"Matron" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... counsel. Little Abe did not understand, but he took a firmer grip on his papa's hand, and never let go all the way up the three long flights of stairs to the police nursery where the child at last found peace and a bottle. But when the matron tried to coax him to stay also, he screamed and carried on so that they were glad to let him go lest he wake everybody in the building. Though proverbially Police Headquarters never sleeps, yet it does not like to be disturbed ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... for her—had allowed her to live on in the conviction that Newson had acquired a morally real and justifiable right to her by his purchase—though the exact bearings and legal limits of that right were vague. It may seem strange to sophisticated minds that a sane young matron could believe in the seriousness of such a transfer; and were there not numerous other instances of the same belief the thing might scarcely be credited. But she was by no means the first or last peasant woman who had religiously adhered to her ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... be tenanted by the souls of the departed waiting to be born again. There they lurk, constantly on the look-out for passing women into whom they may enter, and from whom in due time they may be born as infants. It matters not whether the woman be married or unmarried, a matron or a maid, a blooming girl or a withered hag: any woman may conceive directly by the entrance into her of one of these disembodied spirits; but the natives have shrewdly observed that the spirits shew a decided preference for plump young women. Hence when ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Rhimy pim'd on Missy-Miss; Tartaretta Tartaree From the Navel to the Knee; That her Father's Gracy-Grace Might give him a Placy-Place. He no longer writes of Mammy Andromache and her Lammy Hanging panging at the Breast Of a Matron most distrest. Now the Venal Poet sings Baby Clouts, and Baby Things, Baby Dolls, and Baby Houses, Little Misses, Little Spouses; Little Play-Things, Little Toys, Little Girls, and Little Boys: As an Actor does his Part, So the Nurses get by Heart ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... about as excited as was possible in a matron of her age and dignity; she flung her arms rapturously around Helen, and clasped her to her. "My dear," she ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... the altar. Suddenly the sacred flame becomes extinguished; a noise is heard; the Vestals enter; the unfortunate fair is roused from her stupor by the noise of footsteps and has just time to oblige her lover to retire, which he reluctantly does, but not unperceived by the Vestals. The Matron of the Vestals reproaches her with the crime she has committed and orders her to be placed in a dungeon. She is brought out to be examined by the High Priest, found guilty and condemned by him to the usual punishment of the Vestals for a breach of their vow, viz., the being buried ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... and religious women also, like the men, had avoided the fashions of their times. These had adopted the cap, and the black hood for their headdress. The black hood had been long the distinguishing mark of a grave matron. All prostitutes, so early as Edward the third, had been forbidden to wear it. In after-times it was celebrated by the epithet of venerable by the poets, and had been introduced by painters as the representative ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... from a shipwreck, and had lost everything but the clothes she wore; and from sheer sympathy she, the young wife, had gone across the street to speak to her. She had found her, at first, sullen and uncommunicative. "The girl was a foreigner," said the long-ago bride, now a blooming matron with four children. "Leastwise, though she understood me and gave me short answers in English, it struck me she was French-born. Her black stuff gown was dreadful torn and ruined by the sea-water, sir, and so, as I was about her height, I made bold ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... non-existent." In "The Brunt of the War" Miss Hobhouse writes on page 118 of Bloemfontein Camp: "My request for soap was met with the reply, 'Soap is a luxury.' ... Finally it was requisitioned for, also forage[36]—more tents—boilers to boil the drinking water—water to be laid on from the town—and a matron for the camp. Candles, matches, and such like I did not aspire to. It was about three weeks before the answer to the requisition came, and in the interim I gave away soap. Then we advanced a step. Soap was to be given, though so sparingly ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... dear old Virgil; his Georgics, and the 6th and 8th Books of the AEneid. I could now take them up and read them both again. Pray look at lines 407-415 of Book VIII—the poor Matron kindling her early fire—so Georgic! so Virgilian! so unsuited, or disproportionate, to the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... you'[27] The poor child was to learn soon enough some of the sorrows of a wife, for a year later Thomas Betson fell dangerously ill, and she was nursing him and looking after his business for all the world as though she were a grave matron and not a bride of sixteen. Moreover, she must already have been expecting the birth of her eldest son. William Stonor's attitude towards his partner's illness is not without humour. He was torn between anxiety for the life of a friend and ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... to rest, the door of her sleeping-room is fastened from the outside by one of the matrons. The girl has no means of opening it herself, but by touching a little spring at the head of her couch she can at any moment communicate with the matron night-watchers. These matron night-watchers—two for a certain number of girls—are on the alert during the night, remaining in a place called the "watch," where are suspended the electric bells, underneath each of which is the ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... secured,' said Clare, trying to speak lightly. 'Now let me tell you what I propose to do. The other day Miss Villars asked me if I knew of any lady who would undertake the post of matron to a small Convalescent Home for clergymen's wives and daughters. It is a private one that Miss Villars has started herself. She said she wanted some one who was quite a lady, and who would be able to make every one feel comfortable and at home. The salary would be about 50 pounds. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... safe to go to meeting without them, child," responded the matron gravely. "To such a state hath New Jersey come that 'tis impossible to go from one's ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... the poor woman ate, despite her sorrow, reminded me of the matron of Ephesus. When supper was over I gave her her choice: she might either stay in Leipzig and fare as best she might, or I would reclaim her effects, take her with me to Dresden, and pay her a hundred gold ducats as soon as ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the matron your sister, and tell her to look sharp after you. Treat her with more respect than you do your venerable P.—whose life will be gloom hidden by a film of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... lives. Years have improved rather than deteriorated her short and stout exterior. The long exercise of wise thoughts and the play of benevolent feelings, have given even a sacred beauty to her homely features. The dwarf has disappeared, and there remains instead, a grave but venerable matron—honored like a queen. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... spite of you and my elder brother too, on whom at marriage you settled your estate, I shall become heir,"' p. 251. Father O'Leary, in his Remarks on Wesley's Letter, published in 1780 (post, Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773), says (p. 41):—'He has seen the venerable matron, after twenty-four years' marriage, banished from the perjured husband's house, though it was proved in open court that for six months before his marriage he went to mass. But the law requires that he should be a year and a day of the same religion.' Burke wrote ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... in the play, is where Isabella, the Queen Dowager of Hungary, with a degree of delicacy highly becoming a matron, makes desperate love to Castaldo, an Austrian ambassador. In the midst of her ravings she breaks off, to give such a description of a steeple-chase as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... wife of Craugasius, who, preserving her chastity inviolate, was treated with the respect due to a high-born matron, was mourning as if she were to be carried to another world without her husband, although she had indications afforded her that she might hope for ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the woman who was thrown from the automobile yesterday afternoon," said Grace to the matron. "Is she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... discreet matron has realized a very daccnt competency, by keeping, in the Holy Land, a house of accommodation for single, men and their wives.—When a couple of this description require the asylum of her hospitable roof, she demands possession ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... a breathless, sultry afternoon in late summer when the sweet-faced matron of Oak Knoll turned in at the President's gate and sought out the invalid lying motionless under the oak trees where the fierce heat had driven her. The little face among the pillows was no longer rosy and round; blue veins ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Tocqueville, when he placed first among the causes of our prosperity the noble character of American women. Because foolish female persons in New York are striving to outdo the demi-monde of Paris in extravagance, it must not follow that every sensible and patriotic matron, and every nice, modest young girl, must forthwith, and without inquiry, rush as far after them as they possibly can. Because Mrs. Shoddy opens a ball in a two-thousand-dollar lace dress, every girl in the land need not look with shame on her modest white muslin. Somewhere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... contented laugh of the guarded and happy matron. With the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew down the collar of her kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, maroon-colored, edged with olive and orange—a bruise now nearly well, but still to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... servant, not exactly dirty, but unattractive, let her into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with cocoa-matting, otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room where a stout, pale, common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It was three o'clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her in a bedroom, not very small, but bare and hard and dusty-seeming, and there left her. Alvina sat down on her chair, looked at her box opposite her, looked round the uninviting room, and smiled to herself. Then she rose and went to the window: a very dirty ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the matron's room of the Thirtieth street station-house, a visitor came to see Edith Allandale. The visitor was Kate O'Brien, who, after announcing the condition of the prisoner's mother, declared her willingness to aid Edith in any ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... habits of gossiping conversation, and the love of scandal. So far we most willingly agree with its most vivacious advocates, in its common eulogium. But this is not, we fear, saying enough. We see, or fancy that we see, the sober matron lay down her carefully assorted cards upon the card-table, and with dictatorial solemnity she pronounces, "That dancing is something more than an amusement; that girls must learn to dance, because they must appear well in public; because the young ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... apogee, and was on the wane. The Puritan had stretched his austereness to the point of levity; the Dutchman had comfortably sweated his obedience and content; the Cavalier had paced it with a pretty air of patronage and an eye for matron and maid; the Indian, come from his far hunting-grounds, bivouacked in the governor's presence as the pipe of peace ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... 'Owing to his Roman matron' quoth Tom. 'It was a wonderful opening for public spirit when Lady Walkinghame insisted on Sir Henry refusing the use of the park for practice, for fear we should make targets of the children. So the Spartan mother at Abbotstoke, gallantly setting Margaret aside, sent for the committee ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nothing definite was known, except that he was a man of unbounded wealth and influence—"and a little peculiar withal," so said Mrs. Leah, the matron, who had come up from New York to superintend the arrangement of the house, which was fitted up in a style of elegance far surpassing what most of Dunwood's inhabitants had seen before, and was for two or three weeks thrown open to the public. Mrs. Leah, who was a servant in Mr. ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... that their love created. There is a wonderful picture of these three by Sassaferato which catches, as no other Holy Family that I know of does, the meaning of their association. S. Mary whom the artistic imagination is so apt, after the Nativity, to transform into a stately matron, here still retains the note of virginity which in fact she never lost. It is the maiden-mother who stands by the side of the grave, elderly S. Joseph, the ideal workman, who is also the ideal guardian of his maiden-wife. And Jesus binds these two together and with them makes a unity, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... the night, Sent to impart a sad relief, The matron saw another sight That stayed the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... previously established the identity of the editor of his newspaper with his quondam fellow-workman, and a single link more was all the chain wanted. We talked over old matters for half an hour. His wife, a staid respectable matron, who, when I had been last in the district, was exactly such a person as her eldest daughter, showed me an Encyclopaedia, with colored prints, which she wished to send, if she knew but how, to the Free Church library. I walked with him through his garden, and saw trees loaded with yellow-cheeked ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Mrs. Lincoln and the children and her sisters!" Betty exclaimed. "What perfect taste in her dress! She knows how to wear it, too. What a typical, plump, self-poised Southern matron she looks. And, oh, those darling little boys—aren't they dears! She's a Kentuckian, too—the irony of Fate! A Southerner with a Southern wife entering the White House and eight great Southern States seceding from the Union because of it. It's ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... her, and taking her hand as the bearers placed the litter on the ground, helped her to rise, and led her into the house, followed by Harry Rolfe, who seemed unwilling to give up the charge of the damsel even to them. The beautiful young savage, for such, in the presence of the English matron and the two young maidens, she truly seemed, cast looks of admiration at their fair features, and their dresses, which appeared to her of wondrous texture. Although they could exchange but a few words with her, they were ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... of France. But England's master passion in this war is pride. "In proud and loving memory" is a phrase that one sees a hundred times every day in the obituary notices of those who have died for England. Ambassador Page tells this: He was asking a British matron about her family, severally, and when he inquired about the son, she replied, "Haven't you heard of the new honour that has come to us through him?" And to her friend's negative she returned: "He has been called upon to die for England!" ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... quite bald on the top. Unkind critics, who had once compared Albert to an operatic tenor, might have remarked that there was something of the butler about him now. Beside Victoria, he presented a painful contrast. She, too, was stout, but it was with the plumpness of a vigorous matron; and an eager vitality was everywhere visible—in her energetic bearing, her protruding, enquiring glances, her small, fat, capable, and commanding hands. If only, by some sympathetic magic, she could have conveyed into that ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... hair, And spread her mantle piece-meal in the air. Like Jove's son's club, strong passion struck her down And with a piteous shriek enforc'd her swoun: Her shriek made with another shriek ascend The frighted matron that on her did tend; And as with her own cry her sense was slain, So with the other it was call'd again. She rose, and to her bed made forced way, And laid her down even where Leander lay; And all this while the red sea of her blood Ebb'd with Leander: but now turn'd the flood, And all her fleet ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Morton, the most desirable parti in Cacouna, was literally, as well as figuratively, at Bella's feet, and Maurice leaned on the railing beside them. Mr. Percy was happier than he had been all day; he had been taken possession of by a pretty young matron—an Englishwoman, who still talked of "home," and they had found out some mutual acquaintance, of whom she was eager to hear news. Yet he was not too much engrossed to perceive the group opposite to him, or even to keep up a kind of half-conscious surveillance ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... acclamations and addresses. She told them to fear God, and trust in him for safety from the fury of their enemies. She first went to the principal church, where Te Deum was chanted; and then she took up her abode at the house of Jacques Bourgier, one of the principal citizens, and whose wife was a matron of good repute. She refused to attend a splendid banquet which had been provided for her, and passed nearly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... winter where she expected no more than the first genial touch of autumn. The softnesses of lingering youth had disappeared, stricken out by the hard, straight lines of gravity. Never having known her mother-in-law as other than a woman of fashion, Diane was awed by this dignified, sorrowing matron, who carried the sword ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... and looking down upon it. Perhaps all American women will come to that some day and I shall simply be blazing the way for them. I shall probably grow rosy and round, and if you ever ride up to my door-step, you will find me a buxom and blooming matron instead of a golden girl. And you won't like it in the least. But my husband will like it, because he thinks a bit as I do about it, and he doesn't care for the woman who lives ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... of it. Serious men became frivolous; David Davis made a speech in Welsh; Minnie glowed and blossomed; Arthur was everybody's friend. The old Captain, seated at the bottom of the table with an iron-clad matron on one side and a bored reporter on the other, watched him with a groan. The man who was to take the Burdock out of dock was drinking. Even one glass at such a time would have breached the old man's code; it was a crime against ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... complaisant to the stranger, and soon enthralled his heart by a closer tie. While the careful Guard is here passing his nights, a body is missed from one of the crosses. The Soldier in his alarm relates to the Woman what has happened; but the chaste Matron replies: "You have no grounds for fear;" and gives up the body of her Husband to be fastened to the cross, that he may not undergo ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... joined them and they held a hasty consultation, as a result of which Alan walked straight up to the old women. Hat in hand, and a smile on his bright, boyish face, he bowed low before them and asked if he could be directed to the matron's room. Alan's smile never failed to move a woman's heart, no matter whether she was old or young. In the present instance, one of the aged dames tottered ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... triumphs, for their object was to obtain the suffrage of Rosabella. The singular union of all kinds of pleasure intoxicated the imagination of every guest; and the genius of delight extended his influence over the whole assembly, over the old man and the youth, over the matron ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... events transpired, a lady called at Friend Hopper's house, and asked to see him. When he entered the room, he found a handsomely dressed young matron, with a blooming boy of five or six years old. She rose quickly to meet him, and her voice choked as she said, "Friend Hopper, do you know me?" He replied that he did not. She fixed her tearful eyes earnestly upon him, and said, "You once ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... unornamented, but I think becoming and prettily fancied; it is that of a French paisanne: Lucy is to be a sultana, blazing with diamonds: my mother a Roman matron. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... fillets, he strikes an attitude and runs away, he comes and goes, and sweeps the place with his terrible equine tail; he shows his shining claws, and draws them in; he smiles, frisks, and murmurs. He puts on the looks of a joyous child and those of a matron; he is, above all, there to make ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... which they fanned him. On this occasion, he dispensed many favours, and received many presents. What he gave was let down by a silk cord, rolled on a turning instrument; and what he received was drawn up in the same manner, by a venerable, fat, and deformed old matron, all hung round with gymbals like an image. Two of his principal wives were at a window on one side, whose curiosity led them to break holes in a lattice of roods that hung before the window, to gaze on me. At first I only saw their fingers; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... was speeding southward; its occupants, a noble looking man, a lovely matron, a blooming, beautiful girl of seventeen, a rosy babe in his nurse's arms, and a pale, fragile, golden-haired, blue-eyed child of seven, lying now on a couch with her head in her mother's lap, now resting in her father's arms for ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... not in Vain, for one Day when the Club Meeting broke up, with the Lady President throwing Fits and a Copper guarding the Ballot Box, the principal Insurgent was mentioned in the Public Prints as a Popular Society Matron and Leader in the New Movement among Women. They had to call her that or the Story of her shooting the Ink-Stand at the Recording Secretary would not have been worth playing up on the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... pair that simply sought renown, By holding out to tire each other down; The swain mistrustless of his smutted face, While secret laughter tittered round the place; The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love, The matron's glance, that would those ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment.' But he revenges himself for this concession by an almost savage onslaught upon the full-blown British matron with her 'awful ponderosity of frame ... massive with solid beef and streaky tallow,' and apparently composed 'of steaks and sirloins.' He laments that the English violet should develop into such an overblown peony, and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... visitor who may be induced to follow my example, will not fail to be struck with the happy, "homely" look of everything, the clean, cheerful appearance of the female Arabs, and the courtesy and kindness of the matron. These girls are considered to belong to St. Giles's parish, as the boys to Bloomsbury Chapel. So far the good work has been done by the Dissenters and Evangelical party in the Established Church. The sphere of the High Church—as I was ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... from the contagion of a companionship unfit for innocence. This was to Lucille a frightful blow. Her solitude was now virtually complete. Her own old faithful servant, Marguerite, had been withdrawn; and a tall pale Norman matron, taciturn and sardonic, was now her sole attendant. It was plain, too, that M. Le Prun had gradually removed his establishment from the Chateau des Anges. The gay and gorgeous staff of servants and grooms had disappeared. The salons, halls, and lobbies ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... spake: the glad Sun speeded forth, Hearing her matron words, and backward drave To frozen caves the icy Wind of the North,— And bade the South Wind from the tropic wave Bring watery vapors over river and plain,— And bade the East Wind cross her path, and lave The lowlands, emptying there her laden mist,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... hadst thou to do with Catherine Seyton?" said the matron, sternly; "is this a time or a world to follow maidens, or to dance around a Maypole? When the trumpet summons every true-hearted Scotsman around the standard of the true sovereign, shalt thou be found loitering in a ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... I felt as if I would give anything for one of them willow plumes," a pretty sixteen-year-old girl told the police matron who had rescued her from a man with whom she had left home, because he promised her silk gowns ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... young man. Trifle not with the happy, little blonde lady, whose widowed mother passes sleepless nights thinking of her two pretty daughters. Neither be too attentive to the young matron, whose master carries the dagger by his side. L. and H. seem not good letters of names nor localities for you. Yet, you possess some fine mental gifts. Good books ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... far the greater number united their praise to the all but general voice; nay, some scrupled not to call him, from his perfect ease and nature and variety, the Scottish Shakspeare. No one rejoiced more in his success and his fame, than the matron ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... had considerately disappeared. Mrs. Clifford Frost was waiting for them at the door, and Martie, with quick tact, fell into conversation with the kindly matron, walking at her side down the crowded street, and leaving Rodney to follow with the others. Little Ruth Frost had had some trouble fearfully resembling diphtheria, and Martie's first interested question was enough to enlist the mother's attention. The girl did not really notice the ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... days had not been passed in singleness. His Helpmate was a comely matron, old— Though younger than himself full twenty years. 80 She was a woman of a stirring life, Whose heart was in her house: two wheels she had Of antique form; this large, for spinning wool; That small, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... several of the women came up to me and introduced themselves. One handsome gray-haired woman said: "I am Rosa Clinton," and it shocked me to be unable to find in her the girl I once knew. Another matron whom I recognized at once, retained something inescapably girlish in both face and voice. It hurt me to detect in her withered lips the quaint twist which had once been so charming to me—but then she undoubtedly discovered in me equally distressing ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... perplexed with the false and contradictory rules, which have blasted many bright geniuses in their earliest attempts to gain a true knowledge of the sublime principles of language, on which depends so much of the happiness of human life." The good matron's remark was a poser to the daughter, but it served as a means of her entire deliverance from the thraldom of neuter verbs, and the adoption of the new principles of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... finger of the Divine Potter: she is the victim and the altar of the holocaust. The unfortunates are nearer God than the honest women: they have lost conceit. They do not glorify themselves with the untried virtue the matron prides herself on. They possess humility, which is the cornerstone of virtues agreeable to heaven. A short repentance will be sufficient for them to be the first in heaven; for their sins, without malice and without joy, contain their own forgiveness. Their faults, which are ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... religion in which he had been brought up stood the moral test of the most critical years in boyhood. It never failed him, and he never questioned it. But when that trial was over, and after an illness which shook up his body and mind, he came under the influence of a matron who held with no little force of character the views of the Anglo-Catholic party. These views stole gradually into the mind of the rather effeminate boy, and although they did not make him question the theology of his father for some years, he soon found himself thinking of the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... scarcity of good sense, a general favourite; and seldom saw a day in which some sober matron did not invite me to her house, or take me out in her chariot, for the sake of instructing me how to keep my character in this censorious age, how to conduct myself in the time of courtship, how to stipulate for a settlement, how to manage a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... and trades, were to be found on board. On the high poop deck, under an awning spread over it to shelter them from the burning rays of the sun, were collected the aristocratical portion of the community. There were there to be found ladies and gentlemen, the sedate matron, and the blooming girl just reaching womanhood, the young wife and the joyous child; there were lawyers and soldiers, sailors and merchants, clergymen and doctors, some of them holding high rank in their respective professions. The captain, of course, was king, and his mates ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... ego, parcius Islandis canum curam exprobrare illos populos, quorum matron, et prcipu nobiles, canes in maximis delicijs habent, vt eos vel in plateis, ne dicam in sacris concionibus, sinum gestent, quem morem in peregrinis quibusdam, quos Rom catulos simiarum et canum in gremio circumferre Csar conspexit, hac qustione reprehendit, dum qureret: Numquid ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... the sensation spread to more remote corners of the town. At length, with these perfectings, the affair reached the ears of the Governor's wife herself. Naturally, as the mother of a family, and as the first lady in the town, and as a matron who had never before been suspected of things of the kind, she was highly offended when she heard the stories, and very justly so: with the result that her poor young daughter, though innocent, had to endure about as unpleasant a tete-a-tete as ever befell a maiden of sixteen, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... premature Emotion aroused by pain Ephesian matron, the Epilepsy and micturition analogy between coitus Erotic symbolism Erotisation Eskimos, marriage by capture among sexual instinct in Esthetic sense of animals, alleged Estrus Eunuchs, sexual impulse in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Too much modulation produces an unpleasant effect of artificiality, like a mature matron trying to be kittenish. It is a short step between true expression and unintentional burlesque. Scrutinize your own tones. Take a single expression like "Oh, no!" or "Oh, I see," or "Indeed," and by patient ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the night arrived from which my future life was to be reckoned. I was dressed and sent out to conquer, with a heart beating like that of an old knight-errant at his first sally. Scholars have told me of a Spartan matron, who, when she armed her son for battle, bade him bring back his shield, or be brought upon it. My venerable parent dismissed me to a field, in her opinion of equal glory, with a command to shew that I was her daughter, and not to return ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... in need of a rest," said the matron. "My word, how white you are! Had a hard time, eh, like ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... two hundred and twenty-three children in the building with their attendants and teachers. The matron having assembled all the children after the first alarm, one of the teachers thus addressed them: 'Children, do you believe that Almighty God can deliver you from a mob?' The reply was promptly made in the affirmative. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... for some," said Emmeline Gerrish. Of the three she had grown the stoutest, and from being a slight, light-minded girl, she had become a heavy matron, habitually censorious in her speech. She did not mean any more by it, however, than she did by her girlish frivolity, and if she was not supported in her severity, she was apt to break down and disown it with a giggle, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... comfortable cabin. Yet here was proof positive that the terror which environed her was real. Bound up with the thunder of the gale were the words, "Your loving sister, Madge"—evidently the sister Captain Courtenay had spoken of—"matron of a hospital in the suburbs of London," he said. Would he ever see her again? Or his mother? Had he thought of them at all during this night of woe? Beneath his iron mask did tears lurk, and dull agony, and palsied fear—surely ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... exclaimed the matron, huskily. "It is not that! Oh! the fearful moment has come at last; and, from my inmost spirit I thank thee, my Lord and my God, that it has come free from shame ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has rendered the nude again an artistic possibility. What Mr. Horsley or the British matron would say it is difficult to guess. Perhaps the hideousness depicted by M. Degas would frighten them more than the sensuality which they condemn in Sir Frederick Leighton. But, be this as it may, it is certain that the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... followed their uniformed guide through the streets of Easton, and were soon at the station house. There they were received by the sergeant in charge, while the matron gave them each a cup of hot coffee, a large pot of ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... before him with uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event; whilst the Aldermen, etc., with the Lord Mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying the middle ground of the picture; and lastly, in front, are a double row of boys on one side and girls on the other, from the master and matron down to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their respective rows, and kneel with raised hands before the King.—Timbs' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... absurd for a staid old matron like myself to be jealous, really jealous, at seeing a child like you being consumed alive by a lot of simpering misses in pink and blue chiffon pinafores, who ought to be in their nursery cots asleep, but I have been and am, boy. ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... put their rooms in order. There were sixteen girls altogether, and two teachers besides Miss Chapman and Miss Emma, as the girls called her. There was Miss Ketchum, and Mrs. Boardman, who was really the matron, though the girls always thought of her as a teacher, and she sometimes taught a class if any of the other teachers were ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... loneliness—they weren't likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I'd heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten's wife who'd gone out to live with them lately: she'd been a hospital matron in the city, they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack for exposing the doctors—or carrying on with them—I didn't remember which. The fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with such people, was ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... They went, following the matron, up the grey, tessellated stairs; at each landing the long, grey corridors were tunnels for the passage of strange smells, ether and iodine and carbolic and the faint odour of drains, seeking their outlet at the ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... wilderness with his mother to gather dates and other fruits." "Give me, I pray thee, a little bread and water, for I am fatigued with travelling." "I have neither bread nor water," rejoined the inhospitable matron. "Well," said the patriarch, "tell Ishmael when he comes home that an old man came to see him, and recommends him to change the door-post of his house, for it is not worthy of him." On Ishmael's return she gave him the message, from which he at once understood that the stranger ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... would not be a very vile matron, and justly thought either mad or foolish, that should give away the necessaries of life from her naked and famished children, in exchange for pearls to stick in her hair, and sweetmeats to please ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... pitch into her, Sarah?' exclaims one half-dressed matron, by way of encouragement. 'Vy don't you? if my 'usband had treated her with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I'd tear ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... you to imitate this veteran matron; for it would be too much to ask of any individual in any age, especially the present. But I ask you, and with great earnestness, to acquire the power of self-dependence—and to do it immediately. Make it a matter of conscience. ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the goat her pendent dugs to fill, And browse the herbage of a distant hill, She latch'd her door, and bid, With matron care, her kid;— 'My daughter, as you live, This portal don't undo To any creature who This watchword does not give: "Deuce take the wolf and all his race!"' The wolf was passing near the place By chance, and heard the words with pleasure, And laid them up as useful treasure; And hardly need we ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... language, but principles, Thomas Claypool!" exclaims the virtuous matron. "What must Mr. Warrington's principles be, when he could reject an offer made him by his Prince? Can he speak the High Dutch? So much the more ought he to have accepted his Royal Highness's condescension, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could be of value to her in their late acquaintance. Mrs. Lindsay was a beetle-browed, enormously stout old lady, with a stern eye and commanding presence, who looked as if in her younger days she might well have been a police-matron—as indeed she had been. She had two double rooms and a single hall bedroom to show for inspection, and she waxed surprisingly voluble concerning the vacancy of the latter, at the first tentative mention of her other ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... intrusion, and to bestow gracious condescension upon suppliant timidity—with every feature glowing with that proper pride which is not arrogance, and that proper kindliness which is not humility—there was probably in all Rome no noble matron who could as well adorn her chair of ceremony. Beside her, the true mistress of the place would have appeared as a timid child dismayed with unaccustomed honors; and in comparison, the empress herself might not fill her throne in the palace of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... plan, and placed writing materials on the table. And while the matron employed herself in closing up the rooms, packing up what was needful to take with them to the doctor's and putting out the fire, Clara wrote and sealed her letter. They then put on their bonnets, locked ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... in Athens the father had charge of the education of the boy in his early years, in Rome that duty devolved almost entirely upon the mother. In early Roman history the matron was celebrated for her virtues—fidelity to her husband, love for her children, and queenly guardianship of the sacred precincts of the home. The name of the Roman matron became a synonym of all that is noble, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... tried to direct my wayward feet. But either because I was not recovered from my trip or because the strangeness and confusion wearied me, I could not get the hang of the steps. Presently an understanding matron let me slip out of the dance, and I sat down by the fiddler and dozed. Clanking spurs, brilliant chaps, fur-trimmed trappers' jackets, thudding moccasins, gaudy Indian blankets and gay feathers, voluminous feminine flounces ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... length to roll; But crafty Rufus spies the prey, And with his mallet beats away The loose bark, crumbling to decay; Then chirping loud, with wing elate, He bears the morsel to his mate. His mate, she sitteth on her nest, In sober feather plumage dressed; A matron underneath whose breast Three little tender heads appear. With bills distent from ear to ear, Each clamors for the bigger share; And whilst they clamor, climb—and, lo! Upon the margin, to and fro, Unsteady poised, one wavers ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... guardians the mass of the poor might expect that a majority of guardians would be prompted by national and religious feeling to sympathise with them, so that they would find in the master and matron, the doctor and the relieving officer, something like the natural tenderness which a common kindred and creed inspire. But half the guardians are ex-officio members, as magistrates; nearly all landlords and Protestants. They have in addition 'property votes,' ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... method; in fact, the decorative treatment of caps must have been a trying question. The dignity of the married woman depended somewhat upon the size of the cap she wore, and it was as necessary to convention that the crow-black locks of the matron of twenty-five should be hidden, as that the scant locks of ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... the Church of St. Augustina, is only a pagan statue of the wicked Agrippina with her infant Nero in her arms. Covered with jewels and votive offerings, her foot encased in gold, because the constant kissing has worn away the stone, this haughty and evil-minded Roman matron bears no possible resemblance to the pure Virgin Mary; yet crowds are always at her feet, worshipping her. The celebrated bronze statue of St. Peter, which is adored in the great Church, and whose feet are entirely kissed away by the lips of devotees, is but an antique statue of Jupiter, an ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... this score, the matron proceeded to inform that person whom in pleasant irony she called her lord and master, that she had set her heart on a brooch of the loveliest design it had ever been her good fortune ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... cothurnus, and with a cubit added to their stature by a mural battlement of hair, did the ladies of the eighteenth century disdain to jog soberly behind a booted butler with pistols in his holsters, and a Sir Cloudesley Shovel beaver on his head. {48} "We have heard an ancient matron tell of her riding nine miles to dinner behind a portly farm bailiff, and with her hair dressed like that of Madame de Maintenon, which, being interpreted, means that the locks with which nature had supplied her were further aggravated by being drawn tight over ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... a little of her world and her whole outlook with her. On the last day that she was able to be up she dressed herself in a gay mandarin's coat with a Chinese woman's trousers, and tried to do her dance for the benefit of a shocked and fascinated matron. Every morning she wore a new cap to set off the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... next? Paris,—then the City of the Great Salt Lake,—then Sodom, before and after the Dead Sea. Oh, sir, if slavery tends in any way to give the honour of chivalry to Southern young gentlemen towards ladies, and the exquisite delicacy and heavenly integrity and love to Southern maid and matron, it has then a glorious ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... was of the French fashion; in the spring of the Spanish; in summer of the fashion of Tuscany, except only upon the holidays and Sundays, at which times they were accoutered in the French mode, because they accounted it more honorable, better befitting the modesty of a matron. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... "Umilta Sisters" were received on probation for eighteen months; then entered upon a term of five years, subject to renewal at will; bound by specified rules, but no irrevocable vow. Yielding implicit obedience to the matron, elected by themselves every four years—subject to approval and ratification by the Chapter of Trustees, they were recognized wherever they went by the gray garb, the white aprons, and snowy mob caps peculiar ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... evening dress, with most engaging manners, was a new acquaintance! She observed him with interest as he made himself entertaining to Neil and Dorothy, and blessed him for his tact when he presently went off with Mrs. Chase, to do her special honour as the only young matron present. She observed that Dorothy seemed ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... was one of those women of the day who by the laws of the land lost their property and identity with marriage. Yet, when this retiring, gentle person was called upon to raise funds in Alexandria and Fairfax County, no modern matron working for bond drive or Red Cross ever did a more successful work. Thomas Jefferson, as Governor of Virginia, in a letter from Richmond written on August 4, 1780, to General Edward Stevens, attached a list of "female Contributions, in aid of the War, Probably in 1780." Among the thirteen ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... moral management of the patients was inseparable from medical treatment and must necessarily be the task of the physician. Seven years after this, in 1831, the Committee found it advisable to spread upon the minutes an "interpretation and regulations," relating to the Superintendent and Matron of the Asylum and to the Asylum physicians, to the effect that the Committee understood that the regulations "placed the moral treatment on the physician alone, under the direction of the Asylum Committee, and that the responsibility remains with him alone, that this treatment commenced ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... brow-locks, called "Louise" "fast" and Louise's mother "vulgar." Naturally they would be. [101] With "myosotis eyes," peachy cheeks and auburn hair, rolling over ivory shoulders [102], "Louise" was progressing admirably, when, unfortunately for her, there came in view a fleshy, vinous matron of elephantine proportions, whom she addressed as "mother." The sight of this caricature of the "Thing Divine," to use Burton's expression, and the thought that to this the "Thing Divine" would some day come, instantly ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... had a free fight, and the men swore and shouted in vain, till the lady with the baby suddenly went to the rescue. Planting the naked cherub on the doorstep, this energetic matron charged in among the rampant animals, and by some magic touch untangled the teams, quieted the most fractious, a big gray brute prancing like a mad elephant, then returned to her baby, who was placidly eating dirt, and with a polite "Voila, messieurs!" [Footnote: ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... some of the reckless dancing which the mummers performed under the shelter of their disguise, Pelagueia Danilovna could not help hiding her face in her handkerchief, while her huge person shook with uncontrollable laughter—the laugh of a kindly matron, frankly jovial and gay. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... at the table when the alarm-bell rang, and, being officer of the day I ran over to inquire the cause, and found the powerful young virago, our prisoner, enjoying herself hugely. When the matron had been handing her some food through a hole in the cell, the girl shot out her arm, grabbed her by the hair and with the other hand was now pulling out the hairs by the roots, sometimes a few at a time, sometimes ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way to a waiting motor car and said, "Home!" to the chauffeur. He drove her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors called the pile of white marble that topped the highest ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... the twilight beautiful. But Aunt Pen was too tired to do anything but sup in her own apartment and go early to bed; and Debby might as soon have proposed to walk up the great Pyramid as to make her first appearance without that sage matron to mount guard over her; so she resigned herself to pie and patience, and fell asleep, wishing ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... do think it's scandalous not to let the keeper tell about the beasteses," said the unfortunate matron, with a half turn towards the persecutors, and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... function is so generally attributed to some goddess that we can only suppose that she rose to eminence through local conditions unknown to us. The most interesting point about her is that she came to be the representative of the respectable Greek matron, jealous of her wifely rights, holding herself aloof from love affairs, a home person, entitled to respect for the decency of her life, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... a little forward and a swift flush is dyeing her cheek. She is of all women the youngest looking, for her years; as a matron indeed she seems absurd. The delicate bloom of girlhood seems never to have left her, but—as though in love of her beauty—has clung to her day by day. So that now, when she has known eight years of married life (and some of them deeply ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... two older children, George and Marietta, could remember those early struggling days with as fresh an emotion as that of their parents. Indeed, Marietta, now a competent, sharp-eyed matron of thirty-two, could not see the most innocuous colored lithograph without an uncontrollable wave of bitterness, so present to her mind was the period when they painfully groped their way out ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... from West, From North and from South come the pilgrim and guest; When the gray-haired New-Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored; When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before,— What moistens the lip, and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past like the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... placed him, fill'd With scents odorous, spirit-soothing sweets. Nor stay'd the Goddess, but at once in quest 455 Of Helen went; her on a lofty tower She found, where many a damsel stood of Troy, And twitch'd her fragrant robe. In form she seem'd An ancient matron, who, while Helen dwelt In Lacedaemon, her unsullied wool 460 Dress'd for her, faithfullest of all her train. Like her disguised the Goddess thus began. Haste—Paris calls thee—on his sculptured couch, (Sparkling alike his looks and his attire) He waits thy wish'd return. Thou wouldst ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer |
