"Maidenhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dribbling monologue 'twixt whiffs and sips, 420 The story I so long have tried to tell; The humor coarse, the persons common,—well, From Nature only do I love to paint, Whether she send a satyr or a saint; To me Sincerity's the one thing good, Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood. Quompegan is a town some ten miles south From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth, A seaport town, and makes its title good With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood. 430 Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store, The richest man for many a mile ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... but a most exquisite, perfect flower of maidenhood. When I first saw her, she stood just so, with her open palms full of yellow jasmine. I laid my heart into them, too, my whole heart, my whole life, and every joy and hope ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... And this pilot should be her own conscience, hedged about with the learning, the good breeding, the fine character that she herself, under proper guidance, must cultivate through the impressionable years of childhood and maidenhood. If she so wills it, beauty and grace and true worth are all hers. And let her greet and go forth in the freshness of each golden day, as indeed, she must greet life, itself, with a glad, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... elements of the religion of a people so refined, and so capable of high moral ideas, as the Greeks. Aphrodite is personified desire, but religion did not throw her mantle over desire alone; the cloistered life, the frank charm of maidenhood, were as dear to the Greek genius, and were consecrated by the examples of Athene, Artemis, and Hestia. She presides over the pure element of the fire of the hearth, just as in the household did the daughter of the king or chief. Hers are the first libations at feasts (xxviii. 5), ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... of a young and innocent girl married to this remorseless gambler, scarred with the gun and the knife, was a profanation of maidenhood—and yet, as he fell now and then into a dream, he took on a kind of savage beauty which might allure and destroy a woman. Whatever else he was, he was neither commonplace nor mean. The visitors to whom he was pointed out as "a ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... bridal wreath only just laid aside, was also certain to be of a general universal type with the broad hips, wide waist, muscular limbs, and the melting sweetness of lips and eyes that only abundant health and a rich animalism of nature bring to maidenhood. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... celebrate, nor was there any motive for weaving wreaths or tracing triumphal inscriptions, or even for making mention of the exploits of our brave soldiers, for which reason all was fear and suspicion in the episcopal city, which, although poor, did not lack treasures in chickens, fruits, money, and maidenhood, all of which ran great risk from the moment when the before-mentioned sons of Mars entered it. In addition to this, the native town of Polentinos, as a city remote from the movement and stir brought ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... and coteries know not how to mix. A barrier more impassable than Styx Is Philistine stupidity. Were mutual amusement meeting's aim, Mind must move maidenhood inert ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... fifty years ago there were some very extraordinary and disagreeable coincidences, to put the thing in the least emotional way. In the whole of the two centuries prior to that date there were five first-born girls out of a total of seven generations of the family. Each of these girls grew up to maidenhood and each became engaged, and each one died during the period of engagement, two by suicide, one by falling from a window, one from a 'broken heart' (presumably heart failure, owing to sudden shock through fright). The fifth girl was killed one evening in the park 'round the ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... man was not bound by the same ordinance; he, moreover, was privileged to possess several wives. Did the husband, after the bridal night, believe to have found that his wife had, before marriage, lost her maidenhood, not only had he the right to cast her off, she was stoned to death. The same punishment fell upon the adultress; upon the husband, however, only in case he committed adultery with a married Jewish woman. According to V Moses 24, 1-4, the husband had also the right to ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... both were very happy. Kenyon's genius, unconsciously wrought upon by Hilda's influence, took a more delicate character than heretofore. He modelled, among other things, a beautiful little statue of maidenhood gathering a snowdrop. It was never put into marble, however, because the sculptor soon recognized it as one of those fragile creations which are true only to the moment that produces them, and are wronged if we ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... guessed that Clare stood ready with the best form of filial obedience. They were only a poor couple to gratify his Mephistophelian humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty, and they would proclaim the diverse ways with which maidenhood and womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding Forey girls and other females of the family assembly were expected to develop the finer shades and tapering edges of an agitation to which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of as an emblem of hard things, as, to take a modern example, in Mr. Swinburne's "armed and iron maidenhood "— said of Atalanta. Hearts are "iron," strength is "iron," flesh is not "iron," an "iron" noise goes up to the heaven of bronze. It may not follow, Cauer thinks, from these phrases that iron was used in any way. Men are supposed to marvel at its strange ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... half- hour in the corner of the great hospital. The little self- sacrifice, the interest in this girl so far removed from their usual world, their girlish desire to gain her liking, and the womanly tact which was needed to win her from her rough shyness, all these had their influence on their young maidenhood, an influence which lasted far ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... its eyes. Resentment did not leave her, but over it spread a film of confusion that robbed it of its potency. In him, in his mood, in his words, in his manner, was something that called out in direct appeal the more primitive instincts hitherto dormant beneath her sense of maidenhood, so that even at this vexed moment of conscious opposition, her heart was ranging itself on his side. Overpoweringly the feeling swept her that she was not acting in accordance with her sense of fitness. She knew she should strike, but was unable to give due force to the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... daughter's wedding was sent with the others, and the remaining days of Rachel's maidenhood slipped away in a whirl of preparation and excitement in which her mother reveled, but which was distasteful ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... thing? Why was there his blood battling with her? If only he could have been always gentle, tender with her, breathing with her the atmosphere of reverie and religious dreams, he would give his right hand. It was not fair to hurt her. There seemed an eternal maidenhood about her; and when he thought of her mother, he saw the great brown eyes of a maiden who was nearly scared and shocked out of her virgin maidenhood, but not quite, in spite of her seven children. They had been born almost leaving her out of count, not of her, but upon her. So she could never let ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... chances The Archon Lamachus is old and spent. He has an only child, a daughter, Gycia, The treasure of his age, who now blooms forth In early maidenhood. The girl is fair As is a morn in springtide; and her father A king in all but name, such reverence His citizens accord him. Were it not well The Prince Asander should contract himself In marriage to this girl, and take the strength Of Cherson for her dowry, and the power Of their strong ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Even Giles was grown, though he did not like to be told so, and was cherishing the down on his chin. But the most rapid development had been in Aldonza, or Alice, as Perronel insisted on calling her to suit the ears of her neighbours. The girl was just reaching the borderland of maidenhood, which came all the sooner to one of southern birth and extraction, when the great change took her from being her father's childish darling to be Perronel's companion and assistant. She had lain down on that fatal May Eve a child, she rose in the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shining flaxen hair was plaited into one long braid with narrow strips of crimson and yellow cloth and then twisted like a garland around her head. She was not more than twelve or thirteen years old, but tall, straight as a young pine, and beautifully formed, with the promise of early maidenhood in the gentle swell of her bosom. Her complexion was lovely—pink, brightened with sunburnt gold,—and her eyes like the blossoms of the forget-me-not, in hue. In watching her firm yet graceful tread, as she easily kept pace with the horse, I could not realise that in a few ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... and the Unicorn is one of infinite charm. (Plates facing pages 44 and 45.) In its enchanted wood lives a noble lady tall and fair, lithe, young and elegant, with attendant maid and two faithful, fabulous beasts that uphold the standards of maidenhood. A simple circle denotes the boundary of the enchanted land wherein she dwells, a park with noble trees and lovely flowers, among which disport the little animals that associate themselves with mankind. For four centuries ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... so happened that there was to be another funeral in the village about that time. The old minister, had he been living, might have managed to attend both. But the young minister couldn't think of such a thing. The loveliest flower of maidenhood in his parish had been cut down. One of the first families had been bereaved. Day and night he must ponder and scribble to prepare a suitable discourse. And then, having exhausted spiritual grace in bedecking the tomb of the lovely, should he,—good gracious! could he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... whether it is the promise of what she will be in the careless school-girl, that makes her attractive, the undeveloped maidenhood, or the mere natural, careless sweetness of childhood. If Laura at twelve was beginning to be a beauty, the thought of it had never entered her head. No, indeed. Her mind wad filled with more important thoughts. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... are!" she raged. "Anyone would take you for 'Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies'! Why can't you wake up? This is the dullest hole I've ever been in in my life. Magsie, stop that eternal sewing, and be sporty! You look like a model for 'gentle maidenhood'. I want to stick a pin into you, to ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... he promised me. I took his name then, as we do in the Cold Country. They still call me Tara! Years I have waited, true to my promise—with even my name of maidenhood relinquished. His name—Tara! And now he tosses me aside—because you, only an Earth woman, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... very happy and important. She had always wished to be married; she was not in the least strong-minded and her old-maidenhood had always been a sore point with her. I think she looked upon it as somewhat of a disgrace. And yet she was a born old maid; looking at her, and taking all her primness and little set ways into consideration, it was quite impossible to picture her as the wife of ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... shoulder, and drawing back to escape the disturbing eloquence of his eyes, she discovered the presence of his encircling arm. The discovery brought her to her feet—flushed, palpitating, aquiver with anger at this first shadow of insult to her maidenhood. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... we come once more, But bringing young ones of our brood— One boy (Salopian), and four Girls, blooming into maidenhood. ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... born of murmuring sound" may enhance the charms of maidenhood, is it too much to expect that sunburn, fervently desired, may not only permanently darken the complexion, but affect the mien of the race? And thus in years to come the white Australian may be of the past—transformed physically by the supremacy of soil and sun, and improved in disposition ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... marsh-dwellers who had awakened one morning to find the Kentish river swirling past their doors at Broomhill might aptly be compared with those of the farms round the Woolpack, who woke to find that Joanna Godden was not going just to jog on her final choice between Arthur Alce and old maidenhood, but had swept aside to make ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... agent for the ruin of those she loves. I cannot remember the time when I did not love the only man for whom I ever entertained any affection. He was the playmate of my earliest years,—the betrothed of my young maidenhood,—and just before my poor father died, he joined our hands and left his blessing on my choice. Poverty was the only barrier to our union, but I took a situation as teacher, and hoarded my small gains in the hope of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... she had not changed. She loved her husband with her whole heart and soul: her devotion was as true and constant as she herself could have wished it to be when she dreamed of the duties of a wife in the days of her maidenhood. But all around her was changed. She had no longer the old freedom—the old delight in living from day to day—the active work, and the enjoyment of seeing where she could help and how she could help the people around her. When, as if by the same sort of instinct that makes a wild animal retain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... virtue of her ignorance. Insensate mother, who allowed the forfeiture of her child's chastity in order to avenge her own; caring nought for the purity of her own blood, so she might stain with incest the man who had cost her her own maidenhood at first! Infamous-hearted woman, who, to punish her defiler, measured out as it were a second defilement to herself, whereas she clearly by the selfsame act rather swelled than lessened the transgression! Surely, by the very act wherewith she thought to reach her revenge, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... life, all our interest in her, and all our information about her, dates, sad to say, not from her espousal, nor from her marriage day, nor from any part of her married life, but from her husband's death. Her maidenhood has no interest for us; all our interest is fixed on her widowhood. This work of fiction now in our hands begins where all other works of fiction end; for in the life of religion, you must know, our best is always before us. Well, scarcely was her husband dead when Christiana ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... growing an old woman, but at other times I cannot believe it. I have to get up and cross the room and look at myself in the mirror, and see with my own eyes the gray hairs and the wrinkles in order to convince myself that childhood, and maidenhood, and even middle age, are all left far behind. At these times "now" appears the dream, "then" the reality; and, strangely enough, this very feeling, I am told, is one of the signs of real old age, of our nearing the land that at one time we fancied so ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... and her knowledge of religion, being amazed by the wisdom of her answers. The noble ladies about her, too, and these mendicant friars that were sent to hold inquisition concerning her at Domremy, had found in her nothing but simplicity and holy maidenhood, pity and piety. But, as for a sign of her sending, and a marvel to convince all men's hearts, that, she said, she would only work at Orleans. So now she was being accepted, and was to raise her standard, as ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... beautiful, for she evidently belonged to that class of women who do not attain their full development until a later period. Her figure was almost too slender, her face almost too delicate and ethereal. There was about her a girlish look, an atmosphere of half-saintly maidenhood, which was not so much the expression of her real nature as the effect produced by her being at once very thin and very fresh. There was indeed nothing particularly angelic about her warm brown eyes, shaded by unusually long black lashes; and little wayward ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... proud, flashing maidenhood; and Bertram felt, as he looked on her handsome, glowing countenance, that he had never loved her so sincerely, and at the same time so ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... marry if you liked. There's old Adam—Robin's faithful servant—he loves you with all the frenzy of a boy of fourteen. HAN. Nay—that may never be, for I am pledged! ALL. To whom? HAN. To an eternal maidenhood! Many years ago I was betrothed to a god-like youth who woo'd me under an assumed name. But on the very day upon which our wedding was to have been celebrated, I discovered that he was no other than Sir Roderic Murgatroyd, one of the bad Baronets ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... windows coldly shining Down from the cloud-world of her unknown fancy— She, for whom holiest touch of holiest knight Seemed all too gross—who might have been a saint And companied with angels—thus to pluck The spotless rose of her own maidenhood To give ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... has been already said, Artegal, or Justice, makes conquest of Britomartis or Elizabeth. It is no earthly love that follows, but the declaration of the queen that in her continued maidenhood justice to her people shall be her only spouse. Such, whatever the honest historian may think, was the poet's conceit of what would best please ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... trusted him so wholly, clung to him so faithfully, that mine eyes had to be torn open before I would see the truth—that even now, after all these years, it is like thrusting a dagger into my soul to tell you verily who and what he is. Ay, child, I loved that man in mine early maidenhood, better than ever thou didst or wouldst have done. Dost thou think it was easy to stand up to the face that I had loved, and to play the avenging angel toward his perfidy? If thou dost, thou mayest know much of foolishness ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... Amalia to do with Luis' marriage?" asked Jovita, to whose maidenhood simplicity seemed befitting in ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... where Dave lay on the lounge, the young man never looked at her, but he saw nobody else. Brought up in a saddle on the range, he had never before met a girl like her. It was not only that she was beautiful and fragrant as apple-blossoms, a mystery of maidenhood whose presence awed his simple soul. It was not only that she seemed so delicately precious, a princess of the blood royal set apart by reason of her buoyant grace, the soft rustle of her skirts, the fine texture ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... is talking the best sense, and in the kindliest spirit. There is no better heart than hers, and not many sounder heads; and a little touch of sentiment comes delightfully in, mixed up with a quick and delicate humor and the most perfect simplicity. There is also a very pleasant atmosphere of maidenhood about her; we are sensible of a freshness and odor of the morning still in this little withered rose,—its recompense for never having been gathered and worn, but only diffusing fragrance on its stem. I forget mainly what we ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... caressing any of the goodly angels whose stout legs, flowing curls, and impossible draperies sprawled among the pictures in the big Bible, and who excited her wonder as much by their garments as their turkey-wings and brandishing arms. So she betook herself to pets, and growing up to the old-maidenhood of thirty-five before her father fell asleep, was by that time the centre of a little world of her own,—hens, chickens, squirrels, cats, dogs, lambs, and sundry transient guests of stranger kind; so that, when she left her old home, and removed to the little house in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... state as to one's nerves and much disordered as to one's wardrobe. Hearing my voice uplifted in entreaty as I was carried by them, they had nobly responded; and, because of the impulse of the throng, which accorded to frail maidenhood what was denied to stalwart masculinity, they had ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... last month of maidenhood was nearly gone, Eudemius called Hito to him, to give account of what was in his hands. In the house were so many services of gold and silver, so many of Samian ware from Aretium, costly enough for an emperor's ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... ado to conceal her chagrin; she had started out with bright hopes of securing a brilliant match, and now, though not yet twenty, began to be haunted with the terrible, boding fear of old maidenhood. ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... spoken that converted all her frank, proud maidenhood to a memory. In its place there was now something false and sullied. While Dubova was dressing herself, Sina glanced furtively at her from time to time. Her friend seemed to her bright and pure, and she herself as repulsive as a crushed reptile. So powerful was this impression, that even ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... my person, whence it suddenly came upon me, a wretched creature! For nightly visions thronging to my maiden chamber, would entice me with smooth words: "O damsel, greatly fortunate, why dost thou live long time in maidenhood, when it is in thy power to achieve a match the very noblest? for Jupiter is fired by thy charms with the shaft of passion, and longs with thee to share in love. But do not, my child, spurn away from thee the couch of ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... examining witnesses from Domremy, and the Queen of Sicily and other great ladies to whom Joan was intrusted, the clergy found nothing in her but "goodness, humility, frank maidenhood, piety, honesty and simplicity." As for her wearing a man's dress, the Archbishop of Embrim said to the king, "It is more becoming to do these things in man's clothes, since they have to be done ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... this strange bloom, by sun and wind unwooed, Seems to expand and blossom 'mid the snows, A lily sceptreless, a scentless rose, For dainty listlessness of maidenhood. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... for the modest lore of maidenhood, Bids me not sojourn with these armed men, O whither shall I fly, what secret wood Shall hide me from the tyrant? or what den, What rock, what vault, what cave can do me good? No, no, where death is sure, it resteth then To scorn ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... conquer, the thorns and briars on the path far ahead are trampled by other feet, and plucked by other hands, and when the miles have been cleared and trodden, the unknown laborer comes forth from his obscurity, and humbly asks her to arise from her quiet nook, to shake off the inactivity of her maidenhood, and to tread the beaten path ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... in ecstasy and flinging herself madly into the whirl of pleasure it held out, was not so much her conscience and the ideals which she had formed more or less vaguely from the novels and poems she had read, as the instinct of her maidenhood, which made her shrink from the thought of marriage with a man whom she did not love. So strong was this feeling in her that at first she felt that she could not even bear to be introduced to him with such an ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... of her old-maidenhood concerning love, really thought it cold-blooded and shocking; but she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fine sheep's wool, and protected from the cold by bright blue coverlets's, lay a graceful, lovely girl asleep; this was Rhodopis' granddaughter, Sappho. The rounded form and delicate figure seemed to denote one already in opening maidenhood, but the peaceful, blissful smile could only belong to a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... relations of the various ranks to one another. Great Britain is essentially the home of the chaperon. We pride ourselves, as a nation, upon the extreme care with which we protect our young gentlewomen from contaminating influences. But the fastidious attention which we bestow upon our national maidenhood is as nothing in comparison with the protective commotion with which we surround that shrinking sensitive ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... womanly element is the main quality to be nourished into greater perfection, but only the weakness of girlishness is to be excluded from character. Girls are to grow wiser, and to avoid what must bring harm, but still to keep the attractive freshness of maidenhood. Some of the most delightful women we meet are those who can be girls with girls, and women with women. The young do not lose their respect for them because they appreciate them, nor do elders lessen their regard for ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... the heritage of youth—its gay and adventurous longing for experience—had been filched from her before she was old enough to know its value. In time she would perhaps recover her self-esteem, but she would never know in its fullness that divine right of American maidenhood to rule its environment ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... glance, and being equipped for conquest let go the full battery of their woman's witchery. It made a charming spectacle of young and noble blood indulging in the abandon of the hour. There were dames that set the pace for modest maidenhood, that ogled with the younger beaux,—(as they do to this day). Lady Bettie Payne swept her fingers over the keys of an Italian spinet, that was ornamented with precious stones, and sat upon a table of coral-veined ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... yearnings, which he ascended step by step at each bound of his heart. First he called her 'Holy.' Next he called her 'Mother,' most pure, most chaste, amiable, and admirable. And with fresh ardour he six times proclaimed her maidenhood; his lips cooled and freshened each time that he pronounced that name of 'Virgin,' which he coupled with power, goodness, and fidelity. And as his heart drew him higher up the ladder of light, a strange voice from his veins spoke within him, bursting into dazzling flowers of speech. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... It was narrated to me by a warrior chief of the upper Kati'il. His fourth wife, a relative of the datu who figured in the case of wife capture described in this chapter, had in the days of her maidenhood secretly fallen from grace, which fact she revealed to her warrior husband, together with the name of the offender. The warrior chief thereupon made a two-day march to Compostela and located the house of his enemy, publicly ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... charge in the perambulator beside her. I instantly recognized the infant—a popular organism known as "Baby Buckly"—the prodigy of the Greyport Hotel, the pet of its enthusiastic womanhood. Fat and featureless, pink and pincushiony, it was borrowed by gushing maidenhood, exchanged by idiotic maternity, and had grown unctuous and tumefacient under the kisses and embraces of half the hotel. Even in its present repose it looked moist and shiny from ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... half-naked wife of my syce rejoices in a nose-ring of brass or pewter, and her wrists and ankles are gay with hoops of painted shell-lac; and even she stains her eyelids with lampblack, and tinges her nails with henna. Much lovelier was our pretty ayah in her maidenhood, when her dainty bosom was decked with shells and sweet-scented flowers, and her raven hair lighted up with sprays of the Indian jasmine, which first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... of her maidenhood Margaret has added the serene beauty of motherhood. That is all the change I can see in her, as I put my arms round her and draw ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... I would succeed in breaking through that charmed circle in which she lived, in making her yield up to me the spiritual maidenhood which, as it ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... She was a close student of the Bible, and brought one text from it into her own life. "When I was a child I played as a child, but now that I am old I have put aside childish things." She often quoted this in defence of her industrious maidenhood. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... her face, through the tint of brown, lay the blush and flush of maidenhood, the indescribable sacred something that makes a maiden holy to every man of a manly and chivalrous nature; that makes a man utterly unselfish and perfectly content to love and be silent, to worship at a distance, as turning to the holy shrines of Mecca, to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... her masculine attire, she said she would wear woman's dress only when she heard Mass, and woman's clothing at her execution, if it came to that. The judges were perfectly well aware of her proved maidenhood, and of the real reason for her dress, but they persisted—without result—in trying to trap her into dangerous replies. She was far too direct and simple to be caught, just because she saw no "heresy" in an ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... hardly ever before occurred to her. She flushed slightly, pleased and wondering, with a new seed of gentle vanity planted in her simple nature, a child on the threshold of the womanly inheritance of maidenhood. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... was a veteran representative of the Methodist Preacher of the olden time. He entered the work when Illinois was yet in her maidenhood, and from the first was a recognized power in the land. Genial in spirit, full of anecdote, abundant in labors, an able Preacher, a faithful administrator, and a devoted servant of the Master, he enjoyed ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... to the minor members was small—but it was full of variety and sometimes of excitement. If the work did not entirely drive away the remembrance of Lancelot Vane it enabled her to look upon the romance of her early maidenhood with equanimity. Her love affair had become a regret tinged ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... they still seemed bent on going, she would do all in her power to speed them on their journey. With so many traits betokening strength of mind and character, she had but one weakness; and this was her excessive dread of thunder, caused in early maidenhood by seeing a young lady struck dead at her side ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... from the Tyrian town. Long is the tale of crime, long and intricate; but I will briefly follow its argument. Her husband was Sychaeus, wealthiest in lands of the Phoenicians, and loved of her with ill-fated passion; to whom with virgin rites her father had given her maidenhood in wedlock. But the kingdom of Tyre was in her brother Pygmalion's hands, a monster of guilt unparalleled. Between these madness came; the unnatural brother, blind with lust of gold, and reckless of his sister's love, lays Sychaeus low before ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Also maidenhood of body without wem is common to them all, and so is birth also. For they are not medlied with service of Venus, nother resolved with lechery, nother bruised with sorrow of birth of children. And yet they bring ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... have only now come to be frankly defined or exquisitely analysed. To us, moreover, Botticelli presents not only the poem of the apparition of the young and beautiful manhood of humanism before the brooding and entranced, yet half expectant, maidenhood of mediaevalism, but also the poem of the painter's own peculiar relation to that crisis. For us there is the poetry of the thing itself, and also the poetry of Botticelli's attempt to express it. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... marry Elizabeth to Arran and deny "entrance and title" to the rightful Queen. It was an admirable scheme, and had Arran not become a lunatic, had Elizabeth not been "that imperial votaress" vowed to eternal maidenhood, their bridal, with the consequent loss of the Scottish throne by Mary, would have been the most fortunate of all possible events. The brethren had, in short, a perfect right to defend their creed in arms; a perfect right to change the dynasty; a perfect right to intrigue ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... 14, 1904 (ELMIRA). Funeral private in the house of Livy's young maidenhood. Where she stood as a bride 34 years ago there her coffin rested; & over it the same voice that had made her a wife then committed her departed spirit ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and woman must again usurp her Divine prerogative as a leader in thought, song and action. The religion of the future will honor and revere motherhood, wifehood and maidenhood. Asceticism, an erroneous philosophy, church doctrines based not upon reason or the facts of life, issued out of crude imaginings; phantasms obstructed the truth, held in check the wheel of progress. Let our church women turn their gaze to such characters as Deborah, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... undisturbed even by the bloodiest war; and, best of all, those thousands upon thousands of our Northern girls, whose proper mates will perish in camp-hospitals or on Southern battle-fields, would avoid their doom of forlorn old-maidenhood. But, no doubt, the plan will be pooh-poohed down by the War Department; though it could scarcely be more disastrous than the one on which we began the war, when a young army was struck with paralysis through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... infinite of her dark and fathomless eyes with a radiance as of heaven. And in this gay return of youth and happiness, an exquisite instinct had prompted her to put on a white gown, a plain girlish gown which symbolised her maidenhood, which told that she had remained through all a pure untarnished lily for the husband of her choice. And nothing of her form was to be seen, not a glimpse of bosom or shoulder. It was as if the impenetrable, redoubtable ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and what occasioned the absorption which led to her ignoring all appeals at her door at a time when a woman is supposed to be more than usually gracious? But one answer suggested itself. Her heart was not in her marriage, and that last hour of her maidenhood had been an hour of anguish and struggle. Perhaps she not only failed to love Francis Jeffrey, but loved some other man. This seemed improbable, but things as strange as this have happened in our complex society and no reckoning can be made with a woman's ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the indignation, the wonder that this exquisitely refined specimen of maidenhood should be bent to such base uses—shone in them and stopped her. The colour rose to her face and her eyes grew faintly troubled, then a proud light flashed ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... from Domremy, and the Queen of Sicily and other great ladies to whom Joan was entrusted, the clergy found nothing in her but 'goodness, humility, frank maidenhood, piety, honesty, and simplicity.' As for her wearing a man's dress, the Archbishop of Embrun said to the king, 'It is more becoming to do these things in man's gear, since they have ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... child learns is that it is its duty to be pretty—to look its best. It is taught to value dress and show as the great necessities of existence, and is trained in the most extravagant habits. As the girl advances towards maidenhood, she is forced forward, and made to look as much like a woman as possible. Her education is cared for after a fashion, but amounts to very little. She learns to play a little on some musical instrument, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Innocent-looking the world in the face, Yet fearless with nature's own innocent grace, Full of sweet goodness, yet simple in art, White in the soul, and pure gold in the heart —Ah, like unto you should all maidenhood be Gladsome to know, and most gracious to see; Like you, my ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... lyrics, entitled "The Songs of Seven," which picture seven stages in a woman's life. For the first of the series, "Seven Times One," see page 44 of the Fourth Reader. Read it in connection with this. "Seven Times Two" shows the girl standing at the entrance to maidenhood, books closed and lessons said, longing for the years to go faster to bring to her the happiness she imagines ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... impressed him with the sense of change. It was a certain girlish winsomeness, something elusive, which cannot be defined, but which lends a charm like nothing else in all the world to the sweet unfolding of early maidenhood. ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had told herself again and again what it would be, how it must be; but the reality was beyond her dreams and her visions and her imaginings, for she had to the full what few women have in any century, and what few have ever had in the blush of maidenhood,—the sight of the man she loved, and who loved her with all his heart, coming home in triumph from a hard-fought war, himself the leader and the victor, himself in youth's first spring, the young idol of a warlike nation, and the ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... nineteen the latter alternative seems more appalling than to a woman of thirty, whose eyes have grown strong in the gray, cold, sunless light of confirmed old-maidenhood; even as the vision of those who live in dim caverns requires not the lamps needed by new-comers fresh from the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... cease to resist (O Maid!) such bridegroom opposing, Right it is not to resist whereto consigned thee a father, Father and mother of thee unto whom obedience is owing. Not is that maidenhood all thine own, but partly thy parents! Owneth thy sire one third, one third is right of thy mother, Only the third is thine: stint thee to strive with the others, Who to the stranger son have yielded their dues with a dower! 65 Hymen O ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... sixteenth year; but to all appearances she was much younger. Unlike others of her years, her cheeks did not display the bloom of maidenhood, and her countenance lacked the vivacity natural to her age. Her features wore an expression of melancholy, which was perfectly in keeping with the pallor of her cheeks, the pearly whiteness of which vied in brilliancy with the hue ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... is a legend that the love of God So quickened under Mary's heart it wrought Her very maidenhood to holier stuff.... However that may be, the birth befell Upon a night when all the Syrian stars Swayed tremulous before one lordlier orb That rose in gradual splendor, Paused, Flooding the firmament with mystic light, And dropped upon the breathing hills A ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... softened and grown a woman and come so near me that I felt the great comfort of her presence when she was by, the need of it when she was away. How could I have known anything of the elusiveness in her maidenhood before which ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... her first maidens' fire to-morrow! All ye who have never yielded to the pleading of man, who have not destroyed your innocency, you alone are invited, to proclaim anew before the Sun and the Earth, before your companions and in the sight of the Great Mystery, the chastity and purity of your maidenhood. Come ye, all who ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... there was a strange unwillingness to go back to the dreams at all, a lingering longing for the joys into whose glory she had been for a moment permitted to look. She drew back from all thoughts and tried to close the door upon them. They seemed too sacred to enter. Her maidenhood was but just begun and she had much yet to learn of life. She was glad, glad for Kate that such wonderfulness was coming to her. Kate would be sweeter, softer in her ways now. She could not help it with a love like that enfolding ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... with parted lips he stood, And well content at such a price to see That calm wide brow, that terrible maidenhood, The marvel of that pitiless chastity, Ah! well content indeed, for never wight Since Troy's young shepherd prince had seen ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... face and figure are sufficiently portrayed without any set description. What could be more delicate than the intimation of the foregone 'good-night' between the sisters, or the scene of Lyddy plaiting Thyrza's hair? The delineation of the upper middle class culture by which this exquisite flower of maidenhood is first caressed and transplanted, then slighted and left to wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing had very few means of observation. But this defect, common to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Fortune and Fashion Are sensible girlhood's sole guides, Smart maidenhood ridicules passion, And sentiment calmly derides. I gave you "Bel Ami" as token That we were not victims of "glow;" You gave me your vow—is it broken? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... Behold how this young maidenhood made itself master of this old man and subdued him, for in the name of the sweet face of Venus, Blanche, endowed with the natural artfulness of women, made her old Bruyn come and go like a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... women in their unsullied maidenhood looked longingly and unsuspectingly in the direction of Siberia. They were learning by degrees that the semblance of freedom which offered a pathway to escape was nothing but a strategem employed by pretended friends to entrap them ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... chin, even nose! What is here to shave? Only that peachy floss which is the velvet of the finest human skin, but which Japanese taste removes. There is, however, another use for the razor. All maidens bear the signs of their maidenhood in the form of a little round spot, about an inch in diameter, shaven clean upon the very top of the head. This is only partially concealed by a band of hair brought back from the forehead across it, and fastened to the back hair. The girl-baby's head is totally shaved. When a few years old the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... proud, tempestuous daughter of "bluff King Hal." Already an old woman, she yet affected the dress and carriage of young maidenhood, possessing unimpaired the vanity of a youthful beauty, and, despite her growing ugliness, commanding the gallant attentions that gratified ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... old comrade Harry. Between them there was not a moment's shyness. They were as friendly, as intimate as formerly, though with a perceptible difference of manner. Bessie had the simple graces of happy maidenhood, and Harry had the courteous reserve of good society to which his university honors and pleasant humor had introduced him. He was a very acceptable companion wherever he went, because his enjoyment of life was so thorough as to be almost infectious. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... passed out and to their simple homes, the manhood, motherhood, maidenhood, childhood of Grande Pointe, not knowing that before many days every household in the village was to be a subscriber to the "Album ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and ever-changing scene. Kirk saw dark-faced girls wearing their unfailing badge of maidenhood—a white mantilla—followed invariably at a distance by respectful admirers who never presumed to walk beside them; wives whom marriage had forced to exchange the white shawl for the black, escorted by their husbands; ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... as she saw before her that highly resplendent deity furnished with rays, viz., Surya himself. And beholding them all, the girl became frightened and her face was suffused with blushes of shame. And then she addressed Surya, saying, 'O lord of rays, go thou back to thy own region. On account of my maidenhood, this outrage of thine is fraught with woe to me! It is only one's father, mother, and other superiors, that are capable of giving away their daughter's body. Virtue I shall never sacrifice, seeing that in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... himself at the end of fifteen years five thousand pounds worse than he was when he first took possession of his father's effects. Convinced by the admonitions of his only sister, Miss Grizzle, then in the thirtieth year of her maidenhood, he withdrew his money from the trade, and removed to a house in the country, which his father built near ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... you were his keeper, as he was yours. What if he had found a noble-hearted girl who also trusted him entirely—just until she knew she ought not to listen to him a moment longer? who, when his love showed itself less than human, caring but for itself, rose in the royalty of her maidenhood, and looked him in the face? Would he not have been ashamed before her, and so before himself, seeing in the glass of her dignity his own contemptibleness? But instead of such a woman he found you, who let him do as ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... hideous. Yet, even then, men with the eagle power of vision said to thee in a glance, 'Thou shalt perish ingloriously, because thou hast fallen away, because thou hast broken the vows of thy maidenhood. The angel with peace written on her forehead, who should have shed light and joy along her path, has been a Messalina, delighting in the circus, in debauchery, and abuse of power. The days of thy virginity cannot return; henceforward thou shalt be subject to a master. ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... alone, her face to the shore, her hands resting on the parapet. The light breeze which blew off the land stirred loose ringlets of her hair, and flattened the thin robe against her sunlit figure. So had she stood a thousand times in old days, in her youth, in her maidenhood. So in her father's time had she stood to see her lover come riding along the sands to woo her! So had she stood to welcome him on the eve of that fatal journey to Paris! Thence had others watched her go with him. The men remembered—remembered all; and one by one they stole shamefacedly away, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... person wrapped in profound and undisturbed slumber. Carefully managing my advance, as if I were afraid of waking her up, I begin by gently gratifying her senses, and I ascertain the delightful fact that, like her sister, she is still in possession of her maidenhood. As soon as a natural movement proves to me that love accepts the offering, I take my measures to consummate the sacrifice. At that moment, giving way suddenly to the violence of her feelings, and tired of her assumed dissimulation, she warmly locks me in her arms at the very instant of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... father, and sat in the corner knitting. A slim, girlish figure hardly filled to the full curves of maidenhood, she was yet an element that made for peace. The younger men saw that her lips were red and her eyes had the depth of a mountain tarn. But they had as soon thought of trysting with a ghaist from the kirkyaird, or with the Lady of the Big ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... investment he had recommended, and after it had been settled that he should attend to the matter for her he took up the illustrated volume of Longfellow—for, as the sisters had learned, his culture soared beyond the newspapers—and read aloud, with a fine confusion of consonants, the poem on "Maidenhood." Evelina lowered her lids while he read. It was a very beautiful evening, and Ann Eliza thought afterward how different life might have been with a companion who read poetry like ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... this terrible fact is the other, that woman must marry in India anyhow. No disgrace and misfortune can befall a woman, according to Hindu ideas, equal to that of spending her whole life in maidenhood. This, of course, is connected with the idea that she has no social status or religious destiny apart from man. Hence it is that a host of loving parents, who are unable to find a suitable match for their daughters, rather than leave them unmarried, stupidly join them in wedlock ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... charm. His irrepressible boyishness refused to accept it in all its moral gloom. There were, he perceived, advantages in these strained relations. They had removed Anne into the mysterious realm her maidenhood had inhabited, before marriage had had time to touch her magic. She had become once more the unapproachable and unattained. Their first courtship, pursued under intolerable restrictions of time and place, had been a rather uninspired affair, and its end a foregone conclusion. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... sales-lady, and ladies unsaleable and damaged by carping years; city-wearied fathers of youngsters who called their parents "pop" and "mom"; young mothers prematurely aged and neglectful of their coiffure and shoe-heels; simpering maidenhood, acid maidenhood, sophisticated maidenhood; shirt-waisted manhood, flippant manhood, full of strange slang and double negatives unresponsively suspicious manhood, and manhood disillusioned, prematurely tired, burnt out with the weariness of a sordid ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... view. Bettina herself stated (Briefwechsel, 538) that she was sixteen when her enthusiasm for Goethe first manifested itself as an elemental force. From another passage we learn that this was three years before her first meeting with the poet in 1807, "in the heyday between childhood and maidenhood." The "Child" of the first letters of the Correspondence was, accordingly, just nineteen. German authorities have accepted 1788 as Bettina's birth-year, but English publications, including the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) still cling to 1785, the old date. Herman ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... incontinently nipped in the bud by imperious mamma, and she had dutifully yielded, with the pain sharp in her heart all the same. But he was poor, and Mildred was weak, and so Lady Kingsland's only daughter glided uncomplainingly into old-maidenhood. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... silver face Flowed from the spiritual lily that she held. Lo! these her emblems drew mine eyes—away: For see, how perfect-pure! As light a flush As hardly tints the blossom of the quince Would mar their charm of stainless maidenhood.' ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... Allison and Alex Shelby were the only guests; Alex, because of the part he had played in restoring Jack to health, and Miss Allison, because no occasion in the Valley seemed quite complete without her. She had been too closely bound up with all the good times of Betty's little girl days and her happy maidenhood, not to be ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... vowesses in the eyes of the Church may be illustrated in various ways. For example, the homilies of the Anglo-Saxon AElfric testify to a triple division of the people of God. "There are," says he, "three states which bear witness of Christ; that is, maidenhood, and widowhood, and lawful matrimony." And with the quaintness of mediaeval symbolists, he affirms that the house of Cana in Galilee had three floors—the lowest occupied by believing married laymen, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... sun full clear doth pass, Without a break, through shining glass, Thy Maidenhood unblemished was For bearing of the Lord: Now, sweetest Comfort of our race, To ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural reticence and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about "the silent and insensate" wife. The girl was being deprived of the rollicking ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Dark the tale of crime, And long, but briefly be the sum supplied. Sychaeus was her lord, in happier time The richest of Phoenicians far and wide In land, and worshipped by his hapless bride. Her, in the bloom of maidenhood, her sire Had given him, and with virgin rites allied. But soon her brother filled the throne of Tyre, Pygmalion, swoln with sin; 'twixt whom a feud ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... and primal truth Evelyn revealed to him and the very spirit and sense of maidenhood, the centre and receptacle of life, the mysterious secret of things, the awful moment when the whisper of the will to live is heard in matter, the will which there is no denying, the surrender of matter, the awaking ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... many periods of the past which history leaves in darkness, and tradition tells how this colony found among friendly Indians a refuge from the dangers of Roanoak Island, and how this infant grew into fair maidenhood, and was changed by the sorcery of a rejected lover into a white doe, which roamed the lonely island and bore a charmed life, and how finally true love triumphed over magic and restored her to human form,—only to result in the death of ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... evenings sitting alone by the window in the dark—assuredly not on Olya's account, but because she was dying; all her life she had been dying, as the town was dying where Kozlov was read; as he, Agrenev, was dying; as the maidenhood of Olya had died. How powerful is the onward rush of life! What tragedy lay in those evenings by ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... warm'd thy Fathers heart with prowd desire Of bold-fac't Victorie. Then Leaden Age, Quicken'd with Youthfull Spleene, and Warlike Rage, Beat downe Alanson, Orleance, Burgundie, And from the Pride of Gallia rescued thee. The irefull Bastard Orleance, that drew blood From thee my Boy, and had the Maidenhood Of thy first fight, I soone encountred, And interchanging blowes, I quickly shed Some of his Bastard blood, and in disgrace Bespoke him thus: Contaminated, base, And mis-begotten blood, I spill of thine, Meane and right poore, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... simpleton after all! I cannot understand what's come over the young men in these days. Letting a girl like that wait and wait!" She implied, with a faint scornful smile, that if she were a young man she would be capable of playing the devil with the maidenhood of the town. Edwin was rather hurt. And though he felt that he ought not to be ashamed, yet he was ashamed. He divined that she was asking him how he had the face to stand there before her, at his age, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... been here so much of late, and has paid much attention to our saucy Kate! Wife, what thinkest thou of that? He is an excellent good man, and would make a stanch and true husband. He is something old for the child, for sure; but there is no knowing how the errant fancy of maidenhood will stray." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... girls neglected.' His pages breathe their clean and innocent perfumes, and are beautiful with the chaste beauty of their colour, just as they carry with them something of the sweetness and simplicity of maidenhood itself. And from both he extracts the same pathetic little moral: both are lovely and both must die. And so, between his virgins that are for love indeed and those that sit silent and delicious in the 'flowery nunnery,' ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... how, oft she stood, Sweet in her guileless maidenhood, By dying bed, in hovel lone, Whose sorrow she had made ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the extreme of our Transatlantic cousins, our conventionalities might be so tempered by the introduction of a little genuine human nature, as to admit of a trifling freer intercourse between our youth and young maidenhood of the upper classes. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all inquirers, was always a matter of interest to the residents of the Hotel Winchester. They were an extremely picturesque pair to the eye seeking for romance and color. The child had the pure, clear cut features of the cameo type of New England maidenhood. She was always dressed in some striking combination of blue, deep blue like her eyes, with blue hair ribbons. Her good-looking young relative, with hair almost as near the color of the sun as her own, seemed to be entirely ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... would have been! Whoever heard of a girl on this side of the Maros being married without her farewell to maidenhood. I am paying for the supper and for everything because I want my bride's farewell to be finer and grander than anything that has ever been seen for many kilometres round. I have stinted nothing—begrudged nothing. I have given ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... swimming into his eyes, and she did not realise it, for she did not expect to find it there. For an instant, however, he saw with new eyes that primary eloquence of woman life, the unspent splendour of youth, the warm joy of the material being, the mystery of maidenhood in all its efflorescence. It was the emergence of his own youth again, as why should it not be, since he had never married and had never dallied! But in a moment ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... went on as in a meditation. "Poor Kate! poor Kate! We were bairns together, M. Montaiglon, innocent bairns, and happy, twenty years syne, and I will not say but what in her maidenhood there was some warmth between us, so that I know her well. She was compelled by her relatives to marriage with our parchment friend yonder, and there you have the start of what has been hell on earth for her. The man has not the soul of a louse, and as for her, she's the finest gold! You would ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... need in West and East For graduates, and not a source Supplying it. Some one at least Should start a correspondence course; But joy will scarce o'errun the cup Of maidenhood, my candor owns, Till some skilled Mentor opens up ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the conviction that his feeling for me was rapidly approaching the point at which friendship becomes an impossibility. I must go, and immediately. It was foolish and culpable of me to have stayed so long. A girl in the first blush of maidenhood might excuse herself on the score of not recognizing the signs of a more than Platonic interest, but for me such an apology could not be other than a subterfuge. Mr. Prime had worry enough already, and why add to it the pain of an unrequited attachment? I would ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... curiosity pervaded her being, as she watched the woman moving about the room, to know of her former life-the life of her maidenhood,—and learn if others beside herself ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... quotation is from Can. Tria. xxxvi, qu. 2] declares the contrary: "Three kinds of lawful marriage," says he, "are mentioned in Holy Writ. The first is that of a chaste maiden given away lawfully in her maidenhood to a man. The second is when a man finds a maiden in the city, and by force has carnal knowledge of her. If the father be willing, the man shall endow her according to the father's estimate, and shall pay the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the difficulty, now that in the changed position of women you can no longer honorably keep them in the dark—to make up your mind that you will come to the woman you love in the glory of your unfallen manhood, as you expect her to come to you in the beauty of her spotless maidenhood." ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... soar upward duskily. This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead That sparkled so the day I saw it first, And darkened slowly after. I am she Who loves all beauty—yet I wither it. Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath— Forever since my maidenhood to sow Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep Their bitter care above me even now. It was the gods who led me to this lair, That tho' the burning winds should make me weak, They should not snatch the life from out my lips. Olympus let the other women die; They shall be quiet when the ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... goes, once tended sheep along the marsh-meadow of Peneus among men of old time; for dear to her were maidenhood and a couch unstained. But, as she guarded her flock by the river, Apollo carried her off far from Haemonia and placed her among the nymphs of the land, who dwelt in Libya near the Myrtosian height. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth—even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago—were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... That she showed few positive qualities was true. The colours and tones which changing events paint on the faces of active womankind were looked for in vain upon hers. But still waters run deep; and no crisis had come in the years of her early maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her, like ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... and self-possession make her seem older than the twenty-two years with which the inscription on the portrait credits her. But the face is that of one who has just passed from maidenhood to young womanhood. Life lies before her, and with sweet seriousness she builds her air castles of the future. Thus far she has been carefully guarded from the evil of the world, and her heart is as pure as that of "the lily maid of Astolat." For social triumphs she would care nothing, ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Connemara. For these reasons the amateur will do well to have new books of price bound "uncut." It is always easy to have the leaves pared away; but not even the fabled fountain at Argos, in which Hera yearly renewed her maidenhood, could restore margins once clipped away. So much for books which are chiefly precious for the quantity and quality of the material on which they are printed. Even this rather foolish weakness of the amateur would not be useless if it made our publishers more careful to employ a sound clean hand-made ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... It is my prayer.... They come into a house: they are all strife And hate to any child of the dead wife.... Better a serpent than a stepmother! A boy is safe. He has his father there To guard him. But a little girl! (Taking the LITTLE GIRL to her) What good And gentle care will guide thy maidenhood? What woman wilt thou find at father's side? One evil word from her, just when the tide Of youth is full, would wreck thy hope of love. And no more mother near, to stand above Thy marriage-bed, nor comfort thee ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... circles. Men tip their hats to him on the streets. His name appears on the prospectuses and in the lists of directors in many powerful institutions. He is a prominent figure at many social functions. His hair is white with age, but he still has a lust for tender maidenhood. This man has served a term in the penitentiary for stealing from his government. As a result of that theft he ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... In maidenhood they could do all that a maiden might and more—delve could they no less than spin, hunt no less than weave, brew pottage and helm ships, wake the harp and tell the stars, face all danger ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... swayed about Like seaweed moved by the deep winds of water: For it is all the news of love to me. Through paths pine-fragrant, where the shaded ground Is strewn with fruits of scarlet husk, I come, As if through maidenhood's uncertainty, Its darkness coloured with strange untried thoughts; Hither I come, here to the flowery peak Of this white cliff, high up in golden air, Where glowing earth and sea and divine light Are in mine eyes ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... pink, pale crocus, pale green, silver and azure. Then came chromatic scales of colour; combinations meant to vulgarise the rainbow; sinfonies and fugues; the twittering of birds and the great peace of dewy nature; maidenhood in her awakening innocence; "The Dawn in June." The Master ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... unruffled, but with evidence of unbending character behind it, in some way conjured something out of the past, and he saw her again, the greying locks restored to their youthful glory and the careworn cheek abloom with the colour of young maidenhood as they had been in the gathering shadows that night when they swore to build their own home, and live their own lives, and love each other, always, only, for ever and ever...And yet, to let her defiance go unchecked, to have his authority challenged before his own children—it ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... seer-like she gazed, If from the Hades of the nether world, Slow climbing up the round side of the earth, Haply her prayers were drawing his tardy sails Over the threshold of the far sky-sea— Drawing her sailor home to celebrate, With holy rites of family and church, The apotheosis of maidenhood. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald |
