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noun
Courtship  n.  
1.
The act of paying court, with the intent to solicit a favor.
2.
The act of wooing in love; solicitation of woman to marriage. "This method of courtship, (by which) both sides are prepared for all the matrimonial adventures that are to follow."
3.
Courtliness; elegance of manners; courtesy. (Obs.) "Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state."
4.
Court policy; the character of a courtier; artifice of a court; court-craft; finesse. (Obs.) "She (the Queen) being composed of courtship and Popery."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Courtship" Quotes from Famous Books



... guardians advocated his cause with the beauty, or whether there was something of all these influences at work upon her will, I do not quite know. But certain it is that when Mr. Fabian, after two weeks' courtship, offered his heart, hand, and fortune to the little beauty, she accepted them, and not only accepted, but seemed very happy ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... hot and cold by turns as the memory of her lover's devouring passion and Biddy's sinister words alternated in her brain. What was the warning that Biddy had meant to convey? And how—oh, how—would she ever face the morrow and its fierce, prolonged courtship, from the bare thought of which every fibre of her being shrank ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... execution of J. C. P. Collins were the last acts in his worthless career, so they were the last but one in the courtship of Mat Bailey and Mamie Slocum. These comparatively young people were married soon afterward. They were married and did not live happily ever after; but they certainly enjoyed greater happiness than ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... by him now and again for his "offishness;" but Janice carefully managed that their interviews were not held in the presence of her parents, and so the elders did not come to a realising sense of the condition, but really believed that the courtship was advancing with due progress ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... the hostess, who immediately made preparations for the ceremony. Hymn-books were introduced, and the servant-maid ordered up, and then a quartet was performed by Mr Levisohn, Mrs Tomkins, her husband, and Betsy. The subject of the song was the courtship of Isaac. Two verses only have remained in my memory, and the manner in which they were given out by the fervent Stanislaus will never be forgotten. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... mouths of children like themselves. Then, again, the ancient young people used to read Scott's and Cooper's novels, and found there much that was entirely beyond them, which they knew was only for grown persons, and therefore, though they read of love, courtship, and marriage, they remained as unsophisticated as before. But how is a child to be unsophisticated nowadays, when all these topics are manipulated for its especial benefit?—when there is a devoted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

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

... pride of his soaring eagle heart, Here for his great hand searching the skies for food, Here for his courtship of Heaven's high stars he shall smart, Nebuchadnezzar shall fall, crawl, ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves

... a third time, but as she did not answer a single word, he questioned her no more and flew away without further parley, intent on his courtship. ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... to her thinking, a modest man. He would have spoken out, she believed; but once or twice as he seemed to intend to do so, he was under so agreeable a confusion! Such a profound respect he seemed to shew her! A perfect reverence, she thought: she loved dearly that a man in courtship should shew a reverence to his mistress'—So indeed we all do, I believe: and with reason; since, if I may judge from what I have seen in many families, there is little enough of it shewn afterwards.—And she told my aunt Hervey, that she would be a little less upon the reserve next time he came: ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... three or four years older than Isabel. He lived in beautiful rooms overlooking the river, guarded by a faithful Scottish man-servant. And he had his friends among the fair sex—not lovers, friends. So long as he could avoid any danger of courtship or marriage, he adored a few good women with constant and unfailing homage, and he was chivalrously fond of quite a number. But if they seemed to encroach on him, he ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... said I, 'or you will not have me for your bridesmaid. I give you just three weeks for the courtship, for I shan't remain single one day longer to cook ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... of life to be aware that suitors would come,—would come as long as that convulsion was staved off. She did not suppose that her journey to Liverpool would frighten all the men away. But she had thought that it would put an end to Lord Nidderdale's courtship; and when her father had commanded her, shaking her by the shoulders, to accept Lord Nidderdale when he should come on Sunday, she had replied by expressing her assurance that Lord Nidderdale would never be seen at that house any more. On the Sunday ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

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

... averted face hid his grimaces and swallowed his gorge as he put his arm around her dirt-crusted shoulders and felt the contact of her rancidoily and kinky hair with his neck and chin. But he nearly screamed when she succumbed to that caress so at the very first of the courtship and mowed and gibbered and squealed little, queer, pig-like gurgly noises of delight. It was too much. And the next he did in the singular courtship was to take her down to the stream and give her a ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... by the erection of the tissue round the vulva and by the outpouring of a lubricating secretion which bathes all the parts. The mechanism of this is a nervous one, and its originating cause while partly physical is chiefly mental, due to the emotions aroused by love and courtship, and thus in every act of coitus properly realized, an essential preliminary is an abbreviated courtship. This initial stage has been described as the stage of tumescence, and is succeeded by the introduction of the male organ into the vagina. A motor nerve discharge follows which produces ejaculation ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... Rose felt suddenly unable to muster an argument for the additional sleeping-rooms. It was true that they were not actually necessary for their comfort; but the house as it had been decided upon was so interwoven with memories of her courtship and all that was lovable in Martin; it had become so real to her, that it was as if some dear possession were being torn ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... time from each other—the supreme happiness when together—all were signs which escaped not the eyes of the sister and mother, although the matter-of-fact father failed to notice such trifles. His days of courtship had become a fable, if ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis

... had too good a start. For the rest of the season Ivy met her knight of the sphere around the corner. Theirs was a walking courtship. They used to roam up as far as the State road, and down as far as the river, and Rudie would fain have talked of love, ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... "His courtship had lasted some time—ever since he got his precarious footing in the community. It began by his buying for Amy Foster a green satin ribbon in Darnford. This was what you did in his country. You bought a ribbon ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... him were never brutal to their wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, as the mountaineers too often are; she was certain that they did not craze themselves with whisky and terrify and beat their families; she was sure that when one loved a girl the courtship must be all sweet gentleness and happiness and joy, not like the quick succession of mad love-making and fierce quarrels which had characterized the heart-affairs that she had watched, there ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... formal courtship—more than a month after Clive had settled in Machin Street, for he was far too discreet to engender by precipitancy any suspicion in the haunts of scandal that his true reason for establishing himself in his uncle's household was a certain rich young woman who was to be found every day next door. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... return, I desire to receive from your hand. You discern My reasons, which, therefore, I need not explain. The distance to Luchon is short. I remain A month in these mountains. Miss Darcy, perchance, Will forego one brief page from the summer romance Of her courtship, and spare you one day from your place At her feet, in the light of her fair English face. I desire nothing more, and trust you will feel I desire nothing much. ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... videlicet 1673; and the goodness of the lord bishop of Oxford in giving me priests' orders on my college Demyship, whereby I was enabled to present myself to this living, and hold it, having at that time attained the canonical age. My courtship also and marriage, which befell in the year 1674, had great effect in obliterating past transactions. I was married on Thursday, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... but I paid him off. Sarah takes the helm from this night forth. You wouldn't believe it, but she can swig upon a rope too: and as for pulling an oar—" He went on to tell me that she had been rowing a pair of paddles when his eye first lit on her: and I gathered that the courtship had been conducted on these waters under the gaze of Saltash, the male in one boat pursuing, the female eluding him in another, for long indomitable, but at ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... likely to be slow in making converts. But it is one thing to be slow in getting a hearing, and another in attracting men who are quite prepared to hear. Wordsworth resembled a man coming into a drawing-room with muddy boots and a smock-frock. He courted disgust, and such courtship is pretty sure of success. But Landor made his bow in full court-dress. In spite of the difficulty of his poetry, he had all the natural graces which are apt to propitiate cultivated readers. His prose has merits so conspicuous and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... special occasions, it was the rule for Pennington doors to be closed at ten o'clock, while it was now past midnight. Probably Ikey, who had the reputation of being a woman-hater, did not care for his courtship to be known, for I knew that he did not like being laughed at or ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... Willie," said Mrs. Baxter—"don't you think that, considering the rather noncommittal method of Freddie's courtship, you are ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... free and spontaneous? or not at all. Never was I the woman to advance one step towards any feller in the way of courtship—havin' no occasion for it, bein' one that had more offers than I knew what to do with, as I often tell my husband, Josiah Allen, now, in our little differences of opinion. 'Time and agin,' as I tell him, 'I might have married, but held back.' And never would I have married, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... practice of European courts, it is not the less repugnant to female dignity, and the more indecorous, as Hermione is in love with the unwilling Pyrrhus, and uses every influence to incline him to marriage. What would the Greeks have thought of this bold and indecent courtship? No doubt it would appear equally offensive to a French audience, if Andromache were exhibited to them in the situation in which she appears in Euripides, where, as a captive, her person is enjoyed by the conqueror ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... the book about its being Stuart Harley's taste; it must needs be set down as mine; and while the pages of Harley's book contain no criticism of my costume, I know well enough what all the other women thought about it. Still, I stood it. I endured also without a murmur the courtship and declaration of love of a perfect booby of a man; that is to say, he was a booby in the eyes of a woman—men might like him. I presume that as Mr. Harley has chosen him to stand for the hero of his book, he must admire him; but ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs

... brain with visions of victories, with dancing, dresses, admiration; but now, in the tiring void of country days, memories of Edward's love and devotion were certain to arise. He made, however, no attempt to renew his courtship. At Gort, within three miles, he remained silent, immovable as one of the Clare mountains. Sometimes his brown-gold moustache and square shoulders were caught sight of as he rode rapidly along the roads. He had ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... rung down. The post-chaise overturned in the last chapter of 'Lavengro' is repaired in the first of this sequel, the Man in Black proceeds with his interrupted disquisition, and Borrow resumes his cold-blooded courtship of poor Isopel, playing with her feelings as a cat with a mouse. The dingle episode is divided equally between the two works; and had not 'Glorious John,' after a series of peremptory notes from the author, at last ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... goodness during thirty years. Not anything in detail—not courtship or early raptures—but just the unvarying virtue, that seemed to him a woman's noblest quality. So many women are capricious, breaking into odd flaws of passion or frivolity. Not so his wife. Year after year, summer and winter, as bride and mother, she had been the same, he had always trusted ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... that were fathered upon him for his vexation! O these men! Fathers or husbands, much alike! the one tyrannical, the other insolent: so that, between one and t'other, a poor girl has nothing for it, but a few weeks' courtship, and perhaps a first month's bridalry, if that: and then she is as much a slave to her husband, as she was a vassal to her father—I mean if the father be a Sir Simon Darnford, and ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... a descendant of Priscilla Alden, and he had often heard the story of the courtship of Priscilla by Miles Standish, through John Alden as his proxy. It was said to date back to a poem, "Courtship," by Moses Mullins, 1672. In detail it was given by Timothy Alden in "American Epitaphs," 1814, [Footnote: American Epitaphs, 1814; iii, 139.] but there are here some deflections from ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble

... wife if she had lived. But she had not lived, and her death was the one episode as to which he had been reticent. She was the sort of woman that drives men to drink by marrying them; for she had a face like an angel and a tongue like a two-edged sword, sheathed in time of courtship. The miracle had happened so long ago that it had passed into the region of things unregarded because admitting of no doubt. He had never been what you might call a confirmed drunkard—he hadn't been steady ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... women, seeing dimly through their tears at times, went over the contents of the private safe. There were letters that told of the past—of the happy days of love and courtship, and of the early married life. Viola put them sacredly aside, and delved more deeply into the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

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

... instances, common in Shakspeare, in which we are allowed to perceive what is passing in the mind of a person, without any consciousness on their part. Only Ophelia herself is unaware that while she is admitting the extent of Hamlet's courtship, she is also betraying how deep is the impression it has made, how entire the love with which it ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... the mania of housebuilding into his head. Bob is somewhat fastidious, difficult to please, fond of domesticities and individualities; and such a man never can fit himself into a house built by another, and accordingly housebuilding has always been his favorite mental recreation. During all his courtship, as much time was taken up in planning a future house as if he had money to build one; and all Marianne's patterns, and the backs of half their letters, were scrawled with ground-plans and elevations. But latterly this chronic disposition ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... His courtship had been formal and elaborate, but his declaration was signally simple and to the point. Selma noticed that the cup in his hand trembled. While she kept her eyes lowered, as women are supposed to do at such moments, she was wondering whether she loved ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... expression. It attracted and held her, like a sudden glimpse into a secret room. In all the years of her marriage, in the months of her courtship even, she had never surprised the look on Chilcote's face. The impression came quickly. and with it a strange, warm rush of interest that receded slowly, leaving an odd sense of loneliness. But, at the moment that the feeling came and passed, her attention was claimed in another direction. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... a particular love for his birth-place to the end of his days. From Tavistock Grammar School he passed to Exeter College, Oxford—the old west-country college—and thence to Clifford's Inn and the Inner Temple. His first wife died when he was twenty-three or twenty-four. He took his second courtship quietly and leisurely, marrying the lady at length in 1628, after a wooing of thirteen years. "He seems," says Mr. A.H. Bullen, his latest biographer, "to have acquired in some way a modest competence, which secured him immunity from the troubles that weighed so heavily ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... A stone has been found up in the woods above Raemen which yet shows under its coating of moss the initials of E. T. and A. M. It requires but little imagination to fill out the story of the brief and happy courtship; and two cantos in "Frithjof's Saga" ("Frithof's Wooing" and "Frithjof's Happiness") supply an abundance of hints which have ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... admired her then, and afterward the sweet nature which he learned to appreciate won his respect. The shameful trick played on her in the house of Brazovics awoke in him a chivalrous sympathy. The airy courtship of the captain aroused his jealousy; all these were symptoms of love, and at last he had reached the goal of his wishes: the lovely maiden was his, and ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there was something not quite right about this ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... merit.'—'Indeed, papa,' replied Olivia, 'she does not; I have read a great deal of controversy. I have read the disputes between Thwackum and Square; the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the savage; and I am now employed in reading the controversy in Religious Courtship.'—'Very well,' cried I, 'that's a good girl; I find you are perfectly qualified for making converts, and so go help your mother to make the ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... was not sufficiently frightened by Verona. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neat little airless room of her mind. Kenneth Escott and she were always under foot. When they were not at home, conducting their cautiously radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off to lectures by authors and Hindu ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

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

... fair and accomplished girl. It was Joseph Alston of South Carolina, a gentleman of twenty-two, possessor of large estates in rice plantations and slaves, and a man of much spirit and talent. He valued his estates at two hundred thousand pounds sterling. Their courtship was not a long one; for though she, as became her sex, checked the impetuosity of his advances and argued for delay, she was easily convinced by the reasons which he adduced for haste. She reminded him ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... MAKE LOVE. A complete guide to love, courtship and marriage, giving sensible advice, rules and etiquette to be observed, with many curious and interesting things not generally ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"

... exquisite touch of nature, which most married men, whether of noble or plebeian blood, will quickly recognise. During the whole of her daughter's courtship, the good old lady had scarcely spoken, save by expressive smiles and looks of approval. But now that her object is gained, and her daughter fast married (as she thinks), she suddenly assumes quite a new tone, ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... happy pair! This is not the station where Romance ends, and wooing stops And the charm from courtship drops; This is but the outward gate Where the souls of mortals mate, But the border of the land You ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... paragraphs of explanation which followed. "Seven meanings to Love," he remarked. "First: An affection of the mind excited by beauty and worth of any kind, or by the qualities of an object which communicate pleasure. Second: Courtship. Third: Patriotism, as the love of country. Fourth: Benevolence. Fifth: The object beloved. Sixth: A word of endearment. Seventh: Cupid, the god ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... the embraces of the rattling gale. The storm is not slow to meet this rude invitation; while, if the ropes, sails, and masts, be all wet, as they generally are in such a breeze, it is difficult to conceive any tones more gruff and unsentimental than the sounds of this boisterous courtship. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... troubles in other directions were fated to increase. That evening three men called formally—formally, that is to say, in so far as dressing in their best was concerned and putting on their "company manners." But Beth and courtship were their objects, a fact that developed, somewhat crudely with ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... in the habit of frequently calling to see Elvira Hill, and of taking her out riding in his buggy, that being an approved form of courtship in this section. They talked of their favorite books and studies, their ambitions for the future as regarded mental culture, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

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

... poetry of all languages has omitted the little brother; and yet he is one of the great trials of love—the immemorial burden of courtship. Tragedy should have found place for him, but he has been left to the haphazard vignettist of Grub Street. He is the grave and real menace of lovers; his head is sacred and terrible, his power illimitable. There is one way—only one—to deal with him; but Robert Williams, having a brother ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... that they were emulating each other in their attempts at soaring to a great height. It is evident that these evolutions proceed in part from the pleasure of motion; but they are also connected with their courtship. While they are soaring and circling in the air, they occasionally utter the shrill and broken note which has been supposed to resemble the word Piramidig, whence the name is derived,—and now and then they dart suddenly aside, to seize ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... had disappointed her by taking to writing instead of to a man's job, and then by marrying Rosalind; how Nan had always been tiresome and perverse. And before the children came—all about Richard, and their courtship, and their young married life, and how he had loved and cared for her beyond anything, incredibly tenderly and well, so that all those who saw it had wondered, and some had said he spoilt her. And back before Richard, to girlhood and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... of your fine, young manhood is wasted. Go your ways, then, Philemon, and leave me to the rougher paths my feet were made to tread. I like you now and feel something like a tender regard for your goodness, but if you persist in a courtship which only my father is inclined to smile upon, you will call up an antagonism that can lead to nothing but evil, for the serpent that lies coiled in my breast has deadly fangs, and is to be feared, as you should know who have more than ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... smooth, and overflowing face, that seems as it would run and pour itself into you: somewhat a northerly face. Your courtier elementary, is one but newly enter'd, or as it were in the alphabet, or ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la of courtship. Note well this face, for it is ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... paid girl lives have no accommodations for the entertainment of her male friends. If the house is conducted with any respect for the conventions, the girl lodger must meet her young man on the "stoop" or on the street corner. As the courtship progresses, they must have recourse either to the benches of the public parks, provided the weather be favorable, or else to the light and warmth of the back room of a saloon. The average cheap lodging-house is usually conducted, however, with ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... courtship, addresses; prosecution, action, lawsuit; retinue, suite; petition, solicitation, entreaty, request. Associated words: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... consideration, and in spite of his quite fortuitous marriage with some one else in the meantime, discovers at last that he does love Anita, is the merest peg on which to hang endless philosophisings; and so is his impossible wife Janet herself, the lady who, after having accepted his dubious courtship for no particular reason, fortunately deserts him without any better excuse, thus clearing the way for a most decorous divorce and readjustment. Neither is the writer's inner thesis—the immoralness of ordinary morality, so far as I can make out—particularly agreeable; but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various

... for Effie being the soul of the festivities,—since Mary Strathsay oftenest stood cold and proudly by, wax-white and like a statue on the wall,—and all the world looking on at what they deemed to be no less than Angus's courtship, I saw little of her except I rose on my arm to watch her smiling sleep deep in the night. And she was heartsome as the lark's song up the blue lift, and of late was never to be found in those two hours when my mother kept her room at mid-day, and was over-fond of long afternoon strolls down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... true,—even about any one else. The man had come to her, and had asked her to be his wife,—and yet at that very moment was living in habits of daily intercourse with another woman whom he had promised to marry! And then, too, his courtship with her had been so graceful, so soft, so modest, and yet so long continued! Though he had been slow in speech, she had known since their first meeting how he regarded her! The whole state of his mind had, she had thought, been visible to her,—had been intelligible, gentle, and affectionate. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Withdrew to starve, and die in Wales. Thus Gay, the hare with many friends, Twice seven long years the court attends: Who, under tales conveying truth, To virtue form'd a princely youth:[3] Who paid his courtship with the crowd, As far as modest pride allow'd; Rejects a servile usher's place, And leaves St. James's in disgrace.[4] Thus Addison, by lords carest, Was left in foreign lands distrest; Forgot at home, became for hire A travelling tutor to a squire: But wisely left the Muses' hill, To ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... lover and hero in Blanche Willis Howard's One Summer. He is nearly blinded by the point of Leigh's umbrella at their first meeting, and after an idyllic courtship ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... have recognised his wife, for when he went to sea and left her for the last time, she was a slim, pretty young woman; and though she was certainly not uncomely, no one could accuse her of not having flesh enough. Larry, as many another sailor has done, had married at the end of a very short courtship, his wife, then a nursery-maid in an officer's family at Portsmouth; and a few weeks afterwards he had been pressed and sent out to the East Indies. While there, he had been drafted into another ship, and the ship in which ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... He had not long to wait before he heard all the old fellow's misfortunes. During the summer he had made the acquaintance of a young widow who cooed like a dove, so that the little man again thought of courtship. In short, he married her, but discovered afterwards that she was a shocking scold at home, who would gladly have scratched his eyes out of his head, and he had cause to thank his stars that he had escaped from her hands. The barn-keeper remarked, "I ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... seems to be a description of the interior of the Wollstonecraft household, marries to secure her freedom, rather than from affection for her lover, as was probably the case with "poor Bess." Her husband, who even in the days of courtship had been a dissolute rascal, but hypocrite enough to conceal the fact, throws off his mask after marriage. He speculates rashly, drinks, and indulges in every low vice. All this she bears until he, calculating upon her endurance, seeks to sell her to a friend, that her dishonor ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... I have done. There are reasons, which made me wish to avoid your immediate coming. At the present moment it would interfere gravely with his happiness and with mine were he to learn the circumstances of Sir Francis Geraldine's courtship. Of course it is painful to me to have to say this to you. It is so painful that to avoid it I have absolutely written to you telling you not to come. This I have done not to avoid your coming, which would otherwise have been a pleasure to me, but to ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... knew too well that he had not won her heart, though he had no suspicion that it was given to another. And he was much too clever not to know also how much he hazards who, in affairs of courtship, is premature. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... occurred in her neighbourhood, instead of being left dependent upon hearsay for a knowledge of anything happening outside her four draughty walls. Many a care-infested hour she fretted away between them. For how could she tell with what insidious steps the calamity to ensue from Ody's courtship of Theresa Joyce might all the while be stealing on her? She dared not confide her fears to any neighbour, nor would she have put much faith in the report of observation unwhetted thereby; and she lived in daily ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... his trusty gun, Scarce breathing, he awaits the morrow's sun. Meanwhile, she prattles of adventures gay— Tells how a handsome stranger called that day, Describes his splendid dress,—the arms he bore, Such as no Blackfoot ever saw before; But not a word her cunning lips let fall Of love and courtship as the sum ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... a man to wonder what a woman is thinking. During courtship very young men attribute intellect and qualities of mystery and awe to the woman they love. But after men get an insight into the mind of woman and discover how trivial are the matters that of necessity usually engage it, they become skeptical about feminine mentality; they ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... substance of which dreams are made—to be recalled by dreams alone; another worship had filled her heart, and Austen Vane had become—for her—the fulness and the very meaning of life itself; one to be admired of all men, to be desired of all women. Visions of Austen's courtship had at times risen in her mind, although Euphrasia would not have called it a courtship. When the time came, Austen would confer; and so sure of his judgment was Euphrasia that she was prepared ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... most vain-glorious of men; and, being anxious above all things to connect himself with the blood royal, he had conceived the presumptuous thought of wooing Queen Anne (then the unmarried Princess Anne). Being rejected, of course, rather than have no connection at all with royalty, he transferred his courtship to a young lady born on the wrong side of the blanket, namely, the daughter of James II. by Miss Sedley. Her he married, and they reigned together in great pomp over Buckingham House. But how should this have attracted Pope? The fact, I fear is, that Pope admired him, in spite of his verses, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... a single dactyl is thus dactylic monometer; of two dactyls, dactylic dimeter; and so on up to dactylic hexameter, which is the meter of Homer's "Iliad," Vergil's "AEneid," and Longfellow's "Evangeline" and "Courtship of ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... world, clothed about with the memory of sentiment. Now once more she sprang into vivid vital life as a person. She was not lost; his relations with her were not just incidents of the past; they were as much bound up with the present as courtship has a continuity with married life. She existed—her very self—and communication was possible ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... garage to get the car out to go to Eagle Butte. The cowboys were at the barn preparing to begin the day's work. Skinny had excused himself, ostensibly to attend to some ranch chores, but in reality to get away to the bunk-house and "fix up" for the day's courtship of Carolyn June. He planned, when the cowboys were gone, to put on the white shirt Parker brought, yesterday, from ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... instead of coming to a decision he brooded over his sorrow until in the end his reason left him. In his delusions he imagined himself once more a young man; he thought the Princess his daughter, in her youth and beauty, was his Queen as he had known her in the days of their courtship, and living thus in the past he urged the unhappy girl ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... Pease-blossom?" said the ass-headed clown, not much regarding the fairy queen's courtship, but very proud of his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... his wife, trudging patiently on behind, forgot even her care of her gay clothes, in exchanging greeting with the child as it crowed and laughed over the father's shoulder; at another, I pleased myself with some passing scene of gallantry or courtship, and was glad to believe that for a season half the world of ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... her hoards of chiselled marble and breathing bronze, and new-found agate urns as fresh as day; when painters and sculptors vied with antiquity, and poets and historians followed in their path; when every benign deity was worshipped save Diana and Vesta; when the arts of courtship and cosmetics were expounded by archbishops; when the beauteous Imperia was of more account than the eleven thousand virgins; when obnoxious persons glided imperceptibly from the world; and no one marvelled if he met the Pope arm in arm with the Devil. How miserable, in comparison, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... a full half mile outside the village of Smyrna, but Cap'n Sproul and his victim covered the distance at a lively pace and swung into the yard at a dog-trot. Batson Reeves was just blanketing his horse, for in his vigorous courtship forenoon calls ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... comedy. "There is one passage," says Cheever, "which for exquisite humour, quiet satire, and naturalness in the development of character is scarcely surpassed in the language. It is the account of the courtship between Mr. Brisk and Mercy which took ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... blissfully oblivious of his nearness. Suddenly an odd wave of emotion surged through his brain. His heart leaped with primitive savagery of love, and every fibre in him rebelled fiercely against the decrees and limitations of modern courtship. He had failed in the game as governed and modified by the rules of polite society and high finance. The primogenital man-spirit in him cried out for its inning. Mr. Strumley, as umpire, hearkened to ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... piety of its inmates. The two brothers became useful local preachers, and remained faithful unto death; and with Mary commenced an intimacy, which, notwithstanding considerable difference of age and circumstances, was ultimately consummated in marriage. The story of the courtship is amusing and characteristic. Mary was fair to look upon, and having moreover the prospect of a handsome fortune, commanded many admirers. One day when several of these aspirants for her hand were present, Mr. B. stepped in, and, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of talking, That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle Toby's courtship of widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the most complete systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world—are you to imagine from thence, that I shall set out with a description of what ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... own defective vision a good sharp pair of eyes, never at fault where his interests are concerned? On the other hand, regarded positively, categorically, and explicitly, Dr. Roccabocca, by laying aside those spectacles, signified that he was about to commence that happy initiation of courtship when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, wishes to look as young and as handsome as time and nature will allow. Vain task to speed the soft language of the eyes through the medium of those glassy interpreters! ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

... at the fact of his son having fallen over head and ears in love with the pretty little Cocos-Keeling islander, deemed it his duty, nevertheless, as a sternly upright parent, to make quite sure that the love was mutual as well as deep before giving his consent to anything like courtship. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... sprung up between them, mutual as sincere. To this there could be no objection by the parents on either side: since there was between the two lovers a complete conformity in age, social position, and fortune. In all likelihood the romance of courtship would soon have ended in the more prosaic reality of marriage; but just at that time the young officer was ordered upon some military service; and Don Mariano was also suddenly called away from the capital. The marriage ceremony, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... of Courtship, improving the manners and carriage; But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible thorn-bit ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... yesterday, and sent to the Post Office twice, to be certain there was no mistake: and, now, this morning, comes your roguish, waggish letter, on a Sunday morning, (amidst all my meditations for the good of my parishioners) about love, courtship, marriage, throwing the stocking, going to bed, &c. &c. &c.—quite shocking to write to a country parson, who can have no idea of such things. It might do well enough for a King's chaplain; or a church dignitary, ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... guest and they went through all the formalities of meeting for the first time, of increasing intimacy—condensing a complete courtship ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... the poets of the old and new worlds." Our merchants found information as to "Jobbing, Importing and Other Business," and our young ladies could observe the correct forms for "Letters of Love and Courtship," "Apology for a Broken Engagement," "French Terms used in Dancing," "Rights of Married Women," "The Necessity and Sweetness of Home," and "Marriage—Happiness or Woe may ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... these is, That, by the Work now presented to our Fair Readers, they may be instructed to render themselves superior to that extravagant Taste in Courtship, which was the prevailing Mode in Two or Three preceding Centuries; and from which the present, we are sorry to ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson

... training-schools for girls, and the like—a favorite abode of hers when she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever-busy man. They were married young, a marriage of love withal. Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship, wedding in Holland; the honest trustful walk and conversation of the two Sovereign Spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears, and manifold vicissitudes, till Death, with stern beauty, shut it in: all is human, true, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... of sentiment, and it was only natural that a love story of her own should be confessed. It was back in Cooperstown, and he had been an apprentice of Glen's. She hadn't cared for him at all, judging by excerpts from the scenes of his courtship he had been treated with unmitigated harshness. But her words and tones—still entirely scornful with half a continent between her and the adorer—gave evidence of a regret, of self-accusing, uneasy doubt, as of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

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

... remarkable there should be such a plentiful harvest of courtship before marriage, and generally such a famine afterwards. Courtship is a fine bowling-green turf, all galloping round and sweet-hearting, a sunshine holiday in summer time: but when once through matrimony's turnpike, the weather becomes wintry, and some husbands are seized with a cold aguish ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... now as I used to do. Many a pleasant conversation we've had; but then our hearts were light, and free from care. No, Fergus, you must lave all thoughts of me aside, for I will have nothing of either love or courtship till I know her fate. Who can say but I may be brought back? She said she'd try what she could do with her father to effect it. You know how whimsical the old Squire is; and who knows whether she ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

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

... left my hero happily married to his profession, the courtship and winning of which formed the theme of my tale, I may be permitted to indulge in a very little moralizing of a rather more explicit sort than I have ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... in him could not hide from her for ever the fact that his love manifested itself almost wholly as a parade of ownership and a desire, without kindliness, without any self-forgetfulness. All his devotion, his self-abjection, had been the mere qualms of a craving, the flush of eager courtship. Do as she would to overcome these realizations, forces within her stronger than herself, primordial forces with the welfare of all life in their keeping, cried out upon the meanness of his face, the ugly pointed nose and the thin compressed lips, the weak neck, the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... return two months ago, time had worked changes. She would never have recognized her bright, joyous sister in this tired woman of the listless air. As for her brother-in-law—well, perhaps it was not quite accurate to say that he was a stranger to her; she had known Simon Varr at the period of his courtship and marriage and he was still Simon Varr, only a little more so! Detestable creature. She held him accountable, quite justly, for the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... at once a courtship as ardent and eager as it was open and avowed. His people, florid and colorful in temperament, are natural wooers, free of the language of affection and adroit in its use. Grant was very much in love with the girl, and she meant even more to him than that, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... the time of my visit, the meadow-larks were not quite so tuneful, for here the seasons are somewhat earlier than in the proximity of the mountains, and the time of courtship and incubation was over. Still, they sang enough to prove themselves members of a gifted musical family. Observers in the East will remember the sputtering call of the eastern larks when they are alarmed or their suspicions ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... my most constant guests of an evening. But after her courtship and marriage, she was too apt to bring in her husband. I received him cordially enough two or three times, particularly when he came with 'the good news from Ghent.' But on other occasions his conversation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... difference between the procedure of the Parliament and the Dissenters towards the people in question. One employs courtship, the other force. The Dissenters offer bribes, the Parliament nothing but the front negatif of a stern and forbidding authority. A man may be very wrong in his ideas of what is good for him. But ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the ideal audience, the necessary atmosphere, the beautiful, gracious, intelligent listener. He forgot her ignorance, her utter simplicity, the unplumbed emptiness of her experience, and he spread out his colorful thoughts before her in colorful words, the mental plumage of civilized courtship. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... of a bird!] he directs the bill of the foremost to it; and when she has got the dirty pearl, he struts over her with an erected crest, cling round her with dropt wings, sweeping the dust in humble courtship: while the obliged she, half-shy, half-willing, by her cowering tail, prepared wings, yet seemingly affrighted eyes, and contracted neck, lets one see that she knows the barley-corn was not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... a certain young woman caused him to fall in love. He says the love was mutual and after a courtship of three weeks they were married. The girl's mother told Charles that she had always been very frail, but he did not know that she had consumption. Within three days after they were married she died and her death caused much grief ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... imprisoned; and numerous other works, including "Robinson Crusoe;" "Life of Captain Singleton;" "History of Duncan Campbell;" "Life of Moll Flanders;" "Roxana;" "Life of Colonel Jack;" "Journal of the Plague;" "History of the Devil;" and "Religious Courtship." He edited a paper called "The Review," to which Swift here refers, and against which Charles Leslie wrote ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

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

... sat down by the bed and told him all, keeping nothing back. I told him the history of my mother and my father's courtship, of my own childhood, of the murder of my mother by de Garcia, and of the oath that I had sworn to be avenged upon him. Lastly I told him of what had happened upon the previous night and how my enemy had evaded ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

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

... with a set of doll's tea-things, that I was not particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... with her long walk, her face all sparkle and mystery, as he had seen it in the first days of their courtship; and the look somehow revived his irritated sense of having been intentionally left out ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... year 1879 to Mr. Richard Tebrick, after a short courtship, and went to live after their honeymoon at Rylands, near Stokoe, Oxon. One point indeed I have not been able to ascertain and that is how they first became acquainted. Tangley Hall is over thirty miles from Stokoe, and is extremely remote. ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett

... a happy half-hour that the couple spent there on the settee caressing each other; it was the old days come again—days that had begun with their courtship and lasted without a break till the stranger brought the deadly money. ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... the housewife pressed with measured round the treadles of the loom, as she twilled the web she was weaving; and as the shades of evening descended the sonorous hum of the spinning-wheel gave token to the young man on courtship intent that the daughter of the house was at home. From the kitchen a door opened into the best room, a cheerless sort of place only thrown open on special occasions, and not to compare in comfort with the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... expression, and generally suggestive of pensive emotion. Irving was about eight years her senior, and this difference was just sufficient to draw out that fond reliance of female character which he has so beautifully set forth in the sketch of 'The Wife.' The brief period of this courtship was the sunny hour of his life, for his tender and sensitive nature forbade any thing but the most ardent attachment. What dreams of future bliss floated before his intoxicated vision, soon to change to the stern ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... preamble, he crept towards the L. 14,000 by artful questions; and soon elicited that there had been high words between Master and Mr. Alfred about that very sum: she had listened at the door and heard. Taking care to combine close courtship with cunning interrogatories, he was soon enabled to write to Dr. Sampson, and say that a servant of Mr. Hardie's was down on him, and reported that he carried a large pocket-book in his breast-pocket by day; and she had found the dent of it under ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... of him, and one or two were sullen, for they loved Fan and resented this "lily-fingered gent," who was to their minds "after the old man's acres." Young Compton, the son of a neighboring rancher, was most insulting, for he had himself once carried on a frank courtship with Fan, and enjoyed a brief, half-expressed engagement. He was a fine young fellow, not naturally vindictive, and he would not have uttered a word of protest had his successful rival been a man of "the States," ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... Correlli was fond of her, but he had not supposed he would care to make her his wife, although he had no doubt the girl would gladly avail herself of such an offer. Evidently the courtship had been secretly and successfully carried on; still, he could not understand why they should have adopted this exceedingly strange way to consummate their union, when there was nothing to stand in the way of a public ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... "to suspend my courtship and smoke a cigarette. Possibly I'm going too strong. If I give the lady a rest, she may think ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... admirable thing this is! Suppose there should be one or so, in the whole church, that understands somewhat besides English: shall I not think that he understands that better? Must I (out of courtship to his Worship and Understanding; and because, perhaps, I am to dine with him) prate abundance of such stuff, which, I must needs know, nobody understands, or that will be the better for it but himself, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... his future wife at the house of her uncle, the Master of Balliol, but no particulars of the courtship have survived. The marriage took place at Walcot Church, Bath, on April 26, 1764, the bride's father having died at Bath only a short time before. Two circumstances connected with their brief honeymoon—which consisted only of a journey from Bath to ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... these exclusively religious preoccupations; he urged upon the king that Richelieu should not live constantly in the queen-mother's neighborhood, and in June, 1617, he had orders given him to retire to the courtship of Avignon. Pope Paul V. complained that the Bishop of Lucon was exiled from his diocese. "What is to be done about residence," said he, "which is due to his bishopric? and what will the world say at seeing him prohibited from going whither his duty binds him to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... story always ended with marriage bells; to-day's, which is a far harder love-story to write, begins with them. Earlier authors, in short, shirked the real problem of marriage, they ended where they should have begun. For the main difficulties do not lie in the period of falling in love, in the courtship or the honeymoon, but in the preservation of love after these passionate preliminaries ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... yardin'. Then they gits more familiar, and takes each other's arms. That's wot we calls in these parts aiblen' to aiblen', and last, when they curls their arms round each other, won'erful familiar, that's called waistin'. No, I never went through none o' them courses in my courtship. I weren't such a fool. But I was tellin' ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... arranged affair; and the event was of a nature likely to spread the reputation of the Spa among wealthy widows, and medical gentlemen of more skill than practice. So in they came, the Doctor smirking, gallanting, and performing all the bustling parade of settled and arranged courtship, with much of that grace wherewith a turkey-cock goes through the same ceremony. Old Touchwood had also attended her ladyship's summons, chiefly, it may be supposed, from his restless fidgety disposition, which seldom suffered him to remain absent even from those places of resort ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... is one of the fictions about courtship or not, it is generally assumed that a young woman is longer in making up her mind than is the young man. When a man finds the right girl he is pretty apt to know it, and it is his business then to start out and persuade her to his point of view. "Neither willing nor reluctant" is the attitude ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him! Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When "his father's spirit was in arms," it was not a time for the son to make love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... firmly-set mouth, piercing eyes and a magnificent carriage. She was no longer young when she had accepted Mr. Lenox, and by what means she had encompassed his subjugation we were never told: he always shook his head when he alluded to his courtship. "A fellow is wax in a woman's hands," he had sometimes remarked darkly. But after his marriage he had seemed to acquiesce in his wife's belief in her high individual value to the world in general and himself in particular, and had given her the best of everything. Mrs. Lenox ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... female Indians of a certain tribe, but there is little doubt, in my mind, of this girl's identity. The gold chain about her throat was my brother's gift to his wife. That chain has the story of my brother's love and courtship engraved on it in Indian characters. But I am too much upset to discuss the matter any further to-day. When can ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane

... humble Respects attend the Nobility and Gentry. She has the Honour to acquaint them that she transacts all Business relative to Courtship and Marriage, with the utmost Dispatch and Punctuality. She has, at a considerable Expense, procured a complete List of all the unmarried Persons of both Sexes in this Kingdom, with an exact Account of their Characters, Fortunes, Ages, and Persons. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... stiff-limbed youths who, with a "Blawy nicht, Jeanie" (to which the inevitable answer was, "It is so, Cha-rles"), rested their shoulders on the doorpost, and silently followed with their eyes the flashing needles. Thus the courtship began—often to ripen promptly into marriage, at other times to go no further. The smooth-haired maids, neat in their simple wrappers, knew they were on their trial and that it behoved them to be wary. They had not compassed twenty ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... bit his brain, and alter a short courtship, he prevailed on a young girl in the neighbourhood to go up with him to London, in order to their marriage. When they were there, finding his stock reduced so low that he had not even money to purchase the wedding ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... general favourite; and seldom saw a day in which some sober matron did not invite me to her house, or take me out in her chariot, for the sake of instructing me how to keep my character in this censorious age, how to conduct myself in the time of courtship, how to stipulate for a settlement, how to manage a husband of every character, regulate my family, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... of the now fixed conviction that attentions from him at present could only agitate and distress her harmfully, and bring on her malicious remarks, the Captain was induced to believe that Rocca Marina or Florence would be a far better scene for his courtship, and to defer it till he could find her there ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in this prison, and on that night wantonly killed, was an Englishman, who had been kept in prison for several years, charged with the singular offense of having married the daughter of an ex-marquis. There had been romance in his courtship and romance in his marriage, but it had not met with the approbation of the father, who unfortunately had influence enough to get the newly-married man into prison, and to keep him there. At last the father had relented, and on the next day the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... that a great wrong would be done her, after which she would find no consolation under the roof of Zgorzelice, nor in the depths of the forest, nor in the fields, nor in the abbot's gifts, nor in Cztan and Wilk's courtship. Therefore he said inwardly: "Girl, may God give you the best of everything, for although I am willing to bend the sky for you, I cannot." In fact, the thought that he could not help it, immediately brought him relief, and tranquillity returned, so that immediately he began to think only ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... in their engagement and as unhappy as girls usually are during their courtship. It is the convention to regard those days as very joyous, but probably no woman who was honest about the fact would say that they were so from her own experience. Louise found them full of excitement and an interest from which she relaxed ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... her served as a restraint upon his action. He followed the habits of business negotiation even in love-making; he put down his impatience and made his approaches slowly that he might make sure of success. As a prudent beginning to his courtship he called on Phillida at first but once a week. She soon regained her wonted placidity of exterior, and Millard found it difficult to divine how far ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... recovered from the shock, my mind went back to what I had heard of the courtship of my married sister, also in China. The man who later became her husband was stationed at a place a thousand miles from where she was. They had been very slightly acquainted when they were in Bible institute ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson

... chief intention just now is the writing of a sort of novel-poem—a poem as completely modern as 'Geraldine's Courtship,' running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so, meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly. That is my intention. It is not mature enough ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... Virginia, and his opinion of "calf-love," as the English call an early attachment, and something about the right of every girl to know a suitor long before she consents to marry him. He said he thought that the days of courtship must be the most delightful in the life of a woman, and that a man who wished to cut them short was a fellow without ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Richard paused for the second time. "I have always meant—" he began again, but just then the clock in the kitchen struck the first stroke of ten. Richard caught his breath and arose quickly. Never in his long courtship had he remained as late as that at Sylvia Crane's. It was as if a life-long habit struck as well as the clock, and decided his times ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... life passed like a continual triumph amidst acclamations, and envy, and courtship, and caresses: to please Melissa was the general ambition, and every stratagem of artful flattery was practised upon me. To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... either pony girls will have to grow four legs to cut new capers, somebody will have to write a play entitled 'When Courtship Was in Flower,' requiring flowered skirts ten yards wide with a punch in each furbelow, or we go out of the theatrical business," said Mr. Vandeford, as he shuffled a faint, violet-tinted letter out of a pile of advertising ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

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

... and to fall in love. I was, as I have told you, a boy, and only stood by and listened to what the others said; but it filled me with quite a strange emotion to listen to the old man, and to watch how his cheeks gradually flushed red when he spoke of the days of their courtship, and told how beautiful she was, and how many little innocent pretexts he had invented to meet her. And then he talked of the wedding-day, and his eyes gleamed; he seemed to talk himself back into that time of joy. And yet she was ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen



Words linked to "Courtship" :   wooing, suit, courting



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