"Motherless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... green reed-beds on the vast grey slime Those monsters motherless and helpless lay, Perishing only for the parent's crime Whose seed ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as a motherless baby could be, subjected to the irregularities of a life like mine. Still she seems to ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... he himself was so proud of having served. That was forty-seven years ago. He is now a prosperous London merchant, living, at ordinary times, over his warehouse, and delighting in the society of his four motherless children. At ordinary times! But these are not ordinary times. The plague is in the city! It appeared for the first time about two months ago and has gradually increased in virulence ever since. Mr. Petherick ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... mother to do the necessary grumbling at the inferior quality of the bridegroom's presents, comes to my room later on, and says: "I have been examining these, and perceive that the silver used is not pure in quality." Having shown that she, though motherless, is not easily taken in, she accepts my exhortation to be a good child and to be thankful for what she has, and without further ado begins her preparations for the day when ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... anything much about you, Ralston, but your record is clean since you came here—despite some attempts to blacken it. I like your face—and if you can make my motherless girl happy when I'm gone, you'll have ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... safe keeping for a night. She is such a baby,—I cannot carry her any further through this storm.' And he put aside the wrappings of the bundle he carried and showed me a small pale infant asleep. 'She's motherless,' he added, 'and I'm taking her to my relatives. But I have to ride some distance from here on very urgent business, and if you will look after her for to-night I'll call for her to-morrow. Poor little innocent! She's hungry and fretful. I haven't anything to give ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... throe! Ah! Ah! the crude stab of reality! I am a son, and I have killed my mother! Why! I am now no more than him who tills Or reaps: and I am seized by primal pangs. Mother! [He drinks. The thunder crieth motherless. Ah! how this sword of lightning thrusts at me! O, all the artist in my soul is shattered, And I am hurled into humanity, Back to the sweat and heart-break of mankind. I am broken upon the jagged spurs of the earth. I can no ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... Pallas, Ericthonius took, "Offspring created motherless, and close "In basket twin'd with Attic twigs conceal'd. "The charge to keep, three sister-maids she chose, "Daughters of Cecrops double-form'd, but close, "Conceal'd what lodg'd within; and strict forbade ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... of the invalid heaved two or three times, there was a spasmodic twitching of the slender fingers lying on the young girl's hand, then all was still, and Edith Allandale was motherless. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... gave in return a daughter's love, but she had never been able to enter into the life of the banker as she entered into the life of the engineer. So it was the Seer who became, after Mrs. Worth, the dominant influence in forming the character of the motherless girl. His dreams of Reclamation, his plans and efforts to lead the world to recognize the value of that great work, with his failures and disappointments, she shared at an early age with peculiar ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... not have overvalued it so much. Herself full of mawkish sentimentality, her verses could not fail to be foolish, their whole impulse being the ambition that springs from self-admiration. She had begun to look down on Kirsty, who would so gladly have been a mother to the motherless creature; she was not a lady! Neither in speech, manners, nor dress, was she or her mother genteel! Their free, hearty, simple bearing, in which was neither smallest roughness nor least suggestion of affected refinement, was not to Phemy's ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... him the son of a noble of moderate property. In this he was of course mistaken, but in other respects perceived, with wonderful acuteness, how Ulrich had hitherto been circumstanced, nay even declared that he was a motherless child, a fact proved by many things he lacked. The boy had been sent to school too late—Pellicanus was a good Latin scholar—and perhaps had been too early initiated into the mysteries of riding, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was said that she then whispered but one word, "Father." And that, when the sound of her low voice fell upon his straining ears, he had reached out the arm that still held life, and had drawn her head down upon his breast, and wept like a motherless babe. But what he had said, if aught, about the abandoned mother who, on the banks of the distant river, years gone, had yielded her life to him and his child, no one knew. Of but one thing was there any certainty: the name of Padre Jose de Rincon had ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in each of the above letters was Martha Custis Williams, a great-niece of my grandfather, Mr. Custis, who had for many years lived at Arlington with her uncle. The "little children" were her motherless nieces, whom she had brought that summer to the mountains for their health. General Lee had been engaged for some time in bringing out a third edition of his father's "Memoirs of the War of '76 in the Southern States." It was now in the hands of his publisher, Mr. Richardson, of New York. To this ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... deeply distressed, she wished Logan at the Indies, if only he would first settle Flemington on herself. 'If it be God's will, I desire never to have a child to him,' she said. 'I have a guess what this mystery means, woe's me for his motherless children,' that is, children of former marriages. Later, Lady Restalrig had ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... to Tarsus, intending to leave her with Cleon, the governor of that city, and his wife Dionysia, thinking, for the good he had done to them at the time of their famine, they would be kind to his little motherless daughter. When Cleon saw prince Pericles, and heard of the great loss which had befallen him, he said: 'O your sweet queen, that it had pleased Heaven you could have brought her hither to have blessed my eyes with the sight ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... know there is no God, or He would never have let them do to me what they did. Every night I had prayed to God, and if there were a God anywhere, He would surely have heard my mother's prayer—when she was dying—she asked God to protect her poor little motherless girl. It is a sad world, Lady." The girl's eyes were dry and her voice unbroken. There is a limit even to tears and ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... step, the brightness to her eyes, and more than the old tenderness to her voice, as she went from one shunned sick-room to another like a living sunbeam, bringing the freshness of a May morning with her, and seeming always to come solely for her own pure pleasure. And when poor motherless Janet Mudge was struck down too with the dreaded disease, and had no one but servants to care for her, her own aunt, who lived in Joppa, being afraid to so much as go to the house to ask after her, it seemed perfectly natural to everybody ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... her with a gaze half uneasy and wholly tender. She was the delight of his old age, the center of all his affections, this motherless child of his dead brother. His cheek twitched painfully as he thought of the huge amount of his losings to Lablache. He shivered perceptibly as he rose from his seat and went ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... realised for the first time how awful was the affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once, but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... During the next month came another and far worse blow. Her mother, long an invalid, contracted a severe cold and, in spite of all possible effort to save her, in three short days passed away. To even faintly express the anguish of that now bereaved husband and motherless girl is impossible and ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... from the one they had expected to bestow upon a child. Old Mr. Clifford did not permit her embarrassment to last a moment, but, stepping hastily forward, and encircling her with his arm, he led her to his wife, who brought tears into the eyes of the motherless girl by the gentle warmth of her greeting. She monopolized her ward so long that impatient Burtis began to expostulate, and ask when his turn was coming. The young girl turned a shy, blushing face toward him, and her cheeks, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... was the reply, and Mr. Engler left the room at once to bring the fatherless and worse than motherless boy. The steward smiled as he thought of the contrast between Edwin and his uncle. The latter, a large, powerful man, was well-dressed and was apparently of a strong will, and the peculiar light within his eye and the hard lines about his mouth revealed the same characteristics that had been ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... by a train of events, needless to weary you with narrating, this boy from his infancy fell to my charge—a weighty and anxious trust to one whose thoughts are beyond the barrier of life. I have reared him as became a youth of gentle blood; for on both sides, lady, he is noble, though an orphan, motherless and sireless." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Rosemary was not at all what she had fancied in the way of a daughter-in-law, but, wisely, she determined to make the best of Alden's choice. Something in her stirred in answer to the infinite appeal in the girl's eyes. At the crowning moment of her life, Rosemary stood alone, fatherless, motherless, friendless, with only brown alpaca to take the place of all the pretty ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... her, curled down so earnestly at her puzzling task, and a pity for the more than motherless child swept over him. He bent over her, nervously, eagerly, and she laid down her sewing and sat silent and passive with ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and baronets in the Shell had known that far away, in a tiny cottage at Boulogne, this same contemptible Frenchman was keeping alive from week to week, with his hard-earned savings, a paralysed father and three motherless little girls, who loved the very ground he trod on, and kissed his likeness every night before they crept to their scantily- covered beds—if they had known that this same poor creature said a prayer for his beloved France every day, and tingled in every vein to hear her ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... illness, through which my kind, well-meaning aunt had patiently nursed me. At the first news of my sickness she had, unsummoned, left her comfortable home in Rockland, in mid-winter, and had crossed the mountains to watch beside the feverish pillow of her motherless niece. Careful and kind was her nursing; and even the physicians owned that to her patient watchfulness I owed my life. How grateful was I; and with what looks of love did I gaze on her trim, spinster figure, as she moved earnestly and pains-taking around my chamber; but, alas! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the carriage roll away): Poor girl! Poor, happy, unconscious, motherless child! If only I had the power to stay the blow! ... Who can it be, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... and of eccentric habits who embittered the lives of his children by his peculiar theories of education. Brought up in a small parsonage close to the graveyard of a bleak, windswept village on the Yorkshire moors, and left motherless in early childhood, she was "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters," of whom two, Emily and Anne, shared, but in a less degree, her talents. After various efforts as schoolmistresses and governesses, the sisters took ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... came panting up just as I had written that, the others hurrying along behind, and with flaming cheeks displayed for my admiration three brand-new kittens, lean and blind, that she was carrying in her pinafore, and that had just been found motherless in ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... pass over the deep grief which preyed upon the hearts of the unfortunate brothers, for weeks after they had been compelled to acknowledge the stern truth that they were indeed motherless. Those who have, at that tender age, known what it is to lose an affectionate mother, and under circumstances at all similar to those just described, will be at no loss to comprehend the utter desolation of their bruised spirits: to those who have not sustained this most ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... a significance and present a face so keen and strange that it is as if we had never met it before. An Orphan Court! Again he said the words to himself, and then aloud. No doubt the law did its best for the fatherless and motherless, for such waifs and strays as that which lay beside him. When it bound out children, it was most emphatic that they should be fed and clothed and taught; not starved or beaten unduly, or let to grow up ignorant as negroes. Sometimes the law ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... to the window, together they sat there until from the fleckless blue of the frosty sky the little stars shone out one by one, twinkling soft bright eyes towards Darby as if to say, "Good-night, you poor little motherless lamb! Go to bed; sleep sound, and we shall watch your pillow the whole ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... Down went the motherless babies as four ruthless hands pulled apart their cosey nest, and there, among the nibbled fragments, appeared enough finely printed, greenish paper, to piece out parts of two bank bills. A large cypher and part of a figure one were visible, and that ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... child-birth. Some of the distressing repercussions from these tragedies have been revealed in the annual report of the Director-General of Health, 1936, which shows that in that period 338 children were left motherless by the death of ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... years, and all that time it was our great sorrow that we were childless, and I fervently thanked God on the day she told me our hopes were to be realized. Had I known the trouble that child was to cost me, I would have been less fervent. A little girl was born to us, and a week later she was motherless." ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... eyes. I went to bed, about half-past nine it was this night, and I was lying quietly in bed, looking up to the ceiling; no light on account of the mosquitoes, and Maud, the little girl I was caring for, a romping dear of seven or eight, a motherless child, had been tossing about restless like, and her arm was flung over me. All at once I saw a lady standing by the side of the bed in her night dress and looking earnestly at the child beyond me. She ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... forgive myself. Never! For I can never say that I didn't suspect myself of being unfit. It will break my heart. I have been so proud to think that I had never failed any one who trusted me. And now a poor motherless girl, who was to be my especial care, who had no one but me to care for her—Oh, Judith, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... mother; For my quick heart caught all your history When with a hurried step you sought the sun, And pressed your eyes against the windowpane That God's sweet light might dry them. Well I knew Though all untaught, that you were motherless. And I remember how I followed you,— Embraced and kissed you—kissed your tears away— Tears that came faster, till they bathed the lips That would have sealed their flooded fountain-heads; And then we ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... watched. Part of the time each herd was kept in an inclosed range, fed and watered, and carefully handled by a big force of cowboys. She employed three cowboy scouts whose sole duty was to ride the ranges searching for stray, sick, or crippled cattle or motherless calves, and to bring these in to be treated and nursed. There were two cowboys whose business was to master a pack of Russian stag-hounds and to hunt down the coyotes, wolves, and lions that preyed upon the herds. The better ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... "'Motherless chilluns sees hard times; just ain't got no whar to go; goes from do' to do',' dat's de song dey got up. I doesn't know whar it come from. 'Nother one was: 'When de sun refuse to shine; Lord I wants to be in de number, when ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... up a poor, little motherless thing, such a night as this!" muttered she, putting her spectacles, the thermometer of her anger, on the top of her head. "To leave her there to perish. Why, the wild beasts themselves would be ashamed of such behaviour, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... dash at notoriety by a runaway marriage with the first scamp they can find, and repenting in poverty and social ostracism the romance they conceived in wealth and luxury. They deserve their fate. But when a sensitive girl is motherless, cut off from friends and pleasures, presented with the alternative of solitude or marriage with some detested man, or locked up to forget a dream which was half realised and very sweet, then the case is different. If she breaks her bonds, and flies ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... father but a short time, and left her children orphaned while they were yet very young. Gustavo was but nine and a half years old at the time of his mother's death. Fortunately an old and childless uncle, D. Juan Vargas, took charge of the motherless boys until they could ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... came down, he missed her more and more again, and he whimpered as he limped along, a miserable, lonely, little, motherless Bear—not lost in the mountains, for he had no home to seek, but so sick and lonely, and with such a pain in his foot, and in his stomach a craving for the drink that would nevermore be his. That night he found a hollow log, and crawling in, he ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... intending to send for her as soon as he obtained permanent employment. Before he had done so, the French wife died in giving birth to little Hugh; and the matter coming to the knowledge of Mrs. Gurney, she had pitied the motherless babe and had him placed in a comfortable home. As he grew older, Mrs. Gurney became so fond of her young protege that he was taken into the family, and was given an education that enabled him, in later years, to be of much service to ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... stood where, on the first tap of the supper bell, each could snatch a seat near the upper end of the table and so collectively assume among the hundreds on the boat that separate and superior station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitled them. The squire had his motherless children aboard but could leave them to a sister and brother-in-law. Which reminded the twins to look after their sister, on the roof, as hereinbefore set forth. But both the bishop and the senator were thoughtful for them and when ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl whose fingers thin Crushed from her faintly ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Collector's only child, and motherless—sat and gazed out of the windows in a delicious terror. For hours that morning the travellers had ploughed their way over a plain of blown sand, dotted with shrub-oaks, bay-berries, and clumps of Indian grass; then, at a point where the tall cliffs began, had wound down to the sea between ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... violet-eyed widow of Jimmy Blair. And all night long, from gray dusk until crimson dawn, Dr. DeLancey had sat in the darkened parlor of the warm little house of red brick; he had sat in a rocking chair, and on either old knee he had held a sob-wracked, grief-torn, motherless girl, the one herself almost old enough to be a mother. And again he had cried. Some doctors may lose through oft-recurrence visualized their susceptibility to suffering; but Dr. DeLancey was not of them. And when he stumbled on stiffened legs out of the ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... mission were two of his most needy and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville. The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable pleasures, he had intrusted with the education of his motherless daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission, that he might marry her at the proper time to any person he chose, or to himself if he liked it better. This man entered into the new plans of his master with great zeal, and introduced to him one Prelati, an alchymist of Padua, and a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... time that Major Carew returned from his long trek, two girls sat in a wide window-seat and looked somewhat disconsolately across the fresh spring green of the park. Both were the daughters of South African millionaires. Both were motherless, and one an orphan. They were also cousins, and the same roof ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... and by it began to look as though she had forgotten that there were more than five. She could not count. But most mothers can number their children, even if they cannot count, and soon Calico began to fidget, looking up at the hat which the hungry, motherless squirrels kept rocking. Then she leaped out upon the floor, purring, and bounded upon the table, going straight to ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... prove the final wrench to a heart that had been on the verge of breaking for many a year, and it was not long before Olive and Cyril were motherless. ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dumb, yes, poor and motherless, Friendless and obscure; Only her father left to her, And he ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... sorely perplexed and pushed away his half-eaten supper. He knew himself what it was to be friendless and lonely, and his heart softened toward this worse than motherless child. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... earth we see the tragic results of botched work. Wooden legs, armless sleeves, numberless graves, fatherless and motherless homes everywhere speak of somebody's carelessness, somebody's blunders, somebody's habit of inaccuracy. The worst crimes are not punishable by law. Carelessness, slipshodness, lack of thoroughness, are crimes against self, against humanity, that often do more harm ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... for the voice. It didn't matter whether they were Fidos, or Carlos, or Rovers, or Pontos; they knew that they were lonesome little dogs, and perhaps somebody had remembered them. Lola's tender heart ached at the sight of so many fatherless and motherless ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... forgotten about Mrs. Parmigan! She was a dear old thing; had actually been nursery governess to Miss Grantley; and, having married and been left a widow, had heard of her former pupil and young mistress being left fatherless and motherless, and now brought her small annuity to Barton Vale, and helped to teach in the school and to be a sort of mother to Miss Grantley, without wanting any wages, and only just her board and lodging, beside which she ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... hold thy peace. Nay, then, this idle prating hath a certain foundation, as smoke aye shows some little fire beneath, and I'll tell it thee. When William Molines lay a-dying his mind was sore distraught at leaving his poor, motherless maid alone, for his son Joseph had gone before him, so he sent for me to watch with him that night, and somewhere in the small hours we thought his time had come, and he besought me to promise that I would take the maid under my ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... had given me, and showed it to her, my eyes sparkling with pleasure. She opened it with care, and, looking through it attentively, told me how privileged I was. In fact, several times during the retreat, the truth came home to me that very few motherless children of my age are as lovingly cared for ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... as an avowed and doubtless unregenerate enemy of that sacred flag; but, as has been said, that was before it was pointed out to him that this was the Honorable M. C. from the Pelican State, now prominent as a member of the House Committee on Military Affairs. Motherless and sister-less was the wounded boy, yet gentle and almost caressing hands had blessed his pillow and helped to drive fever and delirium to the winds. It was twelve days after they brought him back to Frayne before ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... said in a voice that might have come down from heaven on dove wings, "you can't for a moment feel or think that I don't realize and appreciate what you have been to the motherless little chap, and for life I am yours at command, as he is. I really thought it would be a relief to you to have him taken away from you for just a little while right now, and I still think it is best; but not unless you consent. You shall have him back whenever you ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... times when he was quartered at Norwich with his regiment. The biographers of Elizabeth Fry tell us that the Duke "was amongst the few who addressed words of friendly caution and sound advice to the young and motherless sisters at Earlham." She never forgot the old friendship—a friendship which had been increased by the unfailing interest of both the Duke and Duchess in her philanthropic work. As soon as she heard of ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... to them. It is rare enough for even a mother to speak explicitly to her daughter of what folk mean when they tell of the risks a girl runs who weds with a man like Thornton Daverill. But she may do so in such a way as to excite suspicion of the reality, and it is hard on motherless girls that they should not have this slender chance. A father can do nothing, and old fulminations of well-worn Scriptural jargon—hers was an adept in texts—had not even the force of their brutal plain speech. For to these girls ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the faces of those dark warriors, when passing the Great Oak's wigwam they beheld the moist eyes and tender leave-taking of that heroic old Chief and his motherless child, whose future depended so much on the coming contest, as following one after another they disappeared in ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... motherless young creature, needing counsel, had come to old Tabus to appeal to her art of prophecy and, if she wanted them, to render her any little services; for the old dame on the island was closely bound to Ledscha, the daughter of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lady of noble birth named Princess Terute. Very different in character, alas! to the good and wise Princess Murasaki, this woman had a cruel, bad heart. She did not love her step-daughter at all, and was often very unkind to the little motherless girl, ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... potshots at the enemy when they present themselves is rather fun. When you watch them scattering like ants before the shell whose direction you have ordered, you somehow forget to think of them as individuals, any more than the bear-hunter thinks of the cubs that will be left motherless. You watch your victims through your glasses as God might watch his mad universe. Your skill in directing fire makes you what in peace times would be called a murderer. Curious! You're glad, and yet at close quarters only in hot blood would you ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... of duty; did they not all belong to this unhappy class? It might safely be inferred that they had no mothers! Such person were to be pitied and helped, rather than condemned for what was the fault not of their natures but of their anomalous situation in life. To rescue a motherless young soul from the brink of perdition was the noblest task of a Christian. And this was still, thank Heaven, a Christian country, despite the ever-swelling invasion of that irreligious foreign element which threatened to break up ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... leaving school at the end of July for the last time, after a surfeit of examinations, had been pronounced 'tired out' by an old aunt, a certain Lady Cassiobury, who came for long periodical visits to Mannering, and made a show of looking after her motherless niece. Accordingly she had been packed off to Scotland for August to stay with a school friend, one of a large family in a large country house in the Highlands. And there, roaming amid lochs and heather, with a ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The motherless boy looked after her until she had disappeared, and stared at the door that had closed upon her until he was recalled from his reverie by the voice of his friend, suggesting that they now see the rabbits. Edgar looked at the gentle creatures with unseeing eyes, though he appeared ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... have been forced to drop his tools and, since his children were young and motherless, attend to this bothersome duty. For fathers played a more intimate part in the homes of that generation than they do now. At any rate he was certainly familiar with the problems that entered into the cooking of the ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... from an Anglo-Indian friend. This was Sir Jasper Nicolls, K.C.B., a veteran of Assaye and Bhurtpore, who had settled down in England and wanted a young girl as companion for, and to be brought up with, his own motherless daughter. The two got into correspondence; and, the necessary arrangements having been completed, little Lola Gilbert, beside herself with delight, was in the summer of 1830 packed off to Sir ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... that reached port almost the day she got the despatch, were not those of her only son, but of one who had practically died for him. And even in the joy of that supreme moment the woman in her turned, after all, in pity to weep for the motherless lad who had been her boy's warmest friend in his hours of doubt and darkness ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... house than in any other house in town, John—answer me squarely, son—answer me," she cried. He shook his head sadly and sighed. "A mother, whose heart bleeds every hour as she sees her son torturing himself with footless remorse; that is one. A heart-broken, motherless girl, whose lover has been torn away from her by her father's vanity and her own pride, and whose mother has been taken as a pawn in the game her father played with no motive, no benefit, nothing but to win his point ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... as soft and weak as a woman's. His wife's death, the care he had been compelled to bestow upon his little ones, together with the thought that the poor motherless children needed to be dearly loved, had combined to make it so, and such a hard struggle took place within him, especially as he was ashamed of his weakness, and tried to conceal his distress from little Marie, that the perspiration stood out on his forehead and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... better for her to go away, better that he should not know of the sadness of his mother's life. And for seventeen years she had kept away from him. It is true she had made inquiries concerning his life at St. Mabyn, but very little more. Paul had grown up with the idea that he was fatherless and motherless, or even if that were not the case he knew nothing about either of them. Then, presently, when the time came for her to tell him the miserable story of the past, she had written asking him to meet her on the lonely moors, and after that she had gone ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... black slaves. Day after day the clank of chained feet marching from Virginia and Carolina to Georgia was heard in these rich swamp lands. Day after day the songs of the callous, the wail of the motherless, and the muttered curses of the wretched echoed from the Flint to the Chickasawhatchee, until by 1860 there had risen in West Dougherty perhaps the richest slave kingdom the modern world ever knew. A hundred and fifty barons commanded the labor of nearly six thousand ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... married yet, and she said then, "Yes; I'll do anything for the benefit of my family, so as to turn my useless life to some practical account." Well, it began like this about Lord Luxellian courting her. The first Lady Luxellian had died, and he was in great trouble because the little girls were left motherless. After a while they used to come and see her in their little black frocks, for they liked her as well or better than their own mother—-that's true. They used to call her "little mamma." These children ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... corpse, and the spot was left long before the pile was consumed, while the husband seemed more cheerful than had been expected, and spoke about finding a nurse among the white women for his infant and motherless child, Dil-boong.[76] The next day he invited the same party of Europeans to see him rake the ashes together, and none of his own people were present at this ceremony. He went before his companions in a sort of solemn silence, speaking to no one until he had ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... place, it must be understood that she was motherless, brotherless and sisterless. She had been Mr. Grey's only child, and her mother had been dead for fifteen or sixteen years. She was now about thirty years of age, but was generally regarded as ranging somewhere between forty and fifty. "If she isn't nearer fifty than ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... old world was in its tender infancy, there was a child, named Epimetheus, who never had either father or mother; and, that he might not be lonely, another child, fatherless and motherless like himself, was sent from a far country, to live with him, and be his playfellow and ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... which Miss Ludington lived had become, through habit, so endeared to her that when, a few years after she had been settled in her ghostly village, a cousin died in poverty, bequeathing to her with his last breath a motherless infant boy, it was with great reluctance that she accepted the charge. She would have willingly assumed the support of the child, but if it had been possible would have greatly preferred providing for him elsewhere ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... native of Arcis, like Simon Giguet. Born about 1807; son of the former huntsman of the Simeuse family, enriched by the purchase of public lands. (See preceding biography.) Early left motherless, he came to Arcis to live with his father, who abandoned the abbey of Valpreux. Went to the Imperial lyceum, where he had Simon Giguet for school-mate, whom he afterwards met again on the benches of the Law school at Paris. Obtained, through Gondreville, the Cross of the Legion of Honor. The royal ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... neighbor, except the farm-laborer who did an occasional day's labor for her father, was Mrs. Nixey, the tenant of a farmhouse, which lay at the head of a valley running up into the range of hills. Mrs. Nixey had given as much supervision to Phebe's motherless childhood as her father had permitted, in his jealous determination to be everything to his little daughter. Of late years, ever since old Marlowe in the triumph of making an investment had communicated ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... number of them might be greater, but "'t is enough, 't will serve," in Mercutio's modest phrase, so far as frequency is concerned. For a just estimate of the importance of the singular circumstance, it might be proper to consult the languid survivors, the widowed husbands, and the motherless children, as well as ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... words Upon her lips, the Lady Mildred passed Unto the rest prepared for her pure soul; Words that meant only this: I cannot trust Unto her earthly parent my young child, So leave her to her heavenly Father's care; And Heaven was gentle to the motherless, And fair and sweet the maiden, Gladys, grew, A pure white rose in the old castle set, The while ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... brother these five sisters had, a brilliant but superficial boy, with no stable character, who became a drunkard and died after lingering on for years, a source of intense shame to his family. The girls were left motherless at an early age. Four were sent to a boarding school for clergymen's daughters, but two died from exposure and lack of nutritious food, and the others, starved mentally and physically, returned to their home. This ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... blessed be the name of the Lord;"—but it was manifest to all that her faith was fainting within her. But of all the piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my thoughts more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate of one of the vessels in the jeopardy. He was an Englishman that had been settled some years in the town, where his family had neither kith nor kin; and his wife having died about a ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... Trenire was only too gentle and kind and patient with his four motherless children; but to-day, when they slowly, and at a discreet distance, followed Jabez into the study, Kitty felt a sudden conviction that things were not going to be quite as simply and easily got over as usual. She saw a look cross her ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... roar and din and clamor of cities, were all sorts of wrongs that needed righting, wounds that cried out to be healed. There were motherless children, there were helpless sufferers moaning for the sight of a green field, but the superfluous females of Amanda Dalton's day had not awakened to any sense of responsibility with regard to their unknown brothers ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... him to her breast and hilt him close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last po' strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down, and her arms sort o' drooped away and then we see she was gone, po' creetur. And Clay, he—Oh, the po' motherless thing—I cain't talk abort it—I cain't ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Sorrento, in one of the charming villas which sweep down to the very brow of the cliffs, educated in Rome up to his fifteenth year; taken at that age from the dreamy, drifting land and thrust into the noisy, bustling life which was his inheritance; fatherless and motherless at twenty; a college youth who was for ever mixing his Italian with his English and being laughed at; hating tumult and loving quiet; warm-hearted and impulsive, yet meeting only habitual reserve from his compatriots ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of scrapes. Another son became an artist; not great like his father, but very helpful and a comfort to him. Then his wife died, and Titian had loved her so dearly that for a long time he had not the heart to paint much. His sister, Orsa, came to live at his home and take care of his motherless children. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... stern and steady pride, but there were differences of temperament that led to frequent clashes of will between them. Reuben Hallowell loved both his motherless children, but he understood his son less well than his daughter. What would be the result of that interview, Cicely wondered, sitting quaking beside the candle that burned so lonely in the gloom. Would her father know how to be ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... you left me, my darling?" she wailed after the funeral. "How shall I live now without you, wretched creature that I am. Pity me, good people, pity me, fatherless and motherless, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... hearing these words, and she felt them to be a prophecy. And God did bless her. In bestowing love and care upon the motherless little ones, she received from above double for all she gave. In blessing, she was twice blessed. About them her heart entwined daily new tendrils, until her own life beat with theirs in even pulses, and to seek their good was the ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... the motherless boy sat watching his flock on the sunny downs, he cast his eyes towards the distant blue sea, and wondered what strange lands might be beyond. The thought of his father would then come across his mind. His imagination pictured him still living in those far away unknown ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... all the simple charm of the people and the natural beauty of the place there came a period of sorrowing and grief. The motherless daughter of an official of the Lord of the Manor, a beautiful girl who was the idol of her family and loved by everybody, fell a victim to the villainy of her father's assistant to whom she was engaged to be married; he betrayed her and then left the village, and no one ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... at his wife's desertion of him for grandees who would never thank her; but he gave in to the prolongation of her absence with a better grace, when he learned how the motherless baby was regarded by his own people. The humanity of the man rose in defence of the injured. He felt also that, in espousing the cause of his wife's nephew, scorned by his baronet father, he was taking the part of his own down-trodden class. He was greatly perplexed, however, as to what ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... forward with an outstretched hand scarcely less frank than her husband's. Then Clarence lifted his eyes. He saw before him the woman to whom his childish heart had gone out with the inscrutable longing and adoration of a motherless, homeless, companionless boy; the woman who had absorbed the love of his playmate without sharing it with him; who had showered her protecting and maternal caresses on Susy, a waif like himself, yet had ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... were motherless; the daughter reigned as mistress of her father's house, acknowledging no control save his, and that was of the mildest kind. Captain Tillotson was the most indulgent of parents; his wife had died while ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... improvement in their work, besides developing some entirely new acts on the flying rings. During this time they had been living with Mrs. Cahill, who, it will be remembered, had proved herself a real friend to the motherless boys. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... "My mother was a motherless girl. My daddy said he looked at her struggling along. All the other girls were trying to have a good time. But she would be settin' down trying to make a quilt or something else useful, and he said to a friend of ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... charitable foundation. It was originally one of three royal hospitals in the city of London, founded by Edward VI., who is said to have been inspired by a sermon of Bishop Ridley on charity. Christ's hospital was specially devoted to fatherless and motherless children. The buildings of the monastery of Grey Friars, Newgate Street, were appropriated to it; liberal public subscription added to the king's grant endowed it richly; and the mayor, commonalty and citizens of London were nominated its governors in its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various |
