"Spinster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemingly an obstacle to anything he desired. For a moment the whimsicality of it interrupted the current of his feeling. He thought of the probable comments of the men of his London club upon the drift his conversation was taking with a New England spinster about his fitness to marry a school-teacher. With a smile that was summoned to hide his annoyance, he said, "I don't see how I ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... though she could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the converging traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as she knew, had never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible women at Altringham-his uncle's widow, his mother, the spinster sisters—it was not impossible that, with tact and patience—and the stupidest women could be tactful and patient on such occasions—they might eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just the right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a May evening, and Lydia Penfold, spinster, aged twenty-four, was sketching in St. John's Vale, that winding valley which, diverging from the Ambleside-Keswick road in an easterly direction, divides the northern slopes of the Helvellyn range from the splendid ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... game of diabolical leap-frog with Australian kangaroos. In one illustration he introduces us to a cheerful assembly of ancestral ghosts: there is the ghostly saucer-eyed head of the family, with a ghostly hound peeping beneath his chair, a ghostly grandmother, half a dozen ghostly spinster aunts, a ghostly butler, a ghostly cook, a ghostly small boy, two ghostly candles; and lastly, a ghostly cat. Small wonder that under the influence of such ghostly surroundings the hair of the affrighted ghost-seer stands erect in the extremity of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... pillow of her motherless niece. Careful and kind was her nursing; and even the physicians owned that to her patient watchfulness I owed my life. How grateful was I; and with what looks of love did I gaze on her trim, spinster figure, as she moved earnestly and pains-taking around my chamber; but, alas! the kitchen told a different story when I was well enough to make my appearance there. Biddy, a raw, bewildered-looking Irish girl, with huge red arms and stamping ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... far end of the room the teacher, Miss Scattergood, sat at her flat-topped desk. "That old maid," as Marty had called her, was not at all the sort of a person—in appearance, at least—that Janice expected her to be. Somehow, a spinster lady who had taught school—and such a school as Poketown's—for twenty years, should have fitted the well-known specifications of the old-time "New England schoolmarm." But Amarilla ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... at Las Palomas, the only white woman on the ranch was "Miss Jean," a spinster sister of its owner, and twenty years his junior. After his third bitter experience in the lottery of matrimony, evidently he gave up hope, and induced his sister to come out and preside as the mistress of Las Palomas. She was not tall like her brother, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... completely compassed the woodenness of her adult relations. She might still be amenable to change, to development. In any event, as Miss Pritchard remarked to a friend in the office, any sort of young female connection cannot but be welcome to the heart of a lonely spinster who reaches her half-century milestone ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... went willingly with Harold, and was soon ushered into the large upper room, which was used as both nursery and school-room, for Mrs. Tracy could not allow her two sons, Tom and Jack, to come in contact with the boys at school; so she kept a governess, a middle-aged spinster, who, glad of a home, and the rather liberal compensation, sat all day in the nursery and bore patiently with Tom's freaks and Jack's dullness: to say nothing of the trouble it was to have the three-year-old Maude toddling about and interfering ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... garden walks, where a few early loiterers were already pacing to and fro. Here a pair of lovers met to quarrel and make up; there a dark-eyed nursery-maid had better eyes for Templars than her charge; on this hand an ancient spinster, with her lapdog in a string, regarded both enormities with scornful sidelong looks; on that a weazen old gentleman, ogling the nursery-maid, looked with like scorn upon the spinster, and wondered she didn't know she was no longer young. Apart from all these, on the river's margin two or three ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—hadou mageiros—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to pick our society, so here we must accept what fellowship the fates provide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen describing his jaunt in a gondola from the railway station; a German shopkeeper descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the beauties of the Marcusplatz; an intelligent aesthete bent on working ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... cross of romantic and grand, All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was a fancy store, kept by two prim but pleasant spinster sisters. Besides newspapers, stationery, thread and needles, and so forth, they kept a stock of toys, candies, and pickled limes, which insured them a run of custom among the young folk, who always spoke of them as the ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... in pursuit of my spinster friends, it may be well to say a few words of the locality ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... twenty-five young ladies in all, daughters of the superior families of Bunkers and the surrounding district. Miss Arnott, their teacher, was a tall, bony spinster, with austere glasses and sharp elbows that ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... the minister, apprised of the block, lengthened out the formulae for the other pairs, and blessed them with more reposeful unction. It was impossible to stave off the Leibel-Green item indefinitely, and at last Rose remained the only orange-wreathed spinster in the synagogue. And then there was a hush of solemn suspense, that swelled gradually into a steady rumble of babbling tongues, as minute succeeded minute and the final bridal party still failed to appear. The latest bulletin pictured the bride in a dead faint. The afternoon was waning fast. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... going or his coming, otherwise than as it might affect her friend's need of him as a physician; this woman who seemed all mother while she was holding the baby, and all boy while she was trying, under old Captain Mayhew's guidance to learn to sail a boat; this woman who was a spinster in years, and a child in simplicity and directness; who was beautiful, and never once thought of her beauty; who was alone, and never seemed lonely: she was a perpetual problem and fascination to him. Dr. Eben was not usually ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... Ketchura Peck, spinster, however, did see many most excellent reasons. She was a maid with a mission, and maintained it to be an outrage that a Christian boy should be brought up by a godless pagan. She worried over it almost as much as she did over the heathen in Central Africa, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... they descended several objectionable persons had joined Laurie, evidently expecting to be taken to upper floors themselves. This meant a delay in his tete-a-tete with the boy, and Laurie turned upon the person nearest him, an inoffensive spinster, a look of such intense resentment that it haunted ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... it to be his duty to call on his ward regularly every week, has learned to know and (I regret to say) to loathe that estimable spinster christened Jane Majendie. ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Betsy" was a boat—named for the unyielding spinster whom the captain hoped to marry. Through the two Betsy's a delightful group of people ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... have had more politeness,' he said to himself. 'It is not every man that can bring a good chance of 400 Pounds a year to a penniless girl. Singleside must be up to 400 Pounds a year now; there's Reilageganbeg, Gillifidget, Loverless, Liealone, and the Spinster's Knowe—good 400 Pounds a year. Some people might have made their own of it in my place; and yet, to own the truth, after much consideration, I don't see how ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... late of Burgh cum Girsby, spinster, com. Nov. 22, 1817, charged with twice administering a quantity of vitrol or verdigrease powder, or other deadly poison, with intent to murder Susanna, the infant daughter of George Barnes of Burgh cum Girsby. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous. For twenty years I had been perfectly comfortable; for ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not at all complimentary to the gentlemen," rejoined a thin, elderly-looking spinster of an uncertain age, dressed in an old-fashioned style, who I should have thought would have been the last person to come to the defence of a sex that had so ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... know; nobody knows. But it is my opinion," said the spinster, with a significant look, "that he went to London to see about a divorce. But he was weak in the head, poor man, and I suppose let things go on. When next I heard of him he was a ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... first, in the twilight—I became aware that the garden had another occupant; that at another table, not far from me, a vague and not very prosperous-looking woman in a shabby bonnet was sitting, with her reticule lying by her, also drinking tea and gazing at the after-glow of the sunset. An elderly spinster I thought her, a dressmaker perhaps, or a retired governess, one of those maiden ladies who live alone in quiet lodgings, and are fond of romantic ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... Israel's care, and thrust his long nose between the rails of his pen for grass, or fruit, or carrot- and beet-tops, with a knowing look out of his deep-set eyes that was never to be resisted by the soft-hearted spinster. Indeed, Miss Lucinda enjoyed the possession of one pet who could not tyrannize over her. Pink's place was more than filled by Fun, who was so oppressively affectionate that he never could leave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... odd party: John and I, bachelor and spinster; my uncle, a silent, moody man, who did whatever we asked him; and the still, open-eyed Martha Moon, who, I sometimes think, understood more about it all than any of us. I could talk a little French, John a good deal of German. When we got to Paris, we found my uncle ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... gloomy meaning. 'But there have been worse. I know what I know. See Collins's Peerage, volume 4, page 242: "Married firstly Sarah, widow of Colonel John Clark, of Exeter, in the county of Devon"—all a hum, Tommy! If they had said spinster, of Bridewell, in the county of Middlesex, 'twould have been as true! I ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... you been living all these years, if you do not know that the very first thing a woman wants to do when she has made a good match is to make ones for all her spinster friends. Jane does not mean any harm. She does it out of ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... were in Geneva. If you had ever travelled through Europe with a charming spinster who never sat down at a Continental table d'hote without being asked by an American vis-a-vis whether she were one of the P.'s of Salem, Massachusetts, you would understand why I call my friend Salemina. She doesn't ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... when the sky was close to the ground a spinster went out to pound rice. [113] Before she began her work, she took off the beads from around her neck and the comb from her hair, and hung them on the sky, which at that time looked ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... her and Steve spin around the room was a sight to bring a smile to the lips of the crustiest bachelor or saddest spinster, for happy lovers are always a pleasing spectacle, and two such merry little grigs as ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... confused account of some lawsuit in which the elder Munden was engaged; with a circumstantial history of the proceedings on a case of breach of promise of marriage, made to or by (we cannot pick out which) Jemima Munden, spinster, probably the comedian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any sister; with a few dates, rather better preserved, of this great actor's engagements,—as "Cheltenham, [spelt Cheltnam,] 1776," "Bath, 1779," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of a practical joke in our younger days, and I did not wish to interpose between him and the venerable spinster. I thought that he would not do anything really ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... say the folks around Yimville are when you get inside. Yes siree! Got the court house full. Seems as if we had every farmer from forty miles around here, and——" he stopped and chuckled loudly—"every farmer's wife and every spinster! The women are certainly mighty anxious to know how you stand on votes for 'em! Talk about home industries for the men, and the usual bunk about protective tariff, but—go easy about national votes for women, ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... whom some thought disappointed, as perhaps, in her foolish thought, she might a little be, was made Abbess of Quedlinburg, which opulent benefice had fallen vacant; and, there or at Berlin, lived a respectable Spinster-life, doubtless on easier terms than Ulrique's. Always much loved by her Brother, and loving him (and "taking care of his shirts," in the final times); noted in society, for her sharp tongue and ways. Concerning whom Thiebault and his Trenck romances are worth no notice,—if it be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fetich of my girlhood, and that quartette of dry-as-dust worthies whom Leo carries around in leash, as other women carry pugs and poodles, came near giving me meningitis in my tender years. My first governess, a Puritan spinster, full of zeal, and conscientiously bent on earning her wages, by exercising my brains to their utmost capacity, undertook to introduce me to all the highly immoral personages and practices that made the Punic Wars famous. By way of making Imilco a lifelong acquaintance, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... CONDITION, INDUSTRIAL AND PROFESSIONAL STATUS: In the country districts any widow having a child of school age and any widow or spinster having a ward of school age may vote for school trustees and school taxes. In Louisville, five third-class, and twenty or more fourth-class cities no woman has any vote. Women may be notaries public. ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... dollars were placed in the Allington Savings Bank to the credit of Bessie McPherson Bowen, and the spinster washed her hands of the whole affair, as she expressed it to herself. But she could not quite forget the child, and when on the Monday evening after the christening she sat by her open fire with her round tea table at her ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... singleness, single blessedness; bachelorhood, bachelorship^; misogamy^, misogyny. virginity, pucelage^; maidenhood, maidenhead. unmarried man, bachelor, Coelebs, agamist^, old bachelor; misogamist^, misogynist; monogamist; monk. unmarried woman, spinster; maid, maiden, virgin, feme sole [Fr.], old maid; bachelor girl, girl-bachelor; nun. V. live single, live alone. Adj. unmarried, unwed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... spinster of Plainton. In companies where there were married ladies she was sometimes obliged to take a second place, but never among maidens, old or young. There were very few subjects upon which Miss Shott had not an opinion; and whatever this opinion might be, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... as if in a kind of pet. Nay they have made a Report on that old Catherine Theot, and her Regenerative Man spoken of by the Prophets; not in the best spirit. This Theot mystery they affect to regard as a Plot; but have evidently introduced a vein of satire, of irreverent banter, not against the Spinster alone, but obliquely against her Regenerative Man! Barrere's light pen was perhaps at the bottom of it: read through the solemn snuffling organs of old Vadier of the Surete Generale, the Theot Report had its effect; wrinkling the general Republican visage into an iron grin. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... stay in England I searched for, but could not find, the self-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumped on and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not the unconsciousness, of the expert male. ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... spinster-aunt-wise, to any one else in your position, I should be tempted to moralize and issue warnings about—well, about the things of the spirit. But you are equipped, there. Like the "Master," you will "go your own way with inevitable motion." With the outer man—that is different. You have never ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinster-hood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... in sight of the promontory of Sunium, where the Greek Muse, in an awful vision, came to me, and said in a patronising way, "Why, my dear" (she always, the old spinster, adopts this high and mighty tone)—"Why, my dear, are you not charmed to be in this famous neighbourhood, in this land of poets and heroes, of whose history your classical education ought to have made you a master? if it did not, you have wofully ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the compass, the chicken pox, whooping cough, measles, and scarlet fever. All these unhappy incidents of childhood left but little impression on my mind. I have, however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost, who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... No girl is. But you all think it must be dreadful to be a moneyless spinster of fifty. I believe, for my part, that there's many a vieille fille who is not particularly sorry for herself or for the man who didn't want to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... woman's prayer to the Commander of the Faithful, who cried, "Hie thee to her and enquire an she be married or virginal; and, if she be unwedded, do thou ask her an she be willing to wive with me."[FN94] So Ja'afar fared to her and questioned her, whereat she answered, "A spinster." Quoth he, "The Youth who sent the dinar to thee desireth to mate with thee;" and quoth she, "An he can pay me my dower and my money down,[FN95] I will become his bride." Hereat Ja'afar said in his thought, "whence can the Prince ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... which she leaves open. An elderly, richly-dressed spinster, whom KATE has nearly knocked down as she fled, stalks into the room. ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... can testify to the pleasantness of the little installation, to the dexterity with which customers were led there, and to the grace with which the canvasser dipped the pen in the handsome silver inkstand. The county squire, the owner of racehorses, the undergraduate, and the Brixton spinster, are easily led by him to the commodious desk. Go and see the man, and you will be ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Theodore went straight to the maiden aunt, with whom Miss Jones resided, and, after most vehement badgering, got her consent to a private marriage within three days. The poor spinster, though much flustered, knowing his attentions to Lesbia had been a good deal talked about, felt almost relieved to have it settled ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... shoulders, exhaling an atmosphere of refined puritanism and provocative intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez' extravagant attentions if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if not, seemed to me plainer than ever. What had this well-poised, coldly observant spinster to do with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her slim, narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the pedal; her delicate fingers were resting idly ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... to dream she marries a vicar, foretells that she will fail to awake reciprocal affection in the man she desires, and will live a spinster, or marry to keep from ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... joy, therefore, that Nevitt saw at last in the parish register of St. Mary's at Mambury, the interesting announcement, "June 27th, Henry Lucius Kelmscott, of the parish of Plymouth, bachelor, private in the Regiment of Scots Greys, to Lucy Waring, spinster, of this parish." ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Miss Marrable, as a matter of course, appropriated to herself the part of "Lydia Languish." One of her favored swains next secured "Captain Absolute," and another laid violent hands on "Sir Lucius O'Trigger." These two were followed by an accommodating spinster relative, who accepted the heavy dramatic responsibility of "Mrs. Malaprop"—and there the theatrical proceedings came to a pause. Nine more speaking characters were left to be fitted with representatives; and with that unavoidable ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... was glad to have her back. That indomitable spinster had actually missed her lodger. She was surprised at her own pleasure in seeing the boxes carried upstairs again, in hearing the soft voice talking to Mawson, in sniffing the faint sweet scent that seemed to hang about the house when Miss Reston was in it, conquering ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... the wind, and the "something" would doubtless bear fruit; for this elderly spinster aunt, with a mania for psychical research, had brains as well as will power, and by hook or by crook she usually managed to accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soon after tea, when she sidled close up to him as they ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... sympathetic, fond of children and animals, wholesome and normal in your habits, without crankiness, and popular with both sexes. While there are many wives and widows possessed of these qualities, there seems to be some handicap to the spinster in the race of life who undertakes to arrive at middle age with all the womanly attributes. Almost invariably she drops some of them by the wayside. She becomes overorderly and fussy—so that association with her for any length of time is insupportable—or ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... "The spinster who has just been blessed Finds solemn thirty much improved, By proofs that such a crabbed soul Is still remembered and beloved. Kind wishes 'ancient Lu' has stored In the 'best chamber' of her heart, And every gift ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Stradivari six children. Her second child was a son named after her, Francesco; but Francesco died in infancy, and the name, in spite of the omen, was given to the next son, who followed his father's profession, but never married. The next child was a daughter, who died a spinster; the next was a son, who became a priest, and the next a son, who died a bachelor. The failure of all their children to marry does not indicate a particularly happy home-life, but this is mere speculation. We only know that Stradivari's ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... you were employed, according to the formula, "in virtue of these and subsequent engagements," and among the "subsequent engagements" you are kind enough to reckon one between Mademoiselle Berthe Lorinet, spinster, of no occupation, and M. Fabien Mouillard, lawyer. "Fabien Mouillard, lawyer"—that I may perhaps endure, but "Fabien Mouillard, son-in-law of Lorinet," never! One pays too dear for these rich wives. Mademoiselle ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... man, however wealthy, so he were of low condition, seemed to her worthy to have a gentlewoman to wife; and seeing that for all his wealth he was fit for nothing better than to devise a blend, set up a warp, or higgle about yarn with a spinster, she determined to dispense with his embraces, save so far as she might find it impossible to refuse them; and to find her satisfaction elsewhere with one that seemed to her more meet to afford it than her artificer ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... be convinced, not through your head, perhaps, but through your heart. I remember converting such a grim female once! You know Henry James says, "Some women are unmarried by choice, and others by chance, but Olive Chancellor was unmarried by every implication of her being." Now, this predestinate spinster acquaintance of mine, well nigh spoiled by years of school-teaching in the wrong spirit, was determined to think kindergarten play simply a piece of nauseating frivolity. She tried her best, but, kept in the circle with the children five successive ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... wires, and an account from a bookmaker showing a small debit balance. There were other miscellaneous bills, a plaintive epistle from a lady signing herself Flora, and begging for the loan of a fiver for a week, and an invitation to tea from a spinster who called herself Poppy. Amongst all this mass of miscellaneous documents there were only three which Wrayson laid on one side for further consideration. One of these was a note, dated from the Adelphi a ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sentimental reason caused Hahn & Lohman to house these hundreds of costumes, these tons of scenery, these forests of furniture. Neither had Josie Fifer been hired to walk wistfully among them like a spinster wandering in a dead rose garden. No, they were stored for a much thriftier reason. They were stored, if you must know, for possible future use. H. & L. were too clever not to use a last year's costume for a this year's ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... with only a suppression of the names, it is probable that the dates assigned to the indictments noted—the 34th and 35th years of Elizabeth—are the true ones, and that the initials given, "S. B. de C. in comit. H. vidua," "Marg' L. de A. in com' E. Spinster," and "Sara B. de C. in comitatu Eb. vidua," are those of the actual culprits and of their residences. Yorkshire is clearly one of the counties meant. It was, moreover, West's ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... buildings and be much sought after by the people who devote their lives—till they commit suicide—to illicit love and the Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909—would that we were all back in 1909!—it was as nice a part of London as a busy, energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home retirement and lilac-scented privacy—could desire to inhabit, at the absurd rental of fifty pounds a year, with comparatively low rates, and the need for only one hard-working, self-respecting Suffragette maid, with the monthly assistance ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... indicative of an architectural transition from the Norman to the Early Pointed English style. There were also the hollow slits of several lancet windows, and one almost perfect pierced circular window to the east, elaborately And here he whirled round on his only daughter, an angular and severely-visaged spinster; "Look at this fool!—this staring ape! All the sauce on the carpet! Wish he had to pay for it! He'll take an hour to get a cloth and wipe it up! Why did you engage such a damned ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... was to cast into a receptacle small billets, with (if the consulters were young women) bachelors' names on them, and then to draw them out lottery-wise. The bachelor whose name appeared on a billet thus extracted at random, became the valentine of the spinster to whose lot it fell. In this way a bevy of young ladies ascertained, in a few minutes, secrets they were most anxious should be disclosed. When the gentlemen were anxious to discover their valentines, they proceeded ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... stock, fully nine-tenths of which he could have sworn he had just shown an elderly spinster who had taken at least half an hour of his time and then left without making a purchase. His back was toward his counter when his attention was attracted by a feminine voice asking if he was busy. As he turned about he recognized her instantly—the girl for whom he had changed a wheel a month ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Miss Eliza were disturbed by this new zeal of his. At the instance of the spinster, the Doctor undertook to lay before Reuben the information conveyed in the letter of Maverick, and that gentleman's disapproval of any association between the young people looking to marriage. It was not an easy or an agreeable task for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... in her bosom and pressed the hand extended to her by Madame Zaire Blanch; whose name was Sally White, spinster. She went back to her children and showed them the card, and sank gracefully into a chair, exhausted as much by the agitation of asking favours as by the walk. "Cross, Fitchett, Copland? Why they were in the 'Tiser yesterday," said Edward: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... town," so that, after a hasty word at tea, he saw no more of the children till another evening, as they were seldom up at his early breakfast. He thought they were well taken care of, for Miss Bathsheba Dawes was an energetic, middle-aged spinster when she came into the family, and had been there fifteen years, so he did not observe, what a woman would have seen at once, that Miss Bat was getting old and careless, and everything about the house was at sixes and sevens. She took good care of him, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... or of the district church. The names of the two parties must be written down in full, with their conditions, and the parishes in which they reside—as, "Between A B, of the parish of St. George, bachelor (or widower, as the case may be), and C D, of the parish of St. George, spinster (or widow, as the case may be)." No mention of either the lady's or gentleman's age is required. Where the lady and gentleman are of different parishes, the banns must be published in each, and a certificate of their publication in ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... in the evening, he found the whole house in great commotion. His mother though anxious and upset, did not conceal her joy at his return; Aunt Agatha, however, a spinster, and his mother's eldest sister, who ruled the house, was furious. She maintained that it would be a positive crime not to punish him. Frithiof could not understand why it should be a crime, but his aunt told him ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... start at once; Oileus led the race; The next Ulysses, measuring pace with pace; Behind him, diligently close, he sped, As closely following as the running thread The spindle follows, and displays the charms Of the fair spinster's breast and moving arms: Graceful in motion thus, his foe he plies, And treads each footstep ere the dust can rise; His glowing breath upon his shoulders plays: The admiring Greeks loud acclamations raise: To him they give their wishes, hearts, and eyes, And ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... lie; has married him for money, and is baffled there. She hoped to become his widow, aha! The plot thickens, indeed! Goodness! what a household! That bad old man, the still viler woman, dangerous Lucian Davlin, and that funny, youthful, cross, 'conceited spinster,' Ellen Arthur, who has a lover, and his name is—heaven save us—Percy! That name will mix itself up with my fate web, and why? Percy beloved of Claire; Percy who brought Philip Girard to his doom; Percy the lover ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... for I am romantic, and do enjoy love stories with all my heart, even if the lovers are only a skinny spinster and a master carpenter. So I just resolved to see what I could do for poor Almiry and the peppery old lady. I didn't promise anything but my bits, and, taking the things I bought, went home to talk it over with Mamma. I found she had often got pins and tape, and such small wares, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... stenographer-in-chief, was big, vigorous, blond—vulgar, energetic, vivid; and Miss Munch, her assistant, a thin, hollow-chested spinster, who loafed upon her job so that she might save her sight for the manufacture of incredible yards of tatting, never missed an opportunity to lift her eyes ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... pleasantest rooms of which, to me, were the small apartment on the ground floor, lined with books from floor to ceiling, and my own peculiar lodging in the upper regions, which, thanks to my mother's kindness and taste, was as pretty a bower of elegant comfort as any young spinster need have desired. There I chiefly spent my time, pursuing my favorite occupations, or in the society of my own especial friends: my dear H—— S——, when she was in London; Mrs. Jameson, who often climbed thither for an hour's pleasant discussion of her book on Shakespeare; and a lady ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the scene. An almost uncontrollable desire to laugh possessed him; but, restraining himself, he took the first chance he had to make his presence known, at which Aunt Eliza groaned, "Oh, my!" and Mary Jane instinctively grasped her yelling children, and the prim spinster curtsied and asked if he used tobacco. At Job's surprised look and negative reply, she said, "Very well. I never employ a male being who permeates his environment with the noxious weed. As you do not, I will offer you proper remuneration ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... teeth o' hell, in season—if hell's made o' wind an' sea, as I'm inclined t' think—an' the ease of a bachelor man, between whiles, in his cottage at Rickity Tickle, where he lived all alone like a spick-an'-span spinster. 'Twas not o' the sea he was scared. 'Twas o' want in an unkind world; an' t'was jus' that an' no more that drove un t' hard sailin' an' contempt o' death—sheer fear o' want in the wolf's world that he'd made this world out t' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... of, and, representing as it did her ideal modern woman, she gave it in 1886 to Wellesley, where modern womanhood was in the making. In later years, irreverent youth took playful liberties with "Harriet", using her much as a beloved spinster aunt is used by fond but familiar young nieces. No freshman was considered properly matriculated until she had been dragged between the rungs of Miss Martineau's great marble chair; May Day always saw "Aunt Harriet" rise like Diana fresh from her bath, to be decked with ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... of the city of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, taking the Parliamentary side in the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the property which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who devised his money to his second daughter, Barbara, a spinster. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... father died, in 1867, her mother's sister, Miss Harriet Tewksbury, a spinster of fifty or thereabouts, who, for the lack of something substantial to interest her, had been halting between woman's rights and Spiritualism, suddenly discovered that Helen's cause was the real woman's cause; whereupon she went to the lonely and grief-stricken girl, and with ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... winter won't wash away. Theer 's the lines. They 'm a fact, same as the sun in heaven 's a fact. God A'mighty's Self couldn't undo it wi'out some violent invention; an' for that matter I doan't see tu clear how even Him be gwaine to magic a married woman into a spinster again; any more than He could turn a spinster into a married woman, onless some ordinary human man came forrard. You must faace it braave an' strong. But that imp o' Satan—that damn Blanchard bwoy! Theer! I caan't say what I think 'bout him. Arter all that's been done: the guests invited, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the door of an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. The introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy for the old lady," Nares said, "even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as I was going by; I always thought she was a kind of pleasant ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... spinster who had found her parents a hindrance to her extensive enjoyment of male companionship. She had literally chopped up ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... had appeared. Those whom I had known were many of them married—others were gone. Society had lost its first charm to me. So my father and I travelled three years. We had barely returned when he died. I did not take up my social duties again till I was thirty-two. Then it was as the spinster aunt, as you have known me. Now do you understand how hard it is for such a girl as Dorothy to ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... be, at this very moment, Mrs. William Beresford, a highly respectable young matron who painted rather good pictures in her spinster days, when she was Penelope Hamilton of the great American working-class, Unlimited; but first Mrs. Beresford's dangerous illness and then her death, have kept my dear boy a willing prisoner in Cannes, his heart sadly torn betwixt his love and duty to his mother ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... nondescripts—thanks to the growing insecurity of things among the army class and gentry generally. If she were really penniless he might—as a Captain—ask her to share his poverty—but was it likely shed be a spinster ten years hence—even if he were a Captain so soon? Promotion is not violently rapid in the Cavalry.... And yet he simply hated the bare thought of life without Lucille. Better to be a gardener at Monksmead, and see ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... of the Forrest of Pendle, in the County of Lancaster Spinster, taken at Reade in the said Countie of Lancaster, the xiij. day of March, Anno Regni Jacobi Angliae, &c. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... harsh-featured spinster, who eked out a precarious living by teaching music. Ethel knew her slightly, as a gaunt woman who usually toiled up the stairs with a sort of scornful weariness of herself ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... a girl why not also? Georgina, or even Byron will make a classical name for a spinster, if Mr. Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... mere shame-faced, sister-hating, commonplace creature that the collective boy thinks it due to himself to be in society,' said Ethel, 'and me from an enjoying sister, into an elderly, care-taking, despised spinster—a burden to myself and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impression on you, what then would all his others? Leslie Stephen says his Humour is heavy (Qy is not his Tragedy?), and wonders how Miss Austen could admire him as it appears she did; and you discern a relation between her and him. I find plenty of grave humour in this Book: in the Spinster, the Bachelor, the Widow, etc. All which I pointed out (in the still-born) to L. S. . . . He says too that Crabbe is 'incapable of Epigram,' which also you do not agree in; Epigrams more of Humour than Wit; sometimes only hinted, as in those two last ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... more than half to penetrate her motives and mysteries. Of one thing I'm sure at least: that they were considerably less insuperable than her appearance announced. Miss Ambient was a restless romantic disappointed spinster, consumed with the love of Michael-Angelesque attitudes and mystical robes; but I'm now convinced she hadn't in her nature those depths of unutterable thought which, when you first knew her, seemed to look out from her eyes and to prompt her ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... and tittering, and glancing through a window, saw several young girls busy at sewing-machines, directed by an angular spinster whom she took ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... beyond me. Can you understand a poor middle-aged spinster being frightened into doing a dangerous thing? That may seem to be nonsense. But if you ask why I took a morsel of paper, and wrote the warning which I was afraid to communicate by word of mouth—why I went upstairs with my knees knocking ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... not say so, everybody could see from the outset the pity of its ever having come about at all. The pious and stiffly respectable priest's sister had been harmless enough as a spinster. It made the heart ache to contemplate her as a wife. Incredibly narrow-minded, ignorant, suspicious, vain, and sour-tempered, she must have driven a less equable and well-rooted man than Jeremiah Madden to drink or flight. He may have had his temptations, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... genial Comic Paper man upon FLORA did not, indeed, pass away, until she and Miss CAROWTHERS were in their appointed quarters under the roof of Mrs. SKAMMERHORN, whither they went immediately upon the arrival of the elder spinster from Bumsteadville. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... forbid that I should encourage the giving of your young life to such a consuming passion. Happiness and success in the pursuit of any ideal can only come to one who dwells in a sympathetic atmosphere. Do you think a people that lauds Mr. Spinster as a great novelist and Mr. Perchance as a great critic can have any knowledge of that deity you would follow, or any sympathy ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... discontent. I had seen much of Darthea in the fall and early winter of '75, and had come to know her better. She was fond of riding with my aunt, who had a strong gray stallion full of tricks, but no master of the hardy old lady, whom neither horse nor man ever dismayed. The good spinster was by no means as vigorous as I could have wished, but ride she would on all clear days whether cold or not, and liked well to have Darthea with us. When ill she was a docile patient, but, once ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... a little freckled, and very tall, by no means bad-looking, and standing on the list in the Family Bible No. IV. From this union Mr. Witherington had issue: first, a daughter, christened Moggy, whom we shall soon have to introduce to our readers as a spinster of forty-seven; and second, Antony Alexander Witherington, Esquire, whom we just now have left in a very comfortable position, and in ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... The spinster pulled her door to with a slam, That sounded like a wooden d—n; For so some moral people, strictly loth To swear in words, however up, Will crash a curse in setting down a cup, Or through a door-post vent ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... She thought over her friends and acquaintances in Paris. Which of them would be the safest to communicate with? Which would be most useful to her, and would trouble her least? Finally she decided on telephoning to a rich American spinster whom she had known for years, a woman who was what is called "large minded," who was very tolerant, very understanding, and not more curious than a woman has to be. Caroline Briggs could comprehend a hint without demanding facts to ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... time here now," continued the spinster, "though whether on account of Sir Charles's health or because his wife prefers it I can't say. I daresay it wasn't gay enough for her in Cheshire—not enough distractions. You know how it is with these young women who marry ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... that way—that is,—that is, I have heard so," said the spinster, correcting herself; "for what should a country-bred woman know about you creatures? When you are near us, they say you are all raptures and flames and promises and I don't know what; when you are away, you forget all ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fired off his funny sayings at Miranda, as he had never joked and laughed before, until Miranda herself smiled and giggled; yes, actually giggled, behind the coffee-urn, at his merry squibs, as if the little imp above mentioned was mischievously tickling her—yes, I will say it,—her spinster ribs. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... revealed a breast to be likened only to that of an old peasant woman who cares nothing about her personal ugliness. The fleshless arm was like a stick on which a bit of stuff was hung. Seen at her window, this spinster seemed tall from the length and angularity of her face, which recalled the exaggerated proportions of certain Swiss heads. The character of their countenance—the features being marked by a total want of harmony—was that of hardness in the lines, sharpness in the tones; ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... said the officer lightly. "But she'll never get out of Alaska a spinster—not that girl. She may be going in to teach, or to run a millinery store, or to keep books for a trading company. She'll stay to bring up kiddies of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Silver. He was on Heart of Oak, she high above him, perched like a bird on tall old Silvertail, who looked like a spinster and was one. Almost you expected her to look at you over spectacles and make an acrid ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... of her through Adelaide Painter—;" and in reply to his glance of interrogation she explained that the lady in question was a spinster of South Braintree, Massachusetts, who, having come to Paris some thirty years earlier, to nurse a brother through an illness, had ever since protestingly and provisionally camped there in a state of contemptuous protestation ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... to marry. I don't know as I do at my time of life," responded the spinster. "I rather guess my day for chances ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... MANCHESTER there is a shortage of curates. A spinster writes to say that she is not surprised, considering how ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... now for that; but she winced, and bit her lip severely, as the irate spinster "gave Miss Maverick to understand that an intercourse which might possibly be agreeable to her French associations could never be tolerated at the home of Dr. Johns. For herself, she had a reputation for propriety to sustain; and while Miss Maverick made a portion of her household, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and Fielding, she far surpassed those pioneers in the exquisite and easy verisimilitude of her art. Nay, we can go further and say that nobody has reproduced life with a more faithful accuracy, that yet was not photography because it gave the pleasure proper to art, than this same Jane Austen, spinster, well-born and well-bred: in her own phrase, an "elegant female" of the English past. Scott's famous remark can not be too often quoted: "That young lady had a talent for describing the movements and feelings of characters of ordinary life, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Miss Gailey, a spinster of superior breeding and a teacher of dancing, had in the distant past been an intimate friend of Mrs. Lessways. The friendship was legendary in the house, and the grand quarrel which had finally put an end to it dated in Hilda's ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... displeasure so plainly that her Italian singing mistress, the elderly spinster Caterina de Celano, took sides with her, and scornfully asked the countess whether she had brought her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of him as if he were your mistress, Major Dunwoodie," observed the smiling spinster, glancing her eye at her niece, who sat pale and listening, in a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... of my hair?" asked the gallant old bachelor of the spinster who had been a belle a few ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... glinted gold where little flecks of sunlight filtered through the branches of the tall trees to caress it. In the hair, too, was a single red rose, caught into place with a natural grace that it seemed a pity to waste on three spinster aunts and two dogs, and the same note of color was repeated in another rebellious blossom at the throat. The young face was plump and oval, and the cheeks were pink, the brown eyes were wide and sparkling and—Oh, well, the young man in the pool ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... spinster, at the parsonage, was disposed to credit something to the rigid legal aspects which the affair was taking, and to find in them a shelter for her wounded dignities. Nor did she share the inquietude of the Doctor at thought of the new and terrible religious influences to which Adele ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... shirt—in a bundle which he proudly tucked under his arm and toddled out of the office whistling a wedding march. An hour later, dressed in this regalia and a new black suit, buttoned primly and exactly in a fashion unknown to Mehronay, he appeared at the opera house with Miss Columbia Merley, spinster, teacher of Greek and Hellenic philosophy at the College. The office force asked in a gasp of wonder: "Who dressed him?" Miss Merley—late in her forties, steel-eyed, thin-chested, flint-faced and with hair knotted so tightly back from her high stony brow that she had to take out two hairpins ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... idiosyncratic passion for the anomalous, but those who were near to him knew what a connecting link they were between him and the little children of whom he wrote, and how each trumpet and drum, each "spinster doll," each little toy dog, each little tin soldier, played its part in the poems he sent out into the world. No writer ever made more persistent and consistent use of the material by which he was surrounded, or put a higher literary value on the little things which go to make ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... implied—oh! it implied all sorts of things. It meant that she would care as little for philandering as an able young business man. Perhaps some day, a long time ahead, she might marry. There wasn't much reason for it, but it might be she would not wish to be called a spinster. "Take a husband," thought old Grammont, "when I am gone, as one takes a butler, to make the household complete." In previous meditations on his daughter's outlook old Grammont had found much that was very suggestive in the precedent of Queen Victoria. She had had no husband ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... girl did not heed him. "Last of all, there's another reason," she went on. "I don't know why I shouldn't speak it, as well as think it, for it's the greatest of all. I'm a young woman. I won't remain such long. I don't want to be a spinster. I know I'm not supposed to say these things, but why not? I want to meet men, men of my own class, my parents' class, men who know something besides the weight of a steer and the value of a bronco,—some man I could ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... The spinster colored up at the nurse's odd way of using the possessive pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... her father was supposed—by his unfortunate wife at least—to have been the scion of a proud and aristocratic family, who had not been too proud, however, to leave her to starve. Altogether, Miss Husted was an exceedingly romantic, high-strung, middle-aged spinster, miles and miles above her station in life, whose heart and purse were open to any foreigner who had discernment enough to see her weakness and tact enough to pander to it by hinting at his noble lineage. This love of ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... "dear Lady Wilde!" I noticed that her glance went towards Willie, who was standing on the other side of his mother, talking to a tall, handsome girl. Willie's friend seemed amused at the lyrical outburst of the green spinster, for smiling ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... mustn't make comments on big brothers," I smiled back at her. Win was nineteen and I had attained the mature age of twenty-seven. We were orphans and spinster Aunt Lucy did her best to be a parent to us; and we got on smoothly enough, for none of us had the temperament that rouses friction ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... is a very strict law intended to eliminate the spinster from the social horizon. It is a law born of craft and inspired by foresight. The daughters of a household must be married off in the order of their nativity. The younger sister dare not contemplate matrimony until the elder sister has been led to the altar. It is impossible ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... unhappy gardener, recoiling from the withered face, bearded lip, and sharp nose of the ancient spinster; "I relinquish my claim—I'll write ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... increasingly valuable as the number of unmarried women increases. More resources are open to an American woman who has to lead a solitary life, not merely in the way of employment, but for the occupation of her mind and tastes, than to a European spinster or widow; while her education has not rendered the American wife less competent for the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... carried a little white silk flag, on which the staring gold letters were lost in the rippling folds. With her eyes on the sky and her feet in the dust, she marched, a prim, ladylike figure, an inspired spinster, oblivious alike of the hooting small boys and the half-compassionate, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... dark, vivid, and expectant as the eyes of youth—autumn pools shot through with the sun. The mouth was a generous one, finely molded by the experience of the years. He remembered that she was a spinster, yet there was about her none of the emptiness, the starved quality, of the woman with her destiny unfulfilled; nothing of the futility, the incompletion, of the celibate that causes the imagination to turn with relief to contemplation of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... simple maiden you must be to ask such a question!" he said. "Sorry? Good God, I should think so! Sorry is no word for it. If Fate thought it necessary to thrust a sister on me I wish it had rather been some yellow-skinned, sour old spinster, but ...
— Fan • Henry Harford |
