Priscilla, daughter of a noble lord. She fell in love with Sir Aladine, a poor knight.—Spenser, Faëry Queen, vi. 1 (1596).
Priscilla, the beautiful puritan in love with John Alden. When Miles Standish, a bluff old soldier, in the middle of life, wished to marry her, he asked John Alden to go and plead his cause; but the puritan maiden replied archly, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” Upon this hint, John did speak for himself, and Priscilla listened to his suit.—Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).
Priscilla. Fragile, pretty, simple girl, whom Hollingsworth and Coverdale love, instead of falling victims to the superb Zenobia. She is thin-blooded and weak-limbed, and her very helplessness charms the strong men, who suppose themselves proof against love of the ordinary kind.—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (1852).
Prison Life Endeared. The following are examples of prisoners who, from long habit, have grown attached to prison life:—
Comte de Lorge was confined for thirty years in the Bastile, and when liberated (July 14, 1789) declared that freedom had no joys for him. After imploring in vain to be allowed to return to his dungeon, he lingered for six weeks and pined to death.
Goldsmith says, when Chinvang the Chaste, ascended the throne of China, he commanded the prisons to be thrown open. Among the prisoners was a venerable man of 85 years of age, who implored that he might be suffered to return to his cell. For sixty-three years he had lived in its gloom and solitude, which he preferred to the glare of the sun and the bustle of a city.—A Citizen of the World lxxiii. (1759).
Mr. Cogan once visited a prisoner of state in the King’s Bench prison, who told him he had grown to like the subdued light and extreme solitude of his cell; he even liked the spots and patches on the wall, the hardness of his bed, the regularity, and the freedom from all the cares and worries of active life. He did not wish to be released, and felt sure he should never be so happy in any other place.
A woman of Leyden, on the expiration of a long imprisonment, applied for permission to return to her cell, and added, if the request was refused as a favor, she would commit some offence which should give her a title to her old quarters.
A prisoner condemned to death had his sentence commuted to seven years’ close confinement on a bed of nails. After the expiration of five years, he declared, if ever he were released, he should adopt from choice what habit had rendered so agreeable to him.
Prisoner of Chillon, Françoise de Bonnivard, a Frenchman, who resided at Geneva, and made himself obnoxious to Charles III., duc de Savoie, who incarcerated him for six years in a dungeon of the Château de Chillon, at the east end of the lake of Geneva. The prisoner was ultimately released by the Bernese, who were at war with Savoy.