed figure of womanhood. The expression, too, is a curious combination of childlike simplicity with the sentimental melancholy of young maidenhood; and one cannot escape the impression that the models are not genuine peasant children, but pretty and somewhat worldly young women, masquerading in pastoral costumes for ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... gracefully. She had had her little romance, and it had been incontinently nipped in the bud by imperious mamma, and she had dutifully yielded, with the pain sharp in her heart all the same. But he was poor, and Mildred was weak, and so Lady Kingsland's only daughter glided uncomplainingly into old-maidenhood. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... find the Kentish river swirling past their doors at Broomhill might aptly be compared with those of the farms round the Woolpack, who woke to find that Joanna Godden was not going just to jog on her final choice between Arthur Alce and old maidenhood, but had swept aside to make ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... 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 sordid ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... sensible, and amiable, and a real comfort to me." Without her sister, the Princess Royal's, remarkable intellectual power, Princess Alice had fine intelligence. She was also fair to see in her royal maidenhood. The two elder sons were away. The Prince of Wales was in Italy, Prince Alfred with his ship in the Levant. At home the volunteer movement, which has since acquired such large proportions, was being actively inaugurated. The war between Austria and France, and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... in her 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
... less than six months gone, when he had waited her coming in those very rooms. Not yet six months, and he seemed to have lived years since then! He recalled her as she appeared before him that night in all the grace and witchery of lovely maidenhood just opening into womanhood. How beautiful, how joyous she had been! without a ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... famous chronicler of Abbotsford has recorded them, can doubt for a moment what was the result of the marriage between Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe and Lady Rowena. Those who have marked her conduct during her maidenhood, her distinguished politeness, her spotless modesty of demeanor, her unalterable coolness under all circumstances, and her lofty and gentlewomanlike bearing, must be sure that her married conduct would equal her spinster behavior, and that Rowena the wife ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... good friend to you, protecting you, teaching you, guarding you and yours from harm, and ye have prospered with me. Ye have seen my child — the Water-lily, as ye call her — grow year by year, from tenderest infancy to tender childhood, and from childhood on towards maidenhood. She has been your children's playmate, she has helped to tend you when sick, and ye ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... at the quarries and, taken with her beauty, asked her at the hands of the Pharaoh, for the hatefullest bondage pure maidenhood ever knew. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... 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, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... dennes seek, And runnen in the mountains all the night, And sleep under a bush; and she could eke Wrestle by very force and very might With any young man, were he ne'er so wight;* *active, nimble There mighte nothing in her armes stond. She kept her maidenhood from every wight, To no man deigned she for to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... herself, through her own action. Laban, who had two daughters, and Rebekah, his sister, who had two 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 and extolled him, and "good ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... in the superstition of her old-maidenhood concerning love, really thought it cold-blooded and shocking; but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lively interest 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 ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... 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 ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... Also maidenhood of body without wem is common to them all, and so is birth also. For they are not medlied with service of Venus, nother resolved with lechery, nother bruised with sorrow of birth of children. And yet they bring forth most swarms ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... ago 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, have ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... No, marriage is no bargain; it is the union of the entire life.' This is what true marriage should be; but in so far as mankind fall below the lofty standards set before them, so far does actual marriage fail to reach its glorious ideal. Meantime, reverence for maidenhood is one of the strongest safeguards of the sanctity of wedded life, and no delusions of any school, whether romantic, sentimental, Micheletic, humanitarian, or Lutheranistic, should be permitted to obscure this reverence. Neither my own experience, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Eteoclus Of Argive lineage; 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 ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... homes that were offered to M'liss when her conversion became known, the master had preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kind-hearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the "Per-ra-rie Rose." By a steady system of struggle and self-sacrifice, she had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to principles of "order," which as a pious woman she considered, with Pope, as "Heaven's first law." But she could not entirely ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... short frock and pink stockings. I remember the midges had stung her about the legs, and she stamped on the ground like a little pony. How could I dream that these white shoulders, this breast covered with violets, this pretty face with the dark eyes, in short, this girl in the full bloom of maidenhood, was the same as the little wagtail on thin feet I had known formerly. How pretty she had grown; a fine butterfly had come from that chrysalis. I renewed my greeting very heartily. Afterwards when the Sniatynskis had left us she told me that my ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... his head quickly, and saw Lila—his daughter. As he turned toward her in the twilight 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 some vague, lost dream and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... called only girlish. The womanly element is the main quality to be nourished into greater perfection, but only the weakness of girlishness is to be excluded from character. Girls are to grow wiser, and to avoid what must bring harm, but still to keep the attractive freshness of maidenhood. Some of the most delightful women we meet are those who can be girls with girls, and women with women. The young do not lose their respect for them because they appreciate them, nor do elders lessen their regard for these women because ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... therefore, of securing a husband at the rate of one chance in seven, or dissatisfied at the 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 ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... very different. She had been shut up in prison for months, for six weeks at least she had been in irons, and the air of heaven had not blown upon this daughter of the fields; her robust yet sensitive maidenhood had been exposed to a hundred offences, and to the constant society, infecting the very air about, of the rudest of men; yet so far is her spirit from being broken that she meets all those potent, grave, and reverend doctors and ecclesiastics, with the simplicity and freedom of a princess, answering ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the sunshine of official favor illumined his daily life; he had a fund of anecdote and table talk; his guests were responsive and full of appreciation of the entertainment provided for them. Nellie, in her shy maidenhood, was a lovely picture at the head of his board; and Holmes, who sat at her left, was evidently more impressed than ever. A son-in-law like that, rich, manly, and educated, a leader of affairs in ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Resentment did not leave her, but over it 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. ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... vowesses in the eyes of the Church may be illustrated in various ways. For example, the homilies of the Anglo-Saxon AElfric testify to a triple division of the people of God. "There are," says he, "three states which bear witness of Christ; that is, maidenhood, and widowhood, and lawful matrimony." And with the quaintness of mediaeval symbolists, he affirms that the house of Cana in Galilee had three floors—the lowest occupied by believing married laymen, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... o'erthrown, no wrecked sweet maidenhood, No sense of loss, like heavy stone, to make her doubt all good? Are here no women's ruined charms, no dead and withering breasts? Are here no hapless, vacant arms, which ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... dark-eyed, happy girl, Whom fourteen years have seen, Blooming in gentle maidenhood, As ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... first 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 ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... 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 ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... baby has suddenly flown, And left me a daughter to maidenhood grown. As I did, e'en so does my bonny maid do, And—learns that sweet lesson ...
— Grandma's Memories • Mary D. Brine
... of alarmed maidenhood, she took refuge in her chamber, as she had done once before. He heard her lock the door hastily, with a double turn of the key. He remained alone, and he asked himself suddenly, seized by infinite ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... playing a waltz on the circle at the end; young people were dancing, other young people of both sexes were promenading, lines of yet younger people, chiefly girls in short frocks, but with the wagging heads and sparkling eyes of one type of budding maidenhood, were skipping along arm-in-arm, singing snatches of the words set to the waltz, and beating a half-dancing time with an alternate scrape and stroke of the soles of their shoes upon the wood floor on which they walked. The odor of the ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... shout bubbles up in the water, and then the heroic defender of crabbed maidenhood leads his beloved to view the remains of this ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... girl 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 ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... hour's ennui. 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 ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... worthy villager 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 fresh ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... 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 ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... summer day, sits on a hill-top, or on the observatory of his house, and sees the sun's light pass from one object to another connected with the events of his past life,—as the school-house, the place where his wife lived in her maidenhood,—its setting ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 you show me a gentleman—nay, more, you show me ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... unconscious loveliness. The eyes that had watched the artist with such certain knowledge of life and with the boldness born of that knowledge were, in the picture, beautiful with the charm of innocent maidenhood. The very coloring and the arrangement of the hair were changed subtly to express, not the skill of high-priced beauty-doctors and of fashionable hair-dressers, but the instinctive care of womanliness. The costume that, when worn by the woman, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... almost 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 look ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... 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 and make ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... pervaded 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 ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... but round about her skirts (though wofully patched) you would be sensible of a certain sphere of decency, which, it seemed to me, could not have been kept more impregnable in the cosiest little sitting-room, where the tea-kettle on the hob was humming its good old song of domestic peace. Maidenhood had a similar power. The evil habit that grows upon us in this harsh world makes me faithless to my own better perceptions; and yet I have seen girls in these wretched streets, on whose virgin purity, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... genius versatile: Some common ill destroys him; parents, both, Until their death, are left but living tombs That hold the one dead image of their joy. A man, the flower of honour, who has found His well-beloved young daughter fled from home, Fallen from her maidenhood, a nameless thing Tainting his blood. A youth who throws the strength Of his whole being into love for one Answering him honeyed smiles, and leaves his land For some far country, seeking wealth he hopes Will grace her daintily with choice delights, And on returning sees the honeyed smiles ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... this strange 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
... chances The Archon Lamachus is old and spent. He has an only child, a daughter, Gycia, The treasure of his age, who now blooms forth In early maidenhood. The girl is fair As is a morn in springtide; and her father A king in all but name, such reverence His citizens accord him. Were it not well The Prince Asander should contract himself In marriage to this girl, and take the ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Valley young men were very fond of dancing attendance on Judith, even if she were verging on old maidenhood. Her prettiness was undeniable; the Stewarts came to maturity late and at twenty-seven Judith's dower of milky-white flesh, dimpled red lips and shining bronze hair was at its fullest splendor. Besides, she was "jolly," and jollity went a long way ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... consumption and other disease. The first thing the child learns is that it is its duty to be pretty—to look its best. It is taught to value dress and show as the great necessities of existence, and is trained in the most extravagant habits. As the girl advances towards maidenhood, she is forced forward, and made to look as much like a woman as possible. Her education is cared for after a fashion, but amounts to very little. She learns to play a little on some musical instrument, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... 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
... atmosphere. But in this case again I can enter into the feelings of the bishop. He probably knows, having once been six years old himself, that all boys of that age are horrid little beasts. He also knows—he distinctly says so in the pastoral quoted by Lalage—that the charm of maidenhood is a delicate thing, comparable to the bloom on a peach or the gloss on a butterfly's wings. Even Miss Battersby, who must know more about girls than any bishop, felt that Lalage had lost something not to be regained when she became intimate enough with Tom Kitterick to rub ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... maiden glow'd, But that was in her earlier maidenhood, With such a fervent flame of human love, Which being rudely blunted glanced and shot Only to holy things; to prayer and praise She gave ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... demonstrated. 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 eye of man, and are perhaps ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... soberly and measurely, as though deep thoughts were ever in her head: though, forsooth, it is not all so sure that her serious face and solemn eyes were but a part of the beauty which was growing with the coming forth of childhood into youth and maidenhood. But this at least is sure, that about this time those forebodings which had shown her that she had no call to love and honour her mistress took clearer shape, and became a burden on her, which she might never wholly shake off. For this ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the general opinion. That she showed few positive qualities was true. The colours and tones which changing events paint on the faces of active womankind were looked for in vain upon hers. But still waters run deep; and no crisis had come in the years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her, like metal in ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... vision, she believed now, and believing, regretted. The cold facts of her existence couldn't be daydreamed away. She was married, and marriage put a full stop to the potential adventuring of youth. Twenty and maidenhood lies at the opposite pole from twenty-four and matrimony. Stella subscribed to that. She took for her guiding-star—theoretically—the twin concepts of morality and duty as she had been taught to construe ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... spirit Bends and bows down in the delight of vision, Caught 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 ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... a tone of some little annoyance and discomfort. "The girls who have completed their tenth year, and who are thought to have as good a chance now as they would have later, are dressed for the first time in the white robe and veil of maidenhood, and presented in the public chamber to attract the choice of those who are looking ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... photograph—one of my father—in a 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 youth ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... 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
... soft little cheek. As she did so, she experienced the same feeling which she used to have when caressing her little sister Evelyn. It was a sort of rapture of tenderness and protection. It was the maternal instinct glorified and rendered spiritual by maidenhood, and its timid desires. Jessy Ramsey's eyes looked up into Maria's like blue violets, and Maria noticed with a sudden throb that they were like George Ramsey's. Jessy, coming as she did from a degenerate, unbeautiful branch of the family-tree, had ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would be worth more than a respectable landed estate in Connemara. For these reasons the amateur will do well to have new books of price bound "uncut." It is always easy to have the leaves pared away; but not even the fabled fountain at Argos, in which Hera yearly renewed her maidenhood, could restore margins once clipped away. So much for books which are chiefly precious for the quantity and quality of the material on which they are printed. Even this rather foolish weakness of the amateur would not be useless if it made our publishers ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... sometimes on my path, dimming the sunlight for a moment and hushing the song upon my lips. Even when my mother died I was too young for more than a child's grief—an April shower of tears; and although my earliest maidenhood was often lonely, I had made me my own happiness with bright imaginings, and prayed God to bring them to pass. So I awaited my future always with a smile and never doubted that it would be fair. All that ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... tried to tell; The humor coarse, the persons common,—well, From Nature only do I love to paint, Whether she send a satyr or a saint; To me Sincerity's the one thing good, Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood. Quompegan is a town some ten miles south From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth, A seaport town, and makes its title good With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood. 430 Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store, The richest man for many a mile of shore; In little less than everything ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... felicity of being his wife, had apparently determined to hastily repair the omission, and it soon became evident that he meant to honour no less a person than Dawn in this connection—Dawn! a princess in her own right, by reason of her health, her beauty, her youth, and her honest maidenhood! ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. Now surely they were changed. Once they had asked a question. They delivered a summons to-night. What was in them to-night? The mystery of young maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its dreams, of the truth of ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... almost as long, but it was not that which impressed him with the sense of change. It was a certain girlish winsomeness, something elusive, which cannot be defined, but which lends a charm like nothing else in all the world to the sweet unfolding of early maidenhood. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... productive part of the population would be undisturbed even by the bloodiest war; and, best of all, those thousands upon thousands of our Northern girls, whose proper mates will perish in camp-hospitals or on Southern battle-fields, would avoid their doom of forlorn old-maidenhood. But, no doubt, the plan will be pooh-poohed down by the War Department; though it could scarcely be more disastrous than the one on which we began the war, when a young army was struck with paralysis through the age ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the big drum? What a nice-looking set of girls! How pleasant to see rosy, English faces tidily got up! They were rosy enough in Ireland, but a great deal too picturesque. Now these are a sort of flower of maidenhood—' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... from what she had been of late; she was sober of demeanour during these last days of her maidenhood, and sat amongst the kindred as one communing with herself: of few words she was and little laughter; but her face clear, not overcast by any gloom or shaken by passion: soft and kind was she in converse with others, and sweet were the smiles ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... cherishing the down on his chin. But the most rapid development had been in Aldonza, or Alice, as Perronel insisted on calling her to suit the ears of her neighbours. The girl was just reaching the borderland of maidenhood, which came all the sooner to one of southern birth and extraction, when the great change took her from being her father's childish darling to be Perronel's companion and assistant. She had lain down on that fatal May Eve a child, she rose in the little ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of soul, inasmuch as her fault had a ready 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, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... excitement, which all young ladies of my sentimental temperament are expected to indulge, when assured that the perilous voyage of portionless maidenhood is blissfully ended in the comfortable harbour of affluent matrimony. Does that feel like ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 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 happiness she ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... the fact that the girl's uplifted eyes express strong attention and intense thought, rather than any romantic feeling, and that her legs, which are covered with pink fleshings, and her feet in slippers, sway to and fro with a childish abandon. Her figure has just begun to blossom into maidenhood. In everything Jenny is still a child, but so charming and beautiful that, without reflecting upon the ability of Mr. Harvey, who decorated the Palace Hotel, of San Francisco, it would be difficult even for him to imagine anything to equal her. Her delicate ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Old maidenhood set in much earlier in those days than at present; the sisters acquiesced, and Betty had run about as usual all the morning in her mob-cap, and chintz gown tucked through her pocket-holes, and only at the last submitted her ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... imprisoned hand was released only to be transferred to the clasp and keeping of another. In her fear that her knight, her soldier, would leave them, and, wounded though he was, insist on attempting to follow his men in their pursuit, the shyness of maidenhood was forgotten. Ruth had seized and clasped the long, brown fingers, and Drummond forgot for the moment all thought of quitting her ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... sent for thee, I think: stand near me. Child, Thou art fairer than thou knowest, I doubt: thou art fair As the awless maidenhood of morning: truth Should live upon thy lips, though truth were dead On all men's tongues and women's born save thine. Dawn lies not when it laughs on us. Thy queen I am not now: thy friend I would be. Tell Thy friend if love sleep or awake in thee Toward ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 which I, most miserable, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... her tragedy from her; of how she spent the entire evenings sitting alone by the window in the dark—assuredly not on Olya's account, but because she was dying; all her life she had been dying, as the town was dying where Kozlov was read; as he, Agrenev, was dying; as the maidenhood of Olya had died. How powerful is the onward rush of life! What tragedy lay in those evenings by the window ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... feeling bitterly ashamed, had been bending under this sense of undeserved shame, ever since the Marchesino's stratagem on the preceding night. Although she was gay and fearless, she was exquisitely sensitive. Peppina's confession had roused her maidenhood to a theoretical knowledge of certain things in life, of certain cruel phases of man's selfishness and lust which, till then, she had never envisaged. The Marchesino's madness had carried her one step further. She had not actually looked into the abyss. But she had felt herself ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... really growing an old woman, but at other times I cannot believe it. I have to get up and cross the room and look at myself in the mirror, and see with my own eyes the gray hairs and the wrinkles in order to convince myself that childhood, and maidenhood, and even middle age, are all left far behind. At these times "now" appears the dream, "then" the reality; and, strangely enough, this very feeling, I am told, is one of the signs of real old age, of our nearing the land that at one time we fancied so "very far off"—farther ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... maidenhood, from among whom he was expected to make his choice, were at length seated in various constrained attitudes about the room, a dead silence fell, broken only by an occasional nervous remark from Mrs. ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... N. celibacy, singleness, single 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to consider that fact, and fit yourselves to be useful, not superfluous women. That class, by the way, is largely made up of widows, I find; so don't consider it a slur on maidenhood.' ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... mind is broadened by this kindness and self-sacrifice of the brother. She has a higher opinion of manhood, and her choice will fall all the higher up. What makes our finest girls often go through the forest of maidenhood rejecting the most promising staffs of support, and, finally, nearing the plains of spinsterhood, pick up in ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... like a choir of awakened 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 ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... given the good things of life as by right, shielded from the knowledge of evil, never facing a problem more exciting than those of Euclid. But now something began to stir in the unknown depths of her nature. For the first time in her life she had had a blow. There rose before her a vision of endless maidenhood. She saw herself as she had seen other women—uninteresting women, she had thought them. Now they seemed to her like tragedies—women whose lives did not count, either to themselves or to the world, middle-aged, somber, unrelated. To be childless, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... into Trans-Caucasia. How many died on the way from hunger and exhaustion is not known. Cholera, dysentery, and spotted fever broke out among them, and the path of their passage was lined with dead and dying. Companies of Kurds made descents upon them, taking toll of their maidenhood, but, with the Russian line to protect them at their rear, they struggled on out of the cemetery and brothel of their native country, and out of the accursed confines of that hell on earth, the Ottoman Empire, leaving behind them the murdered myriads of their ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... after examining 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
... and Ted to her, or if there had not been all the little formalities of avoiding tete a tetes and the like. They were essentials of propriety then—natural, and never viewed as prudish. Nor did it detract from the sweet dignity of maidenhood that there was none of the familiarity which breeds something one would rather not mention ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... floor, as the room clerk informed all inquirers, was always a matter of interest to the residents of the Hotel Winchester. They were an extremely picturesque pair to the eye seeking for romance and color. The child had the pure, clear cut features of the cameo type of New England maidenhood. She was always dressed in some striking combination of blue, deep blue like her eyes, with blue hair ribbons. Her good-looking young relative, with hair almost as near the color of the sun as her own, seemed ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... many periods of the past which history leaves in darkness, and tradition tells how this colony found among friendly Indians a refuge from the dangers of Roanoak Island, and how this infant grew into fair maidenhood, and was changed by the sorcery of a rejected lover into a white doe, which roamed the lonely island and bore a charmed life, and how finally true love triumphed over magic and restored her to human form,—only to result in the death ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... 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 assumed dissimulation, she warmly locks me in her arms at the very instant ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... invisible, 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 keener eyes may have noticed it months ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... alone we come once more, But bringing young ones of our brood— One boy (Salopian), and four Girls, blooming into maidenhood. ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... good my lord!" she rejoined quietly. "There is no treachery in my desire to serve Caesar in single maidenhood, or to offer thee my ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... flapping idly against 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 ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... I loathe her; but in spite of hatred, in spite of loathing, she exercises over my imagination an irresistible fascination—a fascination you can never feel in that intensity which haunts my dreams of early manhood. You knew her not a guileless, artless girl just blooming into early maidenhood. But enough of these maddening memories of the past. It were better, doubtless, that I never see her more, for in my hatred I might kill her. But mark you, Arthur, I will find my child; she is now the only tie that binds me to humanity; the only link that chains me to this mortal coil ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Lake, the which thou mightest have saved and rescued easily, but thou weenest to rescue a maid which pertaineth nothing to thee. Now look thou whether it had been greater harm of thy brother's death, or else to have suffered her to have lost her maidenhood. Then asked he him: Hast thou heard the tokens oL thy dream the which I have told to you? Yea forsooth, said Sir Bors, all your exposition and declaring of my dream I have well understood and heard. Then said the man in this black ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... rebellious, the manifest fundamental idea of the plot is to marry Elizabeth to Arran and deny "entrance and title" to the rightful Queen. It was an admirable scheme, and had Arran not become a lunatic, had Elizabeth not been "that imperial votaress" vowed to eternal maidenhood, their bridal, with the consequent loss of the Scottish throne by Mary, would have been the most fortunate of all possible events. The brethren had, in short, a perfect right to defend their creed in arms; a perfect right to change the dynasty; a perfect ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... a most exquisite, perfect flower of maidenhood. When I first saw her, she stood just so, with her open palms full of yellow jasmine. I laid my heart into them, too, my whole heart, my whole life, and every joy and ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Demeter and Kore. M. Martin ('Hist. France,' i. 63) thinks there is here a confusion between the Greek Kore (Proserpine) and Koridwen, the White Fairy, the Celtic Goddess of the Moon and also (as amongst the Greeks) of maidenhood. But this ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... 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 ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... "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 and beautiful cities, more temples adorned ...
— 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
... was in spite of the long years of trouble and disappointment! True, the first blush of maidenhood was gone, for she was only four years younger than I, but she was beautiful beyond description. Little of stature, yet perfectly moulded, her great, grey eyes still possessed their old charm, while her ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... to do with Luis' marriage?" asked Jovita, to whose maidenhood simplicity seemed befitting in spite ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... of old age Sighing and dying in the heart that fails. Ah! the cruel beauty ... how it creeps Into my home, into my waiting heart! Who am I that I wait to-night?... Alas, Where is the old content of maidenhood, The calmness and the laughter and the song, The patient hands unshaken as the needle Plied to the gentle rhythm that my lips Murmured, untroubled ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... Greuze's canvases Do you cast a glance, a smile; You are not as one of these, Yours is beauty without guile. Round your maiden brows and hair Maidenhood and Childhood met Crown and kiss you, sweet and fair, ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... or other I would succeed in breaking through that charmed circle in which she lived, in making her yield up to me the spiritual maidenhood which, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... Called up her girlhood memories, The huskings and the apple-bees, The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, Weaving through all the poor details And homespun warp of circumstance A golden woof-thread of romance. For well she kept her genial mood And simple faith of maidenhood; Before her still a cloud-land lay, The mirage loomed across her way; The morning dew, that dried so soon With others, glistened at her noon; Through years of toil and soil and care, From glossy tress to thin gray hair, All unprofaned she held apart The virgin fancies of the heart. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... that stand Warding the mightier land Yielded their maidenhood To his imperious prow. The mainland within call Lay vast and virginal: In its blue porch he stood: No more ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... 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
... Chastity personified. Parthenia is sister of Agnei'a (3 syl.), or wifely chastity, the spouse of Encra't[^e]s, or temperance. Her attendant is Er'ythre, or modesty. (Greek, parth[)e]nia, "maidenhood.")—Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... you entertain these views, keep single by all means, and never marry at all: not even to escape the infamy of old-maidenhood.' ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... now in her sixteenth year; but to all appearances she was much younger. Unlike others of her years, her cheeks did not display the bloom of maidenhood, and her countenance lacked the vivacity natural to her age. Her features wore an expression of melancholy, which was perfectly in keeping with the pallor of her cheeks, the pearly whiteness of which vied in brilliancy with the hue of ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... that searched her own for truth, She who had scorned the tempest dark and wild, Feared not the chidings of his hasty youth. And undismayed she moved to where he stood, With blushing, beauteous charms of maidenhood, And there with rapt eyes looking up to him, She told him of those visions never dim; Of that wild spirit born amid the storm Whose restless strength had swayed her fragile form. Before his own she laid her very soul, That he might there its ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... sake. Poor Mrs Morgan, though not at all a sentimental person, had hoarded up her ideal so much after the ordinary date, that it came all the harder upon her when everything thus merged into the light of common day. She walked very fast up Grange Lane, which was another habit of her maidenhood not quite in accord with the habit of sauntering acquired during the same period by the Fellow of All-Souls. When Mrs Morgan was opposite Mr Wodehouse's, she looked across with some interest, thinking of Lucy; and it shocked her greatly to see the closed shutters, which told ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... 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 ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... corruption and waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by which the pure strength of that which should be the guiding soul of every nation, the splendour of its youthful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted or cast away. You may see continually girls who have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... tempest that hath been sent upon me from heaven, and the utter marring of my person, whence it suddenly came upon me, a wretched creature! For nightly visions thronging to my maiden chamber, would entice me with smooth words: "O damsel, greatly fortunate, why dost thou live long time in maidenhood, when it is in thy power to achieve a match the very noblest? for Jupiter is fired by thy charms with the shaft of passion, and longs with thee to share in love. But do not, my child, spurn away from thee the couch of Jupiter; but go forth to Lerna's fertile mead, to ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... catastrophes—cheap, mustard-coloured, half attic, half studio, curiously ornamented with silver paper stars, Welshwomen's hats, and rosaries pendent from the gas brackets. As for Florinda's story, her name had been bestowed upon her by a painter who had wished it to signify that the flower of her maidenhood was still unplucked. Be that as it may, she was without a surname, and for parents had only the photograph of a tombstone beneath which, she said, her father lay buried. Sometimes she would dwell upon the size of it, and rumour had it that Florinda's father had died from the growth of his bones ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... pewter, and her wrists and ankles are gay with hoops of painted shell-lac; and even she stains her eyelids with lampblack, and tinges her nails with henna. Much lovelier was our pretty ayah in her maidenhood, when her dainty bosom was decked with shells and sweet-scented flowers, and her raven hair lighted up with sprays of the Indian jasmine, which first she had offered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... her life; how, oft she stood, Sweet in her guileless maidenhood, By dying bed, in hovel lone, Whose sorrow ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... conditions. To take only one instance, the colossal gold and ivory Hera of Argos, made by the chief Argive master Polyclitus, is the great goddess of the city, just as Athena is of Athens. She was represented as the bride of Zeus, who annually renewed her maidenhood at the great Argive festival of the divine marriage; and we cannot doubt that Polyclitus expressed in this statue, which was hardly less famous than the masterpieces of Phidias, all the essential features of the great religious ideals that underlay this primitive ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... Elizabeth, the vain, 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 gratified and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... flowing curls, and impossible draperies sprawled among the pictures in the big Bible, and who excited her wonder as much by their garments as their turkey-wings and brandishing arms. So she betook herself to pets, and growing up to the old-maidenhood of thirty-five before her father fell asleep, was by that time the centre of a little world of her own,—hens, chickens, squirrels, cats, dogs, lambs, and sundry transient guests of stranger kind; so that, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... first maidens' fire to-morrow! All ye 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
... firm knowledge of her own mind, being now a loving and reasonable woman. It was just a year since she had saved the life of Robin; and patience, and loneliness, and opposition, had enlarged and ennobled her true and simple heart. No lord in the land need have looked for a purer or sweeter example of maidenhood than this daughter of a Yorkshire farmer was, in her simple dress, and with the dignity of love. The glen was beginning to bestrew itself with want of light, instead of shadows; and bushy places thickened ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 challenged before his own children—it would be the beginning ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... and much disordered as to one's wardrobe. Hearing my voice uplifted in entreaty as I was carried by them, they had nobly responded; and, because of the impulse of the throng, which accorded to frail maidenhood what was denied to stalwart masculinity, they had succeeded in reaching ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... death with parted lips he stood, And well content at such a price to see That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood, The marvel of that pitiless chastity, Ah! well content indeed, for never wight Since Troy's young shepherd prince had seen ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... of Pennicote that in the course of looking at things from every point of view, he looked at Gwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant marriage. Why should he be expected to differ from his contemporaries in this matter, and wish his niece a worse end of her charming maidenhood than they would approve as the best possible? It is rather to be set down to his credit that his feelings on the subject were entirely good-natured. And in considering the relation of means to ends, it would have been mere folly to have been guided by the exceptional ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... maidenhood," I said, "was Aurelia Gualandi. There upon your handkerchief I read her initials, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... impudently over-pressing in their solicitations to male strangers. While they were not as yet either aweary or habituated to the necessity of importunity, they remembered their girlhood and their ladyhood, their youth and their modesty, and still carried with them something of the bashfulness of maidenhood; and the young men, the wether lambs, were as yet flush with their half-crowns, and the elder sheep had not quite dispensed the last of their sovereigns or buttoned up their trousers pockets. But as the work went on, and the dust arose, and the prettinesses ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... his eyes—the pity, the indignation, the wonder that this exquisitely refined specimen of maidenhood should be bent to such base uses—shone in them and stopped her. The colour rose to her face and her eyes grew faintly troubled, then a proud light flashed ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils. And, as the old swain said, she can unlock The clasping charm, and thaw the numbing spell, If she be right invoked in warbled song; For maidenhood she loves, and will be swift To aid a virgin, such as was herself, In hard-besetting need. This will I try, And add the power of some ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... comeliness increased, though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars of the patio, and binding them in rings ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... ruin of those she loves. I cannot remember the time when I did not love the only man for whom I ever entertained any affection. He was the playmate of my earliest years,—the betrothed of my young maidenhood,—and just before my poor father died, he joined our hands and left his blessing on my choice. Poverty was the only barrier to our union, but I took a situation as teacher, and hoarded my small gains in the hope of aiding my lover, who went abroad with a wealthy uncle, and completed ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... childhood, except with her old comrade Harry. Between them there was not a moment's shyness. They were as friendly, as intimate as formerly, though with a perceptible difference of manner. Bessie had the simple graces of happy maidenhood, and Harry had the courteous reserve of good society to which his university honors and pleasant humor had introduced him. He was a very acceptable companion wherever he went, because his enjoyment of life was so thorough as to be almost ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... have such a delicate little figure flitting through it, that it passed like a smile from the grimy old houses and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker, sterner than before, there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels of the law; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... fringed with fatal serpents, and fastened with Gorgonian cold, turning men to stone; physically, the lightning and hail of chastisement by storm. Then in her fortitude she wears the crested and unstooping hemlet;** and lastly, in her temperance, she is the queen of maidenhood—stainless as the air ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... 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." ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... fine sheep's wool, and protected from the cold by bright blue coverlets's, lay a graceful, lovely girl asleep; this was Rhodopis' granddaughter, Sappho. The rounded form and delicate figure seemed to denote one already in opening maidenhood, but the peaceful, blissful smile could only belong to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... The witch carried Rannapuura away to her horrible abode, which was in a rock beneath a lofty mountain ridge in Ingermanland. Here the poor child was compelled to pass ten years of her life. But notwithstanding her hard servitude to the witch, she grew up to maidenhood, and no maiden in the whole world was so fair as she. As the dawn shines ruddy on the borders of the horizon at daybreak and promises fine weather, so shone her gentle face in quiet restfulness, and her eyes proclaimed the angel ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... 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 ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... had much ado 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
... that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known, the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the "Per-rairie Rose." Being one of those who contend resolutely against their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and struggles, had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte |
