"Childless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worlds—invite a woman, of whom none of their number had ever heard, to come from Omaha and take the domestic management of his hearth and home. All he knew of her was what he heard there. She was the widow of a volunteer officer who had died of disease contracted during the war. She was childless, almost destitute, accomplished, and so devoted to her church duties. She was interesting and refined, and highly educated. He heard the eulogiums pronounced by the good priest and some of his flock, and Mrs. Fletcher, a substantial ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... forty-one of his own and his wife's relations. "God left him childless that he might be the ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... jealous, because the senora—does not hate us. That woman's heart is wicked, wickedness was born in her, yet, as none are altogether evil, she has one virtue, her love of the senora. She is husbandless and childless, for even among the black people, as I have learnt from the Settlement men, all have feared her and shrunk from her notwithstanding her good looks. Therefore, everything that is best in her has gone to nourish this love for the woman whom she nursed from a babe. It was ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... surprised into a betrothal to M. de la Peltrie, a young gentleman of rank and character. The marriage proved a happy one, and Madame de la Peltrie, with an excellent grace, bore her part in the world she had wished to renounce. After a union of five years, her husband died, and she was left a widow and childless at the age of twenty-two. She returned to the religious ardors of her girlhood, again gave all her thoughts to devotion and charity, and again resolved to be a nun. She had heard of Canada; and when Le Jeune's ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... invalid unfit for the struggle of life, the genius in science or art or statesmanship and the hopelessly trivial mind, the youth in a harmonious, beautiful family life and the childhood in an atmosphere of discord, the home full of love from wife and children and the house childless and chilly, the honours of the community and the disappointment of social bankruptcy—they are the great premiums and the great punishments, which are whirled by fate into the crowd of mankind. Even here most of it ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... right to apprise me, Glennaquoich; he may look as black as midnight at Martinmas ere Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine shall say he does him wrang. Ah! I have nae male lineage, and I should bear with one I have made childless, though you are aware the blood-wit was made up to your ain satisfaction by assythment, and that I have since expedited letters of slains. Weel, as I have said, I have no male issue, and yet it is needful that I maintain the honour of my house; and it is on that score I ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and smart a boy as any in the back woods! Here we set ourselves down in the wilderness, worked day and night, went through toil and danger, hunger and thirst, heat and cold. And for what? Here we are alone, deserted, childless; with nothin' left for us but to pray and cry, to curse and groan. No help; all in vain. I shall go out of my mind, I expect. If he were dead!—if he were lyin' under the hillock yonder beside his brothers, I would say nothing. He gave, and He has a right to take away! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... In 1787, the childless Rajah decided on—after the fashion of many Hindoo princes—adopting an heir, who might perform the last duties which were incumbent on a son. His choice fell upon the son of a near kinsman, a child ten years of age, whom he named Serfojee. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... childless, I should get all the free-hold property?" he said at last, waking up suddenly from that state of abstraction, and turning his thoughtful face ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... were in mourning, yet dressed with elegant simplicity, befitting their rank and position in society. The Chevalier Le Gardeur de Tilly had fallen two years ago, fighting gallantly for his King and country, leaving a childless widow to manage his vast domain and succeed him as sole guardian of their orphan niece, Amelie de Repentigny, and her brother Le Gardeur, left in infancy to the care of their noble relatives, who in every respect ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... early summoned to the hemp and corn, The nursing mother leaves her child new-born; There haggard sickness, weak and deathly faint, Crawls to his task, and fears to make complaint; And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay, Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away! Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands, In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands; The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean, The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean. Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift, Signs ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to Odin's glad banquet-hall. But upon a day she failed to do the All-Father's bidding, and he, in anger, sent her to live among men, and like them to be short-lived, and subject to old age and death. But the childless old king of Isenland took pity upon the friendless maiden, and called her his daughter, and made her his heir. Then Odin, still more angered, sent the thorn of sleep to wound the princess. And sleep seized upon every creature in Isenland, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... rheumatism, and one foot was lame from ingrowing nails,—deviations that, however, did not tend to correct the original angularities of his frame. His wife, on the other hand, had a pretty figure, which still retained—they were childless—the rounded freshness of maidenhood. Her features were irregular, yet not without a certain piquancy of outline; her hair had the two shades sometimes seen in imperfect blondes, and her complexion the sallowness of ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... family—consisting of Mrs. Sherwood and her brother's childless widow; Gussie and Dexie, twin girls of sixteen; Louie, aged thirteen, Georgie ten, Flossie three, and a year-old baby in the arms of black Dinah—arrived in Halifax, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... watching over a hope that she felt might make her last days her best days. She was almost praying that the fair girl whom she had so learned to love might become the solace of her age, and fill, in her childless heart, a place that had ever been an aching void. Miss St. John was too preoccupied to see any lover but one, and he was ever present, though thousands of miles away. But she saw in Graham his friend, and had already accepted him also as her most agreeable friend, liking him ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... evil is not here? Your father slew His father, and then eared the mother field Where he himself was sown, and got you from The source of his own birth. Such taunts will fly. And who will marry you? No man, my daughters; But ye must wither childless and unwed. Son of Menoeceus, who alone art left As father to these maidens, for the pair That gave them birth are utterly undone, Suffer them not, being your kinswomen, To wander desolate and poor, nor make Their lot perforce the counterpart of mine. But look on them with pity, left ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... this, and must have foreseen it; and his taking the long journey for so small a reward gave the measure of his impatience. He was undeniably in pursuit of the Countess Olenska; and Beaufort had only one object in view in his pursuit of pretty women. His dull and childless home had long since palled on him; and in addition to more permanent consolations he was always in quest of amorous adventures in his own set. This was the man from whom Madame Olenska was avowedly flying: the question was whether ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... masterpieces than were the exigencies of a livelihood. It was not unpardonable in a moment of exhaustion and chagrin to fancy that he had offered up the treasures of his genius to the dull gods of the hearth. But if he had been childless and unwedded, the result would have been the same. He is the munificent prodigal of letters, always believing his substance inexhaustible, never placing a limit to his fancies nor a bound to his outlay. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... household goddess, is often kept as a kind of pet in the houses of the peasants. Barren women still go to the ruined temples of the forsaken gods in the hope that there is virtue in the stones; and I myself have given permission to disappointed husbands to take their childless wives to these places, where they have kissed the stones and embraced the figures of the gods. The hair of the jackal is burnt in the presence of dying people, even of the upper classes, unknowingly to avert the jackal-god Anubis, the Lord of Death. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... tent to calm in solitude, as best she may, her bosom's strife. Why must she be thus afflicted? Severe, indeed, and bitter are the elements which are mingled in her cup. Jehovah has judged her. She has been taught to believe that those who are childless are so because of His just displeasure. Her fellow-creatures also despise her; her neighbors look suspiciously upon her. Wherefore should it be thus? She wanders slowly, and with breaking heart, towards the Tabernacle. The aged ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... local appellations are given referring to some peculiarity of personal appearance, Parn-gang-gapko, the baldheaded, Towang Makkeroo, the broken-thighed, etc. Others again refer to family bereavements, as Roo ptootarap, a father without children, Parntomakker, a childless mother, Parnko, an orphan, Wirrang, one who has lost a brother, Rockootarap, one whose wife is dead, Thaltarlpipke, an unmarried man, Rartchilock, one who owns a wife, Rang, a widow, Waukerow, an unmarried woman, etc. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago: The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise, with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... luck. The next morning I received a letter from Uncle Bob asking me to go to Wimberley; and early in the following week I travelled up to Cumberland. I received a warm welcome from the old General. As a boy I used to spend the greater part of my holidays with him, and being childless himself, he regarded me more or less ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... not know, he says, when he will grow used to it. These extravagant expressions of delight show me how great must have been their fears beforehand. Louis has confided in me that he had believed himself condemned to be childless. Poor fellow! he has all at once developed very much, and he works even harder than he did. The father in him ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... after all, a cloud that cast a shadow upon the happiness of the Lindsays,—a cloud of which they rarely spoke, but about which each of them thought a great deal: they were childless. In the early months of their married life they had been wont to talk of their prospective children, and to say what they would do and what they would not do when they had a child; but when the months lengthened into years, and still there was neither son nor daughter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... of revenge reigns regret. Where is my revenge? It gleamed like nectar, and when I drained it consuming poison clung to my lips. To revenge is to regret—for ever! To-day how utterly widowed; to-morrow—childless. Oh, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... "Son of Heaven," and holds the supreme spiritual and temporal power in his hands. On his accession he gives an arbitrary name to his reign, which also becomes his own. He chooses his successor himself from among his sons. If he is childless he chooses one of his nearest relations, but then he adopts his future successor that the latter may make offerings to the souls of himself and his ancestors. The yellow robe and the five-clawed dragon are the emblems of the imperial house. The Emperor is immeasurably superior to his people, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... A distant and childless relative, who made him a visit, pleased with his energy and enterprise, and touched by the development of his social views, left him a considerable sum, at a moment too when a great opening was offered to manufacturing capital and skill. Trafford, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... virtuous maiden in two of his previous existences. Evidently Chinese religious sentiment required a Madonna and it is not unnatural if the god of mercy, who was reputed to assume many shapes and to give sons to the childless, came to be thought of chiefly in a feminine form. The artists of the T'ang dynasty usually represented Avalokita as a youth with a slight moustache and the evidence as to early female figures does not seem to me strong,[38] though a priori I see ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... both of them. He is a little loose, shy, independent person. Except for eating and drinking—in moderation, he has never done anything real from the day he was born. He has frequently not even faced the common challenge of matrimony. Still more frequently is he childless, or the daring parent of one particular child. He has never traded nor manufactured. He has drawn his dividends or his salary with an entire unconsciousness of any obligations to policemen or navy for these punctual payments. Probably he has never ventured even to ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, that makes me so; but it really is because I think women who have nice children should be better than other women. It would be worse for one of them to do a wrong thing than for poor childless me." ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... have been staying is a man of considerable wealth. He has no occupation but the pursuit of culture. He is married to a charming wife, also wealthy; but they are childless, and the result is that they have nothing to expend their energies upon except books and art and society. At long intervals my friend produces a tiny volume, beautifully printed and bound, which he presents to his friends. Last year it was an account of some curious religious ceremonies which ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... contest, and said discontentedly,— "Have your own way, Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,—you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... solitary, and because in my youth, when Love came to me, I was a coward, by reason of worldly considerations, and let it plead in vain, alas! And thus, although my friends were many in those days, my empty heart was always solitary, and now—my friends are mostly dead, and I am—a childless, lonely old man!" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... sword and shield are gracefully disposed before him. At the corner of the gaddi sits a little representation of himself in miniature, complete even to the sword and shield. This is his adopted son and heir. For all the queens and all the grand duchesses are childless, and a little kinsman had to be transplanted from a mud village among the cornfields to this dreamland palace to perpetuate the line. On the corners of the carpet on which the gaddi rests sit thakores of the Royal house, other thakores ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... peculiar to the faith of the Christians came under our review. It was more than midnight when we rose from our seats to retire to our chambers. But before we did that, a common feeling directed our steps to the tomb of Gallus, which was but a few paces from where we had been sitting. There these childless parents again gave way to their grief and was I stone, that I ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... of the simplest kind had followed; the marriage of her son and birth of her grandson, who had cost his mother her life. Then the following year had come the Boer War, and the heroic tragedy of Spion Kop, which left her childless; after that, many years of utter devotion, to her grandson, who adored her; then the Great War and the Battle of the Falkland Islands, which left her absolutely bereft, with the care of the boy's greatest treasure, ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... or Kensington Manor we traced to the three sisters of the last Earl. One of these died childless, the other two married respectively John Nevill, Lord Latimer; and Sir Anthony Wingfield. Family arrangements were made to prevent the division of the estate, which passed to Lucy Nevill, Lord Latimer's third daughter. ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... devoted Christian. My child had always loved her, and I felt that I could leave her in such hands with the utmost confidence. But I had a home still, in name at least, for all the sunshine had gone out of the word 'home' for me. I returned the next day to our childless house: where was the mother? She lay on the floor of her dressing-room, crushed in spirit to the dust. I raised her up; she would not look at me, but hid her face in her hands; her eyes were dry, she had wept away all her tears. I could not bear her grief, and I tried to comfort her; all might yet ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... husband's health. They are about to move to a new residence on the Lake of Neuchatel in a week, and they will be ready to receive Mrs. Miller as visitor in a fortnight from that time. This said, the writer next enters into an important domestic detail. She has been childless for years—she and her husband have now no hope of children; they are lonely; they want an interest in life; they have decided on adopting a child. Here the important part of the letter begins; and here, therefore, I read it to ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... house? He was very tall, and being in bad health might have died suddenly. My being received, argued nothing against this, since the first nine days after a death, the house is invariably crowded with friends and acquaintances, and the widow, or orphan, or childless mother must receive the condolences of all and sundry, in the midst of her first bitter sorrow. There seems to be no idea of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... arms, the baby shrank closer to Beryl, nestled her head under the girl's chin, and put up her lower lip in ominous protest. With an indescribably mournful gesture of surrender, the childless mother sank back in the corner of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... your rare nature, must want to have a child," he continued. "I don't know which must be worse: for a childless woman to long for a child or to have one ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... only one, The stay and comfort of my widowhood, A dear good boy!—when first he went to sea I felt what it would come to,—something told me I should be childless soon. But tell me Sir If it be true that for a hurt like his There is no cure? please God to spare his life Tho' he be blind, yet I should be so thankful! I can remember there was a blind man Lived in our village, one from his youth up Quite ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... Grosley saw, the heroine of Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas. The unhappy Charles II. of Spain, a kind of 'mammet' (as the English called the Richard II. who appeared up in Islay, having escaped from Pomfret Castle), had for his first wife a daughter of Henrietta, the favourite sister of our Charles II. This childless bride, after some ghostly years of matrimony, after being exorcised in disgusting circumstances, died in February 1689. In May 1690 a new bride, Marie de Neubourg, was brought to the grisly side of the crowned mammet of Spain. She, too, failed ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... curiosity of Paris into affection. The cortege which entered the capital with Louis XVIII. brought back, in a singular motley of obsolete and of foreign costumes, the bearers of many unforgotten names. The look of the King himself, as he drove through Paris, pleased the people. The childless father of the murdered Duke of Enghien gained the pitying attention of those few who knew the face of a man twenty-five years an exile. But there was one among the members of the returning families whom every heart in Paris went out to meet. The daughter of Louis XVI., who ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... for them and for their children smiling on them from every side. But if prosperity as a monarch was his, misfortune overshadowed King Alexander's private life. His wife died; his children died. His eldest son, born at Jedburgh, and married, as a lad, to a daughter of the Count of Flanders, died childless. His daughter, the young Queen of Norway, died the year after her marriage, leaving behind her the baby who has come down to us, even through chilly history, as a pitiful little figure, known ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Mrs. Collingwood, childless as they were, felt real happiness in having such a companion—such an adopted daughter, yet they were sure that some of Dean Stanley's great friends and acquaintance in high life would ask his niece to spend the spring in ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... and childless too, And yet believe your friends are true? Truth might perhaps to those belong, To those who lov'd you poor and young; But, trust me, for the new you have, They'll love you ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... is Rahel's expression, the tribute of admiration forced from the childless woman fresh from the Berlin salons, by the spectacle of Bettina romping with her children ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... one victim, to that doomed house. First one little head drooped, then another, then the soft eyes closed, and the little lip said, quiveringly, "It is all dark; kiss us, dear mother;" and Mrs. Adrian was a childless widow. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... of suitors. This of course is only the case with the younger women; the older women for one thing do not nag so much, and moreover they have usually children willing and able to support them. If they have not, their state is, like that of all old childless women in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... united right to might in England. Thus after a moment of darkness and downfall the seed of the righteous took root again and prospered, and the children of St. Margaret occupied both thrones. Edgar, like so many of his race, died childless; but he was peacefully succeeded by his brother Alexander, who, though as much devoted to church-building and good works as the rest of his family, was apparently a more warlike personage, since he was called Alexander the Fierce, an alarming title, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... manner suddenly became cold,—so suddenly that she felt assured the reason was not that which a childless wife might have reason to fear. Unable to discover the real cause, she tried to persuade herself that she had been remiss in her duties; examined her innocent conscience to no purpose; and tried very, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... stupid unfeeling brutes. I am, at least; for I had never read in this dear woman's face until that instant what must have been written there all these years,—the love that might have been given to a husband and children of her own, this lonely, childless woman had given ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... bud at one side of Abraham's head and the full-blown flower below his right ear; so why should she droop because the sale of her household goods had been somewhat disappointing? Somewhat? When the childless old couple, still sailing under the banner of a charity-forbidding pride, became practically reduced to their last copper, just as Abe's joints were "loosenin' up" after a five years' siege of rheumatism, and decided to sell all their worldly possessions, ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... and duly recognized, men could not look with the appalling lightness with which they do on providing some substitute for marriage, when they have not the means to marry in early life, and are under the very prevalent illusion that continent men who marry late run the risk of a childless marriage—a notion which so great an authority as Acton pronounces to be absolutely false physiologically, and without foundation in fact. To bring a child into the world to whom he can perform no one of the duties of a father, and to whom he ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... born, when all the sons of George III. were childless, the Duke of Kent was urged to marry, so that he might have a family to continue the succession. In resenting the suggestion he said many things, and among them this ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... permitted but rarely practised, a second wife being only taken if the first be childless or of bad character, or destitute of attractions. Divorce is allowed, but in some localities at any rate a divorced woman cannot marry again unless she is permitted to do so in writing by her first husband. If a girl be seduced before marriage a fine is imposed on both parties and they are ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... condescension to write to him with her own hand to inform him that she had given birth to a daughter. Great was the joy on this occasion, for the Empress had been married five years, but, until now, had been childless. Petrarch, in his answer, dated the 23rd of the same month, after expressing his sense of the honour which her Imperial Majesty had done him, adds some common-places, and seasons them with his accustomed pedantry. He pronounces a grand eulogy on the numbers of the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Cartier's marriage was childless, so that he left no direct descendants. But the branches of the family descended from the original Jean Cartier appear on the registers of St Malo, Saint Briac, and other places in some profusion during ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... the brother of a childless man was bound to marry his widow: or, at least, he "had the refusal of her," and the lady could not marry again till her husband's brother had formally rejected her. The ceremony by which this rejection was performed took place in open ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... Faugh! How uncanny and how cold! What lover would hang upon those ashen lips? Her bosom is marble, and in her stony heart there flames no fire. With her Ambition perishes and the Star of Hope forever fades. Her house is a ghastly tomb, her bed the granite rock, her lover childless, for her womb is barren." And the Youth, glancing with a shudder at the figure in the mist, drew close to Life and echoed her words with trembling lip, "How uncanny and how cold!" Thus fared he on through many a toilsome year, to where no shadow falls to East or West—to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... kissing her warmly and handing her to a chair; "you might have done this before. I'm such a lonely childless old widower." ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sickness tried, Obeyed the law of fate, and died; He left the kingdom to his son, And gained the heaven his deeds had won. The good Bhagirath, royal sage, Had no fair son to cheer his age. He, great in glory, pure in will, Longing for sons was childless still. Then on one wish, one thought intent, Planning the heavenly stream's descent, Leaving his ministers the care And burden of his state to bear, Dwelling in far Gokarna(194) he Engaged in long austerity. With senses checked, with ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... on, the increasing exigencies of his growing family induced Mrs. X——'s father to purchase a house in town, and he accordingly rented his country-mansion to a childless pair, a clergyman and his wife. The new residents had not been long installed when a series of ghostly disturbances began in real earnest. I believe that nothing more was ever seen, but the kitchen at night, when all the family had retired, would at times become the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... returning home, my rage appeas'd, My foes defeated, and my son aveng'd, I find there nothing left to comfort me. The glad obedience, which I used to see Kindling in every eye, is smother'd now In discontent and gloom; each, pond'ring, weighs The changes which a future day may bring, And serves the childless king, because compell'd. To-day I come within this sacred fane, Which I have often enter'd to implore And thank the gods for conquest. In my breast I bear an old and fondly-cherish'd wish. To which methinks thou canst not be a stranger; Thee, maid, a blessing to myself and realm, ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... mother, my child, from her own mother's vices! I thought my liking to that girl different from any other I have ever felt: it was pure—it was!—it was pity—affection. And I must never see her again—must forget the whole thing! And I sin growing old—and I am childless—and alone!" He paused, almost with a groan: and then the expression of his face changing to rage, he cried out, "The man threatened me, and I was a coward! What to do?—Nothing! The defensive is ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... years old when he married his wife, who was upwards of forty, yet I think her son told me she remained three years childless before he was born into the world, who so greatly contributed to improve it. In three years more she brought another son, Nathaniel, who lived to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, and of whose manly spirit I have heard his brother speak ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Mr. Canton," the Father went on in the same smooth voice, "was, as I have just learned from Mrs. Wilson, left to his daughter for life and to her children after her. If she died childless it was ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... thankful that I am as I am.'"[3] It is of interest further to state that Whittier's life-long friend and co-laborer in the anti-slavery field, Theodore D. Weld, was a nephew of "the wise old doctor." Also that another nephew, who was adopted as a son by the childless physician, was named "Greenleaf" for the young poet in whom he took so much interest. The grave of the Countess in the cemetery near Rocks Village is now better cared for than when the poem was written. This is not the cemetery ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... could have sworn to the terms of the Will; Mr. Burgin had little to teach me. Janet was the heiress; three thousand pounds per annum fell to the lot of Harry Lepel Richmond, to be paid out of the estate, and pass in reversion to his children, or to Janet's should the aforesaid Harry die childless. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... another, and wilt thou deprive him of his reward? If this appears great to thee, thou shouldst have recovered it from the rock to which it was fastened. Now, let him who has recovered it, through whom my old age is not childless, have what he stipulated for, both by his merits and his words; and know that he was preferred not before thee, but before ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... happier in the end for her decision. She herself was softened by it, and she yielded one point in return. Paul had steadily opposed his mother's plan of housekeeping, alone with one maid and a man who slept at the stables. The Dunlops, as it happened, were childless for the winter, young Chauncey attending a "commercial college" in a neighboring town. After many interviews and a good deal of self-importance on Cerissa's part, the pair were persuaded to close the old house and occupy the servants' wing on the Hill, as a distinct family, yet at ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Lady Henrietta, married to Lord Godolphin, who, by act of Parliament, succeeded as Duchess of Marlborough. She died in 1738, childless; and the issue of her next sister, Lady Sunderland, succeeded ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... who had sons not yet grown up had to submit to draw lots, the unhappy people began to revile AEgeus, complaining that he, although the author of this calamity, yet took no share in their affliction, but endured to see them left childless, robbed of their own legitimate offspring, while he made a foreigner and a bastard the heir to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the noble dead To vex their solemn slumber so; Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head, Up the ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... made her an allowance. He could hardly let his only daughter starve, people said, however badly she might have treated him. Lady Lurgrave's early death had been a crushing blow to his love and to his pride. She had died childless. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... At length, after the first heat of opposition was over, he led the weeping virgin to the tribunal of Ap'pius, and there plausibly exposed his pretensions. 10. Clau'dius asserted that she was born in his house, of a female slave, who sold her to the wife of Virgin'ius, who had been childless. That he had credible evidences to prove the truth of what he had advanced; but that, until they could come together, it was but reasonable the slave should be delivered into his custody, he being her proper master. 11. Ap'pius pretended to be ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... peace and happiness of the realm that, after her death, there should be no doubt about the succession. If she were to be married and leave children, they would succeed to the throne without question; but if she were to die single and childless, the result would be, they feared, that the Catholics would espouse the cause of Mary Queen of Scots, and the Protestants that of some Protestant descendant of Henry VII., and thus the country be involved in all the horrors of a protracted ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... king said to her one day, 'This can't be borne any longer. I go about childless, and it's your fault. I am going on a journey and shall be away for a year. If you have a child when I come back again, all will be well, and I shall love you beyond all measure, and never more say an angry word to you. But if the nest is just as empty when ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... A childless and widowed father in Washington remembers with a more than earthly peace, the wife and mother's last request for Wesley's hymn, and her departure to the sound of its music to join the ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... and noise, But I'd rather my personal pleasures be lost than to give up my girls and my boys. Not always they're perfectly good; there are times when they're wilfully bad, But I'd rather be worried by youngsters of mine than lonely and childless and sad. ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... different to what it does now. I tell you, Father O'Rourke, I believe my son is alive, and will come back some day to see me. I know he will. Do you think I doubt his love? Do I doubt my love for him? No. Father O'Rourke, you are a childless man yourself, and you do not know what the love of a mother is for her child, and I do not think you know what the love of a child is for its mother—a fond, loving mother, as I have been,—not such a child as mine. The day will come when Dermot will stand here, as you are ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... technicality. With little or no personal ambition, he had assisted in every political and social movement in the county for half a century, and knew the secret motives of every individual landowner. With large wealth, nothing to do, and childless, he took a liking to young Marthorne. The old man wished for nothing better than to talk; the young squire listened attentively. The old man was delighted to find some one who would sit with him through the long hours of Petty Sessional business. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... completely humbled by this victory. Tarquinius Superbus had no other state to which he could apply for assistance. He had already survived all his family; and he now fled to Cumae, where he died a wretched and childless ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... was second son of Sir John Smythe of Acton Burnell in Derbyshire. His daughter Mary Anne was married at nineteen to one of the Welds of Lulworth Castle, who died within a year, and afterwards to Thomas Fitzherbert, who left her a childless widow ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... succession of events by which the new arrangement was brought about was engineered principally by Napoleon's ex-marshal Bernadotte. May 28, 1810, Prince Charles Augustus of Augustenburg, whom the Riksdag had selected as heir to the infirm and childless Charles XIII., died, and after a notable contest, Bernadotte was agreed upon unanimously by the four estates (August 21) as the new heir. November 5 the adventuresome Frenchman received the homage of the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... men, black-haired and black-eyed, capable of bearing great fatigue, full to the brim of vitality. He was a great reader, fond of music and art; married to a no less cultivated and active wife, but childless. There never was a man who had a keener enjoyment of existence in all its aspects. It used to be a marvel to me to see at how many points a man could touch life, and the almost child-like zest which he threw into ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the European system was plunged by the death of the childless King of Spain, and that most dramatic of historical surprises, the bequest of his throne by a deathbed will to the Duke of Anjou, the second grandson of Louis XIV., furnished Defoe with a great opportunity for ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... in the little one, neither Joe nor his wife gave a look or a thought to Sonny, who was leaping upon them joyously. For years he had been almost the one centre of attention for the childless couple, who had treated him as a child, caressing him, spoiling him, and teaching him to feel his devotion necessary to them. Now, finding himself quite ignored, he quieted down all at once and stood for a few seconds gazing reproachfully at the scene. The intimacy with Joe and Ann which ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... predecessor. Bob had grown old and past his job and become afflicted with an obscure porcine disease, possibly senile decay, for which there was no remedy but merciful euthanasia. The Flints mourned him, desolate. They had not the heart to buy another. They were childless, pigless. But behold! There, to their hand was Andrew, fatherless, motherless. On an occasion, just after the funeral, for which Ben Flint paid, when Madame was mothering the tiny Andrew in her arms, and Ben stood staring, lost in yearning for the lost and beloved ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... marriage, with a lady of high birth, nearly connected with the imperial house. The effect of such a marriage went to incapacitate the children who might be born under it, male or female, from succeeding. On that account, as well as because current report had represented her as childless, the widow lady escaped all attempts from the assassin. Meantime this lady, who was no other than Sister Madeline, had been thus indebted for her safety to two rumors, which were in fact equally false. She soon found means of convincing the emperor, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is best. It is everything. It is the crown of life. Shall I give it up for the Dead Sea fruit of worldly success? Think of the Deemster! Wifeless, childless, living solitary, dying alone, unregretled, unmourned. What is the wickedness you are plotting? Your father is dead, you can do him neither good nor harm. This girl is alive. She loves you. Love her. Let the canting hypocrites ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... want to hear a few plain words, such as I shall rap out when God takes me to task about the peccadilloes of my past life? I don't believe a word about the relationship. A nephew must be the son of either a brother or a sister. Now, your only sister is an abbess, and your late brother's marriage was childless. There is only one way of proving the relationship, and that is to confess that when your brother was young and wild he and Love met, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... rebels. If she was to be persuaded to help the Reformers, they must produce some show of a legitimate "Authority" with whom she could treat. This was as easy to find as it was to the Huguenots in the case of Conde. Chatelherault and Arran, native princes, next heirs to the crown while Mary was childless, could be produced as legitimate "Authority." But to do this implied a change of "Authority," an upsetting of "Authority," which was plain rebellion in the opinion of the Genevan doctors. Knox was thus obliged, in sermons and in the pamphlet (Book II. of his ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... yet time and peace alone could give opportunity for the conditions of a permanent settlement to shape themselves. The name of Caesar had become identified with the stability of the Empire. He no doubt foresaw that the only possible chief would be found in his own family. Being himself childless, he had adopted his sister's grandson, Octavius, afterward Augustus, a fatherless boy of seventeen; and had trained him under his own eye. He had discerned qualities doubtless in his nephew which, if his ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... they are secretly aware that they cannot justly claim it. This is enough for many, and hence more harm is done by fear than could ever have been done by boldness. Boldness goes out into the fight, and if in the wrong gets slain, childless. Fear stays at home and is prolific of a ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... old woman was kind-hearted, and she cut her last loaf in two, giving one half to the beggar, who said, "I see you have been weeping, good wife, and I know the reason of your tears; but cheer up, by God's grace you shall be comforted. Though poor and childless to-day, to-morrow you shall ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... reverence, she owned that it was an act of great charity towards the poor lady, who, she hoped, was falling into a tranquil sleep, but who she would hardly have dared to leave. The pastor, though hardships, battles, and persecutions had left him childless, had been the father of a large family; and perhaps he was drawn the more strongly towards the mother and child, because he almost felt as if, in fulfilling the part of a father towards the widow of Berenger de Ribaumont, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to manage. An ill-starred woman, whose well-to-do husband is engaged in business all day, finds that a dull life-weariness overtakes her. If she has many children, her enforced activity preserves her from danger; but, if she is childless, the subtle temptation is apt to overcome her. She seeks unnatural exaltation, and the very secrecy which is necessary lends a strange zest to the pursuit of a numbing vice. Then we have such busy men as auctioneers, ship-brokers, water-clerks, ship-captains, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... "Childless art thou? dead thy children? leaving thee to want and dool? Less thy misery than his is, who ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... know, in short, whether Dudley and Amy were in love with each other or not. Their marriage, Cecil says, was childless. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... giant-powers of lust, The great, the sage, the happy, and august [3]. No gleam of hope their baleful mansion cheers, No sound of honour hails their unbless'd ears; But dire reproaches from the friend betray'd, The childless sire and violated maid; 300 But vengeful vows for guardian laws effaced, From towns enslaved, and continents laid waste; But long posterity's united groan, And the sad charge of horrors not their own, For ever through the trembling ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... what wrongs they had done to the interest of Christ, it was not his part, but he was persuaded that they would be remarkably punished for it. And to the laird of Logan he said, That he should be written childless; and Horseclugh, That he should suffer by burning. Both of which came afterwards ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... an early death shortly after his marriage when thrown by his horse. He was an only son and he died childless so that branch of the clan ended with the death of Mrs. George Washington Parke Custis. Fitzhugh's widow lived for ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... the happiness to present her lord with a son, she was raised to the rank of Empress and began to exert no little influence in the character of mother to an heir-apparent. Had she not been protected by her new rank her childless rival might have driven her from court and appropriated the boy. She had instead to admit a joint motherhood, which in a few years led to a ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... this story begins with a childless queen whose husband is absent at the wars. She is visited by an old woman on crutches, who gives her a little box of birch-bark containing a bird's egg, and tells her to foster it in her bosom for three months, till a live doll like a human infant is hatched from it. This was to be kept in a ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... his plate and his mail, and all that can render cowardice bold; I have sent such a javelin as this through a stronger fence than three of their war shields!—Haply they think me old; but they shall find, alone and childless as I am, the blood of Hereward is in the veins of Cedric.—Ah, Wilfred, Wilfred!" he exclaimed in a lower tone, "couldst thou have ruled thine unreasonable passion, thy father had not been left in his age like the solitary oak that throws out its shattered and unprotected branches against ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... every part of his internal administration, and in all his domestic relations. His first wife, whom he tenderly loved, died very young. His second wife exercised great influence over him, but seems to have been regarded by him rather with fear than with love. He was childless; and his constitution was so completely shattered that, at little more than thirty years of age, he had given up all hopes of posterity. His mind was even more distempered than his body. He was sometimes sunk in listless melancholy, and sometimes ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... intended to do his duty, and so should every man subject to his orders. The Government had trusted him and he held himself responsible. This would probably be his last duty, and it would be well done. He was childless, sixty-five years old, and had been idle for years. Now he would show his neighbors something of his skill and his power to command. He did not need the pay; he needed the occupation and the being in touch with the things about him. For the last fifteen ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... race is a worthy disciple of mine!' Thou hast obtained that end which great Rishis have declared to be the high reward of a Kshatriya slain in battle with his face towards the foe. I do not, O bull among men, grieve for thee, O Duryodhana! I grieve only for thy mother Gandhari and thy sire, childless as they now are. Afflicted with sorrow, they will have to wander over the earth, begging their food. Fie on Krishna, Vrishni's race, and on Arjuna of wicked understanding! They regard themselves conversant with the duties of morality, yet both of them stood indifferent whilst ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... idea of wedding Prince Rudolph in a more secure manner. When, in time, he became grand-duke, she was more eager than ever to enjoy what she considered her own. Though he had married, she hoped; and, the second wife having died childless, the Countess M'Gregor followed Rudolph into Prance, where he traveled incognito as Count Duren. As a last resort to force the grand-duke into her ambitious aims, she sought for a girl of the age that her own would have been, to pass it off as their child. By chance, the woman to whom ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... true in semblance, if not strictly so in action. For the moment, thinking of my wife and child, I hesitated, and when the hesitation was gone the opportunity was gone with it. My punishment has been severe; by that moment's cowardice, I am now a childless man, and therefore perhaps value my life less highly than I held it at the time we speak of. Hear then, your sentence: You will be taken to the top of the wall, the iron removed from your wrists, and your sword placed in your hand. You will then ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... gallowses. It is not love, not pride, not admiration; it is an expansion of the identity, intimately pleasing, and wholly uncritical; I can expend myself in the person of an inglorious ancestor with perfect comfort; or a disgraced, if I could find one. I suppose, perhaps, it is more to me who am childless, and refrain with a certain shock from looking forwards. But, I am sure, in the solid grounds of race, that you have it ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as well content," she said, "as a poor, desolate, old childless widow could hope to be. There is no happiness left for ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... report of my connection with Hortense is still kept up: the most abominable rumours have been spread as to her first child. I thought at the time that these reports had only been admitted by the public in consequence of the great desire that I should not be childless. Since you and I separated have you heard them repeated?"—"Yes, General, oftentimes; and I confess I could not have believed that this calumny would have existed so long."—"It is truly frightful to think of! You ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a contrast one short year presents! Replete with happiness—replete with woe; In that brief space, a maiden called, and wife, Widow and mother written—childless too. ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow
... to deal death around, the murder of the infant did not prey upon his mind; but the words of the mother he never forgot. 'I am miserable, because I am childless,' he repeated every day; and he ordered all the women of his harem to be well beaten. But he was compelled to admit, that there was now little chance of his wishes being fulfilled. However, as a last resort, he consulted a magician, a man of Persian ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... terrified and worried by his threats and importunities, that he was obliged to make him his heir; and that Lepida, a lady of a very noble family, was condemned by him, in order to gratify Quirinus, a man of consular rank, extremely rich, and childless, who had divorced her twenty years before, and now charged her with an old design to poison him. Several persons, likewise, of the first distinction in Gaul, Spain, Syria, and Greece, had their estates confiscated upon such despicably trifling and shameless pretences, that against some of them ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... aged persons the possibility of attaching the young to them in sentimental bonds of strength to insure resistance to every other attachment is the idlest. Positive, practical, experienced though he was, the childless man had permitted this fantasy to get possession of him. He actually brought himself to believe Lael's love of him was of that enduring kind. With no impure purpose, yet selfishly, and to bring her under his influence until of preference ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Jarvie retired from the firm in 1906; and John Arbuckle and his nephew W.A. Jamison continued it as sole owners and partners until Mr. Arbuckle's death in 1912. Mr. Arbuckle died childless and a widower, leaving as his only heirs his two sisters, Mrs. Catherine Arbuckle Jamison and Miss Christina Arbuckle. Mrs. Jamison is the widow of the late Robert Jamison, who had been a prominent drygoods merchant in Pittsburg. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... entrance stood small eaved lodges in which were housed the two gardeners and their wives. To be lodge-keeper to the Park was as great a guarantee of respectability in Norton as to be vicar of the parish church itself. Only middle-aged, married, teetotal, childless churchmen could apply for the posts, and among their scant ranks the most searching inquiries were instituted before an appointment was finally arranged. It is safe to affirm that no working couples on earth ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... at once to the house of M. Maurin, the notary at the Tulettes, who was also mayor of the commune. A widower for ten years past, and living with his daughter, who was a childless widow, he had maintained neighborly relations with old Macquart, and had occasionally kept little Charles with him for several days at a time, his daughter having become interested in the boy who was so handsome ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... I cried. "She sits too heavy! And squashes 'em perfectly flat!—There was a hen," I cried. "Her name was Lizzie! She was a good hen! But childless! The Grocer gave us some day-old chicks to put under her! But when we went out to the nest the next morning to see 'em—they couldn't have been flatter if they'd been pressed in the Bible!—My ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... first this worthy couple, who were childless, received the boys into their home as sons, and on all occasions treated them as such. Martha Mild, (her surname was derived from her character), had been similarly received ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman, John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and Secretary Lethington that a modus vivendi might be found by persuading Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she herself died childless, on the undertaking of Mary that her marriage and policy should be dictated by England; but it was not Elizabeth's plan to pledge the future of England, and her nimble evasiveness drove the Scottish statesmen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... strongly resembled each other, although he was ten years her senior. When quite young he had married a very worthy woman, and their union was blessed by two children, a son and daughter; but they had laid them both in the grave at an early age; therefore they were now childless. I had never seen my aunt, but my heart turned toward them, and my resolution was soon taken to visit them. They resided about three miles from the village of Littleton, ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... became his wife, for he was a man of good property, and promised to give over his evil ways and be a good husband to her. And he hateth her and would gladly see her dead, for she hath borne him no children. He is for ever flinging cruel words at her, and hath said to her before me that a childless man is a thing of scorn and disgrace even to the savage people of this island. And he makes no secret of his wickedness with other women. That is why my sister Serena is dull and heavy-minded; for she is eaten up with ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... with a dowry of ten talents, and that when her first child was born Alkibiades demanded and received ten more talents, as if he had made a previous agreement to that effect. Upon this Kallias, fearing that Alkibiades might plot against his life, gave public notice in the assembly that if he died childless, he would leave his house and all his ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... but no longer surprised, at the exaggerated way in which the childless Lady of the Bluffs,—her step-daughter having ten years back made a foolish foreign marriage,—gave me her views upon the drawbacks of the daughters of her world, when she made me, on her return from a ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Had he injured the girl in any way? Was he responsible for her disappearance? Did his wife know it, or only suspect it? Who was the girl? What was the secret of Mrs. Farnaby's extraordinary interest in her—Mrs. Farnaby, whose marriage was childless; whose interest one would have thought should be naturally concentrated on her adopted daughter, her sister's orphan child? In conjectures such as these, I completely lost myself. Let me hear what your ingenuity can make of the puzzle; and ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... other. No services, no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude, admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to listen to it from indicating their disgust and fatigue. The childless uncle, the powerful patron can scarcely extort this compliance. We leave the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than hear the history of our companion. The chaplain bites his lips in the presence of the archbishop. The midshipman yawns ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... abode the kindreds' coming as the wet night bideth day? Dost thou remember, Otter, how many a joy we had, How many a grief remembered has made our high-tide glad? O fellow of the hall-glee! O fellow of the field! Why then hast thou departed and left me under shield? I the ancient, I the childless, while yet in the Laxing hall Are thy brother's sons abiding and their ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... escape from his troubles. For if Lesley accepted Maurice, and lived with him in a house opposite her father's, there would always be a corner for him at their fireside, and he would not go to the grave feeling himself a childless, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... big dog Waldmar to him, and with the dog beside him went once more out into the cold and the gloom, whilst his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, were sleeping, and poor childless Katte alone was awake. He looked up at the mountain, and then across the water-swept meadows to the river. He was in doubt which way to take. Then he thought that in all likelihood the lambs would have been seen if they had wandered the river-way, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... end, and editing a "Library of the Fathers." In 1847 he produced another volume of poems, "Lyra Innocentium," which associated doctrines of the Church with the lives of children, whom he loved, though his own marriage was childless. ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... novel apposition of the quick and the dead." A certain peer was remarkable alike for his extreme parsimony and his unusual plainness of face. His wife shared these characteristics, both facial and temperamental, to the full, and yet this childless, unprepossessing and eminently economical couple were absolutely wrapped up in one another; after his death she only lingered on for three months. Some one commenting on this, said, "They were certainly the stingiest and probably the ugliest couple in England, yet their devotion to each other ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... I opened my eyes the next morning she was at the window sewing by the earliest daylight. She is the most intelligent-looking of all the women, but looks sad and almost stern, and speaks seldom. Although she is the principal wife of the chief she is not happy, for she is childless, and I thought that her sad look darkened into something evil as the other wife caressed a fine baby boy. Benri seems to me something of a brute, and the mother-in-law obviously holds the reins of government pretty tight. After sewing till midnight she swept the mats with a bunch ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... rest of us as belongin' to the barb'rous herd, he'd insist on discussin' skunk oil as a remedy for croup. An' the worst of it is he finally has Tutt, who's bad enough before, gyratin' 'round, his addled nose to the sky in redoubled scorn of childless men. From the two sociablest sports in camp it gets so that the uncle in one an' father in the other so far supplants an' shoves aside the mere man in 'em that Job himse'f would have had to make a new record for meekness an' long sufferin' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... talking nonsense," said Jasmine, who had had time to recover her composure, "and remind me of my two old childless aunts," she added, laughing, "who are always quarrelling about the names they would have given their children if the goddess Kwanyin had granted them any half a century ago. As a matter of act, we are three friends reading for our M.A. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... lived, when at home, in the rarefied atmosphere of Golders Green, in a red house with a red-tiled roof, one of a streetful similarly afflicted, where she kept two maids and had a weekly reception day. She was childless, but she disdained to carry a pet dog as compensation for barrenness. Her husband was a meagre shrimp of a stockbroker under his wife's control, who golfed on Sundays and played auction bridge at his club twice a week with ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... evening we, childless parents, were sitting silently together in the cottage; neither of us had any desire to talk, even had our tears allowed us. We sat gazing into the fire on the hearth. Presently, we heard something rustling outside the door: it flew open, and a beautiful little ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... this relationship makes me a descendant of General Delcambre, one of the heroes of the retreat from Russia. His granddaughter married Count Durrieu of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. My great-aunt was born in the provinces in 1781, but she was adopted by a childless aunt and uncle who made their home in Paris. He was a wealthy ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... more, oh never more! 'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless Mother; Rise Out of thy sleep, and slake in thy heart's core A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.' And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, 5 And all the Echoes whom their Sister's song Had held in holy silence, cried 'Arise!' Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... brought, And gave the nymph a plenteous draught; Then fled, and left his horn behind, For husbands past their youth to find; The nymph, who still with passion burn'd, Was to a boiling fountain turn'd, Where childless wives crowd every morn, To drink in Acheloues horn;[6] Or bathe beneath the Cross their limbs Where fruitful matter chiefly swims. And here the father often gains That title by another's pains. Hither, though much against his grain The Dean has carried Lady Jane. He, for a while, would ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift |
