United States or Nigeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


At forty, she was still the wealthiest unmarried princess in Europe; fastidious in toilette, stainless in reputation, not lovely in temper, rigid in etiquette, learned in precedence, an oracle in court traditions, a terror to the young maids-of-honor, and always quarrelling with her own sisters, younger, fairer, poorer than herself.

The maids-of-honor crowded forward like a nose-gay of sweet-scented flowers, eager to do better than the knights in the construction of this invisible wall; for being women they were quicker than their brothers and husbands to understand what the Wizard meant.

Or is the last all ultramarine? What do we know of sapphire, amethyst, emerald, ruby, amber, and the like, most of us who take these names in vain? Leave these precious words to cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and maids-of-honor, to the Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan, or wherever else.

Courage is magnetic; every moment increased the popular enthusiasm, as these highborn ladies stood alone among the boatmen; the crowd inside joined in the attack upon the gate; the guard looked on; the city government remained irresolute at the Hôtel de Ville, fairly beleaguered and stormed by one princess and two maids-of-honor.

My father was an English merchant in Petersburg, and my mother, Vera Bessanoff, who, before her marriage with my father, was celebrated at Court for her beauty, and was one of the maids-of-honor to the Czarina. She was the only daughter of Count Paul Bessanoff, ex-Governor of Kharkoff, and before marrying my father she had, with her mother, been a well-known figure in society.

A soldier named Magnus, of peasant birth, who rose to the rank of corporal in Erik's life-guard, had a daughter named Katrina or Catherine, shortened to Karin, who as a child sat selling nuts in the market-place at Stockholm. Here Erik one day saw her, then about thirteen, and was so struck by her great beauty that he had her placed among the maids-of-honor of his sister Elizabeth.

Willegis the wheel on his coat-of-arms, if it has thus served to tame down freeborn men and women to the slouching and indolent practice of driving, a practice in which the human figure appears at such disadvantage, that one can hardly wonder at Horace Walpole's coachman, who had laid up a small fortune by driving the maids-of-honor, and left it all to his son upon condition that he never should take a maid-of-honor for his wife.

Or is the last all ultramarine? What do we know of sapphire, amethyst, emerald, ruby, amber, and the like, most of us who take these names in vain? Leave these precious words to cabinet-keepers, virtuosos, and maids-of-honor, to the Nabobs, Begums, and Chobdars of Hindostan, or wherever else.

The bees upon the ceiling followed her, dropping honey as they went; the maids-of-honor wheeled away the couch of state; the castle-maids swept up the fading leaves and blossoms, drew the tulip-tree curtains down, fastened the great door with a sandal-wood bar, sprinkled the corridors with rosewater; and by moonrise, when the nightingales sung loud from the laurel thickets, all the country slept, even Maya; but the Spark burned bright, and she dreamed.

He had dined at the club, and had allowed himself to be dragged off to a first performance at a minor theatre. An operetta of the regulation type was being played. The principal personage was a young queen, who was always escorted by the customary four maids-of-honor.