"Motherless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 tried to dream that his Mother's great, furry ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... 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 ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... but a Euhemeristic hypothesis by a Polynesian thinker is not a statement of national belief. Taa-roa was 'uncreated, existing from the beginning, or from the time he emerges from the po, or world of darkness.' In the Leeward Isles Taa-roa was Toivi, fatherless and motherless from all eternity. In the highest heavens he dwells alone. He created the gods of polytheism, the gods of war, of peace, and so on. Says a native hymn, 'He was: he abode in the void. No earth, no sky, no men! He became the universe.' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... with their horses, and others far apart from where the horses stood, the latter also in many cases frozen stiff. Mishap passed by but few of the remoter homes found unprepared with fuel, and Christmas day, deceitfully fair, dawned on many homes that were to be fatherless, motherless, or robbed of a first-born. Thus it was that from this, the hardiest and most self-reliant population ever known on earth, there rose the heartbroken cry for comfort and for help, the frontier for the first time begging aid to hold the skirmish line. Indeed, back from this skirmish ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... McNeil, after securing a comfortable lodging for his wife, left for Australia, 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 ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... looking into her eyes, her hand in his while he made his adieux. He had determined, before Morris fired the bomb which shattered his hopes, to ask if he might see her again, and where, and if there could be found no place fitting and proper, she being motherless and Miss Felicia but a chaperon, to write her a note inviting her to walk up through the Park with him, and so on into the open where she really belonged. All this was given up now. The best thing for him was to take his leave as quietly as possible, without ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... her mother would be to know she had met one of her old playmates, who said so many complimentary things about her. He talked very tenderly about the loss of his wife, and once went back to his own seat to get a picture of his motherless little girl, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... of the whole male arsenal. That is love, and only with this weapon is feminine education successfully carried forward." Tolstoy, in fact, betrayed a touch of orientalism in his attitude towards women. In part no doubt as a result of his motherless youth, in part to the fact that his idealism was never stimulated by any one woman as it was by individual men, his views retained this colouring on sex questions while they became widened and modified in almost ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 her eyes ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... as he realized who it was they were talking about. He lay awake a long time that night smoothing Robin's tangled curls, and crying at the thought of the motherless baby away among strangers, with no one to snuggle him up warm or sing him to sleep. Then there was another thought that wounded him deeply. Twist it whichever way he might, he could construe Mr. Dearborn's last remark to mean but one thing. They considered him a burden. How many plans he made ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... expected to be untidy she preferred that he should make a mess in the kitchen. If he fidgeted his uncle was apt to grow restless and say it was high time he went to school. Mrs. Carey thought Philip very young for this, and her heart went out to the motherless child; but her attempts to gain his affection were awkward, and the boy, feeling shy, received her demonstrations with so much sullenness that she was mortified. Sometimes she heard his shrill voice raised in laughter in the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... did more to advance her son's cause than all her scheming and courage during life. Influential friends flocked to the motherless boy, whose misfortunes made such an appeal to sympathy and protection. His father succeeded to the family baronetcy and became a man of some substance. His uncle, the Duke, took to wife, at sixty-two, his cousin, "Peggy Douglas, of Mains," ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... entered the Abbey when a lad scarcely older than Gabriel. He had come of good family, but had been left an orphan with no one to care for him, and for want of other home had been sent to the Abbey, to be trained for the brotherhood; for in those days there were few places where fatherless and motherless children could be taken ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... companions would soon see that he had spoken the truth, and then he tried to push himself farther into the wall in order to occupy less space in the hall. For fully ten minutes the boys stood there, first on one foot and then on the other, like motherless chickens in a rain-storm, and then the turning of the handle of the door caused them to straighten up into what they intended should be careless attitudes, which should say that they had intended to go right away, but had been delayed by the discussion of some important question. ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... his brother-in-law, Chia Cheng, recommending Yue-ts'un, his daughter's tutor, to his consideration. Dowager lady Chia sends to fetch her granddaughter, out of commiseration for her being a motherless child. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... 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. ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... flew into such a passion, that he quite forgot Olive, and all he was about to say, in the excitement of a pugilistic combat with his unlucky cadet In the midst of which the two belligerents—poor, untaught, motherless lads—were hurried off ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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 forty I'll eat ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... weary, far from the old folkth at h-o-o-me." This was repeated two or three times before the others seemed to get the full swing of it, and then the lines rose and fell sadly and monotonously in the darkness. I don't know why, but I at once got the impression that those motherless little creatures were under a vague belief that their performance was devotional, and was really filling the place of an evening hymn. A brief and indistinct kind of recitation, followed by a dead silence, broken only by the slow creaking ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... such wonder's birth, Would break bounds to contest my prize with me The first discoverer, should she but emerge From that safe den of darkness where she dozed Till I stole in, that country-parsonage Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless, Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years She had been vegetating lily-like. Her father was my brother's tutor, got The living that way: him I chanced to see— Her I saw—her the world would grow one eye To see, I felt no sort of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... wonder glistening with tears. She had always, even to those who knew her to be a woman, something of the child in her appearance, which made a plea from her lips most difficult to refuse. Now she seemed a child on whom the world pressed heavily before her time for suffering had come; she had so motherless a look. Even Garratt Skinner moved uncomfortably in his chair; even that ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... be likely to occupy, I considered that my preparations were complete. Sound doctrine in the servants who waited on her; sound doctrine in the minister who preached to her; sound doctrine in the books that lay on her table—such was the treble welcome which my zeal had prepared for the motherless girl! A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday afternoon, as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives. The giddy throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them felt my exquisite sense ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... white Virgin; Carmen's Senora de Guadalupe was only a negra! Then, for the first time, Carmen spoke so crossly to the child as to frighten her. But the pious woman's heart smote her the next moment for that first harsh word;—and she caressed the motherless one, consoled her, cheered her, and at last explained to her—I know not how—something very wonderful about the little figurine, something that made Chita's eyes big with awe. Thereafter she always regarded the Virgin of Wax as an ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... head, and seating herself on a stool at the fire. "'Twas a chance I got to come and see the folk at home while the master and mistress are in Galway seeing what they can save out of the ruin of their estate there. Ochone, it's bad times, Mike; indeed it is. Lonely enough for you and me and the motherless boys. I've a mind to stay where I am, and settle down in ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... this one of whom I speak thrice more beautiful than the picture you delineate. She was your sister. She is your sister. You are her brother in the story I shall relate to you. You two are fatherless and motherless; you are all that is left of your family, once famous, and seemingly destined through you to become so again. You are a favorite with the czar, and your sister is the pet of the royal family. Your influence at court is unlimited. You are on the summit ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... little life it was—feeble beyond expression, and ugly with the ugliness of savagery. She wriggled and screwed up her skinny features with inane ferocity. A motherless wallaby would have submitted to human solace and ministrations with daintier mien; but the whole household thrilled with excitement. Could the spluttering spark of life be made to glow? That was the all-absorbing topic ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... 1885.—It really dawns upon me to-day in such a way that I can feel it that my wife is likely to die, and I too feel something of how desolate it would be for me with my motherless children sent ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... child of the brave, careless Renaud d'Avesne des Meloises, of an ancient family in the Nivernois, Angelique grew up a motherless girl, clever above most of her companions, conscious of superior charms, always admired and flattered, and, since she left the Convent, worshipped as the idol of the gay gallants of the city, and the despair and envy ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sewing, that now, for her own reasons, she would trust to no hands but her own,—conscious incapacity to be what all the women about her were, stirring, active, hardy housekeepers,—a vague sense of shame, and a great dread of the future,—her comfortless and motherless condition,—slowly, but surely, like frost, and wind, and rain, and snow, beat on this frail blossom, and it went with the rest. June roses were laid against her dark hair and in her fair hands, when she was carried to the lonely graveyard of Greenfield, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... (1816-1855).—Novelist, dau. of the Rev. Patrick B., a clergyman of Irish descent 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
... so lugubrious; remember Abraham's example of hospitality, and let us do all we can for this motherless lamb, or kid,—whichever she may prove. One thing more, and here-after I shall hold my peace. You need not live in chronic dread, lest the Guy Fawkes of female curiosity pry into, and explode your mystery; for I assure you, Peyton, I shall never directly or indirectly ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Catherine de Laval, in her own right Countess of Beaumanoir, and mistress of fiefs and manors, rights of chase and warren, mills and hospices, the like of which were not in Picardy, was happy in all things but her family. Her one son had fallen in his youth in an obscure fray in Guienne, leaving two motherless boys who, after her husband's death, were the chief business of life to the Countess Catherine. The elder, Aimery, grew to manhood after the fashion of the men of her own house, a somewhat heavy country gentleman, much set ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... fact, that "the Lord only knew what she might 'a' done if it hadn't been fer them eye-teeth!" Her first husband had been Bud Molloy, a genial young Irishman who good-naturedly allowed himself to be married out of gratitude for her care of his motherless little Nance. Bud had not lived to repent the act; in less than a month he heroically went over an embankment with his engine, in one of those fortunate accidents in which "only the ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... most lads, Richard. You've a head on your shoulders. I've known you long; but you have never spoken—until to-night. It was your will that took you through your puny childhood, fatherless, motherless, and made your stern old uncle proud of you. Why now be down-hearted? I've heard you spoken of as a lad of spirit by Dr. Warren, aye, and by ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... some idea may be gathered from a letter which Prosper received a year after his marriage. "Circumstances," wrote Mrs. Pottinger, "which had induced me to accept the offer of a widower to take care of his motherless household, have since developed into a more enduring matrimonial position, so that I can always offer my dear Prosper a home with his mother, should he choose to visit this locality, and a second father in Hiram W. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... completely from the right to the left. A tall mill woman, whose husband had gone down in the crash at the saddlery, came and took Nell's hand in hers and laid a strong arm around her shoulders, while Harriet went over and took from the arms of the young father the little motherless mite who had been rescued from the pillow floating on the river. Billy shook hands with a young tanner in tight but wholly new clothes, to whom Luella May Spain introduced him as ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Yule was one of seven motherless sisters who constituted the family of a dentist slenderly provided in the matter of income. The pinching and paring which was a chief employment of her energies in those early days had disagreeable effects upon a character disposed rather ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the rear seat with Tom; and she was shy in this close touch with the mysterious world from afar off; and her timidity made him timid, this youth whose earliest recollection was the booming of cannon, as he played upon a cavalryman's blanket, waiting for his father to return from the charge. Motherless, the pet of the battalion, his playthings the accoutrements of war, his "stick horse," a sabre, his confidential companion a brass field piece. Old soldiers, devoted to their colonel, carried him about ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... heart already. There is actually a little colour in her cheek—the dawn, I trust, of the eternal life. That is Miss St. John's way. As often as she gets hold of a poor hopeless woman, she gives her a motherless child. It is wonderful what the childless woman and motherless child ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... and oh! so sorrowfully! She was only nineteen, two years younger than I am now; and her son was motherless ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... hands, we fail, and all our hopes and desires are destroyed; again we say, it is the will of God. If we see any of our brethren sick, we claim it to be the will of God. If we see the father of a family taken away, we bow our heads and say God's will be done. If we see a family of children left motherless, again we bow our heads and say God's will be done. If we see a beautiful infant snatched by death from the breast of it's heart-broken mother, we meekly bow again, and, with heart full of sorrow, say, it's the will of God. I tell you it is not the will of ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... wondered whether any girl who was ever born into the world could boast a stranger or a happier upbringing than Miriam. She was, it is true, motherless, but by way of compensation Fate endowed her with several hundred fathers, each of whom loved her as the apple of his eye. She did not call them "Father" indeed, a term which under the circumstances they thought ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... craft, and very apt to be took all aback by the wind o' love, as you might say—but Lord! it's only natural arter all. Ah! the rearing o' motherless nieces is a ticklish matter, gentlemen—as to nevvys, I can't say, never 'aving 'ad none to rear—but nieces—Lord! I could write a book on 'em, that is, s'posing I could write, which I can't; for, as I've told you many a time, my Lord, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... I saw one pausing for a space To lift a wistful face Up to a certain window where there dreamed A little brood left motherless; and there One turned to where the unploughed fields lay bare; And others lingering passed—but one there seemed So over glad to haste, she scarce could wait To reach the ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale to dine at Maesnynan, with my relation, Mr. Lloyd, who, with his pretty young daughter (motherless), received them at the door. All came out of the carriage except the great lexicographer, who was crouching in what my uncle jokingly called the Poets' Corner, deeply interested evidently with the book he was reading. A wink ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the same mail a second letter, offering a solution of the problem, arrived 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 ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... The bride, a motherless girl, speedily adopted Mrs. Simmons as mother, and made many happy hours for the old lady; but that venerable and pious person is frequently heard to say to herself, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Cap'n Billy's girl! Been brought up like a wild thing! Sails a boat like an old tar! Swims like a fish! Motherless—old Billy, a poor shote, according to the gossip! The women have a sort of pitying contempt for him; the men keep their mouths shut, but you can fancy the training of this girl. I'm always interested in heredity ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... gives hersel' up to thinking on a man who cares nought for her?' replied her mother, a little severely. 'She were crazed, and my aunt couldn't keep her on, could she? She did keep her a long weary time, thinking as she would, may-be, come to hersel', and, anyhow, she were a motherless wench. But at length she had for t' go where she came fro'—back to Keswick workhouse: and when last I heerd on her she were chained to th' great kitchen dresser i' t' workhouse; they'd beaten her till she were taught to be silent and quiet i' th' daytime, but at night, when she ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... face, as he rode out of the gates, died away as soon as he found himself in the solitude of the lanes. He slackened his speed, and began to think. It was very awkward, he considered, to have a motherless girl growing up into womanhood in the same house with two young men, even if she only met them at meal-times; and all the intercourse they had with each other was merely the utterance of such words as, 'May I help you to potatoes?' or, as Mr. Wynne would persevere ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... prospect of maternity began to grow less shadowy and more reliable, her heart did seem to swell at rare intervals with a real, or assumed pity for the little woman who had been left to wander about motherless and friendless, spending her young life, unheeded, among the cheerless apartments ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... joy— Bun after doing a job; Mother of bright-headed boy, Think of the motherless Bob! High in the heavens august Providence saw him, and said— "Out of the pits of the dust Lift ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... the week before (I was just eleven years old), and my father, aye kind to his motherless bairns, had given me a new pony, a little shaggy beast from Galloway, and, as I was keen to see how it would run beside a big man's horse, I had pled hard for permission to accompany him on ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... painful objections. The horse reached around and bit him sharply in the neck. It hurt, hurt awfully, but he persisted, only to receive another sharp bite, this time more savage. Sounding a baby whimper of despair, he ran back to the door and out into the motherless corral. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... W. Brook, of Fifth Avenue, millionaire, engaged the services of Alexander Y. Hedge, plenipotentiary representative of an Efficiency Company, to introduce economic reforms into his motherless household during his temporary absence, we regarded it as a most reasonable experiment. And for a time it made excellent fun. But after a while it began to wear thin for lack of fresh stimulus, and by the end of the Second Act there was a general feeling in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... was born at sea) 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 of her!' ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... long summer months, the motherless child, in its deep mourning—which looks so pathetic on a very young baby—might be seen carried about in Elizabeth's arms every where. When, after the first six weeks, the wet nurse left—in fact, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... which had been long and tangled, was cut short and neatly brushed. Being naturally of a sunny and affectionate disposition, the cheerful home influences, the motherly care of Mrs. Elmer, whose heart was very tender towards the motherless boy, and, above all, the great alteration in his father's manner, had changed the shy, sullen lad, such as he had been, into an honest, happy fellow, anxious to do right, and in every way to please ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... Israel 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 ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... 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 ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... youthful Andrew Melville, and perhaps it was with some presentiment of his future eminence that, as he held the precocious youth between his knees at the college fire, he fondly said, "My sillie fatherless and motherless chyld, it is ill to wit what God may ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... were few and quiet, the men knew from her face and manner that Davie's licking would not be easily accomplished. In fact, Jennie habitually stood between Davie and his father and brothers. She had nursed him through a motherless babyhood, and had always sympathized in his eager efforts to rise above the sordid life that encompassed him. It was Jennie who had got him the grudging permission to go in the evening to the village schoolmaster for some book-learning. But ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... set apart as a family burying-ground; and when again the night shadows fell Hagar Warren sat in her silent room, brooding over her grief, and looking oft at the plain pine cradle where lay the little motherless child, her granddaughter. Occasionally, too, her eye wandered towards the mahogany crib, where another infant slept. Perfect quiet seemed necessary for Mrs. Miller, and Madam Conway had ordered her baby to be removed from the antechamber where first it had been kept, so that Hagar had ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 Clarissa was still too young to realize ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... I was fatherless and motherless, and my aunt spoiled me. She placed the whole of the ground floor at my complete disposal. My rooms were furnished very elegantly, not at all like a student's rooms in fact: there were pink curtains in the bedroom, and a muslin canopy, adorned with blue rosettes, towered over my bed. Those ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... wife and mother. Ah! here is a bereavement which the child alone can fully feel. When the mother is laid upon the cold bier, and sleeps among the dead, the center of home-love and attraction is gone. What children are more desolate and more to be pitied than the motherless ones? She, who fed them from her gentle breast and sung sweet lullaby to soothe them into sleep,—she, who taught them to kneel in prayer at her side, and ministered to all their little wants, and sympathized with them in all their little troubles,—she ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... her Uncle John's family, whom she liked at once, Kate, Ethel, and the eight girls started for Camp. It was situated in a stretch of woods on the banks of the Muskingum river. One of the girls—Patty Sands—became Ethel's chum. She was motherless and the only child of Judge Sands, ex-congressman of Ohio, and greatly respected. The rest of the girls were also congenial save two—one a Mattie Hastings, whom Ethel avoided saying that her eyes were too close together. Mattie's parents were poor people but she was one ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... the hall. His aunt's eyes were full of tears, for she loved him dearly, her brother's only son, early left motherless, whom she had regarded like her own child, and who had so nobly fulfilled all the fondest hopes. All his overbearing ways and uncalled-for interference were forgotten, and her voice gave way as ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mother in one to motherless children, bears a burden which men shirk or stagger under; and there was not a shirking cell in ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... During the winter they had gained marked 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
... 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 ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... M. Yonge,' Daisy interrupted, 'and it's about a family of poor motherless children who tried so hard to be good, and they were confirmed, and had a bazaar, and went to church at the Minster, and one of them got married and wore black watered silk and silver ornaments. So her baby died, and then she was sorry she had not been ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... 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 could afford to pay for a good ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... at length, "we are both motherless, for the present at least—both of us almost alone; I think God has brought us together to be a comfort to each other. We will be sisters while He permits us to be so. Don't call me Miss Alice any more. You shall be my little sister and I will be your elder ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... softly, looking away, "was a Russian noblewoman. Sophia is Farrell's daughter by adoption only. Farrell was once my closest friend. When my wife died...." He covered his eyes with his hand and remained silent for a few seconds. "When Sophia was left motherless, an infant in arms, Farrell offered to adopt her. Because I became, about that time, aware of this horror that has poisoned my life—this thing of which you have seen something to-night—I accepted on condition that the truth be never revealed to her. It cost me the friendship of Farrell; he ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... three months. Then it came and settled and bade fair to remain and thrive upon the fat of his land. Anna's mother came to live with them. He now realized that he had been extremely shortsighted. He should have stipulated in his advertisement that none except motherless ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... do you dwell?" She check'd herself in her distress, And said, "My name is Alice Fell; I'm fatherless and motherless. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... 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
... young ladies, and how entirely their "style" depends upon their chaperon. Of course Dickens made her funny, of course he made her ridiculous, but he put her there. An American novelist would not have thought it worth mentioning, nor would an American papa with two motherless daughters have thought it necessary, if he travelled with them, to have a chaperon for ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... there were only 70 deaths from sepsis following full-time 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 ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... very powerful and raucous voice was saying in the drawing-room, 'I reckoned I'd call and tell ye myself, Mister Carter, what I thought on it. My gell, a motherless gell, but brought up respectable; sixth standard at Whalley Range Board School; and her aunt a strict God-fearing woman! And here your son comes along and gets hold of the girl while her aunt's at the special service for Wakes folks in Bethesda Chapel, and runs off with her in my dogcart ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... find excuses for marrying Robina, it was in considering her connections that he found his finest. The Vicar had informed his conscience that he was marrying Robina because of what she could do for his three motherless daughters—and himself. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... motherless and are unbranded are known as mavericks, and belong to whoever finds them. The cowman who finds a maverick promptly puts his own brand on it and ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... 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 that Phebe Lane, who had no cares at home ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... her take them along, poor motherless baby?" asked the doctor when he saw the dolls lying as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... as soft and weak as a woman's. His-wife's death, and the care which he had been obliged to bestow all alone on his little ones, as well as the thought that these poor motherless children needed a great deal of love, combined to make him thus. So such a sharp struggle went on within him, all the more because he was ashamed of his weakness and tried to hide his confusion from little Marie, that the sweat started out on his ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... in voluble promise of amendment for the future, to every one who passed, if they would let her off easy. She said aisy, of course, and it was in her native accent that she bewailed the fate of the little ones whom her arrest had left motherless at home. No one seemed to answer her, but presently she broke into a cry of joy and blessing, and from her cell at the other end of the corridor came the clink of crockery. Steps approached with several pauses, and at last they paused at Lemuel's door, and a man outside ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... 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 his eyes were bordered with red ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... seventeen, he twenty-five. It was for him to think, not me. And he did think but to my eternal undoing. The Cause needed a woman's help, a woman's enthusiasm. Without considering my motherless condition, my helplessness, the immaturity of my mind, he drew me day by day into the secret meshes of his great scheme, a scheme which, as I failed to understand till it had absorbed me, meant the unequivocal devotion of my whole life to the exclusion of every other hope ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... show thee how it would be! I say, 'It is me, Marie, Mere Jeanne! I come to show thee my little son, to take thy blessing. And my little friend, too!'" She turned to pat Petie's head; she would not let the motherless boy feel left out, even from a world in which ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... thenceforth was rapid. Old Lefort's private forge was in his own court-yard. Here, among the rustling bananas and the flowering pomegranates, where he had played, a motherless infant, the slim, emaciated lad sat or walked about in the November sunshine. And while Marcel hung about, the smith, hammering out the delicate Lefort wrought-iron work so prized in New Orleans to-day, anathematized indiscriminately ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... wretched, terrified, miserable, and my heart was breaking. I wept, and I have not done that before since my mother died," and now I saw that there was the moisture of tears about her eyes. It was near to making me cry myself when I thought of all that poor child had been through. Motherless and unprotected; hunted across a savage, primeval world by that hideous brute of a man; exposed to the attacks of the countless fearsome denizens of its mountains, its plains, and its jungles—it was a miracle that she had ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... two, the Bunk, had been for some years inhabited by an elderly half-pay naval officer, Captain Carnegy, and his motherless boys and girls. The other house was the Vicarage, the habitation of Mr. Vesey, the good old vicar, his invalid wife, and a pair of excitable Yorkshire terriers, Splutters and Shutters, thus curiously named for the sake of rhyme, it is to be presumed. They were brothers, ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... time he was a widower with one motherless child—Antoinette—a girl of eighteen who had been reared partly in mining camps and partly at exclusive girls' schools in the East, according to her father's varying fortunes. "Tony" Seaver, as she was generally called in those days, combined culture ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... outlines of most of the chapters of this little volume. My heart was full of the theme in the discussion of which I had taken part before my embarkation, and I penned my thoughts freely, amidst the tossings of the ship and the care of two motherless children. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... was the total amount of his treasure, and, large as that sum appeared to him, he could not satisfy himself that he had sufficient to enable him to get back to the home which he had so wickedly left. Whenever he thought of this home, of the Uncle Daniel who had in charity cared for him—a motherless, fatherless boy—and of returning to it, with not even as much right as the Prodigal Son, of whom he had heard Uncle Daniel tell, his heart sank within him and he doubted whether he would be allowed to remain even if he should be so fortunate as ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... it is the man who feels hot. That the eye does not see; it is the man who sees. That compasses will not make a circle; it is the man. That a bay horse and a dun cow are three; because taken separately they are two, and taken together they are one: two and one make three. That a motherless colt never had a mother; when it had a mother, it was not motherless. That if you take a stick a foot long and every day cut it in half, you will never come to ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... home to which Emily Bronte clung with the passionate love of the Swiss for his white mountains, with a homesickness in absence that strained the very cords of life. Yet her childhood in that motherless home had few of the elements of childish happiness, and its busy strictness of daily life was saddened by the loss of Maria and Elizabeth, dear, never-forgotten playfellows. Charlotte, now the eldest of the family, was only two years ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... were not companions. These long-frocked guardians sit beside their playgrounds, with noses in their breviaries, or they head processions of boys and girls on the way to chapel, or they follow, two by two, behind a long string of blue-checked aprons and severe felt hats, the uniform of the motherless; or they teach the little vagrants by the hour—often it is the only schooling that these ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... heart is sair To see twa motherless broods sae fair. But flee away, burdies! flee away! For I darenae bide ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... Arizona overland, few of the wives and daughters with it. Angela, motherless since her seventh year, was at school in the distant East, together with the daughters of the colonel then commanding the regiment. They were older; were "finishing" that summer, and had amazed that distinguished officer by demanding ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King |
