"Girlhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Camors woke up the next morning in the chamber where her girlhood had passed. The birds of spring were singing under her windows in the old ancestral gardens. As she recognized these friendly voices, so familiar to her infancy, her heart melted; but several hours' sleep had restored to her her natural courage. She banished the thoughts which had weakened her, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... with red-brown eyes that were absolutely level in their regard and mercilessly keen, such was the man who had married Maud Brian eight years before, practically in the teeth of Saltash who had wooed her in her girlhood. There was no feud between them. Their enmity was long since dead and buried. Saltash could be intolerably malicious and even vindictive when the mood took him, but his moods never lasted. And as for Bolton, since he had won and still possessed his heart's desire, he could afford ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... Pavet, "your mother, Madame Sheldon,—it seems strange for me to name her thus, for I never think of her except as Lucie De Latour, as I knew her in her girlhood—has a very excellent prospect of coming into the property that was willed ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... had never before felt for victuals. As he ate his senses awakened so that he studied his hostess with interest. Hair which the advancing years, while bleaching to a snowy white had still been unable to rob of the curling waves of girlhood, rippled over a broad white brow, sober but scarcely wrinkled; large, serious but gentle gray eyes, and a small, firm mouth, filled with even white teeth were the salient features of a face at once resolute, refined ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... that his house was his own, and having moved his family into it, had thereafter, save on great occasions, received the congregation individually or en masse, in his study at the church. A patriarchal old man, benevolent yet austere, who once, according to a story I had heard in my girlhood, had horsewhipped one of his vestrymen for trifling with the affections of a young married woman in ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Madame de la Peltrie, with an excellent grace, bore her part in the world she had wished to renounce. After a union of five years, her husband died, and she was left a widow and childless at the age of twenty-two. She returned to the religious ardors of her girlhood, again gave all her thoughts to devotion and charity, and again resolved to be a nun. She had heard of Canada; and when Le Jeune's first Relations appeared, she read them with avidity. "Alas!" wrote the Father, "is there no charitable and virtuous lady who will come to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... and promised to take care of her. I had had no fear then that she would ever grow corpulent and florid, and now I found myself asking if my boyish intuition might not have been right, and she fulfilled entirely the promise of her girlhood, defying the insidious generosity of time and the vulgar influence of Rufus Blight. Should I ever know? Should I ever ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... sheltered, sunshiny home has gone the tender, trusting daughter, in her glad girlhood, her heart all aglow with true hallowed love for him, by whose side she has chosen to spend the coming years. The future has looked so bright, as together they have thought, and planned, and built their airy castles; but the clouds have come and passed, and come again and more frequently, ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... were growing to girlhood and boyhood in the Cronk hut on Cayuga Lake. So safely had the secret of the kidnapping been kept from Granny Cronk and the other squatters in the settlement that the twins were regarded by all as the son and daughter ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... people's Christmas commences the night before; so did Debby's. She had just settled down in Blanket street, and fallen into the sleep of tired, healthy girlhood, when she was aroused by her mother's irritable voice screaming up ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... and her family were resolved to recover the ornament. Many years after, on his return from France, Lovat, whose character, in no respect, rose above suspicion, was taxed with the robbery, and refunded a sum which gave twenty pounds to each of a host of granddaughters, then in their girlhood. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... much occupied with the one great thought which make their strongest, bravest and meanest actions seem perfectly commonplace to themselves. Corona Del Carmine, who had heroically sacrificed herself in her earliest girlhood to save her father from ruin and who a few years later had risked a priceless happiness to shield a foolish girl, had not in her whole life been conscious of a single romantic instinct. Brave, devoted, but unimaginative by nature, she ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Belle, as they neared the end of their junior year, went almost from girlhood into womanhood, as ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... my father's story, of course, and knew that we had very little money. So they provided for him, and gave me funds and sent me to Honduras to spy upon you. Marie, my maid since girlhood, who worshiped my father and knew all the circumstances, went with me. Soon after I reached Honduras, I found that you were selling out with the intention of returning to New York and ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... my girlhood, and before I had seen anything of the world, or could in the least judge for myself, a very wealthy clergyman, who had been a great friend of poor papa's, called to see me, before he returned to Jamaica; where he had a fine living, and possessed ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... questioning, in a dreamy way, whether he had ever before seen such a pretty and agreeable specimen of girlhood, when he experienced a shock of surprise on observing that Jean had gone to a neighbouring spring for water and was making something very like a signal to ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... keep them from wearying of each other? She had little trust in her own fascinations, though she saw the General's eye approvingly fixed on her, and believing herself to be a more pleasing object in her womanly bloom than in her unformed girlhood. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... When she counted the gains they had made, it seemed as if she had been in some fairy palace, and by charms the old wrongs had dropped away and new good had sprung up. They had fought for woman's rights, and had taken hold of the hands of little girls growing out of girlhood into womanhood—girls who must stand on their own feet and earn a living for themselves. When there was no father's hand or brother's arm to help, what could woman do? She looked out into the great thoroughfares of industry ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... girlhood, Jeanne had heard continually of the woes of the war, and had herself witnessed some of the wretchedness that it caused. A feeling of intense patriotism grew in her with her growth. The deliverance of France from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... he began to realize how dearly his wife must love him to give up the pleasure and luxury of her girlhood home for him, and there in that room not fit for cattle, this man cried out in his anguish, "Oh, God, protect my ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... on this day he had promised to go and see his niece Aline, who had just been confined. She was the daughter of a sister who had died, and who had been very dear to him. A little older than Maxime, she had been brought up with him. As she grew into girlhood she developed a complicated character. Restless and discontented, always thinking of herself, she wanted to be loved and to tyrannise. She had also too much curiosity; dangerous experiences were an attraction to her, and with all this she was rather dry, but emotional, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... ought to be. The story of motherhood is told in a very interesting manner, and valuable advice is given regarding the physical preparation for it, which the author believes should begin in early girlhood. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... corresponding doses. The vendors were chiefly women, of whom the most celebrated was a hag named Tophania, who was in this way accessory to the death of upwards of six hundred persons. This woman appears to have been a dealer in poisons from her girlhood, and resided first at Palermo and then at Naples. That entertaining traveller, Father Lebat, has given, in his letters from Italy, many curious particulars relating to her. When he was at Civita Vecchia, in 1719, the Viceroy of Naples ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... tell you. In my early girlhood I knew a young clergyman who was in the habit of occasionally visiting our house. One day he came to bid us good-bye, saying that he was going to a Western city to reside. As he bid me goodbye he gave me a little book. It was a volume of B. F. Taylor's poems, called 'January and June.' The ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... bring before young people who have read her books some qualities of her mind and character which made her the rare woman, teacher, and writer that she was. I knew her from early girlhood. We went to the same schools, in more and more intimate companionship, from the time we were twelve until we were twenty years of age; and our lives and hearts were "grappled" to each other "with links of steel" ever ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... of a long-suffering local community. Her father, who at the time of her birth was a clergyman with a parish, had subsequently evolved into an agnostic and an invalid without one, and she had been used to plain living and high thinking from her girlhood. Even parents who find it difficult to keep the wolf at a respectful distance by untiring economy will devise some means to make an only daughter look presentable on her first appearance in society. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... she is a mother, she wants co-guardianship of her own children. Where she is a breadwinner she wants equal pay for equal work. She wants to wipe out the law that in its savagery protects brutality when it preys upon innocent, defenseless girlhood. She wants the streets and highways of the land made safe for the child whose life cost her a hand to hand conflict with death. She wants a single standard of morals established, where a woman may have an ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the country that he wrote to his wife to sell her property at once and follow him. Bidding a long farewell to the loving parents who had up to that time stood between her and every trouble, Fanny Osbourne, at an age when most young women are enjoying the care-free life of irresponsible girlhood, took her small daughter Isobel and set forth into a new and ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... fair, they mar and flaw; but to the face whose beauty is the harmony between that which speaks from within and the form through which it speaks, power is added by all that causes the outer man to bear more deeply the impress of the inner. The pretty woman fades with the roses on her cheeks, and the girlhood that lasts an hour; the beautiful woman finds her fullness of bloom only when a past has written itself on her, and her power is then most irresistible when ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... years after the glorious defeat of the Armada, and had to her father an honest shoemaker. She came into the world (saith rumour) with her fist doubled, and even in the cradle gave proof of a boyish, boisterous disposition. Her girlhood, if the word be not an affront to her mannish character, was as tempestuous as a wind-blown petticoat. A very 'tomrig and rump-scuttle,' she knew only the sports of boys: her war-like spirit counted ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the corners of her eyes when she laughed; you saw the faint touches of white among the crisp little curls over her temples; you saw that the keenest wind of Fall brought the red to her cheeks only in two bright spots, and that no soft Spring air would ever bring her back the rosy, pink flush of girlhood: you saw these things as others saw them—no, indeed, you did not; you saw them as others could not, and they only made her the more dear to you. And you were having one of the best and most valuable experiences of your boyhood, to which you may look back now, whatever life has brought ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... scholars to lament the untimely death of the youthful Duchess Beatrice. In all the difficult and tangled ways which they were separately called upon to tread, the breath of scandal, the slander of idle tongues, never sullied their fair names. Both princesses held fast to the ideal of their girlhood, and, leading the same pure and spotless life, left the same gracious memory behind them, alike in the old Mantuan city on the banks of the classic Mincio, where Isabella's presence lingers like some delicate perfume about the Camerini ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... at once to the dining-room. There were long tables set in the old-fashioned way for everybody. Mrs. Nancy wanted things to be as they had been in her own girlhood. On the table in the wide window were two birthday cakes, and at that table Dr. Richard sat with his mother on one side of him, and Eve Chesley on the other. Eve's cake had pink candles and his had white, and there were ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... entertainments at Mrs. Vesey's, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame, where they vie with one another, till they are as unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.' 'Lady Spencer,' said Samuel Rogers, 'recollected Johnson well, as she used to see him often in her girlhood. Her mother, Lady Lucan, would say, "Nobody dines with us to-day; therefore, child, we'll go and get Dr. Johnson." So they would drive to Bolt Court and bring the doctor home with them.' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 10. 'I told ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... She produced a cigarette and lit it. "Granny's got a lot of ancient photographs of her girlhood friends," she remarked with her insolent eyes on Madame Zattiany, "and one of them's enough like you to be you masquerading in the get-up of the eighties. Comes back to me. Just before mother left I heard her ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... a young Quakeress, born, I believe, in Philadelphia; but her father and mother died, and she came to South East, to live with her uncle, when she was about eighteen. The story of her girlhood is rather vague; but somehow she fell in love with an English officer, and made a runaway match which turned out better than such affairs usually do; for his relatives received her favorably, and she made her home with them at Temple ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... about six years before the writer of it appeared, as an angel of help, in the dingy dock-side inn, where we tired travelers had taken shelter on our arrival from the other side of the world, and where I was first kissed by my godmother. As I grew up into girlhood, "Aunt K." (K. was the pet name by which Matthew Arnold always wrote to her) became for me part of the magic of Fox How, though I saw her, of course, often in her own home also. I felt toward her a passionate and troubled affection. She was to me "a ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The coquetry of girlhood rose happily in Priscilla's heart. Jerry-Jo had become again simply a link in her chain of events; he had lost the importance the flash of the evening before had given him; he was not forgiven, but for the time he was, as a human being, forgotten. He was Jerry-Jo ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... wonderfully handsome, and though her eyes strayed more than once to the end of the table where her husband was sitting, she carried on her share of the conversation with just that trifle of assurance which marks the transition from girlhood to the dignity of marriage. After the women had left, conversation for a few moments was necessarily political. The Duke, who read the Times and the Spectator, and attended every debate in the House of Lords, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I understood, be altogether removed, and leave her free to begin a new and beautiful life, unalloyed by that hideous, haunting memory of suicide, which had changed into melancholy the gay cheerfulness of her lovely girlhood. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... heard in Tzarskoe came from quite another quarter. As we were strolling in the park one afternoon, we heard sounds of uproarious mirth proceeding from the little island in the private imperial garden, where the Duchess of Edinburgh, in her girlhood, had a pretty Russian cottage, cow-stalls, and so forth, with flower and potato beds. She and her brothers were in the habit of planting their pussy willows, received on Palm Sunday, on the bank of the stream, and these, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... that filled her heart and soul and mind, she saw that her own life had begun when he had first spoken to her, and she felt that it would end with the last good-by, because if he should die or cease to love her, there would be nothing more to live for. Her early girlhood seemed dim and far away, dull and lifeless, as if it had not been hers at all, and had no connection with the present. She saw herself in the past, as she could not see herself now, and the child she remembered ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... the accompaniment of the roaring sea, and a third party was destructive of such intention. Besides, poor May, although exceedingly unselfish and sweet and good, was at that transition period of life when girlhood is least attractive—at least to young men: when bones are obtrusive, and angles too conspicuous, and the form generally is too suggestive of flatness and longitude; while shyness marks the manners, and inexperience dwarfs the mind. We would not, however, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... declaration that they bore him to death, and there never had entered into his heart a feeling or idea of real affection until he met LAURA. He fell for a moment under the spell of her fascination, and then, with cold logic, he analyzed her, and found out that, while outwardly she had every sign of girlhood,—ingenuousness, sweetness of character and possibility of affection,—spiritually and mentally she was nothing more than a moral wreck. He observed keenly her efforts to win him and her disappointment at her failure—not that she cared so much for him personally, but that it hurt her ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... again, but girlhood made all woman by immense tenderness, by the up-rush of a wild love, and by the awakening of all her instincts of home and mating and child-bearing. And then had come that mad, wind-blown twilight at the riverside when the spirit of life had drenched her and she had become ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Hopwood Manufacturing Company, a large engineering works in the Midlands. In this, he had risen until he held the important position of cashier, and he and his wife and daughter had lived in happiness and comfort during the latter's girlhood. But some six years previous to the tragedy which had just taken place a change had come over the household. In the first place, Mrs. Coburn had developed a painful illness and had dragged out a miserable existence for the three years before her death. At the same time, whether from the expense ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... different from the soft, warm winds of the flower-laden South. At night as she lay down to sleep she did not hear the tinkle of music nor the voice of night-singing birds, which in the scenes of her girlhood had been familiar sounds. The moan of the wind in the short, hard grass was different from its whisper in the peach trees, and the shrilling of the coyotes made but rude substitute for the trill of the love-bursting mocking ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Fate Perverse denied a household mate, Who, lonely, homeless, not the less Found peace in love's unselfishness, And welcome whereso'er she went, A calm and gracious element, Whose presence seemed the sweet income And womanly atmosphere of home,— Called up her girlhood memories, The huskings and the apple-bees, The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, Weaving through all the poor details And homespun warp of circumstance A golden woof-thread of romance. For well she kept her genial mood And simple faith of maidenhood; Before ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... lay between, and had grown into the counterfeit presentment of her sister and of all other thin, spare, New England spinsters, it was something of a counterfeit, and underneath was still the faint echo of that wild heart-beat of her girlhood. Having learned the trick of beating and loving and suffering, the poor faithful heart persisted, although it lived on memories and carried on its sentimental ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... above-mentioned in possession of the infantry, under command of their self-elected captain, Otaheitan Sally, who was now, according to John Adams, "no longer a chicken." Being in her eleventh year, and, like her country-women generally at that age, far advanced towards big girlhood, she presented a tall, slight, graceful, and beautifully moulded figure, with a sweet sprightly face, and a smile that was ever disclosing her fine white teeth. Her profusion of black hair was gathered into a knot which hung low on the back of her pretty round head. She was crowned with ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... whom she had brought up with the utmost care, were her only joy. They grew into beautiful girlhood, were modest and good, and loved their mother with all the tenderness of devoted childhood. They, too, helped with the sewing; and their combined efforts, though feeble, were not ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... glimmering figure in the darkness of the hall, and her hair glimmered, also, almost as if it possessed a light and a life of its own. Ronicky Doone saw that she was a very pretty girl, indeed. Yes, it must be Caroline Smith. The very perfume of young girlhood breathed from her, and very sharply and suddenly he wondered why he should be here to fight the battle of Bill Gregg in this matter—Bill Gregg who slept peacefully and stupidly in the room across ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... as I passed. Milly, who had been on the watch, ran and met me. We heard my uncle's voice, as I shut the door, calling Dudley. He had been waiting, probably, in the adjoining room. I hurried into my chamber, with Milly at my side, and there my agitation found relief in tears, as that of girlhood naturally does. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... experience. It would be pleasant to know how each has reached the same platform, through the tangled labyrinths of human life." Soon all was silence and one after another related the special incidents in childhood, girlhood and mature years that had turned her thoughts to the consideration of woman's position. The stories were as varied as they were pathetic and amusing, and were listened to amidst smiles and tears with the deepest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of symptoms which denote the present tendency to a crisis in the life of Woman,—which resembles the change from girlhood, with its beautiful instincts, but unharmonized thoughts, its blind pupilage and restless seeking, to self-possessed, wise and graceful womanhood,—I have ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Dickens (or Skimpole) would have expressed it, is even more coarsely and roughly drawn than in the early sketch of the more famous dramatist. On the other hand, it must be allowed—though it may not be recognized without a certain sense of surprise—that the nobler and purer type of womanhood or girlhood which we owe to the hand of Marston is far above comparison with any which has been accomplished or achieved by the studious and vehement elaboration of Ben Jonson's. The servility of subservience which that great ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of masculine dignity puts so efficient a restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of feminine modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appearances than men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a stronger check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... of Perse resumed his residence in Edelweiss, opening the old palace once more to the world. His daughter, after the death of the Princess, began her extended visits to the home of her girlhood. So long as the Princess was alive she remained away from Edelweiss, reluctant to meet the friend who had banished her husband long before the wedding day in Buda Pesth. Now she came frequently and stayed for weeks at ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the lovely children, who tripped hand in hand down the street of Abbeyweld, grew into ripe girlhood, and walked arm in arm—the pride and admiration of every villager. The curate became at last rector, and Mrs. Myles's absurdities increased with her years. The perfect beauty of the cousins, both of face and form, rendered them celebrated far and near. Each had a separate character as from the ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... argument was lost in swift flashing phrases in which everybody took a part. Rodney was defending himself against them all. And Rose, in an agony because she couldn't understand it, was reminded, grotesquely enough, of the Gentleman of France, or some other of the sword-and-cloak heroes of her girlhood, defending the head of the stairway against the simultaneous assault of half a dozen enemies. And then suddenly it was over. The judges settled back again, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... time went on she came to know that Robin was to receive every educational advantage, every instruction. In his impersonal, aloof way Coombe was fixed in his intention to provide her with life's defences. As she grew, graceful as a willow wand, into a girlhood startlingly lovely, she learned modern languages, learned to ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the end—the end of the great romance which should have given her girlhood back to her, but which instead seemed to have shut her into a lonely and regretful middle-age. All her shining pride in herself was gone—she saw herself as one who has irrevocably lost all that makes life worth living ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... work, or that she bred canaries, these birds being loathed by the Honourable George with remarkable intensity, though it might equally have been that she still mourned a deceased fiance of her early girlhood, a curate, I believe, whose faded letters she had preserved and would read to the Honourable George at intimate moments, weeping bitterly the while. Whatever may have been his fancied objection—that is the time we disappeared and were not heard ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... accompanied him on his readings. Last summer it happened that they went together to St. Joe, Missouri, the home of Mrs. Field's girlhood. On their arrival, Mrs. Field's friends took possession of her and carried her off to a lunch-party, where it was arranged that Mr. Field should join her later. But he, left alone, was swept by his thoughts back to the time when, a youth of twenty-one, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... knowledge of location which seven years gives over three, had led her safely back to Miss Eliza—ever since that long-past day, Arethusa had made up the most of Timothy's world. They had played together all through childhood and boyhood and girlhood, and quarreled violently and much over their play, and then made up with commendable immediacy; Timothy was the nearest approach to a brother Arethusa had ever known. But Timothy's feeling for Arethusa had ever been, and especially ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... habit. She had seen more than most girls of the shabby side of life, of the perpetual tendency of want to cramp the noblest attitude. Poverty and misfortune had overhung her childhood and she had none of the pretty delusions about life that are supposed to be the crowning grace of girlhood. This very competence, which gave her a touching reasonableness, made Glennard's situation more difficult than if he had aspired to a princess bred in the purple. Between them they asked so little—they knew so well how to make that little do—but they understood also, and ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... had known Bobby during many years and had always laughed at him for a solemn, rather-priggish young man—then she fell in love with him and, to his own wild and delirious surprise, married him. The companions of her earlier girlhood missed her cynicism and complained that brilliance had given way to commonplace but you could not find, in the whole of London, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Mr. Povey. "My God!" he muttered, moved by a startling discovery to this impious and disgraceful oath (he, the pattern and exemplar—and in the presence of innocent girlhood too!). "I've swallowed it!" ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of physical harmony. They leaned this way and that, and were not afraid to touch each other. They contemplated the photographs with pleased recognition; looked at some admiringly, as if these characters in their mother's girlhood had been remarkable people. The little children, who could not speak English, murmured comments to each other in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... that is at the bottom of this thing. She has felt all along there was something the matter. Why has she never thought of it before? Here all these years has she been going about blaming her poor old father; her mother for dying too soon; the remarkable circumstances attending her girlhood; that dear old stupid husband she thought was hers; and all the while the really culpable party has been existing unsuspected under her very nose. She clears away the furniture a bit, and tells Society ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... say at once, the creature is a nuisance, but not a danger. The stealthy, crafty, determined pursuer of the young and honest actress is a product of the imagination. These "Johnnies" who hang about stage doors and send foolish and impertinent notes to the girlhood of the stage are not in love—they are actuated by vanity, pure and simple. These young "taddies," with hair carefully plastered down, are as like one another as are the peas of one pod,—each wishes to be considered a very devil of a fellow; but how can that be unless he is recognized as a fascinator ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... be composed of girls of all ages, and of women who have not forgotten their girlhood. Such as have a friendly appreciation of girls—and of those who write for them—are also welcome to listen to as much of my narrative as they choose. All others are eavesdroppers, and, of course, have ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... the most tragic, the most pitiful, the most mercilessly abused by destiny, was Anne. An interminable, monstrous exile is the impression we get of Anne's life in the years of her girlhood. There is no actual record of them. Nobody kept Anne's letters. We never hear her sad voice raised in self-pity or revolt. It is doubtful if she ever raised it. She waited in silence and resignation, and then told her own ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Peters' statement, she approached the injured man—the friend of her childhood and her girlhood—and did what little she could to make his position at least appear ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... decently conducted, than to bear the consequences of an order of things like the present one. The new order must come. It is the only way yet pointed out by which we may hope to close those other avenues, where the joy of youth is turned into a cup of trembling, and the dancing feet of girlhood are led into mires ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... of the time the personification of proper little-girlhood—had a disconcerting faculty of occasionally dropping a word here, or a question there, with startling effect. As, for instance, when she asked Billy "Who's going to boss your wedding?" and again when she calmly informed her mother that when she was married she was not ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... fancies, From shadowy shoals of dream, To clothe her in the wistful hour, When girlhood steals from bud to flower. Bring her the tunes of elfin dances, Bring ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... found courage to confide his poverty and his aspirations to any but these two adorable young girls, whose hearts were blooming beneath the snow of maternal rigor and the ice of devotion. This fact explains Schmucke and the girlhood of the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... pandemonium: man is again a Savage. The great armies roll along their hideous waves, and leave behind them smoking and depopulated deserts. The pillager is in every house, plucking even the morsel of bread from the lips of the starving child. Gray hairs are dabbled in blood, and innocent girlhood shrieks in vain to Lust for mercy. Laws, Courts, Constitutions, Christianity, Mercy, Pity, disappear. God seems to have abdicated, and Moloch to reign in His stead; while Press and Pulpit alike exult ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... holding a sleeping babe in her arms, while a curly-pated boy nestled his head in her lap and slept through the magic lanes and fairy woods of dreamland. The woman's face was one of those that blend the confidence of girlhood with the uncertainty of womanhood. 'Twas a pretty face, which had been plainly tagged by its Maker for a light-hearted trip through this world, but it had been seared by the iron of ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... whose ravenous throats The sea in wrath and mockery fills, The smoke, that up the valley floats, The girlhood of the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... to accuse a young person for suffering herself to be deceived, in the desire to escape, at any price, from the condition of girlhood; but such an accusation is only just in the present condition of our manners. At the present day, a young person knows nothing about seduction and its snares, she relies altogether upon her weakness, and mingling with ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... of this subject, convictions have deepened to the point of dismay since learning, through this school, of the many women who have suffered and who continue to suffer, both mentally and physically, because, in early girlhood, they were not taught those finer physiological facts upon which the very life of the race depends. Yet, strangely enough, these very victims find it almost impossible to give their children the knowledge necessary to save them from a similar fate. It is as if the lack of early training ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... suspicions which the frank charm of the northland had thrust outside. Hilda Farrand was an heiress and a beautiful girl. She had been constantly reminded of the one fact by the attempts of men to use flattery of the other as a key to her heart and her fortune. From early girlhood she had been sought by the brilliant impecunious of two continents. The continued experience had varnished her self-esteem with a glaze of cynicism sufficiently consistent to protect it against any but the strongest attack. She believed in no man's protestations. She distrusted every ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... blighting resolution which bound her to avenge her father's death. Her dearest remembrances of him—tender remembrances once—now burned in her (to use her own words) like fire. It was no ordinary love that had bound parent and child together in the bygone time. Emily had grown from infancy to girlhood, owing all the brightness of her life—a life without a mother, without brothers, without sisters—to her father alone. To submit to lose this beloved, this only companion, by the cruel stroke of disease was of all trials of resignation ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... cheese-parings in their camaraderie. Madame Depine found a fathomless mine of edification in Madame Valiere's reminiscences, which she skilfully extracted from her, finding the average ore rich with noble streaks, though the old tirewoman had an obstinate way of harking back to her girlhood, which made some delvings result in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... to correspond by letter with girls of her own age. Seclusion at this time of life, and the custom of crippling the feet, combine to confine women in the house almost as much as the strictest laws against their appearing abroad; for in girlhood, as they know only a few persons except relatives, and can make very few acquaintances after marriage their circle of friends contracts rather than enlarges as life goes on. This privacy impels girls to learn as much of the world as they can, and among the rich their curiosity is gratified ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... Eveena was of slighter, smaller frame than a healthy French girl of twelve, while I retained the full strength of a man adapted to the work of a world where every weight is twice as heavy as on Mars. What I had practically to do was to lift not seven or eight stone of European girlhood, not even the six Eveena might possibly have weighed on Earth, but half that weight. And yet the position was such that all the strength I had acquired through ten years of constant practice in the field and in the chase, all the power of a frame in ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... feeling so, but you do feel superior, 'way down in your secret heart! And yet, Babbie," and a little shadow darkened her bright face, "and yet, once you are married, you see a sort of—well, a sort of uncompromising brightness about girlhood, too! When I go out to The Alexander now, and remember my old busy days there, and walking to chapel with Aunt Sanna, in the fresh, early mornings—I don't know—it makes me almost a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... a verse-maker. Poetry suited my emotions better than prose. The following is one of my girlhood productions. ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... prodigious mortification in reflecting that Adele had been so closely the witness of his short-lived hallucination. It humiliated him bitterly to think that all his religious zeal had proved in her regard but the empty crackling of a fire of thorns. No matter what may be a youth's sentiment for girlhood, he never likes it to be witness of anything disparaging to his sturdy resolution and manly purpose. But Adele had seen him shake like a reed under the deepest emotions that could give tone to character; and in his mortification ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... length of a looby, the breadth of a booby," &c., he is eminently successful—yet, who shall say the ungainly cub may not one day be an ornament to society! Poor Muff! he has no mother or sisters—the only specimens of girlhood known to him are the maids at home, and the school-master's daughter, that dines with the parlour-boarders at Addle House:—brave boy, thou art clever, but semi-civilized! More "pretty things" are being redeemed—fans, gloves, lockets, handkerchiefs, and chatelaines,—all ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... were scattered by the touch of the spring breeze. She sank into a vague wonder at life, which had so cruelly requited the fervours of her girlhood. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... sit and dream. She would gradually cease sewing and, with her hands idle, and forgetting her surroundings, she would weave one of those romances of her girlhood and be lost in some enchanting adventure. But suddenly Julien's voice giving some orders to old Simon would snatch her abruptly from her dreams, and she would take up her work again, saying: "That is all over," and a tear would fall on her hands as ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to the mantelpiece; then, with an apparent change of impulse, she had turned and faced him. He had noted that her figure was rounder than in girlhood, her complexion paler, but the sunlight still danced in her hair, and her reckless force had given way to a poise that suggested infinite ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... felicitates herself greatly, unless a tall daughter of nine or ten walks abroad at her side. The engaged girl is safe—she rejoices in the last hours of her lingering girlhood and hems table linen with more resignation. The unattached girl has a strange interest in creams and hair tonics, and usually betakes herself to the cloister of the university for special courses, since azure hosiery does not detract from woman's ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... had turned out the light and crawled in beside Mary. Of a sudden, he had seen Judith through his father's eyes and he found himself very unwilling to permit John to see her so. Her loneliness had assumed an entirely new aspect to him. It was the loneliness of girlhood, of girlhood without father, mother, or brother. That was what it amounted to, he told himself. He never had been a real brother to Judith, never had looked out for her as if she had been his sister. And Jude's mother! Just tired and sweet and broken, about as well fitted to cope with her ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... New England girl. Her pale olive skin was flawless and fine of texture. Her mouth was intensely red, and her eyes very dark and heavily shaded by long lashes. She wore at the throat of her white dress a beautiful coral brooch. It had been one of her mother's girlhood treasures. The Dix family had been really almost opulent once, before the Andrew Bolton cataclysm had involved the village, and there were still left in the family little reminiscences of former splendor. Mrs. Dix wore a superb ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... swear it's a trick. I can feel it!" She dropped her hand nervously on the heavy revolver which she wore strapped at her hip, and fingered the gold chasing. Without her gun, ever since early girlhood, she had felt that her toilet ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... against him gave her occupation and aim—two valuable assets toward happiness that she had theretofore lacked. Her living—shelter, food, clothing enough—was now secure. But the most important factor of all in her content was the one apparently too trivial to be worthy of record. From girlhood she could not recall a single day in which she had not suffered from her feet. And she had been ashamed to say anything about it—had never let anyone, even her maid, see her feet, which were about the only unsightly part of her. None had guessed the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Lady is one of the annals of America. It is a moving record of the conquest of self-consciousness and fear through mastery of manners and customs. It has been written by one who has not sacrificed the strength and honesty of her pioneer girlhood, but who added to these qualities that graciousness and charm which have given her distinction ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... awakening, spoke with a brief vividness of the girlish dreams that had given a bias to her life, of the incredulous emotions his awakening had aroused. She told him too of a tragic circumstance of her girlhood that had darkened her life, quickened her sense of injustice and opened her heart prematurely to the wider sorrows of the world. For a little time, so far as he was concerned, the great war about them was but the vast ennobling background to these ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... planning and thinking. Should he speak to Betty and tell her he loved her? Should he only teach her to think of him, not with the frank liking of her girlhood, so well expressed to him that very day, but with the warm feeling which would cause her cheeks to redden when he spoke? Could he be sure of himself—to do this discreetly, or would he overstep the mark? He would wait and see what the next day ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the love in all their watching faces, Martie never forgot. Like a great river of warmth and sunshine it lifted her free of her dry, thirsty girlhood; she felt the tears of joy pressing against her eyes. There was nothing critical, nothing calculating, nothing repressing here; her lover wanted her, just as she stood, penniless, homeless, without a dress except ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... new happiness to Melisse. Croisset's wife was a good woman who had spent her girlhood in Montreal, and Iowaka, now the mother of a fire-eating little Jean and a handsome daughter, was a soft-voiced young Venus who had grown sweeter and prettier with her years—which is not usually the case ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... girlhood's vernal life She caused no small sensation, But now the modest English wife To others leaves flirtation. She's young still, lovely, debonair, Although sometimes her features Are clouded by a thought of care For those ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various |
