"Old maid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by Beulah's psychical gifts because she noticed two years ago that when the family was playing "Old Maid" Beulah always knew in whose hands the dangerous queen was to be found. Then they began to experiment with cards in the family circle, and her ability to know of what the mother or the sister was thinking ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... shall never have a house in Portland Place, nor any diamonds, except Aunt Mary's old brooch. I shall live and die an old maid, and nobody will waste a thought upon me," said Sophy, who made this prophecy at her ease, not expecting it to come true; "but I don't envy poor Clara, and if you marry such a man as Mr. Copperhead, though I shall admire you very much, Ursula, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... dogs bred for ladies' laps are the curls of a mother's darling; the pendant love-locks of the old, old maid who, despite of changeful fashions, clings to those memorials of the pensive beauty of her youth, are repeated in solemn mimicry by the dachshund trotting at her heels; but the sensible fur cap of the dignified Newfoundland reminds us of the cold regions from which his forefathers ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... evergreens. I told you we should see pigeons soon, but you thought it too early. We will have sport to-morrow, if it is warm. For the present, let us see whether Hans' old fowling-piece is still safe from rust. Here it stands behind his bed-room door, dressed up like an old maid for a sailing party, all in flannels. There, Peter, is a true 'stubb-and-twist,' and the locks, although rather out of fashion, are still as elastic as ever. This Hans himself will use to-morrow; for it is an old friend and might feel ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the others wait till death for the bridegroom who does not come. Why should she marry one of her cousins when they were only after her money, the millions which she had inherited from her mother? She might as well remain an old maid and go ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Casanova had presented to Amalia, or rather to her mother. But for this magical aid, Olivo's lot would still have been the same. He would still have been giving instruction in reading and writing to ill-behaved youngsters. Most likely, he would have been an old bachelor and Amalia an old maid. ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... Maria who had sighted him afar off, begged her visitor's pardon and went to the window to arrange the blind. How her heart warmed to that cruel Mr. Joseph, how she loved him then just for that last moment! Her heart—that foolish old maid's heart—beat quickly, beat thickly, she remembered to have read something somewhere about people who could will other people to look at them, to speak to them, to even think of them, to move across a room at their pleasure. If she could but do that! She did try, with her fingers clenched ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... brought a Worcester Pearmain, and threw a T. And Jessica chose a Curlytail and made a perfect O. And Jane, who preferred a Russet, threw her own initial, and Martin said seriously, "You're to be an old maid, Jane." (And Joscelyn looked at him.) And Jane replied, "I don't see that at all. There are lots of lots of J's, Martin." (And Joscelyn looked at her.) Then Martin turned inquiringly to Joscelyn, and she said, "I don't want one." "No stories then," said Martin as firm as Nurse at bedtime. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... afraid, dad," she said decisively. "In the first place, I am not going to marry anyone, and shall grow into a pretty old maid; in the second, if I was dying of love, nothing in the world would induce me to marry a Roman Catholic. Whenever I think of poor Mr Wallington as we saw him lying on the grass with the bullet hole through his forehead, ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... games and other interesting amusements, all of which Winnie enjoyed immensely; and then Aunt Judith inquired if she would like to see an old maid's den. "Nellie has never as yet been privileged to cross its threshold," she finished laughingly, "so it will be something new for both of you ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... go to find Bondon this morning to kill him. In the train I have a sudden inspiration, a revelation from Heaven. It is not Zette but Euphemie that is the bonne amie of Bondon. I laugh, and frighten a long-toothed English old maid out of her wits. Shall I get out at Tarascon and return to Nimes and tell you, or shall I go on? I decide to go on. I make my plan. Ah, but when I make a plan, it's all in a second, a flash, pfuit! At Avignon I see a pair of handcuffs. I buy them. I ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... check to the gayety of the evening. Frank Miller, bold and bad as he was looked crestfallen and uneasy. Some who appeared to be more careful of the manners of society than its morals, said that I was very rude. Others said that I was too prudish, and would be an old maid, that I was looking for perfection in young men, and would not find it. That young men sow their wild oats, and that I was more nice than wise, and that I would frighten the gentlemen away from me. I told them if the young men were so easily frightened, that I did ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... case once something like the one you were telling me about; the landlady of a hash-house where I was stopping in Albany told me. There was a young carpenter staying there, who'd run away from Sydney from an old maid who wanted to marry him. He'd cleared from the church door, I believe. He was scarcely more'n a boy—about nineteen—and a soft kind of a fellow, something like you, only good-looking—that is, he was passable. Well, as soon as the woman found out where ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... wonderful old garden. Down the sandy path under the overhanging blossoms came Jane and Zura, skipping and bowing in time to the game's demands. The last line brought them to us. Hand in hand they stopped, Zura dishevelled, Jane's hat looking as if it grew out of her ear, but old maid and young were ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... saints and religious exercises, Elizabeth lived until she was eleven years old. Then a great grief befell her. One morning, Mademoiselle de Rochemont did not leave her room at the regular hour. As she never broke a rule she had made for herself and her household, this occasioned great wonder. Her old maid servant waited half an hour—went to her door, and took the liberty of listening to hear if she was up and moving about her room. There was no sound. Old Alice returned, looking quite agitated. "Would Mademoiselle Elizabeth mind entering to see if all was well? Mademoiselle her aunt might ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Mrs. Smith; "as if I, or any one else, ever thought of going to the trouble of a party for a plain old maid, like cousin Sabina Incledon!" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... set on fire, and before we lost sight of them, had burnt down to the water's edge. My finger was very bad for three weeks, and the officers laughed at me very much, saying that I narrowly escaped being made a prisoner of by an "old maid." ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... adventurous. Day by day as she worked in the schoolroom or walked in the streets, grief, hope, and desire fought within her. Behind a cold exterior the most extraordinary events transpired in her mind. The people of the town thought of her as a confirmed old maid and because she spoke sharply and went her own way thought her lacking in all the human feeling that did so much to make and mar their own lives. In reality she was the most eagerly passionate soul among them, ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... everything in sight,—including the log hut,—has had the latter restored and turned into the quaintest little town library you've ever seen. But you ought to see the librarian! She is a dried-up, squinty old maid of some seventy summers, and so full of Jane Austen and the Bronte women and Mrs. Southworth that she hasn't an inch of room left in her for the modern writers. Her name caps the climax. It is Alaska Spigg. Can you beat it? No one ever calls her Miss Spigg,—not ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... enforce; but it was not by any means without its good effects. [Footnote: The Rev. R. Hurd, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, an upright and scholarly, but formal and censorious man, whom Johnson called a "word-picker," and franker contemporaries "an old maid in breeches," has left a reference to Fielding at this time which is not flattering. "I dined with him [Ralph Allen] yesterday, where I met Mr. Fielding,—a poor emaciated, worn-out rake, whose gout and infirmities have got ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... enough till you are worth L7,000, which will bring you L300 per annum, and this will maintain you, with the perquisite of spunging, while you are young, and when you are old will afford you a pint of port at night, two servants, and an old maid, a little garden, and pen and ink—provided you live in the country. And what are you doing towards increasing your fame and your fortune? Have you no scheme, either in verse or prose? The Duchess should keep you at hard meat, and by that means ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... Quincey had not been as guileless as the little old maid she was, she would have recognised these indications of intimacy; as it was, she said with superior conviction, "My dear, I know Dr. Cautley. He has never cut me before, and he would not do it now without a reason. There has been some awful mistake. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... Deac'n Gillespie." She is Canadian-French and the only woman on the island who can cook any other way than frying. The bad little hotel is closing. She was so merry and footloose and free, Michael! That's exactly the sort of old maid I ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... exact reproduction of the famous White Horse Inn in England. Thinkin' so much of Dickens as I do (introduced to him by Thomas Jefferson), it wuz a comfort to see over the mantlery-piece the well-known form of "Sam Weller," the old maid, and others of Dickenses characters, that seem jest as real to me as Thomas ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... and exclamations Hamilton confessed himself the man who had guessed Latin to be the cause of Miss Current's remaining an old maid; Rose, crying: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Many a man, incapable by nature of life-long devotion to one woman, becomes a husband in half an hour, duly sanctioned by Church and State. A woman who remains unmarried, because, with fine courage, she will have her true mate or none, is called "an old maid." She may have the heart of a wife and the soul of a mother, but she cannot escape her sinister label. The real "old maids" are of both sexes, and many are married, but ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... or afoot. She was the best girlrider too (saddle or bare-back), and they say that when she was a tomboy she used to tuck her petticoats under her and gallop man-fashion through the scrub after horses or cattle. She said she was going to be an old maid. ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... and blue— Poor old maid! Dressed in yaller, pink, and blue, I'm just as sweet as the morning dew, And to a husband I'd stick ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... to everything that was not rustic, felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic declarations of the old maid. She had found a phrase by which to describe her, a term of contempt that rose to her lips, called forth by I know not what confused and mysterious mental ratiocination. She said: 'That woman is a demoniac.' This epithet, applied to that austere and sentimental ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in the hall made her turn, and, looking up, she saw the gaunt figure of Miss Amelia Peterborough standing in the bend of the staircase. In her hand the old maid held a twisted candlestick of greenish brass, and the yellow flame of the candle cast a trembling, fantastic shadow on the wall at her back. Her head, shorn of the false "front" she wore in the day, appeared to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes had dwindled to mere points of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... a town by besiegers taken, Nor cared he who were winning; But he saw an old maid, for years forsaken, Get up and leave her spinning; 80 And she looked in her glass, and to one that did pass, She ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... well not to marry, after all," reasoned Lucina, "a great many people are not married. Aunt Camilla seems very happy, happier than many married women whom I have seen. She has nothing to disturb her. I shall be happy in the way she is. When I am such an old maid that my father and mother will have died, because they were too old to live longer, I will leave this house, because I could not bear to stay here with them away, and go to Aunt Camilla's. She will be dead, too, by that time, and her house will be mine. Then I, in my cap and spectacles, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... one, whose fear vanished at once, order the father and mother about, run hither and thither, assume the management of everything, apply the leeches, arrange the cataplasms, and bring back hope, joy and health at the double quick. In all branches of the family the old maid appeared thus providentially, without warning, on days of sorrow, ennui and suffering. She was never seen except when her hands were needed to heal, her devoted friendship to console. She was, so to speak, an impersonal creature, because of her great heart; ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... I do think it sounds so much more respectful to call 'em so rather than "old maid" (but I had to tutor Josiah dretful sharp before I ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the election, Mrs. Crow played her trump card. She had treasured an open boast made years before by the disappointed old maid who now opposed her. Minnie, before attaining years of discretion and still smarting under the failures of youth, had spitefully announced that she was a spinster from choice. With great scorn she had stated, while sitting ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... o' speakin' of it, about now, when I run in to borrer some saleratus, an' he hollered into the bedroom: 'Lyddy Ann, you got another headache? If I had such a head as that, I'd cut it off!' An' all the time 'Mandy did act like the very Old Nick, jest as any old maid would that hadn't set her mind on menfolks till she was thirty-five. She bought a red-plaid bow an' pinned it on in front, an' one day I ketched her at the lookin'-glass pullin' out ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... a fault in this world, it is that he is as pernickety, as my old nurse used to say—as pernickety as an old maid. The stiff formality of his room would give me the creeps, if anything could. The first thing I always want to do when I see it is to make hay ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... till I came of age. To depict the tedium of my life, it will be perhaps enough to portray my father to you. He was tall, thin, and slight, with a hatchet face, and pale complexion; a man of few words, fidgety as an old maid, exacting as a senior clerk. His paternal solicitude hovered over my merriment and gleeful thoughts, and seemed to cover them with a leaden pall. Any effusive demonstration on my part was received by him as a childish absurdity. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... marriages it's only money and position. Love never seems to enter into their heads. Oh! I grew so tired of it. Thank God it's over, and our family are now normal. Even Grandmother wished me to marry well. I had far rather be an old maid than to be tied to a man for whom I care nothing, and have to sit opposite and pour tea for him three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. Imagine the horrible monotony of that. I heard that advice given to a girl in a play and I never forgot it; and if only girls could be brought to realize ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... him. Her prattle was so full of, "My husband says, says my husband," that it seemed as though the chief purpose of her jabber was to parade her married state and to hear herself talk of her spouse. The words, "My husband," were music to her ears. They actually meant, "Behold, I am an old maid no longer!" ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... only my little godchild, and I am an old maid, with no business fretting over children, but it seemed as if the medium of light and beauty had been taken from me. Through this crystal soul I had perceived whatever was loveliest. However, what was, was! I returned ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... fileuse," corrected the little biologist, who was beginning to regain a trace of his usual energy. "Like an old maid's heart!" ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... free and independent judgments. He smiled at the idea of any facile passion in the composition of so sure and gallant a personality. Martineau was very fine-minded in many respects, but he was an old maid; and like all old maids he saw man and woman in every encounter. But passion was a thing men and women fell back upon when they had nothing else in common. When they thought in the pleasantest harmony and every remark seemed to weave a fresh thread of common interest, then it wasn't ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... their thanks for the breakfast, and went toward the house. They found Klausoff's sister, Maria Ivanovna, an old maid of forty-five, at prayer before the big case of family icons. When she saw the portfolios in her guests' hands, and their ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... was permitted to encourage; but miscarried of the main end, by treating them according to the rules of art which had been prescribed me. Altilis, an old maid, infused into me so much haughtiness and reserve, that some of my lovers withdrew themselves from my frown, and returned no more; others were driven away, by the demands of settlement which the widow Trapland directed me to make; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... guess, and the end of it was that Mark cleared out. I thought he would turn up again, or apply for a divorce, though he hadn't any reason to. But he did neither, and remained away for a whole year. While he was away I got quit of Ercole pretty smart, I can tell you, as I wanted to shut up that old maid's mouth. I never knew where Mark was, or guessed what became of him, until I saw that advertisement, and putting two and two together to make four, I called to see Mr. Link, where I found ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... They played "Old Maid" deliberately, solemnly. After a time, Mavis had a strong suspicion that Miss Nippett was cheating in order that Mr Poulter might win; also, that Mr Poulter was manoeuvring the cards so that Mavis might ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Vixen—[I'm beginning now]—Her name was Sarah Vixen. She was a horrid old maid. One morning she went and played her organ in Euston Square. She played 'Wait till the clouds roll by,' and 'Sweethearts' waltz', and the 'Marseillaise,' one after the other, after which she paused and watched a tennis match which was going on ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... of our Parish Church in the agregate it is a fair sample of every class of human life. You have the old maid in her unspotted, demurely-coloured moire antique, carrying a Prayer Book belonging to a past generation; you have the ancient bachelor with plenty of money and possessing a thorough knowledge as to the safest way of keeping it, his great idea being ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... batching it. They had a little apartment in the Bronx and Johnnie looked after it for his friend. One of Johnnie's vices—according to the standard of the B-in-a-Box boys—was that he was as neat as an old maid. He liked to hang around a mess-wagon and cook doughnuts and pies. His talent came in handy now, for ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... it would rather bring female society in demand. I often regret that selfishness, cupidity, and the kind of strife which prevails in our sex, on the road to matrimony, have brought celibacy into disrepute. For my part, I never see an old maid, but I am willing to think she is so from choice or principle, and although not in her proper place, serviceable, by keeping alive feelings necessary to exist, that marriages may not become curses instead ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... cruel Lady J-,{20} Regret the golden Ball. Tis useless now:—"the fox and grapes" Remember, and avoid the apes Which wait an old maid's fall. Gay ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... old maid," said Eleanor contemptuously, "and I despise her. I'll find some way to get even with her, and all the rest ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... in washing their hands, but with the most transient gain of cleanliness. No one knows how filthy London is till he begins to notice how much longer window-curtains, household draperies, and personal linen keep clean in the country. I should not like to be called an old maid, but I confess to an old-maidish care for cleanliness. Untidiness in books or papers would not distress me, but dirt is a real distress; and if it be old-maidish to fight a continual battle with dirt, to scour ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... it," she went on at random; her face still wore its uncertain smile. "She said it was overtrimmed, and top-heavy, and didn't become me. As if she ever wore anything that suited her! But Joan is an old maid. She hasn't a scrap of taste. And as for you, Maurice, why I just don't believe you know one hat from ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... rationally, and sensibly, and honourably he talked, when we saw him in the garden. You have heard the dreadful nonsense he has been guilty of this night, and the manner in which he has gone on with that poor unfortunate little old maid. Can anybody doubt how all ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... items each family soiled weekly; the way some people's garments were always torn at the same spot. Oh, she had many tales to tell. For instance, the chemises of Mademoiselle Remanjou provided material for endless comments: they wore out at the top first because the old maid had bony, sharp shoulders; and they were never really dirty, proving that you dry up by her age, like a stick of wood out of which it's hard to squeeze a drop of anything. It was thus that at every sorting of the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... nineteen women out of every twenty are in general. But it is not to be expected, I repeat, that a delicately-minded and modest young creature will at once step forward unabashed and exclaim, 'Yes, papa, I will marry him.' I protest, my lord, it would require the desperate heroism of an old maid on the last legs of hope, or the hardihood of a widow of three husbands, to go through such an ordeal. We consequently must make allowance for those delicate and blushing evasions which, after ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... action of the police in endeavoring to fasten the crime upon an inoffensive and somewhat impecunious social dangler, whose only ambition in life was to lead a cotillion well, and whose sole idea of how to get money under false pretences was to make some over-rich old maid believe that he loved her for herself alone and in his heart scorned her wealth. Even he profited by this, since he later sued the editor who printed his picture with the label "A Social Highwayman" for libel, claiming damages of $50,000, and then settled ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... the door and creaked in the wind; it sounded as if it were alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass had overgrown the pavement of the street. The sun shone clear, but as it shines in the sitting room of the solitary old bachelor and upon the balsam in the pot of the old maid, it was still as on a Scottish Sunday, and it was Tuesday! I felt myself drawn to study Young's ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... garret, where, outside the little window, hung in the sunshine an old, dented bird-cage, which had not even a common cage-glass, but only the neck of a bottle inverted, with a cork below, and filled with water. An old maid stood near the open window; she had just been putting some chickweed into the cage, wherein a little linnet was hopping from perch to perch, and singing until her warbling ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... all living flesh and blood. A horse mercilessly starved in the fields; a wild bird wailing for its murdered mate; a tramp driven by hunger and primitive desire, and harried by the "insolence of office"; an old man denied the little luxuries of his senile greed; an old maid torn and rent in the flesh that is barren and the breasts that never gave suck; these are the natural subjects of his genius—the sort of "copy" that one certainly need not leave one's "home ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... while others doubted it strongly. However, she lived in a notable style, and invited all the nobility of the country-side to La Motte-Giron. She had two daughters, of whom the elder, Anne, on the verge of becoming an old maid, was a very astute person: Jeanne, the younger, ripe for marriage, concealed a precocious knowledge of the world under an appearance of simplicity. The Dame de Lespoisse had also two sons, of twenty and twenty-two years of age; ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... ready, unless we, that are her first friends, come to her aid against her own pride and shyness. You think me intrusive—a meddlesome old maid, prying into what does not concern me: but, brother, she and Mr. Hartman were made for one another. They were deeply interested, both of them—I could see it plainly: it would have been settled in a few days more, if that wretched misunderstanding had not occurred. He may get over ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... David the apprentice tells Magdalene, Eva's nurse, that the new singer did not succeed, at which she is honestly grieved, preferring the gallant younker for her mistress, to the old and ridiculous clerk. The old maid loves David; she provides him with food and sweets and many are the railleries which he has to suffer from his companions ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... her head. "When an old man marries a girl," she said, "she just leads him wherever she wants him to go, and he gives up everything to her, and when an old man marries a tough and seasoned and smoked old maid like Maria Port, she just drives him wherever she wants him to go, and he hasn't nothin' to say about it. It looks as if she told him to come in this mornin', and he's gone. It may be for a weddin', or it may be for somethin' else, but whatever it is, it'll be her way and not his straight ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Rachel be an old maid, what is Grace? Come, my dear, resign yourself! There is nothing more unbecoming than want of perception ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wonderful, extraordinarily good; but although the footmen are English they don't wait anything like as well as if they had remained at home; and Octavia's old maid, Wilbor, told her the hurly burly downstairs is beyond description; snatching their meals anywhere, with no time or etiquette or housekeeper's room; all, everyone for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. And the absolutely disrespectful way they speak of their master and ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... There hung the old sign and creaked in the wind, as if to show that it at least was alive. I saw it from my window; I saw also how the grass in the street had got the mastery over the pavement. The sun shone brightly, but shone as into the bachelor's solitary room, and on the old maid's balsams in the flower-pots. It was as still as a Scotch Sunday—and yet it was a Tuesday. One was disposed for Young's ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... variety of parts representing the old: there appear in turn the austere and avaricious, the fond and tender-hearted, and the indulgent accommodating, papas, the amorous old man, the easy old bachelor, the jealous aged matron with her old maid-servant who takes part with her mistress against her master; whereas the young men's parts are less prominent, and neither the first lover, nor the virtuous model son who here and there occurs, lays claim to much significance. The servant- world—the crafty valet, the stern house-steward, the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... be plenty young enough to think of such things. And really she can very well afford to wait, and will too, take my word. Living down in an out-step place like this, I am sure she ought to be very thankful that you took notice of her. She'd most likely have died an old maid if you hadn't ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... ever, a source of perpetual wonder to the neighbors, who said of her, "She has got the dreadfullest faculty of gettin' along I ever see," and thereby solved the problem, for all except one, and that other one 'Tenty's opposite in every trait, Miss Mehitable Hall, Hannah-Ann's older sister, an old maid of the straitest sect, and one who was nowise sustained under the inflictions of life by the consciousness of enough money to support her, and friends to care for her ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... but in his thirty-sixth year, Tall, handsome, good-natured and witty, And should you refuse him, my dear, May you die an old maid without pity! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... been more than fourteen, and as she was always good-humored and willing to oblige, she became a general favorite. Often, in the early winter evenings, with the nursery as tidy as hands could make it, (for Mammy, although not an old maid, was a mortal enemy to dirt and slovenliness) we all gathered round the fire, while the old nurse and Jane spun out long stories, sometimes of things which had happened to them, sometimes of things which had happened to others, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... Steele seems to have forgotten that he was Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., and had only an old maid-servant. (Nichols.)] ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... an' Marilla can tell her how I've been situated. I wa'n't going to have no such persons in my house as were recommended," he grumbled on cheerfully. "I don't keep a town-farm for the incapable, nor do I want an old grenadier set over me like that old maid Smith. I ain't going to be turned out of my ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Maitre Guillot's face was a study for Hogarth, who alone could have painted the alto tone of voice as it proceeded from his round O of a mouth. "Susette shall remain upon my hands an old maid for the term of her natural life if you dispute the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... boy! I see that I must take care of you. Come, now that we have recovered our breath, we will go on a little further to a nice, quiet, suburban inn, kept by an old maid. I have never been there myself, but I have seen it in driving by with the rector's family. It is such a nice place that the school children go there to have picnic parties in the grounds. We will go and engage a parlor, and have ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Hiler and asserted itself in her three children, one of whom was consistently posthumous. Prematurely old and prematurely disappointed, she had all the inexperience of girlhood with the cares of maternity, and kept in her family circle the freshness of an old maid's misogynistic antipathies with a certain guilty and remorseful consciousness of widowhood. She supported the meagre household to which her husband had contributed only the extra mouths to feed with reproachful astonishment and ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... general psychological region of habit), she acts in the manner which makes her most pleasing to men. And—always with the rather definite realization before her of what a dreadful thing it is to be an old maid—she has naively insisted that her sisters shall play well within the game, and has become herself the most strict censor of that morality which has become traditionally associated with woman. Fearing the obloquy which the world attaches to a bad woman, she throws the first stone at any ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... children's clothes about her, or to find her writing verses at her toilet table surrounded with pamphlets of every kind and with notes on tinted paper? If there were none but wise men upon earth such a woman would die an old maid. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... little regulated in this particular, which is the thing in which, of all the parts of life, I think at this time we suffer most in; 'tis nothing but lack of courage, the fear of not being married at all, and of that frightful state of life called an old maid, of which I have a story to tell by itself. This, I say, is the woman's snare; but would the ladies once but get above that fear and manage rightly, they would more certainly avoid it by standing their ground, in a case so absolutely necessary ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... she bears her pain with great fortitude. Yesterday the English ambassador was paying her a visit of condolence, and as he was expressing his sympathy, the archduchess interrupted him with a laugh. 'Believe me,' said she, 'for a princess of forty, who is an old maid, even a hole in her own cheek is a godsend. Nothing that varies the dull uniformity of my life comes amiss.'" [Footnote: The archduchess's own words. See "Courts of Europe at the Close of the Last Century," by Henry Swinburne, vol. i., ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... my sister Anne and I journeyed from Verona to Venice, and of her naive exclamations of delight on finding herself in a real gondola, gliding smoothly down the Grand Canal. My sister Anne is by some years my senior. She is what might be called an old lady now, and she certainly was an old maid then, and had long accepted her position as such. Then, as now, she habitually wore a gray alpaca gown, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, gloves a couple of sizes too large for her, and a shapeless, broad-leaved straw hat, from which a blue veil was ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... you will see what a plain, dowdy old maid she is. She is not for the like of you, Gavin—a bit country dressmaker, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... a while I did get hardened—and ceased to be revolted. I learned to look upon all that sort of thing as a matter of course. But it was too late then. I had lost what little looks I had ever possessed. I grew to look like an old maid long before I was thirty. Why is ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... primarily that the New Testament writers owe their use of this gracious emblem of sleep. For, as you remember, the word was twice upon our Lord's lips; once when, over the twelve-years-old maid from whom life had barely ebbed away, He said, 'She is not dead, but sleepeth'; and once when in regard of the man Lazarus, from whom life had removed further, He said, 'Our friend sleepeth, but I go that I may awake ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I?' exclaimed Ursula, invading the room that served as kitchen, where Annaple was trying to hush off the child and make her over to a little twelve years old maid, who stood in waiting, helping Willie meantime to unpack his soldiers, with smothered exclamations ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the vacant lots along Center Street, and counters knocked together for the sale of ice-cold lemonade, lemo, lemo, lemo, made in the shade, with a spade, by an old maid, lemo, lemo. Here y' are now, gents, gitch nice cool drink, on'y five a glass. There is even the hook for the ice-cream candy man to throw the taffy over when he pulls it. I like to watch him. It makes me dribble at the mouth to ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... and wearing spectacles and a white cap), Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of country comeliness) and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old maid who was doing her best to be a girl) were waiting at the open porch when our car drew up, and they received me ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... which could not fail to be sometimes represented in the conduct of so gifted a child. An old lady who visited his mother, and was characterized in the family as 'Aunt Betsy', had irritated him by pronouncing the word 'lovers' with the contemptuous jerk which the typical old maid is sometimes apt to impart to it, when once the question had arisen why a certain 'Lovers' Walk' was so called. He was too nearly a baby to imagine what a 'lover' was; he supposed the name denoted a trade or occupation. But his human sympathy resented Aunt Betsy's manner as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... gone to the city to see his old maid aunt," said Granddaddy Bullfrog with a grin. "He won't throw stones at me ...
— Little Jack Rabbit's Adventures • David Cory
... quitting my chamber, I held a brief debate with myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. "Doubtless," thought I, "she is some stiff old maid; for though the daughter of Madame Reuter, she may well number upwards of forty winters; besides, if it were otherwise, if she be both young and pretty, I am not handsome, and no dressing can make me so, therefore ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... sensation. In the old ivory satin with its woven rosebuds and cream rose-point, above which rose pearly shoulders and a neck bearing a small, proud head, with close waves of heavy black hair, Miss Adair was like a dainty, luscious, tropical fruit that is more beautiful than its own flower. "How an old maid in a country town made that dress I don't ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Languish, for a hero of romance, and beguiling the interval with reading "The Delicate Distress," and "The Mistakes of the Heart"? Not at all! The best way to prepare for marriage is to prepare yourself to be like Bridget Elia, "an incomparable old maid." ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... the glorious history of the old maid that I have told thee! Even this is the account of her brahmacarya and her auspicious departure for heaven. While there Baladeva heard of the slaughter of Shalya. Having made presents unto the Brahmanas there, he ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... my Aunt Mabel," said Dolly. "You'll see her when we go back to town for I'm going to have you come and visit me if you will. She's an old maid, and she's terribly proper, and if ever I start to have any fun she thinks it must be wicked, and tries to make me stop. But I fool ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... use of living when I know that I shall be an old maid? We shall all be old maids. What's the use of being pretty, either, when Violet, though she be but a bag of bones, has got the Marquis? I have been out two seasons now, and nothing has come of all ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... old maid up to date) had seen her, had been out to California on a excursion train, and had staid some ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... sobbing) I'm "gorn out"—"be'ind the times," there's no 'ope, I shall never wear 'em again—(takes them off) But I'll 'ave 'em buried with me. (pockets them) I shall die an old maid now—I can't wait till Tupper's growed up. Oh, it's an 'ard world for us maids, a very ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... steep and narrow, and the houses, pell-mell, rich and poor, large and small huddled together without order. Almost opposite the handsome dwelling, the photograph of which had misled me, stood a little house where I could buy rich, creamy milk. It was sold by a Mademoiselle Rosalie, an old maid, whom I generally found solitarily reading a Journal pour Tous with her feet upon a chaufferette, and no light save that of her little oil-lamp. She had never sat by a fire in her life, she told me, burning her face and spoiling ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... so. Though that isn't announced either. Goodness, Bill, suppose they all get engaged and married and leave me to be the only old maid in ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... confidently expect them to catch husbands some time or other," said John Jr., whereupon Carrie blushed, and looked very interesting, while Anna retorted, "Of course we shall. I wouldn't be an old maid for the ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... going to tell you just what I think about it all. Not all women are fitted to marry; some would be happier and better without it. The day is long past when a woman must either marry or be laughed at as an old maid. What I want my girls to do is to grow into strong, noble women who are fitted to fill any position that opens before them, and to fill it well, with no thought of self, but only for the good of others. Then, if the ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... suspicious; and after a few attempts on the part of the women who were her neighbors to be friendly or intimate, they gave her up as impracticable: not because she was impolite or unkind: they did not themselves know why they failed, though she could have told them; for, old maid as she was, poor and plain and queer, she could not bring herself to associate familiarly with people who put their teaspoons into the sugar-bowl, helped themselves with their own knives and forks, gathered up bits of uneaten butter and returned them to the plate for next time, or replaced on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Frey indeed looked so very wooden that in my foolish ignorance I was tempted to protest. But the astonishing fact is that Frey was not only wooden in appearance, but in actuality. How then could he have for wife a slip of a sixteen-year-old maid that you may have met before in Mr HEWLETT's romances? This however is the real story, which (pardon me) I do not mean to tell. If it is no tremendous matter, it will at least please an idle hour, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... considered to foretell the fortunes of the persons in whose possession they were found when the cakes were cut up. The gold ring denoted speedy marriage; the silver penny indicated future wealth; while the thimble infallibly doomed its recipient to be an old maid. The division of Diana's cake revealed Sir Reginald de Echingham in possession of the ring, evidently to his satisfaction; while Olympias, with the reverse sensation, discovered in her slice both the penny and the thimble. ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... Holy Sacrament with my daughter and the old maid-servant, and how she was then led for the last time before the court, with the drawn sword and the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... responsibility. But do you not see that you must thank Heaven for the sufferer's sake also? I will not shock you again by talking of amputation; but even in the smallest matter—even if you were merely sending medicine to an old maid—suppose that your imagination were preoccupied by the thought of her old age, her sufferings, her disappointed hopes, her regretful dream of bygone youth, and beauty, and love, and all the tender fancies which might well spring out of such ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot on the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton into her ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and favor of these spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false Bohemia gradually encompassed her she came to accept them as love's ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... I'se a old maid nigger, an they tells me you don't see old maid niggers. How come I ain't married I don't know. Seems like when I was young I seed somep'n wrong with all de mens that would come around. Then atter while I wuz kinder ole an they didn't come around no mo. Jes' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... of fortification, mounting guard with the other subalterns, and looking after his own company of men. He seemed very young to be put in charge of grown soldiers, but his great ability had brought about this extraordinarily rapid promotion. He had a room in a boarding-house kept by an old maid, but took his meals at the Inn of the Three Pigeons. Now that he was an officer he began to be more interested in making a good appearance before people. He took dancing lessons and suddenly blossomed out into much popularity among the garrison. Older people could not help but see ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... Pearl, but it's awful hard on me"—he wiped the sweat from his brow. "You haven't got any such fool ideas. Of course you haven't. They're for dead ones, old maid country school teachers, and preachers and things like that, hypocrites that have got to make their living by playing the respectable game. But we're not that kind, Pearl, we're alive, and we're not ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... fury of tears, and caresses, and kisses. She nursed her child herself, made swaddling-bands for it out of her coverlet, the only one which she had on her bed, and no longer felt either cold or hunger. She became beautiful once more, in consequence of it. An old maid makes a young mother. Gallantry claimed her once more; men came to see la Chantefleurie; she found customers again for her merchandise, and out of all these horrors she made baby clothes, caps and bibs, bodices with shoulder-straps ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... in New York, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna,—always 'ce cher Roxmouth'—as Aunt Emily said;—money no consideration, distance no object,—always 'ce cher Roxmouth,' stiff as a poker, clean as fresh paint, and apparently as virtuous as an old maid,—with all his aristocratic family looming behind him, and a long ancestry of ghosts in the shadow of time, extending away back to some Saxon 'nobles,' who no doubt were coarse barbarians that ate more raw meat than was good for them, and had to be carried to bed dead ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... The small boy gets it for nothing, the young man has to steal it, and the old man has to buy it. The Baby's right, the Lover's privilege, the Hypocrite's mask. To a young girl, faith; to a married woman, hope; to an old maid charity. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... wondering what was the best thing to do, Miss Hatchett, a pious old maid who spent her nights in patience and sleep, her days in worship and weeding, came hurrying down the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Road was quite a small house—forty pounds a year perhaps, and Miss Belford was a more attractive person than I expected to find. I don't know why, but I had expected to see a typical old maid; instead of which I was met by a young woman who had considerable claims to beauty. She opened the door herself, her maid being out, and was astonished when I said the Vicar of St. Ethelburga's ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... but Miss Priscilla is sure she'll be an old maid, because she's so fastidious. It's funny how much more women exact of men now than they used to. Don't you remember what a heroine the women of Miss Priscilla's generation thought Mrs. Tom Peachey was because she supported ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... that Mr. Tovell and his like were of the race who require to have a joke driven into their heads with a sledge-hammer. Once or twice we come upon a sketch which may help to explain Miss Austen's admiration. There is an old maid devoted to Mira, and rejoicing in stuffed puppies and parrots, who might have been ridiculed by Emma Woodhouse, and a parson who would have suited ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... second and handed it to Ma'aruf, saying, "Take the cup of the drink to which Reason boweth neck in reverence." Quoth Ma'aruf, "What is this, O Wazir?"; and quoth he, "This is the grizzled[FN75] virgin and the old maid long kept at home,[FN76] the giver of joy to hearts, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... parts of New England; the wild carrot, which infests the fields in eastern New York; and the live-forever, which thrives and multiplies under the plow and harrow. In my section an annoying weed is abutilon, or velvet-leaf, also called "old maid," which has fallen from the grace of the garden and followed the plow afield. It will manage to mature its seeds if not allowed ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of Henrietta's illness he sent to enquire after his grandchild every hour. Clementina and an old maid-servant took it in turns to watch by her bedside. It was strictly forbidden to leave Henrietta alone for an instant, and Mr. Demetrius gave special orders that her brother Koloman was not to be allowed to approach within six paces ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... repressed, and I return to my carriage, swearing to die an old maid. Love is undoubtedly an incarnation, and how many conditions are needful before it can take place! We are not certain of never quarreling with ourselves, how much less so when there are two? This is a problem which God ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old clerk of the laceman—M. Bidois—who waits for Madame Moutonnet's permission before he opens his mouth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... history that it would take one too far to look up those which have been commemorated in fiction. The most I did was to endeavour to identify the former residence of Mademoiselle Gamard, the sinister old maid of "Le Cure de Tours." This terrible woman occupied a small house in the rear of the cathedral, where I spent a whole morning in wondering rather stupidly which house it could be. To reach the cathedral from the little place ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... father and sister in a log cabin built of log and mud, having two rooms; one with a dirt floor and the other above, each room having two windows, but no glass. On a large farm or plantation owned by an old maid by the name of Sally ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... plate-glass windows of the city's stores: rocking-chairs on stands, upholstered in clashing colours, their coiled springs only half hidden by tassels, and "ornamental" electric fixtures, instead of the polished coal-oil lamps. Cousin Jenny had grown white, Willie was a staid bachelor, Helen an old maid, while Mary had married a tall, anaemic young man with glasses, Walter Kinley, whom Cousin Robert had taken into the store. As I contemplated the Brecks odd questions suggested themselves: did honesty and warm-heartedness necessarily accompany a lack of artistic taste? and was virtue ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... checkers, backgammon, dominoes, hunt-the-slipper, blind-man's-buff, and in some houses, where they were not too strict, they played cards. High-low-jack, sometimes called all-fours or seven-up, everlasting and old maid were the chief games of cards. Most of these games have come down from a very ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... mind that, my boy,"—she answered kindly;—"we are both only too glad to assist any one, especially you, Frank, whom the vicar calls his 'old maid's son!' All you have to do now, is, to be hopeful and persevere! Only let me see you and Miss Min happily married in the end—for I, you know, like to see young lovers happy:—I have such a large amount of romance in me!" Indeed she had, I thought, when she laughed ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... might, at need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... old maid, proud of her past, proud of her present. The great industry of Derry is shirt making. Was over the largest factory, that of Mr. Tillie, whose branch factory I saw at Carndonagh. This factory employs about twelve hundred hands. These work people were more respectably dressed than any operatives ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... your grandmother," said Anne, "and I know how hard she had to work to keep you two girls respectably dressed and cared for. I know you think I'm an interfering, peculiar woman and an old maid, but your grandmother was no old maid. She lost your mother who'd have worked and kept her when she was old, and instead of having an arm to lean on, she'd to work morning, noon, and night, to give you two girls a home. She was working when other people was sleeping. It's better ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... you think? A mouse ran under the kitchen sink. The old maid chased it With dustpan and broom And kicked it and knocked it Right out ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... he had written down in the book-slate that hung against the screen. His writing was immense, very clumsy, and very round, with huge, full-bellied l's and h's. He saw that he had made an appointment at one o'clock for Miss Baker, the retired dressmaker, a little old maid who had a tiny room a few doors down the hall. It adjoined that ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... her: and Lettice Eden—come, Anstace is to read this, so will I leave Lettice to conceive for herself what should have followed. Both she and Aubrey shall read well enough betwixt the lines. And Joyce Morrell, that thought once to be—what she is not— is an humdrum old maid, I trust a bit useful as to cooking and stitchery and the like, and on whom God hath put a mighty charge of His gold and goods to minister for Him,—but nought nearer than cousins to give her love, though that do they most rarely, and God bless their ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt |
