"Spinster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reading a will aloud is sure of the interest of his audience, and, on this occasion, it was evident that each member of the little group listened with strained attention, but with very different feelings. What they gathered was that Miss Victoria Bench, spinster, being of sound mind, did will and bequeath everything of which she might die possessed to her beloved great-niece, Elizabeth Caldwell, commonly called Beth. Should Beth marry, the money was to be settled ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... genuinely thought she had sinned against him, and that she ought to be exterminated. He condemned her for all manner of things as to which she had had no choice: for instance, the irregularity of her teeth, and the hollow under her chin, and the little tricks of deportment which are always developed by a spinster as she reaches forty. He fled in terror of her. If she should have a glimpse of him, and should recognize him, the consequence would be absolutely disastrous—disastrous in every way; and a period of publicity would dawn for him such as he could not possibly contemplate either in cold ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... singleness, single blessedness; bachelorhood, bachelorship^; misogamy^, misogyny. virginity, pucelage^; maidenhood, maidenhead. unmarried man, bachelor, Coelebs, agamist^, old bachelor; misogamist^, misogynist; monogamist; monk. unmarried woman, spinster; maid, maiden, virgin, feme sole [Fr.], old maid; bachelor girl, girl-bachelor; nun. V. live single, live alone. Adj. unmarried, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dependent upon her aunt. Living with her was a matter of personal choice. Mercy Lascelles was her only relative for one thing, and the elder woman being a lonely spinster, it seemed only right that Joan should make her home under her scarcely hospitable roof. Then, too, there was another reason which influenced the girl. It was a purely sentimental reason, such as at her age might well appeal to her. A whisper ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... be likened to some rare spinster, grown old with years and good works, and now having a safe home with a rich and powerful benefactress. Yet Chelsea is not handsome in her old age, and Chelsea was not pretty in youth, nor fair to view in middle life; but Chelsea has been the foster-mother of several ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... hand her silk skirt was held primly; in the other she carried a little white silk flag, on which the staring gold letters were lost in the rippling folds. With her eyes on the sky and her feet in the dust, she marched, a prim, ladylike figure, an inspired spinster, oblivious alike of the hooting small boys and the half-compassionate, half-scoffing gazers upon ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... very strict law intended to eliminate the spinster from the social horizon. It is a law born of craft and inspired by foresight. The daughters of a household must be married off in the order of their nativity. The younger sister dare not contemplate ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... acknowledge that she did not, and under a hot volley of questions from Donna admitted further that not a soul in San Pasqual had even hinted to her of such a contingency. Too late the spinster realized that she had, figuratively speaking, placed all of her eggs in one bucket and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... a spinster of superior breeding and a teacher of dancing, had in the distant past been an intimate friend of Mrs. Lessways. The friendship was legendary in the house, and the grand quarrel which had finally put an end to it dated in Hilda's early ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... He claims cousinship. But it has not dawned on him that Colland was to have been The McTavish, that he is The McTavish, that I am merely Miss Ellen Alice Douglas Cameron Dundee Campbell McGregor Breadalbane Blair McTavish, houseless, homeless spinster, wi' but a drap o' gude blood to her heritage. I have not told him, Mr. Traquair. He does not know. What's to be done? What would you do—if you knew that he was he, and ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and mandarins, with the castles on elephants' backs, George the Third and his queen in pink ivory against the Emperor of China and lady in white—the delight of Clive's childhood, the chief ornament of the old spinster's sitting-room. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... education, should be expanded at whatever cost into something truly national and all embracing. The ancient grudging selfishness that would not feed other people's children should be cast out. In the war time the wealthy bachelor and the spinster of advancing years took it for granted that other people's children should fight for them. The ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... form matrimonial connections, are ever on the alert for something or somebody better than themselves; and under such circumstances, naturally enough, Miss Alice Somebody—though a pretty girl—talented, as the world goes, highly educated, too, as many hundreds beside her, was still a spinster at twenty-three. The fact was, Mrs. Somebody was a woman of experience in the world—indeed, a dozen years' experience in life at Washington, had given her very definite ideas of expediency and diplomacy; and hence, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... an audible gasp of shock from a spinster-appearing female sunning herself hard by and angularly in the sand in a swimming suit monstrously unbeautiful, Lee Barton was aware of an involuntary and almost perceptible stiffening on the part ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... under a veil of modesty, a spinster under a cloak of cynicism, a wife under a mantle of tact, and a widow under a cloud of mystery—and then women wonder ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... in the large yellow bowl. She was in the mood to commit sublime follies and magnificent indiscretions. For the sake of a drive in that red wheeled gig she would have foresworn Abel at the altar. For the ecstasy of ironing those surplices she would have remained a spinster forever. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... paper soldiers, valentines, fire-crackers before the Fourth, elastic for slingshots, spools, needles and yards of blue calico with white dots, which hung over strings above the counters. Emily was a dark, heavy-browed spinster with a booming bass voice and a stern manner, and when you crept, awed and timid, into the store she glared at you and boomed out, 'Which side, young man?' Yet her store was a kid's paradise. I have often wondered since whether she didn't, in her heart, really love us ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... his breast With verse, let him, fit votarist, implore Their inspiration. He perchance the gifts Of young Lyaeus, and the dread exploits, May sing in aptest numbers; he the fate 310 Of sober Pentheus, [FF] he the Paphian rites, And naked Mars with Cytherea chain'd, And strong Alcides in the spinster's robes, May celebrate, applauded. But with you, O Naiads, far from that unhallow'd rout, Must dwell the man whoe'er to praised themes Invokes the immortal Muse. The immortal Muse To your calm habitations, to the cave Corycian[GG] or the Delphic ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... sought after by the people who devote their lives—till they commit suicide—to illicit love and the Victory Balls at the Albert Hall. But in 1909—would that we were all back in 1909!—it was as nice a part of London as a busy, energetic, sober-living spinster, in the movement, yet liking home retirement and lilac-scented privacy—could desire to inhabit, at the absurd rental of fifty pounds a year, with comparatively low rates, and the need for only one hard-working, self-respecting Suffragette ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... always mindful of the proprieties they have learned at summer hotels. While they are eating their icecream and trying not to twist the spoon in their mouths, a little shriek of laughter breaks from an adjacent table. The twins look up. There sits a spry little old spinster whom they know well. She has a long chin, a long nose, and she is dressed like a young girl, with a pink sash and a lace garden hat with pink rosebuds. She is surrounded by a crowd of boys,—loose and lanky, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... forget one particular evening when he (Smith) put an elderly maiden lady who presided at the tea-table to sore confusion by neglecting utterly her invitation to be seated, and walking round and round the circle, stopping ever and anon to steal a lump from the sugar basin, which the venerable spinster was at length constrained to place on her own knee, as the only method of securing it from his uneconomical depredations. His appearance mumping the eternal sugar was something indescribable." It is probably the same story Robert Chambers ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... must be observed in studying these figures, that farmers' wives and children, working at home, are not reported as gainfully occupied. But a widow or a spinster owner, if herself acting as the enterpriser, is reported as "occupied" in agriculture. The increasing number of such cases in the past generation in part explains the growing number and ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... merry Lemminkainen Spent three summers in the ocean, Spent a merry time in refuge, In the hamlets on the island, To the pleasure of the maidens, To the joy of all the daughters; Only one was left neglected, She a poor and graceless spinster, On the isle's remotest border, In the smallest of the hamlets. 'Then he thought about his journey O'er the ocean to his mother, To the cottage of his father. There appeared the slighted spinster, To the Northland son departing, Spake these ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... practical sister of the spinster pair who cherish (respectively) a secret attachment for Mr. Dermer. Miss Deborah is an admirable cook, and an affectionate aunt and considers that in religion a woman ought to think just as her husband does.—Margaret ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the leading spinster of Plainton. In companies where there were married ladies she was sometimes obliged to take a second place, but never among maidens, old or young. There were very few subjects upon which Miss Shott had not an opinion; and whatever this opinion might be, she considered it her first duty in life to ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... you heard the news?" said Miss Tabitha Jones, a pleasant and wealthy spinster, to a number of young girls who were seated at her ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... for instructions, and guided by the under-butler found Lady Homartyn hiding away in the walled Dutch garden behind the dairy. She had been giving away the prizes of the flower-show, and she was resting in a deck chair while a spinster relation presided over the tea. Mrs. Britling had fled the outer festival earlier, and was sitting by the tea-things. Lady Meade and two or three visitors had motored out from Hartleytree to assist, and Manning had come in with his tremendous confirmation ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... pamphlet called the Spinster, and a Letter to the Earl of Oxford, concerning the Bill of Peerage, which bill he opposed in the House of Commons. Some time after, he wrote against the South-Sea-Scheme; his Crisis of posterity; and another piece intitled, A Nation a Family; and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... strain and relax the Muscles of their Faces in making Distinction between a Spinster in a coloured Scarf and an Handmaid in a Straw-Hat, the Worriers use the same Roughness to both, and prevail upon the Easiness of the Passengers, to the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to come in, and thus they met, the quick, slim, active little spinster, whose whole life had been work, and the far younger widow, whose vocation had been chiefly home-making. Their first silent ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to do rather a foolish thing for a middle-aged spinster—I undertook to chaperon a volatile young niece upon a continental tour. We travelled the usual course up the Rhine into Switzerland, which we enjoyed rapturously. Then passing the Alps, we spent a few days at Milan, and next proceeded to Verona. In all this journey, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... you to attend one of the breakfasts; it can't do you any serious or permanent injury so long as you eat something before you go. Oh no, it doesn't matter,—whichever one you choose, you will cheerfully omit the other; for I avow as a Scottish spinster, and the niece of an ex-Moderator, that to a stranger and a foreigner the breakfasts are worse than Arctic explorations. If you do not chance to be at ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... awkward termination of his visit,—or perhaps BECAUSE of it,—Courtland called again at the plantation within the week. But this time he was accompanied by Drummond, and was received by Miss Miranda Dows, a tall, aquiline-nosed spinster of fifty, whose old-time politeness had become slightly affected, and whose old beliefs had given way to a half-cynical acceptance of new facts. Mr. Drummond, delighted with the farm and its management, was no less fascinated by Miss Sally, while Courtland was now discreet ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... enjoy the greatest peace. My old spinster cousin Ermelin pets and coddles me like an invalid. I am getting back my colour and am very well, physically ... so much so, in fact, that I no longer ever think of interesting myself in other people's business. Never again! For instance (I am only telling ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... caused it to run over. Aunt Phoebe came to live with her and be the mistress of the Bradford house. At some time in the past Judge Bradford and his sister Phoebe had been named joint guardians of Hinpoha, but the Judge was now dead and Aunt Phoebe was the sole guardian. Aunt Phoebe was a spinster of the type usually described in books, tall and spare, with steely blue eyes. She was sixty years old, but she might have been a hundred and sixty, for all the sympathy she had with youth. She had been disappointed in love when she was twenty and had never thought kindly of any man since. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... sportive guesses of young people, who half believe that they may learn from omens at Christmas time what manner of marriages are in store for them. Divinings of this kind are known to all lands, and bear a strong family likeness; but it is, of course, only in a cold country that a spinster can find an opportunity of sitting beside a hole cut in the surface of a frozen river, listening to prophetic sounds proceeding from beneath the ice, and possibly seeing the image of the husband who she is to marry within the year trembling in the freezing ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a son named after her, Francesco; but Francesco died in infancy, and the name, in spite of the omen, was given to the next son, who followed his father's profession, but never married. The next child was a daughter, who died a spinster; the next was a son, who became a priest, and the next a son, who died a bachelor. The failure of all their children to marry does not indicate a particularly happy home-life, but this is mere speculation. We only know that Stradivari's first wife ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... set foot within its front gate; not once since the day when on a sudden resolution he had installed Ruth Josselin here, under ward of Miss Quiney, to be visited and instructed in theology, the arts, and the sciences, by such teachers as that unparagoned spinster might, with his approval, select. In practice he left it entirely to her, and Miss Quiney's taste in teachers was of the austerest. What nutriment (one might well have asked) could a young mind extract from the husks of doctrine and of grammar purveyed ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... fell upon the girls as the gray bonnet vanished round the corner, and despair seized them when a few minutes later Miss Crocker appeared, and said she'd come to dinner. Now this lady was a thin, yellow spinster, with a sharp nose and inquisitive eyes, who saw everything and gossiped about all she saw. They disliked her, but had been taught to be kind to her, simply because she was old and poor and had few friends. So Meg gave her the easy chair and tried ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... psychological moment and a wink from the lawyer is quite enough to lead the jury to believe that, if they acquit the defendant, they will "make the young lady happy," whereas if he is convicted she will remain for aye a heart-broken spinster. Like enough she may ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... knew that this offer had been accepted without hesitation; and thenceforth, accordingly, he threw his daily letters to his wife into the form of communications meant for an imaginary group, consisting of a spinster sister, a statistical laird, a rural clergyman of the Presbyterian Kirk, and a brother, a veteran officer on half-pay. The rank of this last personage corresponded, however, exactly with that of his own elder brother, John Scott, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... dame—to wit, Miss Elizabeth Carr of the Upper Glen—who wouldn't rein her horse out to let us pass, honk as we might. Father was quite furious; but in my heart I believe I sympathized with Miss Elizabeth. If I had been a spinster lady, driving along behind my own old nag, in maiden meditation fancy free, I wouldn't have lifted a rein when an obstreperous car hooted blatantly behind me. I should just have sat up as dourly as she did and said 'Take the ditch if ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... handkerchief, and Aunt Hester, who was a spinster, cast down her eyes and fidgeted with some papers which she had taken from ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... from the stars in the night sky to the stars in the young man's eyes. "Why, yes, I hope I am," said she lightly enough, but one saw she had been startled. "What a funny boy you are, Laurence, to be sure! You don't expect me to remain a spinster, do you?" ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... schools attended by both boys and girls were established in Massachusetts, and before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth there was at least one public school for both sexes in Virginia. But for the most part the girls of early New England appear to have gone to the "dame's school," taught by some spinster or poverty-stricken widow. We may again turn to Sewall's Diary for bits of evidence concerning the schooling in the seventeenth century: "Tuesday, Oct. 16, 1688. Little Hanah going to School in the morn, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... impression upon parents and guardians. Being stout, and between fifty and sixty years old, she was often described as "motherly," though in the timidity, fidgetiness, and primness of her dealing with girls she was essentially a spinster. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... how, it passes my wit to conceive. But there, it would have meant only a few more hours' work daily for the brave old spinster, but not for the boys, for they would have been fed while she fasted, they would have ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... the Indian was over now, and the day of the farmer who succeeded him was over, too. The crash of the loom and the whir of the spinning-wheel were heard no longer, but Amanda Dalton, spinster,—descendant of the original Tristram Dalton, to whom the claim belonged,—sat on alone in her house, and not far away sat Caleb Kimball, sole living heir of the original Caleb, himself a Dalton Righter, and contemporary of ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a family feud or the stubbornness of the present owner. Here it may be to the buyer's advantage to obtain an option on it and engage a local lawyer experienced in real estate matters to perfect the title. For example, two spinster sisters lived in their father's old farmhouse. They were not at all averse to selling, but under the terms of their father's will, a niece in a state institution for the feeble minded held a life interest ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... above martyrdoms, Catharine Hut, of Bocking, widow; Joan Horns, spinster, of Billericay; Elizabeth Thackwel, spinster, of Great Burstead; suffered death ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... returned and reported the woman's prayer to the Commander of the Faithful, who cried, "Hie thee to her and enquire an she be married or virginal; and, if she be unwedded, do thou ask her an she be willing to wive with me."[FN94] So Ja'afar fared to her and questioned her, whereat she answered, "A spinster." Quoth he, "The Youth who sent the dinar to thee desireth to mate with thee;" and quoth she, "An he can pay me my dower and my money down,[FN95] I will become his bride." Hereat Ja'afar said in his thought, "whence can the Prince of True Believers find ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... you were employed, according to the formula, "in virtue of these and subsequent engagements," and among the "subsequent engagements" you are kind enough to reckon one between Mademoiselle Berthe Lorinet, spinster, of no occupation, and M. Fabien Mouillard, lawyer. "Fabien Mouillard, lawyer"—that I may perhaps endure, but "Fabien Mouillard, son-in-law of Lorinet," never! One pays too dear for these rich wives. Mademoiselle Berthe is half a foot taller than ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... The spinster, who had already received in her own opinion sufficient affront for one evening, put the worst construction possible on this accident, and answered with evident ill-temper, "You are ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... Forest Ranger, "that is a well known, game old elderly spinster lady commonly called the Moon; and that other on the branch chittering swear words is nothing in the world but a Douglas squirrel hunting—I think he is really hunting—a flea to mix in his spruce tips ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... least—to have been the scion of a proud and aristocratic family, who had not been too proud, however, to leave her to starve. Altogether, Miss Husted was an exceedingly romantic, high-strung, middle-aged spinster, miles and miles above her station in life, whose heart and purse were open to any foreigner who had discernment enough to see her weakness and tact enough to pander to it by hinting at his noble lineage. This love of things and beings aristocratic was more than ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... often robbed. The introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy for the old lady," Nares said, "even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as I was going by; I always thought she was a kind of pleasant old girl. Well, when she came to the door that ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... half to penetrate her motives and mysteries. Of one thing I'm sure at least: that they were considerably less insuperable than her appearance announced. Miss Ambient was a restless romantic disappointed spinster, consumed with the love of Michael-Angelesque attitudes and mystical robes; but I'm now convinced she hadn't in her nature those depths of unutterable thought which, when you first knew her, seemed to look out from her eyes and to prompt her complicated gestures. Those features in especial had a ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... made and entered into this second day of October, in the year of our Lord 1852, between William Charles Capas, of Charles-Henry Street, in the borough of Birmingham, in the county of Warwick, carpenter, of the one part, and Emily Hickson, of Hurst Street, Birmingham aforesaid, spinster, of the other part. Whereas the said William Charles Capas and Emily Hickson have mutually agreed with each other to live and reside together, and to mutually assist in supporting and maintaining each other during the remainder of their lives, and also to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... withdrew to his natal town. After selling the Beauseant house, which he owned, for the benefit of his creditors, he had remaining an income of not more than twelve hundred francs. About 1816 he married Mlle. Cormon, a spinster who had been courted also by the Chevalier de Valois and Athanase Granson. This marriage set him on his feet again financially. He took the lead in the party of the opposition, established a Liberal paper called "Le Courrier de l'Orne," and was elected Receiver-General of the Exchequer, after ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... laughed and patted her hand. He was cynical generally about romance. He felt that his own perfect love affair with his wife had been the exception. He looked upon Emily as a sentimental spinster who knew practically nothing of men ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... allowed a glimpse of the divinity before she was enveloped in wraps. An admiring group, huddled in the doorway, murmured approval, from the leading "girl," who was the cook, a coloured widow of some sixty winters, whose admiration was irrepressible, down to a New England spinster whose Anabaptist conscience wrestled with her instincts, and who, although disapproving of "French folks," paid in her heart that secret homage to their gowns and bonnets which her sterner lips refused. The applause of this audience has, from generation to generation, cheered the hearts ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... are probably sepulchral. These stone avenues are very numerous. Of the so-called sacred circles the best examples are the "Longstones" on Scorhill Down, and the "Grey Wethers" under Sittaford Tor. By far the finest cromlech is the "Spinster's Rock" at Drewsteignton, a three-pillared cromlech which may well be compared with those of Cornwall. There are numerous menhirs or single upright stones; a large dolmen or holed stone lies in the bed of the Teign, near the Scorhill circle; and rock basins ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... her countenance, Adele," said the spinster, in her solemn manner; "and I am rejoiced that you will not be under her influence the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... sisters looked at each other. "Oh, I know—the lady in black we saw in church the day the revolution began—a strange little shrivelled spinster-thing who lives in that house by the post-office. She quarrelled mortally with the Rector last year, because she ill-treated a little servant girl of ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tidied the name to Emerel, and Friendship had adopted the form, perhaps as having about it something pleasing and jewel-like. Though Emerel was in the thirties at the time of her inheritance, she was still pretty, shy, conformable; and yet there was no disguising that she was nearly a spinster when, as soon as the white house was settled, Mrs. Ricker issued invitations to ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... ever since they had known Dr. Spencer's opinion; and yet he only believed that they were grateful for good advice, and went about among them, easy, good-natured, and utterly unconscious that for him sparkled Mrs. Ledwich's bugles, and for him waved every spinster's ribbon, from Miss ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Joel Rae, Elder after the Order of Melchisedek, and Christina Lund, spinster, native of Denmark, were on the following day, after the endowment-rites had been administered, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... least when her father died; and the gentle coldness of her manner did not encourage women to intimacy, or invite men to pay her attentions that she would scorn. In any other situation, her natural gifts and virtues would have fairer play. As a spinster, she would still have had lovers; as a widow, suitors by the dozen; as a happily married woman she would have been courted, complimented, flattered, by all the world. But, as a woman merely separated from a husband with whom she ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of Thos. Topham, of the city of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, taking the Parliamentary side in the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the property which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who devised his money to his second daughter, Barbara, a spinster. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... MLLE. SAINTE-NITOUCHE.—A demure Spinster says she is quite against the Early Closing Movement, and hopes the shops will keep open as late as possible. "'Early closing' means," she explains, "'early shopping,' and I should blush to commence my rounds before the windows ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... delusion by recounting all manner of episodes and incidents not as they actually had, but as she so ardently desired they might have, taken place.—A pathetic form of lying this, though far from uncommon to feminine and—more especially—spinster practice ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 14, late of Burgh cum Girsby, spinster, com. Nov. 22, 1817, charged with twice administering a quantity of vitrol or verdigrease powder, or other deadly poison, with intent to murder Susanna, the infant daughter of George Barnes of Burgh cum ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Semitic race with the less elegant war customs of the Soudan and the northwest frontier of India, and quoted Doughty, at that time a little-known author, and Cunninghame Graham to show that the Arab was worse than a county-town spinster in his regard for respectability. But his case was too preposterous, and Esmeer, with his shrill penetrating voice and his way of pointing with all four long fingers flat together, carried the point against him. He quoted Cato and Roman law ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Betsy" was a boat—named for the unyielding spinster whom the captain hoped to marry. Through the two Betsys a clever group of people are introduced to ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... it. Here I am, and here I shall stay. I take comfort in the fact that no one connects Ian Verity with an elderly and unattractive spinster hidden in a hermitage on Bessmoor. You will not betray me, I know, and it is good of you to come and visit me in my solitude. I am growing old and you have all your life before you. I have crossed to the shady side of the road while you walk still in the sunshine. I have thought ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... in 1867, her mother's sister, Miss Harriet Tewksbury, a spinster of fifty or thereabouts, who, for the lack of something substantial to interest her, had been halting between woman's rights and Spiritualism, suddenly discovered that Helen's cause was the real woman's cause; whereupon she went to the lonely and grief-stricken girl, and with that fine ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... mother, I learned, had allowed that lady to bring him up Herself, many follies might have been saved the youth. His aunt, Miss Eliza St. Michael, though a pattern of good intentions, was not always a pattern of wisdom. Moreover, how should a spinster bring up ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... sure?" And the spinster of forty-five turned sharply on the matron of less than half her years. "She had on her white muslin when she came to the head of the stairs to ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... of his mother's family in Virginia—a branch that had gone out with a King's grant when Virginia was a crown colony. The collateral ancestor, Pendleton, had been a justice of the peace in Virginia, and a spinster daughter had written down some of the strange cases with which ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... of Stavely Castle, County Galway, Ireland, bachelor, and Christine Marie Lavilette, of the Township of Bonaventure, in the Province of Lower Canada, spinster, Are hereby granted," etc., etc., etc., "according to the laws of the Province of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the vision of some grim-faced spinster-subscriber in a desolate country town starting out at last for the first time in her life, with real, cheery self-importance, rain or shine, to join the laughing, jostling, deliriously human Saturday night crowd at the village post-office—herself ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... and at this unveiling of his sublime self-centredness. He expected to find his world just as he would have it, his cushion at his head and his footstool at his feet, the wife in her place fulfilling her comely duties, the spinster friend in hers, administering balms and counsels; the wife at Merriston House, and the spinster friend in the little sitting-room where, for so many years, he had come to her with all his moods and misfortunes. She felt that her eyes fixed themselves on him with a cold menace as he stood ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinster-hood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses busy and resonant, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the room she rented, Percival was greatly surprised to find, seated comfortably on the only chair to be seen, no less a person than the worthy Mrs. Mivers. This good lady in her spinster days had earned her own bread by hard work. She had captivated Mr. Mivers when but a simple housemaid in the service of one of his relations. And while this humble condition in her earlier life may account for much in her language and manners ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... love of a practical joke in our younger days, and I did not wish to interpose between him and the venerable spinster. I thought that he would not do anything really to ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... her harder, more ruthless. She was now up against her own fate. It was for her to choose between being Mrs. Skrebensky, even Baroness Skrebensky, wife of a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, the Sappers, as he called them, living with the European population in India—or being Ursula Brangwen, spinster, school-mistress. She was qualified by her Intermediate Arts examination. She would probably even now get a post quite easily as assistant in one of the higher grade schools, or even in Willey Green School. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... with an elderly spinster cousin, a short distance out of town. It was a grim house, coldly and rigidly Calvinistic. It gave an unpleasant impression at the start, and our comfort was not increased by the discovery, made early in the call, that the cousin regarded ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the "something" would doubtless bear fruit; for this elderly spinster aunt, with a mania for psychical research, had brains as well as will power, and by hook or by crook she usually managed to accomplish her ends. The revelation was made soon after tea, when she sidled close up to him as they paced slowly along the ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... an eminent Oxford divine, whose life and works commanded reverence, was once mistaken for an ancient New England spinster in emancipated garments. His smoothly shaven face, framed in crinkly, gray locks, was surmounted by a soft, little, round hat, from the up-turned brim of which dangled a broken string. His long frock-coat reached to just above his ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... Sprotts, who now acted as servant to Mrs Villiers, was rather an oddity in her way. She had been Madame's nurse, and had followed her up to Ballarat, with the determination of never leaving her. Selina was a spinster, as her hand had never been sought in marriage, and her personal appearance was certainly not very fascinating. Tall and gaunt, she was like a problem from Euclid, all angles, and the small quantity of grey hair she possessed was screwed into a hard lump at the back of her head. Her face was reddish ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... were. Now on what slender circumstances do the fates of dogs and mortals hang. Only that afternoon Mr. Jellybrand, in the innocent self-confidence of his heart, had agreed with Miss Maple, an elderly and bitter spinster, that the next sewing meeting of the Dorcas Sisterhood should be held in her house and not at the Rectory. He had told Mrs. Cole of this on his way upstairs to the nursery. Now Mrs. Cole liked the Dorcas meetings ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... masters, is no blear-eyed spinster mooning over the trumpery of a heyday that is gone, but a Miss Mischief offering her dainty fingers to you before the kiss of your grandfather's lips is yet dry on them. The damask petticoat, the powdered wig, and the coquettish little patch by her dimpled little mouth are off and into ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... spinster of seven years' standing, was first taken into the confidence of Ginger Stott's mother, the scheme which she afterwards elaborated immediately presented itself to her mind. This fact is a curious instance of Ellen Mary's ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... qualities. She liked him in a sort of way; nay, it might even be said that she was fond of him. But what she liked better than him was to gratify her vanity, by showing her power over the finest young fellow in the village, and to use him as a foil to aggravate George Hawker. My aunt Betsy (spinster), used to say, that if she were a man, sooner than stand that hussy's airs (meaning Mary's), in the way young Stockbridge did, she'd cut, and run to America, which, in the old lady's estimation, was the last resource ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the ground floor, lined with books from floor to ceiling, and my own peculiar lodging in the upper regions, which, thanks to my mother's kindness and taste, was as pretty a bower of elegant comfort as any young spinster need have desired. There I chiefly spent my time, pursuing my favorite occupations, or in the society of my own especial friends: my dear H—— S——, when she was in London; Mrs. Jameson, who often climbed thither for an hour's pleasant discussion of her book on Shakespeare; and a lady with ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... an odd one, although she lived too far away to appreciate the fact that none of the guests, with the possible exception of Rangely, were exactly what she would have been asked to dine with at home. A country member, a self- made vulgarian, an antiquated spinster, and a literateur who, after all, was received rather upon sufferance into such exclusive houses as he entered at all, made up a group of which Miss Merrivale, with feminine instinct, felt the inferiority, despite ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... maiden was a term that implied virgin innocence and purity, whether addressed to the blithe lass of sixteen, or the antiquated spinster of forty," returned the provoking sailor, with ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Messiter had been serenely teaching a second grade at Kalamazoo, Michigan, notwithstanding the earnest efforts of several youths of that city to induce her to retire to domesticity "What's the use of being a schoolmarm?" had been the burden of their plaint. "Any spinster can teach kids C-A-T, Cat, but only one in several thousand can be the prettiest bride in Kalamazoo." None of them, however, had been able to drive the point sufficiently home, and it is probable that she would have continued to devote herself to Young America if an uncle she had never seen had ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... but never dreaming how much those carriages meant to me. As I went timidly into the room I found nearly every seat full, and was greeted with cordial applause. My sister took a seat beside me. My subject was "Spinster Authors of England." My hands trembled so visibly that I laid my manuscript on the table, but after getting in magnetic touch with those before ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... said that the occupant was a spinster and a writer, and Esther remembered that she had noticed even at the time Miss Rice's manuscript, it was such a beautiful clear round hand, and it lay on the table, ready to be continued the moment she should have ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... approached the horse again, secured the dangling reins, and again mounted. Baldy was as demure as a spinster in ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... laugh however, for it can be nothing serious where his friends make merry with it. When he retires from view, his health is drank with three times three. Di, who seemed to take pleasure in annoying the spinster, said she had a great mind not to join in that toast, for he was a loose fellow, otherwise he would have rent his heart and not his garments. It is a pity a clever girl like her will let her tongue run that way, for it leads them to say things they ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the lookout everywhere among the suburbs for two malefactors distinctly differing in type, yet equally in demand. One, said the descriptions, compiled from the original information of Zenobia Perkins, Spinster; residence 259 Calle Real, Ermita; occupation, Vice-President and Accredited Representative for the Philippine Islands of the Patriotic Daughters of America, and the additional particulars later obtained ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... On Genevieve's side. Between thirty-five and forty, a born spinster but clinging to the hope of marriage as the only career for women. Has a small and decreasing income. Affectedly ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... sentimental, German spaniel. Besides, he kept tolerably clean by dint of Israel's care, and thrust his long nose between the rails of his pen for grass, or fruit, or carrot- and beet-tops, with a knowing look out of his deep-set eyes that was never to be resisted by the soft-hearted spinster. Indeed, Miss Lucinda enjoyed the possession of one pet who could not tyrannize over her. Pink's place was more than filled by Fun, who was so oppressively affectionate that he never could leave his mistress alone. If she lay down on her bed, he leaped up and unlatched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... and grand, All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But, ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares from one's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... converting such a grim female once! You know Henry James says, "Some women are unmarried by choice, and others by chance, but Olive Chancellor was unmarried by every implication of her being." Now, this predestinate spinster acquaintance of mine, well nigh spoiled by years of school-teaching in the wrong spirit, was determined to think kindergarten play simply a piece of nauseating frivolity. She tried her best, but, kept in the ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... ran upstairs, Barbara found Caleb's tiny spinster sister, in negligee and boudoir cap, sitting cross-legged like a girl in the middle of the floor. There was an orderly litter of papers around her, and a confusion of clothes; and Barbara hesitated on the threshold until Miss Sarah ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... my goodwill was born to blush unseen in the dark unfathomed cave of a desert ear, for the actual recipient of my compliments was an unmarried spinster relative, who had already passed the years ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... near as he thought he might. When caressed he never turned away, or looked as if he would rather be let alone; at the same time he received the caress so quietly, and with so little response, that often, when his heavenly look had drawn the heart of some mother, or spinster with motherly heart, he left an ache in the spirit he would have gone to the world's end to comfort. He never sought love—otherwise than by getting near the loved. When anything was given him, he would look up and smile, but he seldom ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... of ladies fluttered into the empty hall. A middle-aged spinster literally flung herself towards the young man, and, clasping ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... Sophy you would have to coin a term or fall back on the dictionary definition of a spinster. "An unmarried woman," states that worthy work, baldly, "especially when no longer young." That, to the world, was Sophy Decker. Unmarried, certainly. And most certainly no longer young. In figure she was, at fifty, what is known in the corset ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... sort of spinster, I guess," Jimmy explained. "She lives all by herself, and I guess she gets kind of lonesome sometimes. She's kind of deaf, ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... Oileus led the race; The next Ulysses, measuring pace with pace; Behind him, diligently close, he sped, As closely following as the running thread The spindle follows, and displays the charms Of the fair spinster's breast and moving arms: Graceful in motion thus, his foe he plies, And treads each footstep ere the dust can rise; His glowing breath upon his shoulders plays: The admiring Greeks loud acclamations raise: To him they give their wishes, hearts, and eyes, And send their souls ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... behind ears the natural prominence of which was enhanced by her grayish hair being drawn up tightly and rolled into a "bun" on the very top of the head. She was the personification of neatness, if such be the word to characterize the prim stiffness of a flat-figured, elderly spinster. She wore large, square-toed, common-sense shoes, with low heels capped with rubber cushions, which, as I was shortly to discover, had earned for the lady the sobriquet of "Old Gum Heels." What her real name was I never found out. Nobody knew. She was the most hated of all ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... The little spinster paled. "Jane! Going away?" Her eyes brimmed up with sudden tears. "My dearest girl, aren't you happy in your home? I've tried, oh, how I've tried to take your dear, dead ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... epithet—hadou mageiros—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to pick our society, so here we must accept what fellowship the fates provide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen describing his jaunt in a gondola from the railway station; a German shopkeeper descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the beauties of the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... A spinster, when she cannot make Her thin and grayish hair grow, Feels happier than a Boston man When storm-bound ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... Laidley Worm of Spindelston Heugh, vi. Laird of Darnick Tower, The, vii. Laird of Hermitage, The, xix. Laird of Lucky's Howe, ix. Laird Rorieson's Will, xviii. Last of the Pedlars, The, v. Last Scrap, The, xxiii. Leaves from the Life of Alexander Hamilton, xix. Leaves from the Diary of an Aged Spinster, vi. Leein' Jamie Murdieston, viii. Leveller, The, xvi. Linton Lairds, The; or, Exclusives and Inclusives, iv. Lord Durie and Christie's Will, ii. Lord Kames's Puzzle, xxiii, Lost Heir of the House of Elphinstone, xx. Lottery Hall, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... with the strange gentleman,' whispered the spinster aunt, with true spinster-aunt-like envy, to her brother, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "There's just one thing more I have to say. I shall never, never fall in love again. It's fatal to one's peace of mind. Now that I've fallen out of love, I feel about a hundred years younger. I'm going to be a nice, kind, spinster and found a home ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... arrival at Las Palomas, the only white woman on the ranch was "Miss Jean," a spinster sister of its owner, and twenty years his junior. After his third bitter experience in the lottery of matrimony, evidently he gave up hope, and induced his sister to come out and preside as the mistress of Las Palomas. She was not tall like her brother, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... proposition; it implied—oh! it implied all sorts of things. It meant that she would care as little for philandering as an able young business man. Perhaps some day, a long time ahead, she might marry. There wasn't much reason for it, but it might be she would not wish to be called a spinster. "Take a husband," thought old Grammont, "when I am gone, as one takes a butler, to make the household complete." In previous meditations on his daughter's outlook old Grammont had found much that was very ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Columbine, and Columbine she had become to all who knew her. Her mother dying when she was only three, Columbine had been left to the sole care of her wastrel father. And he, then a skipper of a small cargo steamer plying across the North Sea, had placed her in the charge of a spinster aunt who kept an infants' school in a little Kentish village near the coast. Here, up to the age of seventeen, Columbine had lived and been educated; but the old schoolmistress had worn out at last, and on her death-bed ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Panegyric, "Because, says the Critick, it is a pitiful Comparison of Alexander the Great with a Schoolmaster." What then wou'd he have said of Sir Richard's Metaphorical Comparison of the CREATOR Himself, to a Spinster, and a Weaver? The very Beasts of Mr. Milton, who kept Moses in his Eye, carry Infinitely more Majesty, than the ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... who now pass for gentry in the western counties have been originally raised from and built up by this truly noble manufacture'. It has filled our census lists with surnames—Weaver, Webber, Webb, Sherman, Fuller, Walker, Dyer—and given to every unmarried woman the designation of a spinster. And from the time when the cloth trade ousted that of wool as the chief export trade of England down to the time when it was in its turn ousted by iron and cotton, it was the foundation of England's commercial greatness. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... nearly all their time here now," continued the spinster, "though whether on account of Sir Charles's health or because his wife prefers it I can't say. I daresay it wasn't gay enough for her in Cheshire—not enough distractions. You know how it is with these young women who marry old men, they don't want to sit ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... The spinster was a woman of quick decision. Had it been proposed to receive an ordinary pupil in the house for any pecuniary consideration, her pride would have revolted on the instant. But here was a child of an old friend of the Doctor, a little Christian waif, as it were, floating toward them from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... not add to his message her recommendation that the frontispiece should represent the Spinster's Needles, with the rescue of Don as the type of female heroism. Nor did he tell how carefully he had questioned both her and Rachel as to the date of that ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dream she marries a vicar, foretells that she will fail to awake reciprocal affection in the man she desires, and will live a spinster, or marry ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... accepted it cheerfully, and had even written to his widowed mother, who lived alone in a Dorsetshire village, asking her advice about the girl. Gladys was disturbed in her solitude by Miss Peck, who came to the door in rather an excited and officious manner. She was a little, wiry spinster, past middle life, eccentric, but kind-hearted. She had bestowed a great deal of gratuitous and genuine kindness on her lodgers, though knowing very well that she would not likely get any return but gratitude for it; but times were hard with her likewise, and she could not help ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... his plans would have miscarried. I'd never have married that Osborne man; I'd have snubbed Balderstone the moment he spoke to me; and if Stuart Harley had got a book out of my trip to Europe at all, it would have been a series of papers on some such topic as 'The Spinster Abroad, or How to be Happy though Single.' No more shall I take the part he intends me to in this Newport romance, unless he removes Count Bonetti from the scene entirely, and provides me with a different style of hero from his Professor, the original of whom, by- the-way, as I ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... the little country church of St Mary Charlcombe, a remote village some two miles from Bath, that "Henry Fielding, of ye Parish of St James in Bath, Esq., and Charlotte Cradock of ye same Parish, spinster" were married, on the 28th of November 1734. [2] Fifty years later the village was described as containing only nine houses, the church, well fitted for the flock, being but eighteen feet wide. The old Somerset historian, Collinson, tells us ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... were made by Miss Peppy and my friend Stuart, from the head and foot respectively of their dinner-table, around which were assembled my wife, my niece Lizzie Gordon, an elderly spinster named Miss Eve Flouncer, a Miss Martha Puff, (niece to Miss Flouncer), a baronet named Sir Richard Doles, my ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... Practically the entire village was present, a good half of them in new frocks manufactured by themselves in honour of the great event. It was now four years and seven months since there had been a wedding in the village. The local type of damsel was a pre-natal spinster, and the few village boys went otherwhere in search of wives. Brides there had been, of course; but they had been of the ready-made variety. Other communities had had the glory of the weddings. It was not every day, by any means, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... thought Mary and Mr. Ashforth so suited to one another. Well, well, the heart's an unaccountable thing—to an old spinster, anyhow." ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... incumbrance upon his successor. Haendel could have got the job, if he would have had the girl. But she was almost twice his age, and he left her for another musician to marry in. Then he went to Italy, and was pursued in vain under those bewitching skies by no belated German spinster, but by a beautiful and attractive Italienne. Her, he also spurned. When he was in England, he seems to have come very near falling in love with two different women. The mother of the first objected to him as a mere fiddler. After she died, the father invited ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... a jolly, fat, good-natured man, is presented with a woollen night-cap on New Year's morning by his housekeeper, "a typical spinster not overburdened with fat." This so rejoices the Deacon that he is possessed to make others happy, goes to call upon his pastor, and makes him leave his books and spend the day skating, sleighing, and driving with ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... about in many activities, she was able to ridicule her blazing nights of darkness. With spurious cheerfulness she announced everywhere, "I guess I'm a born spinster," and "No one will ever marry a plain schoolma'am like me," and "You men, great big noisy bothersome creatures, we women wouldn't have you round the place, dirtying up nice clean rooms, if it wasn't that you have to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis |
