"Widowhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... estate, which, upon the death of its owner, had become the joint property of Adele and her brothers; and Frau von Trautenau had resided there since her widowhood, and proposed to continue doing so until one of her sons should buy his sister's and brother's portion and assume the management of it. The relations between Frau von Trautenau and her step-son had always been of the most happy and agreeable ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... been many days in her widowhood, when Biddy asked her to drive into the town, where Biddy had to do a little shopping—that great business of ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... where the only news that she heard of him was, that he had been killed in a duel with her ruthless father. She had mourned for him in secret, without hope and without sympathy, and before the first year of her widowhood had passed—a widowhood she had been sternly forbidden by her father either to bewail or even to acknowledge—she had been driven by a series of unprecedented persecutions to give her hand where she could not give ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... a widow, yet only eleven years old! The shadow—nay, the curse—of widowhood had hung over little Sita ever since she remembered anything. The little brown girl often wondered why other little girls living near her had such happy, merry times while she knew only drudgery and ill treatment from morning until night. One day when six of the weary years had passed, and she was ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... with that doubtless there had reached her some feeling of satisfaction. Religion too had given her comfort, and a routine of small duties had saved her from the wretchedness of ennui. But life with her had had no laughter, and had seldom smiled. Now in the first days of her widowhood she regarded her course as run, and looked upon herself as one who, in speaking, almost spoke from the tomb. All this had its effect upon the young lord. She did inspire him with a certain awe; and though her weeds gave her no authority, ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... Scorn, Despite Rush, Docility Rye-grass, 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
... that, hearing of your arrival, they have come thither in the name of themselves, and the other eleven ladies of his late highness's harem, to know when it will be your princely pleasure to bid them cast aside the sombre weeds of widowhood, and——" ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... 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 ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... himself up in a cocoon; and while the metamorphosis was in process of development he had ample time to study Hamlet's soliloquy. It would mean a divorce from everything he held dear; a parting with his very soul. It would mean the most sorrowful widowhood that could be imposed on man. It would be equivalent to leaving this earth and taking up his abode in Mars. He must sacrifice his love for the creek and the trail. He must renounce his freedom and go into social slavery. It was the emerging from the woods into the prairie; the coming from ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... faded but still handsome woman. Yet she wore that peculiar long, limp, formless house-shawl which in certain phases of Anglo-Saxon spinster and widowhood assumes the functions of the recluse's veil and announces the renunciation of worldly vanities and a resigned indifference to external feminine contour. The most audacious masculine arm would shrink from clasping that shapeless void in which the flatness of asceticism or ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... out for the Holy land. Ten years elapsed, and, as no tidings reached his wife of his whereabouts, it was generally supposed that he had perished in some religious crusade. Taking it for granted, therefore, that he was dead, his wife Mabel did not abandon herself to a life of solitary widowhood, but accepted an offer of marriage from a Welsh knight. But, not very long afterwards, Sir William Bradshaigh returned from his prolonged sojourn in the Holy land, and, disguised as a palmer, he visited his own castle, where he took his ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... strongly with his plump and comfortable physiognomy. She was dressed in a tattered black stuff gown, discoloured by various stains, and intended, it would seem, from the remnants of rusty crape with which it was here and there tricked out, to represent the garb of widowhood, and held in her arms a sleeping infant, swathed in the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... expressing her wish that she might be mistaken, as she wished them well—God knows she bore them no ill-will, etc. She entered the drawing-room at Beech Park with a countenance cast to a totally different expression from that with which she had greeted Lady Matilda Sufton's widowhood. Melancholy would there have been appropriate, here it was insulting; and accordingly, with downcast eyes, and silent pressures of the hand, she saluted every member of the family, and inquired after their healths with that air of anxious solicitude which implied that if they were ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... intimacy, in whom the qualities of administrator and politician overlay the detachment of sensitive reflection, she came to judge men and events by principles drawn from deep feelings and wide surveys; and in the long years of her widowhood, possessing still great natural vitality and vivacity of feeling, she continued open to the influences of an altered time, delighting and astonishing many who might have expected to find between her and them the ghostly ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... thronged with courtiers whose horses were pacing and prancing to and fro. The carriages were filled with young and beautiful women, who awaited the opportunity of saluting, as she passed, the daughter of that daughter of France who, during her widowhood and exile, had sometimes gone without wood for her fire, and bread for her table, whom the meanest attendant at the chateau had treated with indifference and contempt. And so, the Madame Henriette once more returned ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... robes, crying and howling likewise: and they brought with them the Olive boughs wherewith the three slaine bodies were covered on the Beere, and cried out in this manner: O right Judges, we pray by the justice and humanity which is in you, to have mercy upon these slaine persons, and succour our Widowhood and losse of our deare husbands, and especially this poore infant, who is now an Orphan, and deprived of all good fortune: and execute your justice by order and law, upon the bloud of this Theefe, who is the occasion of all our sorrowes. When they had spoken these words, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... little girl ran back, put some more alms before the mendicant, and again prostrating herself asked for his blessing. Once more he said, "Observe the precepts of religion," Then Dhanvanti asked him why he gave her daughter such a strange blessing. The mendicant replied, "Because widowhood will come upon her immediately after her marriage," Dhanvanti threw herself before the Brahman and grasped his feet and cried, weeping, "Tell me how I may escape this evil; what shall I do to save my one little girl ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... This woman who hardly concerned herself at all about her son, allowing him to grow up badly enough and committing all her maternal duties to the grandmother, was perpetually cheerful, notwithstanding that her life had been chequered by chance and her widowhood of sufficiently dramatic character, as was said. She endeavored to play the part of an adviser, an intimate friend to Adrienne. She frequently said to Madame Gerson, who rarely left her, that Madame Vaudrey would be altogether charming ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... allowing as impartially as his state of mind permitted for the fact that, with her mother-in-law always, and her stepson intermittently, under her roof, her lot involved a hundred small accommodations generally foreign to the freedom of widowhood—even so, he could not but think that the very ingenuity bred of such conditions might have helped her to find a way out of them. No, her "reason", whatever it was, could, in this case, be nothing but a pretext; unless he leaned to the less flattering alternative that any ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... her majesty is marked by three great stages—her youth, her married life, and her widowhood. Each is bound to each by the tie of a consistent growth, passing through those experiences which are typical of God's education of His children, whether high or low, rich ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... next pair of arms—her eyes are closed. She has so much to make up for! And who so innocent as she? She does not once realize that she is robbing others of their pleasure. Is she suffering from vertigo or St. Vitus's dance, in her widowhood? ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... dear! it be like the devil come into the world again." Mrs. Berry struck her hands and moaned. "A day I'll give ye: I'll go so far as a week: but there's the outside. Three months dwellin' apart! That's not matrimony, it's divorcin'! what can it be to her but widowhood? widowhood with no cap to show for it! And what can it be to you, my dear? Think! you been a bachelor three months! and a bachelor man," Mrs. Berry shook her head most dolefully, "he ain't widow woman. I don't go to compare you to Berry, my dear young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she mourned As widowhood mourneth, is past: Her heart leaps for her husband returned From his garrison far-off at last? Ah, no! For this woman forlorn Love is dead, she has felt him depart: With far other thoughts she is torn, Far other ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... municipal government, and in her laws concerning the taxation of land and the distribution of personal and real estate. Old customs she left to be handed down to those who should sit in her sons' places,—the luctus of widows, who for a full year of widowhood might not wed again; the names of her deities she gave to the days of the planetary week. Her superstitions and folk-lore, deep-rooted, survived and lingered long among many nations: the old sorcery of the waxen image of an enemy transfixed ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... went sadly to the window. Her eyes, full of self-pity, gazed with unwonted indifference at the passers-by. How thankful she would have been to have Mr. Delarayne at her side at this critical moment in her life. There were times when she was not unappreciative of the many advantages of widowhood; but this was not precisely the moment when the bright side of her peculiar situation seemed to be conspicuous. With Leonetta home for good, and Cleo still unmarried, she felt the need of help and advice; and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... If the owner of a homestead die, leaving a widow, but no children, the same shall be exempt from the debts of her husband, and the rents and profits thereof shall inure to her benefit during her widowhood, unless she be the owner of a homestead ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... 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 she went forth with her maid out of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... twenty Years; however, Aldrovandus tells us of a Pigeon, which continued alive two and twenty Years, and bred all that time except the last six Months, during which space it had lost its Mate, and lived in Widowhood. There is a remarkable Particular mention'd by Aldrovandus relating to the Pigeon, which is, that the young Pigeons always bill the Hens as often as they tread them, but the elder Pigeons only bill the Hens ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... word I never think of such gloomy subjects as provisions for widowhood," cried Lady Mosely: "you have been in Annerdale House—is it ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... emancipation of the Spanish colonies, he does without it, in spite of the opposition of the mother-country, and, "without putting himself in relation with the new governments,[5209] he, acting for himself, "that he may put an end to the widowhood of the Churches," appoints bishops, assigns them a provisional regime in anticipation of the epoch when, in concert with better founded governments, he will decree their definitive regime. In this way, all the great existing churches of the Catholic universe are the work of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... felt the shock the more keenly." Thus the local gabble of the acquaintances and friends of the pretty widow. And she laughed softly to herself that she couldn't feel overwhelmed with grief at her widowhood. "He hadn't a thought above making money," she said to herself—oh, Nell Liardet, for whom did he desire to make it!—"and yet never could make it." And then she thought of Russell, and smiled again. His hand had trembled when it held hers. Surely he did not come so often to see her merely ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... laid siege to it. So determined were the inhabitants to hold out, that they killed their wives and children in order that the provisions might last longer, and thus they fulfilled what Isaiah had foretold—that in one day the loss of children and widowhood would come on them. The place was at last betrayed by a friend of Darius, who cut off his own nose and ears, and showed himself bleeding, at the gates, pretending the king had done him this cruel injury. The Babylonians received and trusted him, and he soon opened ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... as more certainly and evident near at an advanced age. Anna, after the lapse of a century, had greater reason, surely, to apprehend her dissolution, than in the bloom of youth, or at the commencement of her widowhood; and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... 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 ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... and aggressively healthy offspring, were always in evidence. And there was Mrs. Larrabbee. What between wealth and youth, independence and initiative, a widowhood now emerged from a mourning unexceptionable, an elegance so unobtrusive as to border on mystery, she never failed to agitate any atmosphere she entered, even that of prayer. From time to time, Hodder himself was uncomfortably ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... father and husband had taken so little account, which had been of so little profit to her so far in her course through circumstance, had come to her aid. The names and lists of the books that had passed through her hands, during those silent years of her widowhood, lived beside her stern old father, would astonish even Manisty were she to try and give some account of them. And first she had read merely to fill the hours, to dull memory. But gradually there had sprung up in her that inner sweetness, that gentle restoring ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... characters the details of the early training of William Carey. He was the eldest of five children. He was the special care of their grandmother, a woman of a delicate nature and devout habits, who closed her sad widowhood in the weaver-son's cottage. Encompassed by such a living influence the grandson spent his first six years. Already the child unconsciously showed the eager thirst for knowledge, and perseverance in attaining his object, which made him chiefly what he became. His mother would ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Indians, which left me a widow ere I was a mother, that my dear mother's health broke. She never recovered her terror and anxiety of those days which ended so fatally for me, then a bride scarce six months married, and died in my father's arms ere my own year of widowhood was over. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... satisfaction Mrs. Waugh got from Old Nick, when she had related to him the sorrowful story of Edith's widowhood and return, and had appealed to his generosity in her behalf. But he unbent so far as to allow Edith and Marian to be installed at Mrs. L'Oiseau's cottage, and even grudgingly permitted Henrietta to ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... it is a square piece of marble lying flat on the floor, and a quantity of withered wreaths and faded ribbons piled up on it. They are the souvenirs of the late President's funeral. Madame Carnot, a most charming lady, wears a long black veil as in the first days of her widowhood, and receives in ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... days were spent in retirement, among her beloved books and pictures and cats; until, after thirty years of widowhood, full of years and wearied of life's vanities, she was laid to rest in her ducal robes in Westminster Abbey. The bulk of her enormous fortune went to her nephew, Lord Blantyre, with a direction that he should purchase with part of it an estate, to be ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... his eyes on his Mother's face—that face so full of intelligence and the mild sorrow of years of widowhood, borne with resigned patience. Her eyes were full of tears, and there was not a smile on her countenance. Joachim's conscience—he knew not why—twinged him terribly. He ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... 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 of it: the whole of his unentailed ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... society, compelled by her widowhood to manage her own affairs, it was wonderful to Rimrock how much she knew of the intricacies of the stock market and of the Exchange. There was not a financier or a broker of note that she did not know by name, and the complex ways by which they ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... "My beloved is mine, and I am His!" If so, great, unspeakably great, are the glories which await thee! Thy dowry, as the bride of Christ, is all that Omnipotence can bestow, and all that a feeble creature can receive. In the prospect of those glorious nuptials, thou needest dread no pang of widowhood. What God has joined together, no created power can take asunder; He betroths thee, and it is ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... nun, but, on his advice, retained her secular estate and ministered to the needs of the poor. But instances occur in which vowesses retired from the world and its cares. Elfleda, niece of King Athelstan, having resolved to pass the remainder of her days in widowhood, fixed her abode in Glastonbury Abbey; and as late as July 23, 1527, leave was granted to the Prioress of Dartford to receive "any well-born matron widow, of good repute, to dwell perpetually in the ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... you it is different. You have now decided to live for Dick, and let your waist measure look after itself; but I have larger aims and fewer years than you, dearest. My conception of self-respecting widowhood is to be as young as possible, as attractive as possible, as rich as possible, and eventually to read my title clear to (at least) a baronet, and have a castle in a good hunting county. There are difficulties in my upward way, yet ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... same time my health and humors being evidently so, the Dowager Lady Ashburton (not the high Lady you saw, but a Successor of Mackenzie-Highland type), who wanders mostly about the Continent since her widowhood, for the sake of a child's health, began pressing and inviting me to spend the blade months of Winter here in her Villa with her;—all friends warmly seconding and urging; by one of whom I was at last snatched off, as if by the hair of the head, (in spite of my violent No, no!) on the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... an air of fixed dejection. The other, though far her elder in years, still beautiful,—with her long silver hair, blanched by sorrow, not by time, hanging over her shoulders; and wearing, as if in mockery of her unconscious widowhood, the gaudy and embroidered raiment to which a glimmering remembrance of happier times appeared to attach her—that vacant smile and wandering glance of insanity lending at times a terrible brilliancy to her features. But for ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... careless childhood 'scaped the wound:" Then she that seemed the saddest added thus: "Stranger! this forest is no roof of joy, Nor we the only mourners; neither fall Bitterer the widow's nor the orphan's tears Now than of old; nor sharper than long since That loss which maketh maiden widowhood. In childhood first our sorrow came. One eve Within our foster-parents' low-roofed house The winter sunset from our bed had waned: I slept, and sleeping dreamed. Beside the bed There stood a lovely Lady crowned with stars; A sword went through her heart. Down from ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... been unusually interested in the young editor she knew from the first; that she had been mortally wounded by Cupid's shaft she only now discovered. She had passed through a divorce, two "affairs" and a legitimate widowhood, without feeling any of the keen emotions which now drove sleep from her eyes. A long time ago, longer than she cared to remember, she had experienced such emotions, but she had supposed such folly only possible in the high ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... that had grown in a night; kneeling against the sloping pillow, her face buried in the white sheets, was a woman whose fair hair fell neglected about her shoulders, ready to fall under the shears of eternal widowhood; a priest, too, and a nun stood absorbed in meditation in that atmosphere of the death vigil, wherein the weariness of sleepless nights is blended with the mumbling of prayers and whispering in ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 best ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... unlucky, for she might not wed again so soon after her widowhood, and he was under orders for the war, and had no permission for such dalliance from his master, the King of Castille. So he sailed away towards Harfleur, after many protestations of affection on each side, during an eclipse of the sun which came on as he ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... portrait of his future brother-in-law: "He is somewhat taller than Surville; his features are quite ordinary, neither homely nor handsome; his mouth is widowed of the upper teeth, and there is no reason for assuming that it will contract a second marriage, since mother nature forbids it; this widowhood ages him considerably, but on the whole he is not so bad—as husbands go. He writes poetry, he is a marvellous shot; if he fires twenty times, he brings down not less than twenty-six victims! He has ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... was Mrs Garlick's. A miser, she was not the ordinary miser, being exceptional in the fact that her temperament was joyous. She had reached the thirtieth year of her widowhood and the sixtieth of her age, with cheerfulness unimpaired. The people of Bursley, when they met her sometimes of a morning coming down into the town from her singular house up at Toft End, would be conscious of pleasure in her brisk gait, her slightly malicious but broad-minded ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... two surviving children, three of the family dying infants, leaving only my sister Grace and myself to console our mother in her widowhood. The dire accident which placed her in this, the saddest of all conditions for a woman who had been a happy wife, occurred in the year 1794, when I was in my thirteenth year, and Grace was turned of eleven. It may be well ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... ever. Michael did not need a second invitation. The eagerness with which he listened to the first was a true joy for Abraham. Margaret, be it understood, had not invited Michael. The first year of her widowhood was drawing to a close, and she had resolved at length to remove from the retreat in which she had been so long hidden from mankind. Her youthful spirits had rebounded—were once more buoyant—solitude had done its work—the physician was no longer needed. That she might gradually approach ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... animal she was superb! I looked again into her healthy face and speaking eyes, with their bitter knowledge of good and evil, their scorn of scorn, their redeeming honesty and candour. The contrast was complete in every detail except the widowhood of both women; but I did not pursue it any farther; for once more there was but one woman in my thoughts, and she sat near me under a red parasol—clashing so ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... compromise she had hoped to establish in matters of worship became hourly less possible as the more earnest Catholics discerned the Protestant drift of Elizabeth's policy. But Philip still held them back from any open resistance. There was much indeed to move him from his old support of the Queen. The widowhood of Mary Stuart freed him from his dread of a permanent annexation of Scotland by France as well as of a French annexation of England, while the need of holding England as a check on French hostility to the House of Austria ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... widowed ivy shines: Torn from its dear and only stay, In drooping widowhood it pines, And scatters ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... as that thought flashed through my mind. Yes, she presented a picture of sweet and interesting widowhood. In her voice, as in her countenance, was just that slight touch of grief which told me plainly that she was a heart-broken, remorseful woman—a woman, like many another, who knew not the value of a tender, honest and indulgent husband until he had been snatched from her. Mother ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... I 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
... offers to go.] Stay, Sir, and tell me Is this the outcome of your 'father's care'? Was it not enough to poison all my joys With foulest scruples?—show me nameless sins, Where I, unconscious babe, blessed God for all things, But you must thus intrigue away my knight And plunge me down this gulf of widowhood! And I not twenty yet—a girl—an orphan— That cannot stand alone! Was I too happy? O God! what lawful bliss do I not buy And balance with the smart of some sharp penance? Hast thou no pity? None? Thou drivest me To fiendish ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... truly Christian spirit Elsie returned them pity and compassion, because of their widowhood and straitened circumstances, invited them to her house, and when they came received them with kindness ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... been serving-woman to the lady, who in widowhood went to reside at Bristol, and there during her marketings, honest John Kenton had won ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... For it was thus," he adds, "that from the moment she became a widow, I always saw her with her pale hue, as long as I had the honour of seeing her in France, and Scotland, where she had to go in eighteen months' time, to her very great regret, after her widowhood, to pacify her kingdom, greatly divided by religious troubles. Alas! she had neither the wish nor the will for it, and I have often heard her say so, with a fear of this journey like death; for she preferred a hundred times to dwell in France ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the great and growing city, and a few years back had been united in marriage to the admiration of his early school days,—Almira Prendergast, who, disdaining him in the early 50's and wedding the youth of her choice, was overwhelmed with joy to find in the days of want and widowhood, fifteen years later, that Barnard had been faithful to his ideal, had remained single for her sake, and so at last had she consented to accept him and the control of his household. A pew in the "First Presbyterian" had been for years his habitual resort ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... 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 ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... the women to do these penances is the desire to make them eager to care for the comfort and welfare of their husbands lest the latter die and they thus bring upon themselves the discomforts arid terrors of widowhood. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Mrs. De Peyster, then in the fifth year of her widowhood, had graciously undertaken to manage and underwrite the debut of her second cousin (not of the main line, be it said) and had tried to discharge her duty in the important matter of securing her a husband. But her ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... of an engraver's desk to encroaching upon the small family store. He was articled to his uncle, Mr. Sands, and subsequently was transferred to one of the Le Keux. He was a most devoted and excellent son to his mother, and the last days of her widowhood and decline were soothed by his tender care and affection. An opening that offered more congenial employment presented itself at last, when he was about the age of twenty-one. By the death of Mr. John Scott, the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 the part ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... thus 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 Tarbes. ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... that she was more excited than my arrival ordinarily made her. There were tears in her smiling eyes, and she was as nervous as a young girl. She did indeed look remarkably young for a woman of forty-five, with twenty-five years of widowhood and a brief but too tempestuous married ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... probably, indicate the speaker's widowhood, Which left her like 'a boat floating ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... Mickleham, February 29, 1793 Have you not begun, dearest sir, to give me up as a lost sheep? Susanna's temporary widowhood, however, has tempted me on, and spelled me with a spell I know not how to break. It is long, long since we have passed any time so completely together; her three lovely children only knit us the closer. The widowhood, however, we expect now quickly to expire, and I had ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... idea 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; ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... some satisfaction 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 ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... 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 from preventible disease, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... she had a system of education, the theory of which was excellent; but there was little consistency in its practice. As regards money-matters, she talked and thought so much about economy, that she took it for granted that she practised it. After having passed the first years of her widowhood with her own family in Baltimore, she had lately become convinced that her income was not sufficient to allow her living in a large town, without running in debt. Mr. Wyllys was unfortunately too well aware that his daughter-in-law's difficulties were not the result of Baltimore prices, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... have spoken earlier in your widowhood than you approve, and it displeases you, I hope you will believe that I have always thought of you as a wife to be admired above ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... 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. It may be that Laura loves him, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... 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 not ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... you would have saved me from it, Marius," she answered him, her eyes seeming to gaze down into the depths of his. "At La Vauvraye I had hoped to live out my widowhood in tranquil dignity. But—" She let her arms fall sharply to her sides, and uttered a ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... have said that," said Bones in the vernacular, "and their widows are wives again and have forgotten their widowhood." ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... midst of scenes which painfully recalled the memory of his former splendour, is more extraordinary. Be this as it may, the knight and the queen, though lodged under the same roof and passing much of their time together, continued to bewail the miseries of their protracted widowhood. Sir Isumbras, however, speedily recovered, in the plentiful court of the rich queen, his health and strength, and with these the desire of returning to his former exercises. A tournament was proclaimed; and the lists, which were formed immediately ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... what can they do? You are the law. With a private citizen, with me, for instance, it would be different. My wife would prepare herself for widowhood." ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... see Anna, weeping alone over her barrenness and her widowhood; and the angel comes to her and bids her go forth to meet her husband, and she finds him at the golden gate. And they fall on each other's neck and go home together. And Anna brings forth Mary, whom they dedicate to ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the most disgraceful 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Memory and hope coalesce, as we think of Him who is passed into the heavens, and the heart of the Church has to cherish at once the glad thought that its Head and helper has entered within the veil, and the still more joyous one, which lightens the days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the brother; "thy wife shall be my sister during her widowhood, thy children will never want game, until they can themselves strike ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... refuse a cigar in the dining-room as soon as the ladies have gone. Perhaps even the wicked weed would make its appearance before that sad eclipse, thereby postponing or perhaps absolutely annihilating the melancholy period of widowhood to both parties, and would light itself under the very eyes of those who in sterner cities will lend no countenance to such lightings. Ah me, it was very pleasant! I confess I like this abandonment of the stricter rules of the more decorous world. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Further, virginity is condivided with widowhood and conjugal purity. But neither of these is a virtue. Therefore virginity is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... was mentioned as "My niece, Mrs. Champneys." Mrs. MacGregor called her "Anne." Mr. Champneys spoke to her as "Nancy," and Glenn thought he must have been mistaken as to that "Mrs." There was no sign of a husband anywhere; neither was there any indication of widowhood. Nobody mentioned Peter—Mr. Champneys because he was more interested in talking about Glenn's business than his own, on the occasions when he had time to talk about anything; Mrs. MacGregor, because she had never seen Peter, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... ingenious person, and has many polished characteristics; but I think the most singular thing about him is his staggering lack of shame. Neither the hour of death nor the day of reckoning, neither the tent of exile nor the house of mourning, neither chivalry nor patriotism, neither womanhood nor widowhood, is safe at this supreme moment from his dirty little expedient of dieting the slave. As similar bullies, when they collect the slum rents, put a foot in the open door, these are always ready to push in a muddy wedge wherever there is a slit in a sundered household or a crack in ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... Brewster had regarded her quiet, old-fashioned home as his own. The house had once been her grandfather's, and it was one of the pioneers in that part of the town. It was there she was born; in its quaint old parlor she was married; and all her girlhood, her brief wedded life, and her widowhood were connected with it. Mrs. Gray and Montgomery's mother had been schoolmates and playmates, and their friendship endured. When old Edwin Peter Brewster looked about for a place to house his orphaned grandson, Mrs. Gray begged him to let her ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... expected it.' He was going to add, 'And is he dead?' but he checked himself. Her dress unmistakably suggested widowhood; and she had said she ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... useful wife to her brother." I was extremely indignant. My husband was still more so, and wrote a severe and angry letter to her; none of the family dared to interfere again. I lived in peace with her, but there was a coldness and reserve between us ever after. I forgot to mention that during my widowhood I had several offers of marriage. One of the persons whilst he was paying court to me, sent me a volume of sermons with the page ostentatiously turned down at a sermon on the Duties of a Wife, which were expatiated upon in the most illiberal and narrow-minded ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... 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,' ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... place, for you must not look at anybody's wife except your neighbour's,—if you 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... into the house she went up into the old lady's room with the intention of breaking to her the news of Katherine Fanning's widowhood and destitution, and of her own desire to invite her to come ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... man who has been compelled to seek a home in the by-ways of the North, from every homeless widow and orphan of a Union soldier in the South, who should have been protected by the Government, and who, despite widowhood and orphanage, would have exalted in the power of our country had it not been for the treachery ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... 28 married boys. Even allowing for those provinces where cohabitation is delayed, these figures mean in other provinces a cruel wrong to the children of the weaker sex, a doubly cruel wrong when to premature marriage may be added girl widowhood. The Census Report declares that in the lower strata of Hindu society there has been a rapid extension of child marriage and prohibition of the marriage of widows within the last two or three generations, although at the low age of 10, fewer girls are reported married than in 1881.[25] ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... their sorrows by the side of a decaying fire, and by the light of a small iron lamp, or cruize, as it was termed. Poor Elspeth's apron was thrown over her head, and bitterly did she sob and weep for "her beautiful, her brave,—the very image of her dear Simon Glendinning, the stay of her widowhood and the support of her ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... in a day—this gathering about her of so brilliant and delightful a society. She had lived many years at Walpole Lodge, ever since her widowhood, and was now quite an old lady. In her early life she had written several charming books—chiefly biographies of distinguished men whom she had known, and even now she occasionally put pen again to paper, and sent some delightful social essay or some pleasantly ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... what seemed to be hers, was so; Rich, in 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' whose toil ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... murmuring, more repining, more fault-finding than Leah. By sorrow and trial, Leah may have learned submission; and the dearest earthly hopes disappointed—all her affections as a wife crushed and despised—in her hour of grief, and in the desolation of a widowhood of hate, she may have sought and found that love which never faileth, which giveth liberally and ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... would do very well until I could come for you. I could not suspect that you would avail yourself of the privilege of widowhood within so short a time, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... daughter, saying, "Make thee ready, for I mean to come in unto thee this night, because I long for thee with love." When she heard this, she wept, for the case of her husband and father was grievous to her, and sent to him saying, "Have patience with me till my period of widowhood[FN93] be ended: then draw up thy contract of marriage with me and go in to me according to law." But he sent back to say to her, "I know neither period of widowhood nor to delay have I a mood; and I need not a contract nor know I lawful from unlawful; but needs ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... precocious and neurotic childhood, she united with the Congregational Church when seventeen years of age. At the age of twenty-two she married George Washington Glover, probably the best of her husbands. His death, six months later, was followed by the birth of her only child and a ten years' widowhood. During this time she stayed with her relatives and had long periods of illness, principally of an hysterical character. She then experimented to some extent with mesmerism and clairvoyance. In 1853 she married Dr. Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist, from whom she got a divorce, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... bull Lady Scapegrace had contracted a great affection for me, and would have me to roam about the house with her for hours. She was a clever, intellectual woman, without one idea or sentiment in common with her husband. In this state of mental widowhood she had consoled herself by study, amongst other things; and the history of the family into which she had married afforded her ample materials for reflection and research. She had collected every scrap of writing, every private memorandum, letter, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... rebuilt the chateau of brick in the sixteenth century, he put down most of the outer fortifications. Without these the chateau is as much a part of the town of Eu as Buckingham Palace is of St. James's Park. Catherine of Cleves, the widow of the great Duke of Guise, lived at Eu through her long widowhood in the friendliest relations with the good people of the town, while the architects were erecting for herself and her murdered husband, 'the nonpareil of the world,' as she called him (notwithstanding his admiration of Mme. de Noirmoutiers), ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... narrow, with a mat sunk into the floor at the threshold and worn to the quick by the cleansing of numberless feet; and an indescribable frowziness prevailed which imparted itself to the condition of widowhood dug up by the young foreigner from the basement. Sometimes there responded to his summons a clerical, an almost episcopal presence, which was clearly that of a former butler, unctuous in manner and person from long serving. Or sometimes there would be something much more modern, of an alert ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... may 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)
... 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 what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unreasonably fond of his father, and assented to his wishes without demur, even when the great Fontevrault estates hung on his fidelity to a useless oath. Then he died, and I settled into the blank stupidity of my widowhood. I, who had known no master but my own sweet will, now found myself in a hundred ways restricted. I was ruled through Fred. He must graduate at Harvard; the great establishment, splendid but tedious, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... clearness to do, that do." The light carried him into the service; the conscience was set free from the temporary disturbance; yet the decision brought him to the scaffold; it placed upon his brow the martyr's crown. The worthy wife sadly went into widowhood, and the children into orphanage, through that strong, womanly spirit which could brook no deviation ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... anguish run Through the stern breast of Raghu's son, Whose base hand dealt a coward's blow, And smote thee fighting with thy foe? Reft of my lord my days, alas! In bitter bitter woe will pass: And I, long blest with every good, Must bear my dreary widowhood. And when his uncle's brow is stern, When his fierce eyes with fury burn, Ah, what will be my Angad's fate, So fair and young and delicate? Come, darling, for the last sad sight, Of thy dear sire who loved the right; For soon thine eyes will long in vain ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... died rather suddenly from heart disease. His wife mourned him sincerely, but not for long in solitude. She found the anaesthetic for her grief in society, and after a few months of widowhood writes: 'Everybody makes a point of having me out, and I am beginning to be familiarised with my great loss. London is the best place in the world for the happy and the unhappy; there is a floating capital of sympathy for every human good or evil. I am a nobody, and yet ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... no rest for the eyes. We turned our heads from the scene, unable 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 ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... 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 of wax candles ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lingered, a heart-burning and a consciousness of a gloomy 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 and his brother, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... dearest one, has perished— The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew; Most musical of mourners, weep anew! 50 Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... we shall make a few observations on the sorrows of widowhood; then glance at the duties of it; and the supports which God hath provided ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... she was not much affected by promises like these. A lonely hermitage without God, amidst the great monotonous breezes of the West, amidst memories all the more ruthless for that mighty solitude, of such heavy losses, such sharp affronts; a widowhood so hard and sudden, away from the husband who had left her to her shame—all this was enough to bow her down. Plaything of fate, she seemed like the wretched weed upon the moor, having no root, but tossed to and fro, lashed and cruelly cut by the north-east winds; or rather, perhaps, like the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... 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 ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the great hoose. A dairk woman will meet ye at the gate; and she'll have a hand in getting ye the groom's place, wi' a' the gratifications and pairquisites appertaining to the same. And, mebbe, when yer poaket's full o' money, ye'll no' be forgetting yer aunt Chance, maintaining her ain unblemished widowhood—wi' Proavidence assisting—on thratty punds ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... fate knocking at their hearts; who praying, sick with fear, for the return of their men, showed white faces at barred windows, and by every tossing light that passed along the lane viewed long years of loneliness or widowhood. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... her husband's bark sail out of the harbor on his last voyage; and here she watched day after day for its return, only to bring a life- long sorrow with it. The life of a sea-captain's wife is always a half- widowhood, but Mrs. Hathorne was left at twenty-eight with three small children, including a daughter, Elizabeth, older than Nathaniel, and another, Louisa, the youngest. The shadow of a heavy misfortune had come upon them, and from this shadow they ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 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 |
