"Old maid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grieving, child," she said; "I'm only realizing what a selfish old maid I am. I'm crying because I'm a disappointment to myself. Harry, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the priest Ali-bo-babem was called out of his bed, and found at the door, desiring to be married, the crabbed old bachelor and the cross old maid. These two did not live long, but all the rest of the people were ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... great imputation. It had never in life occurred to her withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of experiments, may have anything to say to a young lady's delicacy. She felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own—he would have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love as something in its nature essentially refined. All the same she discriminated; it did lead to something ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Welland had said proudly of her future son-in-law; and old Mrs. Mingott, who had summoned him for a confidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness, and added impatiently: "Silly goose! I told her myself what nonsense it was. Wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingott and an old maid, when she has the luck to be a married ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... one of those sort of girls that took a fancy to any good-looking sort of fellow that came across her. Quite the other way. She seemed to think so little about it that Jim and I always used to say she'd be an old maid, and never marry at all. And she used to say she didn't think she ever would. She never seemed to trouble her head about the thing at all, but I always knew that if ever she did set her fancy upon a man, and take a liking to him, it would not be for a year or two, but for ever. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... crowded theater, care and pain and poverty were banished from the memory, while Oldfield's face spoke, and her tongue flashed melodies; the lawyer forgot his quillets; the polemic, the mote in his brother's eye; the old maid, her grudge against the two sexes; the old man, his gray hairs and his lost hours. And can it be, that all this which should have been immortal, is quite—quite lost, is as though it had never been?" he sighed. "Can it be that its fame ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Joan. I had an old maid English teacher when I was a boy who made us conjugate to like instead of the more intimate and tender word. Poor old soul! I hope it saved her feelings and ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... and angels (Beelzebub's) in order to throw dust in the dear old eyes and drive away their doubts. It was a magnificent performance, 'you go bail.' I'll never do the like of it again, though I had only one old man and one old maid and one young woman for audience. The house 'rose' at me too, and the poor old grandfather was appeased. But when we were back indoors I overheard him saying: 'After all there's no help for it. She's dull with us—what wonder! We can't cage our linnet, Rachel, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... introduced me to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his step-daughter. She was now an old maid, with much simplicity of manner. She had never been in London. Her brother, a Captain in the navy, had left her a fortune of ten thousand pounds; about a third of which she had laid out in building a stately house, and making a handsome garden, in an elevated situation ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... a man asked me to go buggy-riding," she said, "that I've forgotten how to behave. I'm getting to be a regular old maid, Jim." ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... bullfinch, and an ermine, All private favourites of Don Juan;—for (Let deeper sages the true cause determine) He had a kind of inclination, or Weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin, Live animals: an old maid of threescore For cats and birds more penchant ne'er displayed, Although he was not old, nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... true, did this conjecture of the hostess. He had dined "quietly" that night at Lady Nottingham's, and had played "old maid" afterwards, as bridge was universally voted to be far too intellectual. And Daisy took huge pleasure in such facts as these, stealthily conveyed to her by one if not more of her innumerable girl friends. For though there was no doubt that many dutiful mothers would ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... so earnestly that Edith asked if she were grown very fond of that "sour old maid all ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... windows and velvet cushions to the meetin' house, so's the congregation could sleep comfortable in a subdued light. The stained-glass idee put him in close touch with the minister, Reverend Edwin Fisher, and the minister suggested the men's club. And he took to that men's club scheme like an old maid to strong tea; the rest of the improvements went into dry dock to refit while Admiral Gabe got his ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in such a condition of onwee that a hangin' would be a reg'lar tonic for the party that's in; which it's kind of bogged down into an old maid's tea party. Felonious takin's-off has be'n common enough, but there hasn't no hangin's resulted, for the reason that in every case the hangee has got friends or relations of votin' influence. Now, along comes you without no votin' connections an' picks off Purdy, which he's classed ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... out on the boy's brow. The tears welled up in his eyes. He danced the infant in his arms, he addressed it caressingly, he scolded it. Then, in desperation, he laid it on the ground, and ran forth, through the rain, to the cottage of an old maid near, named Sally, stopping, however, at intervals in his career, to listen whether the child were still crying; but unable to decide, owing to the prolonged chime in his ears. It is not at once that the drums of hearing obtain ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... of every month, the Twelve Sages unlocked the box, consulted the paper, and sent a herald through the town to proclaim the girl-name for that month. So this saved a world of trouble; for if some wrinkled old maid should say, "And that happened long ago, some time before I was born," all her gossips laughed, and cried out, "Ho! ho! there's a historian! do we not all know you were a born Allia, ten years before that date?"—and then the old maid was put ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... ground well situated and half of it in the shape of a very pretty lawn and shrubbery, but unluckily, in building the house, dear old Rich thought of his own convenience and not mine (very wrong of him!), and I cannot conceive anybody but an old bachelor or old maid living in it. I do not believe anybody would take it as it stands. No doubt the site is valuable, and it would be well worth while to anybody with plenty of cash to spare to build on to the house and make it useful. But I neither have the cash, nor do I want the bother. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... 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 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... Pendleton," responded the girl, coming quickly forward. "I just heard you were here, aunt, and I want to tell you how delighted, enraptured, overjoyed I am to see you," she added, throwing her arms around the bundle of rags which inclosed the thin little old maid, with a bear-like hug and any amount of extravagant kisses, not daring to look ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... Warren's well-bred and superior smile shone forth to arouse resentment. "I think if I were you, Miss Worthington, that I would ask some one else first, because," very kindly, "Gridley Bennet is a perfect old maid about his game. It bores him almost to tears to play with a poor player or a beginner. I've heard him say so more than once. And men just simply hate that sort of thing when they do ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... copy of this respectable and for a time popular monthly, with which he would be reluctant to part. It contains, for the first time printed, "The White Old Maid," one of the weirdest and most fascinating ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... Smith. She's our prize old maid and dresses like a mail sack full of government seeds, but they say she was the prettiest girl in Homeburg when young Cyrus McCord went to Chicago to carve out his future so that he could come home and marry her. But Cyrus didn't carve out his future. He ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... I were an old maid? I wouldn't really be old in a long while, you know. And you will always want some one. If anything should happen to Cousin Eunice, how lonely you ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... gentleman will always find two or three adherents everywhere, to listen to him open-mouthed and lend him money. You will see he will end by dying in some out-of-the-way corner in the arms of an old maid in a wig, who will believe he is the ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... 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
... lieutenant at the Academy and his fiance were seen by an old maid at the hotel to kiss each other. At the first opportunity she reproved the fair damsel for, to her, such unmaidenly conduct. With righteous indignation she repelled ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... wouldn't let it vex me in the least: it's all to hide her envy of you, because you are really young, and married too. I know very well she's dreadfully afraid of being called an old maid." ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... church all the time. Young Miss come over Sunday mornin' and fotched all us chillen to the house and read the Bible to us. She was kind of a old maid and that was her pleasure. We had baptisin's, too. One old cullud man was a preacher. Lawd, Lawd, we had shoutin' at them ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... 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 ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... tacked up at the head of his bed a picture of some very beautiful lady, and another at the side, and another at the foot! And Jenny Shanks, who couldn't help peeping in, to see how a great hero goes to sleep, wishes that she may be an old maid forever if she did not see him say his prayers to them. Now the same fate befall me if I don't find out who it is. You must know, papa, so you had ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... 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
... who had "understanding" mothers, did not need this special inspiration and help, but it was noticeable that girls who had no mothers at all, found in the little, plump, rather dowdy "old maid school teacher" one of those choice souls that God has put on earth to fulfil the duties of ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... old maid!" he murmured. "All that Whipple money, and she has to be just a small-towner! Say, I bet no one has ever kissed that old girl since her mother died! None of these small-town hicks would ever have the nerve to. Yes, sir; any one's got ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... nurse and she; an old coachman; and a pair of old coach-horses; and two or three old maid-servants, and perhaps a very old footman or two, (for every thing will be old and penitential about her,) live very comfortably together; reading old sermons, and old prayer-books; and relieving old men and old women; and giving ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... printed the poem on a card, and on the other side Margery has drawn the picture of a cross old maid, surrounded by seven cats, all frying to get a drink out of her tea-cup. Then Geoff is going to get a live cat from the milk ranch near here, and box it up for me to give to her when she receives her presents at the ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... did not contain many passengers, several wounded officers going to Richmond on furlough, some countrymen, carrying provisions to the capital for sale, and a small, thin, elderly woman in a black dress, to whom Harry assigned the part of an old maid. He noticed that her features were fine and she had the appearance of one who had suffered. When they reached Richmond and their passes were examined, he hastened to carry her bag for her and to help her off the ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of truth in it MacKelvey hunted down doggedly, and the wires into El Toyon from both directions were kept busy. It was the opinion of many people that Shandon had long ago made good his escape and had gone abroad; it was held by many a mild mannered man or timid old maid that he was even now the head of a lawless gang terrorising whatever near or distant city or countryside the most lurid headlines came from; not a few people shook their heads and prophesied that when the Spring thaw came the body of a reckless, blood tainted ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... they were chiefly occupied by widow ladies, to whom she gave the emphatic title of Madam—though she called one of them Mistress. It appeared that those who were denominated Madams were widows of gentlemen who, in their lives, bore the title of Esquires; but that the Mistress was an old maid, whom her neighbours were ashamed longer to call by the juvenile appellation of Miss. Madam ——, whose name I ought not to have forgotten, has devoted a paddock of four or five acres to the comfortable provision of two super-annuated ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... think 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 our set!" ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... "rat-tailed," with a swollen gland on the neck, would shy at a stone, stand on hind legs for a train, with various other minor defects. I grew fainthearted, discouraged, cynical, bitter. Was there no horse for me? I became town-talk as "a drefful fussy old maid who didn't know her own mind, and couldn't ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... as devoted to you as the Lieutenant is to Elise and Jimmy is to A.O. If I were A.O. I wouldn't care if the whole school came down to meet him. I'd want them to see him. I made up my mind at Eugenia's wedding that it was safer to be an old maid, but I'd hate to be one without ever having had an 'affair' like other girls. It must be lovely to be called the Queen of Hearts like Lloyd, and to have such a train of admirers as Mister Rob and Mister Malcolm and Phil ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Rosemary, pensively, "that an old maid is a woman who never could have married and a spinster is merely one ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Lispeth. When he read out the news they looked at their plates a full minute without speaking. Their expectations had matured. At last they were to come into something in return for nothing. Aunt Lispeth, who had latterly lived at Ipswich in a house which he had just not built for her, was an old maid. They had often discussed what she would leave them—though in no mean or grasping spirit, for they did not grudge the 'poor old girl' her few remaining years, however they might feel that she was long past enjoying ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... keep a malevolent weather-eye on Punch in perpetual hope of catching him tripping. Just such a little chorus of mischievous delight greeted the publication of Mr. du Maurier's joke in which an old maid complains that a serious drawback to the charming view from her windows is the tourists bathing on the opposite shore. It is true, as her friend reminds her, that the distance is very great—"but with a telescope, you know!" But years before, Charles Keene had illustrated ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... into any number of pretty yards but especially Ella Higgins'. Of course Ella's yard and garden is a wonder. It's been handed down from one old maid relative to another till in Ella's time it does seem as if every wild and home flower that ever bloomed was fairly rooted and represented there. It's in Ella's garden that the first wild violets bloom; where the first spring beauty ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... of Mrs. Abel Salter there was but scanty information; her old maid sisters-in-law were given to understand that she sent them her best good-wishes—she also forwarded silks and jars of Burmese condiments, but her husband declared that she was very lazy about letter-writing and constitutionally shy. Her maiden ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... understand it. As for Mademoiselle de Scudery herself, applying, it would seem, the impracticable tests she had invented for sounding the depths of the tender passion, though not without suitors, she died an old maid, at ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... feelings. One day when the three were together, she said, "Mr. Administrator, why don't you marry? It would add enormously to your popularity and it would keep a lot of us girls from being old maids." "How would it prevent your being an old maid, Janet?" said Dru. "Please explain." "Why, there are a lot of us that hope to have you call some afternoon, and ask us to be Mrs. Dru, and it begins to look to me as if some of us would be disappointed." Dru laughed and told her not to give up hope. And then he said more seriously—"Some ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... flesh is grass; here to-day and gone tomorrow, as the Bible says. Still he was an old man, and not good for much; there's better folk than him left behind. Is th' canting old maid as was ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... thank Odalite, when you discover that we have got married on purpose to leave the gallant young middy to you, so that you shall not be an old maid." ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... turn rigid, fixed and white, but unable to speak: he had sat on one of these skulls, and it had bitten him. Silver-mounted skulls set as goblets, in imitation of Byron, are to be seen at any of the china-shops rubbing against the chaste cheeks of the old maid's teacup. Skeletons are sold, bleached and with gilded hinges, to the medical students, who buy the pale horrors as openly as meerschaum pipes. Have I not often found young Grandstone supping among his doctors' apprentices of the Ober restaurant after theatre-hours, a skeleton ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Henley, like most old bachelors, regretted not having married; though he thought that his habits had all become too confirmed, to make it worth while to attempt a change. As a general rule, it will be found that your decidedly old maid is contented with her lot, while your very old bachelor is dissatisfied with his. The peculiar evils of a single life—for every life must have its own—are most felt by women early in the day; by men, in old age. The world begins very soon to laugh at the old ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... indicated by the handwriting and general style of the epistles. Rejecting about two thirds as altogether unworthy of attention, we reserved the remaining half dozen for a second inspection. Among these, the one with the cramped, precise chirography was thought to come from an old maid. Another, whose five lines of rail fence covered a sheet nearly as large as a ten-acre lot, was the production of a strong-minded woman. A third, on tinted paper, and dotted with blots and erasures, was from a fat lady, who wore her shoes down at the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ashamed to be a woman, but in the first Christian centuries what they heard about their sex might well have made them so. A woman is not ashamed to be a widow in the Occident, but she may well be so in India. A woman may be ashamed to be an old maid, or that she has no children, or has only girls. It depends on the view current in the mores, and on the sensitiveness of the person to unfavorable judgments. "Shame, for Arabs, occupies the place ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that owing to the meddlesomeness of some officious busybody on the Executive Council of the Society for Anthropological Research—an old maid she felt certain—Lord Henry Highbarn had been invited to go to Central China as the Society's plenipotentiary, in order to investigate the reasons of China's practical immunity from lunacy and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... any old maid with that cat. 'Kitty!' here and 'Kitty!' there; and 'Poor Kitty, did I forget to warm its milk?' And so on. It was give to him two years ago by Jeff Tuttle's littlest girl, Irene; and he didn't want it at first, but him and Irene is great friends, so he pretended he was crazy about it ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... absolute wickedness, but a sort of burr that pricks and sticks where you least desire it. Now, Laura will make an extremely stylish woman of fashion, and tall, fair Gertrude, with her languors and invalidisms, will be picturesque, but an old maid like Marcia Grandon would be simply intolerable! Let us join hands and get ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... returned Myrtle, the tears starting to her eyes. "But Aunt Martha has grown selfish, and does not care for me very much. I hope Uncle Anson will be different. He is my mother's brother, you know, while Aunt Martha is only my father's sister, and an old maid who has had rather a hard life. Perhaps," she added, wistfully, "Uncle Anson will love me—although I'm ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... quoth Miss Wilhelmina. "My ideas of comfort are always associated with wealth. I maintain, that no one can really be comfortable without it. What should I be, without money? An antiquated, despised old maid—and with all my expensive habits, and queer notions, the very boys in the village would hold me in derision. For even boys know the importance of money, and let me pass unmolested through the midst ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... few minutes Mr. Sharp was so engrossed with looking underneath the craft, to ascertain in what condition the various planes and braces were, that he paid little attention to the old maid school principal, after his first greeting. But Miss Perkman was not a person to ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... 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
... marine. I may dislike women, my dear Raleigh, but I know them better than you do, gallant as you are; and when you tell me in one and the same moment that a woman holding absolute sway over men yet lived and died an old maid, you must not be indignant if I smile and bite the end of my thumb, which is the Chinese way of saying that's all in ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... isn't as if I had asked about a heart affair. The girls in France were always talking of heart affairs, and asking if you were fiancee. They thought you were very old, and must be going to coif Saint Catherine. That means that you are going to be an old maid. I said yes, of course you were, because you were needed at home. Esmeralda was no use, but we could not get ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... walk in the ways of sin and worldliness, calming their fears with her flattering words and peace offerings. Primitive Christianity, they consider, was good enough for primitive days, but she would be a horrid enough old maid in these days of progress. In this fast driving age the Christianity that crowned the life of the holy apostles is altogether too antiquated. She drew men from the world, she crucified their lust, she taught them to practise self-denial and keep their body in subjection; ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... rich 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
... made endurable, even pleasant, by the possession and the love of a devoted dog! The man who would focus the burning glass of science upon the animal, may well mock at such a mission, and speak words contemptuous of the yellow old maid with her yellow ribbons and her yellow dog. Nor would it change his countenance or soften his heart to be assured that that withered husk of womanhood was lovely once, and the heart in it is loving still; that she was reduced to all but misery by the self-indulgence of a brother, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of Mrs. Alice Bradford wife of Governor Bradford being newly entered into the 91st year of her age. She was a godly old maid never married." ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... wild northern men can turn a phrase!" whispered Chrysophrasia in my ear,—"so strong and yet so tender!" She could not take her eyes from her nephew, and he appeared to understand that he had already made a conquest of the aesthetic old maid, for he took her admiration for granted, and addressed himself to Mrs. Carvel; not losing sight of Chrysophrasia, however, but looking pleasantly at her as he talked, though his words were ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... girls' society, and she can never become either eccentric or foolish," Mr. Adiesen said hurriedly; but all the same he suddenly had a vision of his pet growing up to be peculiar, and an old maid perhaps resembling Aunt Osla, or some other of the many spinster ladies whose insular life had ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... 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 ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... not mad," says Tita, throwing up her head. "And as to deceiving you—Of course I can see that you are very angry with me for betraying Margaret's secret to Tom; but, then, Tom is a great friend, and when he said something about Margaret's being an old maid, I couldn't bear it any longer. You know how I love Margaret!—and I told him all about Colonel Neilson's love for her, and that she needn't be an old maid unless she liked. But as to ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... "Now, there's old maid Allis, relative of the Rogerses, lives all alone down on Clark Street in an old house that hain't had a coat o' paint or a new shingle sence the three Thayers was hung, an' she talks about the folks next door, both sides, that she's knowed alwus, as 'village people,' and I don't believe," asserted ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... of the twentieth century, and were not going to bear with a dull old maid, merely because she was their aunt and had been kind to them. As one of them expressed it, "Never put yourself out for a relation, ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... good you are to your Agatha. I knew you would not torture me with a request that I should marry a man I did not love. I grieve that I interfere with your plans; but I will live with you, and be your old maid sister, and nurse and love your children, and they shall love ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... frowned, and did not see fit to answer the remark made to her. Her husband was not very brilliant, either in business, wit, or in any other way, and she had married him, not from love, but because she saw no other way of escaping from being an old maid. ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... for your old chair?" was the reply in a scornful tone, as she gave another and harder dig with her nail. "You're a little old maid—so particular with all your things— that's what mamma says you are. Now tell ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... that Joe, like most men, was as full of gossip and as eager for it as a convalescent old maid, and that, whoever might have been the first at his house to make the break for bed, he was the last to leave off talking. But the chief reason for my laugh was that, just before he came in on me, I was almost pinching myself to see whether I was dreaming it all, and he had made ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... married in a registry office. But would she? She would not. For a month previous to marriage all girls cast off modernity and became Victorian. Yes, she would demand real orange-blossom and everything that went with it.... He got as far as wishing that Sissie might grow into an old maid, solely that he might be spared the wearing complications incident to the ceremony of marriage as practised by intelligent persons in the twentieth century. His character was deteriorating, and he could not stop ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... frightened at Aunt Deborah's black eyes, thought he would rather marry Aunt Dorcas. Why the two sisters didn't toss up for him I can't think; but he did marry Aunt Dorcas, and Aunt Deborah has been an old maid ever since. Sometimes even now she fixes her eyes on Cousin John, and then takes them off with a great sigh. It seems ridiculous in an old lady, but I don't know that it is so. That's the reason my cousin can ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... old maid you read about—the one who always knows all about babies and just how to bring them up to righteous maturity; I've got a mighty strong conviction that I know heaps that my dad never thought of about the proper training for a healthy ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... words troubled her. Was it possible life could be as dull and drab a thing as it seemed to her. Perhaps, though, she had never been in love! She had married because she did not want to be an old maid. Only love can redeem life from its common-place monotony. Maybe that was why ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... rules—church and work until you've landed your heiress. After that you can move back to civilisation.... Now as soon as you strike your town you want to make arrangements for board and lodging in some old woman's house—preferably an old maid. You'll be sure to find at least half a dozen of 'em, willing to take boarders, but you want to be equally sure to pick out the one that talks the most, so that she'll tell the neighbours all about you. Don't worry about ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the story she had told me was implanted in my mind merely by the two questions of my schoolfellows; but, as I could not keep silence entirely and live, I resolved to have recourse to Julie, my former nurse. She was a little woman, fifty years of age, an old maid too, with a flat, wrinkled face, like an over-ripe apple; but her eyes were full of kindness, and indeed so was her whole face, although her lips were drawn in by the loss of her front teeth, and this gave her a witch-like mouth. She had deeply ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... entry which opened off the street. People came and went along this entry: Madame Rasmussen and old Captain Elleby; the old maid-servant of a Comptroller, an aged pensioner who wore a white cap, drew her money from the Court, and expended it here, and a feeble, gouty old sailor who had bidden the sea farewell. Out in the street, on the sharp-edged cobble-stones, the sparrows ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and you will see what a plain, dowdy old maid she is. She is not for the like of you, Gavin—a bit country dressmaker, poor, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... there overtook us a little elderly lady, as prim and neat as an old maid, and as bright-looking as a happy matron. I saw at once who it was—Mrs. Jessop, our good doctor's new wife, and old love: whom he had lately brought home, to the great amazement and ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Mary Ann Cotting didn't hev but a hundred an' forty dollars, all told, an' she were an old maid an' soured an' squint-eyed when Peggy ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... to transfer her luggage, she sauntered leisurely along the platform, searching vainly for an empty compartment, where the regulation of the supply of oxygen would not depend upon the caprice of an old maid. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... answer. "I do not know. I am not old, but I am not sure that I would not rather marry him than be an old maid." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... often wished for a marriage that would separate her from him, that would leave her son alone in a deserted home, where she herself might become all powerful, mistress of everything. Therefore she appealed to him. Was it not true that a woman ought to marry, that it was against nature to remain an old maid? ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... 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
... the smiling and courteous vicar, who nourishes the ambitious hope of obtaining Miss Woodhouse's hand. We have Mrs. Bates, the wife of a former rector, past everything but tea and whist; her daughter, Miss Bates, a good-natured, vulgar, and foolish old maid; Mr. Weston, a gentleman of a frank disposition and moderate fortune, in the vicinity, and his wife an amiable and accomplished person, who had been Emma's governess, and is devotedly attached to her. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... spiritual and intellectual pride, which causes you to set yourself above your fellows, and in the end will be your ruin. It has made a lonely woman of you for years, and it will do worse than that. It will turn you into an old maid—if you live," he added, as though ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... or a kidnapping; and Benjie Doolittle, who likes a sporting event, takes a chance that you'll stand hitched in a plan to rid the community of a political pest without seriously hurting the pest—a friendless old maid who won't be missed for a day or two, and whose disappearance can be hushed up one way or another after she appears too late for ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... festivity of the occasion, and thinks how jolly it will be to have six bridesmaids, how nice she will look in her bridal dress, and how the other fellows will envy her chosen one. Generally marrying two or three years younger than the English girl, she would consider herself an 'old maid' at twenty-three; and for old maids she entertains the very minimum of respect, in spite of their rarity in the colonies. Once married, she gives up to a large extent, if not entirely, the pomps and vanities of which she has had her full during spinsterhood, and devotes herself to her household, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... not leave this great king without committing to writing this good joke which he played upon La Godegrand, who was an old maid, much disgusted that she had not, during the forty years she had lived, been able to find a lid to her saucepan, enraged, in her yellow skin, that she still was as virgin as a mule. This old maid had her apartments ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... And oh, Steven, forgive me, but I'm so happy. [Hugging the pillows on the sofa and burying her face in them.] Don't let me be silly—don't let me forget I'm an old maid,—and there's no fool like an old fool! I mustn't forget there's probably an orange or two among the blossoms for ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... baby's cough, and the cheapest way to do their marketing," she said laughing, as she and Amherst emerged once more into the street. "It's the same kind of interest I used to feel in my dolls and guinea pigs—a managing, interfering old maid's interest. I don't believe I should care a straw for them if I couldn't dose them and order ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of Miss Crawley for the new governess, how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not to be jealous, and to welcome the young lady to the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley, her husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents! They became very fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley and her nephew. He gave up hunting; he declined entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dine with the mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to stroll over to Crawley parsonage—whither Miss ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 gave way to grief, O scorcher of his foes, for ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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 ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... in London on the 20th of September, and found that our old maid landlady had died of the plague, but had kindly sent all our literary and wardrobe effects to Florio, who was still alive and well at the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... see some chiffoniers. The clerk led her to the display of bassinettes, which was an unfortunate error since the lady was an old maid. She accepted his ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... water and things. But I'll tell you about Aunt Pam—her name is Pamela, I think, but we call her Pam for short. She wasn't ever married, though I guess she's old enough. Somebody once said Aunt Pam was an old maid; but that can't be, for old maids are always cranky, and get out of bed backward every morning. Now Aunt Pam was never cranky in her life; and I know she gets out of bed like everybody else, for I've slept with her ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... more filled with good and pure and kindly impulses beat than thine! Indeed, I have ever ascribed my deep reverence for the sisterhood in general to my affectionate remembrances of this childhood's friend. The oracle of our village was Aunt Nora Meriwether—and how could "old maid" be a stigma upon her name, when it was by virtue of this very title that she was enabled to perform all those little kindly offices which her heart was ever prompting, and which made up the sum of her simple ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... sensibility compose the original fundus of southern manners.' Our faults of style, such as they are, proceed from our manliness. In France there are no unmarried women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid. 'What striking sacrifices of sexual honour does this one fact argue!' The French style is remarkable for simplicity—'a strange pretension for anything French;' but on the whole the intellectual merits of their style are small, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Mrs. Madden did not, indeed, appeal strongly to the family pride. She had been a Miss Foley, a dress-maker, and an old maid. Jeremiah had married her after a brief widowerhood, principally because she was the sister of his parish priest, and had a considerable reputation for piety. It was at a time when the expansion of his business was ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... 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 you ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Eugenia was married to Captain Castaigne, the young French officer. Curious that among the four of them who had come from the United States to do Red Cross work among the Allies, Eugenia should be the first to marry! She, a New England old maid, disapproving of matrimony and, ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... to look at those pictures of by-gone fashions," said the Old Maid, "I see the by-gone people in them, and it makes me feel as though the faces that we love are only passing fashions with the rest. We wear them for a little while upon our hearts, and think so much of them, and then there comes a time when we lay them by, and forget them, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... those of limited vocabulary, affixed to Miss Coppinger the ancient label: "A typical old maid," and considered that no further definition was required; and, since her appearance conformed in some degree with stage traditions, there is something to be said for them. If labels are to be employed, even the least complex of human beings would suggest a much-travelled ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Viscount Philibert de la Choue who had made all the arrangements for Pierre's sojourn in Rome. Of the ancient and once vigorous race of the Boccaneras, there now only remained Cardinal Pio Boccanera, the Princess his sister, an old maid who from respect was called "Donna" Serafina, their niece Benedetta—whose mother Ernesta had followed her husband, Count Brandini, to the tomb—and finally their nephew, Prince Dario Boccanera, whose father, Prince Onofrio, was likewise dead, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... had written to her she would have thought that you were finding fault with her for not looking after me more. It's done now, and if I'm satisfied and Captain Trimblett is satisfied, that is all that matters. You didn't want me to be an old maid, did you?" ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... greeted by the loud laughter of all the company, except Cary who did not understand its significance. When it was explained to him that she would wear the mystical tresses who was destined to remain an old maid, he smiled as he murmured ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... about my unworthy self, and England generally. No matter how often he began to ask questions about the Nosnibors and other old acquaintances, both the ladies soon went back to his own adventures. He succeeded, however, in learning that Mr. Nosnibor was dead, and Zulora, an old maid of the most unattractive kind, who had persistently refused to accept Sunchildism, while Mrs. Nosnibor was the recipient of honours hardly inferior to those conferred by the people at large on my father and mother, ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Science and System began to lengthen the mental and financial infancy of the men to such an extent that the "old maid" of twenty-three became common. What were the girls in the "middle class" to do while the boys were growing up to be men, in mind and ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... states, however, that she never at any time had physical relationships with Rosenthal, who was a man of fragile organization and health. Sacher-Masoch united himself to Hulda Meister, who is described by the first wife as a prim and faded but coquettish old maid, and by the biographer as a highly accomplished and gentle woman, who cared for him with almost maternal devotion. No doubt there is truth in both descriptions. It must be noted that, as Wanda clearly shows, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the selfish pigs! Condemned to be an old maid, in order not to spoil an ideal! Perhaps you'd like to enter the ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... smoke, blind hookey, Polish bank, Earl of Coventry, Napoleon, patience, pairs; banker; blind poker, draw poker, straight poker, stud poker; bluff, bridge, bridge whist; lotto, monte, three-card monte, nap, penny-ante, poker, reversis^, squeezers, old maid, fright, beggar-my- neighbor; baccarat. [cards: list] ace, king, queen, knave, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, trey, deuce; joker; trump, wild card. [card suits: list] spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds; major suit, minor suit. bower; right ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... childhood. At the period to which I refer, she could not have 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, and often of things that never did or could ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... circumstances; practically self-taught; studied at London University, where he took his degree with triple honours; became a teacher, then a journalist; has written novels, essays, and poems; among his works the "Bachelor's Club," "Old Maid's Club," "Children of the Ghetto," "Dreams of the Ghetto," "The Master," "Without ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... be 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. ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol |
