"Maidenhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... receipts which fell to the minor members was small—but it was full of variety and sometimes of excitement. If the work did not entirely drive away the remembrance of Lancelot Vane it enabled her to look upon the romance of her early maidenhood with equanimity. Her love affair had become a regret tinged with a ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... ages, and with every people, the arcana of life and death, the mysteries of birth, childhood, puberty, adolescence, maidenhood, womanhood, manhood, motherhood, fatherhood, have called forth the profoundest thought and speculation. From the contemplation of these strange phenomena sprang the esoteric doctrines of Egypt and the East, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... with summer snowballs? And 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
... caressing any of the goodly angels whose stout legs, 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, when she left her old home, and removed to the little house in Dalton that had been left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Fortescue, who has been here so much of late, and has paid much attention to our saucy Kate! Wife, what thinkest thou of that? He is an excellent good man, and would make a stanch and true husband. He is something old for the child, for sure; but there is no knowing how the errant fancy of maidenhood will stray." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... amazed by the wisdom of her answers. The noble ladies about her, too, and these mendicant friars that were sent to hold inquisition concerning her at Domremy, had found in her nothing but simplicity and holy maidenhood, pity and piety. But, as for a sign of her sending, and a marvel to convince all men's hearts, that, she said, she would only work at Orleans. So now she was being accepted, and was to raise her standard, as we had cause ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... authority and being 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 right to intrigue with ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... maid shall conceive a child And get us more grace than ever men had, And her maidenhood nothing defiled. She is deputed to bear the Son, Almighty God. Lo! sovereignties, now may you be glad. For of this maiden all we may be fain; For Adam, that now lies in sorrows full sad, Her glorious birth shall ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... her to open the annual Sale of Work of the Girls' Friendly Society. Sir John Shaftesbury, somewhat late in life, had married a wife many years his junior; a dazzling beauty, a dashing horsewoman, and moreover a lady who, having spent the years of her eligible maidenhood largely among politicians and racehorses, had acquired the knack and habit of living in the public eye. She adored her husband, as did everyone who knew him: but life at Shaftesbury Court had its longueurs even in ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... recent sharp attack of fever, he completely broke down, and, laying his head upon my shoulder, sobbed like a child. Poor Daphne! it seemed hard that she should thus, in the first bright flush and glory of her maidenhood, be struck down, and the light of her life extinguished by the ruthless hand of a murderer; and yet, perhaps, after all, it was better so, better that she should enjoy the bliss of laying down her life for the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... goes, once tended sheep along the marsh-meadow of Peneus among men of old time; for dear to her were maidenhood and a couch unstained. But, as she guarded her flock by the river, Apollo carried her off far from Haemonia and placed her among the nymphs of the land, who dwelt in Libya near the Myrtosian height. And here to Phoebus she bore Aristaeus whom the Haemonians, rich in corn-land, call "Hunter" ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... brass, one would have said, And locks, and bolts, and iron bars, And guards as strict as in the heat of wars Might have preserved one innocent maidenhood. The jealous father thought he well might spare All further jealous care; And as he walked, to himself alone he smiled To think how Venus' arts he had beguiled; And when he slept his rest was deep, But Venus laughed to see and hear him sleep. She taught the amorous Jove ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... been won in her girlhood by a man thoroughly fitted to make her happy—a man of wealth and talent, and honorable service in the State; who, within a week of their marriage day, had been thrown from his horse and killed. Edith had not in so many words devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood; but that was the outcome of the great sorrow of her youth. She had remained single without growing morose, and her sweet and gentle moods endeared her to all who came ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the eighth 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 to be entirely devoted to her, which, considering the charm of the child and the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... seventh day he awoke and looked at Ruth. He was feeling almost well, but had no inclination to stir. It was pleasant enough just to lie there and look at her, and let his gaze wander around her chamber. This white shrine of maidenhood! He had felt its influence before he was able to understand, and the reverential awe had grown with his returning strength. How dainty it was, for all its rough board floor and rude log walls! Even those were as white as the ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... to me after I was married but never in my maidenhood. I awoke in the night, sat up in bed and did not know what was the matter with me. I could not think consciously, I was quite incapable of thought. I knew neither where I was nor what was happening to me; I could remember nothing. I did not know whether I was Jew or Christian, man or woman, a human ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... the sun full clear doth pass, Without a break, through shining glass, Thy Maidenhood unblemished was For bearing of the Lord: Now, sweetest Comfort of our race, To sinners be ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... She had lived all these years with a heart as virgin as mountain snows. When the one sweet dream which comes to most in early maidenhood—the dream of loving and being loved—was crushed, her heart drew back within itself, and, after a time of suffering almost as deep as if for the loss of a real object instead of a mere ideal, she ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... were now 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, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead That sparkled so the day I saw it first, And darkened slowly after. I am she Who loves all beauty—yet I wither it. Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath— Forever since my maidenhood to sow Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep Their bitter care above me even now. It was the gods who led me to this lair, That tho' the burning winds should make me weak, They should not snatch ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... magic wings of Nature and Night came wafted over her mind, she bent down her head upon her lute, pressed her round, dimpled cheek against its smooth frame, and drawing her fingers mechanically over its strings, abandoned herself unreservedly to the reveries of maidenhood and youth. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... picture her joy,— So perfect, so thankful, so free from annoy, As her lips press the lotus-bound chalice, and drain That exquisite blessedness born out of pain! Oh! not in her maidenhood, blushing and sweet, When Douglass first poured out his love at her feet; And not when a shrinking and beautiful bride, With worshipping fondness she clung to his side; And not in those holiest moments of life, When first she was held to his heart, ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... 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 ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... occasions, as if the matter were exceedingly amusing to them, when the fact is that their pride is very sore in that particular spot. A woman who has passed her hour of bloom, and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous iteration, about the usefulness of old maids, and the independence of their lot—determined to cover up the galled spot that burns upon the surface of her personal pride. The trick of keeping up the appearances of wealth, after wealth ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... one goes to a private view or to an artistic salon one sees, here the mystic eyes of Rossetti's dream, the long ivory throat, the strange square-cut jaw, the loosened shadowy hair that he so ardently loved, there the sweet maidenhood of 'The Golden Stair,' the blossom-like mouth and weary loveliness of the 'Laus Amoris,' the passion-pale face of Andromeda, the thin hands and lithe beauty of the Vivian in 'Merlin's Dream.' And it has always been so. A great ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... days when 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 the city where he made his home,—the very thought lent inspiration ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... canvasses 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, New ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... soon as ye may, for I have obeyed me unto the prophecy that my father told me. And by his commandment to fulfil this prophecy I have given the greatest riches and the fairest flower that ever I had, and that is my maidenhood that I shall never have again; and therefore, gentle knight, owe me ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... 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 at ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth—even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago—were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... down-stricken to take heed of empires or patriots; they only thought of Louis and Jean and Andre and Valentin; and they collected round Reine Allix, who said to them, "My children, for love of money all our fairest fruits and flowers—yea, even to the best blossoms of our maidenhood—were sent to be bought and sold in Paris. We sinned therein, and this is the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... 'Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies'! Why can't you wake up? This is the dullest hole I've ever been in in my life. Magsie, stop that eternal sewing, and be sporty! You look like a model for 'gentle maidenhood'. I want to stick a pin into you, to ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... she wilfully deceived thee, that she abused thy belief and denied to thy question and profaned maidenhood to stealth,—all this might have galled thee; but to these wrongs old men are subjected,—they give mirth to our farces; maid and lover are privileged impostors. But to have counted the sands in thine hour-glass, to have sat by thy side, marvelling when ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... question, it was made in abhorrence of this crime, and has been abrogated. Wherefore Jerome [*The quotation is from Can. Tria. xxxvi, qu. 2] declares the contrary: "Three kinds of lawful marriage," says he, "are mentioned in Holy Writ. The first is that of a chaste maiden given away lawfully in her maidenhood to a man. The second is when a man finds a maiden in the city, and by force has carnal knowledge of her. If the father be willing, the man shall endow her according to the father's estimate, and shall pay the price of her purity [*Cf. Deut. 22:23-29]. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... three weeks; and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate the girl whom he had succoured. I will call my mother Lucy. Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is one you would know well. By what series of undeserved calamities this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you. Let it suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart worthy of her own. The ardour of attachment which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gradually sink down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife. But I can't bear the thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a piece of maidenhood as ever lived—fit to ornament a palace wi'—that I've taken so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder every day, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, and her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the calm, unconscious lethargy of her maidenhood's untroubled dreams the soul of Vera had awakened at length to the realization of the strong, passionate woman's ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream 850 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 ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... happily described as "the potentialities of wealth." All the enjoyments of literary and artistic culture, all the pleasures of a refined and favoured life, all the influence for good or evil that accrues to a leader of fashion, were commanded by this young lady; and yet, in the very bloom of maidenhood, she voluntarily set them aside. Whether it was that an impatient and a restless spirit rebelled against social conventionalisms, or whether she was actuated by an earnest love of knowledge, or whether some romance of crushed hope and rejected love ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... 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 ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... half-naked wife of my syce rejoices in a nose-ring of brass or 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
... could scarcely be called a matronly personage. Having married when about sixteen, she was now just thirty-eight years of age; and though the bloom of maidenhood was gone, the beauty of a well-favoured and healthy woman still remained. She wore a cloak of rich blue wool, and under it a scarlet kirtle with a ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... counterpart in the legend which the Kirghiz of Siberia tell of their ancestry. A certain Khan had a fair daughter, whom he kept in a dark iron house, that no man might see her. An old woman tended her; and when the girl was grown to maidenhood she asked the old woman, "Where do you go so often?" "My child," said the old dame, "there is a bright world. In that bright world your father and mother live, and all sorts of people live there. That is where I go." The maiden said, "Good mother, I will tell nobody, but show me that ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... in at the open casement, illumined, with its clear radiance, the chamber which had been, during the years of her maidenhood, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Astrachans of the nineteenth century—it would certainly have been very inconvenient to coddle ailing infantry through an attack of diphtheria, for example. So bountiful Nature, then in the first blush of maidenhood, doubtless brought the long-lived Patriarch through his nine hundred and sixty-nine years without once calling in the family medical adviser. It is recorded, however, that he was born and that he died, and he therefore certainly ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... her form! Soft and seductive, that contained each charm, Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies; And all the sensuous youth of line and curve, That makes men's eyes Bondsmen of beauty eager still to serve.— In every part that memory can warm, Let ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... to maidenhood with, seemingly, the same features, the same voices, the same tastes, and with an unbounded love for and confidence in each other. As they always dressed alike nobody could be sure which was Dora ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... it would have been! Whoever heard of a girl on this side of the Maros being married without her farewell to maidenhood. I am paying for the supper and for everything because I want my bride's farewell to be finer and grander than anything that has ever been seen for many kilometres round. I have stinted nothing—begrudged nothing. I have given an ox, two pigs and a calf to be slaughtered for ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... moment. She had little colour this morning, and looked cold, as she drew up to the fire, holding a white woollen wrap about her shoulders. A slow and subtle modification of her features was tending to a mature beauty which would make bolder claim than the charm that had characterised her in maidenhood. It was still remote from beauty of a sensual type, but the outlines, in becoming a little more rounded, more regular, gained in common estimate what they lost to a more refined apprehension. Her eyes appeared more deliberately conscious of their depth ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... to the shore, her hands resting on the parapet. The light breeze which blew off the land stirred loose ringlets of her hair, and flattened the thin robe against her sunlit figure. So had she stood a thousand times in old days, in her youth, in her maidenhood. So in her father's time had she stood to see her lover come riding along the sands to woo her! So had she stood to welcome him on the eve of that fatal journey to Paris! Thence had others watched her go with him. The ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... movement of the game girls and boys divided. The girls tossed beribboned heads in unwonted coquetry, yet showed always, in downcast eyes and the modest management of light draperies, the mountain ideal of maidenhood. Across from them the line of youthful masculinity swayed; tall, lean, brown-faced, keen-eyed young hunters these, sinewy and light and quick of movement, with fine hands and feet, and a lazy pride of bearing. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... Amalia to do with Luis' marriage?" asked Jovita, to whose maidenhood simplicity seemed befitting in ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Maidenhood Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick To Mistress Margaret Hussey John Skelton On Her Coming To London Edmund Waller "O, Saw Ye Bonny Lesley" Robert Burns To a Young Lady William Cowper Ruth Thomas Hood The Solitary Reaper William Wordsworth The Three Cottage ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... I can't say. Not altogether, perhaps. Goodness knows what went on in the heart of that extraordinary woman, condemned by her own cleverness to perpetual maidenhood. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... so?" 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, cast around you; ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... at her, and he was filled with wonder at the sanctity of her maidenhood. Thenceforth meditating upon the Annunciation he should always clothe Pauline in a robe of white samite and set her in his mind's eye for that other maid of Jewry, even as painters found holy maids in Florence or ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... side a hand to hold, Nor the world's worst of evil knew, Nor rued its miseries manifold, Nor made discovery of its cold. What more, like one with morn content. Or of the morrow diffident, Unconscious, beautiful she stood, Calm, in young stainless maidenhood. Then, with the last steps childhood trod, Took up her fifteen ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... 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 ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of our Transatlantic cousins, our conventionalities might be so tempered by the introduction of a little genuine human nature, as to admit of a trifling freer intercourse between our youth and young maidenhood of ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... years. She mourned him with a fond widow's mourning; prayed daily and nightly for the repose of his soul, and in her exaltation waited now almost impatiently for death that should unite her with him. Taking joy in the thought that she should go to him a maid, she ceased at last to resent the maidenhood that had ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Outside Athens we find the same 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 ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... spread a film of confusion that robbed it of its potency. In him, in his mood, in his words, in his manner, was something that called out in direct appeal the more primitive instincts hitherto dormant beneath her sense of maidenhood, so that even at this vexed moment of conscious opposition, her heart was ranging itself on his side. Overpoweringly the feeling swept her that she was not acting in accordance with her sense of fitness. She knew she should strike, but was unable to give due force to the blow. In the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... attend to the matter for her he took up the illustrated volume of Longfellow—for, as the sisters had learned, his culture soared beyond the newspapers—and read aloud, with a fine confusion of consonants, the poem on "Maidenhood." Evelina lowered her lids while he read. It was a very beautiful evening, and Ann Eliza thought afterward how different life might have been with a companion who ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... Bible, and brought one text from it into her own life. "When I was a child I played as a child, but now that I am old I have put aside childish things." She often quoted this in defence of her industrious maidenhood. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... own,—I—[Do laugh!] by my very great apprehensions of the effects of such a doctrine, that though marriage be a bad thing it is quite necessary, at present, for the defence of the weaker vessels and modest maidenhood. Ay and I applauded him for his honest candour! I was glad I had misunderstood him! Thanked him for all his profound information! In short made him exactly what I wished, my tool! And a high-tempered tool he is, by the aid of which I will shew ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... 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 painfully, as ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... the superstition of her old-maidenhood concerning love, really thought it cold-blooded and shocking; but she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Cross-bearer, Source of good, Light-creating, Word-begot, Gracious child of maidenhood, Bosomed in the Fatherhood, When earth, sea and ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... stretching and yawning comfortably as he bade her good night; and sometimes a yawn caught him in the middle of a word, and he talked while he yawned. She hated this. She was passing through that hard middle ground, that purgatory between maidenhood and wifehood in the course of which married folk find each other only human, after all. And she had not yet come to accept this condition, and to glory in it. She had always thought of Joel as a hero, ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... 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 to wed ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... fortune, would belong to the fatherless family. She did not sigh over the prospect, or falter; but she exercised no self-delusion on the subject. There was nobody but she to do it—nobody but she, in her tender maidenhood, to manage all the vulgar tragical business which must, this very day, confirm to the knowledge of the little surrounding world the event which had happened—nobody but herself to tell the tale to the widow, to ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... 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, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a ridiculous thing that a forlorn governess should be comforted for a lost love by the love of children; but it is true to nature. Women's lives have successive phases, each following the other in natural gradation—maidenhood, wifehood, motherhood: in not one of which, ordinarily, we regret the one before it, to which it is nevertheless impossible to go back. But Fortune's life had had none of these, excepting, perhaps, her one six months' dream of love and spring. That being over, ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... common with all humanity I am compound of man and woman, I can resent the enmity which drives me from shore to shore, but being myself a connoisseur of the red lips and laughing eyes of maidenhood—I am thinking, more particularly of Myra—I can forgive ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... both were very happy. Kenyon's genius, unconsciously wrought upon by Hilda's influence, took a more delicate character than heretofore. He modelled, among other things, a beautiful little statue of maidenhood gathering a snowdrop. It was never put into marble, however, because the sculptor soon recognized it as one of those fragile creations which are true only to the moment that produces them, and are wronged if we try to imprison their airy ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... yet sweeter sounds. On the breast of the fell that lies over against Cat Bells a procession of children walked, and sung, and chattered, and laughed. It was St. Peter's Day, and they were rush-bearing: little ones of all ages, from the comely girl of fourteen, just ripening into maidenhood, who walked last, to the sweet boy of four in the pinafore braided with epaulets, who strode along gallantly in front. Most of the little hands carried rushes, but some were filled with ferns, and mosses, and flowers. They had assembled at the school-house, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... 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 ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... him, that resemblance had no power over her—she was too pure and good to be tainted by its evil, haunting presence. It had, in all probability, so my uncle conceived, tried to suggest wicked thoughts and to tempt to wicked actions; but she, in her saintly maidenhood, had passed on undefiled by evil thought or deed. It could not touch her soul: but true, it set her apart from all sweet love or common human intercourse. My uncle threw himself with an energy more like six-and-twenty than sixty into the consideration of the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... in a meditation. "Poor Kate! poor Kate! We were bairns together, M. Montaiglon, innocent bairns, and happy, twenty years syne, and I will not say but what in her maidenhood there was some warmth between us, so that I know her well. She was compelled by her relatives to marriage with our parchment friend yonder, and there you have the start of what has been hell on earth for her. The man has not the soul of a louse, and as for her, she's the finest gold! ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... too, for nothing," said Leonora, gazing after the hackney-coach. "To-morrow I will no longer be a girl! For I am going now to bid a last adieu to my outward maidenhood and my past!" And she walked with resolute steps across the Gendarmes ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... The prim coquette, the drinking stuff, The drinker, then, the farms and cattle; And on the miser, rude and rough, The robes and lace did Aesop settle; For thus, he said, 'an early date Would see the sisters alienate Their several shares of the estate. No motive now in maidenhood to tarry, They all would seek, post haste, to marry; And, having each a splendid bait, Each soon would find a well-bred mate; And, leaving thus their father's goods intact, Would to their mother pay them all, in fact,'— Which of the testament Was plainly the intent. The people, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... with her sunshade so disposed as to throw her face into shadow, observed him in calm silence. The sunshade was of scarlet silk, and in the softened light stealing through it her cheek gained all the freshness of maidenhood. Her white gown, gathered about the waist with a band of scarlet, not only fitted her figure to perfection, but threw up the colour of her skin into glowing relief. To Sam she appeared a miracle of coolness and warmth; and as yet no ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... find her motionless, lying on her back like a person wrapped in profound and undisturbed slumber. Carefully managing my advance, as if I were afraid of waking her up, I begin by gently gratifying her senses, and I ascertain the delightful fact that, like her sister, she is still in possession of her maidenhood. As soon as a natural movement proves to me that love accepts the offering, I take my measures to consummate the sacrifice. At that moment, giving way suddenly to the violence of her feelings, and tired of her assumed dissimulation, she warmly locks me in her arms ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and they went upstairs together. But even the sight of her old bedroom, where the last year of her maidenhood had been spent, even the sight of the new curtains chastening its exuberance with their dim austerity, did not dissolve Ellen's ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... 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
... 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, judging merely from their impression on my instincts ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arts, in which he made such progress that he had already become the favourite pupil of his celebrated namesake Lopez, the best painter of modern Spain. Such was Maria Diaz, who, according to a custom formerly universal in Spain, and still very prevalent, retained the name of her maidenhood though married. Such was Maria ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Venus, All thinly clad as in the golden age, I could not wish a chaster keeper of them. Nay, had I wives in droves like Solomon, I'd make thee Kislah Aga of my harem, Chief eunuch and sole security—What! Call me satyr when I urge in bounds The boundless beauties of pure maidenhood, And bid thee wed them! Thus best advices are Construed amiss, and what we kindly mean Turned ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... 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 ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... 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
... thoughtful, yet so infantine; the manly beauty of the St. John; the charming humility of the St. Catherine as she presents her palm, form one of the most perfect groups in the world. Childhood, motherhood, maidenhood, manhood, were never, I think, combined in so sweet a spirit ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... moment; she had seen visions of it in the daytime; she had told herself again and again what it would be, how it must be; but the reality was beyond her dreams and her visions and her imaginings, for she had to the full what few women have in any century, and what few have ever had in the blush of maidenhood,—the sight of the man she loved, and who loved her with all his heart, coming home in triumph from a hard-fought war, himself the leader and the victor, himself in youth's first spring, the young idol of a warlike nation, and the centre ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... her Nell, and had been Griff, Bill, 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 in conjunction with ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has been already said, Artegal, or Justice, makes conquest of Britomartis or Elizabeth. It is no earthly love that follows, but the declaration of the queen that in her continued maidenhood justice to her people shall be her only spouse. Such, whatever the honest historian may think, was the poet's conceit of what would best please ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... "happy results" which they advertise to share with a limited number of gentlemen, we shall deem them unworthy of their sex, unless they explain the process by which these results are attained, for the benefit of those who are fast verging toward the autumnal stage of maidenhood. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... 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 ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... on climbing the mountain. He came with me to Winkelsteg, remained three days, made Berthold gamekeeper, and arranged that he should forthwith marry Aga in our church. Before he left he said to me: "She thought more of her maidenhood than of her life. I never knew there were such women. This is a new world for me—I, too, belong to the forest. I entrust her to you—teach her if she wants to learn, and take care of her. And keep the secret If I can be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... and present my most respectful regards to Mrs. White and every body. Learn your lessons, jump the rope, and never conjugate the verb amo, amas; get a poodle dog, and hideous china, and prepare yourself for the noble state of elderly maidenhood: so shall you pass serenely through this vale of tears, and be for ever great, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... 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 in ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... strictest chastity; on the other hand, man was not bound by the same ordinance; he, moreover, was privileged to possess several wives. Did the husband, after the bridal night, believe to have found that his wife had, before marriage, lost her maidenhood, not only had he the right to cast her off, she was stoned to death. The same punishment fell upon the adultress; upon the husband, however, only in case he committed adultery with a married Jewish woman. According to V Moses 24, 1-4, the husband had also the right ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... her shoulder, and drawing back to escape the disturbing eloquence of his eyes, she discovered the presence of his encircling arm. The discovery brought her to her feet—flushed, palpitating, aquiver with anger at this first shadow of insult to her maidenhood. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... heard of one case of fornication just before leaving the upper Agsan. It was narrated to me by a warrior chief of the upper Kati'il. His fourth wife, a relative of the datu who figured in the case of wife capture described in this chapter, had in the days of her maidenhood secretly fallen from grace, which fact she revealed to her warrior husband, together with the name of the offender. The warrior chief thereupon made a two-day march to Compostela and located the house of his enemy, publicly vowing speedy vengeance. I visited the latter's house a few ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... babies are robbed of their mothers' care; so long as little children are made to do the work of men; so long as the girls who are to be the wives and mothers are sent into wifehood and motherhood unprepared, simply because the years of maidenhood are spent in factories that ought to be spent in preparation for wifehood and motherhood. Here is capitalism cutting at the very heart of the home, with Socialism as the only defender of the home it is charged with ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... 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 hope ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... know Fortune and Fashion Are sensible girlhood's sole guides, Smart maidenhood ridicules passion, And sentiment calmly derides. I gave you "Bel Ami" as token That we were not victims of "glow;" You gave me your vow—is it broken? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... of her masculine attire, she said she would wear woman's dress only when she heard Mass, and woman's clothing at her execution, if it came to that. The judges were perfectly well aware of her proved maidenhood, and of the real reason for her dress, but they persisted—without result—in trying to trap her into dangerous replies. She was far too direct and simple to be caught, just because she saw no "heresy" in an ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... 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. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... mad? For filling my soul with God's utmost glory of earth and sea and sky? For filling my heart with purest pleasure in the intimate companionship of fresh and fragrant maidenhood? For giving myself up for once to a dream of sense clouded by never a thought that ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... flooded Jehane, whose breath also became a trouble. By a quick movement she drew her veil about her, lest he should see her unquiet breast. So the mother of Proserpine might have been startled into new maidenhood when, in her wanderings, some herd had claimed her in love. Her husband watched her keenly, not unkindly. Jehane's trouble increased; he left her alone to fight it. So at last she did; then touched his hand, looking deeply into his face. He, loving ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... in the changed position of women you can no longer honorably keep them in the dark—to make up your mind that you will come to the woman you love in the glory of your unfallen manhood, as you expect her to come to you in the beauty of her spotless maidenhood." ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... always lost really true of chastity? she would ask herself. She might prove it false if she could veil bygones. The recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not denied to maidenhood alone. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... adventurous longing for experience—had been filched from her before she was old enough to know its value. In time she would perhaps recover her self-esteem, but she would never know in its fullness that divine right of American maidenhood to rule its environment and ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... hour in the corner of the great hospital. The little self- sacrifice, the interest in this girl so far removed from their usual world, their girlish desire to gain her liking, and the womanly tact which was needed to win her from her rough shyness, all these had their influence on their young maidenhood, an influence which lasted far ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... bare To the winds his golden hair, By the mainmast stood; Graceful was his form, and slender, And his eyes were deep and tender As a woman's, in the splendor Of her maidenhood. ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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 of the presence ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... leathern corselet joined together by stitches. In either case the waist is incased as it were in a straight jacket, which being put on at the age of ten or even younger, and worn constantly until the marriage night, restrains the fulness of nature throughout the period of maidenhood. A skirt open in front and confined around the waist by a scarf or girdle, falls sufficiently short of the ankles to show the wide Turkish trowsers which are ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... path far ahead are trampled by other feet, and plucked by other hands, and when the miles have been cleared and trodden, the unknown laborer comes forth from his obscurity, and humbly asks her to arise from her quiet nook, to shake off the inactivity of her maidenhood, and to tread the ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... and what occasioned the absorption which led to her ignoring all appeals at her door at a time when a woman is supposed to be more than usually gracious? But one answer suggested itself. Her heart was not in her marriage, and that last hour of her maidenhood had been an hour of anguish and struggle. Perhaps she not only failed to love Francis Jeffrey, but loved some other man. This seemed improbable, but things as strange as this have happened in our complex society and no reckoning can be made with a woman's fancy. If this was so—and what other ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 loved ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... in secret. It could never be anything but a 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 them. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Toni matured to statelier maidenhood. The plump girl, half-child, droll and naive, grew to be a thoughtful, silent young woman, secretive and very sure of her aims. She condescended to the guests and took no notice of the desperate admiration which surrounded ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... 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
... chaperon. We pride ourselves, as a nation, upon the extreme care with which we protect our young gentlewomen from contaminating influences. But the fastidious attention which we bestow upon our national maidenhood is as nothing in comparison with the protective commotion with which we surround that shrinking sensitive ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... wonderful art which could afford a little to humanity on so trying an occasion. For she was as it were beginning her career anew; literally to her was this a new world; and she felt for a moment as if in her first blushing maidenhood of song. This second time the hesitation of the voice in that commencement was not felt. The note began soft and timid and scarce audible, as the prayer of Norma might have done; but how it gradually swelled with the influx of divine strength into the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... our need for help Among men armed a woman, foreign born, Virgin, not like the natural flower of things That grows and bears and brings forth fruit and dies, Unlovable, no light for a husband's house, Espoused; a glory among unwedded girls, And chosen of gods who reverence maidenhood. These too we honour in honouring her; but thou, Abstain thy feet from following, and thine eyes From amorous touch; nor set toward hers thine heart, Son, lest hate bear ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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, as so fresh ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and free confession of sins, but a murder, however unnatural and unprovoked, he does not mention, not counting it crime.[291-1] Scenes of brutal licentiousness were approved and sustained throughout the continent as acts of worship; maidenhood was in many parts freely offered up or claimed by the priests as a right; in Central America twins were slain for religious motives; human sacrifice was common throughout the tropics, and was not unusual in higher latitudes; cannibalism was often ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of shame, the result of comparison between himself and the simple girl who stood before him; she was so young, and the memory of passions from which he had suffered years ago affected him with a sense of unworthiness, almost of impurity. Jane had come to be his ideal of maidenhood, but till this moment he had not understood the full significance of the feeling with which he regarded her. He could not transform with a word their relations to each other. The temptation of the hour had hurried him towards an end which he must ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... more of the gallant Yankee captains you might see in the upper corner of each cheek a slight touch of red. For though I would not call the little lady coquettish—that is too coarse and obvious a word—yet there was in her that inalienable consciousness of maidenhood, that sentiment, at once of attraction and of recoil, towards creatures of the opposite sex, that gentle hope of pleasing man, that secret emotion of being pleased by him, that tremor at the idea of being desired, and that flush at the thought of being desirable, which, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... to his daughter's wedding was sent with the others, and the remaining days of Rachel's maidenhood slipped away in a whirl of preparation and excitement in which her mother reveled, but which was ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thoughts into the child's head,' continued he; 'to spoil her peaceful maidenhood with talk about another man's love; and such love, too,' he spoke scornfully now—a love that is ready for any young woman. Oh, the misery in my poor little daughter's face to-day at dinner—the misery, Paul! I thought you were one ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... very good, gentle, 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. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... may follow fast; fears and misgivings and dread discoveries may come close upon thy train; broken-heartedness and bleak perpetual maidenhood may be thine only relics; or, flowering with the years, the thorns of grief and poverty and widowhood may grow where youthful fancy looked for radiant flowers; the heart which echoed with thy bridal song may yet peal forth the Rachel cry—but thou belongest to the heart forever, ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... her, "is a country that hath yet her maidenhood. The face of the earth hath not been torn, the graves have not been opened for gold. It hath never been entered by any army of strength, and never conquered by any Christian prince. Men shall find here more rich and beautiful cities, ...
— 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
... 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 ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... lot to have the slightest inclination to change it; therefore she was in no hurry to marry. She had completed twenty-four years of her existence, had refused several desirable offers, and wished nothing better than to retain her maidenhood. It was the sole article concerning which this heiress had discussions with those around her. When her father took it into his head to grow angry and cry, "You must!" she would burst out laughing; whereupon he would laugh also, and ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... people so refined, and so capable of high moral ideas, as the Greeks. Aphrodite is personified desire, but religion did not throw her mantle over desire alone; the cloistered life, the frank charm of maidenhood, were as dear to the Greek genius, and were consecrated by the examples of Athene, Artemis, and Hestia. She presides over the pure element of the fire of the hearth, just as in the household did the daughter of the king or chief. Hers are the first libations at feasts (xxviii. ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... murmuring sound" may enhance the charms of maidenhood, is it too much to expect that sunburn, fervently desired, may not only permanently darken the complexion, but affect the mien of the race? And thus in years to come the white Australian may be of the past—transformed physically by the supremacy of soil and sun, and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Behold how this 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 go like ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... a trial as I really know not how to support without your company and counsel — I must, therefore, dear Letty, put your friendship to the test — I must beg you will come and do the last offices of maidenhood to your companion ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... 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. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... ruffians attempted to violate the prisoner: so, sooner than suffer this, although she knew that to return to her former dress would be equivalent to meeting certain death, she did not hesitate to save her maidenhood at the ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... description. What could be more delicate than the intimation of the foregone 'good-night' between the sisters, or the scene of Lyddy plaiting Thyrza's hair? The delineation of the upper middle class culture by which this exquisite flower of maidenhood is first caressed and transplanted, then slighted and left to wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing had very few means of observation. But this defect, common to all his early novels, is more than compensated by the intensely pathetic figure ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... conscious that that at all events is not the business of art: but when he comes to create in vacuo he is at once obsessed by some Platonic theory regarding the ethical aim of the poet. The victory, therefore, shall be with the powers of good, purity and vestal maidenhood shall triumph and undergo apotheosis at his hands, the world shall see how fair a monument of stainless womanhood he can erect in melodious verse. Well and good; for this is indeed an object to which no self-respecting person can take exception. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and spiritual welfare is not wholly attributable to an uncle's and guardian's solicitude in behalf of an orphaned niece. A much closer bond, the bond between husband and wife, united them, for when Esther had grown to maidenhood, Mordecai had espoused her. (79) Naturally, Esther would have been ready to defend her conjugal honor with her life. She would gladly have suffered death at the hands of the king's bailiffs rather than yield herself to a man not her husband. Luckily, there was no need ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... and vanity. To the child, whose dreams of womanhood were evolved from the face of the Mary of the Assumption, of the Susannah of Mieris, and of that Angel in the blue coif whose face has a light as of the sun,—to her who had dreamed her way into vague perceptions of her own sex's maidenhood and maternity by help of those great pictures which had been before her sight from infancy, there was some taint, some artifice, some want, some harshness in these jewelled women; she could not have reasoned about it, but she felt it, as she felt that the grand ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... Papists; there was Popery in the blood, and it came out like the gout, missing a couple of generations. Then again there was the scar, and Miss Radcliffe would never be married. One of the neighbours who suggested the scar and maidenhood as a sufficient reason for apostasy was a retired mill-owner, who was a Wesleyan Methodist when he was in business in Manchester, but had become ostentatiously Anglican when he retired into the country. The village blacksmith, whose ancestors had worked at the same forge since the days of Queen Elizabeth, ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... and affection which was naturally to be expected from her close intercourse with the Garthowen family from babyhood. Did she feel anything more? She thought she did. From childhood she had been promised to Will; the idea of marrying him when they were both grown to manhood and maidenhood had been familiar to her ever since she could remember. It caused no excitement in her mind, no tumult in her heart. It was in the nature of things—it was Will's wish—it was her fate! She did not rebel against it, but it woke no thrill ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... 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 aunt and ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... 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 whole man ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural reticence and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about "the silent and insensate" wife. The girl was being deprived of the rollicking freedom to which she had been used, but the great ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... or not she was unusually good to look at had hardly ever before occurred to her. She flushed slightly, pleased and wondering, with a new seed of gentle vanity planted in her simple nature, a child on the threshold of the womanly inheritance of maidenhood. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... her maidenhood, graceful in the dawning of her womanhood, came the girl, the virgin, the daughter of Yakootsekaya-ka, the Keeper of the Worlds of Light. Stooping, she dipped her cup into the cool water. From the edge of the spring ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... the world to know about. Standing with a friend of mine on a high flat housetop in Calcutta one day, I saw a Hindu father on the next-door housetop proudly and lovingly walking and talking with his daughter who was just budding into maidenhood. "His affection is quite unmistakable," my friend said to me, "and yet if in public, he would never ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... man, on a summer day, sits on a hill-top, or on the observatory of his house, and sees the sunshine 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various |
