"Old woman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same house with Huckstep,—a large log house, roughly finished; where we were waited upon by an old woman, whom we used to call aunt Polly. Huckstep was, I soon found, inordinately fond of peach brandy; and once or twice in the course of a month he had a drunken debauch, which usually lasted from two to four days. He was then full of talk, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of their amusements in these excursions consisted in Lord Oxford and Swift's counting the poultry on the road, and whichever reckoned thirty-one first, or saw a cat, or an old woman, won the game. Bolingbroke, overtaking them one day in their road to Windsor, got into Lord Oxford's coach, and began some political conversation; Lord Oxford said, "Swift, I am up; there is a cat." Bolingbroke was ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... therefore, in good truth, we may as well be repre- sented by his uncle's old three-corner'd hat. And as for the other member, even in his youthful days he was no better in the House of Commons than an old woman. Is there no honourable and independent man to be found in the county of Wilts, capable of sustaining such a charge? I, myself, have no doubt but there are many; but it is that cursed long purse, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... for books from clergymen and students, or gruffly bargained with a boy or an old woman for a dilapidated lot of old books. He had a curious quizzical way with strangers, who at once set him down as an oddity, and his impatience with ignoramuses and bores gave him the repute of crustiness, which was redeemed by suavity enough whenever ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... caught sight of Elena's nurse, who was knocking at the door, returning from some shopping she had made. This nurse had been his own nurse in childhood; therefore he remembered her, and cried aloud, "Nurse, Nurse!" But the old woman did not hear him, and passed into the house and shut the door behind her. Whereupon Gerardo, greatly moved, still called to her, and when he reached the door, began to knock upon it violently. And whether ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... The old woman came, heard what details there were to the sad story, shook her head mournfully, and found nothing to say; but together they set about preparing the body for burial. That done, the mind of Mrs. Blatherwick was at ease, and she sat expecting the visit of the carpenter. ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... if they don't, for sure they could be no credit to him; but they that found him put him into the Union, and there an old woman, that they called Granny Moll, took to him. She had but one eye, he says; but, Mother, I do believe he never had another friend like her, for he got to pulling up the bits of grass, and was near crying when he said she was dead and gone, and then ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who were following and trying to keep up with him, calling to him all the time to stop, to wait, to go slow, and give them a chance. There were seven following him: a stout, middle-aged woman, then a grey-haired old woman and two girls, and last a youngish, married woman with a small boy by the hand; and the stout woman, with a red, laughing face, cried out, "Oh, Dave, do stop, can't 'ee! Where be going so fast, man—don't ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... there lost in thought, an old woman, leaning on a staff, passed me. I did not immediately recognize her, but at a second glance I saw it was Hripsime. Nurse Hripsime was a woman of five-and-seventy, yet, from her steady gait, her lively speech, and her fiery eyes, she appeared to be scarcely fifty. She was vigorous and ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... what her lover's real thoughts on the subject were she said to him, "Poor l'Ile Adam, we were very silly to marry—a lad like you, with your twenty-three years, and an old woman close ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... Elizabeth there are seven here, and in them may be traced the great changes of her face,—from that of the plain, awkward, not altogether unpleasing, red-haired girl, to that of the hard, bitter, disappointed old woman. Some of her courtiers surround her;—Leicester, with a treacherous uncertainty of expression; and Burleigh, riding on a mule, and holding flowers in his hand,—an odd representation of the great Lord Treasurer. And here, too, is Henry Wriothesley, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... painter demanded money. He gave away his pictures, because, with an artist's pride, he maintained that their price could not be estimated. There is a tradition that Zeuxis laughed himself to death over an old woman painted by him. He arrived at illusion of the senses, regarded as a high attainment in art, as in the instance recorded of his grapes. He belonged to the Asiatic school, whose head- quarters were at Ephesus, the peculiarities of which were accuracy of imitation, the exhibition of sensual ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... shifted in the fireplace, the marble hood of which had been taken from a famous Italian palace. The irons stood ready as of yore for the cups of mulled wine. Before this fire sat a little old woman knitting. Her feet were on a hassock. From time to time her bird-like glance swept the thinker in the adjacent chair. She wondered what he could see in the fire there to hold his gaze so steadily. The little ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Hunting, by Rubens; Portraits of Vanloo and of his mother, by himself; Cromwell regarding CharlesI. laid out in his coffin, by Paul Delaroche, his chef d'oeuvre; "Nero and a Sorceress experimenting on a slave with the poison they were preparing for Britannicus," by Javier Sigalon; An old woman, by Greuze; also works by Grard Dow, Claude Lorrain, Metzu, Ostade, Paul Potter, Ruysdael, Van den Welde, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... care and ministration to the royalist. She got her bed ready for him, asked him a few questions, looked at his shoulder, not even yet quite healed, said it had not been well managed, and prepared a poultice, which smelt so vilely that Rowland turned from it with disgust. But the old woman had a singular power of persuasion, and at length he yielded, and in a few moments ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... of her I like to help other people's little girls; you know I helped start Elizabeth House, a home for working girls—and I'm getting my money back on that a thousand times over. It's a pretty state of things if an old woman like me, without a chick of my own, and with no sense but horse sense, can't back a likely filly like your Sylvia. I want you to let me call her our Sylvia. We'll train her in all the paces, Andrew, and I hope one of us ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... leading little Agnes through the wide hall, and up the broad stairs and—along the upper hall to the door of the "North Room," the good old woman was wiping her eyes with her apron, and trying to choke down something in her throat which prevented her speaking the words of comfort she wished to say to the sobbing child. When they reached the door of the ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Brodjinsky de la Porkus for three million, nine hundred thousand, six hundred and twenty-four dollars and sixteen cents!" And the sour-looking old woman paid the money in cash and on the spot, which proves this is ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... An old woman now rose suddenly from her seat in the window-sill, the living dread of shepherds, for she travelled the country with a brilliant reputation for witchcraft, and thus she broke in upon the narrative: "I vow, young man, ye tell us the truth upset ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... me clothes frequently of their own or their children's; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some one thing, some another, and these my old woman managed for me like a mere mother, and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them, and turn them and twist them to the best advantage, for she ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... am." Her voice sank to a whisper. "But—oh, Leonard ... somehow I just seemed to feel inside me just how you felt, just how—it was with you those two years. Oh, it's a dreadful thing to say, isn't it? Poor Ida! She was so good to me, and yet sometimes—" The trembling old woman's voice ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... piety because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In my infant and boyish days, too, I owe much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... were the object of these sketches to make people laugh, Grimshaw's life would furnish us with a fruitful subject of amusement. How he dressed himself up as an old woman in order to discover who were the disturbers of his cottage lectures; how he sold his Alderney cow because 'she would follow him up into the pulpit;' how a visitor at Haworth looked out of his bedroom window one morning and saw to ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... deary!" exclaimed the old woman, "and why are you losing your beauty sleep in this fashion? When I was young things used to be very different. Girls had to be in bed by ten o'clock sharp to keep away the wrinkles, but now they're all agog to burn the candle at both ends. It don't pay, Miss ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... Aberdeen. The following extract of a letter of the professor to me, explains how he came by them:—"An aunt of my children, Mrs Farquhar, now dead, who was married to the proprietor of a small estate, near the sources of the Dee, in Braemar, a good old woman, who spent the best part of her life among flocks and herds, resided in her latter days in the town of Aberdeen. She was possest of a most tenacious memory, which retained all the songs she had heard from nurses and country-women in that ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... as yet. He could see the harvesters going to their labours in the fields of wheat and oats, the carters already bringing in little loads of hay. He could hear their marche-'t'-en! to the horses. Over by a little house on the river bank stood an old woman sharpening a sickle. He could see the flash of the steel as the stone and metal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the great man gave a great sigh of relief when he saw that no flashily dressed creature had entrapped him. Even if people stared at him sitting there it made no difference. In pity he shook hands with the little old woman, sat down beside her, calmed her agitation, spoke of Cornwall and the weather, and inquired what he could do for her. A rambling talk about nothing followed, and Disraeli was sure it was just ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... next,' is it, as the children say?" she asked. "Very well, me. Well, once upon a time, dear, a year ago, I was an old woman. I was twenty-nine, if you care to know, but an old woman. For the measure of years is a very bad standard to judge by; it tells you of years only which have practically nothing to do with being old or young. Well, the old woman of twenty-nine ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... I saw them home safely," cried the lieutenant, snatching his cigar from his lips and dashing it into the empty grate. "Colonel, did you ever have an old woman ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... him," panted Winnie. "Oh, dear! It's no joke bringing one's beasties to a show. I'm glad we decided not to exhibit the pigs! Martin, you're not to open that hamper. We shall be having the chickens escaping next! Stop him, Stumps! I feel like the 'Old Woman who lived in a Shoe'. Gwen, you take charge of the cockerels while I find where the Black Minorcas have to ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... lonely way. Every three or four hundred yards you pass a small mountain farmhouse overflowing with children, calling to mind the home of the old woman who lives in the shoe. Many squads of geese, following their corporal, march across the road towards the creek or back again to the barnyard. The thickets are alive with red birds and ground robins and an occasional squirrel, who has come down the mountain for a drink, rustles the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... heroic old woman of Frederick, Maryland, who took up the flag the men had hauled down at the command of Stonewall Jackson.—John Greenleaf Whittier, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... danger, mademoiselle!" exclaimed the maid with a cry of joy, as she closed the door upon the doctor, and, rushing to the bed on which her mistress lay, she began, in a frenzy of happiness and with a shower of kisses to embrace, together with the bed covers, the old woman's poor, emaciated body, which seemed, in the huge bed, as small ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... I'll tell you what you are—you're just a cunning young fortune-hunter. You found out that this property and a good bit besides are coming to Isobel, and you want to collar the sag, like you did that of the old woman out in Lucerne. Well, you don't do it, my boy. I've other views for Isobel. Do you think I want to see her married to—to—the son of a fellow like that—a canting snuffler who prigs letters and splits on his own son?" ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... Thing—the same some one or Thing that McGuire had seen. But granting that their eyes had not deceived them, granting that each had seen Something, what, unless it were supernatural, could have frightened McGuire and Aunt Tillie too? Even if the old woman had been timid about staying in the house, she had made it clear to Peter that she was entirely unaware of the kind of danger that threatened her employer. Peter had believed her then. He saw no reason to disbelieve her now. She had known as little as Peter ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... dingy tragedy; and it seems strange and hard that, after all these years, the poor crazy sinner should be still pilloried on her cart in the scrap-book of my memory. Nor shall I readily forget a certain house in the Quadrant where a visitor died, and a dark old woman continued to dwell alone with the dead body; nor how this old woman conceived a hatred to myself and one of my cousins, and in the dread hour of the dusk, as we were clambering on the garden-walls, opened a window in that house of mortality and cursed us in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gin, whisky, and the likes are only fit for those who nocturnally lay the foundation for matutinal 'hot coppers,' with the vilest shag in the most odorous of yards of clay. 'Smoking leads to drinking,' has been a favorite old woman's saying for time out of mind. How I hate old women's sayings! A grain—requiring to be picked out with a pin and microscope—of truth, with a bushel of bunkum or cant. How is it, that ever since the days of James I, of 'hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain' memory, there have always been carpers ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... said: 'Jane has been weeping, Walter;—prithee why? 'I've seen her laugh, and dance, but never cry. 'But I can guess; with her you should have been, 'When late I saw you loit'ring on the green; 'I'm an old Woman, and the truth may tell: I say then, Boy, you have ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... were sick should go and smell the perfume of the flower and rejoice in the brightness of the light (nooreen)—my name. Rather a highflown way of mentioning the 'exhibition' of a black dose. But we don't feel that a man makes a fool of himself here when he is romantic in his talk even about an old woman. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... has been estimated that at least thirty thousand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed in Scotland, perished in 1722. "She was an innocent old woman, who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She had a daughter, lame both of hands and of feet—a circumstance attributed to the witch having been ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... word of English,—and their habits! But they are better than the Poles, in the Halsted Street district, or the Russians in another West Side district. And we have a brick building, not rooms rented in a wooden house. And the principal is an old woman, too fat to climb all the stairs to my room. So I am left alone to reign among my ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... That's as God pleases. I am a very old man and she was a very old woman when I was born. When she died she was as black as a miraculous Virgin and her breath whistled like the wind in a keyhole. She told me the story when I was a little boy. She told it to me out there in the garden, on a bench by the fish-pond, one summer night of the ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... see any better than he did—toujours myope, lui" the old woman murmured to her son, with a pregnant wink, as she ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... not found many persons professing a respectable degree of intelligence, and even official members of orthodox churches, who entirely discredit its sublime teachings; and yet some of these very persons find little difficulty in believing that an old woman can transform herself into a hare, and wing her way through the air on a broomstick. What contracted notions such persons must have of the almightiness of the Deity, and of the infinite depth of meaning of the following ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... make Serach faithless to his principles. He soon has a falling out with his fellow-celibates, and succumbs to the fascinations of a fair young temptress. After the wedding he discovers that his enemies, the women, have substituted for his beautiful bride, a hideous old woman, Blackcoal, the daughter of Owl. She at once assumes the reins of government most energetically, and answers her husband's groan of despair by the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... persecuting Always less apt to complain of irrevocable events Amuse them with this peace negotiation Are apt to discharge such obligations—(by) ingratitude Arrive at their end by fraud, when violence will not avail them As the old woman had told the Emperor Adrian Attachment to a half-drowned land and to a despised religion Barbara Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon Beautiful damsel, who certainly did not lack suitors Believed in the blessed advent of peace ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... impulsively to an old woman clad in shabby black who stood besides her gazing earnestly at the crowd. Her large bony face was crossed by the lines and wrinkles of long years of care, and her eyes were dim; but her ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... not belong to that degraded set, but the one was a thoughtless child and the other an exceedingly suspicious and inquisitive old woman, and that they were both used as unsuspecting tools by their more designing fellows I have not ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... my room door, with a little start, I met an extremely old woman with the longest face I ever saw; she had what used to be termed a high-cauld-cap on, the white border of which contrasted with her brown and yellow skin, and made her wrinkled face more ugly. She raised her curved shoulders, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... One old woman across the aisle began clapping her hands together, and repeated in a singsong tone, "Oh, ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the gentlewoman in Aroostook, Maine, who put out a fire the other day, first by pouring water on it, then all her milk and cream, and finally all the pickle in her meat-barrels. 'Twas only applying wholesale an old woman's cure for burns; but the point of the matter was that she pickled a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... great care, those children, and all at once Marmaduke decided he knew who their mother must be. The boat was shaped just like a huge shoe and she surely had so many children she didn't know what to do. Yes, she must be the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, only the shoe must ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... saw that the door stood open: a few steps farther, and this fact was accounted for. A bent and wrinkled old woman stood there with a broom in her hand, which she had been using in a plain, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... placed in the care of an old woman who carries it directly to a sturdy molave[88] tree and there attaches it to the branches "so that the child may become strong like the tree." While on this mission the bearer looks neither to the right nor to the left, nor does she hesitate, ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... my husband would meet him in this shape; he cannot abide the old woman of Brainford; he swears she's a witch, forbade her my house, and hath threatened to ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Punch's promising contributors fated to an early death. He began with a few initials—a couple of "A's" were his first little feat, one of them made out of an old woman and a bathing machine. Then came "socials" up to 1865, which attracted attention for their grace, in spite of their lack of backbone; but after a variety of work, including drawings for the "Argosy" and illustrations for ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... dining-room. There was a bright carpet on the floor, a green-covered table between the windows, with books and papers scattered about on it in the way which betokens use and familiarity instead of show. The round table was set for three, and ever and anon a dear little old woman bustled in from the bit of a kitchen and added another touch to the arrangements for dinner. A young miss of perhaps sixteen was curled in a corner of the lounge, working rapidly and a little nervously with slate, and pencil, and brain. The side gate clicked, and a young ...
— Three People • Pansy
... no folk in the street save here and there an old woman sitting at the door of her house, and maybe a young child with her. As he came to where the street turned somewhat, even such a carline was sitting on a clean white door-step on the sunny side, somewhat shaded by a tall rose-laurel tree in a great ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... in my life. The state agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i thought more of what you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When we got to Chicago on the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old woman's leather; (ROBBED HER OF HER POCKETBOOK) i hadn't no more than got it off when i wished i hadn't done it, for awhile before that i made up my mind to be a square bloke, for months on your word, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... colours mean to us—think of the position of one like myself, who can see nothing but those two colours, nothing but the red and the yellow. To me all shapes are equal, all common and noble things are in a democracy of combination. Wherever there is a field of marigolds and the red cloak of an old woman, there is Nicaragua. Wherever there is a field of poppies and a yellow patch of sand, there is Nicaragua. Wherever there is a lemon and a red sunset, there is my country. Wherever I see a red pillar-box and a yellow sunset, there my heart beats. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... so on. The children did not care a fig about that kind of talk; so they walked off to a corner, and began to play with some funny things they found. One was an old man all made of black wadding, and another was a very fat old woman made of white wadding. The old woman hadn't the least speck of a foot to stand on; her body was just a great round roll of wadding, without legs; I never saw a real, live old woman without legs, did you? But ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Jonathan's cousin, and a man of a very warm temper. In activity and skill, he was next to Jonathan. 4. David, and his mother Rachel, the first a hopeful young man of about twenty, and the latter a good-natured old woman, who had the care of our clothes and linen, and kept them clean and in good order. Besides these four families, we took with us a boy, Okkiksuk, an orphan, about sixteen, whom Jonathan had adopted, and who promised to reward the kindness of his guardian by his good behaviour. He was always ready ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... every one else in the room. But of Lady Harrowfield she made an enemy for life. The venomous woman reddened violently—under her paint—while she looked this upstart through and through. But Theodora was quite unconscious of her anger. To her Lady Harrowfield seemed a poor, soured old woman very much painted and ridiculous, and she felt sorry for ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... Don announced. "I want to tell him lots of fings about that bad mans and that silly old woman who said she was my nurse. I told her she was not any such fing 'cause Nannie's my nurse, ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... cents, Sam decided to make his lunch of apples. For this sum an old woman at the corner would supply him with three, and they were very "filling" for the price. After eating his apples he took a walk, being allowed about forty minutes for lunch. He bent his steps toward Wall Street, ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... shot off at a tangent and ran over an Indian woman. So unexpected was the attack, so deep was the drift into which she was hurled, and so rapidly did the flying toboggan get out of sight, that the poor, superstitious old woman ever after declared that it could have been no other than the Muche Manetoo, the ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... for?" sternly asked the guard one morning of an old woman,—old Mrs. Hall who stood out in front of her little house blowing like Boreas in ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... couldn't give you as a reference, and I don't know any man who would be generous enough to take the risk of participating in the fraud.... unless it were Praed—good old Praddy. I'm sure it's been done now and again. They call Judge FitzSimmons 'an old woman.' Well, d'you know, I believe he is ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... had ever heard in his life about any one person; it was perhaps his own fault for having told her that he was not interested in Goethe. When the governess went off picket duty the hostess was again on hand with a not- to-be-gainsaid invitation to visit the cottage of an old woman who remembered Charles James Fox; the woman had been dead for two or three years, but the cottage was still there. Lanner was called back to town earlier than he had ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... pools, birch copses flash by. Here we overtake some emigrants, then an etape.... We meet tramps with pots on their back; these gentry promenade all over the plain of Siberia without hindrance. One time they will murder some poor old woman to take her petticoat for their leg-wrappers; at another they will strip from the verst post the metal plate with the number on it—it might be useful; at another will smash the head of some beggar or ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... with closed eyes—then, letting go with one hand, balanced with lolling heads, trying to grab some rope or stanchion further forward. The long-armed and athletic boatswain swung quickly, gripping things with a fist hard as iron, and remembering suddenly snatches of the last letter from his "old woman." Little Belfast scrambled in a rage spluttering "cursed nigger." Wamibo's tongue hung out with excitement; and Archie, intrepid and calm, watched his chance to ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... and the owner of the dwelling, was a round, rosy-faced little man, with shrewd sparkling grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a very sociable manner. He was the great "gossip" of the place; no old woman at a wash-tub or behind a tea-tray ever wagged her tongue more persistently over the concerns of he and she and you and they, than Abel Twitt. He had a leisurely way of talking,—a "slow and silly way" his wife called ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye. As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... to Gussie, but Ada, the single one, has got Leo's Irma beat for looks. Such a complexion! And the way she comes over to sew with me afternoons! A young girl like that! An old woman like me! You see, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Mr. Delaney annoyed, and lacking knowledge of the situation; all of us awkward and confused save Darthea, who passed out into the hall, followed by Miss Wynne, and saying, as she went forth, 'I will never forgive you, madam, never! never! You are a wicked old woman! I shall never speak to you again. I ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... making himself a nuisance to the single gentlemen lodgers, who are themselves a queer lot, and are easily aggrieved. And there was always the anxiety of his mere existence to face. Visions of a workhouse infirmary for her child had haunted the old woman in the basement breakfast-room of the decayed Belgravian house. "If you had not found such a good husband, my dear," she used to say to her daughter, "I don't know what would have become of that ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the patient should detect their frame of mind, and feel, instead (of benefit), still more sore at heart, which would not, after all, be quite the purpose of her visit; which was to afford her distraction and consolation. "Pao-y," she therefore exclaimed, "you are like an old woman! Ill, as she is, simply makes her speak in this wise, and how ever could things come to such a pass! Besides, she is young in years, so that after a short indisposition, her illness will get all right!" "Don't," she said as she turned ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the town, where I sat down by the fire exhausted in an old woman's shaky dwelling, and fed on aged sardines and hot rice (atrocious mixture), there is a plain extending for twenty li to Yuen-nan-i—flat as country in the Fen district. The road was good (in wet weather, however, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... shudder, as he made this assertion, of the wretched old woman for whose appearance he had to thank the ever-watchful Stadinger, but he had not miscalculated the effect of his announcement. His amiable aunt drew herself up with an angry snort, and measured him with ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... case and the forgeries and perjuries committed in its support had their origin largely in the brain of this scheming, trafficking, crafty old woman." ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... Three days later she died. She left her husband almost broken-hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a man of his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery and denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying a silly, affected old woman with superfluities which she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his affection had been concentrated on her. He had neither brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she was as beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. Her opinion of his writings ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... overhead. Being in fact of a holy nature, the boys covered distance rapidly and by mid-afternoon had passed well beyond the limits of their homeland. There they came upon an old woman sitting beside a ladder projecting from a hole. She asked them who they were and whither they were going. They told her to the Sun, whose sons they were, but whom they ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... goes along a side street as if the devil was arter him. Then I drives on my way and pulls up 'ere. Bilked you were, guvner, and I don't mind sayin' so, but busness is busness, and five poun' ten ain't to be picked up every day. I guess the old woman will be all there ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... the dumb woman into the sleigh, the doctor put Ruth in her lap, Ulrich consoled the child, who asked him all sorts of questions, but the old woman would not part from the chest, and could scarcely be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not an old woman, but already stiff and misshapen by toil and the lack of that saving salt of pride, the stimulation of joy, which keeps us erect and supple. Her broad back was bent; her hands as they shifted the infant tenderly were knotted and work-worn. Mavity Bence was a widow, living at ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... brains are hurt with pride, and whom I may hereafter attempt to recover; but shall conclude my present list with an old woman, who is just dropping into her grave, that talks of nothing but her birth. Tho she has not a tooth in her head, she expects to be valued for the blood in her veins, which she fancies is much better than that which glows in the cheeks ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Place, may be pointed out as the house in which Miss Pope, "the other delicious old woman," dwelt previous to her removal to No. 17; and No. 26, as the lodgings of Mrs. Mathews, when occupied in the composition of the 'Memoirs' of her ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... revels, sees with rage the events which have taken place in Europe. He flies to the cave of Alecto, and drags out the fiend, commanding her to excite universal hostility against Napoleon. The Fury repairs to Lord Castlereagh; and, as, when she visited Turnus, she assumed the form of an old woman, she here appears in the kindred shape of Mr Vansittart, and in an impassioned address exhorts his lordship to war. His lordship, like Turnus, treats this unwonted monitor with great disrespect, tells him that he is an old doting fool, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Inge heard her name pronounced once more, and saw what seemed two bright stars shining above her. They were two gentle eyes closing on earth. Many years had passed since the little girl had lamented and wept about "poor Inge." That child was now an old woman, whom God was taking to Himself. In the last hour of existence the events of a whole life often appear before us; and this hour the old woman remembered how, when a child, she had shed tears over the story of Inge, and she prayed for her now. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... hands clenched in unconscious response to her thought. She was nearing forty. In her own land she would be reckoned almost an old woman. But some magic in the air and way of life in this cool green England seemed to keep age at bay: and there remained within a flame-like youth of the spirit—not so easy, even for ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... but I have never been quite sure, from the tone of that laugh, whether it was a laugh of conviction or of unbelief. It is not improbable that my fair friend's mental constitution may have been somewhat similar to that of the old woman who declined to believe her sailor-grandson when he told her he had seen flying-fish, but at once recognised his veracity when he said he had seen the remains of Pharaoh's chariot wheels on the shores of the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the old woman rose suddenly from her seat, wrung her hands, seemed to trace strange circles in the air, and then scattered some substance into the fire which raised a sudden burst of flames that curled over the cauldron, lit up the house for a few moments, and then roaring up the chimney left all in ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... shady transactions on his conscience. The whole town knows that two years back he married a rich old woman of seventy, and that last year he strangled her; however, he was somehow successful in hushing up this affair. But for that matter, the remaining four have also seen a thing or two in their chequered ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... consisted of an old woman, as dried and colorless as a Russian codfish from Arkhangel, but very clean and active; her son, a big, fresh-colored fellow, with a mop of dark brown curls, well set off by his scarlet cotton blouse; his wife, a slender, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... second time at the side-bell before any person appeared to answer my summons; and then, sad be it to relate, the portal of the mansion was opened by a dirty, down-at-heels, draggle-tailed old woman instead of the staid, respectable man-servant who should have officiated as janitor to be in proper keeping with ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it for them. As soon as we were "dismissed," I started off on a billet search. The transport officer was again with me on the same quest. We separated, and each searched a different part of the village. The first house I went into was a dismal failure. An old woman of about 84 opened the door about six inches, and was some time before she permitted the aperture to widen sufficiently to allow me to go inside the house. A most dingy, poky sort of a place, so I cleared off to search for something better. As I crossed the farmyard behind, ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... of her squire, for her dark, animated face stood the test of the unrelieved whiteness so successfully, that she was all ablush with delight at the discovery that she was not an old woman after all, but on occasion could still look as girlish as she felt. She was attired as a Normandy peasant, with turned-back skirt and loose white bodice; but the feature of the costume was undoubtedly the cap, which looked so extraordinarily like the real article that the sceptical ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... louder, and an old woman then came out of the cottage, leaning upon a crooked stick. She had a large broad-brimmed hat on, painted with the most ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... a little hobby horse, And it was dapple grey; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was made of hay. I sold it to an old woman For a copper groat; And I'll not sing my song ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... ugly leer in the old woman's eye as she spoke, and the thought struck me that Voltaire had been making ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... he, "that mout be a bee, as the old woman said when she killed a wasp. It seems to me ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... assembled stomachs were impatient; for on the appearance of the register of mortgages—who had no defect except that of having married for her money an intolerable old woman, and of perpetrating endless puns, at which he was the first to laugh—the gentle murmur by which such late-comers are welcomed arose. While awaiting the official announcement of dinner, the company were sauntering on the terrace above ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... fame. His mother not unnaturally thought that a little poverty and difficulty would bring him to submission; so, before leaving Paris for Villeparisis in 1819 she installed him in a poorly furnished mansard, No. 9, rue Lesdiguieres, leaving an old woman, Madame Comin, who had been in the service of the family for more than twenty years, to watch over him. Balzac has doubtless depicted this woman in Facino Cane as Madame Vaillant, who in 1819-1820 was charged with the care of a young writer, lodged ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... An old woman lived in a one-roomed cottage among the sand hills bordering the sea. Her place was only a hut with thatched roof and stone floor, but coals were plentiful, so Mary was able to make herself very comfortable. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... it's the place of the young to fetch and carry," said the old woman, in a much more cheerful tone than she had used before. "But Duncan, my laddie, have you picked up a wee bit of paper with writing on it, what ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... broad stairs and besieged the massive doors with heavy blows. A startled footman opened it, and with a curt word Zaidos entered and demanded his father. The man bowed and led him up to a closed door. Here he knocked softly and a stout old woman answered. She looked hard at the young man in uniform, then with a little cry clasped him in a warm embrace. ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person to be in. It lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the winter time; but it never lets in the sunshine! And as for myself, you see what I am—a dismal and lonesome old woman, whose temper is none of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be. I cannot make your life pleasant, Cousin Phoebe; neither can I so much as give ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... letter: as you have done remarkably well already. I am living (did I tell you this before?) at a little cottage close by the lawn gates, where I have my books, a barrel of beer which I tap myself (can you tap a barrel of beer?), and an old woman to do for me. I have also just concocted two gallons of Tar water under the directions of Bishop Berkeley: it is to be bottled off this very day after a careful skimming: and then drunk by those ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... front of the bar, drinking out of bottles, laughing, scraping their feet on the floor. A stout girl with red cheeks and plump white arms moved contentedly among them, carrying away empty bottles, bringing back full ones, taking the money to a grim old woman with a grey face and eyes like bits of jet, who stared carefully at each coin, fingered it with her grey hands and dropped it reluctantly into the cash drawer. In the corner sat Sergeant Olster with a flush on his face, and the corporal who had been on the Red Sox ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... lies!" cried the old woman, drawing him toward the rushy bier; and before he had time to demand, "Who?" she pulled down the shroud and disclosed the body of Sir Ronald Crawford. Wallace gazed on it, with a look of such dreadful ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Maybe they come in by somebody what sell them for money. Maybe we buy them in some old house like Washington's. It is long ago. We have had them in the shop a long time, but the older they are the better they get. They is all the better for being old—a better bargain, my dear!" and the old woman smiled, showing a mouth from which ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... the door of a rough cabin I saw McHenry. He was in pajamas, barefooted, and unshaven. I recalled that he had an "old woman" there. Llewellyn had reproved him for speaking contemptuously of her as beneath him socially. I waved to McHenry, who nodded charily, and pulled down the curtain which was in lieu of a door. The shack looked bare and cheap, as if little money ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... naked aisle. The pews were hard and prim, and occupied by pinch-visaged people; the pulpit was a plain shelf, with hanging oil-lamps on either side; and over the door in the rear projected a rheumatic gallery, where the black communicants were boxed up like criminals. A kind old woman gave Paul a ginger-cake, but his father motioned him to put it in his pocket; and after he had warmed his feet, he was told to sit in the pew nearest the preacher on what was called the "Amen side." Then the services began, the preacher leading the hymns, and the cracked voices of the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... distress Constance by breaking the news too suddenly to her, but she felt within herself that the golden bowl was nearing its breaking at the fountain, and that the silver cords of her earthly house of this tabernacle were not far from being taken down. She was an old woman,—very old, for a period wherein few lived to old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funerals of nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthly treasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her own feeling of earnest longing to rejoin ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... you are twenty, or about that time; you should intend to be; and from the time you are fifteen, it should be made your one life purpose; and in all human probability, you may expect to spend the next ten or twenty years in the nursery, and at forty or fifty, you will be an old woman, your life will be well-nigh worn out." I stand here to say that this is all false. Let the young girl be instructed that, above her personal interests, her home, and social life, she is to have a great life purpose, as broad as the rights and interests of humanity. I ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... upon me—I might rise, I might become rich. We exchanged our vows of fidelity. I returned to the camp. We corresponded. At last her letters alarmed me. Through all her reserve, I saw that she was revolted by her profession, and terrified at the persecutions to which it exposed her: the old woman, her sole guide and companion, was dying: she was dejected and unhappy: she despaired of our union: she expressed a desire for the refuge of the cloister. At last came this letter, bidding me farewell for ever. Her relation was dead; and, with the little money she had amassed, she had bought ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the old woman slid open the screens which form the sides of all Japanese houses, she saw, on the doorstep, a poor little sparrow. She took him up gently and fed him. Then she held him in the bright morning sunshine until the cold dew was dried from his wings. Afterward ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Many's the time I've told him what I think; but Gadsden will always be flighty." No further observations occurring to me, I took up my necklace and bracelets from the seat and put them in my pocket. "Will you permit a meddlesome old woman to inquire what made you buy those cat's-eyes?" said Mrs. Brewton. "Why—" I dubiously began. "Never mind," she cried, archly. "If you were thinking of some one in your Northern home, they will be prized because the thought, at any rate, was beautiful and genuine. 'Where'er I roam, whatever realms ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... relative to her mother and family, things she had had resolution enough to conceal for a great length of time. Both had received from Madam Dupin numerous presents, made them on my account, and mostly for me, but which the cunning old woman, to prevent my being angry, had appropriated to her own use and that of her other children, without suffering Theresa to have the least share, strongly forbidding her to say a word to me of the matter: an order the poor girl had obeyed with an ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... bell he will open himself. He keeps an old woman as servant, but she has just gone out to do his shopping. He always take his meals at home. He is on the second floor—the door ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... said, "you're master and I'm man. I've only got one child as is still dependent on me, thank God, and no doubt your executors will feel it their duty to do the right thing by the old woman." ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... direction fixed to a hamper, and rolling it up, directed that it should be bound upon the girl's wrist and there allowed to remain until she was well. The ague returned no more; and Holt, having remained in the house a week, called for his bill. "God bless you, sir," said the old woman, "you're nothing in my debt, I'm sure. I wish, on the contrary, that I was able to pay you for the cure which you have made of my daughter. Oh! if I had had the happiness to see you ten months ago, it would have saved me forty pounds." With ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... escapes with difficulty out of a back door and returns on foot to Paris.—From the very beginning, according to a universal rule, the fear of a short supply helps to augment the famine. Every one lays in a stock for several days; on one occasion sixteen loaves of four pounds each are found in an old woman's garret. The bakings, consequently, which are estimated according to the quantity needed for a single day, become inadequate, and the last of those who wait at the bakers' shops for bread return home empty-handed.—On the other hand ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... involved almost every person in the guilt of treason, almost every estate in the case of confiscation; and Gallienus often displayed his liberality by distributing among his officers the property of his subjects. On the accession of Claudius, an old woman threw herself at his feet, and complained that a general of the late emperor had obtained an arbitrary grant of her patrimony. This general was Claudius himself, who had not entirely escaped the contagion of the times. The emperor blushed at the reproach, but deserved the confidence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... without any servants save for the old woman who came every morning to tidy his flat, and when the bell rang as he stood before the mirror, he answered it himself without any thought as to the importance of the summons. For Count Poltavo was not above taking in the milk or chaffering with tradesmen over the quality of a cabbage. It was ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... was trying to clean him down with a bunch of hay, "I don't quite understand folk in housen. I went to help that old woman, and ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling |
