"Marriageable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper with the bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen in the Spectator has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the last six years." The famous letter describing the figure, the dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is supposed to be written by a girl of thirteen, "willing to settle in the world ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... or initial is illegible, but who is styled ... Earl ... Katanay, ... Comite ... Katanay, and a confident opinion is expressed in a note to the citation that the witness was Magnus, Earl of Caithness. Now, Earl John's daughter was taken as a hostage on August 1, 1214, and, if she was then marriageable and was married at once, her eldest child could have been born about May 1215, and would attain twenty-one about May 1236, but to suppose her son of the name of Magnus to have been the ward for whom the Earldom of Caithness was being kept ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... my dear friends and brethren in this vale of tears—did you ever see anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing as the way in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable, and pursue him with their daughters? Who was the British nobleman in old old days who brought his three daughters to the King of Mercia, that His Majesty might choose one after inspection? Mercia was but a petty province, and its king in fact ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... learn anything or not; and on these occasions, not merely to hear the lecturer, but to be seen by him. To them, however attractive the lecture might have been, the lecturer was more so. He was an irresistible temptation to matrons with marriageable daughters, and wherever he sojourned he was overwhelmed with invitations. It was a contest who should have him to dinner, and in the simplicity of his heart, he ascribed to admiration of his science and eloquence all the courtesies and compliments with which he was everywhere ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... first great triumph in the face of her enemies. They were all there and all armed to the teeth with spite and envy. There was, for instance, Mrs. Berry with her marriageable if somewhat plain daughter, and many more women besides to whom the beautiful girl was of necessity an unforgivable opponent. The more the men laughed at her quick and occasionally rather pointed observations, the more an obvious admiration shone out of their criticisms, the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... rather excited. The truth was he had a Clara of his own at home—a dead sister's child—very pretty, just about marriageable, and a good deal resembling, as he told me afterwards, our ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... who had fixed his eyes upon me all this time, replied like a man penetrated with gratitude by the offer I had made. He said, that of his eight daughters the eldest was between fourteen and fifteen years old; the second much deformed, and in no way marriageable; the third between twelve and thirteen years of age, and the rest were children: the eldest wished to enter a convent, and had shown herself firm upon that point. He seemed inclined to make a difficulty ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... reverse, in the idea that their grandfather Vetta was the leader of a Saxon force thirty-six years previously. Hengist was in all probability past the middle period of life when he came to the Court of Vortigern, as he is generally represented as having then a daughter, Rowena, already of a marriageable age. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... in this family various suspicions arose in the minds of some concerning me with respect to Mary Penington's fair daughter Guli; for she having now arrived at a marriageable age, and being in all respects a very desirable woman—whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to render her completely comely; or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way extraordinary and highly obliging; or to her outward fortune, which was fair, ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... marriage tried in the third place to give every one an equal chance to be married. The families concerned, when the age thought to be marriageable had been reached, sought to give the young persons a place in the family order. The idea of bachelors and maids of mature years was not only repugnant, it was an indictment of the vigilance and good offices of the elders. When ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... idea from other actors, not from the play. There is no proof there that Shylock is old, but a single line, 'Bassanic and old Shylock, both stand forth,'—which does not imply that he is infirm with age—and the circumstance that he has a daughter marriageable, which does not imply that he is old at all. It would be too much to say that his body should be made crooked and deformed to answer to his mind, which is bowed down and warped with prejudices and passion. That he has but one idea, is not true; he has ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... I don't like it," Gertie was saying, spitefully. "It is an actual shame allowing Daisy Brooks to remain here. Uncle Jet was a mean old thing to send her here, where there were three marriageable young ladies. I tell you he did it out of ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... touch of cross-questioning, the witnesses, resolved to tell the same story, fall into opposite ones. In one case, about a slave, three witnesses had resolved on the sex; but, questioned separately as to size and age, all disagreed. They were not prepared. One represented her a woman grown and marriageable; another, as high as my walking-stick; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... they be not; for they check them in their pleasures, and reprove them for harmless mirth. Now, as to Mistress Aveline herself, she is devout and good; but she takes no part in the enjoyments proper to her years, and leads a life more like a nun in a convent, or a recluse in a cell, than a marriageable young lady. She never stirs forth without her father, and, as you may suppose, goes more frequently to lecture, or to church, or to some conventicle, than anywhere else. Such a life would not suit my grandchild, Gillian, at all. Nevertheless, Mistress Aveline is a sweet young lady, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Put on that handsome frilled shirt and your green coat of Elbeuf cloth. I have my reasons," she added slyly. "Besides, Mademoiselle Cormon is going to Prebaudet, and many persons will doubtless call to bid her good-bye. When a young man is marriageable he ought to take every means to make himself agreeable. If girls would only tell the truth, heavens! my dear boy, you'd be astonished at what makes them fall in love. Often it suffices for a man to ride past them at the head of a company of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... was stirred with an ambition greater than that of controlling a majority in the Senate. He had a daughter, a marriageable young woman who, at least in her father's opinion, would make a desirable wife for any man. His friend Ryder had a son, and this son was the only heir to the greatest fortune ever amassed by one man, a fortune which, at its present rate of increase, by the ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Menu, as customary among the higher castes, in which the parents in general arrange such contracts. The provision in the ninth book (v. 90), appears to belong to the lower classes.—"Three years let a damsel wait, though she be marriageable; but after that term let her choose for herself a bridegroom of equal rank." In the Raghuvansa, a poem, parts of which the author of this translation, if he could command leisure to make himself better ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... followed by a quick feeling of amusement with herself that she should so soon have developed the instinct of the watch-dog. But it was not to be denied that the new mistress of Beechcote was well endowed, as single women go. Fond mothers with marriageable sons might ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had said, she was brave: she went into cages, she flourished lashes, like a spangled lion-tamer. He had not supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words struck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of her conduct is not ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... learning—society must claim him for parties, balls, dinners, and the usual round. It was understood that his 'governor' was a man of substantial wealth; that Phillip would certainly be placed in an extensive farm, to play the pleasant part of a gentleman farmer. People with marriageable daughters looked upon the clever scholar as a desirable addition to their drawing-rooms. Phillip, in short, found himself by degrees involved in a whirl of festivities, and was never at a loss where to go for amusement when he could obtain leave to seek relaxation. If such social adulation made ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... necessary." He smiled at her quizzically. "I knew it was coming, Olga mia. I can smell a love affair fifty miles away. But I shouldn't be persuaded to have him if I were you. He's altogether too young for matrimony by about ten years. Let him wait for Peggy Musgrave to grow up. He will be of a marriageable age ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... she bore all her children. She and her husband have saved money; they are substantial people now and need not fear the future. Their sons are gaining their own living; one daughter is married, the others are arriving at the marriageable age. One day the Hun sweeps down on them. The sons escape to join the French army; the girls and their parents stay behind to guard their property. They are immediately evacuated from Vimy and sent to some city, such as Drocourt, further behind the Hun front-line. Here they are gradually robbed ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... first families, a Sir attached to his name, being of handsome person and accomplished manners, and travelling and living after the manner of a nobleman, (some of our first families are simple enough to identify a Baronet with nobility!) was foully set upon by the fairest and most marriageable belles of the St. Cecilia. If he had possessed a dozen hearts, he could have had good markets for them all. There was such a getting up of attentions! Our fashionable mothers did their very best in arraying the many accomplishments of their consignable daughters, setting forth in the most foreign ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... marriage—until the middle twenties, say. Why not? Or if by the infirmities of humanity one must have marriage before then, there ought to be some especial opportunity of rescinding it later. (Lady Harman ought to have been able to rescind her marriage.) What ought to be the marriageable age in a civilized community? When the mind was settled into its general system of opinions Mr. Brumley thought, and then lapsed into a speculation whether the mind didn't keep changing and developing all through ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... you very happy. Society mothers of marriageable daughters will tear their transformations from their heads, and dance upon them in despair, when they hear that Beau s'est range. But that I don't hold forth to worldly ears I would enlarge upon the immense social advantages of such a union for ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... all. Already the idea that love is the only safe foundation for the home is beginning to take root in Japan. This changing ideal is bringing marked social changes. In some churches an introduction committee is appointed whose special function is to introduce marriageable persons and to hold social meetings where the young people may become acquainted. Here an important evolution in the social order is taking place before our eyes, but not a few of the world's wise men are too exalted to see it. Love ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... natural in a society like this, with Sir Arthur's position and title and everything. It must be a great blow to him, I am sure, this honour conferred on Colonel Antony." Gerrard looked, as he felt, bewildered, not seeing the connection, since Colonel Antony had no marriageable daughter. "Oh, you haven't heard that the dear Colonel has got his K.C.B.? They are all talking about it to-night—it was in the mail ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... with the Orient, thus to speak of this girl—in years a mere child—as one speaks of a mature woman, would seem strange, if not unnatural. But in the East, of course, at the age of ten a girl is counted marriageable; at the age of fourteen she is not infrequently the devoted ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... that lady should make the election within six months, either to quit Portugal for ever, or to remain there on the condition of wedding Don John, the infant son of Ferdinand and Isabella, [34] so soon as he should attain a marriageable age, or to retire into a convent, and take the veil; that a general amnesty should be granted to all such Castilians as had supported Joanna's cause; and, finally, that the concord between the two nations should be cemented by the union of Alonso, son of the prince ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... contamination from the influences heretofore alluded to; that her health bears up under confinement, bad air, scanty food, and insufficient clothing—all of which are experiences too familiar with women who labor at mechanical employments;—when she reaches a marriageable age, and takes the important step which is to 'settle her for life,' what is her condition? The chances are that she has become the wife of some hardworking mechanic, or man of scanty means, who cannot afford to keep a fine lady in his domestic establishment. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the capon?" "That, master, I performed according to what appeared to me the fitness of things. I gave the head of the capon to thee, because thou art the head of this house; I gave the inward part to the mistress, as typical of her fruitfulness; thy daughters are both of marriageable years, and, as it is natural to wish them well settled in life, I gave each of them a wing, to indicate that they should soon fly abroad; thy two sons are the pillars of thy house, and to them I gave the legs, which are the supporters of the animal; while to myself I took that part of the capon ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... her position keenly, and she looked about her with impatience for a deliverer to come to her rescue; but the young men, calculating in their giddiness, honored her with but very little attention, although Lizaveta Ivanovna was a hundred times prettier than the bare-faced, cold-hearted marriageable girls around whom they hovered. Many a time did she quietly slink away from the glittering, but wearisome, drawing-room, to go and cry in her own poor little room, in which stood a screen, a chest of drawers, a looking-glass, and a painted ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... and navy keep aloof, and associate with no class. There were very few ladies at Hong Kong at this time, and of what class they were composed of may be imagined, when I state that a shopkeeper's sister was the belle of the place, and received all the homage of the marriageable men of Hong Kong. Hospitality to strangers is as yet unknown, and a letter of introduction is only good for one tiffin, or more rarely one dinner. I made several excursions in the country, but did not ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... Kensington were divided about Agnes Wilt. The poorer girls thought her perfect. But some marriageable and some married women, moving in her own sphere of society, criticised her popularity, and said she must be artful to control so many men. There are no depths to which jealousy cannot go in a small suburban society. Agnes, as an orphan, had felt it since childhood, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... ladies, and the same gentlemen, who had been on the sands in the morning, and on the pier the day before. There were young ladies, in maroon-coloured gowns and black velvet bracelets, dispensing fancy articles in the shop, and presiding over games of chance in the concert-room. There were marriageable daughters, and marriage-making mammas, gaming and promenading, and turning over music, and flirting. There were some male beaux doing the sentimental in whispers, and others doing the ferocious in moustache. There were Mrs. Tuggs in amber, Miss Tuggs in sky-blue, Mrs. Captain Waters in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... former was shedding tears for his dismissal, the latter was intoxicated with joy by his elevation to the Chancellorship. The defeated judge, however, was not the man to submit without a struggle to his fate. By his second wife he had a daughter: she had reached a marriageable age and was heiress to a princely fortune. Coke resolved that she should marry Sir John Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham's eldest brother. Sir John was very poor, and the Duke of Buckingham all powerful. The union effected, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... wife, and he had been very hard to live with. Dannie admitted that. So Mary had come to prefer him to Jimmy, that was sure; but it was not a question between him and Jimmy, now. It was between him, and any marriageable ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... which was characteristic of her, she put her wits to work to find a fitting match for Mr Arabin. Mrs Grantly, in this difficulty, could think of no better remedy than a lecture from the archdeacon. Miss Thorne thought that a young lady, marriageable, and with a dowry, might be of more efficacy. In looking through the catalogue of her unmarried friends, who might possibly be in want of a husband, and might also be fit for such a promotion as a country parsonage affords, she could think of no one more eligible than Mrs Bold; and, consequently, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... I observed slowly, "the position of an elderly gentleman with a marriageable daughter and a wife," I went on bravely, "who finances a young lady interested in manicuring in an establishment in Bond ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to catch, seize. O.N. fanga, to fetch, capture. Norse fanga, Dan. fange. This word in Northern England and Scotland is to be regarded as a Scand. loan-word. The word fangast, a marriageable maid, cited by Wall, proves this. Literally the word means something caught (cp. Norse fangst). This meaning could not possibly have arisen out of the O.E. word, but is explained by the Norse use of it and the peculiar Norse custom, cp. fanga k[o,]nu, ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... show. Indeed, the Hon. Mr. Ferrol had no morals to speak of, and very little honour. He was the penniless son of an Irish peer, who was himself well-nigh penniless; and he and his sister, whose path of life at home was not easy after her marriageable years had passed, drew from the consols the small sum of money their mother had left them, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the queen, after this confidential communication, "I do not understand why it is that you wish to marry this girl. I should think the nobility of our kingdom was not so poor in beautiful and marriageable ladies that a Count Rhedern should find it necessary to stoop so low in search of a wife. Look behind you, count, and you will see the loveliest ladies, all of whom are of pure ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... chiefs went to seek the death they desired, rushing furiously upon the enemy, with intention to strike home but not to ward a blow. The Island of Gozzo being taken some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two beautiful daughters marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, and their mother, running in to save them, to boot, which having done, sallying out of the house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shots he killed two of the Turks nearest to his door, and drawing his sword, charged furiously in amongst the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... renders her awkward, forces on her a sense of weakness, and makes her timid; and this, finally, finds its expression in her attitude and character. The custom among the Spartans of letting the girls go naked until marriageable age—a custom that the climate allowed—contributed considerably, in the opinion of an ancient writer, to impart to them a taste for simplicity and for attention to decency. Nor was there in the custom, according to the views of ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... for them to be seen in friendly relations with each other. These foreign diplomats delude themselves with the belief that they play an important political part at Washington. So they do in the opinion of the marriageable damsels, who are flattered with their flirtations, and in the estimation of snobbish sojourners, who glory in writing home that they have shaken hands with a lord, had a baron to dine with them, or loaned an attache a hundred ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... and who had the reputation of being one of the most unmitigated scamps who ever wore uniform. York society in those days could swallow a good deal in a man of good birth and competent fortune, but it could not swallow even a well-to-do bachelor of good family and marriageable age who had been forced to resign his commission, and had been expelled from a not too straight-laced London club, by a unanimous vote of the committee. Captain Bywater was dropped with a suddenness and severity which he could not fail to ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... over those marvellous carnations, but to-night she did not give them a thought. She looked with grave dissatisfaction at her pale, nondescript face and nondescript hair and eyes. She did not know that only women with marriageable daughters saw her as she ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... that Lady Hamilton had a daughter, Christian, who was noted for her rare beauty and high spirit. But, unfortunately, she was a girl of strong passion, which, added to her self-will, caused her, when she had barely arrived at a marriageable age, to engage herself to one James Nimmo, the son of an Edinburgh merchant. Before many weeks had elapsed, the young couple were married, and the handsome young wife was settled in her new home in Edinburgh. Time wore on, the novelty of marriage died away, and ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... "They are shaped from within outward by their own wills. They have the power to take the human form and leave it. But it was not until she had been with her mother to To-yalanne, the sacred Thunder Mountain, as is the custom when maidens reach the marriageable age, that her power came to her. She was weary with gathering the sacred flower pollen; she lay under a maguey in the warm sun and felt the light airs play over her. Her breath came evenly and the wind lifted her long hair as ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... babies and old men and women, servants and her associates in the office, strangers on ferryboats and sick people in hospitals alike responded to her friendliness and gaiety. But none of these was marriageable, of course, and the moment Susan met a person who was, a subtle change crept over her whole personality, veiled the bright charm, made the friendliness stiff, the gaiety forced. Susan, like all other ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... surrounding kings longed to marry her, but dared not propose. Seeing this, her father conferred upon her the right to select her own spouse, and the princess began to travel from court to court inspecting all the marriageable princes. One day, in the course of these wanderings, she paused beneath a banyan tree, where a blind old hermit had taken up his abode. He was just telling the princess that he dwelt there with his wife ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... probably going to adorn the museum of Mr. Cornelius van Koppen, an alien millionaire, not one of them found it in his heart to disapprove Count Caloveglia's action. For they all liked him. Every one liked him. They all understood his position. He was a necessitous widower with a marriageable daughter on his hands, a girl whom everybody admired for her beauty ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... people must be taught that the first step towards the reduction of disease is to begin at the beginning, to provide for the health of the unborn. The error, commonly entertained, that marriageable men and women have nothing to consider except money, station, or ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... migrated in the fall with the swallows to California, on their honeymoon, and, after escaping the earthquake, returned to their happy and beautiful home. There was a great eruption among the marriageable prospects of Ashcroft, because many of them had dropped a real bone into the water in snapping at ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... Kromitzki business. Aniela could have put a stop to it with one word, and if she has not done it, she is sacrificing me to her mother's headaches. Besides, Kromitzki lowers Aniela in my eyes, stains her, and brings her down to the level of marriageable girls. I cannot even speak ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... man has set his affection on a young lady,—that is, his real affection,—he ought to stick to it,—or die." Mr. Littlebird, who was the happy father of three or four married and marriageable daughters, opened his eyes with surprise. The young men who had come after his young ladies had been pressing enough, but they had not died. "Or die!" repeated Tribbledale. "It is what I should have done. Had she become Mrs. Crocker, I should never again have ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... enjoined them: for their maxim is, that among peoples of quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young. When the girls are twelve years old, which among them is the marriageable age, their parents or guardians take them home, with great expressions of gratitude to the professors, and seldom without tears of the young lady and ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... alongside of his own mother. The young man did not blame his father, for his father disapproved of polygamy, and was a polygamist only because he could not help himself. It had come about in an evil hour when he was desperate for a dowry for his eldest daughter, now come of marriageable age. He had listened to the village money-lender's advice that he might take a second wife himself and transfer to the daughter the dowry that the second wife would bring. Then in like manner the lapse of ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... women, though it was never strong. At the age of 26 he was seduced by a woman and had connection with her once. Afterward he had reason to think she had played him false in various ways. This induced the strongest antipathy, not only to this woman, but to all marriageable women. A year after this episode homosexual feeling first became clear and defined. He is now 33, and feels the same antipathy to women; he hates even ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... her husband, shaking his forefinger at her in mock reproach. "To a woman with marriageable daughters all roads lead to matrimony, the centre of a woman's universe. All men must be sized up by their matrimonial availability. No, he ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... its efficiency. There is no class of labourers or servants, but all who are required to assist or control the machinery are found in the children, from the time they leave the care of their mothers to the marriageable age, which they place at sixteen for the Gy-ei (the females), twenty for the Ana (the males). These children are formed into bands and sections under their own chiefs, each following the pursuits in which he is most pleased, or for which ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my dear friends and brethren in this vale of tears—did you ever see anything so curious and monstrous and annoying as the way in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable!—The Newcomes. ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... that all the men of the house and family of David who were marriageable, and not married, should bring their several rods to the altar. And out of whatsoever person's rod, after it was brought, a flower should bud forth, and on the top of it the Spirit of the Lord should sit in the appearance of a dove, he should be the man to whom the ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, in the new "frame" house built by my father five years before. That is, some of us lived in the new part, the rest in the old part back of it—the "L." In the autumn my sister gave a party, and invited all the marriageable young people of the village. I was too young for this society, and was too bashful to mingle with young ladies, anyway, therefore I was not invited—at least not for the whole evening. Ten minutes of it was to be my whole share. I was to ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... is the growing inability of the farmers' sons to secure land and the means to cultivate it when they arrive at a marriageable age. Those who have seen for threescore years the ever-increasing flow of boys and girls from the farms to the cities, greater in proportion to the rural population than in any other age, realize the necessity for aid in this direction. While it is true that the farm has contributed largely ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... during childhood in regard to the sexes. The training of boys and girls in this matter is very different. Knowledge pertaining to the sexual life is talked over very freely among boys, so that by the time the boy is of a marriageable age he is pretty well posted. With girls it is quite different. It would be considered very immodest for a girl to discuss such matters. She does not feel free even to talk with her mother or other adviser, and so she goes to the altar ignorant of many things she should know. Then ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... unanimity. I think she sometimes blames herself for her tyrannical usage of these innocents, who nevertheless thrive remarkably on it. You can hardly get on your horse at the door without maiming an infant, and you can't throw a stone in any direction without killing a marriageable damsel. They pervade the old place like an atmosphere; the kraals ring with their voices, and the Kafirs spend lives of mingled misery and delight ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of love for her son and of pride in his achievements, took a hand, and tried to arrange a more suitable match for him. An old friend of the family, Madame de Vesian had a marriageable daughter. She was rich and beautiful, and her lineage was noble. She had never seen Laperouse, and he had never seen her, but that was an insignificant detail in France under the old Regime. If the parents on ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... de' Manardi da Brettinoro, whom Messer Lizio and his wife would as little have thought of mistrusting as if he had been their own son: who, now and again taking note of the damsel, that she was very fair and graceful, and in bearing and behaviour most commendable, and of marriageable age, fell vehemently in love with her, which love he was very careful to conceal. The damsel detected it, however, and in like manner plunged headlong into love with him, to Ricciardo's no small satisfaction. Again and again he was on the point ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of her years, and a certain lack of strength which had always hampered her, was quite prominent in Banbridge society. She was one of the old women whom young girls adore, even when the adoration is not increased by the existence of a marriageable son. Sometimes the old lady would regard an unmarried female-caller with a soft suspicion of ulterior motives, but she never whispered them to her son. Sylvia Anderson had a lovely, fine delicacy where the foibles ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... commemorated as "the Fair." The first is Gudrun, who was daughter of Oswif; but she was now old. The second is Stangerd, daughter of Thorkel of Tongue, and at this time the wife of Battle-Berse of Sowerby in the north-west parts. This Gudrid, Thorbeorn's daughter, is the third, and was, at the moment, of marriageable age, ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... are also coming to be thought a convenient place for rich fathers to dump their incorrigible sons and marriageable daughters for a few years. And in some sections these rich fathers are increasing in numbers at an alarming rate. The presence of all such people (they can not be called students) in various classes is a drag, and the ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... eighteen years she had lived with her youngest sister, who had married very early and now possessed five children: two young ladies of marriageable age, a third still in short ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... company that he had not yet married. Very likely he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a drag upon his future. He was still well within the marriageable limits and looked even younger. Nothing so well preserves youth as Success, and of this tonic Mr. Ashly Crane had had an abundance. Mr. Crane, it should not be thought, had armed himself with a bunch of enormous red roses from the leading florist of Albany ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... a father, who had nine daughters, and they were all marriageable, but the youngest was the most beautiful. The father was a were-wolf. One day it came into his head: 'What is the good of having to support so many girls?' so he determined to put them all out ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, on Wednesday, December 29th, 1610, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated in the same church. As the young bride was not of marriageable age, she returned to her family to live with them for two years, as agreed ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... Devarata, a very calm and sagacious minister to the king of Vidarbha. He had a son named Madhava. Madhava was very beautiful and of uncommon intelligence. He became proficient in all branches of learning, in his early age. He now arrived at a marriageable age. The beautiful town of Padmavati in Malwa is situated at the confluence of the two rivers Indus and Madhumati. There lived in Padmavati, Bhurivasu, who was minister to the king of Padmavati. He had a very beautiful unmarried daughter named ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... late as Henry VI.'s time, Agnes Paston sends to London on the 28th of January, 1457, to pray the master of her son of 15, that if the boy "hath not done well, nor will not amend," his master Greenfield "will truly belash him till he will amend." And of the same lady's treatment of her marriageable daughter, Elizabeth, Clere writes on the 29th ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... present him with four millions of livres by way of reparation for the damage he had sustained, to assist him with a certain number of auxiliaries against all his enemies, and to effect a marriage between the duke of Burgundy and the princess of Piedmont, as soon as the parties should be marriageable. The treaty was guaranteed by the pope and the Venetians, who were extremely desirous of seeing the Germans driven out of Italy. King William being apprized of this negotiation, communicated the intelligence to the earl of Galway, his ambassador ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... concerning their resources, that of their parishioners, the intelligence and morality of the population, etc. He rarely failed to ask the number of births, deaths, marriages, and if there were many young men and girls of a marriageable age. If the cure replied to these questions in a satisfactory manner, and if he had not been too-long in saying mass, he could count on the favor of his Majesty; his church and his poor would find themselves well provided for; and as for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the Rev. Mr. Denham Halloway was called to the vacant parish of St. Joseph's and fell down in its maidenly midst like a meteor from an unexplored heaven,—a young, handsome divine, in every way marriageable, though still unmarried, and in every way attractive, though still to the best of hope and belief unattracted,—this was why no girl of them all thought her own chances lessened in the least when he and Phebe became such friends. No one gossiped. No one ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... Puritans in Cromwell's time. The dress of the peasants, though unlike the English fashion of any period, had an old-world look. The married women wore white kerchiefs twisted round the head, sleeveless jackets, with a mystery of lace adornments. The marriageable girls sat together in one part of the church, which I thought very funny; they wore drum-shaped hats poised on the head in a droll sort of way. Some of them had a kind of white leather pelisse beautifully wrought with embroidery. Each girl carried a large bouquet of flowers. These blue-eyed German ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... handsome, witty, sound in politics; his father still possessed the ancestral castle and the lands of the marquisate. Such a young fellow is sure of an admirable reception in houses where there are marriageable daughters, fair but portionless partners at dances, and young married women who find that time hangs heavy on their hands. So the world, smiling, beckoned him to the foremost benches in its booth; the seats reserved for marquises are still in the same place ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Mothers with marriageable daughters sighed nevertheless in vain. Andor was not for any of them. Andor had eyes only for Elsa. He had become an important man in the village now that his uncle was so ill and he was left to administer the old ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... accompany this evil, in the very happiest marriages. So that a Man ought in reality to confess, that he who can pass away his daies without a Wife is the most happiest. Verily a Wife is a heavy burthen; but especially a married one; for a Maid that is marriageable, will do all that ever she can to hide her infirmities, till she be tied in Wedlock to either one or other miserable wretch. She overpowers her very nature and affections; changes her behaviour, & covers all her evil and wicked intentions. ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... ye hold me yet for child, Hear yet once more the story of the child. For, mother, there was once a King, like ours. The prince his heir, when tall and marriageable, Asked for a bride; and thereupon the King Set two before him. One was fair, strong, armed— But to be won by force—and many men Desired her; one good lack, no man desired. And these were the conditions ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... shocked, bewildered or frightened her with accusations, sulks, or sneers, her light, innocent head was set in such a whirl that the rest was easy. It was possible, upon the whole, that the thing might not turn out so infernally ill after all. Supposing that it had been Bettina who had been the marriageable one! Appreciating to the full the many reasons for rejoicing that she had not been, he walked in gloomy ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ballrooms. Also, Archibald of that ilk might have looked for a showier mate for her under more prosperous circumstances. As it was, her parents spent a strenuous fortnight in persuading her to accept so excellent an opportunity of reducing their supply of marriageable daughters to the more reasonable number of five, and the approval of their creditors ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... she is very well. The concert that evening pleased me exceedingly. Thank heaven that so good a fashion has found entrance among us. In this way we have a perfect bazaar for the marriageable girls, for had not this concert taken place where would you two have found an opportunity to make each other's acquaintance? Where else could you have caught sight of ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... old, and in another year will be deemed marriageable. My heart is broken at the thought, and I can scarce see the paper on which I write for weeping. I know not why I send to you, nor does the count know that I am writing, nor does it seem possible that any aid can come to us, seeing that ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... tried the various chances and distractions of Paris; he dined at table-d'hotes; he made acquaintances heedlessly; he sought society, with no result but that of increasing his expenditures. Walking along the boulevards, he often suffered deeply at the sight of a mother walking with a marriageable daughter,—a sight which caused him as painful an emotion as he formerly felt when a young man passed him riding to the Bois, or driving in an elegant equipage. The sense of his impotence told him that he could never hope for the best of even secondary positions, nor for any easily ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... a zest to a party long looked forward to amongst Virginia's intimates. In those days young ladies did not "come out" so frankly as they do now. Mothers did not announce to the world that they possessed marriageable daughters. The world was supposed to know that. And then the matrimonial market was feverishly active. Young men proposed as naturally as they now ask a young girl to go for a walk,—and were refused quite as naturally. An offer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was nothing to laugh at, though!" remarked Lawless; "she'd have been regularly cooked, if Prank Fairlegh hadn't put her out when he did, and I should have been tried for 'Unjustifiable Girl-icide,' or 'Maliciously setting fire to a marriageable female,' or some such thing; and I daresay the young woman wasn't insured anywhere: I should have got into a pretty mess; it would have been a worse job than ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... mine, beside God's living waters, Dance of the marriageable daughters, The laughter and the ease Beneath His ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... and with it honors had crowded thick and fast upon him. The world of society held out its arms eagerly to him. Lovely young girls, matrons of the house, offered their congratulations to him with the most bewitching of smiles, and mothers with marriageable daughters from all over the city opened an account with the great dry goods house, whose sole owner was a young ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... were three young ladies bound to their friends in India, and a lady returning with her two marriageable daughters to rejoin her husband, who was a colonel in the Bengal army. They were all pleasant people, the young ladies very lively, and on the whole the cabin of the Surprise contained a very agreeable party; and soon after they left Madeira, they had fine weather, smooth water, and every thing ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... people at Tigara in the simple art of cooking. At first the girls viewed it in the line of a novelty, but when they noticed the eligible young men picking out the cooks for their wives, it was astonishing to see what zeal all the marriageable girls suddenly developed. As soon as they had learned to turn a slapjack, or to make a cup of coffee, they would, on returning to their homes in the evening, pass around among the young men, bragging of what good cooks they were; ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... all the marriageable officers, whom the depots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who seemed eligible. She had been engaged to be married a half-score of times in Ireland, besides the clergyman at Bath, who had used her so ill. She had flirted all the way to Madras ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Grettir came to a bondi named Einar, a man of wealth who had a wife and a marriageable daughter named Gyrid. She was a beautiful maiden and was considered an excellent match. Einar invited Grettir to stay ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... patiently accepted the inevitable. The Indians committed acts of violence, but the Acadians remained peaceable. There was, too, a certain amount of intermarriage between Acadian girls and the British soldiers. In those early days of Nova Scotia, girls of a marriageable age were few and were much sought after. There was in Annapolis an old French gentlewoman 'whose daughters, granddaughters, and other relatives' had married British officers. These ladies soon acquired considerable influence and were allowed to do much as ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... They have no uncles or cousins in England at all. All their people come from Australia, and they assured me that such a marriage as I have described has, in the first place, never reached their ears, and, in the next, is impossible, for they have no marriageable relations in the country. I mention this to show that your friend has made a mistake. At the same time, it is strange of her to say that her mother, has married into such a well-known and distinguished family. I can add no more now.—Yours, ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... "for my wife being dead and my daughter marriageable, she keeps house for me; and having a sweetheart betrothed a year ago she hath been laying aside plenishing gear and women's dainty gewgaws. So these I took one by one, beginning with a mirror of polished brass, and made as if ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... they found favour in the eyes of their poorer neighbours. Thus it happened that when Haji Ali let it be known that he desired to find a wife, there was a bustle in the villages among the parents with marriageable daughters, and, though he was a man well past middle life, Haji Ali found a wide range ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford |
