"Maid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a thin, old-maid kiss on the sweet, childish mouth. "I am your Aunt Minerva," she said, as she picked ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... should explode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border for the garden,—a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are getting russet and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves one gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The Flemish Beauties come off readily from the stem, if I take them in my hand: they say all kinds of beauty ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Shall the barren flowers be laid, Nor one holy saint to save All the coldness of a maid. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... was the answer. "And you might have said, 'at long last,' trow. Never saw a maid so hard to come by. I could have got twenty as good maids as she to hire themselves, while ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... indisposition in order to remain behind. Madame was therefore confident of finding La Valliere's room and Saint-Aignan's apartment perfectly empty. She took a pass-key from her pocket and opened the door of her maid of honor's apartment. Bragelonne's gaze was immediately fixed upon the interior of the room, which he recognized at once; and the impression which the sight of it produced upon him was one of the first tortures which awaited him. The princess looked at him, and her ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... necessity, while three others are usually added from time to time. The five elements, if I may so style them, are the "boy," or boys, the cook and his helpers, the horseman, the water-carrier, the gardener, and the maid. The adjuncts are the barber, the wash man, the tailor, and the watchman. In a mild way, you are at the mercy of these servants. Their duties are fixed by caste, one never intruding on the work of another. You must have all or none. Still this is no hardship. Only newcomers ever think, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... Her lover searched for her through all the rooms in vain. The next morning, he sent a servant to the Palazzo Barberini to inquire after the duchess, and learned from him that she was ill. In the evening he went in person, hoping to be received; but a maid informed him that her mistress was in great pain and could see no one. On the Saturday, towards five o'clock, he came back once more, still ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... thus spoke all the soldiers looked at Peter, who fearing his attack on Malchus might be resented, tried to slip through the band and escape unobserved. Passing the fire, he came close to the other waiting maid, Sarah, who, looking him full in the face, said in a shrill voice, "See, this man was ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... description: her whole employment (we may say, her whole delight) was in finding fault: her shrill voice was to be heard from the other side of the street from morning until night. The one servant which their finances enabled them with difficulty to retain, and whom they engaged as the maid of all work (and certainly she was not permitted by Mrs Forster to be idle in her multifarious duty), seldom remained above her month; and nothing but the prospect of immediate starvation could induce any one to offer herself in ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sheltered this friendless little sparrow, feeling sure that God meant her to keep it from falling to the ground, Polly put both arms about her neck, and kissed her withered cheek with as much loving reverence as if she had been a splendid saint, for in the likeness of this plain old maid she saw the lovely charity that blesses and saves ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... had said that she believed that every one who earned those first three leaves was sure to find the fourth one waiting somewhere in the world. It wouldn't make any difference then whether she was an old maid or not. She need not be dependent on any prince to bring her the diamond leaf, and that was a good thing, for down in her heart she had her doubts about one ever coming to her. She loved to make up foolish little day-dreams ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hermitage near by, and falling on her knees before the Virgin of Consolation exclaimed in grief, 'Holy Virgin! pity me! Save the child of my heart! And if she has flown to heaven since I left her side to fall at thy feet, beg thy holy Son to restore her to life, as He did the maid of Galilee!' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... of these people wear their hair, cut off in front on a line with the mouth and carelessly parted or hanging over the face, the back hair rolled up in a compact queue at the nape of the neck. This uncomely fashion prevails with both matron, and maid, while among the other Tusayan the matron parts her hair evenly down the head and wears it hanging in a straight queue on either side, the maidens wearing theirs in a curious ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... raising his voice, he shouted: "What, not at home? But in that case they hoaxed me at the cafe, Melanie's establishment, you know. I went there, and a maid grinned at me, saying that the captain had gone home to bed. Curse the girl! I suspected as much and felt ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... were all in their happiest bloom. Suzanna wondered who watered and tended them. As she lingered beside a pansy bed, the door of the little house opened and a rather frail little old lady came out, followed by a maid who carried a chair that was filled with pillows. She set the chair under a tree midway in the garden between the house and the road. The old lady sank into it and the maid deftly covered her with a large woolen shawl; then saying some word, and placing a ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... performance he had read to the players the first four acts of "Mary Stuart," and when the last and fifth act was written he said to Koerner, "I am only now beginning to understand my trade." Following "Mary Stuart," he wrote "The Maid of Orleans," and then he was absorbed in what is perhaps the greatest of his works, "William Tell," the first reading of which took place in Goethe's house on March 6, 1804. On the 9th it was rehearsed at the theatre, and on the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... only shook her head. My father was not a man whose whims could be lightly crossed, and she would not let me even try. Ashamed! oh, child! I was never so ashamed in my life! I hung my head all day and was afraid even to look the servant maid in the face. I felt she must despise a girl whose own father held her so lightly, And Paul, there 's where the hardest part of all came. How was I to tell my lover what my father had done? And how was I not to tell him, for I knew that Dick Stanton was not the man to keep such a wager ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... we sat talking, I laughed to think of that luncheon party, when Shelley lost his clothes, and came naked, dripping with sea-water, into the room, protected by the skirts of the sympathising waiting-maid. And then I wondered where they found him on the night when he stood screaming in his sleep, after the vision of his veiled self, with ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... only—an old maid—remained faithful to her; and, with the old servant, the widow herself followed the plough; and the crop grew, though the land had been cursed by the Pope ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... there arrived at the house numberless trunks of large dimensions, superintended by the small angry woman and a maid. An hour later came a carriage, from whose door emerged the young lady and her father. Both looked pale and fagged; both were led up-stairs in the midst of voluble comments and commands by the mother; and both, entering the apartment, seemed swallowed up by it, as ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the tears of lovelorn maidens, and when in one of her literature lessons at the Normal, the sad journey of the lily-maid on her barge of black samite, floating down the river, so dead and beautiful, with the smile on her face and the lily in her hand, reduced form A to a common denominator of tears, and made the whole ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... to take her down to the bathroom was not in front of her door at the very second when she left her room, she used to stamp her foot in anger, pull her maid's hair and shout: ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... much intermixed, old and young, hardened offenders with those who have committed only a minor crime, or the first crime; the very lowest of women with respectable married women and maid-servants. It is more injurious than can be described, in its effects and in its consequences. One little instance to prove how beneficial it is to take care of the prisoners, is afforded by the case of a poor woman, for whom we have obtained pardon (Lord ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... are these! Wild and unfamiliar to our ears; yet doubtless the same wandering airs that were played by the sons and servants of Jacob when he returned from his twenty years of profitable exile in Haran with his rich wages of sheep and goats and cattle and wives and maid-servants, the fruit of his hard labour and shrewd bargaining with his father-in-law Laban, and passed cautiously through Gilead on his ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... fixed a day sooner because of to-morrow's holiday. Aniela and my aunt arrived this morning with a maid and sundry boxes containing their racing toilets. The first glance at Aniela filled me with terror. She does not look well at all; her face is wan and has lost its former warm color; it seems smaller too, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Vortigern with such sorcery, that he became mad with love to possess Hengist's daughter. He was so fast in the devil's net that he saw neither shame nor sin in this love. He denied not his hope, though the maid was of pagans born. Vortigern prayed Hengist that he would grant him the maid in marriage, and Hengist accorded her with goodwill. But first he took counsel with his brother and his friends. These praised the marriage, but counselled Hengist to give the damsel only on ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... A maid came in and set the tea-things down; and Mrs. Julaper drew her sad guest over by the arm, and made him sit down, and she said: "What has a man to do, frettin' in that way? By Jen, I'm ashamed o' ye, Master Philip! Ye like three ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and Austria it has long been recognized that domestic service furnishes the chief number of recruits to prostitution. Lippert, in Germany, and Gross-Hoffinger, in Austria, pointed out this predominance of maid-servants and its significance before the middle of the nineteenth century, and more recently Blaschko has stated ("Hygiene der Syphilis" in Weyl's Handbuch der Hygiene, Bd. ii, p. 40) that among Berlin prostitutes in 1898 maid-servants ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... confusion and alarm. Helen had found herself more than usually unwell in the morning; towards noon, the maid who attended her informed Madame Dalibard that she was afraid the poor young lady had much fever, and inquired if the doctor should be sent for. Madame Dalibard seemed surprised at the intelligence, and directed her chair to be wheeled into her niece's room, in order herself to judge of Helen's ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... girls who live in cities, or near townships where travelling companies pay yearly visits, can have no idea of what this first circus meant to this little bush maid, who had lived all her twelve years without seeing anything half so wonderful. Perhaps, too, you are lucky to have so many chances of seeing things—but it is something to possess nowadays, even at twelve, the unspoiled, fresh mind that Norah ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor. But she became conscious of the two strangers who suddenly paused as if to contemplate the Cleopatra, and, without looking at them, immediately turned away to join a maid-servant and courier who were loitering along the hall at a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... morning wrapper, sipping her coffee in an upper room. But she could not deny herself to Uncle John, her dead husband's brother and her only daughter's benefactor (which meant indirectly her own benefactor), so she ordered the maid to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... honorable distinction; and as all conditions would be equal and all functions equally honored, there would be no other emulation than that of merit and virtue. I wish the king of the French could say without shame, "My brother the gardener, my sister-in-law the milk-maid, my son the prince-royal, and my son the blacksmith." His daughter might well be an artist. That would be beautiful, sir; that would be royal; no one but a buffoon ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... pride in finding that in one line we are the masters of the Romans. I will give an instance, and I pick it out as the best among those selected by Cicero. Nasica goes to call upon Ennius, and is informed by the maid-servant that her master is not at home. Ennius returns the visit, and Nasica halloos out from the window that he is not within. "Not within!" says Ennius; "don't I know your voice?" Upon which Nasica ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Lovely maid, with rapture swelling, Should these pages meet thine eye, Clouds of absence soft dispelling;— Vacant memory ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... put down one of his hunters and sold a polo pony so that she could have a maid, she began to wonder if she had at all found out ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Alice, having completed dressing, leaned out of her bedroom window to drink in the soft air of evening. She had not brought a maid, and had refused her hostess's offer to lend her her own on the ground that maids were a superfluity. It was her desire to be a very practical young person, a scorner of modes and trivialities, and yet she had taken unusual care with her toilet this evening, and had spent many ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... lighted with candles, and there was a silver dish of fruit in the center. The dinner was well-served by a trim maid. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... to be sure. It was poor darling Fred I took with me, I remember. I only went to Oxenham once after I was married,—to your Aunt Shaw's wedding; and poor little Fred was the baby then. And I know Dixon did not like changing from lady's maid to nurse, and I was afraid that if I took her near her old home, and amongst her own people, she might want to leave me. But poor baby was taken ill at Oxenham, with his teething; and, what with my being a great deal with ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... take that useless cab ride up Fifth Avenue? If he had no objection to any one knowing his address, why did he go so far out of his way? Mr. Birnes couldn't say. As he pondered these questions he saw a maid-servant come out of a house adjoining that which Mr. Wynne had entered, an he went up boldly ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... intelligent-looking maid opened the door, and the two men followed Madame de Vaurigard into a square hall, hung with tapestries and lit by two candles of a Brobdingnagian species Mellin had heretofore seen only in ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... him he lived at Bath, where Giardini had been exhibiting his then unrivalled powers on the Violin. His excellent performance made Gainsborough enamoured of that instrument; and conceiving, like the servant-maid in the Spectator, that the music lay in the Fiddle, he was frantic until he possessed the very instrument which had given him so much pleasure—but seemed much surprised that the music of it remained ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... woman himse'f, the headlong way he goes after this yere Black Dog, settin' of the war-jig the next sun-up, an' all without even sayin' "Let me look at your hand," to this female, jestifies them inferences of yours. Of course I don't say—an' I don't reckon none—Dave thinks of this old-maid maverick once; but, he sees himse'f, ht shore goes to war a heap precipitate an' onconsiderate, an' Tucson Jennie has ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Bright was consoled; for what is an "understanding" between a man and a maid, if not an unofficial engagement? Like most mothers, Mrs. Bright was anxious, at heart, to see her daughter happily settled in life; and the doctor, though not a wealthy man or popular, was, at least, a rising one in his profession, and ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... are now under the eye of God," said the old maid, with a solemn gesture towards the sky; "swear to me that you did ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... "Now, my lady, you've got on about thirty-thousand pound worth of sparklers. Hand 'em over quietly and we won't hurt you." And Beryl didn't turn a hair (she says) but answered, "You silly boys! I'm locked into 'Olga's' new thief-proof wrap and you can't get anything but my shoes. My maid always locks me in and lets me out, and she's got the keys and you've left her behind!" And they tried to wrench the wrap open, but it resisted, and Beryl put in some piercing g's in alt., and help came and the robbers fled. And now she's the woman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... Menecreta," retorted Hun Rhavas somewhat impatiently. "I've taken the titulus from off her neck and set the hat over her head, and that was difficult enough for the praefect's eyes are very sharp. Ten aurei should be the highest bid for a maid without guarantees as to skill, health or condition. And as ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and they stirred the hanging blossoms, keeping them in almost continual rhythmic motion. The effect was wonderfully charming, but I observed that Ala was especially influenced by it. She sat with her maid beside her, and fixed her eyes, with an expression of ecstasy, upon the swinging flowers. I whispered to Edmund to regard her singular absorption. But he had already noticed it, and seemed to be puzzling his brain with thoughts that it ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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 ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... can die an old maid before I'll ever face another creature like that!" vowed Gyp, ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... would escape his power only to fall into mine,' I added, noticing a glance of horrible suspicion, full of exaggerated dignity. 'You shall have peace, solitude, and independence; in short, you shall be as free and as little annoyed as if you were an ugly, cross old maid. I myself would never be able to see ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... crowded with fugitives and soldiers—mostly soldiers. It was necessary to walk. Weeping, the young husband and wife said farewell to their parents and set out on the long trail, with the two babies in a perambulator, under a load of bread and wine, and a little maid carrying some clothes in a bundle. For days they tramped the roads until they were all dusty and bedraggled and footsore, but glad to be getting farther away from that tide of field-gray men which had now swamped over Lille. The young husband comforted his wife. "Courage!" ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... girl called Natashka. She always wore a cotton dress, went barefooted, and was rosy, plump, and gay. It was at the request and entreaties of her father, the clarionet player Savi, that my grandfather had "taken her upstairs"—that is to say, made her one of his wife's female servants. As chamber-maid, Natashka so distinguished herself by her zeal and amiable temper that when Mamma arrived as a baby and required a nurse Natashka was honoured with the charge of her. In this new office the girl earned still further praises and rewards ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... A Doubt of Martyrdom John Suckling To Chloe William Cartwright I'll Never Love Thee More James Graham To Althea, from Prison Richard Lovelace Why I Love Her Alexander Brome To his Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell A Deposition from Beauty Thomas Stanley "Love in thy Youth, Fair Maid" Unknown To Celia Charles Cotton To Celia Charles Sedley A Song, "My dear mistress Has a Heart" John Wilmot Love and Life John Wilmot Constancy John Wilmot Song, "Too late, alas, I must Confess" John Wilmot Song, "Come, Celia, let's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Plausible from his cassock drew A holy manual, seeming new; A book it was of private prayer, But not a pin the worse for wear: 630 For, as we by-the-bye may say, None but small saints in private pray. Religion, fairest maid on earth! As meek as good, who drew her birth From that bless'd union, when in heaven Pleasure was bride to Virtue given; Religion, ever pleased to pray, Possess'd the precious gift one day; Hypocrisy, of Cunning ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... exasperated him. He leered up again at the girl with the same visible rage at her purity, her simplicity, and he made a little tilting motion with his fingers, as if the devil in him were minded to dash the milk in the maid's face. But her indifference defied him and the thirst tugged at ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... these stories are four girls, who with enthusiasm for outdoor life, transformed a dilapidated canal boat into a pretty floating summer home. They christened the craft "The Merry Maid" and launched it on the shore of Chesapeake Bay. The stories are full of fun and adventure, with not ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... with which she enraptured the dudes, the palatial private car in which she traversed the States, with its little chapel giving on the bathroom; the swashbuckling Marquis de St. Roquiere, who had crossed the Channel after her, and the maid he had once kidnapped in mistake for the mistress; the diamond necklace presented by the Rajah of Singapuri, stolen at a soiree in San Francisco, and found afterwards as single stones in a low 'hock-shop' ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... yet, my dear maid, tho' thy spirit's my pride, I'd wish for some sweetness to temper the bowl; If life be ne'er suffer'd to rest or subside, It may not be flat, but I fear ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... of the English Company now. He hath been knighted by King Charles. Mary and Sir John will present this little maid at the English court. An she be not a nine days' wonder there, my name is not Pierre Radisson. If she's a court ward, some of the crew must take ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... an ancestor of John and Charles Wesley—and told him the gossip detailed to him by the ostler. So Mr. Westly came bustling down to the inn, and accosting the landlady said: "Why, how now, Margaret! you are a Maid of Honour now." ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... 'This lovely maid's of royal blood, That ruled Albion's kingdoms three, But oh, alas for her bonnie face! They hae wrang'd ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... said, coming forward "I'll not ring for Maggie to-night, but be waiting maid myself. Suppose I hang up some of these dresses? And which shall I leave for you? This looks the coolest," and she held up to Ester's view the pink and white muslin which did duty as an ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Proportion'd was to the nicest Rules of Art: So awful was her Carriage when she mov'd, None could behold her, but he fear'd and lov'd, She danc'd well, sung well, finely plaid the Lute, Was always witty in her Words, or Mute; Obliging, not reserv'd, nor yet too free, But as a Maid divinely bless'd should be; Not vainly gay, but decent in Attire, } She seem'd so good, she could no more acquire } Of Heaven, than what she had, & Man no more desire: } Fortune, like God and Nature too was kind, And to these Gifts a copious Sum ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... three rooms looking on the street, and charmingly furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a saddle-horse, a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use. For herself, she had only her own maid, and as cook, a former kitchen-maid. The duke's groom had, therefore, rather a hard place. Toby, formerly tiger to the "late" Beaudenord (such was the jesting term applied by the gay world to that ruined gentleman),—Toby, who at twenty-five years of age was still considered only ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... thing, and laid it in an old Indian basket near the hearth, and put some wool in it, and covered it with an old cloak to keep it warm, and she tended it very carefully, letting it suck her fingers dipped in warm milk, as she had seen the dairy maid do in weaning young calves in a few days it began to grow strong and lively, and would jump out of its basket, and run bleating after its foster mother if it missed her from the room, it would wait at the ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... wounded spirit, although, according to Mrs Browning, not often happy when he attempted compliments, with generous words and ready quotations from Landor's own writings; and finally settled him in Florence under the care of Mrs Browning's faithful maid Wilson, who watched over him during the remainder of his life.[75] To his incredulous wife Browning spoke of Landor's sweetness and gentleness, nor was he wrong in ascribing these qualities to the old lion. She ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the janitor replied. "I don't know where she was—didn't hear. While she was gone, there was a man nurse 'tended to her father—cooked the meals and kept the apartment clean and took him out in his wheel chair. Miss Kate has a maid they call Marie—a big, ugly woman. She takes care of things generally when she is here, but she ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... opened his eyes, and shook his head up and down two or three times, gravely, with a little flute-like whistle. But they had reached the inn, and a stout maid-servant in a night-cap was at the door with a lantern, to take Newman's traveling-bag from the porter who trudged behind him. Valentin was lodged on the ground-floor at the back of the house, and ...
— The American • Henry James
... American no longer commits the blunder of keeping his children innocent. You'll see it beginning in the dancing-class, where I heard an exquisite little girl of six say to a little boy, 'Go away; I can't dance with you, because my mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer the doorbell.' When they get home from the dancing-class, tutors in poker and bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other's little dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collar throw down ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the tender touch of her maid a wilted hand, lifted by a stiffened arm, the raising of which pumped a groan from the lady. The white glove which incased the hand and arm was smutched liberally in ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... walls of his village church. No payment was expected nor fee demanded—it was a love-offering. It was not until ecclesiastics grew ambitious and asked for more pictures that bargains were struck. Did ever a painter of that far-off day marry a maid, and in time were they blessed with a babe, then straightway the painter worked his joy up into art by painting the Mother and Child, and presenting the picture as a thank-offering to God. The immaculate conception of love and the miracle of birth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... other for mutual support, bulging out in front, pierced with six or seven stories of windows, with denticulated gables, the deep red reflection of them trailing in the water, like some high-colored apron which a servant-maid is washing. What a picture Van den Heyden would ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... continued his walk. A trim maid opened the door to him and by her blank look it was evident that he was not a ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... winged creature, but into the animal which has given name to the book; for throughout it there runs a vein of racy, homely satire on the love of magic then prevalent, curiosity concerning which had led Lucius to meddle with the old woman's appliances. "Be you my Venus," he says to the pretty maid-servant who has introduced him to the view of Pamphile, "and let me stand by you a winged Cupid!" and, freely applying the magic ointment, sees himself transformed, "not into a bird, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... wife of one of the missionaries was glad enough to take passage thus for the East; and there was the silent Threlka. Those two could offer company, even did not the little Indian maid, adopted by the baroness, serve to interest her. Their equipment and supplies were as good as any purchasable. What could be done, ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... and such. And we must bow to her behests; Our sister toileth overmuch, Our little maid that hath no breasts. ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... and then at breakfast one morning she got a letter to say her goldmine shares had struck a reef, and she got so rich she simply didn't know what to do with her money. She came to see Papa about it. She was an old maid, so naturally there wasn't much she wanted. You never know who is going to be rich and who poor, with a goldmine. Some of these pebbles are quite valuable," he continued, running a handful of shingle through his fingers, "there are amethysts and opals ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... heart it lies. The key to happiness Men call the key love. In the sweet time of youth, every man and every maid knows where lies the key that will unlock happiness. Sometimes, they, laughing, hold the key in eager, willing hands and will not put it in the door for very bliss and waiting. Just outside they laugh and play and blow wild kisses to the world. The whole world of men and women, who in their ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... bank of the river Amazenus, which, swelled by rains, seemed to debar a passage. He paused for a moment, then decided what to do. He tied the infant to his lance with wrappers of bark, and, poising the weapon in his upraised hand, thus addressed Diana: "Goddess of the woods! I consecrate this maid to you;" then hurled the weapon with its burden to the opposite bank. The spear flew across the roaring water. His pursuers were already upon him, but he plunged into the river and swam across, and found the spear ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... her maid to get the number of a friend's house for her and ask the friend to come to the telephone, and then keep her friend waiting while she has time to be called by the maid and to come to the telephone herself. This method of wasting other people's time is not confined to ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... picking flowers. Her deportment was out of the common; her eyes so bright, her eyebrows so well defined. Though not a perfect beauty, she possessed nevertheless charms sufficient to arouse the feelings. Y-ts'un unwittingly gazed at her with fixed eye. This waiting-maid, belonging to the Chen family, had done picking flowers, and was on the point of going in, when she of a sudden raised her eyes and became aware of the presence of some person inside the window, whose head-gear ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... And wailed and rent his hair and cried, "Who hath done this deed?" And Balen eyed The strange thing loathfully, and said, "The knight I slew, who found him fain And keen to slay me: seeing him slain, The maid I sought to save in vain, ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Hence in a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (P. iii, c. ix) we read: "He chose all that was poor and despicable, all that was of small account and hidden from the majority, that we might recognize His Godhead to have transformed the terrestrial sphere. For this reason did He choose a poor maid for His Mother, a poorer birthplace; for this reason did He live in want. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... languid, she moved slowly about the rooms, arranged some trivial matters, wrote a letter or two, and disappeared again. Next day came forth the order, "This evening at seven o'clock," and punctually at six o'clock she herself emerged, dressed in black travelling costume, followed by her maid, also dressed for a journey. The companion stood in readiness, waiting, before giving the man-servant the final order to close the luggage, till the princess had bestowed an approving glance on the contents. She had not as yet ventured to speak to the princess since the ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Mrs. Norris has made peculiarly her own. Whether the scene be laid in the parlor or the kitchen, whether the character be mistress or maid, she writes with an understanding and sympathy which compel admiration. In the present novel Mrs. Norris chronicles the experiences of one family in trying to solve the servant problem! What they do, with the results, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... mother had a maid call'd Barbara; She was in love; and he she lov'd prov'd mad And did forsake her: she had a song of "willow"; An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune, And she died singing it: that song to-night Will not go from my mind; I have much to do ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... referred to here is 'Unfortunate Miss Bailey,' by George Colman, and sung by Mr. Mathews in the comic opera of Love Laughs at Locksmiths. It tells the story of a maid who hung herself, while her ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... Derbyshire once and would come again, or of the alarms and the dangers and the priest hunters, since those things did not at present touch them very closely. It was rather of Robin's father, and whether and when the maid should tell her parents, and how this new trouble would conflict with their love. They spoke, that is to say, of their own business and of God's; and of nothing else. The frosty sunshine crept down the painted wainscot and lay at last at their ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... felt oppressed by so much prosperity. On the few occasions when Simeon had taken her there to lunch on Sunday—the only dissipation he allowed himself—-she had thought the butler supercilious, and the maid who came to help her off with her wraps, snippy. She had suspected the woman of turning her little coat inside out after it was confided to her care, and sneering ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... that she could not go out that day; but on Monday morning she sends a person to Captain Watson's to know if Mrs. Veal was there. They wondered at Mrs. Bargrave's inquiry, and sent her word she was not there, nor was expected. At this answer, Mrs. Bargrave told the maid she had certainly mistook the name or made some blunder. And though she was ill, she put on her hood and went herself to Captain Watson's, though she knew none of the family, to see if Mrs. Veal was there or not. They said they ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... was, along the deck just then came Constantia Denistoun, with her mother leaning on her arm and a maid following. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bell and the entrance of the maid caused Pauline to flutter up the stairs. They were preparing to attend the Courtelyou's reception that evening to the great Baskinelli, whose musical achievements had been equaled only by his social successes during this, his ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... most men are perfectly frank, and it's about the only one on which it isn't necessary to be. There's never any use trying to hide the fact that you're a jim-dandy—you're bound to be found out. Of course, you want to have your eyes open all the time for a good man, but follow the old maid's example—look under the bed and in the closet, not in the mirror, for him. A man who does big things is too busy to talk about them. When the jaws really need exercise, ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... Qua Non, the Duchess, the Sputchard, the Dutchard, the Ricapicticapic, Oz and Oz, the Maid of Lorn, and myself,—left Crieff some fifteen years ago, on a bright September morning, soon after daybreak, in a gig. It was a morning still and keen: the sun sending his level shafts across Strathearn, and through ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... They met Kinglake, and were at the Proctors, and of the young poet, Anne Adelaide Proctor, Mrs. Browning says, "How I like Adelaide's face!" Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble were briefly in London, and Kenyon, the beloved friend, vanished to the Isle of Wight. To Penini's great delight, Wilson, the maid, married a Florentine, one Ferdinando Romagnoli, who captivated the boy by his talk of Florence, and Penini caught up his pretty Italian enthusiasms, and discoursed of Florentine skies, and the glories of the Cascine, to any one whom ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... respect them, or to be sensible of them. As often as I went to see him I was made to wait in the little reception-room below, and never shown at once to his study. My name would be carried up, and I would hear him verifying my presence from the maid through the opened door; then there came a cheery cry of wellcome: "Is that you? Come up, come up!" and I found him sometimes half-way down the stairs to meet me. He would make an excuse for having kept me below a moment, and say something about the rule he had to observe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... the household henceforth not to touch a thing in the insects' laboratory, to do no more sweeping, no more dusting. They might disturb the swarm and make it think that my hospitality was not to be trusted. I suspect that the maid, wounded in her self-esteem at seeing so much dust accumulating in the master's study, did not always respect my prohibitions and came in stealthily, now and again, to give a little sweep of the broom. At any ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... something like the one you were telling me about; the landlady of a hash-house where I was stopping in Albany told me. There was a young carpenter staying there, who'd run away from Sydney from an old maid who wanted to marry him. He'd cleared from the church door, I believe. He was scarcely more'n a boy—about nineteen—and a soft kind of a fellow, something like you, only good-looking—that is, he was passable. Well, as soon as the woman found out where he'd ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... English maid in the hotel, who had been long enough out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here be specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... body, man! but she looks wondrous grim," answered King James. "Art thou sure she has not been in her time maid of honour to Queen Mary, our kinswoman, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... effect. Luther's remarks about matrimony among the Turks should be remembered when Catholics cite Luther's remarks about King Ahasuerus dismissing Vashti and summoning Esther, and the right of the husband to take to himself his maid-servant when his wife refuses him. By all divine and human laws the matter to which Luther refers is a just ground for divorce, and that is ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... as kitchen-maid, to the great delight of Agnes, while Ruth congratulated herself that there would be no more dishwashing for her, a thing she detested above all others. "She appears anxious to learn, doesn't she?" asked Agnes. "She ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... a short one-act piece, with a sufficiently good plot, and every part in it a character, except "Parker, the Maid"—and here let me enter a solemn protest against the further use of "PARKER" as the name of a lady's-maid in farce or comedy. PARKER is played out. Let her be united to "CHARLES, his Friend," and let both enjoy their well-earned retirement from ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... said, a sound of footsteps reached them from below, and a loud voice, gruff but kindly, shouted through the little place "Lucy, where are you, my girl? Has the little maid come?" and the next moment Mona was darting down the stairs and, taking the last in one flying leap, as in the old days, ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... knock, which always frightens me. I picked up a long, blue envelope, stamped "War Office." Oh, my heart stood still. I went into my bedroom, and tried to compose myself to break the envelope. Then I asked my new maid to come and be with me when I opened it. After she had arrived, I said a prayer that all might be well with you. Then I opened it: and, Rupert, it was only your Commission as 2nd Lieutenant arriving a year late. Oh, I went straight to church ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... accustomed weakness, I suffered myself to be prevailed upon, and we went to sup with the baron, who received me as he usually had done. But his wife received me coldly and almost uncivilly. I saw nothing in her which resembled the amiable Caroline, who, when a maid, expressed for me so many good wishes. I thought I had already perceived that since Grimm had frequented the house of D'Aine, I had not met there ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... told, Made anchors all our fleet to hold: Their Danish jest cut out in cheese Did not our stern king's fancy please. Now many a maiden fair, may be, Sees iron anchors splash the sea, Who will not wake a maid next morn To laugh ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... Jack to go home. He would have answered that it was impossible, but I said, why not go? I was safe, and he could be back in a month or five weeks. I had old Anne Wickham with me, and she'd been my nurse when I was a little girl, you know, and my maid afterward, till she ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... palm-trees. We stopped, about three in the afternoon, at a rancho in a small village, and did not start again until next morning, a little before day-break. Negroes and people of negro descent began to abound in this congenial climate. I remember especially the waiting-maid at the rancho, who was a "white negress," as they are called. Her hair and features showed her African origin; but her hair was like white wool, and her face and hands were as colourless as those of a dead body. This animated corpse was healthy enough, however; and this peculiarity ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... the girl's eyes, sudden contempt curled her lip, and a glance full of meaning went from her cousin to the door, where Mrs. Snowdon appeared, waiting for her maid to bring her ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... Standing at the gate, an astonishing figure, still in her evening frock, looking haggard and old in the gray, disillusioning light of early morning, was Lydia Sessions. Upstairs, her white bed was smooth; its pillows spread fair and prim, unpressed by any head, since the maid had settled them trimly in place the morning before; but the long rug which ran from her dressing table to the window might have told a tale of pacing feet that passed restlessly from midnight till ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... having heard somewhat to her disadvantage," replied the King—"but your ain looks gang far to contradict the reports, fair maid." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her maid. She grew ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... happiness out of her new position as she did from the possession of a husband. She took charge of the weekly accounts; she locked up the provisions and gave them out daily, after the manner of her defunct master; she ruled over two servants,—a cook, and a maid whose business it was to mend the house-linen and make mademoiselle's dresses. Cornoiller combined the functions of keeper and bailiff. It is unnecessary to say that the women-servants selected by Nanon ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... there—the poor girl—sitting patiently by herself. Long before this the orchestra had given up playing and only a dozen passengers or so were there; but she was the only lone one—in a red plush chair under a cluster of wall-lights. Besides the passengers, there was one steward and a colored maid, both staring ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... protest that I was not able to speak to her, which I would have done, to have diverted her tears. His wife a good woman, and so sober and substantiall as I was never more pleased anywhere. Servant-maid, 2s. So thence took leave, and he with us through the city, where in walking I find the city pay him great respect, and he the like to the meanest, which pleased me mightily. He shewed us the place where the merchants meet here, and a fine Cross yet standing, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... what does a free Englishman care for the Court comedy of St. James, so long as it does not trouble him, and so long as no one interferes when he plays comedy in like manner in his own house, making his lackeys kneel before him, or plays with the garter of a pretty cook-maid? 'Honi soit ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was silence in the sewing room until Katherine, followed by a maid, entered with tea and cakes. Some dress materials that rested on a gypsy table were swept aside by the impulsive Katherine, and the table, with the tray upon it, was placed at the right hand of Dorothy Amhurst. When the servant left the room, Katherine sidled to the long sewing table, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... one of her pale malevolent laughs up at the maid in the window, who stood there, with the papers in her hand, in a sort ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Miss Vermont, positively you mustn't come the Green Mountains over us that way. You must adopt at least a piece of a southern principle, and not walk out under all that load. They'll take you for a waiting-maid; give them to this fellow; he'll put them down as ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and leave the ancient town, with its modern houses and remains of old fortifications, without a thought of the romantic history which saturates the region. There is not much in the smart, new restaurant, where a tidy waiting-maid skillfully depreciates our currency in exchange for bread and cheese and ale, to recall the early drama of the French discovery and settlement. For it is to the French that we owe the poetical interest that still invests, like a garment, all these islands and bays, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... went by. Her Grace of Queensberry's maid, a hard-faced Scotswoman who was not to be intimidated nor betrayed into confidences, superintended Lavinia's shopping and turned a deaf ear to Mrs. Fenton's ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... 14th of January, 1715, she found at last her corporeal ills at an end. She obtained a bed, change of dress, food, and her liberty. The guards, their officers, and the coach which had brought her, returned; she remained with her waiting-maid and her nephews. She had leisure to think what she might expect from Versailles. In spite of her mad sovereignty scheme so long maintained, and her hardihood in arranging the King of Spain's marriage without consulting our King, she flattered herself she should find resources ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... which we set up our own household goods stood in Nutley, N.J. We had with us an elderly attache of the Stockton family as maid-of-all-work; and to relieve her of some of her duties I went into New York, and procured from an orphans' home a girl whom Mr. Stockton described as "a middle-sized orphan." She was about fourteen years old, and proved to be a very peculiar individual, with strong ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... 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
... say all these despairing things; but I am an old man, and I take them for what they are worth. You have a few hard months before you, perhaps, but before you know it they will be over with. Don't worry yourself; look after Marilla a little, and that new hand-maid, and drive about with me. To-morrow I must be on the road all day, and, to tell the truth, I must think over one or two of my cases before I go to bed. Won't you hand me my old prescription book? I was trying to remember something ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the desire to write came directly after the book had been read. "Ihad just finished reading it," he says, "and Heaven knows with what pleasure, every word from 'as far as this matter is concerned' on to 'I seized the hand of the lady's maid,' were imprinted in my soul with small invisible letters." The characters of the Journey stood "life-size in his very soul." Involuntarily his inventive powers had sketched several plans for a continuation, releasing Yorick from ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... That is the centre of country gossip. They would have told you every name, from the master to the scullery-maid. Williamson? It conveys nothing to my mind. If he is an elderly man he is not this active cyclist who sprints away from that young lady's athletic pursuit. What have we gained by your expedition? The knowledge that the girl's ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... talisman had been loosed;[FN15] and the bride rejoiced with even more joyance than he did by cause of her sire, with his three tasks, having made her believe that she would never be wedded and bedded but die a maid, and she had long been in sadness for such reason. Then the married couple abode with the King their father for the space of a month, and all this time the camp of the young Prince remained pitched without the town, and every day he would send to his pages and eunuchs ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the pages, but a strange, melancholy chill pervades the book. In "The Wedding Knell", "The Minister's Black Veil", "The Gentle Boy", "Wakefield", "The Prophetic Pictures", "The Hollow of the Three Hills", "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Ambitious Guest", "The White Old Maid", "Edward Fane's Rose-bud", "The Lily's Quest"—or in the "Legends of the Province House", where the courtly provincial state of governors and ladies glitters across the small, sad New England world, whose very baldness jeers it to scorn—there is the same fateful atmosphere ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... maid. "Ah! these be weary wars, what won't let a gentleman live at home in peace, nor his poor servants, who have ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in her, which had not so hammered since Osborn started upon his joy-year. No more could she bear contemplation of Julia and her delight. She ran along the corridor to her room, calling to the maid: ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton |
