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Courtship   /kˈɔrtʃˌɪp/   Listen
Courtship

noun
1.
A man's courting of a woman; seeking the affections of a woman (usually with the hope of marriage).  Synonyms: courting, suit, wooing.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Courtship" Quotes from Famous Books



... think it possible. And then his mind wandered off to other days, to far different times. He thought of their courtship; of his first seeing her, an awkward beautiful rustic, far too shiftless for the delicate factory work to which she was apprenticed; of his first gift to her, a bead necklace, which had long ago been put by, in one of the deep drawers of the dresser, to be kept for Mary. He ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... mouth or peeped." He did not run across that in general current writing. He got that directly from the Bible. In his poems is an amazing amount of reference to the Bible. One would expect much in the "Courtship of Miles Standish," for that is a story of the Puritans, and they spoke, naturally, in terms of the Bible; yet, of course, they could not do it in Longfellow's poem, if Longfellow did not know the language of the Bible very well. One might not expect to find it so much in "Evangeline," ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... silvery sound of it I plucked up a hint of courage; for surely, I thought, she wasn't cruel enough to make game of me as she turned me down. Still, I couldn't really hope. She was too wonderful, and my courtship had been too inadequate. Despondent, arms on my knees, I harped ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... under her balcony,—and looks sufficiently sheepish as people detect him on their late return from the theatre. [Footnote: The love-making scenes in Goldoni's comedy of Il Bugiarda are photographically faithful to present usage in Venice.] Or, if the friends do not take this course in their courtship (for they are both engaged in the wooing), they decide that Todaro, after walking back and forth a sufficient number of times in the street where the Biondina lives, shall write her a tender letter, to demand if she be disposed ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... eyes; Her breath is the perfume of sacrifice. And wheresoe'er my fancy would begin, Still her perfection lets religion in. We sit and talk, and kiss away the hours As chastely as the morning dews kiss flowers. I touch her, like my beads, with devout care, And come unto my courtship as my prayer. ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... of his opinions; also he was going to marry Dorothy. Evidently his determination won the Judge's consent, and in giving it he smothered his objections, for there was no further opposition to the match, and no courtship ever gave clearer evidence of an intense devotion on both sides than that of Hancock and Dorothy, who, being ten years younger than her Hero, looked up to him as to some great and superior being worthy of her heart's ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... dignity, he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers can be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion which affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall. Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... flowed along peacefully. These were most profitable years, for he was always an industrious worker and would not allow moodiness or disinclination to work to deprive him of opportunities for worthy labor. His three greatest works, Evangeline, Hiawatha and The Courtship of Miles Standish, appeared at intervals of a few years. But this period of comparative ease and quiet was brought to an abrupt close by the tragic death of Mrs. Longfellow in 1861. Her dress had taken fire from a lighted match that had fallen to the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... accomplished, Abner felt himself free to scale down to a minimum the customary attentions of a courtship. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages vanished into insignificance before the convincing ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... Captive's Cunning Devices. A Pursuit and a Rescue. Extraordinary Presence of Mind. A Robber captured by a Woman. A Brave, Good Girl. Helping "the Lord's People." A Home of Love in the Wilderness. A Singular Courtship. The Benevolent Matron and her Errand. Story of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... all prophecies, the couple seemed to find in marriage the secret of perpetuating the intoxication of a courtship which, on Maumbry's side at least, had opened without serious intent. During the winter following they were the most popular pair in and about Casterbridge—nay in South Wessex itself. No smart dinner in the country houses of the younger and gayer families within driving ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... made at home was finished and pressed, had been built very early in the history of the town, and while there were "spinsters" who went from house to house, much of the work was done by mother and daughters. Seaborn Cotton, who must often during his courtship have ridden over from Boston, found Dorothy like the Priscilla she may have known, busy in the graceful fashion of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... in Rowley's straightforward and homely dramatic handling of the supernatural element: in the miracle of St. Winifred's well, and the conversion of Albon into St. Alban by "that seminary knight," as the tyrant Maximinus rather comically calls him, Amphiabel Prince of Wales. The courtship of the princely Offa, while disguised as the shoemaker's apprentice Crispinus, by the Roman Princess Laodice, daughter of Maximinus, is very lively and dramatic: the sprightliest scene, I should say, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... lived with him, did all that was possible to make him happy. Every momentous event of Cardan's life—and many a trifling one as well—was heralded by some manifestation of the powers lying beyond man's cognition. In writing about the signs and tokens which served as premonitions of his courtship and marriage, he glides easily into a description of the events themselves in terms which are worth producing. "In times past I had my home in Sacco, and there I led a joyful life, as if I were a man unvexed ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... woman's heart, I must pay my way in the land's current coinage of compliments and high-pitched protestations. Yes, yes, such sixpenny phrases suffice the seasoned traveler, who does not ostentatiously display his gems while traveling. Now, in courtship, Master Mervale, one traverses ground more dubious than the Indies, and the truth, Master Mervale, is ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... most birds display their plumage at the time of courtship, apparently with the full knowledge that it is beautiful, constitutes one of Mr. Darwin's strongest arguments. It is, no doubt, a very curious and interesting phenomenon, and indicates a connection between the exertion of particular muscles and the development of colour ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... love you," said Duv Laca. "We shall have a notable year of courtship and joy. And let us go now," she continued, "for I am impatient ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... have attracted during the days we have sailed together—may have attracted, bedad, I mean—the declared admiration even of a fellow like myself, we being so much together; but I had heard your story, fair lady, and of the courtship paid you by Captain Vince of the corvette Badger—whose family I knew in England—and, acknowledging his superior claims, I constantly refrained, though not without great effort (I must say that much for ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... up a mate; his urgent and oft-repeated advertisement was answered. Still the drumming did not cease, but was quite as fervent as before. If a mate could be won by drumming, she could be kept and entertained by more drumming; courtship should not end with marriage. If the bird felt musical before, of course he felt much more so now. Besides that, the gentle deities needed propitiating in behalf of the nest and young as well as in behalf of the mate. After a time a second female came, when there was war between ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... old creatures, those two. It was almost as if they were members of an ancient family under some curse—they were so gentlewomanly, so proper, and they sighed so. Sometimes I would see tears in their eyes. I do not know that my courtship of Florence made much progress at first. Perhaps that was because it took place almost entirely during the daytime, on hot afternoons, when the clouds of dust hung like fog, right up as high as the tops of the thin-leaved elms. The night, I believe, is the proper season for the gentle ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... ceremony in their marriages, though their mode of courtship is not without its singularity. When a young man sees a female to his fancy, he informs her she must accompany him home; the lady refuses; he not only enforces compliance with threats, but blows; thus the gallant, according to the custom, never fails to gain the victory, and bears off the willing, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... imagination enough to admire anything about a riotous crazy quilt. She is in love with Clifton Gray, has been since she wound her brown braids about her head, and is piecing strips of him into her life-fabric by the very sanest love—courtship—marriage design. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... on her from time to time, his idle fingers plaiting a little wreath out of long-stemmed clover and boutons d'or, he appeared merely an intrusive, irresponsible young fellow willing to amuse himself with a few moments' rustic courtship here before he continued ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... used by these fiends in human form to trap girls into houses of sin, is courtship and false marriage. These men go into the country districts and, under the guise of commercial men, board at the best hotels, dress handsomely, cultivate the most captivating manners, and then look for their prey. Upon the streets they see a pretty girl and immediately lay ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... for friends in England, became quite intimate with me, and related to me a considerable portion of his own history and that of his family, and it was from him that I heard the following story of his courtship, which is not quite so prosaic and business-like as such affairs usually are in Mohammedan countries. His shop was in the silk bazaar at Cairo, and what first led to the subject was a sentence in Arabic written over it, which I had puzzled my brains in trying to read ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... will extend the benefits of this individual action to the creation of Public Opinion in the Community, in Society at large. As all great powers, Public Opinion is courted; this courtship is "Propaganda." Truth requires propaganda as life needs transmission. An efficient propaganda takes myriad forms but its purpose is always the same, i.e., give to others our ideas and through them organize the public mind. Distribution ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... criticism finds good reasons to justify this contemporary judgement. Mr. Swinburne writes: "The last battle of Talbot seems to me as undeniably the master's work as the scene in the Temple Gardens, or the courtship of Margaret by Suffolk"; and it would be easy to prove that much of what the dying Mortimer says is just as certainly Shakespeare's work as any of the passages referred to by Mr. Swinburne. Like most of those who are destined to reach the heights, Shakespeare seems to have ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... who had for surname the Haughty, sat in her mansion, and during the same winter messengers went between King Olaf and Sigrid to propose his courtship to her, and she had no objection; and the matter was fully and fast resolved upon. Thereupon King Olaf sent to Queen Sigrid the great gold ring he had taken from the temple door of Hlader, which was considered a distinguished ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... been going through life with my eyes shut to my own antiquity. It came on me like a flash three minutes ago, that this gross oldster, sitting of a Saturday sipping the good aqua of Elrigmore, with a pendulous waistcoat and a wrinkled hand, is not the lad whose youth and courtship you ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... Winn and Serat had their shops was the property of Nicholas Rousselet, a French gentleman of Demerara, the story of whose unconventional courtship of Miss Catherine Moffatt is pretty enough to bear retelling, and entitles him to a place in our limited collection of etchings. M. Rousselet had doubtless already mad excursions into the pays de tendre, ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... I have found my life in losing it," he continued with a grim smile. "Saturn! what a courtship is ours—what an engagement—what a bridal bed! But there, old fellow, I'm afraid I'm happier than you—alone in spirit, and separated from her you love. Perhaps I was wrong to carry you away from Venus—it has ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... women of their grace and dignity. He preferred the young girls in their costume of the fourteenth dynasty. Progress, he thought, had tended only to complicate life and render it less enjoyable. All the essentials of happiness—love, courtship, marriage, the home, children, friendship, social intercourse, and play, were independent of it; had always been there ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... The courtship must have been brief and to the point, for it was positively known that he and his fiancee had met but three times in the interval when ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... resolute and ardent of the votaries of chance, may be numbered the mortals whose hope is to raise themselves by a wealthy match; who lay out all their industry on the assiduities of courtship, and sleep and wake with no other ideas than of treats, compliments, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... time forward we entertained each other with affectionate kindness in order to marriage, which yet we did not hasten to, but went on deliberately. Neither did I use those vulgar ways of courtship, by making frequent and rich presents, not only for that my outward condition would not comport with the expense, but because I liked not to obtain by such means, but preferred an ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood

... disquiet than he is fancied to have who found his face in Michael Angelo's hell. The same should serve me also in excuse for my silence in celebrating your mastery shown in the design and draught, did not indignation rather than courtship urge me so far to commend them, as to wish the furniture of our House of Lords changed from the story of '88 to that of '67 (of Evelyn's designing), till the pravity of this were reformed to the temper of that age, wherein God Almighty found his blessings more operative than, I fear, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... bet of it," said Sheffield: "one will give in early, one late, but there is a time destined for all. Pass some ten or twelve years, as Carlton says, and we shall find A.B. on a curacy, the happy father of ten children; C.D. wearing on a long courtship till a living falls; E.F. in his honeymoon; G.H. lately presented by Mrs. H. with twins; I.K. full of joy, just accepted; L.M. may remain what Gibbon calls 'a column in the midst of ruins,' and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... it," answer'd Psyche, "but I have a Dose at hand will infallibly do it" and therefore brought me a lusty bowl of satyricon, (a love-potion) and so merrily ran over the wonderful effects of it, that I had well-nigh suck'd it all off; but because Ascyltos had slighted her courtship, she finding his back towards her, threw the bottom ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... t'other day (Whose words are often few and funny), What to a novice she could say Of courtship, love and matrimony. Quoth ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... of her favorite and most satisfying habits was to evoke from the realm of the future a proper hero, shining with zeal and virtue like Sir Galahad, in whose arms she would picture herself living happily ever after a sweet courtship, punctuated by due maidenly hesitation. This fondness for letting her fancy run riot and evolve visions splendid with happenings for her own advancement and gladness was not confined to matrimonial day-dreams. On the morning when she entered the school-house door ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... was her equal; the white strain in him, which now governed all his thoughts and actions, felt the call of its own blood. Hence, it had been with sad, rather than bitter, feelings that he witnessed Donald's courtship of the girl. More fiercely than ever, he realized the limitations of his kind. The bar sinister was a veritable millstone around his neck which dragged him down to a ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... symptom, you will say,) and received him very graciously. After the first compliments were over, he seemed eager to improve the opportunity to enter directly on the subject of his present visit. It is needless for me to recite to you, who have long been acquainted with the whole process of courtship, the declarations, propositions, protestations, entreaties, looks, words, and actions of a lover. They are, I believe, much the same in the whole sex, allowing for their different dispositions, educations, and characters; but you are impatient, I ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... race, and has, if a colloquialism may be allowed here, done yeoman service ever since. Even in modern days, notwithstanding the invention of the telephone and the motor car, we are still dependent upon art for the beginning of our courtships. To-day the courtship begins by the man and the woman sending each other books. Before books were invented music served the purpose of the lover. For when man ceased to capture woman, he went to the river's edge and cut a reed and made it into ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... to open. There must be a courtship in progress. It was very plain now why 'Sieur George had wished not to be accompanied by the rail gentleman; but since his visits had become regular and frequent, it was equally plain why he did not get rid of him;—because it would not look well to be going ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... think no more of him she loves so dearly. See! she is weeping even in her dreams. But you have good reasons, no doubt. Young Carl is wild, perhaps, or drinks, or gambles, eh? What! none of these? Perhaps he is wayward and uncertain; and you fear that the honeyed words of courtship might turn to bitter sayings in matrimony. They do, sometimes, eh, baron? By all means guard her from such a fate as that. Poor, tender flower! Or who knows, worse than that, baron! Hard words break no bones, they say, but angry men are ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... "and he's likely to continue it. Folks have given up expecting that that courtship ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the pivoting panel and shelf which kept me on the right track. Miles had searched the shelf for the marriage certificate which he could not know Nita had already burned. Probably, too, he had written her a few letters during their short courtship——" ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... and manner gave Saunders credit for the suggestion, and Saunders seemed to like it. There is nothing like following up, in football, war or courtship. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... Bataan; while Loarca, writing late in the sixteenth century, records a very like ceremony practised by a coast group, probably the Pintados. At the same time it is worthy of note that Jenks found among the Bontoc Igorot a great divergence both in courtship and marriage. Among the Dusun of British North Borneo the marriage of children of the well-to-do is consummated by the eating of rice from the same plate. Other instances of eating together, as a part of the marriage ceremony in Malaysia, are given by Crawley. ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... we have of a Jewish courtship. The Women seem quite as resigned to the custom of "being taken" as the men "to take." Outside parties could no doubt in most cases make more judicious selections of partners, than young folks themselves under the glamour of their ideals. Altogether the marriage of Isaac, though rather prosaic, has ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... home next door with his sister and her husband. The two brown stone houses were almost within arm's reach of each other. She had painted dainty water colors for his rooms and he had thrown thousands of roses from his windows into her boudoir. It had been a merry courtship—the courtship of modern cavalier and lady fair. Ridgeway's parents died when he was in college, and he was left to enlarge or despise a fortune that rated him as a millionaire and the best ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... cowboys, just as they really exist. Spirited action, a range feud between two families, and a Romeo and Juliet courtship make this a bright, jolly, entertaining ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... 'Nay, this is courtship,' the old man answered. His head leaned forward with a birdlike intentness; he listened with one hand held out as if to still any sound in the room. They heard footsteps from the floor above, a laugh and voices. 'Now Margot talks to him ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... his widowed years with the not insignificant, fraction of life left to Miss Silence, to their mutual advantage. He came to the village, therefore, where Father Pemberton was very glad to have him supply the pulpit in the place of his unfortunate disabled colleague. The courtship soon began, and was brisk enough; for the good man knew there was no time to lose at his period of life,—or hers either, for that matter. It was a rather odd specimen of love-making; for he was constantly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... through the illimitable forests only by the help of the "blazed" trees and the course of streams. Social intercourse was infrequent except in autumn and winter, when the young managed to assemble as they always will. Love and courtship went on {296} even in this wilderness, though marriage was uncertain, as the visits of clergymen were very rare in many places, and magistrates could alone tie the nuptial knot—a very unsatisfactory performance ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... a purely educational outlook in life, and a horizon bounded by her school; but Cupid, who plays strange pranks even with head mistresses, brought her fate along in the shape of a major from the temporary camp by the lake, and shot his arrows with such deadly aim that the whole romantic business—courtship, engagement, and war wedding—took place in the course of a few weeks, almost under the very noses of her interested pupils. They had gone home for their Easter holidays much thrilled about her engagement ring, and had returned ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... Lady being broken in Sorrows, and having mortify'd all her Appetites to the Enjoyments of this World, and not knowing where to meet with so fair an Overture, tho' at first, in Modesty, she seem'd to refuse it as too great an Honour, yet yielded to less than a Quarter of an Hour's Courtship. And the next Sunday marry'd they were, with the Consent, and to the perfect Satisfaction of, his Daughter, Madam Eugenia; who lov'd Philadelphia sincerely. They kept their Wedding very nobly for a Month, at their own House in Great Lincolns-Inn-Fields; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... by Bella's declaration that she would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella's return to the sphere of Mr George Sampson's courtship, or whether it was a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come into collision with somebody on the present occasion,—anyhow she made a dash at her stately parent now, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... persuaded into love against their judgment by all that talent, manner, attention, and flattery can do, I have no inclination to believe Fanny one of them, or to think that with so much tenderness of disposition, and so much taste as belonged to her, she could have escaped heart-whole from the courtship (though the courtship only of a fortnight) of such a man as Crawford, in spite of there being some previous ill opinion of him to be overcome, had not her affection been engaged elsewhere. With all the security which love of another and disesteem of him could give to the peace of mind he was attacking, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... happy evenings, such as the night before had been, when the glamor and romance of courtship days had come back, and they had found a new beauty of love and the glory of life, in the easier circumstances ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... the belles were all allotted those who scarcely deserved that title had their turn, many of the soldiers being not at all particular about half-an-inch of nose more or less, a trifling deficiency of teeth, or a larger crop of freckles than is customary in the Saxon race. Thus, with one and another, courtship began to be practised in Overcombe on rather a large scale, and the dispossessed young men who had been born in the place were left to take their walks alone, where, instead of studying the works of nature, they meditated gross outrages on the brave men ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... Fortune was smiling on the gallant fellow on whom she had seemed to frown. Even the course of true love was defying all previous record, and had run with exceptional smoothness. Barring the one fearful task of having to write to her father, his courtship had been sweet and unimpeded as all its first surroundings had been bitter. And now, free, hopeful, redeemed, what was there to wait for? Why not claim his bride and a long leave of absence, and take her with him to see the dear old mother in Kentucky? "The engagement is at last announced," wrote ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... added to the pleasures of his courtship! He had a rival,—and such a rival;—his own bootmaker, whom he could not pay, and whose father had insulted him a day or two since. Moggs junior would of course know why his customer was dining at Alexandrina Cottage, and would have his own ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... even gone so far as to purchase a ballad of considerable antiquity, that had long fluttered among many others, chiefly expressive of maritime sentiments, on a dead wall in the Commercial Road: which poetical performance set forth the courtship and nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain 'lovely Peg,' the accomplished daughter of the master and part-owner of a Newcastle collier. In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle descried a profound metaphysical ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Leicester offered his help—for he knew the match was unlikely—and soon Catherine de Medici's agents were busy by Elizabeth's side. Elizabeth, as usual, was coy and maidenly. She was too old, she said, the thought of marriage was shocking to her; but, withal, the courtship went on actively. Anjou's charms and rumoured gallantries were the staple gossip at her court, and Elizabeth never tired of hearing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... his wife was extremely modest and reserved; and he took mischievous pleasure in telling strangers the story of their courtship in a way that made her blush. "Dost thou know what Hannah answered, when I asked if she would marry me?" said he. "I will tell thee how it was. I was walking home with her one evening, soon after the death of her mother, and I mentioned to ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... Baker, the naturalist, who married one of his daughters and received his assistance, as we have seen, in starting The Universal Spectator. Baker, original a bookseller, in 1724 set up a school for the deaf and dumb at Newington. There, according to the notes which he left of his courtship, he made the acquaintance of "Mr. Defoe, a gentleman well known by his writings, who had newly built there a very handsome house, as a retirement from London, and amused his time either in the cultivation ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... which characterized Mary, were not felt in an equal degree by her sisters, so that a disproportionate share of every burthen attendant upon the situation, fell to her lot. On the other hand, they could scarcely perhaps be perfectly easy, in observing the superior degree of deference and courtship, which her merit extorted from almost every one that knew her. Her kindness for them was not diminished, but she resolved that the mode of its exertion in future should be different, tending to their benefit, without intrenching ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin

... affection. When this early and childish intimacy ripened into youthful love, confessed and returned, still it differed in some shades from the passion existing between lovers originally strangers to each other, until their affections have been united in the ordinary course of courtship. Their love was fonder, more familiar, more perfectly confidential; purer too, perhaps, and more free from starts of passionate violence, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... disinclination to go home, took possession of another cage whose owner was amiable, and finally turned upon her rough wooer, as I suppose he must be named; though if I had not seen a similar style of courtship among the orchard orioles I should hesitate to give it that name. One morning she rose in her might to put an end to all this persecution, and I saw her on the war-path, pursuing him with open beak; but after ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... her side. It was innocently done, on mine. The good easy bailiff, looking aside at the moment from his ducks, discovered us pursuing our boy-and-girl courtship in each other's arms. He shook his big forefinger at us, with something of a sad and ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... flying-chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields; from whence, proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a collation of buns, cheesecakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bottled ale; through all which scenes the author dodged them (charmed with the simplicity of their courtship), from whence he drew this little sketch of Nature; but, being then young and obscure, he was very much ridiculed for this performance; which, nevertheless, made its way into the polite world, and amply recompensed him by the applause of the divine Addison, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Odin's courtship of Rinda reminds us of Jupiter's wooing of Danae, who is also a symbol of the earth; and while the shower of gold in the Greek tale is intended to represent the fertilising sunbeams, the footbath in the Northern story typifies the spring thaw which sets in ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... you know those books which pretend to have been written from one hundred to two hundred years ago,—"Mary Powell" (Milton's Courtship), "Cherry and Violet," and the rest? Their fault is that they are too much alike. The authoress (a Miss Manning) sent me some of them last winter, with some most interesting letters. Then for many months I ceased to hear from her, but a few weeks ago she sent me her new Christmas book,—"The ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... happened, I was at that time keeping company with a young lady who lived at the very house concerning which they asked. I will not go into detail any further at this point, for this is a real case and I should be trespassing on personal ground. But any one who yet remembers his boyhood courtship, with all its agonies and fears, its hopes and joys, its disappointments and its pleasures, can see at a glance how important this occasion is in throwing light on the meaning of the dream. Of course "W. H." ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... 1850], I sit, a married man in the Bengal army, writing to a brother, it may be a married man, in Van Diemen's Land." (Rumors of Tom's courtship of Julia Sorell had evidently just reached him.) He goes on to describe his married home at Hoshyarpore, and his work at Indian languages. He has been reading Carlyle's Cromwell, and marveling at the "rapid rush of ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... odd courtship went on. Roger talked to her as he had never talked to anyone. He did not find it in the least hard to talk to her, though her necessity of watching his face so closely while he talked bothered him occasionally. He felt ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he had professed to regard with so much interest. But she assented ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... however, had to be confirmed a third time; and four days after that, she again repeated her confirmation, and begged to be excused from it. Upon this I gave her up, and this time all my counsellors were of one opinion." This was the longest courtship in the list, having lasted three whole months; and, quite disheartened by its bad success, Kepler's next attempt was of a more timid complexion. His advances to No. 9 were made by confiding to her the whole story of his ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... in her courtship, when her husband loved her and they looked forward to marriage and he was tender and ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... part of her letter. This is sufficient for her; this incident supplies the place of an answer, and persuades her that Sarpedon is her lover. In the Odyssey, we are informed that Penelope, harassed by the vexatious courtship of her suitors, begins to curse them all, and to pour forth vows for the return of Ulysses. Her son Telemachus interrupts her by a loud sneeze. She instantly exults with joy, and regards this sign as an assurance of the approaching return of her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... Tories The Revenge of Josiah Breeze The May-Pole of Merrymount The Devil and Tom Walker The Gray Champion The Forest Smithy Wahconah Falls Knocking at the Tomb The White Deer of Onota Wizard's Glen Balanced Rock Shonkeek-Moonkeek The Salem Alchemist Eliza Wharton Sale of the Southwicks The Courtship of Myles Standish Mother Crewe Aunt Rachel's Curse Nix's Mate The Wild Man of Cape Cod Newbury's Old Elm Samuel Sewall's Prophecy The Shrieking Woman Agnes Surriage Skipper Ireson's Ride Heartbreak Hill Harry Main: The ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... Fairlie or by me. All he asked, in that case, was that she would recall to mind, for the last time, what the circumstances were under which the engagement between them was made, and what his conduct had been from the beginning of the courtship to the present time. If, after due reflection on those two subjects, she seriously desired that he should withdraw his pretensions to the honour of becoming her husband—and if she would tell him so plainly with her own lips—he ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... and taking advantage of the additional room left him on the seat to spread himself comfortably, as if a few preliminary refusals were part of the inevitable routine of courtship] I'm in no hurry. It was only just to let you know in case young Gardner should try to trap ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... any effective rivalry made courtship a rather tame and uninteresting affair to Miss Purcell. She had only to make up her mind whether she would take the wine-merchant's son, or the lawyer's nephew, or the doctor's assistant, or, perhaps, it would be one of those ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair

... sunbeams thread the mist, gathering colour as they filter through the pollen-meshed catkins of the black birches; an oriole bugling in the Yulan magnolias below at the road-bend, fire amid snow; a high-hole laughing his courtship in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... twilight had darkened into night when, at length, she yielded herself utterly to his masterful charms, and nominally surrendered to the suit she had actually won. As is always the case with the wild folk, the courtship was fiery and brief, but one would not say that it was the less passionately earnest for that; and, at the time, Warrigal seemed to Finn the most gloriously handsome and eminently desirable of all ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... lovers choose to be alone in their courtship preparations, ashamed to have even a child to witness to their foolish actions, and more foolish expressions? Is this deified passion, in its greatest altitudes, fitted to stand the day? Do not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... overture in which the theme of the impending work is exquisitely hinted at, but which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise. What is to follow, if all goes well, begins presently to appear. Passion settles down into possession, courtship into partnership, pleasure into habit. A child, half mystery and half plaything, comes to show us what we have done and to make its consequences perpetual. We see that by indulging our inclinations we have woven about us a net from ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... this mood he was soon to learn, and no phase of their courtship eight years ago had roused in him such agonies of jealousy and longing as beset him now, when Julia, quiet of pulse and level eyed, convinced him that she could very ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... he often saw Steerforth, but never guessed how often the latter had been secretly to see little Em'ly or of the wicked part he was playing. But one day David heard that Barkis, Peggotty's husband (whose early courtship he himself had aided when he took her the message "Barkis is willin'") had died, and David went at once to Yarmouth to try to comfort his old nurse ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... in her rooms with far from enviable feelings. Her curiosity had been largely satisfied and the unwonted conditions were proving very trying indeed. Could she have set out with the prospect of returning to those magical days of youth and courtship, as Droop had originally proposed, the end would have justified the means. But they could not do this now if they would, for Phoebe had left her baby clothes behind. Thus her disappointment added to her burdens, and she found herself wishing that she had never ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... William Mitchell, were actually making, by a tedious method, a fairly good article. They were assisted in their work by a sister. By some fortunate accident, Gillott and Miss Mitchell met, and after a brief courtship they entered into an engagement to marry. She spoke to her intended husband of the nature of her occupation, and Gillott at once conceived the idea that the press, the useful implement then used principally in the button ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... may learn the delectable arcana of domestic affairs, in as little time as is usually devoted to directing the position of her hands on a piano-forte, or of her feet in a quadrille—this will enable her to make the cage of matrimony as comfortable as the net of courtship was charming. For this purpose he has contrived a Housekeeper's Leger, a plain and easy plan of keeping accurate accounts of the expenses of housekeeping, which, with only one hour's attention in a week, will ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... went rapidly back and forth, and then the proposal bounded along as unexpectedly as every other detail of the courtship. There was very little sentiment of expression about it, but he was in earnest and gave references as to his respectability, etc., much as if he were applying for a business position, and ended by asking her at which end of his route she preferred to live, New York, or ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... ambitious citizens on one side, supported by the Crown, to oppose to the efforts (let it be so) of private and unsupported ambition on the other. Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge of elections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to the people. I think, therefore, the independent candidate and elector may each be destroyed by it; the whole body of the community be an infinite sufferer; and a ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... Brooke after a courtship of three years, everybody concerned was satisfied. There was nothing particularly romantic in either the courtship or marriage. Wesley was a steady, well-meaning, rather slow fellow, comfortably off. He was ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Colonel, I am not thinking of love or courtship. That is the business of the drawing-room, and not of the camp. But she did ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... "True courtship consists in a number of quiet, gentlemanly attentions; not so pointed as to alarm, not so vague ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... sufficiently recovered, Nicholas, to his utter surprise and dismay, learned that she had been doomed to be imprisoned, even in her own house, until she consented to be the wife of one whom, however he might have won upon her regard by fair and honest courtship, she hated and repulsed for this traitorous and forcible detention. Yet they had not dared to let her go, lest the secrets of her prison-house should be told. The false beggar, whose real name was Clegg, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... married Annie Tiller of Hancock County. They had four children, three of whom are living. About his courtship and marriage he has to say: "I wuz at Sunday School one Sunday an' saw Annie fer the fust time. I went 'round where she wuz an' wuz made 'quainted with her an' right then an' there I said to myself, 'She's my ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... herself of a little bit of picturesque sentiment about feeding the birds (Les Petits Oiseaux is the title of the old French piece, if I remember rightly) in a rather too forcedly ingenuous manner, but behaving most naturally in the interrupted courtship scene, and being generally very sympathetic. I mustn't omit Miss HUNTER, pink of parlour-maids, not the conventional flirty soubrette nor the low-comedy waiting-woman, but a self-respecting, responsible young person, conscious of her own and her young man's moral rectitude, and satisfied with quarter-day ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... his professional duties gave him no time or opportunity for courtship, or for some other reason, Fritz Bagger remained a bachelor; and a bachelor with the income of his profession is looked upon as a rich man. Counsellor Bagger would, when business allowed, enter into social ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various

... themselves in their accustomed places, and 'Tildy had cast an unusual number of scornful glances at Daddy Jack, who made quite a pantomime of his courtship, Uncle Remus startled them all somewhat by ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... marriage not to be afraid of spoiling the wife with too much care and thoughtfulness for her comfort, and happiness, or the keeping up of the little attentions so pleasant to give and receive, and so lavishly bestowed in the days of courtship. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley



Words linked to "Courtship" :   entreaty, prayer, appeal, bundling



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