"Motherless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this, 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
... was a motherless girl. My daddy said he looked at her struggling along. All the other girls were trying to have a good time. But she would be settin' down trying to make a quilt or something else useful, and he said to a friend of ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... lair and crouched beside the shimmering fire of the furze. A startled grass-snake strove to leap out of the way of the monarch of the woods—- a hurried crunch and a string of thirty white eggs was left motherless, forlorn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... Ludington lived had become, through habit, so endeared to her that when, a few years after she had been settled in her ghostly village, a cousin died in poverty, bequeathing to her with his last breath a motherless infant boy, it was with great reluctance that she accepted the charge. She would have willingly assumed the support of the child, but if it had been possible would have greatly preferred providing for him elsewhere to bringing him home with her. This, however, was impracticable, ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... 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 iron man ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... he turned from the carriage of the girl to whom he was declared engaged, let her drive away without another glance, and stood there, tall and stalwart and manly, his soft brown eyes fastened on her face,—hers, Jenny Wallen's, a penniless, motherless, homeless working-girl. Mrs. Wells had hugged herself with delight all the way back, and would have said no end of foolish things but for her patient's prohibition. Even the prohibition had not kept her afterwards ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... for them poor motherless children,' said Mrs. Hackit to her husband, 'a-going among strangers, and into a nasty town, where there's no good victuals to be had, and you must pay dear ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... turn till ye?" cried Flucker. "Awel, then, ye'll no tell the lassie, she's weel as she is; he's gaun t' Enngland the day. I cannie gie ye a' a hidin'," said he, with an eye that flashed volumes of good intention on a hundred and fifty people; "but I am feytherless and motherless, an' I can fa' on my knees an' curse ye a' if ye do us sic an ill turn, an' then ye'll see ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... 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
... for all those poor little motherless things, with a liar for a pa, an' all the time I lived there, I tried to make up to 'em what I could, but step-mas have their sorrers, my dear, that's what they do, an' I ain't never seen no piece about it in the paper ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... Dr. Trenire was only too gentle and kind and patient with his four motherless children; but to-day, when they slowly, and at a discreet distance, followed Jabez into the study, Kitty felt a sudden conviction that things were not going to be quite as simply and easily got over as usual. She saw a look cross her father's face such as she ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... moment when she saw her, ragged, unkempt and forlorn, among the lowering, suspicious men-at-arms in the courtyard, and now that she knew the dangers and the privations the girl had braved for the sake of Wilhelm, the affectionate heart of Beatrix found ample room for the motherless Elsa. ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... residence often, was glad to leave the boy in his brother's charge. The Captain's wife, this boy's mother, was a lady of Buenos Ayres, of Spanish descent, and had died while the child was in his cradle. These two motherless children were as strange a pair as one roof could well cover. Both handsome, wild, impetuous, unmanageable, they played and fought together like two young leopards, beautiful, but dangerous, their lawless instincts showing through ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Edward had died when he was quite young, and he, their only child, had been left to the care and protection of dame Brandon; and well had she cared for him, and been as a mother to the motherless. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... 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
... the neglect of two motherless children. The sketches of character and touching love ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... Beltane, in thy lonely childhood thou didst need me, and I—O God pity me—I was far from thee! But, dear my son, because I could not cherish thee within these arms I strove to love and cherish all motherless children for thy dear sake and to grieve for all sorrowing mothers. So builded I the nunnery at Winisfarne and there sought to bring solace and comfort to desolate hearts because my heart was so desolate for thee, my babe, my Beltane. And I have prayed unceasing unto God, and He, in His infinite ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... "English, strict method, offered by gentleman." "Highly cultured lady seeks position as English gouvernante. Delight William, Post Office, No.——." "Governess Housekeeper; cultured and distinguished lady wanted, good-looking, age twenty to twenty-eight, for the education of two motherless children, knowledge of English language required. Good presence requisite, and must be extremely energetic." Here it is possible that the advertiser really wants a housekeeper; but the advertisement is perverse in character. "Governess, youthful, energetic, very strict, either Englishwoman ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... kind, well-meaning aunt had patiently nursed me. At the first news of my sickness she had, unsummoned, left her comfortable home in Rockland, in mid-winter, and had crossed the mountains to watch beside the feverish pillow of her motherless niece. Careful and kind was her nursing; and even the physicians owned that to her patient watchfulness I owed my life. How grateful was I; and with what looks of love did I gaze on her trim, spinster figure, as she moved earnestly and pains-taking around my chamber; but, alas! the kitchen told ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... admiration for gorgeous displays. Its work is an exemplification of the living, practical Christianity of today. In almost every state in this fair land of ours can be found Odd-Fellows' homes, within whose walls the orphan is no longer motherless. For each and every little one within these homes, one million Odd-Fellows feel a father's love and ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... difficult 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 you then but a bye over here on a visit, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... 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 it ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... on his narrow bed. The watcher's thoughts fled to the little messenger galloping over the long miles of lonely country—his motherless girl, whom he had sent on a mission that might so easily spell disaster. Horrible thoughts came into the father's mind. He pictured Bobs putting his hoof into a hidden crab-hole—falling—Norah lying white and motionless, perhaps far from the track. That was not the only danger. Bad characters ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... spinning busily, though it was nine o'clock; and though her words 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 ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stride cheerily along the dingy street to the house where he and his fellow-workman lodged, refresh himself with a hot bath, don what he called his dress suit, and after their simple meal and a frolic with little Dick, the motherless boy who was the joy of Richard Trueman's heart, he would settle down for a long evening of study among his cherished books. John Randolph never lost sight of the fact that he was to be a physician by ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... preserved, with a perfectly easy conscience, the most absolute silence on the subject of Sally. While he was faithful to Regina, what reason had he to reproach himself with the protection that he offered to a poor motherless girl? When he was married, he might mention the circumstances under which he had met with Sally, and leave the rest ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... grumbled greatly at his wife's desertion of him for grandees who would never thank her; but he gave in to the prolongation of her absence with a better grace, when he learned how the motherless baby was regarded by his own people. The humanity of the man rose in defence of the injured. He felt also that, in espousing the cause of his wife's nephew, scorned by his baronet father, he was taking the part of his own down-trodden class. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... his sister Anna, written from Medora, the middle of June, we have Roosevelt's own record of his reactions to his first experiences as an actual ranchman. "Bamie" or "Bye," as he affectionately called her, was living in New York. She had taken his motherless little Alice under her protecting wing, and, since the disasters of February, had been half a mother to ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... course of time, a kind of general nursery governess in a large family of motherless children. The father was almost always away from home; his sister kept the house, and Lyddy stayed in the nursery, bathing the brood and putting them to bed, dressing them in the morning, and playing with them in the safe privacy of the back garden or the open attic. They loved her, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Georges answered sternly, and his answer vibrated through the room, "I have never admired, pitied, or loved Jeanne so much as now that I know that she has been—motherless." ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the beautiful white pig which Anderson gave them. A little movable pen was provided for this favorite, and the youngsters fed it several times a day with warm milk from a nursing-bottle, like any other motherless child. The pig loved its foster-mothers, and squealed for them most of the time when it was not eating or sleeping; fortunately, a pig can do much of both. It grew playful and intelligent, and took on strange little human ways which made one wonder if Darwin were ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin, Pushed from her faintly ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... 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 ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... because she 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the sadness of his mother's life. And for seventeen years she had kept away from him. It is true she had made inquiries concerning his life at St. Mabyn, but very little more. Paul had grown up with the idea that he was fatherless and motherless, or even if that were not the case he knew nothing about either of them. Then, presently, when the time came for her to tell him the miserable story of the past, she had written asking him to meet her on the lonely moors, and after that she had gone away ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... reached port almost the day she got the despatch, were not those of her only son, but of one who had practically died for him. And even in the joy of that supreme moment the woman in her turned, after all, in pity to weep for the motherless lad who had been her boy's warmest friend in his hours of doubt ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... her new home, among them Helen and Tom Cameron, the twin, motherless children of a wealthy dry-goods merchant who had a beautiful home, called "the Outlook," near the mill, and Mercy Curtis, the daughter of the railroad station agent at Cheslow, the nearest important town to Ruth's new home. Ruth, Helen, and Mercy all went to Briarwood Hall, ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... she was also dark-dressed, for Mr Auberly had become a widower and his child motherless ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... they laid her by the side of her husband, and the gray-haired, childless old people, and the golden-haired, fatherless and motherless boy, returned together ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... did not think of the wrong then. You were a motherless babe, then, and I was a childless mother. For you must know, you must have felt in your inmost soul that I ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... day when the tales had at last kindled to flame the parent fire of that wildness in her which slept unsuspected in the breast of the blacksmith, then old as the way of life runs, and he had closed his cabin and his forge, given his two motherless girls to the wife of Jacques Baptiste, joined a party going into the wilderness, and gone out ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Glenmore, turning to Mrs. Rivers, said: "I know from happy experience that you and your good husband are always ready to lend a helping hand when one is in need. Now Laura and I want a little help. We have had a rather embarrassing arrival at the Castle,—the motherless little son and daughter of my brother, Colonel Montford. They were sent over from India, at our suggestion, but we hardly know what to do with them. They are shy and homesick, and thus far have had little to say to any one but their dusky old Ayah, ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... now. I ain't long for this world. Only keep me from worse, George, while I am alive, and do something for the boy afterwards, and I am content. You're going to get married, I know, and I wish you well. But don't forget this poor little thing when it's motherless. If you do, and let him fall into vice, you'll ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the handsomest and most imposing house in the little city, was an heiress and considered the richest girl in Dorfield, having been left several millions by her mother. Her father, Jason Jones, although he handled Alora's fortune and surrounded his motherless daughter with every luxury, was by profession an artist—a kindly man who encouraged the girl to be generous and charitable to a degree. They did not advertise their good deeds and only the poor knew ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... Miss Fairman. I did not mean to say that. He has been most generous to me—kinder than I deserve. But I have borne much, and still must bear. The fatherless and motherless is in the world alone. He needs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... than what Sandra said as she descended the Acro-Corinth, keeping to the little path, while Jacob strode over rougher ground by her side. She had been left motherless at the age of four; and the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the deep grief which preyed upon the hearts of the unfortunate brothers, for weeks after they had been compelled to acknowledge the stern truth that they were indeed motherless. Those who have, at that tender age, known what it is to lose an affectionate mother, and under circumstances at all similar to those just described, will be at no loss to comprehend the utter desolation of their bruised ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space, Motherless ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... dismissed Mr. Clavering at once, or to have openly accepted the fate which a union with him would bring. Only passion stoops to subterfuge like this. And you," she continued, rising and turning toward me in a sort of forlorn hope very touching to see, "can you see this young motherless girl, driven by caprice, and acknowledging no moral restraint, enter upon the dark and crooked path she is planning for herself, without uttering one word of warning and appeal? Tell me, mother of children dead and buried, what excuse you will ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... innocent. He is there— In the desert vast, in the wilderness, On the bellowing sea, in the lion's lair, In the midst of battle, and everywhere. In his hand he holds with a father's care The tender hearts of the motherless; The maid and the mother in sore distress He shields with his love and his tenderness; He comforts the widowed—the comfortless, And sweetens her chalice of bitterness; He clothes the naked—the numberless,— His charity covers their nakedness,— And he feeds the famished and fatherless With the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... you, fair stranger?' said he; and she, with tears, told him she was homeless, houseless, motherless. Then he fell in love with her sweet face and soft words; so he asked her to be his bride, and she went with him to the palace, her heart full of gratitude to the Sun, who had ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... preaches mair charity in a day ner ye'r ready to stand by in a twelvemonth. Come, Reuben, whip up yer dobbin. Let's away to my own house. I'd hev to be as poor as a kirk louse afore I'd turn my back on a motherless lad as is nigh to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... "Oh, what a selfish soul I am to be spending all my strength this way! I shan't be fit for any thing to-morrow if I go on so." Then she patted the lamb on its head, and said with a comforting sense of comradeship in the little creature's presence, "Good-night, little motherless one! Sleep warm," and then she went to bed and slept ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... likely soon to wear out, and when, accordingly, business was rather slack at Miss Simmonds', Mary met Alice Wilson, coming home from her half-day's work at some tradesman's house. Mary and Alice had always liked each other; indeed, Alice looked with particular interest on the motherless girl, the daughter of her whose forgiving kiss had comforted her in many sleepless hours. So there was a warm greeting between the tidy old woman and the blooming young work-girl; and then Alice ventured to ask if she would come in and take her tea ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a world of unconscious longing in Patricia's voice; no one, not even Daddy, knew quite what the coming of her grandmother meant to the little motherless girl. And a grandmother she had not seen since babyhood. The coming weeks seemed to Patricia full of ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... wings, whereby she will be prevented from describing the high flight in the air that the organ of the male demands. Nature, however, heedless of these more intrinsic causes, is so deeply concerned with the multiplication of males, that we sometimes find, in motherless hives, two or three workers possessed of so great a desire to preserve the race that, their atrophied ovaries notwithstanding, they will still endeavour to lay; and, their organs expanding somewhat beneath the empire of this ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... were very intimate, in spite of the difference in their ages. Marthe was full of indulgent kindness for her friend, whom she had known as quite a child, motherless and left to herself; whereas Suzanne was less even-tempered with Marthe, now gushing and coaxing, now aggressive and satirical, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... 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 ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... advanced softly and bent over it. He looked with tender sympathy at the little marble image which yesterday was a poor, ragged peasant, to-day was a bright and winged angel. His thoughts flew back to the imperial palace, where his little motherless daughter was fading away from earth, and the father prayed for his only child. He took from the passive hands a rose, and softly as he came, he left the solitary cottage, wherein an angel ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of a sensational nature was at a low ebb. The firm of Denny & Carson announced that the boy's father had refunded the full amount of his theft, and that they had no intention of prosecuting. The Cumberland minister had been interviewed, and expressed his hope of yet reclaiming the motherless lad, and Paul's Sabbath-school teacher declared that she would spare no effort to that end. The rumour had reached Pittsburgh that the boy had been seen in a New York hotel, and his father had gone East to find him and ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... 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 God, the will of Good. ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... made?" said Leonard, mournfully, and after a long silence,—"no inquiries to learn who was the father of the motherless child?" ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fish come to thee without escape; Mayest thou reach unto plump water-fowl. For thou art the orphan's father, the widow's husband, The desolate woman's brother, the garment of the motherless. Let me celebrate thy name in this land for every virtue, A guide without greediness of heart; A great ...
— Egyptian Literature
... stiff, and made a piteous little act of charity, forgiving the sin of the man against herself, but not his crime against dead Richard's child. And she stretched out long black-sleeved arms gropingly in the thick, numbing darkness that hemmed her in, and moaned to the Mother of the motherless ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... time he was able to speak, and he told Mrs. Newton his sad little history; how he had no one in the whole world to look with pity on him, or his motherless child; and how God alone was his hope in this day of calamity. His father had been displeased with him because he had married that young woman, whom he dearly loved; and he had given him some money that was his portion, and would do nothing else for him. The young man had taken some land ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... through the narrow window and fell right upon the motherless little group, as with a stifled exclamation he went forward and, stooping, lifted Faith ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... this we naturally turn first of all to the orphan work. Ten thousand motherless and fatherless children had found a home and tender parental care in the institution founded by George Muller, and were there fed, clad, and taught, before he was called up higher. His efforts to improve ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... was a star. No one who saw her but acknowledged it. He marvelled as he recalled the change wrought in the face of the matron and because of her gentleness to the little girl forgave her all that she had not been to his motherless boyhood. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... head of a different species. The ends of the world had been searched to make this patchwork of blood. The women raved over the cruel display; they gloated over our beauty; but they cared nothing for the pathetic story the hats told of rifled nests and motherless young. ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... for her uncle she would not have where to lay her stately head—and she was La Favorita of Monterey, the proudest beauty in California! Her father had gambled away his last acre, his horse, his saddle, the serape off his back; then sent his motherless girl to his brother, and buried himself in Mexico. Don Antonio took the child to his heart, and sent for a widowed cousin to be her duena. He bought her beautiful garments from the ships that touched the port, but had no inclination to gratify ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... by a runaway marriage with the first scamp they can find, and repenting in poverty and social ostracism the romance they conceived in wealth and luxury. They deserve their fate. But when a sensitive girl is motherless, cut off from friends and pleasures, presented with the alternative of solitude or marriage with some detested man, or locked up to forget a dream which was half realised and very sweet, then the case is different. If she breaks her bonds, and flies to the only loving ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Motherless, she was utterly desolate. It would be long, long before she could find any one to fill her mother's place, if she ever did. For the present she was satisfied to stay with Miss Payne, but she did not ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... named McNeill, son of Doctor C. D. McNeill, of Wilmington, North Carolina—a classmate—with whom he had been closely associated since graduation. McNeill had a sister, Anna Matilda, a great soul, serious and strong. At length Whistler took his motherless brood—including himself—to her and she accepted them all. I bow my head to the stepmother who loves into manhood and womanhood children whom another has loved into life. She must have a great heart already expanded by love to do ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... had, now, you could be livin' in the proper tenant's house for the Wilcox's man, instead of Michael O'Donnell, who has no business livin' up here on the hill so far from his work that he can come home but once a week to look after his poor motherless child. I will say for you, Tim, that you do your duty by that bit of a slip of a girl baby, keepin' her so neat and clean an' all, times when ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... that her husband would marry again. He was of those men who are inveterate husbands—and that new woman!—Who was she? What was she like? What would be her attitude towards a motherless child? towards her little one? She would be kindly at first, little doubt of that, but afterwards, when her own children came, what would become of the child of a husband's first ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... breathe "I had no idea there was any one like this—I had no idea there was any one like this!" Her freedom amazed him and charmed him—it seemed so to simplify the practical question. She was on the footing of an independent personage—a motherless girl who had passed out of her teens and had a position and responsibilities, who wasn't held down to the limitations of a little miss. She came and went with no dragged duenna, she received people alone, and, though she was totally without hardness, the question of protection or ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... whereat Bob 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 ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 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, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... husband to a sense of duty. But I little knew the workings of his mind. He seemed to return a little to his senses, when he saw that his cruelty had probably caused the death of the poor woman, and rendered a large family of helpless children motherless. His countenance became more dark and gloomy, and he scarcely raised his eyes to ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... can have affidavits to the fact, a la mode de New England, if you require them. Do not mistake my motive, nevertheless, Miss Effingham, which is any thing but vulgar curiosity"—here Mrs. Bloomfield looked so kind and friendly, that Eve took both her hands and pressed them to her heart—"you are motherless; without even a single female connexion of a suitable age to consult with on such an occasion, and fathers after all ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... he despatched on this mission were two of his most needy and unprincipled dependants, Gilles de Sille and Roger de Bricqueville. The latter, the obsequious panderer to his most secret and abominable pleasures, he had entrusted with the education of his motherless daughter, a child but five years of age, with permission that he might marry her at the proper time to any person he chose, or to himself if he liked it better. This man entered into the new plans of his master with great zeal, and introduced to him one Prelati, an alchymist of Padua, and a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... taking her old mammy's hand. "If ever a motherless girl had a true friend I have one ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... special guest, was Lieutenant "Hefty" Harris, of old Camp Bowie, and as Bright's special charge were 'Tonio, sometime chief of the Red Rock band of Apache-Mohaves, Kwonahelka, his associate and friend, with two young braves of the tribe, Kwonahelka's shy, silent wife and her ward, a motherless young Apache girl, sister to Comes Flying, he whose untimely taking off had so seriously complicated the Indian question in the district of the Verde. Bright had his Apache visitors comfortably stowed, and abundantly provided for, close to his own roof, and 'Tonio, charged ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... another answer from you." Her features kindled—her brow became flushed—her eye glanced wild-fire as she proceeded—"I demand such an explanation, as a woman basely slandered has a right to demand from every man who calls himself a gentleman—as a creature, motherless, friendless, alone in the world, left to her own guidance and protection, has a right to require from every being having a happier lot, in the name of that God who sent them into the world to enjoy, and ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl whose fingers thin Crushed from her faintly ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... only at the grave-head a stunted wild-rose, wilted and scraggy, was struggling for existence. Thoughts came of the desolate childhood of many a little one in this hard world; and there was joy in the assurance, that Angelo was neither motherless nor fatherless, and that Margaret and her husband were not childless in that New World, which so ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... cloud that hovers over the small boy, even when the cane is descending upon him. Trifles please the poor little fellow and help him to forget the gloom which surrounds him. Coventry Patmore, in that most touching poem, "The Toys," tells of a father who struck his motherless son, and sent him weeping to bed, and, being tardily remorseful, the father looked at the sleeping boy, whose undried tears were still on his cheek, and found that before going to sleep the stricken lad ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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 ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... wanting to see my sister so I made up my mind to run off. One of old Master's motherless nephews lived with him and I got him to go with me one night to the potato bank and I got me a lap full of potatoes to eat so I wouldn't starve like old Master said I would. Dis white boy went nearly to a house where some white folks lived. I went to de ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... enjoyed it for the sake of the music; and even civilians' children, who see the service devoid of sweet sounds, and under its blackest and most revolting aspect, still are strangely fascinated thereby. Julie had heard about one of these, a lonely motherless boy, whose chief joy was to harness Granny to his "hearse" and play at funeral processions round the drawing-room, where his dead mother had ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... desired to see his motherless daughter well married before he should be called away from her. So, one evening, he sent for Sybil to come into his sitting-room, and when she obeyed his summons, and came and sat down on a low ottoman beside his arm-chair, he said, laying his ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... the simple charm of the people and the natural beauty of the place there came a period of sorrowing and grief. The motherless daughter of an official of the Lord of the Manor, a beautiful girl who was the idol of her family and loved by everybody, fell a victim to the villainy of her father's assistant to whom she was engaged to be married; he betrayed ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... mother had kissed her the very last thing, and then suddenly turned so pale and cold that the little girl grew frightened, and cried harder than ever in her life before. She hadn't had a kiss since that time from anybody; and how the little motherless heart yearned for just one more warm loving caress from the dear mother who "lived in the sky," as the child expressed it! So when presently she saw a lady and child at the basement window of the house opposite, she went over, and, kneeling ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and her disgust changed to a profound pity. A motherless girl who had run wild in the backwoods, her father probably out all day, her only female guide a woman of the backwoods, whose manners were presumably of the roughest—this had been Rona's training. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... yes, poor and motherless, Friendless and obscure; Only her father left to her, And he was ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... have to await the still riper hours when Bill shall have yielded up his wages. Old ladies of the locality are here in plenty, doubtfully fingering the pieces of meat which smother the slabs of the butchers' shops. Little Elsie is here, too, buying for a family of motherless brothers and sisters with the few shillings which Dad has doled out. Who knows so well as Little Elsie the exact spending value of twopence-halfpenny? Observe her as she lays in her Sunday gorge. Two penn'orth of "pieces" from the butcher's to begin with (for twopence you get ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... daughters, and both to have died in childbirth! I am very, very sorry, yet I keep my grief within bounds. What seems to me so lamentable is that two honourable ladies should in the very spring-time of life have been carried off at the moment of becoming mothers. I am grieved for the infants who are left motherless at their birth; I am grieved for their excellent husbands, and grieved also on my own account. For even now I retain the warmest affection for their dead father, as I have shown in my pleading and my books. Now but one of his three children ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... 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
... and devout widows who consecrated themselves to God, in or out of religious orders, are both, and fulfil in the spiritual order their proper destiny. We hold them in high honor, because they become mothers to the motherless, to the poor, to the forsaken, to the homeless. They instruct the ignorant, nurse the sick, help the helpless, tend the aged, catch the last breath of the dying, pray for the unbelieving and the cold-hearted, and elevate the moral tone of society, and shed a cheering radiance along the pathway ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... had been recalled; his heart had not recovered from the desolation caused by the death of the Bishop and his brethren, as well as the Helmores in the Makololo country, and still more by the removal of Mrs. Livingstone, and the thought of his motherless children; the most heart-rending scenes had been witnessed everywhere in regions that a short time ago had been so bright; all his efforts to do good had been turned to evil, every new path he had opened having been seized as it were by the devil and turned to the most diabolical ends; his countrymen ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... life for the life of little children. The scene of the first story was in America, nearly five and twenty years ago; that of the second story was in London, only a few weeks since. A young English girl had taken service in a family going to America, and her special duty was the charge of the three motherless children of her widowed master. One cold day in December they all embarked in a great Mississippi steamboat bound for the far North West. Day after day they steamed through the swollen river, where pieces of ice were ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... country, three hundred Israelites were ready for the long march to the Nile. They left behind them a camp oppressed with that heart-soreness, which affliction added to old afflictions brings,—the numb ache of sorrow, not its lively pain. Only Deborah, the childless, and Rachel, the motherless, went with lighter hearts,—if hearts can be light that go forward to meet the unknown fortunes ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... seized Steven 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
... nature, which was essentially womanly, had in reality long craved for the intimate sympathy and intercourse which only another woman could supply. There was something indolent and restful in the very atmosphere of the house that supplied a distinct want in the motherless girl's life. There were a number of vague possibilities of trouble in the world, half perceived, half divined by Eve; which possibilities Mrs. Harrington seemed capable of meeting and ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the motherless babies as four ruthless hands pulled apart their cosey nest, and there, among the nibbled fragments, appeared enough finely printed, greenish paper, to piece out parts of two bank bills. A large cypher and part of a figure one were visible, and that accounted ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... this while, to have the small motherless Hake children near her, inventing a hundred errands to keep them busy. Thus, to be sure, they saw many things too sad for their young eyes, yet Ruth perceived that in feeling helpful they escaped the worst broodings of bereavement, and, on the whole, watching them at times, as their ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a kind voice. She came from the parish of Dundonald. 'And where is your father?' He is dead. 'And is your mother in Glasgow?' She died in the hospital, and the thought of that sad time set the tears running down my cheeks. 'You poor motherless bairn!' she exclaimed, 'can it be you are the child of my old school companion? Have you any brothers or sisters?' No, I have nobody in the world. 'Did your mother leave you nothing?' In my simplicity, not understanding she meant worldly gear, I untied my bundle, uncovered the cloth I had ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... Ju-hai appeals to 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
... and starting forward, she cried, 'Dr. May, Dr. May, you will save him! He is fatherless and motherless, and his brother has always been harsh to him; but you will not forsake him; you said you would be a father to ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... love him, without knowing what it was he wanted of me. One of the signs he used to make me was to link one hand in the other, to show me he wished to marry me; and though I should have been glad if that could be, being alone and motherless I knew not whom to open my mind to, and so I left it as it was, showing him no favour, except when my father, and his too, were from home, to raise the curtain or the lattice a little and let him see me plainly, at which he would ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... we virtuously bring up our motherless little sister?" was the thought with each of the girls. The answers were, in one mind, "I trust we shall do well by her, dear little thing. I see, on an emergency, that I know how to act. I never thought I was capable of being of so much ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Susanna, quietly; "but oh! my dear, the world outside isn't such a Paradise for young girls like you, motherless and fatherless and penniless. You have a good home here; can't ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a 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 object mysterious ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... ring removed. The swelling gradually passed away. And William Archer determined to make amends for his past neglect by future care and attention to his motherless boy. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... pressed against the windowpane, hours of mechanical and repeated lonely 'games', which had lost their savour, and were kept going by sheer inertness. Not unhappy, not fretful, but long,—long, long. It seems to me, as I look back to the life in the motherless Islington house, as I resumed it in that slow eighth year of my life, that time had ceased to move. There was a whole age between one tick of the eight-day clock in the hall, and the next tick. When the milkman ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... watching every look of the teacher she loved and grieved at losing, sat Lucy Raymond, the minister's motherless daughter, a slight, delicate-looking girl, with dark hair and bright grey eyes, full of energy and thought, but possessing a good deal of self-will and love of approbation,—dangerous elements of character unless modified ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... in 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
... into the heart of Australia under the impression that I was now really motherless, and under that impression I have lived ever since. I cannot now detail to you all my wanderings and adventures. I will only say that I became deeply interested in the Australian gold mines, bought up one finally, and have superintended its running ever since. Lately, it became necessary for me to ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman |
