softer sex

A lover in Kahiki-nui--of the softer sex, it would appear-- looks across the wind-swept channel and sends her thoughts lovingly, yearningly, over to Kona of Hawaii, which district she personifies as her lover.

From Unwritten Literature of Hawaii The Sacred Songs of the Hula by Nathaniel Bright Emerson

And, as in the case made famous by Cowper, of the "softer sex" and the old-fashioned iron-cushioned arm-chairs, the old man had, as became his years, "'gan murmur."

From The Cruise of the Betsey or, A Summer Ramble Among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides. With Rambles of a Geologist or, Ten Thousand Miles Over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland by W. S. (William Samuel) Symonds

A prince, with eunuchs and the softer sex Shut up so long, would warlike nations vex, Provoke the German, and, neglecting heaven, Forget the truce for which his oath was given.

From Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham by Sir John Denham

About three o'clock of a roseate day in early spring two fashionables of the softer sex, elegantly arrayed, might have been observed sauntering languidly down Fifth Avenue.

From The Spinner's Book of Fiction by Various

Our friend," he continued, "is described to me as a brawny, shaggy, grim, and ill-favored personage, not particularly well calculated, one would say, to insinuate himself with the softer sex.

From The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne