"Widowhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood before them with joined hands, concentrating her senses. And for the welfare of Savitri, all the ascetics dwelling in that hermitage, uttered the auspicious benediction that she should never suffer widowhood. And Savitri immersed in contemplation accepted those words of the ascetics, mentally saying,—So be it!—And the king's daughter, reflecting on those words of Narada, remained, expecting the hour ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Adriatic mourns her Lord,[lm] And annual marriage now no more renewed— The Bucentaur[388] lies rotting unrestored, Neglected garment of her widowhood! St. Mark yet sees his Lion[389] where he stood[3.H.] Stand, but in mockery of his withered power, Over the proud Place where an Emperor sued,[ln][390] And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour When Venice was a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... things about Percy and Conny as she waited in the still drawing-room for the funeral service to begin. She had admired Conny extravagantly at first, and now though she tried to think of her in her widowhood sympathetically, she found it impossible to pity her; while of poor Percy, who it seemed "had been too much under his wife's thumb," she thought affectionately.... The hall and the two rooms on this floor where the people ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... I never can dispute your power, Or as a parent, or a conqueror; But, when my year of widowhood expires, Shall yield to your command, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... am positive that you had no intention of coming here. My dear, I am a woman of experience, and I know the world. While he is away you have a fever in your blood. Your sad heart flies for comfort to these foreign lands. At home you cannot bear the sight of that empty bed—-it is like widowhood. Since the death of my dear husband I have never known ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... of those she was hanging out, many had belonged to her grandmother, and mother, and aunts, and great-aunts, you can fancy what a wonderful array there was. Her own wedding-dress was among them, and all the coloured silks and satins she had possessed before her widowhood. And more wonderful even than the dresses were a few, not very many, for indeed no room or wardrobe would have held very many, bonnets, or 'hats,' as I think they were then always called. Huge ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... been a tragedy such as often comes to the immigrants who reach the United States equipped for success only with strong muscles—a tragedy of wasted hope and broken courage and failing vigor if not of death. Mrs. Paterno was the only one of them who could sympathize with Moya's widowhood; her husband had seen the Black Hand death sign a few months before, had disregarded it and had been stabbed in the back one night as he came home from ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... Portion. Adapted from the Bible and the Prayer Book, for the Private Devotion of those living in Widowhood. Collected and Edited by Lady Mary Vyner, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... and before he landed in America his father had departed on a longer journey. The ne'er-do-well had the good grace to send back the little sums of money saved by his mother in her widowhood, and gradually his letters ceased. It was known that he was in Chili, and there was war going on there, and yet the good old lady's ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... this to console her that the law didn't forgit her in her widowhood. No; the law is quite thoughtful of wimmen by spells. It sez it protects wimmen. And I spoze that in some mysterious way, too deep for wimmen to understand, it wuz protectin' ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... of the Court, lay in bed for six weeks—at least she was bound to lie there whenever she was not in entire privacy. The room and bed were hung with black, but a white covering was over her, and she was fully dressed in the black and white weeds of royal widowhood. The light of day was excluded, and hosts ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... complete and absolute indifference to the fine arts which was so common in the middle classes and the country aristocracy of those days. I mention these deficiencies to explain the extreme dulness of my poor father's existence during his widowhood, a dulness that a lover of books must have a difficulty in imagining. A man living alone with servants (for his son's childhood was spent elsewhere), who took hardly any interest in a profession that had become little more than nominal for him, who had not even the stimulus of a ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... And still it was his wife who held him and sustained him through all and, ere the last stroke of the executioner, had received his last breath. She took up one of the severed hands, kissed it, and placed it in her bosom, and escaping to Byzantium, there spent her life in widowhood. ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the many poetical superstitions of dreaming) by frequent visions of this shadowy love of the past. Probably to distract himself, Peacock, who had hitherto attempted no profession, accepted the rather unpromising post of under-secretary to Admiral Sir Home Popham on board ship. His mother, in her widowhood, and he himself had lived much with his sailor grandfather, and he was always fond of naval matters. But it is not surprising to find that his occupation, though he kept it for something like a year, was not to his taste. He gave it up in the spring of 1809, and returned to leisure, poetry, and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... elevate and uphold it, fortify and ennoble it, and shed a glory over it by the example of life and character which they have bequeathed. "The names and memories of great men," says an able writer, "are the dowry of a nation. Widowhood, overthrow, desertion, even slavery, cannot take away from her this sacred inheritance.... Whenever national life begins to quicken.... the dead heroes rise in the memories of men, and appear to the living to stand by in solemn ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... splendid of the many pageants which the hierarchy of Rome had devised to attract the veneration of the faithful. The period during which the Abbacy remained vacant, was a state of mourning, or, as their emblematical phrase expressed it, of widowhood; a melancholy term, which was changed into rejoicing and triumph when a new Superior was chosen. When the folding doors were on such solemn occasions thrown open, and the new Abbot appeared on the threshold in full-blown dignity, with ring and mitre, and dalmatique ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually— either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death of manliness we women mourn. We marry, and find we have taken upon ourselves misery, and lifelong widowhood of the mind and moral nature. Do you wonder that some of us ask: Why should we keep ourselves pure if impurity is to be our bedfellow? You make us breathe corruption, and wonder that we ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the year after her widowhood found her less frequently in the public meetings, less willing to organise new centres of work, more determined to avoid presidencies and chairmanships. For this she gave as an excuse the frequent trips abroad, which seemed to have no special ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... turned from her fears to the amazing reality of her widowhood. Even yet she could not wholly credit the fact that Ed's wasted life had come to an end and that she was free to make the most of her own. Alaire remembered her husband now with more tenderness, more charity, than she would have believed possible, and it seemed to her pitiful that ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... fact, such as the youth of Arthur, the widowhood of Constance, the character of Faulconbridge, are all from the earlier version, as is the suppression of the baron's wars and Magna Charta. Shakespeare added practically nothing to ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... is taken away, and she is clad in the coarsest garments. She becomes the slave of the family; virtually an outcast; frequently a prostitute. She can never remarry, no matter how young she may be at the beginning of her widowhood. ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... days in her widowhood, when Biddy asked her to drive into the town, where Biddy had to do a little shopping—that great business ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... for her with another; and the younger, though requiring, every year of her married state, all the attention and comfort and support of an affectionate husband, yet was more than once left to experience a temporary widowhood. And if we withdraw our thoughts from those of whom this family was then deprived, there is little to lessen our estimate of their loss, when we think of those whom they left behind. Henry's maternal grandmother, indeed, the Countess of Hereford, survived her daughter many years; and we ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... to her had a touch of high chivalry. It came of long service; of pity for her early widowhood, for her childlessness, for the fate ordaining that all these great possessions must be inherited by strangers; but most of all it was coloured by a memory of which he had never dared, and would never dare, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spare. Haply, had but one daring soul stood forth To rally them and lead them to revenge, When my great father fell, they had replied! Alas! our foe alone stood forward then. And thou, my mother, hadst thou made a sign— Hadst thou, from thy forlorn and captive state Of widowhood in these polluted halls, Thy prison-house, raised one imploring cry— Who knows but that avengers thou hadst found? But mute thou sat'st, and each Messenian heart In thy despondency desponded too. Enough of this!—Though not a finger stir To succour me in my extremest need; Though all free ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... rendered harder by the struggle with ill health. Soon we began to realise that the physical weakness, which all her courage could not overcome, was more than merely her old malady. "What did Frances die of?" Bernard Shaw wrote to me. "Was it of widowhood?" ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... was much longer than usual since he had wandered into Lisconnel, illness and one thing and another having detained him in the North for the last twelvemonth and more—all her blackest days of childless widowhood—so that this was his first visit since the departure of ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... real depth of attachment to him, her best hope for the future was in his constancy, and that he would eventually marry her; for Sir William's death could not be far distant, and matters might otherwise favor the hope that both he and she cherished. Her approaching widowhood would in fact leave her, unless her husband's will was exceptionally generous, in a condition as precarious, her acquired tastes considered, as that from which her marriage had rescued her; and her uneasiness would ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... her towards us as before the elders of the city, declared his purpose to take her in marriage. At this scene, Madame de la Tour, recalling the desolate situation in which she had been left by her relations, her widowhood, and the kind reception she had met with from Margaret, succeeded now by the soothing hope of a happy union between their children, could not forbear weeping; and these mixed recollections of good and evil caused us all to unite ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... and before his death a formal reconciliation had taken place between the runaway daughter and her north-country parents, from whom she later inherited the money which had supported herself and her daughter throughout the years of her widowhood. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honoured with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men, whether ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... display and pugnacity. Some authors, however, argue that the song of the male cannot serve to charm the female, because the females of some few species, such as of the canary, robin, lark, and bullfinch, especially when in a state of widowhood, as Bechstein remarks, pour forth fairly melodious strains. In some of these cases the habit of singing may be in part attributed to the females having been highly fed and confined (32. D. Barrington, 'Philosophical Transactions,' 1773, p. 262. Bechstein, 'Stubenvogel,' 1840, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... this bank of the river, is the castle of the Widow Starkenburg. Her days of widowhood, however, are nearly passed, for I intend to marry her to one of my victorious knights, who will ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... the death of her husband, who, he says, was only gone a little before her to glory; and he sets before her the divine mercy, which by this means calls her to a more heroic practice of all virtues in the state of widowhood,—especially continence, plainness in dress, furniture, and diet, profuse alms-deeds, and holy prayer, the exercise whereof ought to be her most assiduous employment. Herein he warns her that vanity and pride are ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... apprentice, but, being placed with our old bailiff for a time, had made himself necessary, and ingratiated himself with my father so as to succeed to the situation; and it had been the universal belief, ever since my mother's widowhood, that he had taken advantage of her seclusion and want of knowledge of business to deal harshly by the tenants, especially the poor, and to feather ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Egypt, Tushratta, King of Mitani. May it be well with thee, may it be well with thy son, may it be well with Tadukhipa, my daughter, thy young companion in widowhood. Thou knowest that I was in friendship with Nimmuria, thy husband, and that Nimmuria was in friendship with me. What I wrote to him and negotiated with him, and likewise what Nimmuria thy husband wrote to me and negotiated with me, thou and Gilia and ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... passed the fore part of the ship assumed some degree of order and comfort, but the crowded second sabin and rear decks gave forth the incessant sound of lamentation. A bride of two months sat on the floor and moaned her widowhood. An Italian mother shrieked the name of her ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... effect on her aunt. If the Queen of the White Ants had been stout before, what was she now? Whatever her appearance had been in the days of comparative prosperity, with a husband to keep her up to the mark, and a desire to rank with the officers' wives, she had let everything go in widowhood, poverty, and neglect; and as she stood panting in her old shiny black alpaca, the only thing Gillian recalled about her like old times was the black lace veil thrown mantilla fashion over her head; but now it was over a widow's ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... confidence which her husband had placed in her. In the first days of her widowhood, she sent for me, and made her Will. The view she took of her position was so thoroughly sound and sensible, that I was relieved of all necessity for advising her. My responsibility began and ended with shaping her instructions into the proper ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... all respects from those just mentioned, closed in the second year of Dublin's widowhood as a metropolis. It was the career of a young man of four-and-twenty, who snatched at immortal fame and obtained it, in the very agony of a public, but not for him, a shameful death. This was Robert, youngest brother of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... into a Grecian temple, according to the approved method of the time of Louis XIV. A statue of the wife of Coeur de Lion was once to be seen here, but has long disappeared. That princess resided in this part of Falaise, at one period of her widowhood, and contributed greatly to the embellishment of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... abandoned her comfortable widowhood without sufficient reflection: and now she had to put up as best she might with the difficulties of Herr Rauchfuss's disposition—sighing or complaining ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... expressions of love. There must have been some pang when she reflected that the cruel wrong which she had inflicted on him had probably hurried him to his grave. As a widow, in the first solemnity of her widowhood, she was wretched and would see no one. Then she returned to England and shut herself up in a small house at Brighton. Lady Linlithgow offered to go to her, but she begged that she might be left to herself. For a few short months the awe arising from the rapidity with which ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... liberty, was not unprotected, and her late husband's sister—a Mrs. Tell—had lived with her all through the years of her widowhood. Mrs. Tell, too, was a rich widow, tall, and of imposing aspect, but easy-tempered and rather lazy. She was past sixty, and looked a majestic matron, with her white hair and lace cap. Katherine's ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... comprehended from the sudden tears which filled the beautiful eyes of the countess as she spoke of the earl's decease, was a severe one. Still, the grief of widowhood must have been greatly assuaged by love for her children, and not inconsiderably, after a while, we may be sure, by the brilliant position in which she was left—as, in addition to being splendidly jointured, she was appointed by her husband's will ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... she was for the first time feeling the pressure of a vast mysterious movement, for the first time being dislodged from her supremacy in her own world, and getting a sense that her horizon was but a dipping onward of an existence with which her own was revolving. All the troubles of her wifehood and widowhood had still left her with the implicit impression which had accompanied her from childhood, that whatever surrounded her was somehow specially for her, and it was because of this that no personal jealousy had been roused in her relation to Deronda: she could not spontaneously think of him as rightfully ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... tribes the examples are fewer than might be expected. This change has brought descent through the fathers, and has involved, besides, the more or less complete subjugation of women, with insistence on female chastity, abolition of divorce, infant marriage, and perpetuation of widowhood.[144] Not every tribe is yet thus revolutionised. Among the Kasias of south-east India the husband lives with the wife or visits ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... young woman's real desire, and looking at her out of the corner of his eye, with a heart full of benevolence and of sympathy for her distress, he said: "Oh, I understand perfectly. I know that your widowhood must be irksome to you. You are young and in good health. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... ruelle, but to obtain for him the solid advantages of what she calls "un bon parti." [A good match.] To this end she frequents the houses of widows and heiresses, vaunts the docility of his temper, and the greatness of his expectations, enlarges on the solitude of widowhood, or the dependence and insignificance of a spinster; and these prefatory encomiums usually end in the concerted introduction ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... will marry her," he said when he heard of Madame de Ferrier's widowhood. "She will never be obliged to sue to the Bonapartes. The count is as fond of her as he ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... was the wife of a governor-general whom she had wedded in second marriage after a long widowhood. He did not see her often, two or three times a year, that was all. Floating about from one end of Europe to another, they kept up a regular exchange of letters; the prince never took any step without consulting his wife, who usually gave him sound advice. ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... of the whole correspondence would occupy much space, and we can only briefly refer to a few of the letters at different periods of her long life of widowhood. To Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, she writes, in 1690: "When anything below is the object of our love, at one time or other it will be a matter of our sorrow. But a little time will put me again into my settled state of mourning; for a mourner I must be all my days ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Forbear, and wade no farther in this speech. Your words are wounds. I very well perceive The purpose of this smooth oration: This I suspected, when you first began This fair discourse with us. Is this the end Of all our hopes, that we have promised Unto ourself by this her widowhood? Would our dear daughter, would our only joy, Would she forsake us? would she leave us now, Before she hath clos'd up our dying eyes, And with her tears bewail'd our funeral? No other solace doth her father crave But, whilst the fates maintain his dying life, Her healthful ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Napoleon extended; the dethronement of the Pope, by Gen. Berthier, in 1798; the refusal of some of the powers to permit her to nominate, within their limits, the candidates for ecclesiastical preferment, &c. She is thus made to feel her widowhood,—her divorce from the secular arm,—and has mourned the loss of her most devoted children, who have forsaken ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... half the World, and are by the just Complaisance and Gallantry of our Nation the more powerful Part of our People, I shall dedicate a considerable Share of these my Speculations to their Service, and shall lead the young through all the becoming Duties of Virginity, Marriage, and Widowhood. When it is a Woman's Day, in my Works, I shall endeavour at a Stile and Air suitable to their Understanding. When I say this, I must be understood to mean, that I shall not lower but exalt the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... she made little motions of vanity as she fancied her entrance into Duck Creek parish church on the Sunday after the arrival of the tobacco ship, arrayed in imitation of the Princess of Wales, the news of whose recent widowhood had not ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... weeping Fair before the Altar stood, In all the dignity of Widowhood. First, from her eyes she wip'd away the tears; And then the solemn offering prepares. —Connubial love,—the Altar's sacred tie,— } Pure thoughts, chaste words, and many a tender sigh } Which issued from ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... stood down there among them like a sister, ready with head, heart, and hand to help them help themselves; not offering pity as an alms, but justice as a right. Hardship and sorrow, long effort and late-won reward had been hers they knew; wifehood, motherhood, and widowhood brought her very near to them; and behind her was the background of an earnest life, against which this figure with health on the cheeks, hope in the eyes, courage on the lips, and the ardor of a wide benevolence warming ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... to their enemies which should go throughout all generations to the children of the nation. Then Judith went to the House of the Lord and fell upon her face and called upon the Lord who breakest the battles to bless her purpose. She went thereafter to her house, put off the garments of widowhood and of sackcloth, and bathed, and anointed herself with precious ointment, and put on the garments of gladness, with bracelets and chains and rings and ornaments to lure the eyes of all the men that should see her. Then ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... so when that stillness is to divide us eternally from others; when those we have loved with all the passion, the devotion, the watchful sanctity of the weak human heart, are to exist to us no more! when, after long years of desertion and widowhood on earth, there is to be no hope of reunion in that INVISIBLE beyond the stars; when the torch, not of life only, but of love, is to be quenched in the Dark Fountain, and the grave, that we would fain hope is the great restorer of broken ties, is but the dumb seal of hopeless, utter, ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fortunes impaired and futures mostly behind. Then there were gay fox-hunting holluschickies, without serious intent and minus both future and past worth mentioning, who called and sat on the front porch because they thought their presence would be pleasing and relieve the tedium of widowhood. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... James, and other of my friends, to see safely brought from Burcote, and placed in the library. Sir Francis Vere hath sent me this year his accustomed annual gift of ten pounds. The Lady Mary Vere, wife to Sir Horace Vere, in the time of her widowhood (for so she is desired it should be recorded), being called Mrs. Hoby, of Hales, in Gloucestershire, hath given twenty pound. (He then enumerates about 15 other donations, and thus goes on:) Thus I thought meet to observe my yearly custom, in acquainting the University with the increase of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... vague instinct which compels humanity in moments of doubt and perplexity to seek this change of observation or superior illumination. Not that Mrs. Wade's disturbance was of a serious character. She had passed the acute stage of widowhood by at least two years, and the slight redness of her soft eyelids as well as the droop of her pretty mouth were merely the recognized outward and visible signs of the grievously minded religious community in which she lived. The mourning she still wore was also partly in conformity ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... peace, when there's no water?"[8] Our Thanksgiving had been a cheerful one, though colored, as such anniversaries are likely to be, with recollections of the absent, or the dead; for the memory of my father was always present to my mother, then and during a long widowhood of almost half a century, and my older brothers were at sea. My mother was an excellent housekeeper, and we had plenty of the usual belongings of the festival, so eagerly looked forward to by the young, and something to bestow upon others not so well supplied. It was ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... already considered and dismissed the idea of marrying the younger of the two living ex-Queens of Naples—both named Joanna—a niece of Ferdinand of Aragon. The wife now proposed was Philip's sister, Margaret, who on her first widowhood had been spoken of as a possible alternative to Katharine for Arthur of Wales. Since then, she had become Margaret of Savoy, the name by which she is generally known; but had been widowed a second time. This proposal probably ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... go to the next door but one, you are scolded, and presumed to be perfidious. And then a relazione or an amicizia seems to be a regular affair of from five to fifteen years, at which period, if there occur a widowhood, it finishes by a sposalizio; and in the mean time it has so many rules of its own that it is not much better. A man actually becomes a piece of female property,—they won't let their Serventi marry until there is a vacancy for themselves. I know two instances of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a great discovery, and, naturally enough, it set her weeping, for, she sobbed, it made her feel, for a minute, that she had lost her widowhood and that, after the shower, he'd ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... left the abode of her younger years—the scene of her widowhood; and she went away to hire a poor lodging in the outlets of London; but her God was with her, and the child she had nursed in her prosperity was ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... brought to her any announcement of the long-awaited miracle, but they gave her the assurance that some other woman had her eye on him, and this, for some strange reason that may have been explained by Arthur's dependence on her through her long widowhood, comforted her. ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... real name was Madame Houssard; her husband, whom Balzac incorrectly called "Pere Cognet," kept a little cabaret in the rue du Bouriau. "Mere Cognette," who lost her husband about 1835, opened a little cafe at Issoudun during the first years of her widowhood. Balzac was an intermittent and impecunious client of hers; he would enter her shop, quaff a cup of coffee, execrable to the palate of a connoisseur like him, and "chat a bit" with the good old woman who probably unconsciously furnished him with ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... The irrepressible look of humorous tolerance of all human frailty had suffused Poindexter's black eyes with mischievous moisture. "If you think it quite safe to confide to your wife this prospect of her improvement by widowhood, you may!" ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... have the leisure he desired? All in all, one cannot doubt that those years of retirement at Horton had been the most peaceful on which the old man could look back. But those years had come to an end. The sad spring of 1637 had come; the invalid wife had died; and he had been left in widowhood. Little in the ten years of his life since then but a succession of shiftings and troubles! For a while still at Horton, sauntering about the church and in daily communion with the grave it contained, his younger son and that son's newly-wedded ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... in those days, his daughter suggests, and the year of conventional widowhood having expired, Mr. Sedgwick, then at the age of twenty-three, married Miss Pamela Dwight, the mother of his four sons, all successful lawyers, and his three daughters, all exemplary women. The second Mrs. Sedgwick was presumably more beautiful ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... seemed incessantly to encounter widows: widows young and old, from the aged to the absurdly immature. It was only after a period of bewilderment that it dawned upon us that the sepulchral garb and heavy crape veils reaching from head to heel were not necessarily the emblems of widowhood, but might signify some state of minor bereavement. In Britain a display of black such as is an everyday sight at Versailles is undreamt of, and one saw more crape veils in a day in Versailles than in London in a week. Little girls, though their legs might be uncovered, had their ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... where the duke's sister, the Princess Sophie, was holding a little court. The princess had married the younger son of a princely house, but had been a widow now for years, and had lived since her widowhood at her brother's court, where she was by no means a favorite. The duchess was beloved for her gentleness and kind heartedness, by all who came in her way, but her elderly sister-in-law was disliked heartily for her arrogance and acerbity. ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... with a prince of another, are documents of very high importance. It is considered necessary not only to make very formal provision for the personal welfare and comfort of the wife during her married life, and during her widowhood in case of the death of her husband, but also to settle beforehand the questions of succession which might arise out of the marriage, and to define precisely the rights and powers both of the husband and the wife, in the two countries ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Afterwards it was inclosed in a red velvet bag. With the velvet gown enveloping the whole, it was conveyed to Lady Ralegh's house in a mourning coach which she had sent. It was embalmed; and she kept it ever by her for the twenty-nine years of her widowhood. Bishop Goodman of Gloucester, who, though King James's poor-spirited apologist, admired Ralegh, relates that he had seen and kissed it. On Lady Ralegh's death the charge of it descended to Carew Ralegh. It has been stated, and has been denied, that it was buried with him at ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... I called the other day on my kinswoman G.—then in the second week of her widowhood—and saw her sitting, her young boy by her side, in her recent sables, I felt unable to reconcile her estate with any risible associations. The Lady with a skeleton moiety—in the old print, in Bowles' old shop ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... violet. The Queen wore white, and did not leave her apartments for a whole year. Hence the name of chateau, hotel, or tour de la Reine Blanche, which many of the buildings of the Middle Ages still bear, from the fact that widowed queens inhabited them during the first year of their widowhood. On occasions of mourning, the various reception rooms of a house were hung with black. In deep mourning, such as that for a husband or a father, a lady wore neither gloves, jewels, nor silk. The head was covered with a low black head-dress, with trailing ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... was one of these and he came to her a cripple, an emaciated and sick man. Then had followed, as Joe knew, the marriage, the hard pioneer life in the shanty on the stony hill, the death, and the long widowhood.... ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... of her own interests, and having a wise forecast of the future, she was torn with a twofold anxiety, loathing both widowhood and the marriage she saw before her. Accordingly, she secretly sent off a friend of sure fidelity, and well acquainted with Mesopotamia, to pass by Mount Izala, between the two forts called Maride and Lorne, and so to effect his entrance into Nisibis, calling ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... triumphant manner prompted a sore-hearted woman, suffering herself at the coming parting, to turn and say: "Well, Mrs. Garrison, I suppose that after your husband sails you'll have to follow the rest of us into grass-widowhood." ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... of the Great Muster, and had a rush of blood to the head, according to the common report,—at any rate, something which stopped him short in his career of expansion and promotion, and established Mrs. Rowens in her normal condition of widowhood. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and Master Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear uppon ye headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man's member wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widows in England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wilted neither, till coition ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... "blossoming countenance of the child," he got into conversation with the mother, and learned that she had been greatly tempted by Temple women in the town, who had admired the baby and wanted to get it. "If I give her to them, she will never be a widow," was the allurement there. The bitterness of widowhood had entered into her soul, and poisoned the very mother-love within her; and yet there was something of it left, for she did not want her babe to be a widow. The boy, with the leisureliness of the East, dropped the matter ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... itinerant shows; and more private noises were taken little notice of. The famous "dry election" was at hand, in which the depths of public feeling might be measured by the low flood-mark of drink. Will Ladislaw was one of the busiest at this time; and though Dorothea's widowhood was continually in his thought, he was so far from wishing to be spoken to on the subject, that when Lydgate sought him out to tell him what had passed about the Lowick living, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Changeable Saffron, Shun Excess Sage, Domestic Virtue Sainfoin, Agitation St. John's Wort, Animosity Salvia, Blue, Wisdom Salvia, Red, Energy Saxifrage, Mossy, Affection Scabious, Unfortunate Love Scabious, Sweet, Widowhood Scarlet Lychnis, Brilliant Eye Shinus, Religious Enthusiasm Sensitive Plant, Sensitiveness Senvy, Indifference Shamrock, Light-heartedness Snakesfoot, Horror Snapdragon, "No." Snowball, Bound Snowdrop, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Dora went to Mary's house, and stood Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise To God, that help'd her in her widowhood. And Dora said, "My uncle took the boy; But, Mary, let me live and work with you: He says that he will never see me more." Then answer'd Mary, "This shall never be, That thou shouldst take my trouble on thyself: And, now I think, he shall ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... of actions. This opinion is commonest in the country-towns and villages; and my mother's relations are thus distinguished; so that a woman of them, when her husband dieth or divorceth her while she is young, passeth in widowhood her life, however long it may be, and disdaineth to marry a second time." I fear that this state of things belongs to the good old days now utterly gone by; and the loose rule of the stranger, especially the English, in Egypt will renew the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... mischievous little god of love on her fan. "I made a blind choice among men equal in rank and riches, all so mediocre and uninteresting that it mattered not which I chose. This was the motive of my preference for M. de Riancourt, Katinka. Besides, although marriage has its inconveniences, widowhood has still greater ones. So, it is the better to marry, after all; it saves the trouble of wondering ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... to the fire, and staring about him. Presently his glance lit upon the blue velvet curtains which shut off the room they were in from the larger saloon that had not been used since Lady Croston's widowhood, and an idea which had been floating about in his brain suddenly took definite shape and form. He was a prompt man, and in another second he had acted ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... famous funeral oration over those who fell in the Peloponnesian war, thus addresses the Athenian women: "To the wives who will henceforth live in widowhood, I will speak, in one short sentence only, of womanly virtue. She is the best woman who is most truly a woman, and her reputation is the highest whose name is never in the mouths of men ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... in her early widowhood that she first met the man, and when their union came it brought ruin on them both. In France there came to her one day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell. He was but a few years older than she, and in his presence for the first time she felt, in her own despite, that ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... before demanding an audience, but in that brief interval he heard that the Rani had that morning distributed to the army the monthly allowance which had just been paid to her, and the jewels in which she had invested her savings since her widowhood. It might be considered a valiant effort to compensate them for the breaking of her promise, but Gerrard knew that her tradesmen's bills would have to be settled by the Durbar in consequence. The lady was clearly incorrigible, and he braced ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... was in that state in which alone a woman ceases to be a dependant—widowhood. Lord Roseville, who had been dead about two years, had not survived their marriage many months; that period was, however, sufficiently long to allow him to appreciate her excellence, and to testify his sense ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And she gave him her hand. He held it, and kissed it, and cried over it, as the young will, and implored her, on his knees, not to condemn herself to life-long widowhood, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... him! How many a year has passed[27], Though we are still so young, since we have met, Which I have worn in widowhood of heart. He loved me not: yet he seems little changed— Changed to me only—would the change were mutual! He speaks not—scarce regards me—not a word, 240 Nor look—yet he was soft of voice and aspect, Indifferent, not austere. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... chiefly for the sake of recommending that branch of education for our young females, as likely to be of more use to them and their children, in case of widowhood, than either music or dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of crafty men, and enabling them to continue, perhaps, a profitable mercantile house, with establish'd correspondence, till a son is grown up fit to ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... happen to be mentioned as ill,—the worthy soul's better feelings struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid, until a tear or two came forth and found their way down a channel worn for them since the early days of her widowhood. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... spake of Burgundy / the son of Ute fair: "How dost thou so, Sir Ruediger? / All that with me are To thee are well disposed. / Thou dost an evil thing, And wilt thine own fair daughter / to widowhood too ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... felt such respect for that quiet woman, Madame de Clericy, as on this afternoon when widowhood first cast ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... from the farm of Hubert To where Mabel's castle stood, Closed in, a league on all sides. With wall'd parks and wealthy wood, No chance glimpse could be look'd for, So recluse her widowhood. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... earliest patrons, the good-hearted Gonfalonier of Justice, and anticipates the coming of the only woman he is known to have cared for, Vittoria Colonna. It was at S. Silvestro that she dwelt, retired in widowhood, and here occurred those Sunday morning conversations of which Francesco d'Olanda has left us ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... curful, as you say, sir," returned the Widow Martin; "and for that reason I should like to know if there isn't a will. I know the deacon set store by me, and I can hardly think he has departed for another world without bethinking him of his cousin Jenny, and of her widowhood." ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... blank. Then argument rose to her lips. Was she not free? In her love for Henri she deceived nobody; she could deal as she pleased with her love. Then, did not everything exculpate her? What had been her life for nearly two years? Her widowhood, her unrestricted liberty, her loneliness—everything, she realized, had softened and prepared her for love. Love must have been smouldering within her during the long evenings spent between her two old friends, the Abbe ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... life is to judge not that I be not judged. One of my beloved husband's finest sermons was on that text. I read it constantly—in my own copy of the edition printed by subscription, in the first days of my widowhood—and at every fresh perusal I derive an increase of spiritual ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... me, and I would find myself shivering with terror. Once I dreamed that I looked up from my desk to find him standing in the doorway, smiling that mirthless smile of his, and I heard him say, in his mocking way: 'Hello, Dawn my love; looking wonderfully well. Grass widowhood ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... effusion. Mrs Askerton told the history of her life of her first foolish engagement, her belief, her half-belief, in the man's reformation, of the miseries which resulted from his vices, of her escape and shame, of her welcome widowhood, and of her second marriage. And as she told it, she paused at every point to insist on the goodness of him who was now her husband. 'I shall tell him this,' she said at last, 'as I do everything; and then he will know that I have in ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... her could have carried her through that weary time; but the day did at last come when the peril was pronounced a thing of the past, and the feeble submissive patient might be carried away from the Grange—from the scene of her brief married life and of her bitter widowhood. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... for its dead; The streets were black with widowhood; While orphaned children begged for bread, And Rachel, for the brave and good, Mourned, and would not ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... that in Liverpool some seven thousand persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die. Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr. Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... With words and blows; but he is in the wrong, Begin he when he dares! O, he's too hot And angry to live long with Marian. But I'll not long be subject to his rage: Here 'tis shall rid him of his hateful life, And bless me with the style of widowhood. 'Twas Harvey's work to temper it so well: The strongest poison that he ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... All her children were grown up, married, and, in the language of the time, "gone away." She was in truth a lone woman, busying herself in household and farming affairs. With a few negroes, and a miserably poor piece of land, she struggled in her widowhood with fortune, and contrived, with North Carolina frugality and industry, not only to make a decent living, but to lay up something for a rainy day, as she phrases it. In her visits to her fields and garden, I ran by her side and listened to stories of Tory atrocities and Whig suffering in North Carolina ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... that," replied Lavendar. "She is in reality only a girl, and her widowhood has already lasted two years, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... own name, just on the threshold of manhood, his heart beating high with hope, falls into the dust; but above the cries of early widowhood and the desolation of that dark day, I hear the patriarch's prayer, commending children, and children's children, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... out of his little adventure in widowhood, and some out of Mary's self-victory; but there, listening to the old man's whispered story, his satisfaction died. He realised again the grim truth about his summer's experience—that the issue of it had been defeat. Utter, unqualified defeat! He had caused the bosses a momentary chagrin; but ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... rites because his spirit went straight to heaven, and thus the end to which the ceremonies were directed was already attained without them. It was also said that the wife of a man dying such a death should not regard herself as a widow nor undergo the privations imposed on widowhood. But this did not apply so far as self-immolation was concerned, since the wives of warriors dying in battle very frequently became sati. In the case of chiefs also it was sometimes the custom, probably for political reasons, that the heir should not observe mourning; ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... of his dear mother, till he beheld another in her place. His father entered into a second marriage before much more than half his year of widowhood was expired, with a lady, who, though pretty near his equal in years, had yet remains enough of beauty to render her extremely vain and affected, and fortune enough to make her no less proud.—These two qualities occasioned ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... longer to look. We felt disposed to stop our ears, but still we heard it, marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp. But hush,—uncover every head! Here they pass, the remnant of ten men of a full regiment. Silence! Widowhood and orphanage look on and wring their hands. But wheel into line, all ye people! North, South, East, West—all decades, all centuries, all millenniums! Forward, the whole line! ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... smothering Meilhan with kindnesses she was longing herself to make the most of the fortune which had come to her. From the first days of her widowhood she was constantly writing letters which Mme Lescure carried for her. Euphemie had already begun to talk of remarriage. Her choice was already made. "If I marry again,'' she said, a few days after the death of Lacoste, "I won't take anybody but M. Henri Berens, of ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... now Lord Rivers, has relieved you of all embarrassment; no doubt, my Lord Dorset and his kinsmen will be chevaliers enough to do the same. The Duchess of Bedford will but suit the decorous usage to retire a while into privacy, to mourn her widowhood. And when a year is told, if these noble persons reappear at court, your word and the earl's will at ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she fell an easy victim to Shelley's impassioned eloquence, when he urged her to flee with him from an uncongenial home. Shelley appeared to Mary as almost a divine being, and her worshipful love never waned, even during her long widowhood of thirty years' duration. For Shelley, in the whole matter, there seems to be no valid excuse. He deliberately defied the world and the world's ways, and even his memory must bear the fatal consequences. If we allow his genius to excuse his acts, we ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... soft-haired, ringleted dogs, of a beautiful breed, peculiar to Peru, set up a concert of glad welcomings when we gained the beach, which was responded to by Hunilla. Some of these dogs had, since her widowhood, been born upon the isle, the progeny of the two brought from Payta. Owing to the jagged steeps and pitfalls, tortuous thickets, sunken clefts and perilous intricacies of all sorts in the interior, Hunilla, admonished by the loss of one favorite among them, never allowed these delicate ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... breakfast table ... and I was hurt when I learned that she had gone back to Newark to live, and had left no word for me. Her father told me she "had gone back to George," meaning her never-seen husband from whom she evidently enjoyed intervals of separation and grass-widowhood. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... considering the change in him. Anne was recollecting that Colonel Musgrave had somewhat pointedly avoided her since her widowhood. He seemed almost ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... former things are passed away." Love will then be perfect; there will be no heart-burnings and disappointments there. There you shall enjoy the honey without the sting, and the rose without the thorn. "Earth hath no sorrows that heaven cannot heal." All care and toil, and tears, and orphanage, and widowhood, shall drop and disappear at the threshold of heaven. If our tent-home stirs up within us imperishable joys, by the power of anticipation and foretaste, what joy will not that better land afford? If the promise is so cheering, what must the fulfillment ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... flurried Lilia extremely. She left Mr. Kingcroft without even the pressure of a rescue-party. She cried a great deal on her return to Sawston, and said she was very sorry. Mrs. Herriton took the opportunity of speaking more seriously about the duties of widowhood and motherhood than she had ever done before. But somehow things never went easily after. Lilia would not settle down in her place among Sawston matrons. She was a bad housekeeper, always in the throes of some domestic crisis, which Mrs. Herriton, who kept her servants for years, had to ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... for us ever since, tells us that Gormlai was present at his burial and chanted a funeral ode. Her long widowhood was a period of disconsolate mourning. At length it is said she had a dream or vision, in which King Nial appeared to her in such life-like shape that she spread her arms to embrace him, and thus wounded her breast ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... does not pay an annuity to some one else's wife, married women speak of him as a poor-spirited creature, a man given to low vice, a lover of servant girls. Soon adultery becomes the most respectable form of marriage, and widowhood and celibacy are commonly practised. No one takes a wife unless he takes her away from some one else. Now men vie with one another in wasting what they have stolen, and in collecting together what they have wasted with the keenest ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... disgrace than for all his former disreputable conduct, which only passed for good-fellowship. If he had been hanged, or even transported, he would only have been "poor Dan Hewlett," and his wife would have had all the pity due to widowhood; but everybody fought shy of him, and the big lads hooted at him. He could not get work, Judith's pension had failed, and they lived scantily on what Farmer Goodenough allowed Molly to earn, as an old hand, to be kept off the parish. Little Judith was apprenticed ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ample proportions and of leisurely habit. Life had of late hurried her a bit, but she still gave the effect of restful calm. She was of the same generation as Aunt Claudia, and a widow. But she wore her widowhood with a difference. She had on to-day a purple hat. Her hair was white, her dress was white, and her shoes. She was prettier than Aunt Claudia but she lacked her distinction of ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... prove faults of morals and vices, though of no great gravity, let her lose her dowry and pay back to her husband her marriage gift, and let her never join herself in marriage with another; that she may not stain her widowhood with the impudence of unchastity we give the repudiated husband the right of bringing an accusation by law. Hereafter if she who abandons her husband prove grave causes and a guilt involving great crimes, let ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the proper object of pity and sympathy, if pity and sympathy are to be given. She is not cheered by the smiles of admiring crowds, nor does she feel the intoxication of flattering tongues. She dwells at home in the desolation and loneliness of a practical widowhood, and often ekes out a meager support from ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... staggering under it. This goes, however, with the fondest recall of our cousins' inbred ease, from far back, in all such assumable relations; and of how, four of the simplest, sweetest, best-natured girls as they were (with the eldest, a charming beauty, to settle on the general ground, after marriage and widowhood, and still to be blooming there), they were possessed of the scene and its great reaches and resources and possibilities in a degree that reduced us to small provincialism and a hanging on their lips when they told us, that ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... balm of bay, southernwood, pine, and syringa breathed through the long alleys; the stimulating scent of roses moved with every zephyr, and the closer odors of jessamine, honeysuckle, and orange flowers hung heavily in the hollows. It seemed to Courtland like the mourning of beautiful and youthful widowhood, seductive even in its dissembling trappings, provocative in the contrast of its own still strong virility. Everywhere the grass grew thick and luxuriant; the quick earth was teeming with the germination of ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had sent her his dog! In the first year of her widowhood she had first met Langham; she was then twenty-one. In the second year of her widowhood Langham had offered himself, and, with the declaration on his lips, had seen the utter hopelessness of his offer. They had not met since then. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... stock of self-reliance had been largely improved by twenty years of grass-widowhood, was ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... and desertion; in widowhood and childlessness; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, when each soul must stand alone before its God, one Friend remains, and that the ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... were now open to Mrs. Boardman. Either to devote herself to her domestic duties, manage her household, educate her darling boy, and in quiet seclusion pass the weary days of her widowhood; or—looking abroad on the spiritual wants of the people around her, knowing that if one devoted laborer was gone there was the more need of activity in those that remained,—she might continue to employ her time and ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... not so much back as forward, and is rather intended to get a new husband than to lament the old. When I was a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady, who is yet living, the widow of a prince, wore somewhat more ornament in her dress than our laws of widowhood allow, and being reproached with it, she made answer that it was because she was resolved to have no more love affairs, and would never ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... with those torturing reflections, and while the first wild burst of grief was yet rolling down her cheeks, she determined to begin her lone, young widowhood by instantly writing to him and bidding him hope. In this epistle, all the nobility of her true heart and nature blazed forth so transcendently, and with such fierce, womanly fervor, that the moment it reached the hands ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... other are, and is very friendly towards me. He has already fought a duel about Laura, and in spite of the reputation of coward he had in Italy, showed a deal of pluck. Poor Davis has passed to Nirvana some months ago, and I suppose after a decent interval of widowhood, Laura will marry Maleschi. They will make a splendid couple. The Italian has the torso and head of an Antinous; in addition to that, a complexion like pale gold, raven black hair, and eyes as blue as the Mediterranean. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... respects his culminating achievement, has its roots in an earlier stratum of his life than its predecessor. There is little here to recall the characteristic moods of his first years of desolate widowhood—the valiant Stoicism, the acceptance of the sombre present, the great forward gaze upon the world beyond. We are in Italy once more, our senses tingle with its glowing prodigality of day, we jostle the teeming throng of the Roman streets, and are drawn into the vortex of a vast debate which ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... something like that. Now I realize that it's none of those things. It's—it's just an offence against—my human dignity. I've been treated like—like an inferior. But why shouldn't I be treated like an inferior? I am an inferior. When I go back to Evanston, and take up grass-widowhood and the burden of living down the family scandal, and sit and twiddle my thumbs in a big house, and have my maiden aunt come ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... England chose only to offer the infamous and treacherous Leicester, whose character was ruined by the mysterious death of his wife (Amy Robsart), and who had offered to sell England and himself to idolatrous Spain. Mary's only faint chance of safety lay in perpetual widowhood, or in marrying Knox, by far the most powerful of her subjects, and the best able to protect ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... he exclaimed; "this is morbid. You have never forgiven God for taking away your husband. You have been keeping a grudge against Him all these years of your widowhood." ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... and priesthood and the triumph of falsehood and wrong were foretold by the prophets. This is the time predicted in Holy Writ, when the very elect shall be wellnigh seduced, and when God shall seem to give up His own into the hand of the Adversary. The priestless Church is the Church in the state of widowhood foretold by Daniel in the last days. Thus, the Raskol was brought by the new path of theology to that belief in the approaching end of the world and the reign of Antichrist to which we have already seen it led by its aversion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... She was Lord Evenwood's sister. She spent a very happy widowhood interfering in the affairs of the various ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... judgment;—seek its love who will! Then dreamed I bliss in mine own home to find; I thought to make my daughter blest in wedlock: Death, like a whirlwind, snatched her betrothed away, And rumor craftily insinuates That I am author of my own child's widowhood:— I, I, unhappy father that I am! Let a man die—I am his secret slayer. I hastened on the death of Feodor; I gave my sister, the Tzaritza, poison; I poisoned her, the lovely nun,—still I! Ah, yes, I know it: naught can give us calm, Amid the sorrows of ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... mean that I am never to let myself be known as I am?" asked Daphne. Her face had changed; it wore a look of fright and resistance. "Why, that would mean that I am never to unmask; to go about all my life in my trappings of false widowhood. You read what that paper called me! I cannot play ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... things, happily, are known only by experience, and many escape. Then our cause demanded my only son. I face death with him in every battle, every danger. He takes risks without a thought of fear, and I dare not let him know the agony of my fear. Yet in my widowhood, in the sore pressure of care and difficulty in managing a large plantation in these times, I have found my faith in God's love adequate to my need. I should still find it so if I lost my boy. I could not escape the suffering, but I would not ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... to widowhood. Lately she exacted my solemn pledge not to assist Hawkins with any ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... When that stands in my name, you and I have an equal interest in marrying each other. There it all is, my beautiful aunt, as plain as day. Between you and me there must be no ambiguity. I can marry my aunt at the end of a year's widowhood; but I could not marry ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... welcome to our vows and us, Most great and universal genius! The drooping West, which hitherto has stood As one in long-lamented widowhood, Looks like a bride now, or a bed of flowers Newly refresh'd both by the sun and showers. War, which before was horrid, now appears Lovely in you, brave prince of cavaliers! A deal of courage in each bosom springs By your access, O you the best of kings! Ride on with all white ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... body. The traces of his existence are only to be found in the works which he has left. He ended his days upon a foreign soil, which he never considered as his country, remaining faithful in the devotion of his affections to the eternal widowhood of his own. He was a Poet of a mournful soul, full of reserve and complicated mystery, and familiar with ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... know exactly what you mean. I can quite understand that you should find your—your widowhood hard to bear. You are young, healthy, and it is only natural; very natural." He began to smile, his lively nature getting the better of him. "Besides, the Church allows these feelings, sometimes," he went on, gently ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... his will Shakespeare did not mention his wife. The apologists explain this by saying that, of course, he had already given her all that she ought to have. But if he loved her he would have mentioned her with affection, if only to console her in her widowhood. Before the will was signed he inserted a bequest to her of his "second-best bed," and the apologists have been at pains to explain that the best bed was kept for guests, and that Shakespeare willed to his wife the bed they both occupied. How inarticulate poor William Shakespeare ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... having a surplus for the poor, which she gladly imparted; Rich too, through Agriculture, pursued less from need than habit. Habit mingled with satisfaction, and bringing health in its train. Early widowhood had touched her brow with sadness such as time bringeth, Yet in her clear eye was a fortitude, surmounting adversity. Busy were her maidens, and happy, their right conduct kindly approved, Busy also the swains thro' ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... and a decidedly attractive woman—brunette. There's a suggestion of repressed widowhood about her. It's the gown, probably. I am not yet in my dotage, and I had seen her ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... cried the Spaniard. "In the first place, I will not again annoy my master with the request for a leave of absence. Dona Magdalena must try how she can accommodate herself to widowhood while she has a living husband, if the Holy Virgin will only permit me to offer your Majesty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to the end. He lived in an intellectual solitude deepened by the fact that it was only an inner cell of an outward seclusion almost as complete, for the house had the habits of a hermitage. His mother, after nearly a score of years of widowhood, still maintained her separation even from her home world; she is said to have seen none of her husband's relatives and few of her own, and a visitor must have been a venturesome person. The custom of living apart spread through the household. The elder sister, Elizabeth, who ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry |
