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Babyhood   /bˈeɪbihˌʊd/   Listen
Babyhood

noun
1.
The early stage of growth or development.  Synonyms: early childhood, infancy.
2.
The earliest state of immaturity.  Synonym: infancy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Babyhood" Quotes from Famous Books



... opened. Facts wove themselves together in wider and wider combinations. Orderly procedure was found where there had seemed such confusion as only capricious spirits could occasion. It is learned, too, that even as the individual man has grown up from babyhood, so the race of man has grown up from the beast. The globe itself has grown from a simple origin into infinite diversity and complexity. There has been a universal, orderly growth,—what we name "Evolution." ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... wrap her charge carefully in a shawl, and fetch milk from the dresser, and coax till Dorrie turned her small head, heavy with the cares of neglected babyhood, sideways on the old plaid maud and began to suck. Apparently he had interrupted the scrubbing of the kitchen floor, for the tiles were wet three quarters of the way over, and on a dry oasis stood a ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... "nobody," still he could not help feeling an interest in the ranch, which had been the only home he had known for a long time. In fact it was really the only home he knew, for he did not, of course, recall his days of babyhood. And now, though Dave knew that he was not Mr. Carson's son, though he realized that he might never inherit the broad acres over which roamed thousands of cattle, still he retained the feeling of loyalty and fealty that caused him to ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster

... anywhere near home, the laughing jackasses, two of them, that come and guffaw to me every morning, the pheasants that I watch capering and strutting on the logs hidden in the scrub. Even the plants become friends; there are creepers near my camp that I've watched from babyhood, and more than one big tree with which I've ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... absolutely after this, either in regard to the heavens above or the earth beneath, but continued to use my "mother's instinct," if "reason" is too dignified a term to apply to woman's thoughts. My advice to every mother is, above all other arts and sciences, study first what relates to babyhood, as there is no department of human action in which ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Tennyson really worked the essence of modern science into his poetical constitution, so that its appalling birds and frightful flowers were really part of his literary imagery. To him blind and brutal monsters, the products of the wild babyhood of the Universe, were as the daisies and the nightingales were to Keats; he absolutely realised the great literary paradox mentioned in the Book of Job: "He saw Behemoth, and he played with him ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... passion. And yet the moment I beheld her, my heart was dastardized; and my reverence for the virgin purity, so visible in her whole deportment, again took place. Surely, Belford, this is an angel. And yet, had she not been known to be a female, they would not from babyhood have dressed her as such, nor would she, but upon that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... going to let anyone but you know that I'm a fool. Especially the girl. She would be thunderstruck. Not that girls of nineteen haven't married men of forty, and perhaps cared for them. But this girl has been brought up since her babyhood to think of me as her guardian, and an elderly person beyond the pale where love or even flirtation is concerned. Imagine a daughter and namesake of Ellaline de Nesville being in the society of a man, and not trying to flirt with him! It's almost inconceivable. ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... Little Albert's babyhood kept his mother a good deal at home—and by "home" I mean the house in which he had been born. His father's lessened interest in Europe (and his diminished deference for it) kept his mother at home completely—and by "home" I now mean the town in which Albert had been born. Father, mother, and ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... the eyes are large and bright blue, and when the great beak opens it shows a large throat of deepest carmine, so that it possesses the beauty of colour from its earliest days, and when full grown and in fine plumage it is one of the handsomest of our birds. In its babyhood my jay was much like other young things of his kind, always clamouring for food, and seeming to care for little else, but as he grew up he attached himself to me with a wonderful strength of affection which entirely reversed this order of things, for whenever ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... unbearable. She had waited almost an hour for Pym to return, and then, taking Ixza with her, had gone forth; but where the old nurse resided, only Lilama and Ixza knew. The maid knew only that Lilama had left the cellar with the intention of assisting, in some manner, the nurse of her babyhood. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... his babyhood he had been a child of one purpose: to increase by burlesques the sufferings of unfortunate friends. If one of them wept, Wallie incessantly pursued him, yelping in horrid mimicry; if one were chastised he could not appear out-of-doors for days except to encounter Wallie and a complete rehearsal ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... him away in the lock-up, an' be out agin in no time, Masther Jim," said Murty. "Take care of her me boy." And the stockman, who had known Norah since her babyhood, choked suddenly as he looked at her pale face. Norah was herself again, however, and she smiled at ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... the postmaster at the general store, and repack my kit for pony travel. Then, after watching Big Pete skilfully throw the diamond hitch, we were off for the hills and our first camp. I hoped that I was on my way to find my real father and unravel the mystery that surrounded my strange babyhood. But I little guessed what adventures I was to have or the strange things I was to see before my quest ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... sportsmen known as Le Roi des Bois. It is said, but we cannot vouch for the fact—that Cauchon, in order to acquire the scent, swiftness and sagacity of the cariboo, has lived on cariboo milk, with an infusion of moss and bark, ever since his babyhood, but that this very winter (1865) he killed, with slugs, four cariboo at one ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... chubbier and more adorable every day he lived. It is no exaggeration to say that they all worshipped him now in his little kingly babyhood, for the dear life had been twice given, and the second time it was Judy's gift, and ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... It was rarely indeed that her placid nature was roused to wrath, but she did the thing thoroughly when she was about it. In a flow of eloquence, worthy of Esmeralda herself, she revived incidents in Pixie's life, dating from babyhood onwards, to prove to the chairs and tables, and any odd pieces of furniture which might happen to be listening, the blameless and beautiful character of the maid who had even been spurned ("spurned" was the word used) by a recreant ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... scarcely fail to be remarkable in some way. It is not from such sources that the mediocrities are recruited. But the child was utterly unlike her parents, and never showed much likeness to either in after life. Her genius was unquestioned even from her precocious babyhood, and she was the wonder and admiration of all the brilliant circle of her father's friends. Her temperament was most vehement and impulsive, and her vivacity a wonder even to the Parisians. She seemed to know everything by intuition, and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... From babyhood we lose sight of Socrates until we find him working at his father's trade as a sculptor. Certainly he had a goodly degree of skill, for the "Graces" which he carved were fair and beautiful and admired ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... is admitted the first time with much ceremony in order that the day may be one of pleasant memories. He also receives a new name, the name of his babyhood being dropped. Indeed, a change of name accompanies each new epoch of his life, as the time he takes a new degree, the day of his marriage, etc. Thus the boy enters upon his new work. The first years of study are devoted to reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic, which ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... gathered breasts arises from a mother sitting up in bed to suckle her babe. He ought to be accustomed to take the bosom while she is lying down; if this habit is not at first instituted, it will be difficult to adopt it afterwards. Good habits may be taught a child from earliest babyhood. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... the days pass quickly at the Presidio. The door of the commodious sala at the home of the comandante always stood wide open, and almost nightly the feet of the young people which had danced since their babyhood tripped over the floor of the old adobe building. Picnics were planned to the woods near the Mission and frequently longer excursions were undertaken; for El Camino Real was not only, the king's highway to church and military ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... right hand in recognition, as if he had been a young officer. Most boys might have looked awkward or theatrical in making the gesture, but he made it with naturalness and ease, because he had been familiar with the form since his babyhood. He had seen officers returning the salutes of their men when they encountered each other by chance in the streets, he had seen princes passing sentries on their way to their carriages, more august personages raising the quiet, recognizing ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Hindu mythologies localized, the story being recited in a monotonous, sing-song chant, in the old Kawi or sacred language, by a professional accompanist who sat, cross-legged, in the orchestra. As a result of constant drilling since babyhood, the Balinese dancers attain a perfection of technique unknown on the western stage, but the visitor who expects to see the verve and abandon of the Indian dances as portrayed by Ruth St. Denis is certain to be disappointed. To tell the truth, the dances of Bali, like those I saw ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... he would try, as it were by a side wind, to get a useful spurt of work out of me, either in the garden or in the hay-field, had constantly an eye to my scholastic improvement. From my very babyhood, before those first days at Harrow, I had to take my place alongside of him as he shaved at six o'clock in the morning, and say my early rules from the Latin Grammar, or repeat the Greek alphabet; and was obliged ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... well a halt was always called, for the water of it had healing properties, and from their babyhood the children had, as a matter of duty, tested its powers by bathing their eyes; but to-day, as they stooped over it, a weird shriek in the distance brought them to their feet again. Then came a great racket, as though a pile of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... Gillian had her confidential talk with her mother—-a talk that she never forgot, trying to dig to the roots of her failures in a manner that only the true mother-confessor of her own child can perhaps have patience and skill for, and that only when she has studied the creature from babyhood. The concatenation, ending (if it was so to end) in the committal to Avoncester Jail, and beginning with the interview over the rails, had to be traced link by link, and was almost as long as 'the house ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... admiration. Then the baby, who never before had seen the purple and fine linen of majesty or the sparkling jewels of wealth, knowing this was the opportunity of his life put up his hands in welcome and said in the universal language of babyhood, "Ah, goo! ah, goo!" He was a worthy child of a great mother, and the minute he was left to himself he came before the footlights and with one word captivated his audience, and a storm of kisses fell upon his lips and neck and arms. And when the girls ceased lest they should ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley

... wondered to hear whole schoolrooms full of them humming and droning their lessons as we made our way among the tenants. Fortunately, they played mostly in the gutters, the larger looking after the smaller when their years and riches were so few more, with that beautiful care which childhood bestows on babyhood everywhere in Europe. To say that those Spanish children were as tenderly watchful of these Spanish babies as English children is to say everything. Now and then a mother cared for a babe as only a mother can in an office which the pictures and images of the Most Holy Virgin consecrate and ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... dreadful admission, isn't it? I think it was our old nurse. I can always remember her driving a dog out of the nursery. 'Nasty thing!' she used to say. 'You shall not come near my baby.' I suppose I got the idea quite in babyhood that a dog was something noxious. Not that the others minded. The house was always full ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... the three-headed dog, what should appear but Geryon, the six-legged man monster, kicking at Hercules with five of his legs, in order to get the remaining one at liberty! But Hercules held on. By and by, no Geryon was there, but a huge snake, like one of those which Hercules had strangled in his babyhood, only a hundred times as big; and it twisted and twined about the hero's neck and body, and threw its tail high into the air, and opened its deadly jaws as if to devour him outright; so that it was really a very terrible spectacle! But Hercules was no whit ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... true," you say, "for I have tried desperately to remember certain incidents, certain lessons learned—and they are gone. Moreover, I cannot remember what happened back there in my babyhood." ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... the fine things to be said for Aunt Charlotte; the arguments in her behalf—a splendid long golden list of them stretching back to their babyhood and beyond, binding them with ties stronger almost than blood ties to this faithful, loving, cantankerous, crotchety old soul. Aunt Charlotte had been born in servitude, the possession of their mother's mother. She had been their mother's handmaiden before their mother's marriage. Afterward she ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... understand it at all. At first she thought he wanted to coax the confession out of her, and when she found that it made no difference, she could not recover from her wonder—he, whom she had deserted in his babyhood, and so cruelly injured in his manhood, to devote himself to toiling for her sake, and never to speak harshly to her for one moment. She knew I loved her, and she had always been good to me, except when O'Leary forced ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... uncle, the Canon Lucien; he loved, more than all his other playmates and companions, his boy-uncle, fat, twelve-year-old Joey Fesch, who had taught him his letters, and been his admirer and follower from babyhood. ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... and pure air must be constantly inhaled by the lungs, in order that they may supply vigor to the whole frame. All enlightened parents are acquainted with these laws of nature, and generally act on them; but when, owing to judicious management, their children emerge from babyhood in full enjoyment of all the animal organs, and with muscles and sinews growing firmer every day in consequence of the exercise which their little owners delight in giving them, is the same judicious management extended to the mind, of which the body, which has been so carefully nourished, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... negotiations; the troth plight before the circle of ceremonious kindred and merry maidens, of whom she had often been one—the subsequent attentions of the betrothed on all festival days, the piles of linen and all plenishings accumulated since babyhood, and all reviewed and laid out for general admiration (Ah! poor Aunt Johanna still spinning away to add to the many webs in her walnut presses!)—then the grand procession to fetch home the bride, the splendid ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he notice the stranger again, although he stayed there a long time. But when an old robin came to attend to his wants, that was a different matter; the kingbird went at once for the grown-up bird, thus proving that he spared the first one because of his babyhood. ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... she looked truly to a man who had paddled two days in a hot sticky fog, as, clad in white, she sat still and placid on her airy perch. Her hair, of the very light fleecy gold seldom seen after babyhood, hung over her shoulders unconfined by comb or ribbon, felling around her like a veil and glittering in the horizontal sunbeams; her face, throat and hands were white as the petals of a white camellia, her features infantile, her cast-down eyes invisible under ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... bereavement which comes to every mother. It comes upon her suddenly, leaving her surprised, wondering, and full of foolish little fears that in the boyhood of her boy she may not hold so big a place as was given her to hold through all his babyhood. ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott

... temporal and eternal salvation were strictly his own affair. He asked, and expected, no aid from the community; he could at most "change works" in time of harvest, with a neighbor, if he had one. It was the sternest school of self-reliance, from babyhood to the grave, that human society is ever likely to witness. It bred heroes and cranks and hermits; its glories and its eccentricities are written in the pages of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman; they are written more permanently still in ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... that it is easy for most of us to make a fair beginning at almost anything. In the rough and tumble of babyhood and youth we all accumulate experiences which are raw material for any and every occupation. So when one of them kindles in you a light blaze of curiosity, you have only to pull yourself together, you have only to mobilize your forces, and you ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... one and one only. Any change in it was not only in itself a new experience, but brought into juxtaposition what is with what was. The changes that began to mark the divergence of sex were positive shocks to him, for they were unexpected. In the very dawn of babyhood dress had no special import; to his masculine eyes sex was lost in youth. But, little by little, came the tiny changes which convention has established. And with each change came to Squire Norman the growing realisation that his child was a woman. A tiny woman, it is true, and requiring ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... little Christabel, whose few years had hitherto been passed in pain and suffering. The apothecary was not able to find out what hidden disorder sapped the spring of little Christie's health, and made her from her very babyhood a frail, weak, pallid invalid, scarcely fit to do anything except lie on a sofa, learn a few little lessons from her father, and amuse herself with fancy work. A playfellow she could seldom bear. Her cousins, the three daughters ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... me with thy large brown eyes, Philip, my king! Round whom the enshadowing purple lies Of babyhood's royal dignities. Lay on my neck thy tiny hand With love's invisible scepter laden; I am thine Esther to command Till thou shalt find ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... Rodenhurst, kept by Miss Roscoe for boys under twelve; and Martin learnt his letters at home, and trotted about the house and parish in Beatrice's wake. He was a sweet little scamp, and the apple of her eye, for she had brought him up from babyhood, but she sometimes felt it would be an intense relief when he was old enough to go to ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... large man with a constant expression of wondering inquiry. It was the expression of his babyhood; he had never lost it, and it was an expression which revealed truly the state of his mind. Always had Joe Beecher wondered, first of all at finding himself in the world at all, then at the various happenings of existence. He probably ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... on the far-off days of Peter's babyhood very tenderly when she was alone with little Sarah, who sat and nursed her doll, and liked very much to listen; she often felt awed, as though some one had died; but she did not connect the story much with the Peter of every ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... greater, if as great, as my right to inclusion in the collection of Scottish Poets. If I "lisped in numbers," it was not in Yorkshire, for Yorkshire I left for ever before even the first babblings of babyhood began. However, "kissing goes by favour," and I was happy ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... stored with evidences of the most laborious and patient work; a Cambridge text lay beside them face downward, as he had left it on departure. His mother's housekeeper, who had been one of his best friends from babyhood, was the only person allowed to dust his room—but on the strict condition that she replaced ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... snatched from him in a moment in the darkness. The loss did not hurt him as deeply as he might have thought; he was numbed by the greater blow that hung over him. If Allan would only live!...The boy had been his constant companion since babyhood. All his hopes, all his ambitions, which had found their expression in his years of feverish toil, had been wrapped about Allan. He had no one else...His better self revolted at that thought. "You have ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... bitter-sweet!— Beauty of babyhood,— Earth's wistful uttermost of good Flung out upon the street; Fouled, even as the highways would, With mirk and mire and bruise; The cheek more petal-fine Than rose before a shrine! Those hands like star-fish ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody

... the room; I'd no candle, and 'twas enough to startle him. 'Oh, is it you, Judith?' said he, quietly, making believe to be as indifferent as may be. I struck a light, for I couldn't find the shirts, and then I saw his white face. He can't overget the fear: 'twas implanted in him in babyhood: and I only wish I could get that wicked girl punished as I'd punish her, for it was her work. But about the t'other? I have heard of ghosts walking—though, thank goodness, I'm not frightened at 'em, like ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... 'but,' as if the good qualities wasn't of much account since they could not command general admiration. Yes, this had something to do with what follered; I can see that plain enough. Still, I know she loved 'Lihu from babyhood deep down in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... dozen years had slipped away. Now young Thomas Camm was leaving childhood, as he had long left babyhood, behind him. He was a big boy, quick, strong for his age, and bidding fair to be as good a farmer as ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... early morning. Her eyes were dim with weeping. She had not thought of its age and history, neither did the sight of such pathetic loot wake bitter feelings against her foes. It was only the cup that her little children had used, one after another, in their babyhood; the last and dearest had kept it longest, and even he was dead—fallen in ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... held her close, while he told her of her babyhood and the story of the kidnapping, refraining from mentioning Cronk's name. It took sometime to impress upon her that all need of apprehension was past, that her future cast with her own dear ones was safe, and that Lem and Lon were but as ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... chimneys and rattled the casements in a way that would have prevented a town-bred child from sleeping, and up in those bare rooms there was cold enough to pinch you black and blue; but Elsie and Duncan had never thought much of that, for they had been accustomed to it from babyhood, and only threw on their thick homespun garments in ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... in fact a nest of pirates. In 1841 the island was ceded by China to Great Britain, and the cession was confirmed by the treaty of Nanking in August, 1842. The transformation effected in less than a decade had been magical; yet that was only the bloom [Page 8] of babyhood, compared with the rich maturity ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... My babyhood, my childhood, my girlhood, my school-days were all utterly blotted out by that one strange shock of horror. My past life became exactly as though it had never been. I forgot my own name. I forgot my mother-tongue. I forgot everything I had ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... his very babyhood the child delights in colour, and at a very early age he learns to love and understand pictures. Then comes the desire to make these for himself. Give him pencil and paper, give him chalk, charcoal, a paint-box, and other suitable materials, and he will set to work ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... Valentine Hawkehurst, the successful young scribbler, with his fair young wife Charlotte; and out on the terrace yonder are two nurses walking with two babies, at that early, and, to some minds, obnoxious stage of babyhood in which a perpetual rocking, and pacing to and fro, and swaying backwards and forwards in the air, is necessary for the preservation of anything approaching tranquillity. But to the minds of the two ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... at the remembrance of the young, gay man who had been her boon companion since her babyhood, and at the memory of those last sad days, when she knew he had agonized over her future even more than over ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... always lived in Washington in a little house with black shutters, near the Capitol, while the children had lived with his sister, near the White House, where they had grown from babyhood. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... showed none of the preternatural musical precocity of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, who in their very cradles were steeped in music. While his musical powers lay a long time latent, his thoughts and energies were from babyhood directed to the theatre. At the age of ten he probably knew a great deal more about the drama of the day than he did of its music; probably he knew better when a play was well represented than when ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... at Ansdore, she did not personally make much use of it, having perhaps a secret fear of its unfriendly whiteness, and a love of the homely, steaming jug which had been the fount of her ablutions since her babyhood's tub was given up. This evening she removed the day's grime from herself by a gradual and excessively modest process, and about one and a half pints of hot water. Then she twisted her hair into two ropes, put on a clean night-gown, and ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... and the words flashed defiantly from his lips. The shaft struck home. It was true. From the boy's babyhood the father had realized it with ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned posies, whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of sombre threads. Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that all its important events, babyhood, childhood, betrothal, marriage, motherhood, with all their mysteries of love and life and death, were chronicled in this narrow space not two ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, what humble consciousness of her own babyhood and want of strength, even in the matter of lifting and carrying; through how much weariness and hopelessness, and how many secret tears; she drudged on, until recognised as useful, even indispensable. That time came. She took the place of eldest of the three, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... as you please,"—graciously. She was very fond of this upright old soldier, whom she had known since babyhood. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... but trying to be a man—and beginning to understand. No man with his heart in the right place could hold out against her pretty coaxing. It was sweet enough to wile the very birds out of the trees. It made no difference that he had been used to her wiles from babyhood up. To be used to Ruth's ways only made them harder to resist. No stranger could possibly have foreseen his defeat as clearly as David foresaw his at the moment that she started toward him. But self-respect ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch 205 Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 210 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... mother felt like this about me," she would say to herself, and the wonder was like a cord drawing her back to her mother and to her own babyhood. Then George would become strangely vague, strangely remote in her thoughts; and her mother would seem nearer to her than everything except the child ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... I have journeyed from the far-off Lands Of Babyhood—where baby-lilies blew Their trumpets in mine ears, and filled my hands With treasures of perfume and honey-dew, And where the orchard shadows ever drew Their cool arms round me when my cheeks were fired With too much joy, and lulled mine eyelids to, And only let the starshine trickle ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... for seven days in the week is higher and more lasting than an hour of teaching in the Sunday school under the best of teachers. So it is with joy that we know that these parents are beginning with the babyhood of their children to tell them of Him who blessed the little ones and said, 'of such is the kingdom of heaven.' We are glad we may look forward to the time when we, in the Sunday school, may also have ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... reverence and love, and stopped to speak with them. But Belfield life, slow and stagnant though it was, was busy enough to have filled their minds with fresher memories, and I was so nearly forgotten that there was small pleasure in reminding them of the lad who had grown from babyhood into a tall stripling among them. My sentiment passed. I looked about more coldly even at the street that led to the cottage where Georgy Lenox lived, and went on briskly to the great stone house of the Holts. Georgy would be there of course: impossible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... a proper balance in the conduct of our short affairs I must believe that you will practise; and I must believe, as I look here into your face, seeing your confident advance (as though you were flying out from your babyhood into young life without any fear), that the virtues which now surround you in a crowd and make a sort of court for you and are your angels every way, will go along with you and will stand by you to the end. Even ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... he laid a strong though boyish hand upon the young girl's arm. "What need for couriers or dispatches that speak of suitors for your hand? Am not I to be your husband? From babyhood you have so ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... John!" cried the tottering old butler who had known him since babyhood. "Very glad, indeed, we all are to ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... every baby has to do with the saving of the world—the saving of it from selfishness, and folly, and greed. And for Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign of love in the earth? How could he do better than begin from babyhood? He had to lay hold of the heart of the world. How could he do better than begin with his mother's—the best one in it. Through his mother's love first, he grew into the world. It was first by the door of all ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... himself, stoutly: though Hirschvogel never stirred, never spoke, yet would he keep all faith in it! After all their happy years together, after all the nights of warmth and joy he owed it, should he doubt his own friend and hero, whose gilt lion's feet he had kissed in his babyhood? "No, no, no, no!" he said, again, with so much emphasis that the Lady of Meissen ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)

... repent. (Offering to embrace her.) CAS. (withdrawing from him). Nay, Luiz, it may not be. I have embraced you for the last time. LUIZ (amazed). Casilda! CAS. I have just learnt, to my surprise and indignation, that I was wed in babyhood to the infant son of the King of Barataria! LUIZ. The son of the King of Barataria? The child who was stolen in infancy by the Inquisition? CAS. The same. But, of course, you know his story. LUIZ. Know his story? Why, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... After babyhood the Indians of Guiana are never seen naked. When they change their single garment they retire. The women wear a little apron, now generally made of European beads, but the Warraus still make it of the inner bark of a tree, and some ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... harshness and intolerance for all the world beside. He had as it were taken that unwilling heart by storm, claiming it as his right before he was out of his cradle. And later the attachment between them had grown and thriven, for Piers had never relinquished the ground he had won in babyhood. By sheer arrogance of possession he had held his own till the impetuous ardour of his affection and the utter fearlessness on which it was founded had made of him the cherished idol of the heart which had tried to shut him out. Sir Beverley ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours' ramble, she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from babyhood—a handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her days, which showed no symptom of declining, in admirable works. Her daughter, the widow of an officer killed at the Marne, was with her, and the two greeted Noel with a shower of cordial questions: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... as embers Quenched with flakes of rain or snow Till the last faint flame burns low, All those lustrous memories lie Dead with babyhood gone by: Yet in her they dare not die: Others, fair as heaven is, yet, Now they share ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... something of her antecedents. And Frank had answered that he would do so, knowing the while that nothing could tempt him to bring her and his brother together until all the recollections of her babyhood, if she had any, were obliterated, and she had in part ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... witchcraft makes him ruthless to the accused, he is equally pitiless in his terror of what he calls 'ill-luck.' An 'unlucky' child may, he believes, bring misfortune upon a whole village, and if mother-love triumphs sometimes over fear, and the little one grows out of babyhood without any neighbour knowing that it has cut its top teeth first, or is in some other way marked for misfortune, the secret may none the less leak out some day. And then the poor little bringer of 'bad luck' will quietly disappear, or will sicken ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... occurred yesterday. His mother and I recalled them over and over again. From the day John was born, it seems to me the only things that really interested me were the things in which he was concerned. I used to tuck him in his crib at night. The affairs of his babyhood were far more important to me than ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... in the golden brown shadows of her hair. On either side of her square white forehead the sunny ripples kept the only memory of the golden curls of babyhood. The darker eyebrows and heavy lashes and the deep violet-blue eyes, the pink bloom of the cheeks, and the resolute mouth gave to Leigh's face all the charm of the sweet young girl. But the deeper charm that claimed the steady gaze lay in the spirit back of the face, ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... from the East, and Susan gladly seized the opportunity for a little visit at home. She found herself strangely stirred when she went in, from the bright winter sunshine, to the dingy, odorous old house, encountering the atmosphere familiar to her from babyhood, and the unaltered warm embraces of Mary Lou and her aunt. Before she had hung up her hat and coat, she was swept again into the old ways, listening, while she changed her dress, to Mary Lou's patient complaints and wistful questions, slipping out to the bakery just before ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... absent themselves so obstinately! She told him, with her secret smile, that she had scolded them for talking so much; but when he played they were never far away, she assured him. Nor was the Japanese woman, Cilli—what a name! A nickname given by Constantia in her babyhood. Cilli was a good soul. He hoped so—her goodness was not apparent. She had a sneering expression as he played. He never looked up from the keyboard that he did not encounter her ironical gaze. She was undoubtedly interested. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... advantage, or disadvantage, of that experience of life which comes early to those who live in crowded tenements or amongst the outspoken people of the countryside. The children of the poorer classes have, in a way, too little to learn: they are brought up from babyhood in the midst of all domestic concerns, and the love affairs of their elders are intimately known to them, therefore quite early in adolescence "ilka lassie has her laddie," and although the attraction be short-lived and the affection ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... first chance at starting men to thinking right. Through babyhood and boyhood they are ours. If all ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... his craft," said Louis, laughing; "the little squaw has been brought up in the knowledge and practice of such matters from her babyhood; perhaps if we were to set her to knitting, and spinning, and milking of cows, and house-work, and learning to read, I doubt if she would prove half as ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... rather irritably; "but if I were to talk for ever I should never make you understand, mother. In the first place, you have never seen Verity—I mean Mrs. Keston. She is the product of a modern age. From babyhood she has lived among artists. She has imbibed their Bohemianism and learnt to talk their jargon. A studio has been her nursery, playroom, and schoolroom, and as soon as she grew ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... scores of generations of moccasined feet, which was once the only approach to the fortress-pueblo. It was three hundred feet down that precipitous wall to where the steps joined the trail, but from babyhood she had gone up and down, and she knew them every one. From one to another she fearlessly sprang, and over several at a time she dropped herself, catching here by her hands and there by her toes and finally landed, with a last long leap, on the trail. ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... table turned. On the threshold stood Kenneth Thornton and by the hand he held a savage-visaged child clad in breech clout and moccasins, but otherwise naked. Its eyes held the beady sharpness of the Indian, and though hardly past babyhood, it stood haughtily ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... twenty-four hours had passed her quondam boarder, with a tired sigh, sank into his favorite morris chair in his old familiar rooms, and looked about him with contented eyes. Every treasure was in place, from the traditional four small stones of his babyhood days to the Batterseas Billy had just brought him. Pete, as of yore, was hovering near with a dust-cloth. Bertram's gay whistle sounded from the floor below. William Henshaw ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... at the foot of his bed, where his eyes rested on them earliest and latest, hung a group of portraits in oil, in the same frame, of Louis the beloved, from his babyhood to the present time: on the side wall hung a painting of Anne in her first glory as mistress of the new home in Washington Square; opposite, Monsignor smiled down in purple splendor; two miniatures contained the grave, sweet, motherly face of Mary Everard and the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... almost entire charge of her little god-daughter; and, as "Nina" grew out of her babyhood, Sarah continued to exercise such general supervision over her that the child learned to look up to her as to a mother, and frequently when together, and in her correspondence for many years, addressed her ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... Righteousness from babyhood has given to these girls delicate beautiful features, clear complexions that neither faded nor had to be renewed in the thick of battle, eyes that seemed flecked with divine lights and could dance with mirth on occasion or soften exquisitely in sympathy, furtive ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... no more: a tall, heavily built blond boy, with a quiet, sweet disposition, that at first offered temptations to the despots of the playground; but a sudden flaring up once or twice of that unexpected spirit which had broken out in his babyhood brought him immunity from ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... town was to him! He had always loved it from his very babyhood. The wide old streets, with ancient houses still standing here and there, rising or falling in gentle slopes, and called by quaint old names such as he never heard elsewhere; the fine old churches crowning the hills, and lifting up delicate tall spires, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... the little sufferer, softly speaking the language of her babyhood, the padre hears word after word, uttered by the girl in the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... battle with king colic. But this ancient invader of the empire of babyhood had sounded a precipitate retreat; the curly head had fallen over on the paternal shoulder; the tear-stained little face was almost calm in repose, when down went a naked heel square on an inverted ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... rolled smoothly back from his baby forehead, little Johnny lay, asleep. Somebody, with a touch of tenderness, had placed a just budding rose in the tiny white hand, and baby looked very sweet and beautiful in his narrow bed. Poor little Johnny! his had been a sad, neglected babyhood; many weary hours had he spent in his cradle, receiving only cross looks from Kitty, and neglected by the mother, who, though she loved Johnny, and even because she loved him, must leave him to work for her daily bread. But it was all over now: Johnny's cries would never disturb them again; ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... not an expert swimmer, had passed her novitiate, and thoroughly enjoyed a leisurely round of the bay, with as much floating included as Miss Young would allow. To Honor the sea was as a second element. She had been accustomed to it from her babyhood, and was as fearless as any of her brothers. She soon gave proof of her ability in the bath, and was straightway placed among those Chaddites who were privileged to ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... for nature works for the purpose of preventing "serous surface" invasion, and it takes a deal of malpractice to force such an infection. If nature's provisions against peritoneal inflammation were not as great as they are, few people with intestinal putrefactive diseases, from cholera infantum in babyhood to proctitis in old age, would get well, for most of the treatment for one and all of these diseases is obstructive rather than ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... restlessness. Frequently a change of position fully to the right side, when a child has been restless or crying, and especially if it has been lying on its back, will at once relieve it and allow it to go to sleep again. It is the knowledge of these little things that count in babyhood. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... take care of Duke's babies—ah, my brave boy, that was the hardest blow of all! The others were too delicate and fragile for this world—I learnt not to murmur at their so quickly taking flight. But he—so strong and full of life—who had come through all the dangers of babyhood and childhood, who had grown up so good and manly, so fit to do useful work in the world—was there no other victim for the deadly cholera's clutch, out there in the burning East?" and Grandmamma shuddered as a vision of the terrible scenes of a plague-stricken land, that she ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... Lou. It was a cry through Emmy Lou. Emmy Lou was just beginning to grow tall, just losing the round-eyed faith of babyhood. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... rose an hour after daybreak and repeated a short prayer, a habit learned in their babyhood. For seven years the sincere petition had been put up every morning on their mother's bed, and begun and ended by a kiss. Then the two brothers went through their morning toilet as scrupulously as any pretty woman; doubtless ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac

... full permission. Ever since Honora had been able to combine a narration, Humfrey had been the recipient, though she seldom knew whether he attended, and from her babyhood upwards had been quite contented with trotting in the wake of his long strides, pouring out her ardent fancies, now and then getting an answer, but more often going on like a little singing bird, through ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... with the nurse, and trying to cheer up a solemn-looking boy of three, who evidently considered his deposition from babyhood as a great injury, she tripped lightly down again, to take part in the Saturday's reading ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... were together because they liked to be; doing the farm work because it suited them better; while she had known from babyhood that for some reason her mother did not care for her as she did for Adam. She thought at first that it was because Adam was a boy. Later, when she noticed her mother watching her every time she started to speak, and interrupting with the never-failing caution: "Now be careful! ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... appeared there first, in Newland Archer's boyhood, as a brilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten, of whom people said that she "ought to be painted." Her parents had been continental wanderers, and after a roaming babyhood she had lost them both, and been taken in charge by her aunt, Medora Manson, also a wanderer, who was herself returning to New York ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... never destroyed an intensity and depths of elemental passion that might have been native to these very wildernesses in which she was imprisoned. Cool an self-restrained to the finger tips, she knew the full meaning of fidelity. Orphaned almost in babyhood, she had lived a lonely life: this girlhood love affair of hers had been her single, great adventure. She had been sure that her lover still lived when all her friends had judged him dead. Months and years she had dreamed of finding him, of sheltering ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... his chain. He cannot. If he made up his mind to try, that project would itself be an unavoidable link—a thought bound to occur to him at that precise moment, and made certain by the first act of his babyhood." ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... death the Rev. Mr. Bronte's life grew yet more secluded from ordinary human interests. He was not intimate with his parishioners; scarcely more intimate with his children. He was proud of them when they said anything clever, for, in spite of their babyhood, he felt at such moments that they were worthy of their father; but their forlorn infancy, their helpless ignorance, was no appeal to his heart. Some months before his wife's death he had begun to take his dinner alone, on account of his delicate digestion; ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... have been more than ever persuaded that I'm a promising little German, but I did desperately want to. I could hardly not cry. These cheated people! Exploited and cheated, led carefully step by step from babyhood to a certain habit of mind necessary to their exploiters, with certain passions carefully developed and encouraged, certain ancient ideas, anachronisms every one of them, kept continually before their eyes,—why, if they did ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... wonderfully distinct and frequent repetitions. Then they passed the fantastic castle of the Palatinate, built in the middle of the stream, and in old times the refuge of the Countesses Palatine, where their children were born and kept in security during their babyhood. The Empress landed at Bingen, where she spent the night, starting again the next morning. Towards three in the afternoon she reached Mayence, where twelve young girls belonging to the best families of the city were awaiting her. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... things she could teach them, and their meek spiritedness gave her but little trouble. Their dead mother's suffering and their father's rough contempt on the rare occasions when he had chanced to behold them had chastened them to humbleness from their babyhood. There was none who wanted them, none who served or noticed them, and there was no circumstance which could not restrain them, no person who was not their ruler if ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... you have heard the truth, Madame. But you know yourself that babyhood and womanhood are two different things; and the woman has just set at naught the baby. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... were any of his own kind in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact, he had never thought about himself at all, but, having all he wanted in the shape of food and sport, had made himself quite content and even happy. As he grew from babyhood he got more mischievious still, and gave no end of trouble by eating and destroying nearly all the grapes on the vines, and fruit ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... among a series of pictures, with the following of George the Fourth, exhibited in his babyhood. We are told that "all persons of fashion were admitted to see the Prince, under the following restrictions, viz.—that in passing through the apartment they stepped with the greatest caution, and did not offer to touch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... where brothers and sisters as habitually teased and annoyed each other, would have struck them as fantastic. Perhaps Kate herself hardly knew the power of her own will upon them. Her commands in their babyhood had not been couched in the language of modern child-analysts, nor had she given, or been able to give, any particular reason for her law. But the instinct by which she drew Wolf's attention to his sister's goodness, or noted Wolf's cleverness ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... theater is stifling hot in summer, and yet he must laugh and scream and sing within it, while his good wife collects the sous, talking all the while to this and to that child whom she has known since its babyhood; chatting with the nurses decked out in their gay-colored, Alsatian bows, the ribbons ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith



Words linked to "Babyhood" :   infancy, immatureness, baby, immaturity, oral phase, time of life, oral stage, early childhood



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