"Maidservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pronoun, his insolence would be considered quite unpardonable. And yet no people appear to be troubled less with false pride than the class of whom I am speaking. Relatively large landowners, whose names count for a good deal in the district, think there is nothing derogatory in sending a maidservant to market to sell the surplus fruit and eggs. Those who buy are equally practical. They haggle over sous with their friends' servant just as if she were a peasant driving a bargain on her own account. It is the exception, however, when ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... it was better to drift Urquhart into a thing than to lead him up to it. Moreover, it was not at all disagreeable to him that Urquhart, a club and office acquaintance, should see how comfortably placed he was, how well appointed with wife and child, with manservant and maidservant and everything that was his. Urquhart was a rich man, and to know that his lawyer was rich was no bad thing. It inspired confidence. Now the particular thing to be done with the two men, Francis Lingen and Urquhart, was this. Francis Lingen, who might be a baronet some day and well to do, was ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... young Mr. Warren; and we alighted, and a very small maidservant opened the portals of the baronial hall, while the cabman carried up my trunk, and Mr. Warren, senior, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... yourself excepted, look at the few of us who chance to be here in the South. Look at Courtlandt Classon, intellectually destitute! Cuyp, a mental brother to the ox; and Vetchen to the ass; and Mrs. Van Dieman to somebody's maidservant—that old harridan with all the patrician distinction of a Dame ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... ourselves—not I, nor Homo, but Dea. As for me, I shall continue to roll on in the caravan. I belong to the meanderings of vagabond life. I shall dismiss these two women. I shall not keep even one of them. I have a tendency to become an old scoundrel. A maidservant in the house of a libertine is like a loaf of bread on the shelf. I decline the temptation. It is not becoming at my age. Turpe senilis amor. I will follow my way alone with Homo. How astonished Homo will be! ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to appear upon the stage, and kept the audience waiting: At last Melanthius, the choragus, shoved him on to the stage, exclaiming. "Do you not see the wife of Phokion there, who always goes about with only one maidservant to wait upon her, and are you going to give yourself ridiculous airs and lead our wives into extravagance?" These words were heard by the audience, and were received with great cheering and applause. Once, when an Ionian lady was displaying a coronet and necklace of gold and ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... worsted lace, and livery buttons of a very notable size. The honest fellow's hands, I remarked, were very large and black; and a fine odour of the stable was wafted about the room as he moved to and fro in his ministration. I should have preferred a clean maidservant, but the sensations of Londoners are too acute perhaps on these subjects; and a faithful John, after all, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a good enough maidservant in a house, never idle but ever occupied and busy. But albeit she hath a very gentle mistress who loveth her well and is well content with what she doth—or, if all be not well (as all cannot always be well), is content to pardon her ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... stones of the court-yard, I became aware that a certain maidservant had been obtruding upon my view with a persistency that might be intentional. I now regarded her, as she stood in a small doorway leading to the kitchen. She was a plump, well-made thing, with a wholesome, honest face, but the sluttishness of her loose ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... existed between him and his mother were now removed, for he took her to live with him, the household being made up of himself, his wife, his mother, a friend (a woman), a nurse, the little boy, a man- and maidservant, and a mule.[63] Possibly Chiara brought her own income with her, and thus allowed the establishment to be conducted on a more liberal scale. The Plat lectureship would scarcely have maintained three servants, and Jerome's gains from other sources must ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... from the fear of meeting the unhappy criminals, she hastily turned down die next street, but found that also filling with people who were running to the scene she was trying to avoid: encircled thus every way, she applied to a maidservant who was standing at the door of a large house, and begged leave to step in till the mob was gone by. The maid immediately consented, and she waited here while she sent her ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... been shut out, when Mary, the maidservant, who was sitting industriously stitching away, heard a rap-a-tap at the front door, announcing the arrival, as she supposed, of a visitor. Putting down her work, she hurried to the door and lifted the latch; but no one was there except Deb, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... afterwards he said, "Now we will pray," and they sat a while in silence. Julia sat, too, her keen, observing eyes cast down and a curious stillness about her. After that every one went to bed; Julia and the maidservant had two little rooms right up in the eaves of the house; the family slept on the floor below. Julia was glad of this, though it was possible to imagine her room would be very hot in summer and very cold in winter. But she was glad to be well above the sleeping house, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... company. Some cotton wool did service for white hair neatly arranged under a boudoir cap; her dress (borrowed from Noreen, who was a head taller than Gowan) fell to her ankles; she wore spectacles, and wrinkles had been carefully painted across her forehead. Bertha, a forward chit of a maidservant (servants on the stage invariably assume a cheekiness of manner that would never be tolerated by any employer in private life), bounced in and handed her a letter, and stood making grimaces to the audience while her mistress—very ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... the door was opened by a neat maidservant, he brought the box of flowers, and laid it on a table in the hall. "Miss Bond's niece!" he said, with a nod of explanation and introduction. "Thought she'd come herself; like to see the young ones. I'll be back for ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... couple so engaged, but without success. We often talked of the act, as to how it was done. Neither he nor I had any clear ideas on the subject, save as to the organs involved. I was about 15 when a maidservant of the house in which I was a boarder, came to my bedroom one night and taught me how to masturbate her. She said that this was a good thing for me to do, and warned me never to "play with myself" as it would kill me, or drive me mad. I told her that I had tried it, but could not bring ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... pathway came a trim maidservant, who could never guess how John Everard hated her for at least one moment ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... actually happened. Nothing was seen on all sides but wizards, men changed into animals, animals, or men and women, under some spell. In the inns, a man watched with a suspicious look the ways of the maidservant who poured out his drink or handed him a dish. Perhaps some magic potion was mingled with the cheese or bread that she was laying on the table. It was an atmosphere of feverish and delirious credulity. The pagan madness got the better of the Christians themselves. Augustin, who had lived in ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... put her on an allowance of a pound a day. The wife of the younger Hugh, her husband's niece, was deputed to watch her, and she could not even write a letter without the Lady Despenser's knowledge. Isabella bitterly chafed under her humiliation. She was, she declared, treated like a maidservant and made the hireling of the Despensers. Finding, however, that nothing was to be gained by complaints, she prudently dissembled her wrath and ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... as a "right hook in the ear," followed by a "left swing to the chin," and my assailant immediately disappeared behind a bush, with a flash of pink silk calves and buckled shoes. Then, while the trim maidservant filled the air with her lamentations, the imp and I ran hot-foot for the wall, over which I bundled him neck and crop, and we set off ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... child by back streets to the river, and thence down to the Temple stairs, accompanied by Tibble Steelman, and a maidservant on whose presence her grandmother had insisted. Dennet had hardly slept all night for excitement and perturbation, and she looked very white, small, and insignificant for her thirteen years, when Randall and Ambrose met her, and placed her carefully in the barge ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... don't know that I should care for it to come out at the Lyceum, but of course if the terms were very—oh, they're beginning at last! I hope this light comedy scene will go well. (Curtain rises: Comic dialogue—nothing whatever to do with the plot—between a Footman and a Matinee Maidservant in short sleeves, a lace tucker, and a diamond necklace; depression of audience. Serious characters enter and tell one another long and irrelevant stories, all about nothing. When the auditor remarks, "Your story is indeed a sad one—but go on," a shudder goes through the house, which ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... observed that much seriousness marked the faces of the two men, and went home and told their parents that something new had happened about Mrs. Phillotson. Then Phillotson's little maidservant, who was a schoolgirl just out of her standards, said that Mr. Phillotson had helped in his wife's packing, had offered her what money she required, and had written a friendly letter to her young man, telling him to take care of ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... future queen on the Suna or borderland of the city, which is of course the railway station. Musicians have been already despatched and the platform is full of gaily dressed girls. The train arrives, the party assemble at the waiting-room, a maidservant waves rice and water to 'take off' the effects of evil eyes and they start amid admiring eyes of the passengers and onlookers. As soon as the bride reaches her father's temporary residence another girl waves rice and water and throws it away. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... lodgings,—to reflect that while he lived they never failed to have champagne at their dinner parties; and that they had three men to wait at table on such occasions, while Mr. Smith, next door, had never more than one and a maidservant. If such idiotic women would but look forward, and consider how all this must end! If the professional man spends all he earns, what remains when the supply is cut off; when the toiling head and hand can toil no more? Ah, a little of the economy and management which must perforce ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... white apron, the maidservant still stood motionless on the veranda, enjoying the soft ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... . . . sitting for hours together with my head on my breast . . . conscious of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I could assign no real cause whatever." A maidservant thought him a little wrong in the head, but a Jew pedlar rebuked her for saying so, and said the child had "all the look of one of our people's children," and praised his bright eyes. With the regiment he travelled along the Sussex and Kent coast during the next four ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... thought, struck out in the fervour of conversation, improved and shaped into those famous lines, which are in truth the noblest in the poem of the Campaign. As the two gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe; the little maidservant that waited on his lodging came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court or a great man's levee. The courtier coughed a little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked round the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his nose in the air, and saluted with the two flakes of fire that sparkled in his bright eyes the pretty maidservant, who thought him neither so ugly nor so foul, nor so bestial; when, following Perrotte up the steps, Amador received on the nose, cheeks, and other portions of his face a slash of the whip, which made him see all the lights of the Magnificat, so well was the dose administered by ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... expense of sending mother and son to a warm climate each fall, as the rigors of the northern winters were considered too hard for the two invalids to bear, had reduced them almost to poverty; consequently the expense of a maidservant had long since been ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... mark of grandeur, which, with a single word or glance, could reduce to the lawliness of the most profound respect those rash and forward persons who presume to deviate from the rules of politeness. I spoke like a queen, but was treated like a maidservant. The Hircanian, without even deigning to speak to me, told his black eunuch that I was impertinent, but that he thought me handsome. He ordered him to take care of me, and to put me under the regimen of favorites, that so my complexion being improved, I might be the more worthy of his favors ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... he heard the shooting of bolts and the rattling down of a chain, the door was opened, and a pretty-looking maidservant, with sleep still in her eyes, ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... glancing with a grave, mysterious, official expression towards the door. In her hand she was holding something carefully wrapped in paper. I guessed that that something was the small shot, and that Grandmamma had been informed of the occurrence. In the room also were the maidservant Gasha (who, to judge by her angry flushed face, was in a state of great irritation) and Doctor Blumenthal—the latter a little man pitted with smallpox, who was endeavouring by tacit, pacificatory signs with his head and eyes to reassure the perturbed ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... "They ring. A maidservant opens the door, they hand her the letter, and assure the maid that they're both so in love that they'll die on the spot at the door. The maid, stupefied, carries in their messages. All at once a gentleman appears with whiskers like sausages, as red as ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Edward consented to pass the night there, and return home on the following morning. Oswald went into the sitting-room to speak with the Intendant of the forest, leaving Edward in the kitchen with Phoebe, the maidservant. He told the Intendant that he had brought home some fine venison, and wished his orders about it. He also stated that he had been assisted by Edward Armitage, who had brought the venison home for him in his cart, and who was now in the kitchen, as he would ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... see the Minster; and as we had found a parcel of new books for us at Johnson's, from Lindley Murray, we thought ourselves bound to go and see him. We were told that he lived about a mile from York, and in the evening we drove to see him. A very neat-looking house: door opened by a pretty Quaker maidservant: shown into a well-furnished parlour, cheerful fire, everything bespeaking comfort and happiness. On the sofa at the farther end of the room was seated, quite upright, a Quaker-looking man in a pale brown coat, who never attempted ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... her with the good-fellowship, the pleasures and the childish fancies of a grandfather's heart. But he died after a few months, and Germinie had fallen back into the service of kept mistresses, boarding-house keepers, and passageway tradesmen, when the sudden death of a maidservant gave her an opportunity to enter the service of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, then living on Rue Taitbout, in the house of which her ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... at present, because then the seven years will be over. But before I can resume my natural form, and take possession of the belongings of my forefathers, you must go out into the world and take service as a maidservant.' ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... loyal to his wife than she to him, desired to lie with his maidservant, and made his enterprise known to a friend, who, hoping to share in the spoil, so aided and abetted him, that whilst the husband thought to lie with his servant he in truth lay with his wife. Unknown to the latter, he then caused his friend ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... re-appearance you look up to her without money in your pocket. But if you are not fortunate enough to have any there, in order to avert her evil aspect, you must immediately turn head over heels! It is considered unlucky to see the new moon through a window-pane, and I have known a maidservant shut her eyes when closing the shutters lest she should unexpectedly see it through the glass. Do not kill your pig until full moon, or the pork will be ruined." [406] In Suffolk, also, "it is considered unlucky to kill a pig in the wane of the moon; ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... children unto the third and fourth generation of those who take my name in vain: I am God, thy God. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy brother: I am God, thy God. Thou shalt not covet the wife ... or his manservant, or his maidservant, or anything that is his: I am God, thy God. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart: I am God, thy God. These ten words (or commandments) ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... had not come for a lesson, the dirty maidservant, who opened the third-floor door to him, showed him as a visitor into the best sitting-room. Maurice remained standing, in prescribed fashion. But he had no sooner crossed the threshold than he was aware of loud voices in the adjoining room, separated from ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the same persons who were employed in milking the cows. The number of cows milked was twenty-four, and the whole of them had the cow-pox. The milkers, consisting of the farmer's wife, a man and a maidservant, were infected by the cows. The man-servant had previously gone through the smallpox, and felt but little of the cow-pox. The servant maid had some years before been infected with the cow-pox, and she also felt it now in a slight degree; ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Rud-didet was going to brew the household beer, there was no barley. And her maidservant said, "There is a bushel, but it was given to the dancing-girls, and lies in the store-room, sealed with their seal." So the lady said to her maid, "Go down and fetch it, and we shall give them more ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... yardman. bailiff, castellan[obs3], seneschal, chamberlain, major-domo[obs3], groom of the chambers. secretary; under secretary, assistant secretary; clerk; subsidiary; agent &c. 758; subaltern; underling, understrapper; man. maid, maidservant; handmaid; confidente[Fr], lady's maid, abigail, soubrette; amah[obs3], biddy, nurse, bonne[Fr], ayah[obs3]; nursemaid, nursery maid, house maid, parlor maid, waiting maid, chamber maid, kitchen maid, scullery maid; femme de chambre[Fr], femme fille[Fr]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Earl of Emsworth said: "Baxter is invaluable—positively invaluable." The Honorable Freddie said: "A chappie can't take a step in this bally house without stumbling over that damn feller, Baxter!" The manservant and the maidservant within the gates, like Miss Willoughby, employing that crisp gift for characterization which is the property of the English lower orders, described ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... reseating him on the sofa, vowed that he would not let him go without supper. And again Meier sat and listened, but he looked at Rashevitch with perplexity and uneasiness, as though he were only now beginning to understand him. Patches of red came into his face. And when at last a maidservant came in to tell them that the young ladies asked them to go to supper, he gave a sigh of relief and was the first to walk out ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... looked cold and cautious. Mrs. Prest had floated away, giving me a rendezvous at the end of half an hour by some neighboring water steps; and I had been let into the house, after pulling the rusty bell wire, by a little red-headed, white-faced maidservant, who was very young and not ugly and wore clicking pattens and a shawl in the fashion of a hood. She had not contented herself with opening the door from above by the usual arrangement of a creaking pulley, though she had looked down at ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... and flutter; all hope and apprehension. The moment they stopped, a trollopy-looking maidservant, seemingly in waiting for them at the door, stepped forward, and more intent on telling the news than giving them any help, immediately began with, "The Thrush is gone out of harbour, please sir, and one of the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the news of the robbery, scared the two women, who went about their work at once with a commendable quietness. But I think it was a whisper from the maidservant which caused the farmer to ejaculate, as he helped me to ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fashion, and giving saucy answers. They are forbidden to play with fire or candles, to quarrel with fellow domestics, to waste victuals or to give them away. A fine example of the morality of scruples inculcated by the tract is the passage on the duty of religious observance. A maidservant should not neglect to go to church at least every other Sunday, and should never spend the time allowed her for that purpose walking in the fields or drinking tea with an acquaintance. "Never say you have ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Caleb feebly stretched his wan hand, held the letter which had "come too late" over the flame of the candle. As the blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr. Jones prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and the maidservant brushed the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... captain was a favourite with all the ladies present. Ruffled brows were smoothed and sharp voices hushed at his approach. He immediately and quietly assumed the man's place in the room; attended to everyone's wants, lessened the pretty maidservant's labour by waiting on empty cups and bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... suah to blow down. Miss—yo' highness," groaned the trusty maidservant. Beverly laughed bravely but nervously with the tall goat-hunter. He at once set about making his guest comfortable and secure from the effects of the tempest, which was now at its height. Her couch of cushions was dragged far back ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... The little maidservant brought in the afternoon letters and with them a folded newspaper—the Markborough Post. A close observer might have detected that it had been already opened, and hurriedly refolded in the old folds. There was much interest felt in Upcote Minor in ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I shall lose any reputation I have left. I think," he added, "I'd better go in alone first and prepare them, if you don't mind waiting outside. I'll come to the window and wave my pocket-handkerchief when they're ready. And do come in by the door like an ordinary person, and ask the maidservant if you ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... instance of self-devotion and presence of mind was manifested by a maidservant, during the war in La Vendee. "The wife of Lepinai, a general in the Vendean army, was imprisoned at Nantes, and attended by a young girl, a native of Chatellerault, so faithfully attached to the service of her mistress that she had followed her ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... amusement; therefore did Sir Guy in his generosity give an annual servants' ball, which he attended and opened himself in a state of hilarity not calculated to inspire much respect amongst his retainers. He had, however, sufficient self-command invariably to select as his partner the prettiest maidservant in his establishment. But if the baronet failed in his dignity as head of the house, her ladyship had enough for both. She looked like a queen as she sailed in, amongst her own domestics and all the retainers and hangers-on ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... grin, and asked in an undertone, 'Any good?' But May, to whom this was the last blow, rushed past him, lost herself in corridors, ran wildly hither and thither, tears streaming from her eyes, and was at length guided by a maidservant into the outer air. Fleeing she cared not whither, she came at length into a still corner of the park, and there, hidden amid trees, watched only by birds and rabbits, she wept out ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... difficulties, amongst which may be mentioned our arrival by night at Martigny, where, owing to the crowded state of the hotels, we were everywhere refused accommodation, and it was only on account of a little intrigue between a postillion and a maidservant that we found clandestine shelter for the night in a private house from which the owners ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... mostly poor people or peasants; but it was so with the rich and well-to-do in the bloody Middle Ages. The Catholic country gentleman helping the Protestant refugee to escape disguised as a manservant (or a maidservant), and the Protestant country gentleman doing likewise by a hunted Catholic in his turn, as the battles went. Rebel helping royalist, and royalist helping rebel. And always, here and there, down through those ages, the delicate girl standing ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... not be in at all to-night," he answered, in a hard, dry voice that travelled along the dingy passage with a penetrating distinctness. The landlady murmured to the slatternly maidservant an ejaculatory diatribe on the dissipatedness of young literary gentlemen as the door banged. Trenchard disappeared in the gathering darkness, and soon left Smith's Square ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Presently came a maidservant, neat and trim, and after some wrestling with bolts the outer door was opened a little way, and our names and business demanded, after which we entered a great hall, apparently used as a refectory. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... fellow-traveller was slightly acquainted with Aunt Maria; and this acquaintanceship induced him to request that he might be permitted to escort me to her house and see me safe after my disagreeable adventure. I had no objection to his accompanying myself and the staid maidservant whom I found waiting for me at the inn when the coach stopped at York; and Aunt Maria politely insisted on the young man's remaining to partake of the early breakfast she had prepared ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... and drunk by the General in a glass of Romarin Champagne. We heard afterwards that the country people were much impressed by the way the British Army had recognized the gallantry of a poor Belgian maidservant. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... married. His modest Devonshire establishment was managed by a maidservant named Prudence Baldwin. "Fate likes fine names," says Lowell. That of Herrick's maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had the good fortune to be embalmed in the amber of what may be ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... box of a house, one maidservant, an occasional trip into town, four new frocks a year—moderate ones, you know, in keeping with her circumstances—and ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... my father fought for you, and adventured his life, and delivered you out of the hand of Midian: and ye are risen up against my father's house this day, and have slain his sons, threescore and ten persons, upon one stone, and have made Abimelech, the son of his maidservant, king over the men of Shechem, because he is your brother;—if ye then have dealt truly and uprightly with Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice ye in Abimelech, and let him also rejoice in you: ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... the detectives went out, following the old maidservant who had shown them in. Don Luis was ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Code ruled that the woman was no wife, usually stated the consequences to which each party was liable for repudiating the other. These by no means necessarily agree with the Code. Many conditions might be inserted: as that the wife should act as maidservant to her mother-in-law, or to a first wife. The married couple formed a unit as to external responsibility, especially for debt. The man was responsible for debts contracted by his wife, even before her marriage, as well as for his own; but he could use her ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... roused the wrath and hatred of the discarded wives and their relatives was but natural. Often the European bride, sometimes the faithless husband too, fell by the hand of a murderer who could never be found, or was poisoned by a maidservant or cook who was bought over to assist in the work of vengeance. The cast-out children sometimes played a part in these tragedies; if not, they certainly retained a hatred of Europeans generally, and rumours of mutiny were ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... from the early part of the Percy Folio, and the ballad is therefore deficient. Where gaps are marked in the text with a row of asterisks, about nine stanzas are lost in each case—half a page torn out by a seventeenth-century maidservant to light a fire! Luckily we can supply ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... treasure." "But how," asked Brother Masseo, "can one speak of treasure when there is such lack of all things needful? Here have we neither cloth, nor knife, nor plate, nor porringer, nor house, nor table, nor manservant, nor maidservant." Answered Francis, "This and none else it is that I account wide treasure; which containeth nothing prepared by human hands, but all we have is of God's own providence—as this bread we have begged, set out on a table of stone so fine, ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... opened her door to go across to see if Rose, who had been put the night before by a sleepy maidservant into a cell opposite, were awake. She would say good-morning to her, and then she would run down and stay with that cypress tree till breakfast was ready, and after breakfast she wouldn't so much as look out of a window till she had helped Rose get ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... augur Murena (III, 19), with toasts and tipsiness and noisy Bacchanalian songs and rose-wreaths flung about the board; a delicious mockery of reassurance to one Xanthias (II, iv), who has married a maidservant and is ashamed of it. He may yet find out that though fallen into obscurity she is in truth high-born and noble, and will present him ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... he said, 'it is a fact. A woman is worth less than a man in that way. A maidservant can be hired for less than a manservant, a daughter can claim less than a son. They cannot do so much work; they are not so strong. If they had been worth more, the law would have been the other way; of ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... another interruption occurred. A caller in the person of a Mr. Pomeroy was announced by the maidservant. I had heard Miss Hamm refer to this person on divers preceding occasions and from the outset had taken a dislike to the sound of his name. It would appear that he resides in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and that he knew Miss Hamm and her uncle ere their removal to these parts. It would appear ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... and instructions to vend the books in all the parishes of Madrid, with the result that in the course of about a fortnight 600 copies were disposed of in the streets and alleys. A house to house canvass was instituted with remarkable results, for manservant and maidservant bought eagerly of the books. Antonio excelled himself and made some amends for his flight from Labajos, when, like a torrent, the Carlist cavalry descended upon it. Dark Madrid was becoming illuminated ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... fervour that was all the more enhanced by the sight of Miss Gibbs in the front row, sitting with pursed-up lips and straightened back. Meta, as Lydia Languish, sighed, wept, made eyes, and indulged in a perfect orgy of sentiment, while Lois acted the cheeky maidservant with enthusiasm. The best of all, however, was Mrs. Malaprop; Linda had seen the play on the real stage, and reproduced a famous actress to the utmost of her ability. Her absurd manners and amusing mistakes sent the room into a roar, and she occasionally had to wait ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... appeared to be of little avail. The disease stole on through the village, as if it had been left to work its own way; from day to day tidings came abroad of another and another who was down in the fever,—the Tuckers' maidservant, Mr Hill's shop-boy, poor Mrs Paxton, always sure to be ill when anybody else was, and all John Ringworth's five children. In a fortnight, the church bell began to give token how fatal the sickness was becoming. It ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... daughter was about sixteen; and, finding that O-Tsuyu could not be happy with her mother-in-law, he had a pretty villa built for the girl at Yanagijima, as a separate residence, and gave her an excellent maidservant, called ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... fire was lighted and the maidservant went to work kneading dough—yeast was not used. The loaves were baked on charcoal, as is often done among the Lapps, and at the same ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Devayani quickly sent a maidservant to her father. The maid represented to Sukra everything as it had happened. And as soon as he had heard all, Bhargava came and saw Yayati. And beholding Bhargava come, Yayati worshipped and adored that Brahmana, and stood with joined palms in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... Beatus, written at his death by John Sturm of Strasburg, the friend of Ascham, gives a picture of the life he led at Schlettstadt during his last twenty years: the plain, simple living in the great house inherited from his father, without luxury or display, attended upon by an old maidservant and a young servant-pupil, given to friends but not allowing hospitality to infringe upon his work, lapped in such quiet as to seem almost solitude; the daily round being dinner at ten, in the afternoon a walk in his gardens outside the city walls, and supper at six. Gentle and accommodating, ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... at once looked up Braden Thorpe and put him on his guard. Thorpe laughed at his fears, and promptly joined in the search for the sick man. They thought of Lutie, of course, and hurried to her small apartment. She was not at home. Her maidservant said that she did not know where she could be found. Mrs. Tresslyn had gone out alone at half-past seven, to dine with friends, but had left no instructions,—a most unusual omission, ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... dominion of a master over his slave differs from that of the father over his son (Polit. i, 3). But the dominion of master over slave gives the former the right to sell his servant or maidservant. Therefore it was unfitting for the Law to allow a man to sell his daughter to be a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... [Footnote 21: A maidservant in the drama Malatimadhava is called Avalokita. It is not clear whether it is a feminine form of the divine name or an ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Pharaoh to present each of his guests with a living reminder of the occasion and his hospitality. Wherefore he desireth thee to choose which of the twelve serving maidens hath pleased thee best, and he will give her to thee, to be always thy maidservant." ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... by being so pleasantly homely. A single trim maidservant waited upon them, a man at the sideboard opened the wine, carved, and vanished early in the repast. Over a great bowl of clustering roses he could see her within a few feet of him, plainly dressed in black lace with a band of velvet around her white neck, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... sorry, as I went away, to leave the poor maidservant to her lonely and desolate memories. She had to leave her comfortable kitchen and her easy routine, for new duties and new faces, and I could see that she anticipated the change ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Gladbach, was dyspeptic and American, and, moveover, preoccupied with business. He was consequently indignant, on entering the garden-like court and cloister-like counting-house of "Von Becheret, Sons, Uncles, and Cousins," to find the comptoir deserted even by the porter, and was furious at the maidservant, who offered the sacred shibboleth "Mittagsessen" as a reasonable explanation of the solitude. "A country," said Mr. Clinch to himself, "that stops business at mid-day to go to dinner, and employs women-servants to talk to business-men, is ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the house, to board there for such length of time as should be agreeable to herself and the society, for the price of a hundred pounds a year, fifty for any child she might have, twenty for a maidservant, and thirty ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... on this occasion with an irritable force that produced clangour enough, one would have thought, to awaken the dead. It served, at all events, to arouse the living, for presently heavy footsteps could be heard descending the stairs, and, finally, a middle-aged maidservant, whose cap had obviously been assumed in haste, appeared, confronting Sara with an air of suspicion that seemed rather to suggest that she might have ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... parlour, she kissed them both, and made some remarks upon their looks, which showed that she was quite pleased with their appearance. Mrs. Fairchild employed them a little time in going backwards and forwards to Betty, and helping in many things; for when people keep but one maidservant, they ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... which appeared and disappeared and reappeared again, flickering faintly from floor to ceiling. There seemed no explainable origin for it, and Evelyn's mind at once turned to the supernatural. A silly maidservant at home had been accustomed to ply her with ghost stories, all of which now recurred to her memory. What was it, that unnatural, luminous halo on the opposite wall? It was moving nearer to her, and had almost reached the curtain of her cubicle, when, with ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... better step into the hall for a moment," said the maidservant, "and I'll inquire if my missis is at leisure; but if it's the new housemaid's ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... each throws his or her sickle in turn at the Hare to cut it down. It must be cut below the knot, and the reapers continue to throw their sickles at it, one after the other, until one of them succeeds in severing the stalks below the knot. The Hare is then carried home and given to a maidservant in the kitchen, who places it over the kitchen-door on the inside. Sometimes the Hare used to be thus kept till the next harvest. In the parish of Minnigaff, when the Hare was cut, the unmarried reapers ran home with all speed, and the one who arrived first was the first ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... with a page to carry his chair, the judge who through his wife accepts bribes from the Jews, the rhetorical goldsmith, the usurer (onzeneiro) with his heart in his cassette (arca)[127]. There too the pert servant-girl, the gossiping maidservant, the witch busy at night over a hanged man at the cross-roads, the faithless wife of the India-bound lisboeta, the Lisbon old woman copious in malediction, her genteel daughter Isabel, the wife who in her husband's absence only leaves her ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... house was one of the best in the town, but the family was small. There was but one child, a boy of fourteen, who was now away at school. The doctor had readjusted the logs upon the andirons, and was just putting the tongs in their place when a maidservant came in. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... for that crime; but the fear of further persecution, human weakness, or perhaps sincere conviction, had caused them to renounce the error of their ways, and they now went to mass. But they had a maidservant, forty years of age, Anna van den Hove by name, who was staunch in that reformed faith in which she had been born and bred. The Jesuits denounced this maid-servant to the civil authority, and claimed her condemnation ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Heathknowes Farm she had an eye for everything. She "shooed" into duty's path a youngling hen with vague maternal aspirations which was wandering off to found a family by laying an egg in the underbrush about the saw-mill. She called back final directions to her daughter Jen and maidservant Meg, and saw that they were attended to before she would go on. She looked into the saw-mill itself in the by-going, and made sure that Rob McTurk was in due attendance on the whirling machinery which was turning off ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... concerned to leave Manderson's, if any; his whole plan, if my guess was right, must have been directed to producing the belief that Manderson was in the place that night. Moreover, his plan did not turn upon leaving footmarks. He meant to leave the shoes themselves, and he did so. The maidservant had found them outside the bedroom door, as Manderson always left his shoes, and had polished them, replacing them on the shoe-shelves later in the morning, after the body ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... what he might choose to say with some deference, and had differed, if they differed, in silence. But Mrs. Proudie interrogated him and then lectured. "Neither thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant," said she impressively, and more than once, as though Mr. Harding had forgotten the words. She shook her finger at him as she quoted the favourite law, as though menacing him with punishment, and then called upon him categorically to state whether he did not think that travelling on the Sabbath ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant or his maidservant ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... presented to the Duchess of Snoblands by the Maharajah of Khidmutgar about three years ago, but the sow met with an unfortunate accident in her ladyship's absence, being dipped into a box of face-powder by a thoughtless maidservant. The third specimen, a fine boar, was brought from China as the mascot of H.M.S. Colossus, but just after reaching harbour was accidentally devoured by the ship's cat. The remaining two I have here. They are expensive, of course, a hundred-and-five guineas the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... the other; "I thought perhaps you might have a maidservant, or some of those black people you ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... the maidservant assisted Susanna at the stove, and a few minutes passed before they entered the supper room, where the company had assembled. When they did so, the girl was surprised to note that her mother was standing between two tall strangers, one of whom had his arm about her, and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... valuable. That young women should not make a practice of marrying old men, that illicit passions and intrigues may bring on disaster, that it is madness to make love to another man's wife in a garden, observable by all, that it is greater madness still to keep on when a maidservant is screaming that some one is coming—these rules of conduct are very well in their way and might commend themselves to the denizens of Clapham; but, again, I hardly think Wagner would have constructed a great music-drama to ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... qui mal y pense', but why is not that maidservant rather laid by the side of her mistresses? Now, when we on the floor above offer our hospitality to Yves, we are careful to place ourselves under our mosquito-net in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had implored and coaxed, and probably bribed Mrs. Richards to do something more than 'take her son in and do for him'; and Mrs. Richards, as her first compliance with these requests, had kept the latch-key in her own pocket. So matters went on for a week; but when Mrs. Richards found that her maidservant was never woken by Mr. Charley's raps after midnight, and that she herself was obliged to descend in her dressing-gown, she changed her mind, declared to herself that it was useless to attempt to keep a grown gentleman in leading- strings, and put the key on the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... but all the time she was hurrying up the maidservant, and later, while she and Dick sat opposite each other, rather silent, through lunch, her eyes and mind were busy trying to read the secret of Dick's manner. The girl had impressed him strongly, that was evident, but why should she have occasioned this gloom in Dick who so very rarely ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... she had taken to be a glove was the hand of a man, who was prostrate upon the floor. Understanding that something terrible had occurred, she rang at the front door, roused Mrs. Woods, the housekeeper, and the two women made their way into the study, having first dispatched the maidservant to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... soubrette Maidservant in a play displaying coquetry, pertness, and a tendency to engage in intrigue. Flirtatious or ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... return immediately to Colonel William Johnson, rode away with their horses, and Robert, Tayoga and Willet took their packs into the house of Mynheer Huysman, who grumbled incessantly while he and a manservant and a maidservant made them as ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a man has bought silver, gold, manservant or maidservant, ox or sheep or ass, or anything whatever its name, from the hand of a man's son, or of a man's slave, without witness and bonds, or has received the same on deposit, that man has acted the thief, he shall be put ...
— The Oldest Code of Laws in the World - The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon - B.C. 2285-2242 • Hammurabi, King of Babylon |
