"Old maid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... might understand that though I might choose to be an old maid, I could never marry anybody ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... heart is doom'd to melt; Love is a passion that will be felt; And just when scandal was making free To hint "What a pretty old maid she'd be,"— Little Min-Ne, Who but she? Married Ho-Ho of the Golden Belt! A man, I must own, of bad reputation, And low in purse, though high in station,— A sort of Imperial poor relation, Who rank'd as the Emperor's ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... thousands of women in this country believe that if two people look in a mirror at the same time, or if one thanks the other for a pin, or if one gives a knife or a sharp instrument to a friend, it will break up friendship. If a young lady is presented with a thimble, she will be an old maid. Some people think that after leaving a house it is unlucky to go back after any article which has been forgotten, and, if one is obliged to do so, one should sit down in a chair before going out again; that if a broom touches a person while ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Some are so selfish as to be unwilling to part with their daughter, preferring their own happiness to hers. Others are so silly as to think no ordinary man good enough for her, and therefore, if they had their own way, would have her to become an old maid. Fortunately, such shortsighted ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... young man died and he outlived Robert, Mellor Park would be his; they would and must return, in spite of certain obstacles, to their natural rank in society, and Marcella must of course be produced as his daughter and heiress. When his wife repulsed him, he went to his eldest sister, an old maid with a small income of her own, who happened to be staying with them, and was the only member of his family with whom he was now on terms. She was struck with his remarks, which bore on family pride, a commodity ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so simple now. Nobody was left but Arthur Gatty. She had just got to make up her mind about him—which would take a little time—and then—either she was a happy married woman or, said Aggie, coyly, a still happier old maid in ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... face was a study for Hogarth, who alone could have painted the alto tone of voice as it proceeded from his round O of a mouth. "Susette shall remain upon my hands an old maid for the term of her natural life if you dispute the confection ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... d'une fileuse," corrected the little biologist, who was beginning to regain a trace of his usual energy. "Like an old maid's heart!" ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... While we are on the subject of the middle-aged woman, it may be well to mention a phenomenon sometimes noticed in the early forties. Often an "old maid" who has considered herself settled for life in her bachelor estate, suddenly takes to herself a husband. (I use the verb advisedly!) Mothers who have thought their child-bearing days long past sometimes find themselves pregnant. "The child of her old age" is not an uncommon ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... he gazed on a town by besiegers taken, Nor cared he who were winning; But he saw an old maid, for years forsaken, Get up and leave her spinning; 80 And she looked in her glass, and to one that did pass, She said—"pray are the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Bonanni had no intention of staying, and now went away rather abruptly, after nodding to her old maid, unseen by Margaret, as if there were some understanding between them, for the woman answered the signal with an unmistakable ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... add, that a friend, whose early days were spent in Sheffield, has told, me (since the Query was proposed) that he has heard his mother tell some legend of "the fat Miss Ludlum." After all, therefore, the proverb may be founded on a fat old maid and her fat poodle. I can hardly, then, deem my ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... in yaller, pink, and blue— Poor old maid! Dressed in yaller, pink, and blue, I'm just as sweet as the morning dew, And to a husband I'd stick like ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... of her; and a-wundern what she done That all her sisters kep' a gittin' married, one by one, And her without no chances—and the best girl of the pack— An old maid, with her hands, you might say, tied behind her back! And Mother, too, afore she died, she ust to jes' take on, When none of 'em was left, you know, but Evaline and John, And jes' declare to goodness 'at the young men must be bline To ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... dress, and had those dresses well made, nature with her was satisfied. It was the same with the children. Charlotte never rebuked her father with the prospect of their future poverty, nor did it seem to grieve her that she was becoming an old maid so quickly; her temper was rarely ruffled, and, if we might judge by her appearance, she was always happy. The signora was not so sweet-tempered, but she possessed much enduring courage; she seldom complained—never, indeed, to her family. Though she had a cause for affliction which would ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... now—friendship! There's as much difference between that and love as there is between a photographic copy of a Tintoretto and the original Tintoret itself. When I think of any other man getting Patricia Moore, a link seems to drop right out of my spine. Yet she's not born for an old maid. Love and a "happy ending" for her story ought to be attached to her like a label. If I can't work to get her, some one else will. Caspian is doing it already, but in spite of the money I don't think she'd ever take him: her instinct finds truth as the needle finds the pole. Three boys are also ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... board at the same place—with Angelique Larideau Gillespie, "Mis' Deac'n Gillespie." She is Canadian-French and the only woman on the island who can cook any other way than frying. The bad little hotel is closing. She was so merry and footloose and free, Michael! That's exactly the sort of old maid ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... difficult to bear that condition to which we are not condemned by necessity, but induced by observation and choice; and therefore I, perhaps, have never yet felt all the malignity with which a reproach, edged with the appellation of old maid, swells some of those hearts in which it is infixed. I was not condemned in my youth to solitude, either by indigence or deformity, nor passed the earlier part of life without the flattery of courtship, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... thought to see her again, but last voyage I was promoted, and the new boat was not yet launched, so I had to wait for a couple of months with my people at Sydenham. One day out in a country lane I met Theresa Wright, her old maid. She told me all about her, about him, about everything. I tell you, gentlemen, it nearly drove me mad. This drunken hound, that he should dare to raise his hand to her, whose boots he was not worthy to lick! I met Theresa again. Then I met Mary herself—and met her ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... to put forward as men; for with very few exceptions he knew they were heroes of the divided skirt. To him Deronda was an incarnation of woman's rights; Tito an 'improper female in breeches'; Silas Marner a good, perplexed old maid, of the kind of whom it is said that they have 'had a disappointment.' And Lydgate alone had aught of the true male ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... but from all the complaints Henny Pace has made of her, I know she must be charming. When Henny gives a boarder a good character, I know without meeting her that she is some spineless old maid who is afraid to call her soul her own, or that she is a hypocrite like me who wants peace at any price. Now she tells me that Miss Kean is head-strong, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... hearing things—seeing things—and after a while I did get hardened—and ceased to be revolted. I learned to look upon all that sort of thing as a matter of course. But it was too late then. I had lost what little looks I had ever possessed. I grew to look like an old maid long before I was thirty. Why is nature so ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and more worn and fatigued. A woman at thirty, well courted and well married, looks five or ten years younger than a woman of the same age unhappily married. Old maids and bachelors always look older {120} than they are. A flirting widow always looks younger than an old maid of like age. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... early to rise" was the only way to be "healthy, wealthy, or wise!" Aunt Faith, who had never quite forgiven our young heroine for having said, at the discreet and positive age of nine, that "she didn't see what her father and mother had called her such an ugly name for. It was a real old maid's name!" Whereupon, having asked the child what she would have preferred as a substitute, and being answered, "Well—Clotilda, I guess; or Cleopatra," Miss Henderson had told her that she was quite welcome to change it for any heathen ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... apple in order to finish it before going into the house. Now she was sitting on the sofa beside Cousin Kate, feeling very awkward and shy with her little brown fingers clasped in this stranger's soft white hand. She had heard that Cousin Kate was a very rich old maid, who had spent years abroad, studying music and languages, and she had expected to see a stout, homely woman with bushy eyebrows, like Miss Teckla Schaum, who played the church organ, and taught German in ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... racing register. He sold for sixty thousand when he was a cripple. We borrowed the use of him. She was his only get of the season. But look at her! She's got his chest and lungs. I had my choices—mares eligible for the register. Her dam wasn't eligible, but I chose her. She was an obstinate old maid, but she was the one mare for Big Chief. This is her first foal and she was eighteen years old when she bred. But I knew it was there. All I had to do was to look at Big Chief and her, and it just had to ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... to be married for at least five weeks," said Patty, with an upward glance peculiar to her own sparkling face,—one that always intoxicated Mark. "I am seventeen and a half; your father couldn't expect a confirmed old maid like me to waste any more time. But I never would do this—this—sudden, unrespectable thing, if there was any other way. Everything depends on my keeping it secret from Waitstill, but she doesn't suspect anything ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one of those who are quite willing to wait patiently. If the one I want doesn't come—why, I'll be a jolly, philosophical old maid. No seconds or culls for me, as the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... are so foolish," said the Old Maid; "they run after what glitters, and do not see the gold until it is too late. At first they are all eyes ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... "Yes; a pinched old maid in a black dress. None will marry her for her acres. It will be a pre sale with a vengeance. I caught a glimpse of her as we came out of harbour. I did not see the other, who is young—her niece, I understand. There she is, coming on deck now—the heiress, I mean. She will not look her best ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... back to me in sleep, and when I wake and think of myself as I am, I know not why I do not die of it. Oh, Hannah, if you have dreamed of marriage, give it up. Live your life out as you are. Die a dear, sweet, good, old maid, teaching little children and being kind to them and taking care of your old mother. Oh, my dear, don't call yourself lonely. Don't dare to say it, lest you should be punished. There is no loneliness that a woman can know which can be compared ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... more babies borned and men will get they noses rubbed in their plates, if they don't eat the awful truck she is er going to teach the women to cook for their husbands. An' the men won't marry no more then at all, and I'll have to be a old maid like her." ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in her own problems. She had suddenly decided that she was going to be an old maid, and it bothered her. She had discovered that she did not like any one well enough to marry, and she was ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... there leans an old maid. She plucks the withered leaf from the balsam, and looks at the grass-covered rampart, on which many children are playing. What is the old maid thinking of? A whole life drama is unfolding itself before ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... how does your lady? Gad, I say anything in the world to get this fellow out of my head. I beg pardon that I should ask a man of pleasure and the town a question at once so foreign and domestic. But I talk like an old maid at a marriage, I don't know what I say: but she's the best woman ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... tries you out for a tie-up or a kidnapping; and Benjie Doolittle, who likes a sporting event, takes a chance that you'll stand hitched in a plan to rid the community of a political pest without seriously hurting the pest—a friendless old maid who won't be missed for a day or two, and whose disappearance can be hushed up one way or another after she appears too late ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... finished supper and were drinking our "tay," Mrs. O'Shaughnessy told our fortunes with the tea-leaves. She told mine first and said I would die an old maid. I said it was rather late for that, but she cheerfully replied, "Oh, well, better late than niver." She predicted for Mrs. Louderer that she should shortly catch a beau. "'T is the next man you see that will come coortin' ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... perceive that their conditions were hopeless. Her daughter Augusta had explained to her that there was no chance remaining either for Phineas, or for Lord Fawn, or for Mr. Appledom. "I believe she will be an old maid, on purpose to bring me to my grave," said Lady Baldock. When, therefore, Lady Baldock was told one day that Lord Chiltern was in the house, and was asking to see Miss Effingham, she did not at once faint away, and declare ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... cruel Lady J-,{20} Regret the golden Ball. Tis useless now:—"the fox and grapes" Remember, and avoid the apes Which wait an old maid's fall. Gay lady ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... credit to me, I just can't help it. I'd have a fit if they weren't all nice and in order. And if that means I'm going to be an old maid, I can't help it,—and ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. For these latter, the only elements ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... No old maid ever held her ears so wide open. But I could hear nothing but a murmur of angry argument from the Countess and a murmur of gentle objection from Lady Mary. I was in possession of an ideal place from which to overhear conversation. Almost every important conversation ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... in a neat little cottage owned by an old maid, who took great pride in making everything shine. The paymaster of one of our battalions and I had a cheerful home there when the poor old lady fled. Her home however did not long survive her absence, ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... Eden—come, Anstace is to read this, so will I leave Lettice to conceive for herself what should have followed. Both she and Aubrey shall read well enough betwixt the lines. And Joyce Morrell, that thought once to be—what she is not— is an humdrum old maid, I trust a bit useful as to cooking and stitchery and the like, and on whom God hath put a mighty charge of His gold and goods to minister for Him,—but nought nearer than cousins to give her love, though that do they most rarely, and God bless their hearts therefor. My best treasures be in ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... For he'd made up his mind he'd be wed varry sooin; An he went to ax Jenny his wife for to be, But shoo sed, "Nay, aw'll ne'er wed a hawbuck like thee, Thi legs luk too lanky, Thi heead is too cranky, Its better bi th' hawf an old maid aw ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... repressed, and I return to my carriage, swearing to die an old maid. Love is undoubtedly an incarnation, and how many conditions are needful before it can take place! We are not certain of never quarreling with ourselves, how much less so when there are two? This is a problem which God ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... it? You don't like me to talk about gentlemen? What a queer girl you are, Emily! Why, you're not settling down to be an old maid at your ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... "An Old Maid's Paradise" is a bright little sketch of the adventures and misadventures of a woman who builds a cottage on Cape Ann promontory for five hundred dollars, and settles down to a joyful existence without any need of aid or comfort from living man except as a purveyor and burglar-alarm. Every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... see for her actin' that way. Outside of her clothes, she wa'n't such a freak. That is, she wa'n't deformed, or anything like that. She wa'n't even wrinkled or gray haired; though how she kept from growin' that way I couldn't figure out. I put it down that her lonesome, old maid existence must have struck in and paralyzed ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Mehitable had replied. "I suppose I won't really sense that I'm an old maid until there's ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... waited for him all these years. She had been sought after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... my brother. And oh, Steven, forgive me, but I'm so happy. [Hugging the pillows on the sofa and burying her face in them.] Don't let me be silly—don't let me forget I'm an old maid,—and there's no fool like an old fool! I mustn't forget there's probably an orange or two among the ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... nurse and she; an old coachman; and a pair of old coach-horses; and two or three old maid-servants, and perhaps a very old footman or two, (for every thing will be old and penitential about her,) live very comfortably together; reading old sermons, and old prayer-books; and relieving old men and old women; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Miss Wilhelmina. "My ideas of comfort are always associated with wealth. I maintain, that no one can really be comfortable without it. What should I be, without money? An antiquated, despised old maid—and with all my expensive habits, and queer notions, the very boys in the village would hold me in derision. For even boys know the importance of money, and let me pass unmolested through the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... better, and that's exactly why she said it. She intended to let me know where she was going, thinking it would break my heart. She admits she is bent on getting married, and says she knows I'll live and die an old maid. She hates me, Alfred; with all her soul she hates me. She will never rest satisfied till she sees me plumb down and out. It all started through no fault of mine, too. You remember that young preacher, Mr. Wrenn, that ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... of personality, are often cruelly ironical. Many a man, incapable by nature of life-long devotion to one woman, becomes a husband in half an hour, duly sanctioned by Church and State. A woman who remains unmarried, because, with fine courage, she will have her true mate or none, is called "an old maid." She may have the heart of a wife and the soul of a mother, but she cannot escape her sinister label. The real "old maids" are of both sexes, and many are married, but ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... most men are perfectly frank, and it's about the only one on which it isn't necessary to be. There's never any use trying to hide the fact that you're a jim-dandy—you're bound to be found out. Of course, you want to have your eyes open all the time for a good man, but follow the old maid's example—look under the bed and in the closet, not in the mirror, for him. A man who does big things is too busy to talk about them. When the jaws ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... was inhabited by poor people, the poorest of whom looked out from the garret, where, outside the little window, hung in the sunshine an old, dented bird-cage, which had not even a common cage-glass, but only the neck of a bottle inverted, with a cork below, and filled with water. An old maid stood near the open window; she had just been putting some chickweed into the cage, wherein a little linnet was hopping from perch to perch, and singing until ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... these confidences of her sister's; but not very successfully. Madge clung to her. Lady Beresford would not be bothered. Edith was busy with her own affairs. But Nan—old Mother Nan—who had nothing to think of but other people, might as well begin and play the old maid at once, and give counsel in ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... better order, he sat down to dinner upon the Wednesday preceding the appointed day, with his worthy aide-de-camp, Mr. Meiklewham; and after bestowing a few muttered curses upon the whole concern, and the fantastic old maid who had brought him into the scrape, by begging an invitation, declared that all things might now go to the devil their own way, for so sure as his name was John Mowbray, he would trouble ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... use of living when I know that I shall be an old maid? We shall all be old maids. What's the use of being pretty, either, when Violet, though she be but a bag of bones, has got the Marquis? I have been out two seasons now, and nothing has come of all the trying. And yet I was the belle of the season, wasn't I, Alice?' And now, looking ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... in her life. If she had, she wouldn't be a poor miserable old maid at this moment. What's that coming they're making such a noise about? My God, Ben, if it ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... her, or to find her writing verses at her toilet table surrounded with pamphlets of every kind and with notes on tinted paper? If there were none but wise men upon earth such a woman would die an old maid. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... dress might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... "Why, that's the 'Old Maid's Kitchen,'" said Mrs. Evans, when she arrived on the scene. "I've been here before. Just why it should be called the Old Maid's Kitchen is more than I can tell, for it looks like the fireplace belonging to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... radish, which is troublesome in parts of New England; the wild carrot, which infests the fields in eastern New York; and the live-forever, which thrives and multiplies under the plow and harrow. In my section an annoying weed is abutilon, or velvet-leaf, also called "old maid," which has fallen from the grace of the garden and followed the plow afield. It will manage to mature its seeds if not ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... who knows the secret of that only philter which can intoxicate and bewitch him. He had forgot that there are certain Jacks who go through life without meeting the Jill appointed for them by Nemesis, and die old bachelors, perhaps, with poor Jill pining an old maid upon the other side of the party-wall. He forgot that love, which is a madness, and a scourge, and a fever, and a delusion, and a snare, is also a mystery, and very imperfectly understood by everyone except the individual sufferer who writhes under its tortures. Jones, who is wildly ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... love! O cunning love! An old maid to trepan: I cannot go about my work For loving of a man. I cannot bake, I cannot brew, And, do the best I can, I burn the bread and chill the mash, Through loving ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... like any old maid with that cat. 'Kitty!' here and 'Kitty!' there; and 'Poor Kitty, did I forget to warm its milk?' And so on. It was give to him two years ago by Jeff Tuttle's littlest girl, Irene; and he didn't want it at first, but him and Irene is great friends, so he pretended he was crazy ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... has gone crazy," he muttered; "anyway this little snipe of a village has. Why can't they let a fellow alone? I don't want them to look after me, and I don't feel in need of their interference either. I never saw such a time; I can't turn in any direction but some old maid will ask me something stupid; and the girls are as bad, and the boys ...
— Sunshine Factory • Pansy
... and her cockatoo lived on her wages; and all the tips added up, and never spent, year after year, went to swell a very comfortable little account at interest in the Birkbeck Bank. This little account had mounted up to a very tidy sum, and the thrifty widow—or old maid—no one ever knew which she was—was generally referred to by the young artists of the Rubens Studios as a 'lady of means.' But ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... very much of the twentieth century, and were not going to bear with a dull old maid, merely because she was their aunt and had been kind to them. As one of them expressed it, "Never put yourself out for a relation, however ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... crossed Jessie's face like a ripple on still water. Her voice mimicked his. "Why do you want to saw off an old maid on that two-fisted man you've knew ever since he was knee-high to a grasshopper? What did he ever do to you that was ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... this statement the Confessions of an Old Maid who might have done better. She closes her testimony with an acknowledgment that she "ought to be grateful and humble," and the "hope, through the grace of God, to rise more above the world, to attain a higher and happier state of ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... she said, smiling, "to tempt me to betray my cousin's secrets, if she had any, but candidly I must admit that as yet I know none. It is a strange fancy, but I often think Ellen will be an old maid." ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... was talkin' with her after prayer meetin' the other night. 'You wouldn't know the brick house, Sarah,' says Jane. 'I'm keepin' a sewin' school, an' my scholar has made three dresses. What do you think o' that,' says she, 'for an old maid's child? I've taken a class in Sunday-school,' says Jane, 'an' think o' renewin' my youth an' goin' to the picnic with Rebecca,' says she; an' mother declares she never see her look ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... been different from what they are apparently becoming,' he said then, regarding her as a stall-reader regards the brilliant book he cannot afford to buy. 'But one gets weary of repining about that. I wish Picotee and yourself could see us oftener; I am as confirmed a bachelor now as Faith is an old maid. I wonder if—should the event you contemplate occur—you and he will ever visit us, or we shall ever ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... not!" answered he, laughing loudly, as he sprang over the sofa, and set his back against the door. "Come, come, you Will-o'-the-Wisp, as full of flights, and fancies, and vagaries, as a sick old maid! can't you see which side your bread is buttered? Sit down, I say! Don't you know that I'm as good-natured a fellow as ever lived, although I do parade a little Gil Bias morality now and then, just for fun's sake? ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... is feigned to be thrown over its shoulder. At times it is wreathed in stony flowers. The only variety is in the form. Sometimes your urn is broad and squat, a Silenus among urns; sometimes fragile and high-shouldered, like a slender old maid; here an "out-size" in urns stalwart and strong, and there a dwarf peeping quaintly from its wrapping. The obelisks, too, run through a long scale of size and refinement. But the curious man finds no hidden connection between the carriage of the monument ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... uncomfortable. Lured away by a prettier face, you left her to pass through life, unblessed by that love which every female heart craves, and for which no kindred love will compensate. It was your faithlessness that left her to walk, with repining spirit, the flinty path of the old maid. ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... gossip. Quietly and with a fine casualness he conveyed the whole picture of the new order at Temple Barholm. He did it with wonderfully light touches, and yet the whole thing was to be seen — the little old maid in her exquisite clothes, her unmistakable stamp of timid good breeding, her protecting adoration combined with bewilderment; the long, lean, not altogether ill-looking New York bounder, with his slight slouch, his dangerously unsophisticated-looking face, and ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... livelier fire, (With animation) To roast a Papist by, my gracious Sire!— But ah! the Evidence—(weeps again) I mourned to see— Cast as it burned, a deadly light on thee: And Tales and Hints their random sparkles flung, And hissed and crackled, like an old maid's tongue; While Post and Courier, faithful to their fame, Made up in stink for what they lackt in flame. When, lo, ye Gods! the fire ascending brisker, Now singes one now lights the other whisker. Ah! where was then the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Farmer's Boy has gone to the city to see his old maid aunt," said Granddaddy Bullfrog with a grin. "He won't throw stones at me ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... but that he should speak up and not be afraid of them. There were lots of fellows came after her. You remember Blinks, of the Carabineers. He was full of money, and he asked her three times. She is an old maid to this day, and is living as companion ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... once, an old maid now, deposed, despised, forgotten — I, like them have thrilled with passion and have dreamed of nuptial rest, Of the trembling life within me of my children unbegotten, Of a breathing new-born body to my yearning bosom prest, Of the rapture of a little soft ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... Road was quite a small house—forty pounds a year perhaps, and Miss Belford was a more attractive person than I expected to find. I don't know why, but I had expected to see a typical old maid; instead of which I was met by a young woman who had considerable claims to beauty. She opened the door herself, her maid being out, and was astonished when I said the Vicar of ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... lot with a stout heart, like any other brave man," says he. "There are natural hardships which every man must bear in his time, and this is one of them." Then lowering his voice, he adds, "Unless you would have her die an old maid, she and her father must ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... where you will find another couple; for you must not fancy that yours is the only wedding on which to-day's sun is to shine. A young clown, finding his time wear heavily in the house with an ugly old maid, for want of something better to do, did what makes the booby now think himself bound in honour to transform her into his wife. By this time they must both be already dressed, so let us not miss the sight; for doubtless, it will be a ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... myself," said I, "after I came to notice her particularly. There's an old maid at home who's charitable, and belongs to the Cruelty to Animals, and she never knows whether she had better cross in front of a street car or wait. I named the hen after her. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... whither they were going. And he, too, did not know whither he was going. His house rose before his imagination—six big rooms, where he lived alone. Aunt Anfisa had gone to the cloister, perhaps never to return—she might die there. At home were Ivan, the old deaf dvornik, the old maid, Sekleteya, his cook and servant, and a black, shaggy dog, with a snout as blunt as that of a sheat-fish. And the ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... much as you do, Eben Megg," cried the boy, laughing. "Just as much as everyone else does who lives here. Didn't our old maid come in scared one night after a holiday and walking across from Rockabie and go into a fit because she had seen, as she said, a whole regiment of ghosts walking over the moor, leading ghostly horses, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... should be kept in perfect ignorance of Evellin's rank, but since it seemed prudent to increase the number of living witnesses of his identity, Mrs. Mellicent was admitted into their counsels. Though a woman, and an old maid, she belonged to that extraordinary class of people who can keep a secret; and I must do her the justice to say, that she never directly or indirectly betrayed her trust. And whenever she reproved the girls for ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... enough to jaw Jabe Slocum. I b'lieve it's nothin' in the world but them children! They keep a runnin' after me, 'n' it's dear Samanthy here, 'n' dear Samanthy there, jest as if I warn't a hombly old maid; 'n' they take holt o' my hands on both sides o' me, 'n' won't stir a step tell I go to see the chickens with 'em, 'n' the pig, 'n' one thing 'n' 'nother, 'n' clappin' their hands when I make 'em gingerbread ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... then said, "Mary, do you mind when I was here last harvest, and the talk we had about Gilbert? I've often thought on it since, and how I guessed right for once't, for I know the ways o' men, if I am an old maid, and so it's come out as I said, and a finer couple than they'll make can't be found in ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... leave at different places, and I was in a hurry to go to the roller skating rink, so I got my chum to help me, and we just took the numbers of the houses, and when we rung the bell we would hand out the first package we come to, and I understand there was a good deal of complaint. One old maid who ordered powder for her face, her ticket drew some worm lozengers, and she kicked awfully, and a widow who was going to be married, she ordered a celluloid comb and brush, and she got a nursing bottle ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... sober, proper, dignified, religious old maid unused to children, listened in frozen amazement and paralyzed silence. She decided to put the child to bed at once that she might collect her thoughts, and lay some plans for the rearing of this sadly ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... really she can very well afford to wait, and will too, take my word. Living down in an out-step place like this, I am sure she ought to be very thankful that you took notice of her. She'd most likely have died an old maid ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether superior to him in the article of cider. 'But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,' Farmer Cloysey would say, when Miss Le Smyrger expressed this opinion of her art in a manner too defiant. 'Yeu pays no rent, or yeu couldn't do it.' Miss Le Smyrger was an old maid, with a pedigree and blood of her own, a hundred and thirty acres of fee-simple land on the borders of Dartmoor, fifty years of age, a constitution of iron, and an opinion of her own on every subject under ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... "I do not know. I am not old, but I am not sure that I would not rather marry him than be an old maid." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... returned Rosemary, pensively, "that an old maid is a woman who never could have married and a spinster is merely one ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... she went on, staring drearily at the shadowy corner of the room beyond her. "That women have something to sell, or give away, and the question is just how much each one can get for it! That's what makes the most insignificant married woman feel superior to the happiest and richest old maid. She says to herself, 'I've made my market. Somebody chose me!' That's what motherhood and homemaking rest on: the whole world is just one great big question of sex, spinning away in space! And even after a woman is married, she still plays with sex; she likes to ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... of good family could no longer count on a dot if the war lasted much longer. Then there was the decrease in men. Better go out into the world and make any sort of respectable career than be an old maid at home. She gave them much practical advice, told them that one of the most lucrative employments was retouching photographs, and implored them to cultivate any talent they might have and market ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Hands Around Grandmother's Choice Garfield's Monument Gentleman's Fancy Handy Andy Hands All Around Hobson's Kiss Indian Plumes Indian Hatchet Jack's House Joseph's Necktie King's Crown Lady Fingers Ladies' Wreath Ladies' Delight Mary's Garden Mrs. Cleveland's Choice Old Maid's Puzzle Odd Fellows' Chain Princess Feather President's Quilt Sister's Choice The Tumbler The Hand The Priscilla Twin Sisters Vice-President's Quilt Widower's Choice Washington's ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... They played "Old Maid" deliberately, solemnly. After a time, Mavis had a strong suspicion that Miss Nippett was cheating in order that Mr Poulter might win; also, that Mr Poulter was manoeuvring the cards so that Mavis might not be declared ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... second act David the apprentice tells Magdalene, Eva's nurse, that the new singer did not succeed, at which she is honestly grieved, preferring the gallant younker for her mistress, to the old and ridiculous clerk. The old maid loves David; she provides him with food and sweets and many are the railleries which he has to suffer from his companions ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... it, and you didn't do it, which is more. You supposed I didn't know. Men may be blind as bats—they usually are; and our Brown is worse than the commonality. But trust an old maid for spying out a love secret. It's like exploring a strange land for her, you know. Lord! Miss Carry, you can't keep a secret from Eliza Casey; but then, why should you? Isn't she bound to be your staunch ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... been days when I haven't talked to a soul, except the nurse and the chambermaid. Lonesome! Say, the amount of petting I could stand would surprise you. Of course, my nurse was a perfectly good nurse—at twenty-five per. But I was just a case to her. You can't expect a nurse to ooze sympathy over an old maid with the fever. I tell you I was dying to have some one say 'Sh-sh-sh!' when there was a noise, just to show they were interested. Whenever I'd moan the nurse would come over and stick a thermometer ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... her head. "When an old man marries a girl," she said, "she just leads him wherever she wants him to go, and he gives up everything to her, and when an old man marries a tough and seasoned and smoked old maid like Maria Port, she just drives him wherever she wants him to go, and he hasn't nothin' to say about it. It looks as if she told him to come in this mornin', and he's gone. It may be for a weddin', or it may be for somethin' else, but whatever it is, it'll be ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... made her turn, and, looking up, she saw the gaunt figure of Miss Amelia Peterborough standing in the bend of the staircase. In her hand the old maid held a twisted candlestick of greenish brass, and the yellow flame of the candle cast a trembling, fantastic shadow on the wall at her back. Her head, shorn of the false "front" she wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... present. But she bears her pain with great fortitude. Yesterday the English ambassador was paying her a visit of condolence, and as he was expressing his sympathy, the archduchess interrupted him with a laugh. 'Believe me,' said she, 'for a princess of forty, who is an old maid, even a hole in her own cheek is a godsend. Nothing that varies the dull uniformity of my life comes amiss.'" [Footnote: The archduchess's own words. See "Courts of Europe at the Close of the Last Century," by Henry Swinburne, vol. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... chronometer and require the education of an expert who has lived among their intricacies for many months in order to control their vagaries and doctor their ills, which, if not chronic, are as varied as those of an old maid of sixty. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... but couldn't dig it up. We was still on the subject when in floats Daughter. She's one of these nice, sweet, sensible lookin' girls, almost vergin' on the old maid. She'd just come home from her school. The case was explained to her; but she don't remember ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... seemed of every complexion and country, from groups of tourists in the latest fashion to a couple of long-robed Parsees, with their funny little caps perched above their black polls. Bess indicated another passer-by, and said in a low tone, "What an old maid of a man!" and certainly, with his straight gown, and a high comb stuck up in his back hair which was coiled into a tight knot, the dark-skinned fellow did strongly ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... broken nail, and she continued lame during the remainder of the night. In making an apology to her for his want of dexterity, and assuring her that he was not so awkward in handling the enemies of his country in battle as in handling friends he esteemed in a dance, he gave no quarter to an old maid aunt, whom, in the violence of his gesticulation, he knocked down with his elbow and laid sprawling on the ground. He was sober when these accidents ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... do you think? A mouse ran under the kitchen sink. The old maid chased it With dustpan and broom And kicked it and knocked it Right out of ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... old maid before I'll ever face another creature like that!" vowed Gyp, and Pat echoed ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... full minute without speaking. Their expectations had matured. At last they were to come into something in return for nothing. Aunt Lispeth, who had latterly lived at Ipswich in a house which he had just not built for her, was an old maid. They had often discussed what she would leave them—though in no mean or grasping spirit, for they did not grudge the 'poor old girl' her few remaining years, however they might feel that she was long past enjoying herself. The chance would come to them some time, and when it did ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... could I do. When a woman is alone and has no children—and I was married such a short time—do you know what I am, after all? Simply an old maid, and like all ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey, and Zephaniah Pennel, are incomparably good. Each affords matter enough for a long dissertation on New England and human character. Miss Roxy, especially, is the typical old maid of Yankee-land, and is so thoroughly lovable, in spite of her idiom, her crusty manners, and her eccentricities, that the only wonder is that she should have been allowed to remain single. But the same wonder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stage with childlike exultation. "I go to find Bondon this morning to kill him. In the train I have a sudden inspiration, a revelation from Heaven. It is not Zette but Euphemie that is the bonne amie of Bondon. I laugh, and frighten a long-toothed English old maid out of her wits. Shall I get out at Tarascon and return to Nimes and tell you, or shall I go on? I decide to go on. I make my plan. Ah, but when I make a plan, it's all in a second, a flash, pfuit! ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Science and System began to lengthen the mental and financial infancy of the men to such an extent that the "old maid" of twenty-three became common. What were the girls in the "middle class" to do while the boys were growing up to be men, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... I know it? Ain't I clean druv out my wits a-thinkin' ever'thing over, and where in the name of natur' am I goin' to do it all, with them horrid gasoline stoves no bigger'n an old maid's thimble, and Pasqually gone off s'archin' with the rest, and no'count the heft of the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... sympathy had drawn her to Hugh. She might have had a son about his age, who had run away thirty years ago. Or rather, for she seemed an old maid, she had been jilted some time by a youth about the same size as Hugh; and therefore she loved him the moment she saw him. Or, in short, a thousand things. Certainly seldom have lodgings been let so oddly or so cheaply. But some impulse or other of the whimsical ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Sis was an old maid and lived in the country; her dog had followed her to the party. The standing of every family in those parts was rated by the number of dogs they possessed. Sis's people had stood high for many years but their canine possessions had decreased. When ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Joseph, "her's gone away. There's a little old maid as lives theer now—has been theer a ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... little time or taste for Freud. She only knew (without in the least knowing she knew) that in giving of her goods, of her affections, of her time, of her energy, she found a certain relief. Her own people would have been shocked if you had told them that there was about this old maid aunt something rather splendidly Rabelaisian. Without being at all what is known as a masculine woman she had, somehow, acquired the man's viewpoint, his shrewd value sense. She ate a good deal, and enjoyed her food. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... captain of the Delapaon, hearty and hale from twenty years of deep-sea sailing from the Java coast to Heligoland. Came Paradies, the little German trader, in his finest blacks, and chose a seat off in one corner of the room. Then "Foxy Grandpa" and the "Arizona Babe" arrived, and the old maid from Zamboanga, who, when expression failed her, would usurp the conversation with a "blab, blab, blab!" And as the serpent made for old Laocooen, so she now made for ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Uncle Tom dreadfully,—and dear old Peter, too; and Cathy and Bridget and Mary Ann. And I hate to get up at seven o'clock. And Miss Hood, who takes us out walking and teaches us composition, is such a ridiculously strict old maid—you would laugh at her. And the Sundays are terrible. Miss Turner makes us read the Bible for a whole hour in the afternoon, and reads to us in the evening. And Uncle Tom was right when he said we should have nothing but jam and bread and butter for supper: oh, yes, and cold ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... refinement and luxury more than you do. No woman has better taste, could use a large income to better advantage. And you have intelligence. You know you must have a competent husband. Yet you fritter away your opportunities. A very short time, and you'll be a worn, faded old maid, and the settled people who profess to be so fond of you will be laughing at you, and ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... to tell you a bit about myself. I am not an old maid, but, at the time this occurs, I am unmarried, and I am thirty-four years old—not quite beyond the pale of hope. Men and women never do pass beyond that—not those of sanguine temperament at any rate. I am neither ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... turned round to him, and asked him some questions about the Skald, and so, getting into conversation with him, managed to turn her shoulder to her suitor. On the other side of him sat Lady Rosina de Courcy, to whom, as being an old woman and an old maid, he felt very little inclined to be courteous. She said a word, asking him whether he did not think the weather was treacherous. He answered her very curtly, and sat bolt upright, looking forward on the table, and taking his dinner as it came to him. He had been put there in order that ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... will labour to prove that he is related to some gentleman of the Renaissance, even while he boasts of being able to "buy him up." If the Italians were really great, why—they were really Germans; and if they weren't really Germans, well then, they weren't really great. It is an occupation for an old maid. ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... good at talking. You know how I was thrown into a dungeon on Valentine's account, but no one can understand my feelings during that time. Ulrich was left alone here among this miserable rabble with nobody to care for him, for our old maid-servant was seventy. I had buried my money in a safe place and there was nothing in the house except a loaf of bread and a few small coins, barely enough to last three days. The child was always before my eyes; I saw him ragged, begging, starving. But my anxiety tortured me most, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... request that I would add mine. I looked it over and found very great names, and did not know whether to laugh or cry at her funny request, which I couldn't have made up my mouth to grant. How queer it seems to me that people won't let me be a little girl and will act as if I were an old maid or matron of ninety-nine! Poor Mr. Persico is terribly unhappy and walks up and down perpetually with such ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... solemnidad f. solemnity. soler to be accustomed. solidaridad f. solidarity, participation. solidez f. solidity. solitario solitary. solo alone; solo only; tan solo only. soltar to loosen, let go. soltero -a bachelor, unmarried person. solteron -a bachelor, old maid. sollozo sob. sombra shadow. sombrero hat. sombrio somber, gloomy. son m. sound. sonar to sound. sondear to sound. sonreir(se) to smile. sonrisa smile. sonar to dream. soplar to blow. soplo blowing, puffing. sordo deaf; secret; ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... a large girl of twenty-five or thereabouts, and was called an old maid. She radiated good nature from every line of her buxom self. Her black eyes were full of drollery, and she was on the best of terms with Howard at once. She had been a teacher, but that did not prevent her ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... or her Watteau fans. As she came towards him now with a cup in her hand, her pale face a little flushed, her dark hair braided very plainly and neatly above her high forehead, Rainham could not help thinking that she would make an adorable old maid. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... her husband, and never could love him, and that it all had been foolishness and nonsense. She had married him from interested motives, because, in the words of her school friends, he was madly rich, and because she was afraid of becoming an old maid like Rita, and because she was sick of her father, the doctor, and wanted ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... indeed Viscount Philibert de la Choue who had made all the arrangements for Pierre's sojourn in Rome. Of the ancient and once vigorous race of the Boccaneras, there now only remained Cardinal Pio Boccanera, the Princess his sister, an old maid who from respect was called "Donna" Serafina, their niece Benedetta—whose mother Ernesta had followed her husband, Count Brandini, to the tomb—and finally their nephew, Prince Dario Boccanera, whose father, Prince Onofrio, was likewise dead, and whose mother, a Montefiori, had married again. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the cardinal rules—church and work until you've landed your heiress. After that you can move back to civilisation.... Now as soon as you strike your town you want to make arrangements for board and lodging in some old woman's house—preferably an old maid. You'll be sure to find at least half a dozen of 'em, willing to take boarders, but you want to be equally sure to pick out the one that talks the most, so that she'll tell the neighbours all about you. Don't worry about that, though, they all talk. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... conspire to prevent woman from manifesting her will; they force her to wait till she is wanted. As a rule, she seizes gladly the opportunity, soon as offered, to reach the hand to the man who redeems her from the social ostracism and neglect, that is the lot of that poor waif, the "old maid." Often she looks down with contempt upon those of her sisters who have yet preserved their self-respect, and have not sold themselves into mental prostitution to the first comer, preferring to tread single the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... is again, spiritual and intellectual pride, which causes you to set yourself above your fellows, and in the end will be your ruin. It has made a lonely woman of you for years, and it will do worse than that. It will turn you into an old maid—if you live," he added, as though shaken ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Beulah's psychical gifts because she noticed two years ago that when the family was playing "Old Maid" Beulah always knew in whose hands the dangerous queen was to be found. Then they began to experiment with cards in the family circle, and her ability to know of what the mother or the sister was thinking became more and more ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... come to Arkansas 'reckly after the Civil War. They come with Mr. John and Miss Olivia Cooper. Miss Olivia was his wife, but Miss Presh was a old maid. Folks used to think it was sort of bad if a woman didn't marry. Thought she have no chances. It sort of be something like a disgrace if a woman was a old maid. Don't seem that-a-way no more. I never heard much about Miss Presh but I heard mama tell this: Grandma Mary Lea ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... blessedness. When there was cherry-tart for dinner, an alarming number of stones were secretly swallowed, in order that the person guilty of this abominable piece of sharp practice might count out, "This year—Next year—Some time—Never!" and at old maid's cards the object of the game was now reversed, and instead of trying to "go out," every one strove to remain in, the fortunate being in whose hands the "old maid" remained at the finish always brandishing the hitherto detested card with a shriek ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... think you can stand an old maid school teacher, I'll be looking for you." She was very close to him now. "Why did you do it, Terrence? Why are you making the march with the Narakans? Fielding says your chances ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... all the proposin' you've done in the last five mouths, Hull Parsons?" she demanded stormily. "You ain't asked every old maid for miles around to marry you, have you, Hull Parsons? An' you didn't tell the last one you proposed to that if she didn't take you there would be only one more chance left—that old pepper-box of a Widow Perkins? You didn't say that, now, did you, Hull Parsons?" and the widow's eyes and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... round her, and she did not hinder him, nay, for she could not. So she clung to him and let him lift up her head and kiss her eyes and then her mouth, and that not once, no, but many a time and again, and so long that I, a sixteen-year-old maid, was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
