"Great-uncle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ready for church yet; we shall surely be late," said the young wife as she entered the elegant library where her husband sat reading a choice volume of poetry. It was Clara's first Sabbath in her new home. She had but lately left the sheltering roof of a kind great-uncle, who had taken her to his home when a lonely orphan, and reared her very tenderly, surrounding her with every comfort and many of the elegancies of life. A gentleman some years her senior had won her heart's affection, and now she was installed as mistress of his beautiful ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... part in the quarrels, and the nation hated her the more for interfering. And very strangely, Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, was, at the meeting of Parliament, accused of high treason and sent to prison, where, in a few days, he was found dead in his bed—just like his great-uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester; nor does anyone understand the mystery in one case, better than in the other, except that we are more sure that gentle Henry VI. had nothing to do with it than we can be of ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... follows,—the other parts it behoves me not to open out to strangers:—"My own love, and sometime lord,—Take it not amiss of me, that even without farewell, I go; for I cannot persuade the men to wait, your return being doubtful. My great-uncle, some grand lord, is awaiting me at Dunster, having fear of venturing too near this Exmoor country. I, who have been so lawless always, and the child of outlaws, am now to atone for this, it seems, by living in a court of law, and under special surveillance (as ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... be sure; quite true; but if I'm your papa's uncle, I'm your great-uncle, and there isn't such an immense amount of difference; don't you suppose you had better call me Uncle ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... rank of senator and praetor, but died in the prime of life, when Augustus was only four years old. Augustus was carefully educated in Rome under the guardianship of his mother and his step-father; and his talents recommended him to his great-uncle, Julius Caesar, who adopted him as his son and heir. At the time of Caesar's assassination (44 B.C.), Augustus was a student under the celebrated orator Apollodorus, at Apollonia in Illyricum, whither, however, he had been sent chiefly to gain practical instruction in military ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... daughter Atia, again, was married to Caius Octavius, a nobleman of the plebeian order. From this marriage sprang the present Octavius, who afterwards became the Emperor Augustus. He was mainly educated by his great-uncle, was advanced to the patrician order, and was adopted as his son and heir; so that his full and proper designation at this time was Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The text gives a right taste of the man, who always stood firm as a post ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... "Probably my great-uncle," he said. "In this part of the world," he went on, "there is no one who knows me beyond mere acquaintanceship, except ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... learned two things, certainly, in the wars he had fought to establish himself in the monarchy his great-uncle had founded. He had learned the necessity and the value of sea power, and he had understood the unique position of Ravenna in relation to the East and the West. That he had been able to appreciate both these facts is enough to mark him as the great ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... were indeed few, but they were just enough to keep a tantalizing hope alive. Modestly leaving out of count his personal and intellectual qualifications, he thought of his family. It was an old stock enough, though not a rich one. His great-uncle had been the well-known Vice-admiral Sir Armstrong Somerset, who served his country well in the Baltic, the Indies, China, and the Caribbean Sea. His grandfather had been a notable metaphysician. His father, the Royal Academician, was popular. But perhaps this was not the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... witness my great-uncle's last moments. He recognised me, clasped me to his breast, blessed me at the same time as Edmee, and put my ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... in the picaresque school, lacking none of the author's usual raciness and vigour; but, if at the end we find Mr. Fergus Rowley still unable to reinstate himself, and left with no better consolation than the "Heigho" of his famous great-uncle Anthony, the fault, I feel, was his own. He ought to have looked in at the Kingsway Theatre and provided himself with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... [Footnote 607: Great-uncle of the writer, and son of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, a graduate of Harvard, and minister of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... time not far wrong. I had a profound respect for Miss Sheil's talent and a high admiration of her charm and beauty, and I think she had more liking than love for me. We both of us had a horror of the ordinary forms of wedding ceremonies, and we told only five persons in all-my great-uncle, who came up to town for the wedding, and was present at it; my brother, who was in Russia; my grandmother, who kept house for me, and who was present at it; George Trevelyan, [Footnote: 'On January 14th I announced to him my intended ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... 'twas my duty to speak to you about it. It was my great-uncle, Captain Silas Hardin. He was my ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... thought a little!" cried the young gentleman, leaping to his feet and hastening to grasp his great-uncle's hand. "But, indeed, evil-minded persons described my only uncle to me so differently that I could not picture him to myself in the shape of such a gallant, noble gentleman. Milles tonnerres! let nobody in ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Pretty lifelike, I call it—well, there ain't anything in it yet, but my great-uncle Bradly's shirtstuds are in the Bartlett pear, just beyond, and that orange contains a Honiton lace collar that my mother wore the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... having a very great deal of responsibility and worry during the long school terms, as he was not only head master, but owned the school as well, which he had purchased from his great-uncle, used to leave almost the day the holidays began and travel abroad with my mother. This partly accounts for the very unusual latitude allowed to us boys in coming and going from the house—no one being anxious if now and again we did not return at night. The school matron was left ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Uncle Athol, choose Leslie Manor. It's so near Kilton Hall that the boys can ride over to see me and I can go to see them," begged Beverly, clasping her hands about her great-uncle's arm and looking up into his face in a manner to coax ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... to him, I'm sure. Your great-uncle, Lillyvick, my dears!' interposed Mr Kenwigs, condescendingly explaining it ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... ago," he began, "since I came into my property, Heatherleigh Hall, near Carlisle, Cumberland. It was left me by my great-uncle, General Wimpole, whom I had never seen, but who had made me his heir in preference to his other nephews, owing to my reputed likeness to an aunt, to whom he was greatly attached. Of course I was much envied, and I dare say a good many unkind things were said about me, but ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... most wonderful thing!" said she, at last, slowly; and her breath came like a gasp with her words. "My great-uncle, Mr. Oldways." ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... broke the power of his nobility. His people aided him, for they were wearied of the pressure of feudalism, and he concentrated the whole power of the realm in his own hands. He took up the projects which had been left untouched since the death of his great-uncle, Prince Henry the Navigator. The dream of his life was to find the direct sea route to India. To achieve this end he collected at his Court all the learned men he could attract; he improved the methods of shipbuilding, and began to build full-decked ships of 100 tons; he did much to ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... although their looks and manners were carefully watched. On the contrary, they were rather boisterously merry at the wedding, and poor Mrs. Gibson it was that died of consumption, four or five years after her marriage—three years after the death of her great-uncle, and when her only child, Molly, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... learned since that a certain ancestor—or was he only a great-uncle?—I forget—had a taste for mechanics, even to the craze of the perpetual motion, and could work well in brass and iron. The creature was probably some invention of his. It was a real marvel how, after so many years of idleness, it could now go as it did. I confess, as I contemplate the thing, I ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... be the second Duke of Wellington, nor Charles Dickens, Jr. It is a terrible thing, one would say, to a mind of honorable feeling, to be pointed out as somebody's son, or uncle, or granddaughter, as if the excellence were all derived. It must be a little humiliating to reflect that if your great-uncle had not been somebody, you would be nobody—that, in fact, you are only a name, and that, if you should consent to change it for the sake of a fortune, as is sometimes done, you would cease to be anything but a rich man. "My father was President, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... Mortsauf the day he saw me for the first time; the haughty glance with which these sovereigns of the earth make you measure the distance that lies between you and them disappeared. I knew almost nothing of my family. The duchess told me that my great-uncle, an old abbe whose very name I did not know, was to be member of the privy council, that my brother was already promoted, and also that by a provision of the Charter, of which I had not yet heard, my father became once more ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... the Jewish world to determined action, designed to stamp it out once for all. To wage war against this superstitious belief seems to have fallen to the lot of several of Levinsohn's family. In 1757, when it asserted itself in Yampoly, Volhynia, his great-uncle, by the unanimous consent of the Council of the Four Countries, was sent to Rome to intercede with the Pope. After six years of pleading, he returned to his native land with a signed statement addressed to the Polish king and nobles, which declared the accusation to be ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... old lady quite well by sight, but she did not know her name. Perhaps Ida's great-uncle knew it; but he was a grave, unsociable man, who saw very little of his neighbours, so perhaps he did not; and Ida stood too much in awe of him to trouble him with idle questions. She had once asked Nurse, but Nurse did not know; so the quiet orphan child asked no more. She made up a name for ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with Prussia. The real causes of this war were French jealousy of the growing power of Prussia, and the Emperor's anxiety to strengthen his government in the affections of the French people by reviving the military glory of the reign of his great-uncle. The pretext upon which the war was actually declared was that Prussia was scheming to augment her influence by allowing a Prussian prince (Leopold of Hohenzollern) to become a candidate for the vacant throne of Spain ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Ann alone with her much-feared Great-uncle Henry. He nodded to her, and drew out from the bottom of the wagon a warm, large cape, which he slipped over her shoulders. "The women folks were afraid you'd git cold drivin'," he explained. He then lifted her high to the seat, tossed her satchel into the wagon, climbed up himself, and clucked ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... vii., p. 501.).—The representative of Augustine Vincent is Thomas Wentworth Edmunds of Worsbro', W. Barnsley, in the county of York, the son of the late Wm. Bennet Martin of the same place, Esq., who has assumed the name of his great-uncle, Francis Offley Edmunds. There is a memoir of Augustine Vincent, by Mr. Hunter, published, I believe, by Pickering, Piccadilly, which shows the descent, and may perhaps throw light on Francis Vincent. The name, I believe, is still common ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... since I had laid the body of my great-uncle, Captain John Carter, of Virginia, away from the sight of men in that strange mausoleum in the old ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of valerian and assafoetida,—not quite so much since the new blood came in. There is n't the change in folks people think,—same thing over and over again. I've seen six fingers on a child that had a six-fingered great-uncle, and I've seen that child's grandchild born with six fingers. Does this girl like to have her own way pretty well, like the rest of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... be mentioned as having exercised a lasting influence upon his early life. One of these was an old great-uncle, Justizrath Voethoery, brother of both his grandmothers, and a gentleman of Hungarian origin. This excellent man was retired from all business, with the exception that he continued to act as justiciary for the estates of certain well-tried ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... that little face could only belong to one related to Daisy Wilson," he said. "Little one, put yer arms round me. I'm your great-uncle—your great-uncle! I never thought that Daisy Wilson could have a daughter married, and that that daughter could have little ones of her own. Well, well, well, how time does fly! I'm your grandmother's brother—Sandy Wilson, home ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... was my great-uncle," said the courteous Jonah, "and there was no one in Ullerton better acquainted with Rebecca Caulfield. I've heard my grandmother talk of her many a time. She used to send him poultry and garden-stuff from her house at ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... beauty and impulsive, violent temper, having quarrelled with her excellent sister, Dorothea Fryer, at whose house in Staffordshire she was staying, suddenly set off to London on a visit to her great-uncle, the Rev. John Plymley, prebend of the Collegiate Church at Wolverhampton, and Chaplain of Morden College, Blackheath. She journeyed by the ordinary conveyance, the Gee-Ho, a large stage-waggon drawn by a team of six horses, ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... personal traits of the Emperor seem so exemplary that, if he fails to meet the heroic needs of the hour, the world is disposed not to reproach him, but rather to feel pity for the young ruler who has had thrust upon him such an insoluble problem. His character recalls somewhat that of his great-uncle Alexander I. We see the same vague aspiration after grand ideals, and the same despotic methods in dealing with things in the concrete. No general amnesty attended his coronation, no act of clemency has been extended to political exiles. Men and women whose hairs have whitened in ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... herself out of her ancestors, using a free hand, picking and choosing what she liked best, with due care for the effect of combinations; selecting here and there and modifying, if advisable, a trait of Grandpa or Grandma Foxwell, of Great-Uncle or Great-Aunt Baxter; borrowing qualities lavishly from her own gently born and gently bred mother, and carefully avoiding her respected father's Stock, except, perhaps, to take a dash of his pluck and an ounce of his persistence. Jed Morrill remarked of Deacon Baxter once: "When Old Foxy wants ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... time that Tom and Nellie Rover sprang a great surprise on all the others. This surprise was in the shape of a pair of very lively boy twins, one christened Anderson, after his grandfather, and the other Randolph, after his Great-uncle Randolph of Valley Brook Farm. Andy and Randy, as the twins were always called, were decidedly active lads, taking after their father, "who was never still a minute," ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... betrothed to Duke Crazioso di Pianno-Forti, of the famous family of Moderato e Diminuendo—indirectly descended from the Cardinal Appassionato Tutti. Tutti was the great-uncle of the infamous Con Spirito, well known to posterity as the lover of the lovely but passionate Violenza Allargando, destined to become the mother of Largo con Craviata, the fearless captain of Dolcissimo's light horse under General Lamento Agitato, whose grandmother, Sempre Calando, was notorious ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... from Abraham. Mouawiye and the Ommiades, fourteen in all, were of the same branch as Osman, the third Caliph. The Abassides of Kufa, Bagdad, and Cairo, fifty-four in all, descended from Abas, the great-uncle of the Prophet. There were many others who at different times usurped the name of Caliph, but these seventy-two are all who are recognized as universal Caliphs. Mohammed XII., the last of these died in obscurity in Egypt in 1538. The power of the Caliphs gradually decayed, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... if we accept his excuse at its face value, the event proved his folly. It is strange that in this, the supreme victory of the Cross over the Crescent on the sea, a Doria should have tarnished his reputation so foully, even as his great-uncle Andrea had tarnished his in the battle of Prevesa. It seems as if in both, as Genoese, the hatred of Venice extinguished every other consideration of loyalty ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Saturday afternoon Ethel came back from the duty-visit to Aunt Hannah and said as it were confidentially to Leonora: 'Fred called in while I was there, mother, and stayed for tea.' What could Leonora answer? Who could deny Fred the right to visit his great-aunt and his great-uncle, both rapidly ageing? And of what use to tell John? She desired Ethel's happiness, but from that moment she felt like an accomplice in the furtive wooing, and it seemed to her that she had forfeited both the confidence of her husband ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... to Four Winds. It's the most beautiful harbor on the Island. There's a little village called Glen St. Mary at its head, and Dr. David Blythe has been practicing there for fifty years. He is Gilbert's great-uncle, you know. He is going to retire, and Gilbert is to take over his practice. Dr. Blythe is going to keep his house, though, so we shall have to find a habitation for ourselves. I don't know yet what it is, or where it will be in reality, ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and a fresh claim to the Drummond estates, and to the Earldom of Perth, were brought forward by the descendant of John Drummond, the great-uncle of James, Duke of Perth. The said John Drummond was raised to the dignity of the English peerage in 1685, by James the Second, by the title of Viscount Melfort; in 1686 he was raised to the dignity of Earl of Melfort; and afterwards, following the monarch to St. Germains, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... accountant, would rise from the volume nervously shattered from an attempt to grasp what it was all about. The only person in the book who is accorded any comprehensive biographical resume is a certain great-uncle of Mr. Conrad, Mr. Nicholas B., who accompanied Bonaparte on his midwinter junket to Moscow, and was bitterly constrained to eat a dog in the forests of Lithuania. To the delineation of this warrior, who was a legend of his youth, Mr. Conrad devotes his most affectionate and tender power of whimsical ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... strewed flowers in the pathway of the distinguished Frenchman. She remembered the incident perfectly and in our numerous conversations I have repeatedly heard her allude to it. She told me that, seated at General Lafayette's side in the carriage which conveyed him through the city, was the great-uncle, Colonel Richard C. Anderson, who led the advance of the American troops at the Battle of Trenton. General Robert Anderson, U.S.A., whose memory the country honors as the defender of Fort Sumpter, was his son. The General's widow, a daughter ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... resolved, or once denied; strongly intent on business, little on pleasure; by these virtues he engaged the attention of all men And the people, sensible that they owed their liberty and very existence to his family, and remembering that his great-uncle Maurice had been able, even in more early youth, to defend them against the exorbitant power of Spain, were desirous of raising this prince to all the authority of his ancestors; and hoped, from his valor and conduct alone, to receive protection against those imminent dangers with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... chosen for this task were all members of the Imperial family—a great-uncle, an uncle, a younger brother, and a first cousin of the Emperor—and the fields of operation assigned to them were: first, to the west along the northern shore of the Inland Sea; secondly, to the northwest into Tamba, Tango, and Tajima; thirdly, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... books saw little of me; but, on the contrary, I found in them a pleasure and a companionship that has lasted through my life. Thus it happened that I made considerable progress. So much so that the good Bishop, my great-uncle, often flattered me with the ambitious hopes of some day filling his Episcopal chair—a hope that, I need ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... clearness, grammatical coherence, and intelligibility—than the autograph; and I can understand the preference of some students for the former, though I do not share it Michelangelo the younger added fluency and grace to his great-uncle's composition by the sacrifice of much that is most characteristic, and by the omission of much that is profound and ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... courses, but he soon found that he had to do with his match; that Helen's hand was always a little higher than his own. And, even when we saw him at his most dogmatic, the fact that the question of sex, in its physical aspects, did not enter into their relations—he was only her step-great-uncle—saved us from a great deal of uneasiness. In all his moods, whether of blustering self-assertion or reluctant surrender, of canny craft or protesting generosity, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... girls passed on, taking the queer-looking duck with them, and George became pink with mortification as his mother called his attention to a white-bearded guest waiting to shake his hand. This was George's great-uncle, old John Minafer: it was old John's boast that in spite of his connection by marriage with the Ambersons, he never had worn and never would wear a swaller-tail coat. Members of his family had exerted their influence uselessly—at eighty-nine conservative people ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... six I distinctly remember the Chartist riots in 1848. William Bridges Adams, the engineer, an old friend of my great-uncle, Philip Taylor, had a workshop at Bow, and my mother helped to start a library for the men, and sometimes attended meetings and discussed politics with them. They adored her, and when people talked of possible danger she would smile and say: 'My ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... would seem as if they had a pretty strong case," he answered. He went on to tell me what he knew of the matter in his clean, pithy sentences, often brutally cynical, as though he had not a spark of interest in any of it. Mr. Cooke's claim to the land came from a maternal great-uncle, long since deceased, who had been a settler in these regions. The railroad answered that they had bought the land with other properties from the man, also deceased, to whom the old gentleman was alleged to have sold ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stone with a vase a-top of it to his great-uncle,' she remarked, 'and the captain's grandfather he's got two angels crying and a skull at the bottom; it's a nice handsome grave, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... the accuser of the other three. Investigation of his origin showed that a male cousin had died raving mad, a female cousin had died in an asylum, a great-uncle on the maternal side had been crazy and had committed suicide; another cousin was weak-minded and subject to fits; another, a deaf-mute, had died in an asylum; another great-uncle was a drunkard and a loafer; one sister was an idiot, the other had run away from home, ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... sort of great-uncle, I imagine," answered the other, laughing; then his rather rambling eye rolled round the ordered landscape in front of the house; an artificial sheet of water ornamented with an antiquated nymph in the center and surrounded ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... established some years ago by a grand-niece of Froebel, who endeavors thus to carry out the principles of her great-uncle, whose instruction and companionship she enjoyed in her youth. Still in the prime of life, of gracious and winning presence, full of noble enthusiasm in doing good and of love for children; a devoted student of the principles and philosophy of education, ably ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... had an opportunity to think, and I did think, if the pulse of an overwhelming pain, perpetually recurring like the beat of a loaded wheel, can be called thought. Although there is no insanity in our family nearer than a great-uncle, I marvel that I retained my wits under this terrible blow. I seriously contemplated suicide, and probably should have taken my life had not my mental condition gradually undergone a change. I was no longer conscious of suffering, nor of a desire ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... and I were at school together, but I was an elderly boy of seventeen, when he was lost in the crowd of "gytes," as the members of the lowest form are called. Like all Scotch people, we had a vague family connection; a great-uncle of his, I fancy, married an aunt of my own, called for her beauty, "The Flower of Ettrick." So we had both heard; but these things were before our day. A lady of my kindred remembers carrying Stevenson about when he was "a rather peevish baby," and I have seen a beautiful photograph of him, like ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the family in Wilton Square. Let us, before proceeding with the story, enumerate the younger Mutimers. The first-born, now aged five-and-twenty, had his great-uncle's name; Joseph Mutimer, married, and no better off in worldly possessions than when he had only himself to support, came to regret the coldness with which he had received the advances of his uncle the capitalist, and christened ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... heard arrangements being made for the nurse to go to the Colonel at once, and they gathered from what was said that David's great-uncle was ill with typhoid fever, and that the Doctor had ordered ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... only two uncles, and neither of them, are our own natural-born relatives. One is a great-uncle, and the other is the uncle from his birth of Albert, who used to live next door to us in the Lewisham Road. When we first got to know him (it was over some baked potatoes, and is quite another story) we ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... I was fifteen. My great-uncle, my guardian, is a wholesale grocer in Chicago; he has a large ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... curled over her ears and low on her forehead, which made of her face a small and delicate oval. In the big hall, with a roaring fire in the wide fireplace, she dispensed comforting hospitality to the adoring Admiral. And when she had given him his tea she sat on a stool at his feet. "Oh, wise great-uncle," she said, "I am going to ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... which he rode away; nor does their narrative account for this. But the main point is that you are safe. By the way, I hope you have kept your son at your side; for I have now received the information about which I dropped you some hints. It appears that he inherits from a great-uncle (one Silvanus Tellworthy) certain American estates, of which you and a Captain Runacles, of Harwich, are the legal administrators. I fancy this has been kept from you; and, if so, a descent upon Harwich may be used ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Jencks, Mr. Jerrolds, and of unexceptionable family: her great-uncle a bishop, her father a retired army officer. She has been governess to the family of the Governor-General of Canada, thus, as you see, enabling her to know just what would be required in American society (the maid told ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... potential rebel, no man was ever less a revolutionary. As much a constitutionalist as Hampden or Washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. The tradition of parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations. Two years after his birth his great-uncle, John Edward Redmond, from whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as Liberal member for the borough of Wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place, commemorating good service rendered. Much of the rich flat land which ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... return to share. Or, perhaps, while I was asleep I had returned without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the day—the dawn of a new era to me—on which they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in making myself ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... affection, and though her fortune was considerably reduced, she still had enough to render her child's life comfortable, so that his education did not suffer by it. He was scarcely six years of age when he succeeded to the barony of his great-uncle, and this circumstance in a young Englishman's life always means increased prosperity. His childhood was, therefore, most decidedly fortunate in many respects. This is all the more certain that Byron, throughout his life, always spoke of his happy childhood, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Her family is a branch of the old Aldclyffe family on the maternal side. Her mother married a Bradleigh—a mere nobody at that time—and was on that account cut by her relations. But very singularly the other branch of the family died out one by one—three of them, and Miss Aldclyffe's great-uncle then left all his property, including this estate, to Captain Bradleigh and his wife—Miss Aldclyffe's father and mother—on condition that they took the old family name as well. There's all about it in the "Landed Gentry." 'Tis a thing very ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... right. Lady Gertrude's father was a parvenu, of very mean extraction. Her great-uncle had made the family fortune, partly in trade, but mostly by petty peculations; and her father, who had attracted the Queen's eye when a young lawyer, had been rapidly promoted through the minor grades of ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... A great-uncle of mine was once taken for a clergyman at a public dinner nearly a hundred years ago, and he was asked to say grace; he was a good man, and also practical, and had a splendid appetite, but he was not eloquent, and ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of this place, who is in his 80th year, is related to this family. The said William Chapman being his great-uncle (maternal). ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... a few relatives and friends. Among these was a very, very old man, whom he afterwards heard was a great-uncle and a centenarian. Between him and one of the little girls, there apparently existed a strong sympathy; for his hand reached out and drew her to him when the tears began to steal down her cheeks, and the looks which passed between the two had all the ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... But I have a great-uncle there, living at Kensington. I believe that is part of London, though really I don't know much about it. I shall go ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... virtue of the powers conferred upon us by Act of Parliament (Ancestry Act, 1922), we are prepared to give your sometime great-great-uncle William, who, according to family tradition, always wanted to go to sea, a commission in the Navy, and the rank of lieutenant, together with appointment to any ship of the line—with the exception of the Victory—which fought under ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Tessiers have always lived in Bordeaux and they are connected by marriage with everybody—from the blacksmith up to the Mayor's notary. Once a Tessier was Mayor himself. Years and years ago Madame's great-uncle Jean had emigrated to America, and from time to time vague rumors of the wealth he had achieved in the new country reached the ears of his relatives—but no ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... maternal grandfather of Mme. de Beauseant. He had married the daughter of Chevalier de Rastignac, great-uncle of Eugene ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... for a time; but papa wants him, besides, to take to the business in earnest. You know, my great-uncle, Robert Mervyn, left Robert all his fortune, quite in his own hands; and papa says that if he were to put that into the distillery it would do the business great good, and that Robert would be one of the richest men in England ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 1164.—Unluckily for himself, Henry could not be content firmly and quietly to enforce the law as it had been declared at Clarendon. He had in his character much of the orderly spirit of his grandfather, Henry I., but he had also something of the violence of his great-uncle, William II. A certain John the Marshal had a suit against the archbishop, and when the archbishop refused to plead in a lay court, the king's council sentenced him to a fine of 500l. Then Henry summoned the archbishop to his castle at Northampton to give an account of ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... that their uncle and great-uncle Minoret was really coming to live in Nemours, they were seized (in spite of the political events which were just then weighing so heavily on Brie and on the Gatinais) with a devouring curiosity, which was not surprising. Was he rich? Economical ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... Miss Hatchard's great-uncle; though she would undoubtedly have reversed the phrase, and put forward, as her only claim to distinction, the fact that she was his great-niece. For Honorius Hatchard, in the early years of the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... "Imagine your great-uncle's feelings, when suddenly his office door opened, and a gentleman appeared leading those two ridiculous ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... in an ambassade," suggested another, "for he hath a gift in diplomacy and law which, verily, did astound the old Giustinian. The eloquence of his great-uncle Sebastiano hath fallen upon him.—If he were not so young—! Here in Venice he is rolling up influence, and the charm of his inamorata is also a danger; and already in the Consiglio all eyes ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... to the Causes of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and M. de Malesherbes had himself presented to Louis XVI. a scheme for a law. "It is absolutely necessary," said he, "that I should render the Protestants some kind offices; my great-uncle De Baville did them so much injury!" The Assembly of notables appealed to the king's benevolence on behalf of "that considerable portion of his subjects which groans under a regimen of proscription equally opposed to the general ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... brothers—your great-uncle James, Ethel Brown—went to Williams College," said Mr. Emerson, "and I shall be glad to spend the night here and see the town and the buildings I heard him talk ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... celebrations were over that we noticed that anything was wrong in Fairfield. 'T was shoemaker who told me first about it one morning at the Fox and Grapes. "You know my great-great-uncle?" ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the bishopric Thomas de Cantilupe, one of the greatest men who has ever held that office, a man whose life was in almost every way a remarkable contrast to that of his predecessor, Bishop Aquablanca. It is said that the Bishop of Worcester, his great-uncle, asked him as a child as to his choice of a profession, and that he answered he would like to be a soldier. "Then, sweetheart," his uncle is said to have exclaimed, "thou shalt be a soldier to serve the King of Kings, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... great-uncle Ralph's letter with him, as he had promised Graciella. When she read it, she would see the reasonableness of his hope, and might be willing to wait, at least a little while. Any delay would be a point gained. He shuddered to think that he might lose her, and then, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... first were frequent, that is, coming twice a year, when the London packet arrived or departed, became rare; and if, on the death of my great-uncle William, they ceased, or if any passed later between us and the next holder of Wyncote, I never knew. The Welsh squires had our homestead, and we our better portion of wealth and freedom in this new land. And so ended my knowledge of this matter for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... are Livingstons of the manor on their great-grandmother's side, and Van Something-or-others on the side of a great-great-uncle by his second marriage, and who perhaps have never chanced to be asked to the Hilbroughs' receptions, shrug their shoulders, and tell you that they do not know them. But Mrs. Hilbrough does not slight such families because of the colonialness of their ancestry. Her own progenitors came ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... going to tell you, dear reader, did not occur, as such things generally do, to my great-uncle, or to my second cousin, or even to my grandfather, but to myself. It happened that a few years ago I received an invitation from an old schoolfellow to spend Christmas week with him in his country house on the borders of North Wales, and, as I was then a happy bachelor, and had not seen my friend ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... name of Home's mother was Macneil. He was adopted by an aunt, who, about 1842, carried the wondrous child to America. He had, since he was four years old, given examples of second sight; it was in the family. Home's mother, who died in 1850, was second-sighted, as were her great-uncle, an Urquhart, and her uncle, a Mackenzie. So far there was nothing unusual or alarming in Home's case, at least to any intelligent Highlander. Not till 1850, after his mother's death, did Home begin to hear 'loud blows on the head of my bed, as if struck by a hammer.' The ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... for five hundred dollars. I cannot connect Abel Strout with this shake-down—for that is what it is. The woman up in Michigan never heard of her great-uncle's property down here till this little Schrimpe told her. But we can't connect him with Strout. Strout's skirts are clear. And this Schrimpe had a perfect legal right to drum up trade. He's that kind of lawyer," said Mr. Payne, ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... were, and they founded the glorious firm of Etches. Harold was the grandson of one brother, and Maud was the Granddaughter of the other. Consequently, they both stood in the same relation to Dan, who was their great-uncle—addressed as ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... had worn them this one evening. Mr. Beljus himself had said that he would not even think of letting them go at fourteen to anybody else, and as for the two poor baskets of worn and useless articles offered in exchange, and a bent scarfpin and a worn-out old silver watch that had belonged to great-uncle Ben—why, the ten dollars and forty cents allowed upon them was beyond all ordinary liberality; it was almost charity. There was only one place in town where evening clothes were rented, and the suspicious persons in charge had insisted that William obtain from his father ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... eager to exercise his power. His throne had not been saved for him by the British, as his father's had been, and he was surrounded by intriguers, who were scheming always for their own advantage. He at first appeared almost as unprogressive as his great-uncle, Abbas I., but he later learned to understand the importance of British counsels. During his visit to England in 1899 he frankly acknowledged the great good which England had done in Egypt, and declared himself ready to cooperate with the officials ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Do you think I would make myself safe and sure when I might be wrecking so many? No, but unfortunately, on my mother's side, they are cautious. My great-uncle takes care of the right I have there, and I have never been allowed to meddle with it. He sends me two hundred dollars a month, and this is all ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... below, as if to protect the house. I asked my host what was the history of this piece of ordnance. "Well," he said, "the chain you might have some personal interest in. It is a part of the chain your great-uncle Israel placed across the river at West Point for the purpose of blocking or at least of checking the passage of the British vessels. The chain was forged here in the Ringwood foundry and I have secured a part ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... summer of 1788, when the girls were fifteen and twelve respectively, they accompanied their parents on a visit to their great-uncle, old Mr. Francis Austen, at Sevenoaks. Though Jane had been to Oxford, Southampton, and Reading before, it is probable that this was her first visit into Kent, and, what must have been more interesting still, her first ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... outside the mere school routine. Why, now, did he not take up some standard book of history with which to occupy his spare time, or some great poem like the Paradise Lost, of which he might commit a few lines to memory every day, and so emulate his great-uncle, who used to be able to repeat the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... eager to exercise his new power. His throne and life had not been saved for him by the British, as was the case with his father. He was surrounded by intriguers who were playing a game of their own, and for some time he appeared almost disposed to be as reactionary as his great-uncle Abbas I. But in process of time he learnt to understand the importance of British counsels. He paid a second visit to England in 1900, during which he frankly acknowledged the great good the British had done in Egypt, and declared ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... shocking thing," continued Aunt Theresa, taking off her bonnet; "for she had a great-uncle in Hanwell, and her grandfather cut his throat. I suppose it was in ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... small motherless son and which were destined so greatly to increase. There are clues I have only lost, not making out in the least to-day why the sons of Aunt Wyckoff should have been so happily distinguished. Our great-uncle of the name isn't even a dim ghost to me—he had passed away beyond recall before I began to take notice; but I hold, rightly, I feel, that it was not to his person these advantages were attached. They could have descended ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... His great-uncle, William, Lord Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey, had died, and the big-eyed, lame boy was the nearest heir—in fact, the only living male who bore the family-name. The next day at school, when the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... great-uncle, Philip," said the old man, surveying his young kinsman with an interest inspired by the feeling ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... Camors, who was very pale, "it seems to me you dispose of the hand of Mademoiselle de Tecle very readily. Mademoiselle de Tecle is rich and courted on all sides—also, her great-uncle has ideas of the province, and her mother, ideas of religion, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... town, for he had been on the point of leaving to enlist in the navy. Family matters could not have detained him, for he was quite alone in the world since both his father and his mother were dead and his stepmother had married again. Under his great-uncle's gaze the lad opened his eyes with a start and ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... temper and a will, and there was another cousin one degree further removed than himself, a good-natured, good-looking and highly-aristocratic Jack Trevellian, who was thirty years old, and a great favorite in the best society which London afforded, and who, if a great-uncle and two cousins were to die without heirs, would become Sir Jack, and who, it was thought, had an eye on the ten thousand a year. So Neil was very gracious, and sugared Blanche's strawberries for her at breakfast, and read to her after breakfast, and staid at home to ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... "So, our friend Poulain was once called in by you to attend old M. Pillerault, the Countess Popinot's great-uncle; that is one of your claims to my devotion. Poulain goes to see your landlord (mark this!) once a fortnight; he learned all these particulars from him. M. Pillerault was present at his grand-nephew's wedding—for he is an uncle with money to leave; ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a business friend of your great-uncle's. He delivered the children over into his charge, telling him the story. Of course he started home with them immediately, knowing how frightened we would be if we got home and discovered that ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... found that she had been sent there. Her aunt came from the inner room as she opened the door, and she knew at once by her face that Death was in the house. For its expression recalled the sad vision of her father's departure. Her great-uncle, the little grey-headed old cottar in the Highland bonnet, lay dying—in the Highland bonnet still. He was going to "the land o' the Leal" (loyal), the true-hearted, to wait for his wife, whose rheumatism was no chariot ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... breed true; the child does resemble its parent or parents. No doubt the resemblance is not absolute: there is variation as well as inheritance. Sometimes the variation may be recognised as a feature possessed by a grandparent or even by some collateral relative such as an uncle or great-uncle; sometimes this may not be the case, though the non-recognition of the likeness does not in any way preclude the possibility that the peculiarity may have been also possessed by some other member of the family. But on the whole the offspring does closely resemble its parents; that is to say, not ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... councillor of the parliament, a great-uncle of madame, Monsieur de Boisfrelon. After the Revolution he fell into dotage; but he did not die until 1832, at the age of ninety-six. Madame could not at first make up her mind to let his rooms to a stranger, but she finds she cannot afford to ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... dear Lady Killpatrick. You are not to see that, Lord Colambre—that's a little blot in our scutcheon. You know, Isabel, we never talk of that prudent match of great-uncle John's; what could he expect by marrying into THAT family, where you know all the men were not SANS PEUR, and none ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... suggest the expedition, and who longed beyond everything to follow in his brothers' footsteps. Eighteen years, however, passed away before another such expedition could be undertaken, and by that time the eldest of the five brothers, Duarte (or Edward), the namesake of his great-uncle, our gallant Black Prince, had succeeded his father as King of Portugal. From him Enrique and Fernando won permission for another attack upon the Moors, and set forth, full of the hope of taking Tangier as they had taken Ceuta. But Fernando's honours were not to be won with the sword. The Portuguese ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of a story I heard Uncle Roger telling about Cousin Annetta King," said the Story Girl. "Great-uncle Jeremiah King used to live where Uncle Roger lives now, when Grandfather King was alive and Uncle Roger was a boy. In those days it was thought rather coarse for a young lady to have too hearty an appetite, and she was more admired if she was delicate ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was naughty my 'Uncle Sussex' would hear me and punish me, for which reason I always screamed when I saw him! I had a great horror of Bishops on account of their wigs and aprons, but recollect this being partially got over in the case of the then Bishop of Salisbury (Dr Fisher, great-uncle to Mr Fisher, Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales), by his kneeling down and letting me play with his badge of Chancellor of the Order of the Garter. With another Bishop, however, the persuasion of showing ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... was burned during the Terror," said Eugene, "for my great-uncle, from whom Mlle. de Tartas inherited it, was a good and true Royalist; he went to Spain after the Revolution, and did not come back until the accession of Charles X., when he restored the house, and then died, enormously old. This explains why it is ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... gentleness of an angel, taking continuous pleasure in her little son—indeed, Anna had said this was her only joy, to caress the illustrious infant and call him Paul—such name he had been christened—after a great-uncle. And again Dmitry lowered his eyes, and again Paul looked out of the window ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... Holbrook has just the name that my great-great-great-uncle on my mother's side had," said the boy, in a whisper so puzzled that it was fairly agonized. "Grandmother has told me about him. He had a battle with six Injuns and killed them all himself, and this Mr. Cephas Holbrook has done just that same thing. And he killed ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... taken from the scripture.' 'A foolish pique indeed. (cried Mrs Tabby), and even sinful, to fall out with your name because it is taken from holy writ. — I would have you to know, you was called after great-uncle Matthew ap Madoc ap Meredith, esquire, of Llanwysthin, in Montgomeryshire, justice of the quorum, and crusty ruttleorum, a gentleman of great worth and property, descended in a strait line, by the female side, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... blood a large share of the restless spirit of enterprise that has been the main factor in making the Anglo-Saxons the dominant race of the world. His father and his grandfather had both been officers in the royal navy, and a great-uncle had commanded a merchantman that traded in the Eastern seas, and had never come back from one of its voyages; there had been little doubt that all on board had been massacred and the ship burned by ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... nearly up, and I had to set off to rejoin my ship, allowing myself a few days to spend in London. Jane advised me to stop at Bristol to visit our great-uncle, Sir Hurricane Tempest, but I replied that I did not think the old gentleman would care about seeing me, and I certainly should not find ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... time she rose, and laughing cheerfully to Mr. Flitcroft, who was standing in the doorway and replied with a wan smile, stepped out quickly into the hall, where she almost ran into her great-uncle, Jonas Tabor. He was going toward the big front doors with Judge Pike, having just come out of the latter's library, down ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... boring place. You remember the house—enormous, tidy, hideous, uncomfortable. Well, we had such a dinner last night after I arrived—soup, fish, everything popped on to the table for Great-uncle John to carve at one end, and Great-aunt Maria at the other! A regular aquarium specimen of turbot sat on its dish opposite him, while Aunt Maria had a huge lot of soles. And there wasn't any need, because there were four men-servants in the room who could easily ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn |
