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Matron   /mˈeɪtrən/   Listen
Matron

noun
1.
A married woman (usually middle-aged with children) who is staid and dignified.
2.
A wardress in a prison.
3.
A woman in charge of nursing in a medical institution.



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"Matron" Quotes from Famous Books



... the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron, and maid, And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... present or absent objects. The reader will not be displeased with the following interesting exemplification from Bishop Jeremy Taylor. "St. Lewis the King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres on an embassy, and he told, that he met a grave and stately matron on the way with a censer of fire in one band, and a vessel of water in the other; and observing her to have a melancholy, religious, and phantastic deportment and look, he asked her what those symbols ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... invalid man is as exposed to women as a young chicken to rats. You won't stand a ghost of a chance. Look at your father, if I left him alone when he was having an attack of gout with a gray-haired matron of a reformatory, he'd be on his knees to her before I ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... hair of any Athenian gentleman in the time of Socrates stand on end. Aspasia was obliged to be a courtesan in order to become educated and to frequent cultivated society[184]; Sulpicia was a noble matron in good standing. The world had not stood still since Socrates had requested some one to take Xanthippe home, lest he be burdened by her sympathy in his last moments. Pains were taken that the Roman girl of wealth should have special ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... Jemima's idea of what such an affair should be than her own had been; with a bishop officiating, and a choir in surplices (rather weak-voiced and tearful, without their beloved leader) and a matron-of-honor in a very smart New York frock, and the little church crowded to its doors, and even spilling into the road beyond. Nor was the congregation entirely composed of country-folk, tenants and the like. There was quite a sprinkling of what ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... Worst Authors." Why, the finest word I know of in the English language was coined, not by my poor old grandfather, whose education had left little to desire, nor by any of the admirable scholars whom he in his turn educated, but by an old matron who presided over one of the halls, ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... gay, from lively to severe," (for novelty in quotations we find to be contagious,) have recounted the wildly erratic history "of that false matron known in nursery rhyme, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... united and simultaneous efforts of the civilized world should be exerted in the overthrow of a monster so destructive to the good looks and life of man. Every physician should advise his patients, and every boarding-school in existence and every hospital should have its surgeon or matron, and every regiment its officer, to make their nightly and hourly 'rounds,' to force a stop to so unnatural, disgusting, and dangerous a habit! Under the working of such a system, mothers guarding and helping the helpless, schoolmasters their scholars, hospital surgeons their patients, ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... to like it, Puddin'," smiled the old gentleman, softly. "She's a perfect stranger to me; but I understand she is the matron of an Orphans' Home, and I thought she would like a little fun; but ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... again for nearly a quarter of a century, when he met her on Epsom Downs, on the Derby day when the terrible horse Gladiateur beat all the English steeds. She was then very much changed, very much changed indeed, appearing as a full-blown Egyptian matron, with two very handsome daughters flaringly dressed in genuine Gypsy fashion, to whom she was giving motherly counsels as to the best means to hok and dukker the gentlefolks. All her Christianity she appeared to have flung to the dogs, for when the writer spoke to her on that very important subject, ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... accounts, by making the former so eminent, at the cost of the other heroes, in his Jerusalem Delivered. Thus Virgil transformed by his magical power the chaste Dido into a distracted lover; and Homer the meretricious Penelope into a moaning matron. It is not requisite for poets to be historians, but historians should not be so frequently poets. The same charge, I have been told, must be made against the Grecian historians. The Persians are viewed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... a droll part to-night, came forward and maintained a conversation with his housekeeper; not bad. The young woman who played the grave matron performed with great finish. She was a favourite, and was ever applauded. The second scene came; a saloon tastefully furnished; a table with flowers, arranged with grace; birds in cages, a lap-dog on a cushion; some books. The audience were pleased; especially the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... 2 This discreet matron has realized a very daccnt competency, by keeping, in the Holy Land, a house of accommodation for single, men and their wives.—When a couple of this description require the asylum of her hospitable ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... her on the way here," Betty decided at last, and rushed down-stairs again. As she went by the matron's door she almost ran ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... morning till night; we did what we liked, went where we liked: we lived better too. Mr. Brocklehurst and his family never came near Lowood now: household matters were not scrutinised into; the cross housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection; her successor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to the ways of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality. Besides, there were fewer to feed; the sick could eat little; our breakfast-basins were better ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... a meagre matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and she carried a battered ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... you, will any grave, wise citizen, or modest matron, take the object of this folly in Deliro and his wife; but rather apply it as the foil to their own virtues. For that were to affirm, that a man writing of Nero, should mean all emperors; or speaking of Machiavel, comprehend all ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... and two, keeping pace with the time of the music, which is a stately, dignified march. The bridesmaids follow, also two and two, with about six feet of space between each couple. The maid of honor alone, or the maid and matron of honor together, then come. The flower girl, or flower children follow, scattering flowers from a basket ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... Innocence,—the very image of it looks upon you from many a child's face. Courage, firmness, self-control,—you may read them in the lines of many a manly countenance. Purity,—who has not felt its hallowing regard fall upon him from the eyes of maid and matron? Pity, tenderness, sympathy,—these angels move about us in human forms, and he that hath eyes to see ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... marry, and are introduced into society, takes from them all awkwardness and restraint. A girl of fourteen can enter a crowded ball-room with as much self-possession, and converse with as much confidence, as a matron of forty. The blush of timidity and diffidence is, indeed, rare upon the cheek ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... be done; it is not sufficient to give an order, you must also be in a position to explain how it is to be carried out I felt quite guilty when I saw the picture in Punch the other day, of a young and inexperienced matron requesting her cook "not to put any lumps into the melted butter," and reflected that I did not know how lumps should be kept out; so, as I am fortunate enough to number among my new friends a lady who is as clever in these culinary details as she is bright and ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defense of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn. And if I found in the story afterward, any of them, by word or deed, breaking that oath, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... worst always contains, a few superior members, who make themselves a blessing by working a constant, tactful redistribution of individuals by their true values, across the unworthy lines upon which society ever tends to stratify. Such a person, a matron, sat with Marguerite one April evening under a Chinese lantern in the wide, curtained veranda of an Esplanade-street house whose drawing-room and Spanish garden ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... an institution—the Bethany Home—about the middle of October. She was just twelve, the Matron said. I think she was very glad to come. She's had a good home and plenty to eat. And one funny thing is that Bridget took such a fancy to her, and though Bridget's good as gold, she has some ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas

... pleased with the simple piety of our friend the hunter Peter's squaw, a stout, swarthy matron, of most amiable expression. We were taking our tea when she softly opened the door and looked in; an encouraging smile induced her to enter, and depositing a brown papouse (Indian for baby or little child) on the ground, she gazed round with curiosity and delight in her eyes. We ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... Nyoda and the seven Winnebagos left in the station, and when one of the officers offered to show us around Nyoda accepted the invitation gladly. She is always anxious that we should see as much as possible. Nyoda stood and talked to the matron a long time while we went on through, and when we came back she was invisible. We waited awhile, but ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey

... pitch into her, Sarah?' exclaims one half-dressed matron, by way of encouragement. 'Vy don't you? if my 'usband had treated her with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I'd tear ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... new deputies was to wait upon Juanna de Mansilla, who had been whipped as a witch, who was placed on horseback behind the treasurer Estrada, in which situation she was escorted in grand procession through all the streets of Mexico, like a Roman matron, and was ever afterwards stiled Donna Juanna, in honour of her constancy, for refusing to marry again while she believed her husband was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... very moment, Mrs. William Beresford, a highly respectable young matron who painted rather good pictures in her spinster days, when she was Penelope Hamilton of the great American working-class, Unlimited; but first Mrs. Beresford's dangerous illness, and then her death, have kept my dear boy a ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... education than that given to women by the Church. Judged, by ordinary standards, she was an accomplished wife, yet her ignorance of life paved the way for great misfortunes. The epitaph on the Roman matron, "She did needlework and kept the house," gives a faithful picture of her ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... himself at ease, and he found a kneeling-cushion ready for him. After having taken his place upon it, and tuned his instrument, the voice of a woman—whom he divined to be the Rojo, or matron in charge of the female ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn

... return to hear a good account of you. It is possible that you'll be introduced in my absence to the honors of matrimony; but even so, I know that peace, an' taciturnity, an' submission will be your most signal qualifications. You will then be in a situation equal to that of a Roman matron. As for us, Miss Norah, we are subject to the dilapidations of occasional elevation. The ambrosia of sentiment lies in our path. We care not for the terrestrialities of life, when separated from the ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... with the manner in which persons are received into Congregational churches, by relating a verbal account of their experience, will recognize in this narrative a resemblance to that practice. Christiana, a grave matron, appears to have felt no difficulty in complying with the requisition; but Mercy, young and inexperienced, blushed and trembled, and for awhile continued silent. Their profession being approved, the readiness of the church ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... notions about marriage took their color entirely from an exalted enthusiasm about the ends of life, an enthusiasm which was lit chiefly by its own fire, and included neither the niceties of the trousseau, the pattern of plate, nor even the honors and sweet joys of the blooming matron. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... to him?" asked pertinently one of the old ladies; and vain efforts were made to ascertain Mr. Dillwyn's denomination. "For all I kin make out, he hain't got none," was the declaration of another matron. "I don't b'lieve he's no better than he should be." Which was ungrateful, and hardly justified Miss Charity's prognostications of enduring fame; by which, of course, she meant good fame. Few had seen Mr. Dillwyn undisguised, so that they could give a report of him; but Mrs. Marx assured them he ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... superficial judges of one another: where customs differ they often remark only the salient distinctive points which, when examined, prove to be of minor importance. Europeans seeing and hearing that women in the East are "cloistered" as the Grecian matron was wont and ; that wives may not walk out with their husbands and cannot accompany them to "balls and parties"; moreover, that they are always liable, like the ancient Hebrew, to the mortification of the "sister-wife," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... much to fear from Sweden, left the conduct of the desultory war with his generals, and set out on another tour of observation to southern Europe. The lovely Catharine, who, with the fairy form and sylph-like grace of a girl of seventeen, had won the love of Peter, was now a staid and worthy matron of middle life. She had, however, secured the abiding affection of the tzar, and he loved to take her with him on all his journeys. Catharine, though on the eve of again becoming a mother, accompanied her husband as far as Holland. Through Stralsund, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... seven-and-twenty, and had always been accustomed to defer to Miss Fairbairn as much older as well as wiser than herself; and this deference did not seem out of place, for the large, fair spinster made the young matron look ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... leant a little forward and a swift flush is dyeing her cheek. She is of all women the youngest looking, for her years; as a matron indeed she seems absurd. The delicate bloom of girlhood seems never to have left her, but—as though in love of her beauty—has clung to her day by day. So that now, when she has known eight years of married life (and some of them deeply ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... Velasquez in the Royal Gallery at Madrid, there are only four female portraits; and of these, two represent children, another an ancient matron, and a fourth his own wife! The Duke of Abuquerque, who at the door of his own palace waylaid and horsewhipped Philip IV., and his minister Olivarez, feigning ignorance of their persons, as the monarch came to pay a nocturnal visit to the Duchess, was not very likely to call ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... between the ashes tall and slim, Like matron with her twin grand-daughters at her knee; The rowan berries cluster o'er her low head, gray and dim, In ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... before they left for deep space. Yellow Sands was strictly for young families, where bright-boy hubby worked up on the hill at E.H.Q., and wifey raised super-bright kids who already considered Dad to be behind the times. Their idea of sin in that town was to snub the wrong matron at a cocktail party; or not snub, as the case might be. Not that it mattered much, neither Frank nor Louie was ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... relinquish a plan which I had once thought wise and well-laid, just because I myself did not receive all the honour and consequence due to the originator. So I coolly took the part assigned to me, which is something like that of steward to a club. I buy in the provisions wholesale, and provide a fitting matron ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... younger by ten summers, a vexation transformed her into a matron. The snow white hair, carefully arranged on her forehead, seemed to indicate somewhat advanced age; but it was known that it had turned grey in a few days and nights, eight years before, when a discontented blackguard stabbed the quartermaster, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Max, her little Indian pony, would accompany him a few miles, or as far as his road led toward the scene of her own labors; but no Spartan dame or Roman matron could more sternly have resisted the young man's frequent entreaties to be allowed to accompany her farther than the point at ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... paw into elaborate splints as if it was a human being? Why was her head filled with queer imaginations of the country house at Embley turned, by some enchantment, into a hospital, with herself as matron moving about among the beds? Why was even her vision of heaven itself filled with suffering patients to whom she was being useful? So she dreamed and wondered, and, taking out her diary, she poured into it the agitations of her soul. And then the bell rang, and it was time to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... matron, nodding her head, "but who would like to marry a midshipman? Make haste and be a ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... boast; Their Skill and Industry their Sons employ, In works of Peace, Integrity and Joy. Their Lives, in Social, harmless Bliss, they spend, Then to the Grave, in honor'd Age descend. The hoary Sire and aged Matron see Their prosp'rous Offering to the fourth Degree: With Grief sincere, the blooming offspring close Their Parent's Eyes, and pay their Debt of Woes; Then haste to honest, joyous Marriage Bands, A newborn Race is rear'd by careful Hands: ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... glittering star, Nor heeds the public scorn, or transient curse, Unknown alike to honour and remorse. Behold the leering belle, caress'd by all, Adorn each private feast and public ball, 140 Where peers attentive listen and adore, And not one matron shuns the titled whore. At Peter's obsequies[5] I sung no dirge; Nor has my satire yet supplied a scourge For the vile tribes of usurers and bites, Who sneak at Jonathan's, and swear at White's. Each low pursuit, and slighter folly, bred Within the selfish heart and ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... was no reason why she shouldn't go where she wanted, where she had always gone. The Convalescent Home belonged to the Fieldings, and the Fieldings were her dearest friends who had been turned into relations by her father's marriage. So this evening, absorbed in the convalescents, she never saw the matron's queer look at her or her pointed way ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... Tribune, sternly; "thy lips elude the answer I would seek. In our degenerate time and land, thy sex and ours forget too basely what foulness writes a leprosy in the smallest stain upon a matron's honour. That thy heart would never wrong me, I believe; but if thy weakness, thy fear of my death should wrong me, thou art a bitterer foe to Rienzi than the swords ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... departed waiting to be born again. There they lurk, constantly on the look-out for passing women into whom they may enter, and from whom in due time they may be born as infants. It matters not whether the woman be married or unmarried, a matron or a maid, a blooming girl or a withered hag: any woman may conceive directly by the entrance into her of one of these disembodied spirits; but the natives have shrewdly observed that the spirits shew a decided preference for plump young women. Hence when ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... died of damp; Through huddling leaves the holy chime Flagged; I, expecting Mrs. Gamp, Thought—"Will the woman come in time?" Upstairs I knew the matron bed Held her whose name confirms all joy To me; and tremblingly I said, "Ah! will it be a girl or boy?" And, soothed, my fluttering doubts began To sift the pleasantness of things; Developing the unshapen man, An eagle baffled of his wings; Considering, next, how fair ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the Spanish; in summer of the fashion of Tuscany, except only upon the holidays and Sundays, at which times they were accoutered in the French mode, because they accounted it more honorable, better befitting the modesty of a matron. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... entirely to shut out the infection. I have known FIFTEEN CHILDREN SLEEP in two beds!"—From the sworn evidence of Mrs. Elizabeth Gain, late matron, and Mr. Adams, late medical attendant, at the Sevenoaks Union—extracted from the Times of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various

... The matron uttered this first article in the great confession of woman's faith with the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... delivered expressed the wish of his sister-in-law at once to see him. She received him alone and with great warmth. She was beautiful, and soft as May; a glowing yet delicate face; rich brown hair, and large blue eyes; not yet a mother, but with something of the dignity of the matron blending with the lingering timidity ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... house of a neighbouring carpenter. There the hunted creature fell insensible on the ground, the master of the house refusing to give her up, though the maddened mob surged around it, swearing that if the "Arminian harlot"—as respectable a matron as lived in the city—were not delivered over to them, they would tear the house to pieces. The hope of plunder and of killing Rem Bischop himself drew them at last back to his mansion. It was thoroughly sacked; every portable article of value, linen, plate, money, furniture, was carried ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... six, and the second four; the youngest child, a little girl named, unfortunately, Flora, after her mother, was three years old. There had been a fourth, Flossy's second baby, also a girl, who had only lived one day. All this being so, was it not strange that a young matron who had led, for some four years out of the eight years her married life had lasted, so wholly womanly and domestic an existence as had fallen to the lot of Flossy, should have been led astray by the meretricious allurements of unlawful love?—Maud's ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... hall, feeling more and more uncomfy, and less and less like Christmas. We were very cold indeed, especially our hands and our noses. And we felt less and less able to face the Matron if she was horrid, and one of us at least wished we had chosen the Quaggy for the pudding's long home, and made it up to the robbed poor in ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... George and Marietta, could remember those early struggling days with almost as fresh an emotion as that of their parents. Indeed, Marietta, now a competent, sharp-eyed matron of thirty-two, could not see the most innocuous colored lithograph without an uncontrollable wave of bitterness, so present to her mind was the period when they painfully groped their way out ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... who followed Wagner about in his old age, keeping at a respectful distance, but receiving now and then a gracious acknowledgment that he appreciated their homage. When the composer died, Katarina, then a matron with a family, took to her bed and saw no ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... and elderly Friend who led me to this choice point of observation is her father. The plump and motherly matron on the high seat, whose face alone is a remedy for care and worry, is her mother. They will invite me home with them when meeting is over. Already I see the tree-embowered farmhouse, with its low, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... at the railway station that night and found that her American Red Cross button, which had come with her dollar subscription to the association, made the matron inspector rather kindly inclined. Nevertheless, she took off Sara Lee's shoes, and ran over the lining of her coat, and quite ruined the ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... for no sign, By touch or mark, he gave me as he passed; Only I knew a lily that I held 110 Snapt short below the head and shrivelled up; Then turned my Guide and looked at me unveiled, And I beheld no face of matron stern, But that enchantment I had followed erst, Only more fair, more clear to eye and brain, Heightened and chastened by a household charm; She smiled, and 'Which is fairer,' said her eyes, 'The hag's unreal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the matron Clay answered: I heard thy sighs. And all thy moans flew o'er my roof, but I have call'd them down: Wilt thou O Queen enter my house, tis given thee to enter, And to return: fear nothing, enter with ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake

... her train, And over fields where scattered hamlets rose In barren solitary pomp repose? Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call The smiling long-frequented village fall? Beheld the duteous son, the sire decayed, The modest matron, and the blushing maid, Forced from their homes, a melancholy train, To traverse climes beyond the western main; Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, And Niagara ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... heather; it would not grow in the sheltered meadows. And you, had you known the fate that love would have chosen, you too would not have thrived in your full bloom. Another happy, prosperous north-country matron would be dead. But now you live, still singing of freedom, the undying soul of courage and loneliness, another voice in the wind, another glory on the mountain-tops, Emily Bronte, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... she as those who love their lords, or they Who love the lords of others? such have been Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say. Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien, Or the light air of Egypt's graceful Queen, Profuse of joy—or 'gainst it did she war, Inveterate in virtue? Did she lean To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar Love from amongst her griefs?—for such ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... now?" said Mrs. Badger, a fat, comfortable, motherly matron, who always patronized the last matrimonial venture that put forth among ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... test of the most critical years in boyhood. It never failed him, and he never questioned it. But when that trial was over, and after an illness which shook up his body and mind, he came under the influence of a matron who held with no little force of character the views of the Anglo-Catholic party. These views stole gradually into the mind of the rather effeminate boy, and although they did not make him question the theology of his father ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... to tell you, that I have been this morning and offered myself as matron to the fever-ward while it is so full. They have accepted me; and I am ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... midday, and as they drive into Bangor at dusk;—two women dashing along in a wagon, and with a child, rattling pretty speedily down hill;—people looking at us from the open doors and windows;—the children staring from the wayside;—the mowers stopping, for a moment, the sway of their scythes;—the matron of a family, indistinctly seen at some distance within the house, her head and shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its breakfast,—the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the door, turning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... again. Pepina, the elder sister, a widow now, had come home to keep house for Matteo, but she was too much taken up with work, the care of her two children and looking out for a second husband to have time to watch Silvia, and after a few weeks the young girl went as unheeded as a matron ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... Are you a slave?" shouted shrilly the irate matron. "Veil your face, abandoned wretch! You white snake, ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... the libertine and judge—is in point. Having set his licentious eyes upon the beautiful Virginia—daughter of Virginius, a centurion of the army—and having in vain sought to obtain possession of her person by tampering with the matron who conveyed her to and from her school, he induced an equally licentious individual, one Claudius, to claim her as his slave, and bring the matter before himself for decision. In vain the anguished father asserted that Virginia was his child. With ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... ages passed: and lo! another came, An English matron, in whose simple faith Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim, A ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... estate, treated like a beast, or worse than a beast, recklessly worked out and then cast forth to die, scourged, tortured, flung in a moment of passion to feed the lampreys, crucified for the slightest offence or none. "Set up a cross for the slave," cries the Roman matron, in, Juvenal. "Why, what has the slave done?" ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... Katharine abused the child, though; not that she exactly neglected it. She chose its clothing and food with a proper degree of care; she consulted more than one efficient matron of Saint Peter's congregation, before she accepted the references of the nurse. That done, she left the child's routine chiefly to the nurse; to the nurse exclusively she left all the more tender ministrations to the little, dawning personality. Upon one point, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... chains for her neck and hair, as well as the indispensable brooches whereon the stability of the whole costume depends. When she rises to have her himation draped around her, the directions she gives reveal her whole bent and character. A dignified and modest matron will have it folded loosely around her entire person, covering both arms and hands, and even drawing it over her head, leaving eyes and nose barely visible. Younger ladies will draw it close around the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... as he could; and when the opportunity offered, was besotted enough to repeat the question to his mother and sister. Mrs. Raymer was a large and placid matron of the immovable type, and her smile emphasized her opinion of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... Eleanor softly, coming towards him with a young matron's caressing manner to a boy whom ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pretty drawing-room, long low and old-fashioned, I saw two ladies, one a matron, the other a lovely young girl. Sir John introduced me to his wife and then to Agatha, ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme

... diggins the squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?" asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his head into one of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to a sage old man, the oracle of the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Giaom puberty in girls takes place from the tenth to the twelfth year, but few become mothers at a very early age. When parturition is about to take place the woman retires to a little distance in the bush, and is attended by an experienced matron. Delivery is usually very easy, and the mother is almost always able on the following day to attend to her usual occupations. The infant is laid upon a small soft mat which the mother has taken care to prepare beforehand, and which is used ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... Hence it was observ'd, The subtile matter, when in throat retir'd, Kept still its roulant quality, and oft Would mount in circling spires to pericranium Of she-philosopher, when in elbow chair, Deep and profound, would the grave matron reve, And learnedly pronounce (like great RENATUS[2]) With equal verity the world ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... The Roman matron stopped him with a dignified gesture. "Ere you kiss me," she said, "let me know whether I speak to an enemy or to my son; whether I stand here as your prisoner or ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... that of Lucrezia Petrani the small head indicates a person below the middle height; the attributes are those of a Roman matron in her pride; her high complexion, graceful contour, straight nose, black eyebrows, and expression at the same time imperious and voluptuous indicate this character to the life; a smile still seems to linger an the charming dimpled cheeks and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... built on what is called the "Cottage Family Plan." This means that they are divided into cottages, each of which holds about twenty-six criminals. Locks, bolts, and bars are not used any more than necessary. Each cottage is in the care of a matron, who has orders to keep it as much like a home ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... The matron showed him the way through a long corridor, terminating in a big ward. Before reaching the door of the ward there was a ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... the late chief's mother or grandmother,—his brother, his cousin or his nephew,—but never his son. Among many persons who might thus be eligible, the selection was made in the first instance by a family council. In this council the "chief matron" of the family, a noble dame whose position and right were well defined, had the deciding voice. This remarkable fact is affirmed by the Jesuit missionary Lafitau, and the usage remains in full vigor among the Canadian Iroquois to this day. If there are two or more members of the family who ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale

... formed for each other, soon ripened into a mutual attachment and an engagement. They were married on the 26th of July, 1797. It was a happy union. For more than half a century they shared each other's joys and sorrows. The venerable matron who for this long period accompanied him in all the vicissitudes of his eventful life, still survives, to deplore the loss of him who had ever proved a faithful protector ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... That run-aways' eyes may wink; and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalked of, and unseen!—- Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties: or if love be blind, It best agrees with night.—Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match, Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, Thinks true love acted, simple modesty. Come night!—Come, Romeo! come, thou day in night; ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... Northwest, were the wonders of the world in the variety and beauty of their exhibits and the vast sums realized from them. Scarcely a woman in the nation, from the girl of tender years,[12] to the aged matron of ninety, whose trembling hands scraped lint or essayed to knit socks and mittens for "the boys in blue," but knows its work, for of it they were a part. But not a hundred of all those thousands who toiled with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... on all day; at once a young matron, and a bashful, tender, delicate bride. The three who knew her best were every moment expecting this mood to change, and give place to one of her crazy fits; but they watched in vain. There was still the same angelic mildness and sweetness. The Priest could not keep his eyes away ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... taking possession of a man's effects on the ground that he was in one's debt; or by writing, composing, or publishing defamatory prose or verse, or contriving the doing of any of these things by some one else; or by constantly following a matron, or a young boy or girl below the age of puberty, or attempting anybody's chastity; and, in a word, by innumerable ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... with the establishment of St. Denis, told Madame Campan that Napoleon visited it during the Hundred Days, and that the pupils were so delighted to see him that they crowded round him, endeavouring to touch his clothes, and evincing the most extravagant joy. The matron endeavoured to silence them; but Napoleon said, 'Let them alone; let them alone. This may weaken the head, but it strengthens ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... is grace which says nothing, a heaven only for a husband, the dignity more of a matron than of a heroine, and love that might have suited Eve before she had seen this world. Leonora is certainly a beauty; but then a beauty who does not know her power, and who, consequently, can make no one ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... The matron of a farmhouse two centuries old showed me a tub containing tiny carp which she had hatched for her carp pond, the inmates of which, as is common, came to be fed when she clapped her hands. In ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... night a respectable man with weak eyes and a cold was communing with a commanding Presence that lived in a bureau—nothing less!—in the entrance-hall of the big hotel at the new St. Sennans. It was that of a matron with jet earrings and tube-curls and a tortoise-shell comb, and an educated contempt for her species. It lived in that bureau with a speaking-pipe to speak to every floor, and a telephone for the universe beyond. He that now ventured to address it was a waiter, clearly, for ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... then, that we heard of Mrs. Johnson; and it was from a colored boarding-house there that she came to Charlesbridge to look at us, bringing her daughter of twelve years with her. She was a matron of mature age and portly figure, with a complexion like coffee soothed with the richest cream; and her manners were so full of a certain tranquillity and grace that she charmed away all our will to ask for references. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... come before, you know. She did ask a lot for some one called Peer. And she got the matron to write somewhere—wasn't it to Levanger? Were you the fellow she was asking for? So you came at last! Oh, well—she died four or five days ago. And they're just gone now to bury her, in ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer



Words linked to "Matron" :   wife, woman, adult female, married woman, matron of honor, nurse, wardress, police matron



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