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Widowhood   Listen
noun
Widowhood  n.  
1.
The state of being a widow; the time during which a woman is widow; also, rarely, the state of being a widower. "Johnson clung to her memory during a widowhood of more than thirty years."
2.
Estate settled on a widow. (Obs.) "I 'll assure her of her widowhood... in all my lands."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Widowhood" Quotes from Famous Books



... only sister, who had been the wife of a rich English Jew. She had married an Englishman of high rank; but her husband, as well as her father and mother, was dead; all were dead; and she was living in widowhood and loneliness; and, ah! a great wrong had been done her! And here the Jew would sigh dismally and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... the end of 1560 this had gone so far that secret preparations seem to have been made for immediately anticipating the St Bartholomew of twelve years later. But the sudden death of Francis and the widowhood of Mary changed the whole situation. The new King was in the power, not of the Guises, but of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and Mary of Scots would now have to accept a second or a third place in Paris. But in Europe, and in the politics of Europe, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... sir," returned the Widow Martin; "and for that reason I should like to know if there isn't a will. I know the deacon set store by me, and I can hardly think he has departed for another world without bethinking him of his cousin Jenny, and of her widowhood." ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... The return of Eliduc gave infinite pleasure to his friends, to the king his master, and above all, to his excellent wife, who now hoped she should be indemnified, by his beloved society, for her long and dreary hours of widowhood. But she beheld, with surprise and consternation that he harboured some secret grief, and anxiously enquired if any thing in her conduct had given him displeasure. Eliduc assured her of the contrary, but ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... I had been a man in a novel I should of course have gone to the New Forest, and lived the simple life in sandals and few clothes, subsisting mainly on nuts; but as I was a woman in real life, with an honest contempt for what some one has called the widowhood of the unsatisfied, I settled down here. For reasons of my own I wanted to be in this part of the world. To me there is ever a healing strength in wide spaces, and Bessmoor has been my best friend. And if the leaves of memory make a rustling at times, I am glad of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... you believe that these claims were now admitted, and that they heightened the iniquity of Welbeck into the blackest and most stupendous of all crimes? These ideas were necessarily transient. Conclusions more conformable to appearances succeeded. This lady might have been lately reduced to widowhood. The recent loss of a beloved companion would sufficiently account for her dejection, and make her present ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... my health and humors being evidently so, the Dowager Lady Ashburton (not the high Lady you saw, but a Successor of Mackenzie-Highland type), who wanders mostly about the Continent since her widowhood, for the sake of a child's health, began pressing and inviting me to spend the blade months of Winter here in her Villa with her;—all friends warmly seconding and urging; by one of whom I was at last snatched off, as if by the hair of the head, (in spite ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... time had I felt such respect for that quiet woman, Madame de Clericy, as on this afternoon when widowhood first cast its ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman

... largely to the fact that as a native of Holland she had been taught "the knowledge of accounts." "I mention this affair chiefly for the sake of recommending that branch of education for our young females as likely to be of more use to them and their children in case of widowhood than either music or dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of crafty men, and enabling them to continue perhaps a profitable mercantile house with establish'd correspondence, till a son is grown up fit to undertake and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... left off trade. With him she lived without reproach, but not without pain, in a state of great self-denial, for about twelve years; and her virtue was rewarded by his dying and leaving her very rich. The first year of her widowhood was just at an end, and she had past it in a good deal of retirement, seeing only a few particular friends, and dividing her time between her devotions and novels, of which she was always extremely fond. Very ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... of his dear mother, till he beheld another in her place. His father entered into a second marriage before much more than half his year of widowhood was expired, with a lady, who, though pretty near his equal in years, had yet remains enough of beauty to render her extremely vain and affected, and fortune enough to make her no less proud.—These two qualities ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... by the Bridge of Sighs, rise the accents of woe, as at the time when the tambourine was heard in the gay gondolas, and the golden ring was cast from the Bucentaur to Adria, the queen of the seas. Adria! shroud thyself in mists; let the veil of thy widowhood shroud thy form, and clothe in the weeds of woe the mausoleum of thy ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... had a peculiar dream. It seemed to her that her husband had returned from a long journey for an hour or so and was going away again. Of course, in her dream the lady forgot all about her widowhood. ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji

... reconciliation had taken place between the runaway daughter and her north-country parents, from whom she later inherited the money which had supported herself and her daughter throughout the years of her widowhood. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... early widowhood that she first met the man, and when their union came it brought ruin on them both. In France there came to her one day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell. He was but a few years older than she, and in his presence for the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... year after her widowhood found her less frequently in the public meetings, less willing to organise new centres of work, more determined to avoid presidencies and chairmanships. For this she gave as an excuse the frequent trips abroad, which seemed to have no special ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... went to the little schoolhouse to meeting the first Sunday of her widowhood, being determined to be a part of the community in which she lived, Hepsie was on the outskirts of the little crowd after services were over, to explain in a whisper that Lizzie was "goin' t' go t' meetin' now like she'd always wanted to do, only Mr. Hunter never 'd take 'er anywhere ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... inhabited. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... will promise to marry me within a year of widowhood, I will undertake to get twenty thousand francs for it from Elie Magus; and unless you marry me you will never get a thousand francs ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... Kaiser Henry V.'s Widow, who brought no heir to Henry V., was our English Henry Beauclerc's daughter,—granddaughter therefore of William Conqueror,—the same who, having (in 1127, the second year of her widowhood) married Godefroi Count of Anjou, produced our Henry II. and our Plantagenets; and thereby, through her victorious Controversies with King Stephen (that noble peer whose breeches stood him so cheap), ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... evoked expressions of sympathy and regret from all parts of the empire and from many states of the union. The letters and telegrams of condolence which Lady Tilley received during the first days of her widowhood would of themselves fill a volume, showing how widely he was known and respected. The funeral, which took place on the Saturday following his death, was one of the largest ever seen in St. John, and was attended ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... dead for her than for me. One must outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... towards a difficult peace and serenity, rendered harder by the struggle with ill health. Soon we began to realise that the physical weakness, which all her courage could not overcome, was more than merely her old malady. "What did Frances die of?" Bernard Shaw wrote to me. "Was it of widowhood?" ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Joseph were still wondering at these sublime words there appeared an aged prophetess whose long years of widowhood had been spent in continual worship; she, too, praised God for the salvation to be accomplished by the Child of Mary and she went forth to speak of him to all who like her "were looking for the redemption ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... the young woman's real desire, and looking at her out of the corner of his eye, with a heart full of benevolence and of sympathy for her distress, he said: "Oh, I understand perfectly. I know that your widowhood must be irksome to you. You are young and in good health. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... longing for the next pair of arms—her eyes are closed. She has so much to make up for! And who so innocent as she? She does not once realize that she is robbing others of their pleasure. Is she suffering from vertigo or St. Vitus's dance, in her widowhood? ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... border rancho which was world enough for the lovers. There had been one eastern summer for them the first year of their marriage, and Philip Singleton had seen her there, and never forgot her. After her widowhood he crossed the continent to be near her, and after awhile his devotion, and her need of help in many ways, won the place he coveted, and life at Granados went on serenely until her death. Though he had at times been bored a bit by the changelessness of ranch life, yet he had given his word ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... that his dead body had been devoured by the flames. He had a wife, a young Gaul named Eponina, who was in frantic despair at the rumor; but he had her informed, by the mouth of one of his freedmen, of his place of concealment, begging her at the same time to keep up a show of widowhood and mourning, in order to confirm the report already in circulation. "Well did she play her part," to use Plutarch's expression, "in her tragedy of woe." She went at night to visit her husband in his retreat, and departed at break of day; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... you it is different. You have now decided to live for Dick, and let your waist measure look after itself; but I have larger aims and fewer years than you, dearest. My conception of self-respecting widowhood is to be as young as possible, as attractive as possible, as rich as possible, and eventually to read my title clear to (at least) a baronet, and have a castle in a good hunting county. There are difficulties in my upward way, yet I feel strongly I shall overcome them. Let my motto be, "The battle ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... but thrown open, warmed and brightened with flowers each day, because the Duchess chose to catch glimpses of their cheerfulness as she passed them on her way up or downstairs. The house was her own property, and, after her widowhood, when it was emptied of her children by their admirable marriages, and she herself became Dowager and, later, a confirmed rheumatic invalid, it became doubly her home and was governed by her slightest whim. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... prepared to wait. His hand sought the pocket of his coat, and fingered tenderly a small stone bottle, the fond companion of his widowhood. He pulled it out, uncorked it, and took a long pull; then placed it on the table ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... persecute them, and load them with obloquy; yet their number increases constantly; and, indeed, of all those that have been thus born to Christ, I cannot give the number, besides those living in holy widowhood, and keeping continency in ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... uniting a mystical with a luxurious expression, like that of Sibyls who had been feasting with Cleopatra. There was something to me strange as well as lovely in their aspect—as strange as their condition, which seems a state half-way between marriage and widowhood. They see no man except their husband; and a visit from him (except in the case of the favorite) is a rare and marvelous occurrence, like an eclipse of the sun. Their bearing toward each other was that of sisters: ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... affection for me, and would have me to roam about the house with her for hours. She was a clever, intellectual woman, without one idea or sentiment in common with her husband. In this state of mental widowhood she had consoled herself by study, amongst other things; and the history of the family into which she had married afforded her ample materials for reflection and research. She had collected every scrap of writing, every private memorandum, letter, and document that could throw ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... great discovery, and, naturally enough, it set her weeping, for, she sobbed, it made her feel, for a minute, that she had lost her widowhood and that, after the shower, he'd be ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... is her prescient pang of widowhood. Ere Salamanca clang to-morrow's close She'll find her ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... Marechal de Saxe, recognized and educated, but finally left with slender resources, and married to M. Dupin de Francueil, an accomplished person of good family and fortune, greatly her senior. To him she bore one child, a son named Maurice, after the great soldier. As might have been expected, her widowhood was early and long, for her aged partner soon dropped from her side, beloved and regretted. George tells us that her grandmother was wont to insist that an old man can be more agreeable in the marital relation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... old Mrs. Venning remembered the first days of her own widowhood, and life seemed to her a very short affair, ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... established in the Indies by the credit of the Brahmans, threatened to overrun all the East. When a married man died, and his beloved wife aspired to the character of a saint, she burned herself publicly on the body of her husband. This was a solemn feast and was called the Funeral Pile of Widowhood, and that tribe in which most women had been burned ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... always in good Humour when an East-Wind blows, because it seldom fails of bringing me a Letter from him. Let me entreat you, Sir, to give me your Advice upon this Occasion, and to let me know how I may relieve my self in this my Widowhood. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... abandoned her comfortable widowhood without sufficient reflection: and now she had to put up as best she might with the difficulties of Herr Rauchfuss's disposition—sighing or complaining would do ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... her son, allowing him to grow up badly enough and committing all her maternal duties to the grandmother, was perpetually cheerful, notwithstanding that her life had been chequered by chance and her widowhood of sufficiently dramatic character, as was said. She endeavored to play the part of an adviser, an intimate friend to Adrienne. She frequently said to Madame Gerson, who rarely left her, that Madame Vaudrey would be altogether ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... light of a small iron lamp, or cruize, as it was termed. Poor Elspeth's apron was thrown over her head, and bitterly did she sob and weep for "her beautiful, her brave,—the very image of her dear Simon Glendinning, the stay of her widowhood and the support ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... thus," he adds, "that from the moment she became a widow, I always saw her with her pale hue, as long as I had the honour of seeing her in France, and Scotland, where she had to go in eighteen months' time, to her very great regret, after her widowhood, to pacify her kingdom, greatly divided by religious troubles. Alas! she had neither the wish nor the will for it, and I have often heard her say so, with a fear of this journey like death; for she preferred a hundred times to dwell ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... insular in his ideas, why had he taken an American wife, and she a widow? He had been charmed by her vivacity. She lifted him out of the gloom in which he had lived so long. If she had been tame and prosaic, she would have worn the weeds of widowhood again in a short time. She made him comfortable; she surrounded him with the brightest people she could find; he was not allowed to mope indoors, and Sir Stuart Fernborough and his sprightly American wife attended ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... the emancipation of the Spanish colonies, he does without it, in spite of the opposition of the mother-country, and, "without putting himself in relation with the new governments,[5209] he, acting for himself, "that he may put an end to the widowhood of the Churches," appoints bishops, assigns them a provisional regime in anticipation of the epoch when, in concert with better founded governments, he will decree their definitive regime. In this way, all ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of her majesty is marked by three great stages—her youth, her married life, and her widowhood. Each is bound to each by the tie of a consistent growth, passing through those experiences which are typical of God's education of His children, whether high or low, rich ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... in three out of four families, and unemployment was responsible in two out of three cases. In nearly half the families there was found defect of character, and in a third of the cases there was widowhood or desertion or overcrowding. Added to these were old-age incapacity, large families, and ill adjustment to environment due to recent ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... This absence of interest in literature was accompanied by that complete and absolute indifference to the fine arts which was so common in the middle classes and the country aristocracy of those days. I mention these deficiencies to explain the extreme dulness of my poor father's existence during his widowhood, a dulness that a lover of books must have a difficulty in imagining. A man living alone with servants (for his son's childhood was spent elsewhere), who took hardly any interest in a profession that had become ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... widowhood, the noblest and handsomest youths of Cairo began mysteriously to disappear. They would be well and happy one day, and the next they would be gone from the places that knew them. By and by their ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... Portion. Adapted from the Bible and the Prayer Book, for the Private Devotion of those living in Widowhood. Collected and Edited by Lady Mary Vyner, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... beauty and the leader of fashion for years. Now that she is past fifty that character is no longer possible to her. But she might have assumed another—less showy, perhaps, but surely far more touching. With her whitening hairs she might have worthily worn the triple dignity of her widowhood, her maternity and her misfortune. She has chosen instead, with a weakness unworthy of the part that she has played on the wide stage of contemporary history, to clutch vainly after the fleeting shadow of her vanished charms. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... one can say that I did not stand by William through the entire widowhood of my marriage. I was the world compass of his life, always sitting in his amen corner with my attention fixed anxiously upon the spiritual pulse of the congregation, always giving him the most nourishing food our limited ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... to attend. He declared, verbally and in writing, that he no longer possessed a wife; that Madame de Montespan had died of an attack of coquetry and ambition; and he talked of marrying again when the year of mourning and of widowhood should be over. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... marriage for Henry: who had already considered and dismissed the idea of marrying the younger of the two living ex-Queens of Naples—both named Joanna—a niece of Ferdinand of Aragon. The wife now proposed was Philip's sister, Margaret, who on her first widowhood had been spoken of as a possible alternative to Katharine for Arthur of Wales. Since then, she had become Margaret of Savoy, the name by which she is generally known; but had been widowed a second time. This proposal probably came from Philip, but was resolutely resisted ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... her life and Herbert's, were now going to attack her son and rob him of his rights. They should not do it if she could help it. Never! Mary Vernon had been a high-spirited girl, and, although those who had only known her through her widowhood would have taken her for a gentle and quiet woman, whose thoughts were entirely wrapped up in her boy, the old spirit was alive yet, as with head thrown back, and an angry flush on her cheeks, she declared to herself that ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... for nothing, and that unless by some fortunate chance I could light upon some clue to his whereabouts in the great world beyond our little town, I would be likely to pass the remainder of my days in widowhood and desolation. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... management. She must either have ladies, or she must not have them. There was a great allurement in the latter alternative; but she knew well that if she gave way to it, all prospect of general society would for her be closed,—and for ever. This had been in the early days of her widowhood in Park Lane. She cared but little for women's society; but she knew well that the society of gentlemen without women would not be that which she desired. She knew also that she might as effectually crush herself and all her aspirations by bringing ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... was mourning for its dead; The streets were black with widowhood; While orphaned children begged for bread, And Rachel, for the brave and good, Mourned, and would ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... learned that she had gone back to Newark to live, and had left no word for me. Her father told me she "had gone back to George," meaning her never-seen husband from whom she evidently enjoyed intervals of separation and grass-widowhood. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... the aboriginal tribes the examples are fewer than might be expected. This change has brought descent through the fathers, and has involved, besides, the more or less complete subjugation of women, with insistence on female chastity, abolition of divorce, infant marriage, and perpetuation of widowhood.[144] Not every tribe is yet thus revolutionised. Among the Kasias of south-east India the husband lives with the wife or visits ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... the sitting bird of her eggs, or destroy her tender young, and she immediately sets out in quest of a male, who is no laggard when he hears her call. The same is true of ducks and other aquatic fowls. The propagating instinct is strong, and surmounts all ordinary difficulties. No doubt the widowhood I had caused in the case of the woodpeckers was of short duration, and chance brought, or the widow drummed up, some forlorn male, who was not dismayed by the prospect of having a large family of half grown birds on ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... pain, but only with a quite contrary view. She answered very coldly, "I might do what I would; for she had not spoken about it, but was resolved to live apart from me." This was fairly giving me my discharge, and I thought of taking my measures privately to retire. As I had not, since my widowhood, made any visits but such as were of pure necessity, or charity, there were found too many discontented spirits, who made a party with her against me. The Lord required of me an inviolable secrecy of all my ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... of Kew". 'The embellishments of Kew palace and gardens, under the direction of [Sir William] Chambers, and others, was the favourite object of her [Royal Highness's] widowhood' (Bolton Corney). ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... treasures" ever since she went away. The whole scene worked him up and did him good, for he always loves to have his Southern friends drum him up and talk to him of your Uncle Seargent and Aunt Anna. Mr. —— is one of our millionaires, and she married him a year ago after thirteen years of widowhood. She says she still has 200 "negroes," who won't go away and won't work, and she has them to support. She talked very rationally about the war, and says not a soul at the South would have slavery back if they could.... I called at Mrs. B.'s yesterday—at exactly ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... sixteenth century, he put down most of the outer fortifications. Without these the chateau is as much a part of the town of Eu as Buckingham Palace is of St. James's Park. Catherine of Cleves, the widow of the great Duke of Guise, lived at Eu through her long widowhood in the friendliest relations with the good people of the town, while the architects were erecting for herself and her murdered husband, 'the nonpareil of the world,' as she called him (notwithstanding his admiration of Mme. de Noirmoutiers), the beautiful monuments ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... ample proportions and of leisurely habit. Life had of late hurried her a bit, but she still gave the effect of restful calm. She was of the same generation as Aunt Claudia, and a widow. But she wore her widowhood with a difference. She had on to-day a purple hat. Her hair was white, her dress was white, and her shoes. She was prettier than Aunt Claudia but she lacked her distinction of manner ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... am never to let myself be known as I am?" asked Daphne. Her face had changed; it wore a look of fright and resistance. "Why, that would mean that I am never to unmask; to go about all my life in my trappings of false widowhood. You read what that paper called me! I cannot ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... aspect contrasted strongly with his plump and comfortable physiognomy. She was dressed in a tattered black stuff gown, discoloured by various stains, and intended, it would seem, from the remnants of rusty crape with which it was here and there tricked out, to represent the garb of widowhood, and held in her arms a sleeping infant, swathed in the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... of dower" set conspicuously in the foreground—"one equal third part"—at length she comprehended it all. Her home was to pass into other hands: henceforth she was to be counted only as an incumbrance on it. Looking from the misery of the present down the gloom of the future, she could see only widowhood and penury. And whilst the appraisers were performing their ungracious task of overhauling cupboards and drawers, and estimating the value in cash of presents received in her courtship, she, in her quiet despair at this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... they would sit beside an oil-lamp with a flowered china shade, Mrs. Schump, gnarled of limb and knotted of joint, ever busy, except on the most excruciatingly rheumatic of her days, at a needlework so cruel, so fine that for fifteen years of her widowhood it had found instant market at ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... repeat, her action had been the same. In so far as she had perjured herself for the sake of peace in the family, she owned the sacrifice was vain; but her own personality was the true reason for what she had done. She was free in her unimpeachable widowhood—a mother who had never been at heart a wife. She feared no ghosts this keen autumn weather, at the summit of her conscious powers. Her dark eye unsheathed its glance of authority. It was an eye that went everywhere, and everywhere was met with signs that praised its ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... I may presume to ask such a favour," said the Countess. "I am a Peeress of this nation—mother to one English Earl, and widow, alas, to another! In England I have spent my brief days of happiness, my long years of widowhood and sorrow. France and its language are but to me the dreams of an uninteresting childhood. I know no tongue save that of my husband and my son. Permit me, as the widow and mother of Derby, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... bore sons to this man also, by whom are typified the Virtues which befit Old Age, as previously said. Hortensius died, by which is typified the end of Old Age, and Marcia, made a widow, by which widowhood is typified Extreme Old Age, returned in the early days of her widowhood to Cato, whereby is typified the Noble Soul turning to God in the beginning of Extreme Old Age. And what earthly man was more worthy ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... there had reached her some feeling of satisfaction. Religion too had given her comfort, and a routine of small duties had saved her from the wretchedness of ennui. But life with her had had no laughter, and had seldom smiled. Now in the first days of her widowhood she regarded her course as run, and looked upon herself as one who, in speaking, almost spoke from the tomb. All this had its effect upon the young lord. She did inspire him with a certain awe; and though her weeds gave her no authority, ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... been. She bow'd down And wept in secret; and the reapers reap'd, And the sun fell, and all the land was dark. Then Dora went to Mary's house, and stood Upon the threshold. Mary saw the boy Was not with Dora. She broke out in praise To God, that help'd her in her widowhood. And Dora said, "My uncle took the boy; But, Mary, let me live and work with you: He says that he will never see me more." Then answer'd Mary, "This shall never be, That thou shouldst take my trouble ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... the first few days of her widowhood, she heard what was going on. The evidence against him became stronger and stronger, whereas the other man, Yosef Mealyus, had been already liberated. There were still many who felt sure that Mealyus had been the murderer, among whom were ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... I say, the deprecatory, worrying attitude had become second nature with my mother long years before her widowhood, and had lined and seamed her poor forehead and silvered her hair before my Rugby days were over. Bereavement merely gave point to a ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... have expected it.' He was going to add, 'And is he dead?' but he checked himself. Her dress unmistakably suggested widowhood; and she had said she ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... these and he came to her a cripple, an emaciated and sick man. Then had followed, as Joe knew, the marriage, the hard pioneer life in the shanty on the stony hill, the death, and the long widowhood.... ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... soul stood forth To rally them and lead them to revenge, When my great father fell, they had replied! Alas! our foe alone stood forward then. And thou, my mother, hadst thou made a sign— Hadst thou, from thy forlorn and captive state Of widowhood in these polluted halls, Thy prison-house, raised one imploring cry— Who knows but that avengers thou hadst found? But mute thou sat'st, and each Messenian heart In thy despondency desponded too. Enough of this!—Though not a finger stir To succour me in my extremest need; ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Isabella, silent and pale, shrouded in the sable robes of widowhood—that painful garb which, in its voiceless eloquence of desolation, ever calls for tears, more especially when it shrouds the young; her beautiful hair, save two thick braids, concealed under the linen coif—sat Marie, lovely indeed ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... for us ever since, tells us that Gormlai was present at his burial and chanted a funeral ode. Her long widowhood was a period of disconsolate mourning. At length it is said she had a dream or vision, in which King Nial appeared to her in such life-like shape that she spread her arms to embrace him, and thus wounded her breast against the carven head-post of her couch, and of that ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... before he landed in America his father had departed on a longer journey. The ne'er-do-well had the good grace to send back the little sums of money saved by his mother in her widowhood, and gradually his letters ceased. It was known that he was in Chili, and there was war going on there, and yet the good old ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... although she loved liberty, was not unprotected, and her late husband's sister—a Mrs. Tell—had lived with her all through the years of her widowhood. Mrs. Tell, too, was a rich widow, tall, and of imposing aspect, but easy-tempered and rather lazy. She was past sixty, and looked a majestic matron, with her white hair and lace cap. Katherine's whims did not annoy her in the least, and she had taken quite kindly to Jamie. ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney

... abroad we seemed incessantly to encounter widows: widows young and old, from the aged to the absurdly immature. It was only after a period of bewilderment that it dawned upon us that the sepulchral garb and heavy crape veils reaching from head to heel were not necessarily the emblems of widowhood, but might signify some state of minor bereavement. In Britain a display of black such as is an everyday sight at Versailles is undreamt of, and one saw more crape veils in a day in Versailles ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... names, such as Mrs. Potter Palmer, or Mrs. Isabella B. Hooker. A widow is no longer called by her husband's given name, but reverts to her own christened cognomen, preceded by "Mrs." Thus, Mrs. James H. Hayes in her widowhood is, to every one, Mrs. Helen B. Hayes. An exception to this would be in the case of such well-known names as Abraham Lincoln, or James G. Blaine, where custom grants the widow the right to bear the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... which had been a good deal interrupted during the years I passed out of England, was renewed the year before her death, when I visited her at Hatchford, where she was residing in her widowhood, and where I promised her when I left her I would return and stay with her again, but was never fortunate enough to do so, her ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... savages or barbarians. There is nothing in the Vedas to justify the cruelties of the Hindu gods and the practices of the priests. They do not authorize animal worship, caste, child-marriage, the burning of widows or perpetual widowhood, but the Brahmins have built up a stupendous system of superstition, of which they alone pretend to know the mystic meaning, and their supremacy is established. Thus the nature worship of the Vedas has disappeared and has given place to terrorism, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... warmly solicited her to marry him. Every person spoke in his favour, and urged her to consent; her poverty was no faint adviser, and with general approbation at the conclusion of the first year of her widowhood she became ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... post-liminium.(145) But if the woman opposed to the marriage prove faults of morals and vices, though of no great gravity, let her lose her dowry and pay back to her husband her marriage gift, and let her never join herself in marriage with another; that she may not stain her widowhood with the impudence of unchastity we give the repudiated husband the right of bringing an accusation by law. Hereafter if she who abandons her husband prove grave causes and a guilt involving great crimes, let her obtain a ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... Prince of Wales. Whatever her real depth of attachment to him, her best hope for the future was in his constancy, and that he would eventually marry her; for Sir William's death could not be far distant, and matters might otherwise favor the hope that both he and she cherished. Her approaching widowhood would in fact leave her, unless her husband's will was exceptionally generous, in a condition as precarious, her acquired tastes considered, as that from which her marriage had rescued her; and her ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... in again. Primrose had wondered at his long absence. There had been many things to disturb the serenity of the peaceful farmhouse. A sister of Aunt Lois' who had cared for the mother during years of widowhood was taken down, and died after a short illness. The mother, old and feeble, and wandering in her mind, needed constant care. There were three children also, a lad of sixteen and two younger girls, one of whom was devoted to the poor old grandmother. There was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... night. He might as well drink, for it could not hurt him. Nothing material had power to hurt him, it seemed. He felt the pain of longing for the utterly unattainable, knowing that it was beyond him forever. The widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared with the bereavement of complete possession. He had not so much as told Gloria that he had loved her. How could he, being but one degree above a beggar? The unspoken words burned furrows in his heart, as molten metal scores smoking channels in living flesh. Gloria ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... estimated that in Liverpool some seven thousand persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die. Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr. Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire from preventible ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... would look with horror on such a proposal. A daughter of hers to marry within a twelvemonth of her widowhood!" ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... thirtyfold fruits do not differ as various species of virtuous acts, but as various degrees of perfection, even in the same virtue. Thus continency of the married state is said to be signified by the thirtyfold fruit; the continency of widowhood, by the sixtyfold; and virginal continency, by the hundredfold fruit. There are, moreover, other ways in which holy men distinguish three evangelical fruits according to the three degrees of virtue: and they speak of three degrees, because the perfection of anything is considered ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... say, upon any Occurrence of that Nature, which I can give you a Sense of, though I cannot express it wholly, I am all over Softness, and am obliged to retire, and give Way to a few Sighs and Tears, before I can be easy. I cannot but recommend the Subject of Male Widowhood to you, and beg of you to touch upon it by the first Opportunity. To those who have not lived like Husbands during the Lives of their Spouses, this would be a tasteless Jumble of Words; but to such (of whom there are ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of Hardwick's building enterprises it may be added that she built Hardwick Hall, "more glass than wall" (according to an old rhyme), in 1587. The Earl died in 1590, and the Countess had another long widowhood of 17 years. Her second son, William Cavendish, was created Baron Cavendish and his great-grandson ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard

... the Book. This monumental poem, in some respects his culminating achievement, has its roots in an earlier stratum of his life than its predecessor. There is little here to recall the characteristic moods of his first years of desolate widowhood—the valiant Stoicism, the acceptance of the sombre present, the great forward gaze upon the world beyond. We are in Italy once more, our senses tingle with its glowing prodigality of day, we jostle the teeming throng of the Roman streets, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... he exclaimed; "this is morbid. You have never forgiven God for taking away your husband. You have been keeping a grudge against Him all these years of your widowhood." ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... other's doings. Isabelle was thinking of this and many other things about Percy and Conny as she waited in the still drawing-room for the funeral service to begin. She had admired Conny extravagantly at first, and now though she tried to think of her in her widowhood sympathetically, she found it impossible to pity her; while of poor Percy, who it seemed "had been too much under his wife's thumb," she thought affectionately.... The hall and the two rooms on this floor where the people had gathered ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... also true, that in no stage of her existence can she be regarded as independent. She is dependent upon her father in childhood, the slave of her husband so long as he lives, and subject to her son during the days of her widowhood. Hinduism leaves her no opportunity, in this human existence, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... climb the campanile, from which, as Signor Rooskin says, may be seen Torcello and Venice—"Mother and Daughter ... in their widowhood." Looking down, it is strange indeed to think that here once ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... that no place could be very miserable. Poor lady! her life had been one long martyrdom, all the more hard to bear because it was made up for the most part of small annoyances, petty mortifications, little recurring incessant bitternesses. And now, during the seven years of her widowhood, she had gained a calmer and serener atmosphere, in which she was raised above the possibility of humiliation from the dwarfed natures and malicious hearts in the midst of which she lived. They could hurt her feelings, they could embitter her days no longer. To the hopes and pleasures of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... daughter of the high constable of Naples, and married to the Marquis of Pescara. Early left a widow, she abandoned herself to sorrow. That fidelity which made her refuse the hand of princes in her youth, rendered her incapable of a second attachment in her widowhood. The solace of her life was to mourn the loss and cherish the memory of Pescara. After passing several years in retirement, Vittoria took up her residence at Rome, and became the intimate friend of the distinguished men of her time. Her verses, though deficient ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... per 1000 as against 28 married boys. Even allowing for those provinces where cohabitation is delayed, these figures mean in other provinces a cruel wrong to the children of the weaker sex, a doubly cruel wrong when to premature marriage may be added girl widowhood. The Census Report declares that in the lower strata of Hindu society there has been a rapid extension of child marriage and prohibition of the marriage of widows within the last two or three generations, although at the low age ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought out funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of others attracted him, because of his great gentleness; he mingled with the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with the priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his thoughts for text these funereal psalmodies filled with the vision of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... marrying a second time amongst the most disgraceful of actions. This opinion is commonest in the country-towns and villages; and my mother's relations are thus distinguished; so that a woman of them, when her husband dieth or divorceth her while she is young, passeth in widowhood her life, however long it may be, and disdaineth to marry a second time." I fear that this state of things belongs to the good old days now utterly gone by; and the loose rule of the stranger, especially ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... ye, all ye that walk in Willow-wood, That walk with hollow faces burning white; What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood, What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night, Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite Your lips to that their unforgotten food, Ere ye, ere ye again shall ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti

... change in him. Anne was recollecting that Colonel Musgrave had somewhat pointedly avoided her since her widowhood. He seemed almost ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... esprit, elegance, and gout of this greatest of French cultural periods. Her life may be considered as having had two distinct phases—one connected with an unhappy marriage and the other the period of a restless widowhood. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... laying up a store of happy recollections to which his thoughts in after days often turned. Early in January 1862, accompanied by Lady Elgin, he went to Osborne on a visit to the Queen; who even in those early days of widowhood, roused herself to receive the first Viceroy of India ever appointed by the sole act of the Crown. On the 28th of the same month he quitted the shores of England; and, after a rapid and uneventful journey, reached ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... a day—this gathering about her of so brilliant and delightful a society. She had lived many years at Walpole Lodge, ever since her widowhood, and was now quite an old lady. In her early life she had written several charming books—chiefly biographies of distinguished men whom she had known, and even now she occasionally put pen again to paper, and sent some delightful social essay or some pleasantly written ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... relieved the artist from the charge of exaggeration. Thus far Grace's manner had been ascribed to high-bred reserve and the natural desire for seclusion in her widowhood. Now, however, that attention was concentrated upon her, Graham feared that more than her beauty would ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... T. Devine advocates social insurance for sickness and widowhood, but not out-door relief or widow's pensions; also advocates physical investigation and home visiting for school children, but not school lunches, eye-glasses or clothing as a free gift. His conclusion is that "the state should enforce a minimum standard ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... his famous funeral oration over those who fell in the Peloponnesian war, thus addresses the Athenian women: "To the wives who will henceforth live in widowhood, I will speak, in one short sentence only, of womanly virtue. She is the best woman who is most truly a woman, and her reputation is the highest whose name is never in the mouths of men for ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... wife and children to Him who had bestowed them, as intrusted blessings, which he had dearly valued, and now as tenderly regretted. Resolved to pass the rest of his days in widowhood, he made Mrs. Mellicent superintendant of his household and director of his daughter's feminine accomplishments. She also undertook to supply the place of Mrs. Beaumont in the parish, but in the task of managing the humours and improving the inclinations ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... this is the same Countess of Arundel who, in her widowhood, resided in Italy in order to be near her young sons then at Padua. Having provoked the suspicion of the Doge and Council of Venice, she was arrested by them on a charge of treason, and brought before the tribunal, where she successfully pled her own cause, and obtained her release, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... this unhappy match, the anxieties of the last illness, and the sudden death which for a moment revived her former affection, the first months of her widowhood acted on the young woman like a healthy calming water-cure. The enforced retirement, the quiet charm of mitigated sorrow lent to her thirty-five years a second youth almost as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... Remington," and "that charming young widow," but no serious attentions had been paid, no millionaire had asked to be her second husband. If there had, she would have said yes, for Agnes was not averse to changing her state of widowhood. She liked the doctor, but if he did not propose, and some other body did, she should accept that other body, of course. This was her intention when she left Aikenside, and when she came back, it was with the determination to raise ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... that ladies, especially young ladies, must always wear their jewellery, even when travelling. Arms, wrists, neck and ankles, bare of jewels, are a sign of widowhood or dire poverty. Out young heroine was accordingly adorned with jewels and she was also richly attired. Was she not the daughter of a wealthy man and going to visit her mother-in-law? So her mother had lovingly dressed her in an exquisite gold-embroidered ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee

... her desolate widowhood dragged themselves by. Her youth was gone, and the grey hairs which had startled Cartier had now many companions. But they seemed only to add beauty and character to her sweet, sad face. She gave herself up to unselfish devotion to others and her duty; and as if the storms of her life ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... turned from her fears to the amazing reality of her widowhood. Even yet she could not wholly credit the fact that Ed's wasted life had come to an end and that she was free to make the most of her own. Alaire remembered her husband now with more tenderness, more charity, than she would have believed possible, and it seemed to her ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... of fifty-five summers at the utmost, but weakly confessing to as much as forty. She had made a point of insisting upon a brisket of beef and a flat-polled cabbage for dinner every Saturday; and the same, with a "cowcumber," cold on Sunday; and for supper a soft-roed herring, ever since her widowhood. ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... with those torturing reflections, and while the first wild burst of grief was yet rolling down her cheeks, she determined to begin her lone, young widowhood by instantly writing to him and bidding him hope. In this epistle, all the nobility of her true heart and nature blazed forth so transcendently, and with such fierce, womanly fervor, that the moment it reached the hands of the young soldier the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... a boy writhed in and out and around and under a pathetic old Jersey cow, who was being rescued from the jaws of death. Now I wonder just what I would have done to escape such an experience? Slated myself for Belgian widowhood, perhaps, as a kinder fate, or stayed right there in New York to help Peter on "The Emergence." I wonder if Peter ever saw a dear, big-eyed, trustful old Jersey cow have medicine poured down her throat. It is called "drenching." I wish he could see it before he ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... faded but still handsome woman. Yet she wore that peculiar long, limp, formless house-shawl which in certain phases of Anglo-Saxon spinster and widowhood assumes the functions of the recluse's veil and announces the renunciation of worldly vanities and a resigned indifference to external feminine contour. The most audacious masculine arm would shrink from clasping that shapeless void ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... was a long, low cottage on the street's southern side, between it and the sea. Its grounds sloped upward from the street, widened out extensively at the rear, and then suddenly fell away in bluffs to the beach. It had been built for "Mi'ss Paula" as a bridal gift from her husband. But now, in her widowhood, his wealth was gone, and only refinement and ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... Montgomery Brewster had regarded her quiet, old-fashioned home as his own. The house had once been her grandfather's, and it was one of the pioneers in that part of the town. It was there she was born; in its quaint old parlor she was married; and all her girlhood, her brief wedded life, and her widowhood were connected with it. Mrs. Gray and Montgomery's mother had been schoolmates and playmates, and their friendship endured. When old Edwin Peter Brewster looked about for a place to house his orphaned grandson, Mrs. Gray begged him to ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... single persons,—consenting,—of sound mind,—and of the age of twenty one years;—or of the age of fourteen in males and twelve in females, with consent of parents or guardians, or without it, in case of widowhood. And no marriage is voidable by the ecclesiastical law, after the death of either of the parties; nor during their lives, unless for the canonical impediments of pre-contract, if that indeed still exists; of consanguinity; and of affinity, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... in your widowhood than you approve, and it displeases you, I hope you will believe that I have always thought of you as a wife to be admired above any that I ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... seamen, and die abroad on board the merchants' ships they were employed in, or are cast away and drowned, or taken and die in slavery, their widows shall receive a pension during their widowhood. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... as the stranger might have had. While the good King Umberto lived the stranger would have had many other chances, for it is said that the queen showed herself with him to the people at the windows of their palace every afternoon; but in her widowhood she lives retired, though now and then her carriage may be seen passing through the streets, with four special policemen on bicycles following it. These waited about the doorway of the concert-hall that afternoon and formed a very simple, if effective, guard. In fact, it might ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... and besides this, urged her very strongly to tell the cardinal to throw the man into the water. To which the queen said "Amen." Then the lover sent quickly to his lady a letter in a plate of cucumbers, to advise her of her approaching widowhood, and the hour of flight, with all of which was the fair citizen well content. Then at dusk the soldiers of the watch being got out of the way by the queen, who sent them to look at a ray of the moon, which frightened her, behold the servants ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... in all respects from those just mentioned, closed in the second year of Dublin's widowhood as a metropolis. It was the career of a young man of four-and-twenty, who snatched at immortal fame and obtained it, in the very agony of a public, but not for him, a shameful death. This was Robert, youngest brother of Thomas Addis Emmet, whose emeute ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... their love, and who can assuage these bitter tears? The husband,—deepest of all life's bereavements,—perhaps it is he, for whom the funeral wail is now heard. What can time, and dust, and this tomb of earth, minister to her, who sits in the freshness of widowhood? ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... "thy wife shall be my sister during her widowhood, thy children will never want game, until they can themselves strike ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... Our Thanksgiving had been a cheerful one, though colored, as such anniversaries are likely to be, with recollections of the absent, or the dead; for the memory of my father was always present to my mother, then and during a long widowhood of almost half a century, and my older brothers were at sea. My mother was an excellent housekeeper, and we had plenty of the usual belongings of the festival, so eagerly looked forward to by the young, and something to bestow ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... and exalted pair of friends look out of English history at us, in the faces of John and Lucy Hutchinson. He was governor of Nottingham, and one of the judges of Charles I. In her widowhood, Lady Hutchinson drew that wonderful portrait of her husband which has been styled the most perfect piece of biography ever penned ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... husband was only an ordinary being who knew nothing whatever of Art; and it was a relief to her—and perhaps to him, poor man—when he departed this life, and left her to an artistic widowhood with anything but an artistic income—if size counts in Art. But one must eat, and one must wear clothes (in chilly, civilized Boston, at least), and Mrs. Livingstone suddenly realized that something must be done toward supplying these necessities ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... there are who know: The Matron, who alone hath stood, When not a prop seemed left below, The first lorn hour of widowhood, Yet cheered and cheering all, the while, With ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... Galloway. By the death of Mr Inglis in 1826, she became dependent, with three children by her second marriage, on a small annuity arising from an appointment which her late husband had held in the Excise. She relieved the sadness of her widowhood by a course of extensive reading, and of composition both in prose and verse. In 1838 she published, at the solicitation of friends, a duodecimo volume, entitled "Miscellaneous Collection of Poems, chiefly Scriptural Pieces." Of the compositions in this volume, there are several of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... never think of such gloomy subjects as provisions for widowhood," cried Lady Mosely: "you have been in Annerdale House—is it not a ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... for ever throwing my widowhood in my teeth, Georgina," said Lady Belstone, plaintively. "It is not my fault that I am a widow. I did ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... husband had taken so little account, which had been of so little profit to her so far in her course through circumstance, had come to her aid. The names and lists of the books that had passed through her hands, during those silent years of her widowhood, lived beside her stern old father, would astonish even Manisty were she to try and give some account of them. And first she had read merely to fill the hours, to dull memory. But gradually there had sprung up in her that inner sweetness, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... She was Lord Evenwood's sister. She spent a very happy widowhood interfering in the affairs of the various ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... capitalists of the great and growing city, and a few years back had been united in marriage to the admiration of his early school days,—Almira Prendergast, who, disdaining him in the early 50's and wedding the youth of her choice, was overwhelmed with joy to find in the days of want and widowhood, fifteen years later, that Barnard had been faithful to his ideal, had remained single for her sake, and so at last had she consented to accept him and the control of his household. A pew in the "First Presbyterian" had been for years ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... days when Milly still had her own little place in the world, she had rather made fun of Hazel's views and imputed them to social ambition. "She wants to be talked about," she said. But since the experience of widowhood, Milly was changing her mind and listened much more attentively to all that Hazel had to say about "the woman movement,"—the "endowment of motherhood," the "necessity for the vote,"—and read "What Forty Thousand ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... States equipped for success only with strong muscles—a tragedy of wasted hope and broken courage and failing vigor if not of death. Mrs. Paterno was the only one of them who could sympathize with Moya's widowhood; her husband had seen the Black Hand death sign a few months before, had disregarded it and had been stabbed in the back one night as he came home from ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith

... most welcome to our vows and us, Most great and universal genius! The drooping West, which hitherto has stood As one in long-lamented widowhood, Looks like a bride now, or a bed of flowers Newly refresh'd both by the sun and showers. War, which before was horrid, now appears Lovely in you, brave prince of cavaliers! A deal of courage in each bosom springs By your access, O you the best of kings! Ride on with ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... perform his funeral rites because his spirit went straight to heaven, and thus the end to which the ceremonies were directed was already attained without them. It was also said that the wife of a man dying such a death should not regard herself as a widow nor undergo the privations imposed on widowhood. But this did not apply so far as self-immolation was concerned, since the wives of warriors dying in battle very frequently became sati. In the case of chiefs also it was sometimes the custom, probably for political reasons, that the heir should not observe mourning; because if ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell



Words linked to "Widowhood" :   marital status



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