"Marriageable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neighbourhood of Vimy, let us say. She was married there and it was there that she bore all her children. She and her husband have saved money; they are substantial people now and need not fear the future. Their sons are gaining their own living; one daughter is married, the others are arriving at the marriageable age. One day the Hun sweeps down on them. The sons escape to join the French army; the girls and their parents stay behind to guard their property. They are immediately evacuated from Vimy and sent to some city, such as Drocourt, further behind the Hun front-line. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... regarding sex has prevented and corrected matrimonial disagreements; and having easily found so much definite influence of sex-science upon marriage, I am forced to believe that sex-instruction specially organized for people of marriageable age is already giving results of tremendous importance to very many individuals. Large numbers of young people are already awake to the need of scientific guidance in marriage, and there is a great demand for ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... the young couples thus constituted. This method of sexual selection, half playful, half serious, flourished especially in the region between England, the Moselle, and the Tyrol. The essential part of the custom lay in the public choice of a fitting mate for marriageable girls. Sometimes the question of fitness resolved itself into one of good looks; occasionally the matter was settled by lot. There was no compulsion about these unions; they were often little more than a game, though at times they involved ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... are always the very hardest members of the tribe to engage in conversation, except a young girl of marriageable age. Both do all their courting by making ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... he parries these thrusts with weak, apologetic appeals, preserved in his Respuestas (Rhymed Answers). He claims his high-born foe's sympathy by telling him that he has sons, grandchildren, a poor, old father, and a marriageable daughter. In extenuation of his cowardice it should be remembered that Antonio di Montoro lived during a reign of terror, under Ferdinand and Isabella, when his race and his faith were exposed to most frightful persecution. All the more noteworthy is it ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... with cities and many villages, inhabited by an idolatrous people, whose manners are so licentious that no man marries a wife who is a virgin. Hence when travellers and strangers from other countries come among them, the women of the country who have marriageable daughters bring them to the tents of the strangers, and entreat them to enjoy the company of their daughters so long as they remain in the neighbourhood. On these occasions the handsomest are chosen, and those who are rejected return home ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... who lived at some distance, near the Military School, and who, as the weather was fine, wished to walk home and avoid the expense of a cab, left with his three marriageable daughters, and Amedee in his ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... outside, because the Mormons were so shut off from civilization that they seemed to occupy a little world of their own, and no one claimed the right to censure or interfere with them. Gradually, however, there became a shortage of marriageable women, and this resulted in mysterious raids being made on neighboring settlements. Wanderers upon the mountains spoke with horror of mysterious tribes of men who wandered around engaged in acts of plunder, and from time to ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... themselves, that he to whom the lot should fall should have Helen to his wife, but should be obliged to assist in procuring another for his friend. The lot fell upon Theseus, who conveyed her to Aphidnae, not being yet marriageable, and delivered her to one of his allies, called Aphidnus, and, having sent his mother Aethra after to take care of her, desired him to keep them so secretly, that none might know where they were; which done, to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the same gentlemen, who had been on the sands in the morning, and on the pier the day before. There were young ladies, in maroon-coloured gowns and black velvet bracelets, dispensing fancy articles in the shop, and presiding over games of chance in the concert-room. There were marriageable daughters, and marriage-making mammas, gaming and promenading, and turning over music, and flirting. There were some male beaux doing the sentimental in whispers, and others doing the ferocious in moustache. There were Mrs. Tuggs ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... seem a rare combination of marriageable qualities. I asked the value of a great auk's egg, and was surprised to learn that a specimen had recently been sold at auction for something like three hundred pounds. I inquired whether all the great auks' eggs that came ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... his advisers, looked round at the various marriageable princesses belonging to the smaller courts of Germany. The sister of that Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern whose selection for the throne of Spain led afterwards to the Franco-Prussian war, was spoken of; but the lady most seriously considered was the Princess ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Alliance came to an end by the treaty of Utrecht, did not exceed 6000 souls, and the whole population of the province in that year was only 20,000, a small number for a century of colonization. For some years after the formation of the royal government, a large number of marriageable women were brought to the country under the auspices of the religious communities, and marriages and births were encouraged by exhortations and bounties. A considerable number of the officers and soldiers of the Carignan-Salieres regiment, who followed the Marquis ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... scrupulous well-spoken Matron, who gives me a great many good Words, only doubts, Whether she is not obliged in Conscience to shut up her two marriageable Daughters, till such time as she hath comfortably disposed ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the kind of thing that happened to ladies in the days when true womanliness consisted in knowing nothing accurately, and always taking advice. Efforts to improve themselves in some such way were common enough among marriageable maidens, and their mothers helped them to the best of their ability with equally happy hints. Because small feet were a beauty, therefore feet already in perfect proportion must be squeezed to reduce their size till they were all deformed; and because slenderness ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... ago Mrs. Light disappeared, and has not since been seen in Rome, except for a few days last winter, when she passed through on her way to Naples. Then it was you met the trio in the Ludovisi gardens. When I first knew her she was the unmarried but very marriageable daughter of an old American painter of very bad landscapes, which people used to buy from charity and use for fire-boards. His name was Savage; it used to make every one laugh, he was such a mild, melancholy, pitiful old gentleman. He had married a horrible wife, an Englishwoman who had been on ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... filled with tenderness, the next sparkling with laughter. Then Mrs. Maroney had a freedom of manners that placed him at once at his ease, while Miss Johnson was rather prudish, quite sarcastic, and somehow he felt that he always made a fool of himself in her presence. Besides, Miss Johnson was marriageable, and much as De Forest loved the sex, he loved his freedom more. His morals were on a par with those of Sheridan's son, who wittily asked his father, just after he had been lecturing him, and advising him to take a wife, "But, father, whose wife ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... were tumbling about his ears, but he stuck to his guns. His affection for Kathleen, fanned by her indifference, had become all-absorbing. Courted and flattered by mothers with marriageable daughters, he had come to believe that he had but to speak ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... little divorce and little dissension in domestic life among the Hopi, in spite of Crane's[9] half comical sympathy for men in this "woman-run" commonwealth. Bachelors are rare since only heads of families count in the body politic. An unmarried woman of marriageable age is unheard of. ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... number of marriageable second cousins is usually several times as great as that of first cousins, the number of marriages between second cousins is probably somewhat less than the number of marriages between first cousins, but the number of second cousin marriages combined with the number of 1-1/2 cousin marriages ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... especially to stand in need of the matrimonial guarantee. Had it been feasible, Mr. Farmiloe would have brought a wife with him from the town where he had lived for the past few years, but he was in the difficult position of knowing not a single marriageable female to whom he could address himself with hope or with self-respect. Natural shyness had always held him aloof from reputable women; he felt that he could not recommend himself to them—he who had such an unlucky aptitude for saying the wrong word or keeping silence when speech was ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... twenty-five kopeks, they'll take it at half a ruble; but if they won't take it at half a ruble, they'll grab for it with both hands at seventy kopeks. We'll profit, anyhow. There, you can say what you please, but I have a marriageable daughter; I want to pass her on, and get rid of her. And then, my boy, it'll be time for me to take a rest; I'll have an easy time lying on my back; and to the devil with all this ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... a reproach upon her that she had not yet succeeded in making the marriage everyone, including herself, predicted for her and expected of her. On the contrary, it was the most savage indictment possible of the marriageable and marrying men who had met her—of their stupidity, of their short-sighted and mean-souled calculation, of their lack of courage—the courage to take what they, as men of flesh and blood wanted, instead ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... mosque for the Friday congregational prayers, and as they were wealthy and prosperous they found favour in the eyes of their poorer neighbours. Thus it happened that when Haji Ali let it be known that he desired to find a wife, there was a bustle in the villages among the parents with marriageable daughters, and, though he was a man well past middle life, Haji Ali found a wide range of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... brain,—or even testify in favor of this Head-Worker, and of the sense he shows, especially of the patience. For example: that of the "Polish Towns and Villages, ordered" by this Tyrant "to deliver, each of them, so many marriageable girls; each girl to bring with her as dowry, furnished by her parents, 1 feather-bed, 4 pillows, 1 cow, 3 swine and 3 ducats,"—in which desirable condition this tyrannous King "sent her into the Brandenburg States to be wedded and promote population." ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... This is partly due to defective education during childhood in regard to the sexes. The training of boys and girls in this matter is very different. Knowledge pertaining to the sexual life is talked over very freely among boys, so that by the time the boy is of a marriageable age he is pretty well posted. With girls it is quite different. It would be considered very immodest for a girl to discuss such matters. She does not feel free even to talk with her mother or other adviser, and so she goes to the altar ignorant of many things she ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... and soon I heard he was a partner in a mining house which was doing wonders with some gold areas in the North. The next step was his return to London as the new millionaire,—young, good-looking, wholesome in mind and body, and much sought after by the mothers of marriageable girls. We played polo together, and hunted a little in the season, but there were signs that he did not propose to become the conventional English gentleman. He refused to buy a place in the country, though half the Homes of England were at his disposal. He was a very busy man, he declared, and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... So many marriageable young women were among the guests, it was very probable they would all leave as brides; for even the melancholy Magdalene a suitor waited there—the rich Berezowski. Father Peter sighed deeply—if he could only see ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... the town of Kundinapura in Berar, Devarata, a very calm and sagacious minister to the king of Vidarbha. He had a son named Madhava. Madhava was very beautiful and of uncommon intelligence. He became proficient in all branches of learning, in his early age. He now arrived at a marriageable age. The beautiful town of Padmavati in Malwa is situated at the confluence of the two rivers Indus and Madhumati. There lived in Padmavati, Bhurivasu, who was minister to the king of Padmavati. He had a very beautiful unmarried daughter named Malati. The king indicated ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... in them some sporting instinct, making hazard attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... patient somewhat similar to that provided for lunatics. In almost every rank of society the developed epileptic would be excluded from marriage by the law of sexual selection, and as the great majority develop epilepsy before coming to a marriageable age, few epileptic children can ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... investigator whom we had working on the case nor my nephew have ever told us the date of birth of our Emily Leonard. We can, of course, obtain that, if it is not already in my nephew's possession, but without it we can't be sure that our cousin was of marriageable age ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... daughter, and Goffreda, the pope's third son; but as the old Ferdinand wanted to make the best bargain he could out of it; he dragged on the negotiations as long as possible, urging that the two children were not of marriageable age, and so, highly honoured as he felt in such a prospective alliance, there was no hurry about the engagement. Matters stopped at this point, to the great annoyance of Alexander VI, who saw through this excuse, and understood that the postponement was nothing more or less than a refusal. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of desperate purpose about this. When a sentimental young man seeks a private interview with a marriageable young woman, and recklessly refuses at the outset to retain at least his cane for the solution of the intricate conversational problem of what to do with his hands, it is an infallible sign that some madly rash intention has temporarily overpowered his usual sheepish ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... pinching want in the active exercise of arms; and as an expert horseman, dreadful for his spear, let him harass the fierce Parthians; and let him lead a life exposed to the open air, and familiar with dangers. Him, the consort and marriageable virgin-daughter of some warring tyrant, viewing from the hostile walls, may sigh—- Alas! let not the affianced prince, inexperienced as he is in arms, provoke by a touch this terrible lion, whom bloody rage hurries ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... manner every way convenient and consistent with such a design. But we were informed that the governor had filled it with the daughters of the labouring poor, who were here instructed in weaving and spinning, and were brought up in industry and cleanliness, remaining in the house until of a marriageable age, when a portion equal to ten pounds sterling was given with each on the day of her nuptials. This and the other expenses of the house were furnished by a fund produced from the labour of the young people, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... might take to puzzling out reasons for this inadequacy which would inevitably cause trouble. For this, and divers other motives politic, the rosy veil of sentiment is always delicately flung more or less over every new move on the national debating-ground,—and whether marriageable princes and princesses love or loathe each other, still, when they come to wed, the words 'romantic love-match' must be thrown in by an obliging Press in order to satisfy the tender scruples of a people who would certainly not abide the thought of a Royal ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... If I am not mistaken, she has been marriageable for some Time. She has been fit for a Husband a great While, ripe for Wedlock, ready for a ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... considered that in Otaheite women are very early marriageable, and that families are easily reared, one will not find cause for censuring the impolicy, whatever is thought of the immodesty, according to our notions, of the kind of dances here mentioned. It seems reasonable enough, that the girls should be instructed in the only arts requisite ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... green coat of Elbeuf cloth. I have my reasons," she added slyly. "Besides, Mademoiselle Cormon is going to Prebaudet, and many persons will doubtless call to bid her good-bye. When a young man is marriageable he ought to take every means to make himself agreeable. If girls would only tell the truth, heavens! my dear boy, you'd be astonished at what makes them fall in love. Often it suffices for a man to ride past them at the head of a company of artillery, or show himself ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... old. The second is Stangerd, daughter of Thorkel of Tongue, and at this time the wife of Battle-Berse of Sowerby in the north-west parts. This Gudrid, Thorbeorn's daughter, is the third, and was, at the moment, of marriageable age, being full fifteen ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... the loss of the flax, Jackeymo resolved to convert a very nice bit of pasture into orchard ground, which he calculated would bring in L10 net per acre by the time Miss Violante was marriageable. At this, Squire pished a little; but as it was quite clear the land would be all the more valuable hereafter for the fruit-trees, he consented to permit the 'grass land' to be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... at Hornem Hall till last Season, when my wife and I were invited by the Countess of Waltzaway (a distant relation of my Spouse) to pass the winter in town. Thinking no harm, and our Girls being come to a marriageable (or, as they call it, 'marketable') age, and having besides a Chancery suit inveterately entailed upon the family estate, we came up in our old chariot,—of which, by the bye, my wife grew so ashamed in less than a week, that I was obliged ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... described by that officer as "beggars sent out to enrich themselves," and who expected the government to feed them while they looked for pearls and gold mines. The paternal providence of Versailles, mindful of their needs, sent them, in 1704, a gift of twenty marriageable girls, described as "nurtured in virtue and piety, and accustomed to work." Twenty-three more came in the next year from the same benignant source, besides seventy-five soldiers, five priests, and two nuns. ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... in the middle of an interesting flirtation with Marie, which bade fair to develop into something deeper with careful engineering on the part of her family, for Micky was a catch, and though so far he had proved himself singularly adroit in avoiding mothers with marriageable daughters, the Delands were beginning to pat each other on the back and to ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... to blush and stammer, brought up to be ignorant of everything, neither knowing how to stand up on her legs nor how to sit down on a chair—all that sort of thing's done with, old-fashioned, worn out. That was the marriageable young lady of the days of the Gymnase Theatre. There is nothing of that kind nowadays. The process of culture has changed; it used to be a case of the fruit-wall, but at present the young person grows in the open. We ask ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... one—and whether the schoolmaster designed to remain only a lord of the ferrule, or casting the insignia of his office behind him, to seek higher things, he was never slow in adopting it. Among his scholars, there were generally half-a-dozen or more young women—marriageable daughters of substantial men; and from this number he selected, courted, and espoused, some healthy, buxom girl, the heiress of a considerable plantation or a quantity of "wild land." He always sought these two requisites combined—for ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... shaved every morning, he purchased a crop-eared Welsh cob; and it was soon known in the neighbourhood that the only journey the cob was ever condemned to take was to the house of a certain squire, who, amidst a family of all ages, boasted two very pretty marriageable daughters. That was the second holy day-time of poor Caleb —the love-romance of his life: it soon closed. On learning the amount of the pastor's stipend the squire refused to receive his addresses; and, shortly after, the girl to whom he had attached himself made what the world ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thin, for eighteen years she had lived with her youngest sister, who had married very early and now possessed five children: two young ladies of marriageable age, a third still in short dresses, and ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... has set his affection on a young lady,—that is, his real affection,—he ought to stick to it,—or die." Mr. Littlebird, who was the happy father of three or four married and marriageable daughters, opened his eyes with surprise. The young men who had come after his young ladies had been pressing enough, but they had not died. "Or die!" repeated Tribbledale. "It is what I should have done. Had she become Mrs. ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... enters with a policeman whom he orders to bind the prisoner and guard him. More disguises are adopted by Euripides who succeeds at last in freeing his kinsman by pretending to be an old woman with a marriageable daughter whom the policeman can have at a price. When the latter goes to fetch the money Euripides ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... and England in its care for its womenfolk. French parents consider marriage the proper career for a woman, and with logical good sense set themselves from the day of a girl's birth to provide a dowry for her. When she is of a marriageable age they provide the husband. They will make great sacrifices to establish a daughter in prosperity, and they leave nothing to chance. We leave everything to chance, and the idea of marriage made by bargain and without love offends us. Such marriages are often enough made in England, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... it. Parents, proceeded she, when children are young, are pleased with every thing they do. You have been a good child upon the whole: but we have hitherto rather complied with you, than you with us. Now that you are grown up to marriageable years, is the test; especially as your grandfather has made you independent, as we may say, in preference to those who had prior ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the infants or by their parents were void, unless subsequently ratified by the contracting parties by word or deed,—at twelve the girls ceased to be children, and at fourteen the boys, and were then fully marriageable, as they are to-day in many parts of the world. Of childhood, Judge Swinburne says, "During this age, children cannot contract Matrimony de praesenti., but only de futuro"; but their spousals could readily be turned into actual marriages after the girls ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... probable that this vice is just as prevalent now. The scarcity of girls in nearly all the towns and villages and the exorbitant rates demanded for marriageable daughters in some districts, only render sad confirmation to what Drs. Abeel and Talmage wrote two score and ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... other class of life a marriageable uncle and aunt—sixty and forty respectively—would have accepted their condominium of the household that was left, it is not for the story to discuss. Uncle Moses refused to give up the two babies, and Aunt M'riar refused ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... thought of deception, or how soon the story would circulate through the house that he was a widower, and so he, as ex-governor of Iowa, and a man just in his prime, became an object of speculative interest to every marriageable woman there. He had no thought, no care for the ladies, though for the Miss Bigelow, whom his boots annoyed, he did feel a passing interest, and Ethie, whose ears seemed doubly sharp, heard him in his closet adjusting the thin-soled slippers, which made no sound upon ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... chance. And, above all, protect our American girls by preventing any pretty English, French, or German girls from coming in competition with them. These foreign girls bring their pretty faces here and glut the matrimonial market. The fewer the marriageable girls, the higher their market value. We protect iron-workers, and decline to protect our own daughters. This is an outrage. Shall we prevent the railroad companies from laying rails made of foreign iron, and permit husbands ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... said the man, "for my wife being dead and my daughter marriageable, she keeps house for me; and having a sweetheart betrothed a year ago she hath been laying aside plenishing gear and women's dainty gewgaws. So these I took one by one, beginning with a mirror of polished brass, and made as if I would dash them in pieces if she ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... it was nothing to laugh at, though!" remarked Lawless; "she'd have been regularly cooked, if Prank Fairlegh hadn't put her out when he did, and I should have been tried for 'Unjustifiable Girl-icide,' or 'Maliciously setting fire to a marriageable female,' or some such thing; and I daresay the young woman wasn't insured anywhere: I should have got into a pretty mess; it would have been a worse job ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... was rather excited. The truth was he had a Clara of his own at home—a dead sister's child—very pretty, just about marriageable, and a good deal resembling, as he told me afterwards, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... halls of learning—society must claim him for parties, balls, dinners, and the usual round. It was understood that his 'governor' was a man of substantial wealth; that Phillip would certainly be placed in an extensive farm, to play the pleasant part of a gentleman farmer. People with marriageable daughters looked upon the clever scholar as a desirable addition to their drawing-rooms. Phillip, in short, found himself by degrees involved in a whirl of festivities, and was never at a loss where to go ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... it is inconceivable that the Prophet should have brought forward a relation of impure love. In favour of "an unmarried person" is, in the first instance, the derivation. Being derived from [Hebrew: elM], "to grow up," "to become marriageable," [Hebrew: elmh] can denote nothing else than puella nubilis. But still more decisive is the usus loquendi. In Arabic and Syriac the corresponding words are never used of married women, and Jerome remarks, that in the Punic dialect also a virgin ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... "sort." She was wanting in distinction, but, as Isabel had said, she was brave: she went into cages, she flourished lashes, like a spangled lion-tamer. He had not supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words struck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of her conduct is ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... a father give a present to his daughter—either marriageable or a prostitute [unmarriageable]—and then die, then she is to receive a portion as a child from the paternal estate, and enjoy its usufruct so long as she lives. Her estate belongs ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... mortals, happy he, From business and the cares of money free! No human storms break off at land his sleep, No loud alarms of nature on the deep. From all the cheats of law he lives secure, Nor does th' affronts of palaces endure. Sometimes the beauteous marriageable vine He to the lusty bridegroom elm does join; Sometimes he lops the barren trees around, And grafts new life into the fruitful wound; Sometimes he shears his flock, and sometimes he Stores up the golden treasures of the bee. He sees ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... heaps of them," replied his aunt. "My cousin has a daughter who is just of the marriageable age, and as nice a girl as you could wish. Her people would be only too glad to secure you ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... the Mercians,'' the eldest child of Alfred the Great, was educated with her brother Edward at her father's court. As soon as she was of marriageable age (probably about A.D. 886), she was married to AEthelred, earl of Mercia to whom Alfred entrusted the control of Mercia. On the accession of her brother Edward, AEthelflaed and her husband continued to hold Mercia. In 907 they fortified Chester, and in 909 and 910 either AEthelflaed or her husband ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and the university are also coming to be thought a convenient place for rich fathers to dump their incorrigible sons and marriageable daughters for a few years. And in some sections these rich fathers are increasing in numbers at an alarming rate. The presence of all such people (they can not be called students) in various classes is a drag, and the wheels of ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... astonishing the number of visitors he had to receive, and cards and notes of invitation were showered upon him from people whose very existence he had previously never heard of, connections by marriage of the past generation crowded upon him, mothers with marriageable daughters invited him to their assemblies, young men of his own order sought to engage him in the various pursuits considered indispensable among those by whom he now found himself surrounded. When it became generally ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... the queen, after this confidential communication, "I do not understand why it is that you wish to marry this girl. I should think the nobility of our kingdom was not so poor in beautiful and marriageable ladies that a Count Rhedern should find it necessary to stoop so low in search of a wife. Look behind you, count, and you will see the loveliest ladies, all of whom are of ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... four millions of livres by way of reparation for the damage he had sustained, to assist him with a certain number of auxiliaries against all his enemies, and to effect a marriage between the duke of Burgundy and the princess of Piedmont, as soon as the parties should be marriageable. The treaty was guaranteed by the pope and the Venetians, who were extremely desirous of seeing the Germans driven out of Italy. King William being apprized of this negotiation, communicated the intelligence to the earl of Galway, his ambassador at Turin, who expostulated with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... in our hotel, Bobby, and thirteen of them have marriageable daughters. Imagine the creaking of casements, when Mr. Thayer warbled, 'Open the window to me, Love!' Troubadours will do for the country; in town, one can heed only the impersonal strains of the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... accounted for by the marriages occurring between persons of this class. I have seen more than fifty persons, all of mixed blood, descend from one couple, and these with the persons joined to them by marriages as they have come to marriageable age, amounted to over seventy souls—all in about a half century. That the slaves had, despite their fearful death rate, the manumissions and the escapes, increased twice as fast as the free colored people of the North, three times as fast as ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... whole of them; bear witness, O ye New Year's doings I have there seen. Visiting your friends, and your friends' friends. Open houses every where! "Drop in and take a glass of wine or bit of cake, if nothing else"—that's the word. Jeremy Diddlers flourish, marriageable daughters and interesting widows set their caps for the nice young men, the streets are noisy and full of confusion, the theatres and show-shops generally reap an elegant harvest, and the police reports of ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Heinz, listening intently. "The Fs," explained the ex-pedagogue, "are the four letters which marriageable knights should consider. They are: Family, figure, favour, and fortune. But hold your cap on! What a hot blast this is, as if the storm were coming straight from the jaws of hell. And the dust! Where did all these withered leaves come from in the month of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dear friends and brethren in this vale of tears—did you ever see anything so curious and monstrous and annoying as the way in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable!—The Newcomes. ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... house in the West had been searched for its marriageable females. At one time a daughter of the Doge of Venice was nearly chosen. Unfortunately there were influential Greeks of greater pride than judgment to object to the Doge. He was merely an elective chief. He might die the very day after celebrating ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... calmly and easily enough. There are at least two marriageable dukes in the market, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Finshriber, how for a woman her age she snaps her black eyes at him. It ain't hard to guess when a woman's got a marriageable daughter—not?" ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... several marriageable daughters, is constantly on the lookout for unwary young men, ignoring the fact of their want of brains, lack of breeding, and wholly regardless of the fact that they have no "family" connections, but ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... through arrogance, or shyness, or simply because of his unimaginative stupidity, remaining outside the social pale, knowing no one but some card-playing cronies; I can picture him to myself terrified at the prospect of having the care of a marriageable girl thrust on his hands, forcing on him a complete change of habits and the necessity of another kind of existence which he would not even have known how to begin. It is evident to me that Mrs What's her name would have had her ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of obviously home manufacture never were seen in one company. The married ladies whispered scandal behind their fans, and in a Christian spirit shot out the lip of scorn at their social enemies; the young maidens sought for marriageable men, and lurked in darkish corners for the better ensnaring of impressionable males. Cupid unseen mingled in the throng and shot his arrows right and left, not always with the best result, as many post-nuptial experiences showed. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Clinton," said Hycy, with another smirk, "that won't pass. Is it not laid down by the philosophers that you think of little else from the time you are marriageable?" ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... this evil occurs in connection with the living-in system which is imposed by a good many big shops on their employees. I used to know a number of young men of marriageable age who were housed in a great and bare sort of barracks and given in addition a wage that was only enough to provide dress and necessary etceteras. If, desiring to marry, they said that they wished to live out and to receive the equivalent ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... and in wit and wisdom far excelled all the maidens of her own age in every land. She was brought up with the Princes her cousins in all joyance; and they ate together and played together and slept together; and the king had determined in his mind that when she reached marriageable age he would give her in wedlock to some one of the neighbouring royalties; but, when she came to years of discretion, her uncle perceived that the three Princes his sons were all three deep in love of her, and each ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... is by far the most poignant of the whole. I therefore surrendered myself freely to the soft allurements thrown in my way by such matronly denizens of Glasgow as were possessed of stock in the shape of marriageable daughters; and walked the more readily into their toils because every party, though nominally for the purposes of tea, wound up with a hot supper, and something hotter still by way of assisting ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... wondered whose eyesight had been strained over those marvellous carnations, but to-night she did not give them a thought. She looked with grave dissatisfaction at her pale, nondescript face and nondescript hair and eyes. She did not know that only women with marriageable daughters saw her as she saw herself in ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... him, the elegance of his movements, the great air, blending in so extraordinary a manner disdain and graciousness, Andre-Louis trembled for Aline. Here was a practised, irresistible wooer, whose bonnes fortunes were become a by-word, a man who had hitherto been the despair of dowagers with marriageable daughters, and the desolation of husbands ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... five sisters, I believe, Lady Aline? [ALINE stops short.] All younger than yourself, all marriageable, and all unmarried? ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... regarded her as his affianced wife, and could see no reason for further mystery. She understood his impatience to have their plans settled; it would protect him from the formidable menace of the marriageable, and cause people, as he said, to stop meddling. Now that the novelty of his situation was wearing off, his natural indolence reasserted itself, and there was nothing he dreaded more than having to be on his guard against the innumerable plans that his ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... to say that she had sought to bring about this DENOUEMENT? Rather, it seems that her efforts were commendable. She was a young woman of marriageable age. She believed her her mission in life was marriage to some man who would make her a good husband, and whom she would in turn love, honor, and strive to make happy. Harry Glen's family was the equal of her's in social station, and a little above it in ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... blindness of idolatry, a wicked custom is used; for no man there marrieth a wife that is a virgin; whereupon, when travellers and strangers, coming from other places, pass through this country and pitch their pavilions, the women of that place having marriageable daughters, bring them unto strangers, desiring them to take them and enjoy their company as long as they remain there. Thus the handsomest are chosen, and the rest return home sorrowful, and when ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... was Beatrice's first great triumph in the face of her enemies. They were all there and all armed to the teeth with spite and envy. There was, for instance, Mrs. Berry with her marriageable if somewhat plain daughter, and many more women besides to whom the beautiful girl was of necessity an unforgivable opponent. The more the men laughed at her quick and occasionally rather pointed observations, the more an obvious admiration shone out of their criticisms, the more determined ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... safe foundation for the home is beginning to take root in Japan. This changing ideal is bringing marked social changes. In some churches an introduction committee is appointed whose special function is to introduce marriageable persons and to hold social meetings where the young people may become acquainted. Here an important evolution in the social order is taking place before our eyes, but not a few of the world's wise men are too exalted ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... restrained empressement of his reception, pounced on the young man, taming her ways and gestures to what she supposed to be his English prudery, and produced an immediate effect upon him. Lord Magellan, who was only dumb with English marriageable girls, allowed himself to be amused, and threw himself into a low chair by the actress—a capture apparently ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no class. There were very few ladies at Hong Kong at this time, and of what class they were composed of may be imagined, when I state that a shopkeeper's sister was the belle of the place, and received all the homage of the marriageable men of Hong Kong. Hospitality to strangers is as yet unknown, and a letter of introduction is only good for one tiffin, or more rarely one dinner. I made several excursions in the country, but did not find any thing worth narrating, or describing ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper with the bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen in the "Spectator" has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the last six years." The famous letter describing the figure, the dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is supposed to be written by a girl of thirteen, "willing to settle in the world as soon as she can." She adds, "I have a good portion which they cannot hinder ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... them, and Mrs. Honoria and the senator, Gantry, Gordon and his wife, and the two Weatherfords, with one of the marriageable daughters, were at the cafe door waiting for the laggards. Being in no proper frame of mind to enjoy a theatre supper with another Weatherford attack as the possible penalty, Blount reluctantly surrendered Patricia to Gantry, made ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Among those aristocratic families with which he had frequent intercourse was one in which there was a young girl, an orphan and an heiress. She was beautiful and intellectual, like Countess Diodora, and competition for her hand was naturally high among the young and old bachelors, and marriageable men of their set. Singularly enough, the young stranger, who never thought of such good fortune, at last felt compelled to believe that the open preference the lady showed him was more than common courtesy, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Alice! Balls, parties, receptions there would be, and trips to the seashore and all the other society manoeuvers, made ostensibly to introduce Alice to the world; but if the truth were told in cold blood all this was simply a parading of the girl before a number of rich and marriageable men. Poor Harry Brandeth! ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... at them from time to time; he was amazed and indignant that Mrs. Liddell could attend to any one save himself. He was rather unfortunately placed between Miss Burnett, whose attention was taken up by Sir Ralph Brereton, a marriageable baronet, who sat on her other side, and Lady Alice Mordaunt, a timid, colorless, but graceful girl, still in the school-room, who scarcely spoke at all, and if she did, always to her right-hand neighbor, a stately-looking man with grave dark eyes, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... trouble to get a start, for Andy Bridges had come up from the ranks and hadn't forgotten it—most of 'em do—and welcomed any decent young man in his house, even if he was a car hand. Madelene had a couple of marriageable cousins then and that may account ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... thither the mothers and their marriageable daughters, all tricked out with their dowries ready in the shape of strings of gold and silver coins round their necks, with bright variegated garments at their horses' sides, and stuffed pillows and painted pitchers ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... a short hour's ride, "An impecunious old lady lived, two marriageable and impecunious daughters beside, "Whom Bluebeard had seen and at love's highest pitch "Sent to say he would marry, he didn't care which! "Sent to say he would marry, he didn't ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... see Constance and Sophia subject to this parental rule. They take castor oil when they are bidden. They do not leave the house without the sanction of Mrs. Baines. They must not, needless to say, realise the fact that marriageable young men are real facts. They must pay attention to the shop, preserving a proper distance from the assistants. They must be careful that Maggie, the servant, does not overhear familiar conversations. They ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... was a town called Atpat. In It there lived a Brahman. He had seven daughters, and when they had reached a marriageable age he asked them who would arrange their marriages and bring them handsome husbands and make their fortunes. The six eldest daughters said, "Papa, Papa, you of course. You will arrange our marriages and bring us handsome husbands and make our fortunes for us." But the ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... quite used to being warned by Ellen from philandering if she so much as talked five minutes to any marriageable man under eighty or over eighteen. She had always laughed at the warning with unfeigned amusement. This time it did not amuse her—it irritated her a ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... say of an age of prose and prudence? Yet you don't look cold-blooded. What does money matter? Dominus providebit. Go read Browning. What's 'the true end, sole and single' that we're here for? Besides, have you never heard that there are such things as marriageable ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... iv. 4. 10. 'In the second Punic war Gnaeus Scipio wrote to the senate from Spain, begging that he might be replaced in his command. For his daughter was now of marriageable age, but could not be provided with a dowry during his ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... seemed to him that Stefan had been his choice from the first and when one of his councilors remarked: "Then, Your Majesty, there's no use sending word to the neighboring kings that the Princess has reached a marriageable age and would like to look over their sons," the Tsar flew into an ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... illegible, but who is styled ... Earl ... Katanay, ... Comite ... Katanay, and a confident opinion is expressed in a note to the citation that the witness was Magnus, Earl of Caithness. Now, Earl John's daughter was taken as a hostage on August 1, 1214, and, if she was then marriageable and was married at once, her eldest child could have been born about May 1215, and would attain twenty-one about May 1236, but to suppose her son of the name of Magnus to have been the ward for whom the Earldom of Caithness was being kept till 7th July 1235 from 1232 and that he ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined them: for their maxim is that, among people of quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... still a bachelor? To wonder what untold disappointment, what unwritten history of sorrow, has left me the lonely, brooding celibate you see? I 'll lift the veil—a moment of epanchement. It's because I 've never met a marriageable woman who had n't her noddle stuffed with curling-irons and fashion-plates and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... think Of all the bitter passages of fate That must attend you amongst men. For where Can ye find fellowship, what civic throng Shall ye resort unto, what festival, From whence, instead of sight or sound enjoyed, Ye will not come in tears unto your home? And when ye reach the marriageable bloom, My daughters, who will be the man to cast His lot with yours, receiving for his own All those reproaches which have marred the name Of both my parents and your name no less? What evil is not here? Your father slew ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... sufficient to have set him apart from all the other males of Oakdale. He was widely travelled, had an independent fortune, and was far from unhandsome. For years he had been the hope and despair of every Oakdale mother with marriageable daughters. The Oakdale fathers, however, had not been so keen about Reginald. Men usually know more about the morals of men than do women. There were those who, if pressed, would have conceded that ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nature, seemed as merry and well-pleased as though Sheldon had fallen in love with her, instead of Annie Evalyn; for it began to be whispered in the upper circles that "Dr. Prague's pretty governess had captivated the fascinating Sheldon." Many ugly grimaces distorted the proper faces of marriageable daughters; and captious, ill-natured remarks were indulged in by disappointed maidens, who had beggared their fathers' pockets to purchase silks and satins, jewels and diamonds, to carry by storm the heart of the elegant, accomplished ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... son of King Gustavus, grew in due course of time to marriageable age and, as young men will, began to look about for a wife. His thoughts first turned towards the Princess Elizabeth, of England, then in the height of her youthful charms, of which exaggerated accounts were brought to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... attraction toward women, though it was never strong. At the age of 26 he was seduced by a woman and had connection with her once. Afterward he had reason to think she had played him false in various ways. This induced the strongest antipathy, not only to this woman, but to all marriageable women. A year after this episode homosexual feeling first became clear and defined. He is now 33, and feels the same antipathy to women; he hates even ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... should have fixed upon a boy rather than a girl; that it was notorious to all, that his wife had herself nursed this daughter; and that it was surprising such a claim should be made after a fifteen years' silence; and not till Virginia was become marriageable, and acknowledged to be exquisitely beautiful. 19. While the father spoke this, with a stern air, the eyes of all were turned on Virgin'ia, who stood trembling, with looks of persuasive eloquence and ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Mademoiselle Steno warns her that she is compromised, more than a marriageable young girl should be, in playing, with regard to M. Maitland the role she has already played with regard to M. Goyka. There are conditions of blindness so ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... table-d'hotes; he made acquaintances heedlessly; he sought society, with no result but that of increasing his expenditures. Walking along the boulevards, he often suffered deeply at the sight of a mother walking with a marriageable daughter,—a sight which caused him as painful an emotion as he formerly felt when a young man passed him riding to the Bois, or driving in an elegant equipage. The sense of his impotence told him ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... subordination to himself, the girl was as simply a child as any in the world,—good-hearted, tender, and sweet, and, as he could see, without tendency to flirtation. Take her in another way, confront her with a young and marriageable man, and Elmore greatly feared that she unconsciously set all her beauty and grace at work to charm him; another life seemed to inform her, and irradiate from her, apart from which she existed simple and childlike still. In the security of his own deposited affections, it appeared to him ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... Greek curiosity, such as the sick persons exposed at street-corners in order that they might beg the passers-by to prescribe for them, the prostitution of her votaries within the courts of the goddess Mylitta, and the disposal of marriageable girls by auction: Herodotus, however, regretted that this latter custom had fallen into abeyance. And yet to the attentive eye of a close observer even Babylon must have furnished many unmistakable symptoms ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... she is very well. The concert that evening pleased me exceedingly. Thank heaven that so good a fashion has found entrance among us. In this way we have a perfect bazaar for the marriageable girls, for had not this concert taken place where would you two have found an opportunity to make each other's acquaintance? Where else could you have caught sight ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... impossible, to put down the system. It may be that slavery as it exists in the houses of the better classes in Hong Kong is mild, and that custom among the better classes renders servitude to them a boon as long as it lasts. It is, I believe, an admitted duty that when the young girl grows up and becomes marriageable she is married; but then it is the custom that the husband buys her, and her master receives the price always paid for a wife, whilst he has received the girl's services for simple maintenance; so that, ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell |
