"Childhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tiber, far from the city's tumult, My cradle stood; it was a quiet home! A sister much beloved lived with me there, A chosen vestal from her childhood days.— Then came a coward to our distant valley;— He saw the fair, ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... confidence of a feeble husband, and in his testament he declared the empress guardian of the Roman world, and of their son Constantine the Sixth, who was no more than ten years of age. During his childhood, Irene most ably and assiduously discharged, in her public administration, the duties of a faithful mother; and her zeal in the restoration of images has deserved the name and honors of a saint, which she ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... new school of biography is the astonishing familiarity shown by the narrator with the circumstances, the conversations, and the very thoughts of remarkable boys in their early life. The incidents of childhood are usually forgotten before the man's renown has given them any importance; the few anecdotes which tradition has preserved are seized upon with the utmost avidity and placed in the most conspicuous position; but in these later books we have illustrious children portrayed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... creation of my own efforts. From my childhood, the prodigious impulse given to the science of history by the nineteenth century has affected me. I saw where my way led. I have followed it, in ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... our own age in the family, I had become her companion, and even friend, to a degree which would have been impossible in other circumstances. She had scarcely outgrown the freshness and simplicity of childhood when I first came to live with her, and my mind and feelings had expanded rapidly under the constant stimulus of a nature so full of rich life; so that at the date I now speak of, we lived together more as sisters than as aunt and niece. An inexpressible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... at her in wonder. Her big eyes, shining with the lovely innocence of childhood, met his without a flicker. "Bless my immortal soul," he muttered, "she is getting at me again." Then aloud, and gravely—"My assistants are always expected to conduct themselves ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... distracted mother that her own boy's voice blended with those others. He too was singing in honor of that Child. Happy and ever young, he was bidding her rejoice in the day which made all childhood sacred. And for his sake she had been ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... of sweet recollections cluster round our childhood's homes, and as we think of them the words of Scott ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... that he may bring cruel pressure to bear on you, and I want to warn you solemnly not to let any consideration of me or what people may say of me influence your actions. You are young and beautiful, and I pray that the rest of your life may have in it more happiness than your childhood has known. I have interceded with Carder for Pete several times, winning the poor fellow's devotion. He can't read writing and will not be tempted to open this. I'm sure he will hide it and manage to give it to you secretly if you come to this dreary place. My poor child! My ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... withdrew to his own room. She sat for some time looking vacantly at the mosaic of light and shade on the floor before her, and striving to divest her mind of the haunting thought that she was the victim of some unyielding necessity, whose decree had gone forth, and might not be annulled. In early childhood her home had been one of splendid affluence; but reverses came, thick and fast, as misfortunes ever do, and, ere she could realize the swift transition, penury claimed her family among its crowding legions. Discouraged and embittered, her father made the wine-cup ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... to Denzil again, and drew his mother out. She would like to have heard incidents of his childhood and of how he looked when he was a little boy, but she was too timid to ask any deliberate questions. She felt drawn to this lady, she looked so young and human. Perhaps she was not so wonderful in evening dress, but her figure was boyish in its slim spareness—in these ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... be! If, while our bodies grow old and withered, our hearts could but retain their early youth and freshness, of what avail would be our sorrows and sufferings! But, the faint image of Eden which is stamped upon them in childhood, chafes and rubs in our rough struggles with the world, and soon wears away: too often to leave nothing ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... door-step on which the white kitten used to gambol. But the shutters were closed, and the door was locked, and there was an air of desolation and a deep silence brooding over the place, that sank more poignantly into Martin's heart than if he had come and found every vestige of the home of his childhood swept away. It was like the body without the soul. The flowers, and stones, and well-known forms were there; but she who had given animation to the whole was gone. Sitting down on the door-step, Martin buried his face in ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... step-father's blows and curses. "I will make a real priest of him," the Count declared; and that afternoon, perched on the box of his travelling-carriage, I was whirled away from the dark scenes of my childhood into a world, where, as it seemed to me, every one was as happy as an angel on ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... understand that her heart was far away from her present home; for her actions spoke this as plainly as might have ever been done by words, and poor Lalla, wherever she had come from, and under whatever circumstances, had evidently left her heart behind her among her childhood's scenes. ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... time changed to Puer. He was the Deity of fire; and his ministers were styled Pueri: and because many of them were handsome youths selected for that office, Puer came at length to signify any young person. Some of the Romans would explain this title away, as if it referred to Jupiter's childhood: but the history of the place will shew that it had no such relation. It was a proper name, and retained particularly among the people of Praeneste. They had undoubtedly been addicted to the rites of fire; for their city was said to have been built by Caeculus, the son of Vulcan, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... the tender twilight of my one dim dream of a sinless childhood I catch that accusing glimpse of my mother—and myself. And as I stand here on this shapeless cairn of remorses, which, after forty years, I have piled upon my butchered and buried promise, that child turns from "the cup of his life and couch of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... every feeling heart!) While yet she was, though clouded o'er with grief. Her pleasing converse minister'd relief: With Climene, her youngest daughter, bred, One roof contain'd us, and one table fed. But when the softly-stealing pace of time Crept on from childhood into youthful prime, To Samos' isle she sent the wedded fair; Me to the fields; to tend the rural care; Array'd in garments her own hands had wove, Nor less the darling object of her love. Her hapless death my ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Nature and her Time By all the timeless age of Consciousness, And my adult oblivion of the clime Where I was born makes me not countryless. Ay, and dim through my daylight thoughts escape Yearnings for that land where my childhood dreamed, Which I cannot recall in colour or shape But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed And yet is not as light remembered, Nor to the left or to the right conceived; And all round me tastes as if life were dead And the world made but to be disbelieved. ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... the scenes and all the men that we have known from Childhood, and the life of our country, we believe that indolence does exist there. The Filipinos, who can measure up with the most active peoples in the world, will doubtless not repudiate this admission, for it is true that there one works and struggles against the ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... walked the pleasant half mile that lay between them; the exercise of which gave us all activity and good spirits. Jocelyn was right glad to see us, and Patty, his staid and sober wife, with whom we had romped many an innocent hour in our childhood days, was quite as glad as he. But they looked a little surprised that such "great folks" as their new neighbors, should drop in so unceremoniously, and into their common "keeping room," too, to chat away an evening. However, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... because you wore the only flower I ever notice, one that is associated with my earliest childhood. I never knew a woman to wear a bunch ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... instructions of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the man who should receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma uttered by another man no wiser than himself would become contemptible. It is the same with communities. The childhood of the European nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendancy of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendancy which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority. The priests, with all their faults, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which, that the work may more obviously correspond with the course of human life, and for the sake of exhibiting in it the three requisites of a legitimate whole, a beginning, a middle, and an end, have been also arranged, as far as it was possible, according to an order of time, commencing with Childhood, and terminating with Old Age, Death, and Immortality. My guiding wish was, that the small pieces of which these volumes consist, thus discriminated, might be regarded under a two-fold view; as composing an entire work ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... twenty, his mother continued to spoil him like a little child. She adored him because she had shielded him from death, throughout a tedious childhood of constant suffering. The boy contracted every fever, every imaginable malady, one after the other. Madame Raquin struggled for fifteen years against these terrible evils, which arrived in rapid succession to tear her son away from ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... of her grand, womanly moods, and seemed to put her childhood and childhood's tempers and jealousies away from her as one ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... undergo labours, watchings and journeyes, as well as any of stronger compositions; he was rheumatick, and had a long sicknesse and distemper occasion'd thereby two or three yeares after the warre ended, but elce for the latter halfe of his life was healthy tho' tender, in his youth and childhood he was sickly, much troubled with weaknesse and tooth akes, but then his spiritts carried him through them; he was very patient under sicknesse or payne or any common accidints, but yet upon occasions, though never without just ones, he would be very angrie, and ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of a healthy nature. There is nothing about him which suggests unwholesomeness, and much that suggests sound strength and clean good sense. Also among his penitents are numerous shopgirls who have lost in the commercial struggle whatever piety they possessed in childhood and in their craving for excitement have gone astray from the path of safe simplicity—gambling on horse races and often getting into serious trouble by their losses. Dr. Orchard may be trusted to give ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of early Childhood" the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante addresses to one of his ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of her who had been Eleanor Millsap was the case of a child who, diligently climbing out of the environment of her childhood, has attained to heights where her parents may never hope to come, a common enough case here in flux and fluid America, and one which some will applaud and some will deplore, depending on how they view such matters; a daughter proclaiming by her ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... lively, high-spirited, out-of-door creature, whom the close conventionalities of castle life and even whipping could not tame, and who had been the despair of her mother and of the discreet dames to whom her first childhood had been committed, to say nothing of a Lady Abbess or two. Indeed, from the Mother of Sopwell, Dame Julian Berners, she had imbibed nothing but a vehement taste for hawk, horse, and hound. The recluses of St. Mary, York, after being heartily scandalised ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from a distance of sixty years. Who can doubt but what the old man, writing his accounts of this mother's race, that race that had been so deeply wronged, wrote it under the influence of that potent spell, which the memory of old age throws around childhood's days? ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... systematic and its rules as well defined, as in the Church of Rome. Except those in the service of Huitzilopochtli, and perhaps a few other gods, none obtained the priestly office by right of descent, but were dedicated to it from early childhood. Their education was completed at the Calmecac, a sort of ecclesiastical college, where instruction was given in all the wisdom of the ancients, and the esoteric lore of their craft. The art of mixing colors and tracing designs, the ideographic writing ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... the summer sunshine flushing O'er him in his race, Sweeter dawn of rosy childhood blushing On his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to thank Him for my dear father," she responded, putting her hand into his, with the very same loving, confiding gesture she had been wont to use in childhood's days. ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better than anyone else in ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... have been for New Amsterdam could it always have existed in this state of blissful ignorance and lowly simplicity; but, alas! the days of childhood are too sweet to last. Cities, like men, grow out of them in time, and are doomed alike to grow into the bustle, the cares, and miseries of the world. Let no man congratulate himself when he beholds the child ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... children during the first ten years of marriage made her position not only unpleasant but precarious, but the birth of her first son made her unassailable. In rapid succession she bore ten children, seven of whom survived childhood. Though she had little influence on affairs of state during her husband's reign, she acquired self-confidence and at last began to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Bold Robin Hood or Red Riding, Who peasant and prince have delighted, Despite of all social dividing, And the times of their childhood united. ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... trap. He is a lanky fellow, about thirty, not naturally stupid but stunted mentally by a brutalized childhood. He is a raw material of a charming man, but, at present, it requires a very keen eye to detect his potentialities. His clothes are an even poorer edition of TUBBY'S. ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... resolution wavered. It was hard to go and leave behind the scenes of merry childhood and all the pleasant recollections connected with the home; and as she sat there undecided, many pleasant recollections rushed back into her memory and pleaded powerfully with her tender heart. But the greatest ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... of songs for the nursery, for childhood, for boys and for girls, and sacred songs for all. The range of subjects is a wide one, and the book ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her life be absorbed in her child's. But to-night Lucia was dreaming of England, the far-away "home" which she had never seen, but of which almost all her elder friends spoke, and where her mother's childhood and girlhood had been passed. She still leaned her head back lazily as she ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... nation, the French. That he should have written this at a moment when Louis Philippe had succeeded in all his wishes, and seemed securer than ever in the possession of his Throne, shows a calm reliance in his destiny and in the realisation of hopes entertained from his very childhood which borders ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... to proceed, until a circumstance fortunately occurred of which he hastened to avail himself. In exchanging the petty Court of Florence for that of France, Marie had speedily emancipated herself from the compulsory economy to which she had been accustomed from her childhood, and had become reckless in her expenditure to an excess which constantly disturbed the equanimity of the prudent minister of finance. The current expenses of her household amounted annually to the sum of three hundred and forty-five thousand livres, an enormous ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... always made a strong appeal to me, but never one of simple grief or sorrow. Its expression is rather of great dignity, and I remember watching in somewhat of awe one which grew near my childhood's home, as its branches writhed and twisted in a violent rain-storm, seeming then fairly to agonize, so tossed and buffeted were they by the wind. But soon the storm ceased, the sun shone on the rounded head of the willow, turning ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... father's sister became his housekeeper. I had but one brother a year older than myself. How well I remember him, a fine noble-hearted boy full of love and affection. We were neglected by our father and aunt, and left to get through our childhood's days as best we could. We would wander together hand in hand by the river side or in the woods, and often cry ourselves to sleep in each other's arms at our father's want of affection for us. We enjoyed none of the gayeties, none of the sports ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... further follow that a man is not the same person in childhood, manhood, and old age, and that terms such as father and the like are illegitimately used.—The preceding arguments may also be used to refute the (Bauddha doctrine) of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... her modelling in childhood, and her subsequent masterpiece, which had won the commendation of Napoleon ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... being from her childhood the one embodiment her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured. She was twenty-one years and twenty-one ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... comer, but, as I am not, I will simply say it was made in the height of the then fashion, with a small crown and a very high, flaring front, with ornaments atop. On the Sabbath following its arrival, the good sister put on her bonnet as innocently as in childhood she had ever said "Our Father" at her mother's knee, and went to Church. She walked modestly to her seat, bowed her head as usual, and the services proceeded. She certainly felt devout, and she had not the remotest idea that there was anything in the Church that could ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... much wrong upon both sides, Mrs. Brennan; but I am a soldier, and my duty is very simple—I follow my flag and, as a Virginian, am loyal to my State and to the principles taught me in my childhood." ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... waggonette for Axe; Mrs. Baines, encumbered with trunks and parcels, leaving the scene of her struggles and her defeat, whither she had once come as slim as a wand, to return stout and heavy, and heavy-hearted, to her childhood; content to live with her grandiose sister until such time as she should be ready for burial! The grimy and impassive old house perhaps heard her heart saying: "Only yesterday they were little girls, ever so tiny, and now—" The driving-off of a waggonette ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the two latter lay down upon a bed of ferns beneath the Aoa, and were soon sleeping as soundly and peacefully, as though all our troubles and dangers were now at an end. How easily they put in practice the philosophy that vexes itself not about the future! Exercising the happy privilege of childhood, they cast upon others, in whom they placed implicit confidence, the responsibility of thinking and planning for them—free from all ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... that the little excursion was of the nature of a pilgrimage. The idle hour, the bit of holiday, became a memorial, as recollection brought back to her the days of childhood spent down yonder, a few squares away, in this very city. They seemed bright in retrospect, like the pleasant paths of a quiet garden, but they had ended abruptly, and had been followed by years of activity and colorful experience in another country. Through it all what anticipations ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... song of the little birds, the boohabeeba, which frequent my terrace and the house-top, as sparrows familiarly in England. With these I feel I can hold free converse and interchange an unadulterated sympathy. The innocent little creatures remind me of my days of childhood, when I revelled in the woods and corn-fields of Lincolnshire, listening to the song of birds in early fresh spring morn, or bright summer day. Here was the tender chord of childhood associations touched, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... an unhappy childhood between his grandmother, the unfortunate widow Elizabeth, a somewhat uneven-tempered mother, and an erratic and unreasonable father. The unhappy lad had even been imprisoned by his father on suspicion ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... women's hearts there, and I have felt sorry for them; and when I think of God's knowing what is in their hearts, I have felt sorry for the men. And I often think now, Josephine,—think oftener and oftener of it,—that if the resurrection trumpet of our childhood should sound some day, no matter when, out there, over the old St. Louis cemetery, and we should all have to rise from our long rest of oblivion, what would be the first thing we should do? And though there were a God and a heaven awaiting us,—by ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... too generous, too magnanimous to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell. I have no respect for any human being who believes in it. I have no respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of childhood with that infamous lie. I have no respect for the man who will add to the sorrows of this world with the frightful dogma. I have no respect for any man who endeavors to put that infinite cloud, that infinite shadow, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... composer of his own or any age, was so devoted to music in childhood that his father forbade his musical studies. At the age of eleven he as greatly delighted and surprised Frederick I. of Prussia by his inspirational playing; he was in youth appointed to a conspicuous position of organist ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... dirt. Grope through the dark dens, climb the rickety stair To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, Half starved and half naked, lie crouched from the cold; See those skeleton limbs, those frost-bitten feet, All bleeding and bruised by the stones of the street; Hear the sharp cry of childhood, the deep groans that swell From the poor dying creature who writhes on the floor; Hear the curses that sound like the echoes of Hell, As you sicken and shudder and fly from the door; Then home to your wardrobes, and say, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... stay with my Aunt Prue in London in order that I might attend one of the Schools of Art. Yes, my mother thought it was better for me even to run the risk of becoming bohemianised like Cyril Aylwin, than to brood over Winnie or the scenes that were associated with our happy childhood. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... from California to New Jersey to live with a brother and sister whom she has not known since very early childhood. She is so democratic in her social ideas that many amusing scenes occur, and it is hard for her to understand many things that she must learn. But her good heart carries her through, and her conscientiousness and moral courage ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... want every one I love around me to share in my happiness; and you, dear Peg, are associated with some of the brightest recollections of my childhood." ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... beauty that had passed from her, dying many deaths, each death hurting her; the tender mortal beauty of babyhood, of childhood, of boyhood; but this invulnerable beauty of their young manhood would be with her for a long time. John would have it. John was only a fairer Nicholas; but as yet his beauty had not hardened; his boyhood lingered in ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... think it necessary to inform them of it, and this in order to cure their ignorance, and to make the occasion of that name manifest. Pharaoh, in the Egyptian tongue, signifies a king [15] but I suppose they made use of other names from their childhood; but when they were made kings, they changed them into the name which in their own tongue denoted their authority; for thus it was also that the kings of Alexandria, who were called formerly by other names, when they took the kingdom, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... friendly terms with the Thrale family, whose successors (Messrs. Barclay, Perkins and Co.) still retain the Doctor's chair on their premises. Dr. Sacheverell was Chaplain at St. Saviour's from 1705 to 1709, and appears to have engaged Johnson's attention, as a preacher, in his childhood.[22] ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... to do. Now listen, Letty; the pleasures of this garden are endless, never, if you lived to a thousand, could you see all its beauties. And to those who have found the way here, it will never be closed again but by their own fault. You may come here often for rest and refreshment—in childhood and womanhood and even in quite old age, and you will always be welcome. You may perhaps never see me again, but that will not matter. I am only a messenger. Remember all I say, be gentle and good and do your work well, and whenever ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... death—that he did not insist upon sharing with her his modest pay, and gave to her most respectful homage and duty. It is hardly necessary in this presence to refer to his devotion to his wife, Ellen Ewing Sherman. They were born in neighboring households, reared from childhood in the same family, early attached and pledged to each other, married when he reached the grade of captain, shared in affection and respect the joys and sorrows of life, and paid the last debt to nature within a few months ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... unsuitable pose. At the same time the reasons for your choice should never be obvious. There was another case, which amused me slightly—a dark girl, with fine eyes. She was originally intended to be a beauty, but she had some accident in her childhood that had crippled her. She had to walk with a stick, and her back was bent. She posed as a man-hater. The part suited her well enough, for she had rather a pretty wit. "But," I said to her, "it is too plainly a case of the fox and the grapes; you hate men because you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... as the Germania. Such comparisons are still at times made, but they are like the comparison between a rising and a receding tide; both trace the same line along the sands, but it is the same tide only in appearance. It is the contrast between the simplicity of childhood and of senility, between the simplicity of a race dowered with many-sided genius and of a race dowered with but one-sided genius. It is neither in the absence of civilization, nor in its newness, that the youth of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... the old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... listening quietly whilst the letter was being read. On the faces of several of the elder people there was a far-away look and sometimes a smile, for the scenes described in the letter brought back memories of their own childhood when the holidays and the preparations for them were ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... will provide woman with new means for gaining the respect and admiration of man. Woman will realize that her duty does not merely consist in giving sons and daughters to the fatherland, but in educating and training them in such a manner that from their childhood on they will take interest in everything tending to improve social conditions, and in inspiring them with the desire to devote their efforts to a certain cause or party, for the best of their people. Public opinion will become much broader and stronger when it shall reflect ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... Southern gentleman wishes to take the nurse who takes charge of his little baby, or the old woman who nursed him in childhood, and whom he called 'Mammy' until he returned from college, . . . and whom he wishes to take with him . . . into one of these new Territories, . . . why, in the name of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... rather pleased at the discovery. A bitter and hot spring might be very useful. He had imbibed—like many others—from the teaching of his childhood that any bitter liquid was good for you. As he advanced farther the valley continued to spread out. It was now perhaps a half mile in width, and well wooded. The creek became less turbulent, flowing with a depth of several ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... glances, plainly saying, 'tis Sunday, and no using needle or knife that day. I understand them well enough, for I would have thought exactly the same myself in my childhood. So I try to find a way out by a little free-thinking: 'tis another matter when it's a machine that does the work; no more than when an innocent cart comes rumbling down the road, as it ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... bearings of many a struggle. In case she became too arbitrary on any occasion Grant had fallen into the way of calling the Ape, and asking him to remove her, whereupon the youth would carry off his small mother in his arms and insist that, as he put it, from a childhood expression, with a long "a," she "'have herself." There was ever this quality of the whimsical about life in this home. And I am inclined to believe that the world is better for ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... awake some time longer. In a half-dreamy way she was thinking over in her own mind the old fairy tales she had loved as a little girl—with them there mingled in her fancy the scenes and memories of her own childhood. She was glad to find Hoodie so eager for stories, it might be one way of winning the strange-tempered little creature's confidence, and she tried to call to mind some of the tales most likely to interest her. And somehow, "between sleeping and waking," there came back to her mind the shadow ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... chamber, known as Mr. Prosper's own: and from it was the door into his bedroom. How Miss Thoroughbung had learned her way to it he never could guess. But she had come up the stairs as though she had been acquainted with all the intricacies of the house from her childhood. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... street into a river, upon the surface of which the plumply-falling drops were producing multitudes of those peculiar gleaming white splashes which are known to childhood as "sixpences and half-crowns." All at once the downpour diminished. The sky became lighter, and the sun showed a cleared face ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Virginia, by slave labor. His mother was a Miss Randolph, and well connected; to her the future President owed his aristocratic blood and refined tastes, and with good looks a fine, manly presence. By her, Thomas, who was the third of nine children, was in his childhood's days gently nurtured, though himself fond of outdoor life and invigorating physical exercise. His father died when his son was but fourteen, and to him he bequeathed the Roanoke River estate, afterwards rebuilt and christened "Monticello." His studies at the time were pursued ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... Mercedes's romantic benevolences. Mrs. Talcott is a sort of old pensioner; a distant family connection; the funniest old American woman you can conceive of. She has been with Mercedes since her childhood, and, like everybody else, she is so devotedly attached to her that she regards it as a matter of course that she should be taken care of by her for ever. The way Karen takes her advantages as a matter of course has always ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in a greater degree, as she had often felt in childhood, when, in taking her to task for some naughtiness, he had worn this same sad and distant look. He had never punished her nominally; the pain he himself showed had always affected her as the severest reprimand never could ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... genuine productions of native minds, cast in the idiomatic forms of the native tongue by those born to its use. No matter how fluent a foreigner becomes in a language not his own, he can never use it as does one who has been familiar with it from childhood. This general maxim is tenfold true when we apply it to a European learning an American language. The flow of thought, as exhibited in these two linguistic families, is in such different directions that no amount of practice can render one equally accurate ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... that shared his opinion. That frank and genial gaze of Bonnyboy's, which expressed goodness of heart but nothing else, seemed to Grim an "open sesame" to all hearts; and that unawakened something which goes so well with childhood, but not with adult age, filled him with tenderness and a vague anxiety. "My poor lad," he would murmur to himself, as he caught sight of Bonnyboy's big perspiring face, with the yellow tuft of hair hanging down over his forehead, "clever you are not; but ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the truth. His mother's love had instructed him early and zealously in the doctrines of Christianity, and prepared his mind for a conviction of their divine truth when he reached an age which would enable him to exercise his own judgment. As I have already mentioned, even in childhood he had an inquiring mind and a disposition to take nothing for granted without investigation. Hence the questions which sometimes surprised and puzzled his instructress. The tendency grew with his growth, and displayed itself in his ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... in the center of the room. Two larger tables stood against the wall. Upon them lay volumes of the English classics, and a cluster of wax flowers under a glass cover, that had seemed wonderful to Dick in his childhood. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... part of the older Mercia lay in the hands of the house of Godwine, and as the waning health of the king, the death of his nephew, the son of Eadmund who had returned from Hungary as his heir, and the childhood of the AEtheling Eadgar who stood next in blood, removed obstacle after obstacle to his plans, Harold patiently but steadily ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... later must fail. The form of the orange-tree, the cocoa-nut, the palm, the mango, the tree-fern, the banana, will remain clear and separate; but the thousand beauties which unite these into one perfect scene must fade away: yet they will leave, like a tale heard in childhood, a picture full of indistinct, but ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... however. She might desire a return to that with all her soul, yet nothing would come of it. It was gone! Gone past recall! When Tita's affairs were wound up, it was found that all should be sold, not only her other two houses, but the old home—the one beloved of her childhood. Oakdean came to ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... volley. Machine guns were turned loose and several bombs were thrown in our rear. The Boche in front of me was looking down his sight. This fellow might have, under ordinary circumstances, been handsome, but when I viewed him from the front of his rifle he had the goblins of childhood imagination relegated to ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... was opposite, but he was not a man of ponderous strength, nor were there those wondrous flights and scintillations of sparks which were the joy of our childhood in the Tattenhall forge. A fire of powdered charcoal on the floor, always being trimmed and replenished by a lean and grimy satellite, a man still leaner and grimier, clothed in goggles and a girdle, always sitting in front of it, heating and hammering ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... suspected author of this letter, lived in the nearest house to Mr. Preston's. The house is marked 1, on the map of Brookdale. He was three or four months younger than Jerry, and, like him, was an only son. They had been intimate playmates from early childhood, though their tastes and dispositions were very different. Clinton was an industrious boy. He liked to work, and took an interest in all his father's plans and labors. He was an ingenious boy, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... at fifty years old, we are accounted three parts dead; this lesson we may learn from our fingers' ends, the dimensions whereof demonstrate this to us, beginning at the end of the little finger, representing our childhood, rising up to a little higher at the end of the ring-finger, which betokens our youth; from it to the top of the middle finger, which is the highest point of our elevated hand, and so most aptly represents ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... years of age—emerged from a house in the Calle San Bernardo at Madrid, where he had passed a wearisome hour in practising a duet of Bellini's with Dona Feliciana Vasquez de los Rios. This young lady, still in her teens, moderately pretty and tolerably rich, Andres had from childhood been affianced with, and was accustomed to consider as his future wife, although his sentiments towards her were, in fact, of a very tepid description. Betrothed as children by their parents, there was little real love between them: they met without pleasure and parted without pain; their engagement ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... literature, and especially from poets; you come under the influence of friends—fathers, mothers, or other elders—who evidently have springs of conduct and aspirations you as yet only dimly recognize; and mixed with all these influences there is that influence on us from childhood upward of our prayers that we have been taught, our religious services, our Bibles, and most of all the Sacred Figure, dimly seen, but never long absent from our thoughts, enveloped in a sort of sacred and mysterious halo—the figure of our Lord Jesus Christ enshrined in our hearts, ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... to accept a permanent yoke, while in the territory of the united States, as John Baptist Tassis was at that very moment pathetically observing in a private letter to Philip, "with the coming up of a new generation educated as heretics from childhood, who had never heard what the word king means, it was likely to happen at last that the king's memory, being wholly forgotten nothing would remain in the land but heresy alone." From this sad fate Cambray had been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... For to mispronounce a name was a bad blunder, but to name it wrongly was to miss it altogether. Such a thing had no real life, or at best a vitality that would soon fade. Adam knew that! And he pondered much in his childhood over the difficulty Adam must have had "discovering" the correct appellations for ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... complete reflexion of Scripture." And to turn to a critic of very different character, Dean Swift: "I have been better entertained and more improved," writes that cynical pessimist, "by a few pages of this book than by a long discourse on the will and intellect." The favourite of our childhood, as "the most perfect and complex of fairy tales, so human and intelligible," read, as Hallam says, "at an age when the spiritual meaning is either little perceived or little regarded," the "Pilgrim's Progress" becomes the chosen companion of our ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... all the circumstances and particulars that concerned the person of Richard duke of York, which he was to act, describing unto him the personages, lineaments, and features of the king and queen, his pretended parents, and of his brother and sisters, and divers others that were nearest him in his childhood; together with all passages, some secret, some common that were fit for a child's memory, until the death of king Edward. Then she added the particulars of the time, from the king's death; until he and his brother were committed to ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... on the arm of another, to resting more and more of our weight on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing alone, this has perpetually exemplified our relations, as individuals, to the Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and youth, under all circumstances; taught by her, in the great majority of instances, through our whole lives; never, in any case, becoming so independent of her as we do in riper years, of the individual instructor of our youth; she has an abiding ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... correspondent of yours, I take the right of having watched you through all your childhood, and from a knowledge of your disposition, to write you a few lines. That you have by this time discarded your father's foolish, nonsensical philosophy, I am very sure. It was I who advised your going away for that purpose, and I am sure that, as ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of Shandon bells, Whose sounds so wild would in days of childhood Fling round my cradle their magic spells, On this I ponder where'er I wander, And thus grow fonder, sweet Cork, of thee; With the bells of Shandon That sound so grand on, ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... attached to positions of power, and knew that the art of governing was not an easy one. She had studied Machiavelli's famous work, The Prince, which had been dedicated to her father, and it was from it, as well as from her ancestors, that she derived her wisdom and astuteness. Her childhood had prepared her for the work of the future, and she went at it with caution and reserve until she was sure ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... time Antiochus Epiphanes came to the city, having with him a considerable number of other armed men, and a band called the Macedonian band about him, all of the same age, tall, and just past their childhood, armed, and instructed after the Macedonian manner, whence it was that they took that name. Antiochus with his Macedonians made a sudden assault upon the wall; and, indeed, for his own part, his strength and skill were so great that he guarded himself from the Jewish darts, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... not a good feature or a pleasant expression among them all. Edward Morland recollected his having often read "that childhood is always lovely." But he saw that the juvenile Watkinsons were an ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... of mine, with a brute's confession? Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars? Or is it because there is something better — A glimmer of good, maybe — or a shadow Of something that's followed me down from childhood — Followed me all these years and kept me, Spite of my slips and sins and follies, Spite of my last red sin, my murder, — Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind? And you smile for that? You're a good man, ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... childhood. He was thirteen inches high, and rather sluggish, when he was two years old—as nearly all of us are at that age. He is thirty-seven feet high now, and the stateliest figure in America. His legs ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... every question that could be asked? Well, this is much the same as what the discovery of Sanskrit has done for us. It has added a new period to our historical consciousness, and revived the recollections of our childhood, which ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... secession movement paused, and Farragut earnestly trusted would stop. Born in a Southern State, and passing his childhood in the extreme Southwest, his relations with both had been severed at too early an age to establish any lasting hold upon his affections; but, though he was to the end carried upon the Navy Register as a citizen of Tennessee, the tenderest and most enduring ties of his life had been formed in ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... cases where I had the chance to be kind." Why, Rachel Pitstone's life had been one continuous selfless offering to God and man, from her childhood to her last hour! He knew very well what he had owed her—what others had owed—to her genius for sympathy, for understanding, for a compassion which was also a stimulus. He missed her sorely. At that very moment, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... length what he called even his "magic wand" was broken, and the old man struggled on to the last, without bitterness, without defiance, without murmuring, but not without such sudden flashes of subduing sweetness as melted away the anger of the teacher of his childhood,—that something seemed to be supplied. Till calamity came, Scott appeared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no more. Then first was perceived in him something above nature, something which could endure though every end in life for which he had fought ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... some two hundred years ago, had a hearty laugh, which their successors have often re-echoed; they said that helpless suckling and its priests put them so much in mind of their own old man, surrounded by his cardinals, he! he! Old age is second childhood." ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... flying, like a conjurer with oranges. My own earnings, when I began to have a share, he would but show me for a moment, and disperse again, like those illusive money gifts which are flashed in the eyes of childhood, only to be entombed in the missionary-box. And he would come down radiant from a weekly balance-sheet, clap me on the shoulder, declare himself a winner by Gargantuan figures, and prove destitute of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bewilderment. I like, at any rate, to think so; because I have been in corners quite as awkward, yet have never known myself so pitifully demoralised. The uniform might be that of a British officer, but the face was that of Don Quixote de la Mancha, and shone at me in that blue light straight out of my childhood and the story-book. High brow, high cheek-bone, long pointed jaw, lined and patient face—I saw him as I had known him all my life, and I turned up at the other man, who stooped over me, ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... astonishing thing is that this law was esoteric.[6] The people knew of it only by its irresistible force, and by the constant pressure or the rare easing of its iron hand. Those who executed the law were drilled in its routine from childhood, and this routine became second nature. Only a few copies of the original instrument were known, and these were kept with a secrecy which to the people became a sacred mystery guarded by a long avenue ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the other lady approached, and in her turn accosted him in this manner:—"I also am come to you, Hercules, to offer my assistance; I, who am well acquainted with your divine extraction and have observed the excellence of your nature, even from your childhood, from which I have reason to hope that, if you would follow the path that leadeth to my residence, you will undertake the greatest enterprises and achieve the most glorious actions, and that I shall thereby ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... up a little worn copy of the Pilgrim's Progress that I had had from childhood, and opened it at a favourite passage, where Christian and his companion are talking with the shining ones as they went up towards the Celestial city, and I thought of Elspeth as I read it. 'You are going now,' said ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the desire of perfect happiness in the human breast. It is not a disease, for it is no peculiarity of individuals, but a property of the race. It is not a decay, for it grows with the growing mind, being feeblest in childhood, when desires are simplest and most easily satisfied, and strongest where mental life is the most vigorous. It is an attribute of great minds in proportion to their greatness. To be without it, would be to live a minor in point of intellect, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Revolution broke out, being deeply imbued from childhood with the principles of liberty, and the justness of the American cause, he did not hesitate to assist in the great struggle ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... / of this sesou{n} ver I meene the sesou{n} / of my yeerys greene Gynnyng fro childhood / strecchith{e}[A] vp so fer to e yeerys / accountyd ful Fifteene bexperience / as it was weel seene The gerissh{e} sesou{n} / straunge of condiciou{n}s Dispoosyd to many vnbridlyd ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... the World War is the closing of the period of the childhood of humanity. This childhood, as any childhood, can be characterized as devoid of any real understanding of values, as is that of a child who uses a ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... his wood—for of course he must sink it, else it would freeze into the ice and be useless. One theory is that the beavers suck the air from each stick. Two witnesses declare to me they have seen them doing it; and in a natural history book of my childhood there is a picture of a beaver with the end of a three-foot stick in his mouth, sucking the air out. Just as if the beavers didn't know better, even if the absurd thing were possible! The simplest way is to cut the wood early and leave it in the water ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... sugar-plums proposed for the rewards of their well-doing?—Would not this require that memory or reflection in children, which, in another place, is called the concomitant of prudence and age, and not of childhood? ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... had no spaciousness at all, but a certain breathless intimacy. Great leaved plants as tall as little trees, and trees as small as big plants, bound together by vines, made up the "deep impenetrable jungle" of our childhood imagining. Here were rustlings, sudden scurryings, half-caught glimpses, once or twice a crash as some greater animal made off. Here and there through the thicket wandered well beaten trails, wide, but low, so that to follow them ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... last night was concern for the honor of womanhood; and her indignation at first did not strike where we are told woman's indignation does, on the woman, but on the man. Loving John Seymour as a brother from her childhood, feeling in the intimacy in which they had grown up as if their families had been one, the thoughts that had been forced upon her of his wife the night before had struck to her heart with the weight of ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... others, like the rest of his species. He had his ruling passion, and, but that his father had made him a GENTLEMAN, he was sure nature had intended him for the Roscius of his age. From his earliest childhood, when he used to recite, during the Christmas holidays, "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," and astonish his father's porter (who had a turn that way himself) with his knowing, all by heart, "My name is Norval, on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... rightly we were nicknamed in childhood!" Rufus went on bitterly, half communing with himself. — "I for fiery impulse, and you for ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... certain capacity for rhythmic cadence (visible enough in all my later writings), and the cheerfulness of a much-protected but not foolishly-indulged childhood, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... he was about ten years old, quite alarmingly large. This, however, was but an episode in his growth; he became afterwards a fresh-colored, yellow-bearded man, but he was never accused of anything worse than a tendency to corpulence. He emerged from childhood a simple, wholesome, round-eyed lad, with no suspicion that a less roundabout course might have been taken to make him happy, but with a vague sense that his young experience was not a fair sample of ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... He was always silent when questioned about his early life; and all that Lupin knew was that he had been an orphan since childhood and that he had lived all over the place, changing his name and taking up the queerest jobs. The whole thing was a mystery which no one had been able to fathom; and it did not look as though the police would make much of ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... light burned clear, the noise went on. It was a trying moment for the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he didn't ask Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees by his bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to open his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth the sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... had from his childhood been for Gilbert the supreme sign of romance, and he had chosen to spend the first night of his honeymoon at the White Horse Inn. From his honeymoon he wrote home that he had "a wife, a piece of string, a pencil and a knife. What more can any man want?" Ten years later he wrote The Ballad ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... childhood loved A faith so sweet as this is; We felt the touch of rose-leaf palms, And almost felt their kisses: We tracked them through the shadowy grass, Or when the evening glistened, We lay in wait to see them pass, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... like enchanting genii. You know at all times how to find the right word and the right deed, and the Graces have showered upon you the most winning charms to fascinate all hearts, in whatever you may be doing. On the other hand, I am awkward and ill at ease. I know it only too well; my unhappy childhood, grief and cares of all kinds, have rendered my heart reserved and bashful. Perhaps I am not always lacking right ideas, but I fail only too often to find the right word for what I think and feel. Hereafter, my dear Louisa, frequent occasions will arise ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... good considerations arise, amongst which is the kindly recollection of Mr. Hector, surgeon at Birmingham: 'Hector is likewise an old friend, the only companion of my childhood that passed through the school with me. We have always loved one another; perhaps we may be made better by some serious conversation, of which however I have no distinct hope.' He says too, 'At Lichfield, my native ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... nutritious. Propagated by centuries of isolated homesteaders, heirlooms that survived did so because these superior varieties helped the gardeners' better-nourished babies pass through the gauntlet of childhood illnesses. ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... an officer in Napoleon's army, was born at Besancon on February 26, 1802. He spent a roving and unsettled childhood, for wherever the father was sent the mother and children followed. The first three years of his life were spent in Elba, where he learnt to speak the Italian dialect spoken in the island in addition to his mother tongue. Then for three years ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... bed asleep. His rumpled hair was still damp from the fog. His mother stroked it softly while her slow tears dropped down on his face with its expression of peaceful childhood. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... affair, according to McKinstry's education, as much as marketing. So when he found that the tawny old house and the quiet little girl in there with the curious voice, which people came for miles to hear, were gaining an undue weight in his life, held, to be plain, all the fairy-land of which his childhood had been cheated, all fierce beauty, aspiration, passionate strength to insult Fate, which his life had never known, he kept the knowledge to himself. It was boyish weakness. He choked it out of thought on Sundays as sacrilege: how could he talk of the Gurney ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Kemble Oliver, author of "Federal St.," was born in Salem, Mass., March, 1800, and was addicted to music from his childhood. His father compelled him to relinquish it as a profession, but it remained his favorite avocation, and after his graduation from Harvard the cares of none of the various public positions he held, from schoolmaster to treasurer of the state of Massachusetts, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... He, with his companions in virtue, it is also said, was saved by the intercession of Queen Philippa. In one of his smaller works, Bernardin asserts this descent, and it was certainly one of which he might be proud. Many anecdotes are related of his childhood, indicative of the youthful author,—of his strong love of Nature, and ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... we call childhood had an endless charm for Sir George Grey, and often that drew him back to his own early years. The little child, a bundle of prattling innocence, still on the banks of the world's highway, like a ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... surprise in the lady's voice. "His mother always sat at table with us, and behaved beautifully, too. Of course Spunk is little, and makes mistakes sometimes. But he'll learn. Oh, there's a chair right here," she added, as she spied Bertram's childhood's high-chair, which for long years had stood unused in the corner. "I'll just squeeze it right in here," she finished gleefully, making room for the chair at ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Gibbon's childhood was passed in chronic illness, debility, and disease. All attempts to give him a regular education were frustrated by his precarious health. The longest period he ever passed at school were two years at Westminster, but he was constantly moved from one school to another. ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... children are all little Legitimists in the Luxembourg gardens, whereas they are all Red Republicans at the Tuileries. One has no means of knowing this with certainty, but it is assumed; at any rate the Legitimists are a very numerous class in the neighbourhood. Another class of childhood to be seen here is that composed of the offsprings of artists and professors of the Latin quarter, and of the active tradesmen of the neighbourhood. They come here, like the others, for the fresh air, to see a bit of greenery, to hear the band play, to ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... M'riar, with her usual record of inexperience of childhood. "I never, never did, in ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan |
