"Childless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was childless, so that he left no direct descendants. But the branches of the family descended from the original Jean Cartier appear on the registers of St Malo, Saint Briac, and other places in some profusion during the sixteenth and ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... Manor we traced to the three sisters of the last Earl. One of these died childless, the other two married respectively John Nevill, Lord Latimer; and Sir Anthony Wingfield. Family arrangements were made to prevent the division of the estate, which passed to Lucy Nevill, Lord Latimer's third daughter. ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... is so conducted as to prove not only a means of profit but a shrewd propaganda. "When childless women are furnished with these, they are pledged, if successful, to ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... then, than that the kinsmen of Vigdis should grab it." [Sidenote: Thord goes to Hoskuld] To this Hoskuld agreed, and had it bound by witnesses. This Melkorka took heavily, deeming the fostering too low. Hoskuld said she ought not to think that, "for Thord is an old man, and childless, and I wish Olaf to have all his money after his day, but you can always go to see him at any time you like." Thereupon Thord took Olaf to him, seven years old, and loved him very dearly. Hearing this, the men who had on hand the case against Thord Goddi thought that ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... felt inclined to laugh and to weep at the same time upon receiving a kiss from, her withered mouth whose down had turned into pin points. It was the kiss of an old beauty who remembers the gallantry of a youthful lover, the kiss of a childless woman caressing the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... there are many childless folk who would envy you your charge, but, methinks, you have the air of one who is burdened with a hidden grief. Now, if I can, by hearing it, assuage it, and you would fain bring it to me, I would do what in me lies as a minister of ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... very popular with Tommy Atkins. David Bright's very reserves, the closed doors in his domestic life, did not prevent, and indeed in some ways helped, the process. The mother had known in the depth of her heart that Rose was lonely, but then she was childless. Rose had never, even in moments when the nameless mystery that was in her home oppressed her most in its dull, voiceless way, tried to tell her mother what she did not herself understand. Sir David had been courteous, gentle, attentive, but never happy. Rose knew now ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... established in work at a rate above the minimum, and free of any debt he may have incurred. The State will never press for its debt, nor put a limit to its accumulation so long as a man or woman remains childless; it will not even grudge them temporary spells of good fortune when they may lift their earnings above the minimum wage. It will pension the age of everyone who cares to take a pension, and it will maintain special guest homes for the very old to which they may come ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... successors: wills they make none: for want of children his next akin inherits; his own brothers, those of his father, or those of his mother. To ancient men, the more they abound in descendants, in relations and affinities, so much the more favour and reverence accrues. From being childless, no advantage nor estimation ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks of the world's thought, his work in life finished, his one literary venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked upon the pallid, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... story that Martha neglected Pope "with shameful unkindness," in his later years. It is clearly exaggerated or quite unfounded. At any rate, the poor sickly man, in his premature and childless old age, looked up to her with fond affection, and left to her nearly the whole of his fortune. His biographers have indulged in discussions—surely superfluous—as to the morality of the connexion. There is no question of seduction, or of tampering with the affections of an innocent woman. Pope ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... would have none but gentlemen about him, and in whose days the peasants arose against their masters. He gave his sister Matilda in marriage to Odo, Count of Chartres; he gave her lands by the Arve as her dowry; but when she died childless, he held that he had a right to take them back again. To this doctrine the widower naturally did not agree; disputes arose between the two princes, and the fortress of Tillieres—one would like to know its exact shape in those days—arose ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... that the colonel and his wife were childless, and the slender willowy figure I had seen across the garden wall was that of Lilian Roseblade, their niece and adopted daughter. She came into the room shortly afterward, and I felt, as I went through the ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... should be more than glad to have her"; and Mary meant what she said. Her heart ached for John's motherless children. Jinny's interest in them had lasted only so long as she had none of her own; and Mary, who being childless had kept a large heart for all little ones, marvelled at the firm determination to get rid of her stepchildren which her ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... with a breaking heart! a harder fate, Ishmael. Since her death, I have been a wifeless, childless, homeless wanderer over the wide world! Oh, Ishmael! my son! my son! give ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... countries, is not quite the same as the number of children per marriage; but it indicates very great fertility, while it may be noted also that sterile marriages are comparatively rare among French Canadians, although among English Canadians the proportion of childless families is found to be almost exactly the same (nearly 20 per cent) as among the infertile Americans of Massachusetts. The annual Reports of the Registrar-General of Ontario, a province which is predominantly of ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... to a famous saying of S. Paul, to the unity which exists between Christ and His Church. Now, although, from this point of view, the significance of married life is to a great extent impoverished and frustrated, if intercourse is so regulated as to render the marriage childless not in fact merely, but in intention, yet it does not follow that procreation must be directly in view on every individual occasion, since the mystical value of intercourse as a spiritual sacrament of love may still exist in independence ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... of mine, the squire's sister, had been carried off. She died childless. A favourite young cousin of his likewise had run away with a poor baronet, Sir Roderick Ilchester, whose son Charles was now and then our playmate, and was a scapegrace. But for me he would have been selected by the squire for his heir, he said; and he often 'confounded' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cawing of the myriad rooks which inhabited the trees of the little park, as in column or thick wedge they speeded to their nests, disturbed the silence of evening. Nature was the same, as when she was the kind mother of the human race; now, childless and forlorn, her fertility was a mockery; her loveliness a mask for deformity. Why should the breeze gently stir the trees, man felt not its refreshment? Why did dark night adorn herself with stars—man saw them not? Why are there fruits, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... exclaims in Suetonius. Jacob had his Reuben, Simeon and Levi; David an Amnon, an Absalom, Adoniah; wise men's sons are commonly fools, insomuch that Spartian concludes, Neminem prope magnorum virorum optimum et utilem reliquisse filium: [5790]they had been much better to have been childless. 'Tis too common in the middle sort; thy son's a drunkard, a gamester, a spendthrift; thy daughter a fool, a whore; thy servants lazy drones and thieves; thy neighbours devils, they will make thee weary of thy life. [5791]"If thy wife be froward, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... nations! there she stands, Childless, and crownless, in her voiceless woe; An empty urn within her wither'd hands, Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago: The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; The very sepulchres lie tenantless Of their heroic dwellers; dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise, with thy yellow ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... all, because the youngest. "Could they not bear with you three weeks, little fellow?" I said. "I know those at whose firesides such as you would have been welcome guests. That New York woman whom I met lately, young, rich, and childless,—I could commend you to her in place of the snarling little spaniel fiend who was her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Konyahu then despised, 28 Like a nauseous vessel? Why is he flung and cast out On a land he knows not? Land, Land, Land, 29 Hear the Word of the Lord! Write this man down as childless, 30 A fellow ...(?) For none of his seed shall flourish Seated on David's throne, Or ruling still ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... evening we, childless parents, were sitting silently together in the cottage; neither of us had any desire to talk, even had our tears allowed us. We sat gazing into the fire on the hearth. Presently, we heard something rustling outside the door: it flew open, and a beautiful little girl three or four ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... maiden sister, who resided with him, and had charge of his household until her death. Subsequently to the death of this lady, this only child was married to Mr. Alston, of South Carolina, but survived her marriage only a short time, dying childless. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the Counsellor is a childless widower. I am told that the Tutor is unmarried, and so far as known not engaged. There is no use in denying it,—a company without the possibility of a love-match between two of its circle is like a champagne ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deep in her heart was a feeling more seldom in women's hearts than in men's. She would not have owned that she did not wish to part with this new darling of her heart—who had awakened within it emotions of whose strength the childless woman had never dreamed. There was also another reason, which she would not admit even to herself. Had Rose been, indeed, her daughter, and she had possessed her from the cradle to womanhood, she would probably have been as other mothers, but now Rose ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... abbey and killing women on the Border. James tried to retaliate, but his levies (October 31) at Fala Moor declined to follow him across the Border: they remembered Flodden, moreover they could not risk the person of a childless king. James prepared, however, for a raid on a great scale on the western Border, but the fact had been divulged by Sir George Douglas, Angus's brother, and had also been sold to Dacre, cheap, by another Scot. The English despatches prove that Wharton had full time ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... say, the man so hated and cursed was once a nation's hope and joy. When his father, Hezekiah, lay sick unto death, his greatest grief and the profoundest sorrow of his people was caused by the thought that he was dying childless. They prayed for his recovery mainly on that ground. He recovered, and married, and a child was born, and the glad father called him Manasseh, which means, God hath made me forget—forget my sickness ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... reason. But God dealt very mercifully with me; His mighty hand rescued me from death and from madness when one or other appeared inevitable. As soon as I was permitted pen and ink, I wrote to the bereaved mother in a tone bordering upon frenzy. I accused myself of having made her childless; I called myself a murderer; I believed myself accursed; I could not find terms strong enough to express my abhorrence of my own conduct. But, oh! what an answer I received, so mild, so sweet, from the desolate, childless ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... noise, But I'd rather my personal pleasures be lost than to give up my girls and my boys. Not always they're perfectly good; there are times when they're wilfully bad, But I'd rather be worried by youngsters of mine than lonely and childless and sad. ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... we find, in class upon class, that as the annual income increases the number of children in the family diminishes, until we come to the old English nobility of whom, according to Darwin, 19 per cent. are childless. These last have every reason to wish for heirs to inherit their titles and what land and wealth they possess, and, as their record in war proves them to be no cowards' breed, it would be a monstrous indictment to maintain that their childlessness is mostly due to the use of contraceptives. ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... house on Westbourne Terrace, and invited a distant relative, Lady Belgrave, the childless widow of a baronet, to come and pass the season with him and chaperone his daughter ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... was Boris' will dated a year before. He left everything to Genevieve, and in case of her dying childless, I was to take control of the house in the Rue Sainte-Cecile, and Jack Scott the management at Ept. On our deaths the property reverted to his mother's family in Russia, with the exception of the sculptured marbles executed by himself. These ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... about herself often confused Harmony. Her resentment at her single condition, because it left her childless, brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In the atmosphere in which Harmony had been reared single women were always presumed to be thus by choice and to regard with certain tolerance those weaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very much vexed at her dismissal. The Browns were a childless couple and the arrangement had suited them perfectly. Their resentment was very bitter. Mrs Brown had to remain ashore alone with her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board. Poor Flora had no greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathiser. And Mrs Brown, with a woman's quick ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... and he has the mortification of feeling that, though surrounded with children and grandchildren, he is almost the last of his race, and that his family is about to be extinct. Two old brothers and one childless nephew are all that are left of the Wyndhams, and the latter has been many years married. All his own children are illegitimate, but he has everything in his power, though nobody has any notion of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... who were childless and in easy circumstances, arranged to undertake the care of the children, and Mrs. Strickland had only herself to provide for. She let her flat and sold her furniture. She settled in two tiny rooms in Westminster, and faced the world anew. She was so efficient that it was certain ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... or to the whole family, but is the public and private property of the state. Now the state should seek to have its houses as holy and happy as possible. And if any one of the houses be unfortunate, and stained with impiety, and the owner leave no posterity, but dies unmarried, or married and childless, having suffered death as the penalty of murder or some other crime committed against the Gods or against his fellow-citizens, of which death is the penalty distinctly laid down in the law; or if any of the citizens be in perpetual exile, and also childless, ...
— Laws • Plato
... endless series Of quite unnecessary queries, Till overworked officials came To loathe the mention of his name. At last their anguish grew so keen The Premier had to intervene, And by a tactful master-stroke Relieved them from Alfonso's yoke. By way of liberal reward He made the childless Scutt a lord, And then despatched him on a Mission In honorific recognition Of presents sent for our relief By a renowned New Guinea Chief. The natives of those distant parts Are noted for their generous hearts, But, spite of protests raised by us, Continue anthropophagous. And this, I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... his poor Susan died, Miss Hobson, by her father's demise, having now become a partner in the house, as well as heiress to the pious and childless Zachariah Hobson, her uncle Mr. Newcome, with his little boy in his hand, met Miss Hobson as she was coming out of meeting one Sunday; and the child looked so pretty (Mr. N. was a very personable, fresh-coloured ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were clumped about their rude dwelling were nearly the last you passed in your ascent of the mountain. These people had a multitude of sheep and goats, and lived in their airy solitude a pastoral and simple life, and were childless. Philip Feltram was hardy and active, having passed his early days among that arduous scenery. Cold and rain did not trouble him; and these people being wealthy in their way, and loving him, would be glad to find him employment of that desultory pastoral kind which ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... loved his lonely mother. When his mother lay a dying I said to her, 'My dear, this baby is sent to a childless old woman.' He has been my pride and joy ever since. I love him as dearly as if he had drunk from my breast. Do you ask to see ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... favor of the man at my side, than any virtue which is still left in these withered sinews and dried bones. San Marco remember him in his need, for the kind wish, and soften the hearts of the great to hear the prayer of a childless parent!" ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... class, best of all, it is served in simple shapes, but with a great variety of Unfortunate Persons,—such as lonely people from lodging-houses, poor people of all grades, widows and childless in their affliction. This is the kind most preferred; in fact, never abandoned by ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her for being childless, Madame de Nailles would say: "What do you mean? I have one daughter; she is enough ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... maintains the contrary. He quotes from Lord Bacon, that 'Unmarried men are the best friends, best masters, and best servants,' and that 'The best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from unmarried or childless men.' He also introduces Jeremy Taylor, as saying that 'Celibacy, like a fly in the heart of an ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... look to do well by thy tribe, and that from which I spring, recompensing my father for his loss, pouring ointment on his affliction, for great is the grief of the old man, and he loveth me, and is childless.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clothes way up 'round midnight. Nosir, couldn't wash any nigguh's clothes in daytime. My mother lived in a big one room log house wif an' upstairs. Sometimes the white folks give yer 'bout ten cents to spend. A woman with children 'ud git 'bout half bushel of meal a week; a childless woman 'ud git 'bout a peck an' a half of meal a week. If yer wuz workin', they'd give yer shoes. Children went barefooted, the yeah 'round. The men on the road got one cotton shirt an' jacket. I had five sisters an' five brothers. Might as well quit lookin' at me. I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... midnight to the mind of the childless father; when they were only half gone, he took his bed; and every day, and every night, old Charlie, the "low-down," the "fool," watched him tenderly, tended him lovingly, for the sake of his name, his misfortunes, and his broken ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... and valiant son of Arjuna, named Iravat, was begotten upon the daughter of the king of the Nagas by the intelligent Partha. Her husband having been slain by Garuda, she became helpless, and of cheerless soul. Childless as she was, she was bestowed (upon Arjuna) by the high-souled Airavat. Partha accepted her for wife, coming to him as she did under the influence of desire. It was thus that that son of Arjuna was begotten upon ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he at once prepared to enforce his claim on Milan. He allied himself against his rival, Sforza, with Venice, and with Pope Alexander. That he might marry the widowed queen, and preserve her duchy of Brittany for the Crown, he required that his own childless marriage should be annulled. Upon the Legate who brought the necessary documents the grateful king bestowed a principality, a bride of almost royal rank, and an army wherewith to reconquer the lost possessions ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... greater benefactors of mankind who bring into the world two or three evilly-squalling brats,[63] or those who, to the best of their power, keep a beneficent eye on the lives, and habits, and tendencies of all mankind? Were the Thebans who had large families more useful to their country than the childless Epaminondas; or was Homer less useful to mankind than Priam with his fifty good-for-nothing sons?... Why, sir, the true cynic is a father to all men; all men are his sons and all women his daughters; he has a bond of union, a lien of affection with ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... it, piecemeal fall away. And who are they who drive me from the king— My father's favor? What requital hath A monk to give a father for a son? What compensation can the duke supply For a deserted and a childless age? Would'st thou be loved? Here in this bosom springs A fresher, purer fountain, than e'er flowed From those dark, stagnant, muddy reservoirs, Which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the heavy work is reduced to a minimum; but the exigencies of family life are illustrated in the fact of the almost universal demand of the tenants for continuous heat and hot water night as well as day. The ordinary childless apartment house banks its fires at night. A supplementary apparatus would mean work by the tenants, however. This is a good example of the balance which must be struck in all new plans ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... Bodhisattva, was a virtuous maiden in two of his previous existences. Evidently Chinese religious sentiment required a Madonna and it is not unnatural if the god of mercy, who was reputed to assume many shapes and to give sons to the childless, came to be thought of chiefly in a feminine form. The artists of the T'ang dynasty usually represented Avalokita as a youth with a slight moustache and the evidence as to early female figures does ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Mrs. Horncastle, with a quivering lip,—"where do I go when you have settled this? Back to my past again? Back to my husbandless, childless life?" ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... the Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, coming to him, asked him, (28)saying: Teacher, Moses wrote to us, if a man's brother die, having a wife, and he die childless, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... concubinage has become an extensive subject. Practically the disadvantage is that the slave-girls, knowing themselves to be the master's property, consider him bound to sleep with them; which is by no means the mistress's view. Some wives, however, when old and childless, insist, after the fashion of Sarah, upon the husband taking a young concubine and treating her like a daughter—which is rare. The Nights abound in tales of concubines, but these are chiefly owned by the Caliphs ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... his position, he would have to place a legitimate heir by his side. Josephine had borne her husband no children; and she knew that his brothers had, more than once, proposed to him to dissolve his childless union, and replace it with the presence of a young wife. Hence, Bonaparte's assumption of royal dignity meant a separation from her; and Josephine still loved him too well, and too much with a young wife's love, to take so great a ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... fifty-nine years old, and a childless widower. Mother and daughter listened, therefore, with devout admiration to all that he told them ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... an old saw framed in ancient days In memories of men, that high estate, Full grown, brings forth its young, nor childless dies, But that from good success Springs to the race a woe insatiable. But I, apart from all, Hold this my creed alone: Ill deeds along bring forth offspring of ill ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... for their recovery. The ashes of the bonfires are also reputed to possess beneficial properties; hence in some places people rub their hair or their bodies with them. In some places they think that by leaping over the fires they rid themselves of all misfortune, and that childless couples thereby obtain offspring. Berbers of the Rif province, in Northern Morocco, make great use of fires at midsummer for the good of themselves, their cattle, and their fruit-trees. They jump ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... strange, oh strange! How else? My husband dead and childless left. My thwarted woman—thoughts have inward turned, And that vain milk like acid in me eats. Have I not in my thought trained little feet To venture, and taught little lips to move Until they shaped the wonder of a word? I am long practiced. ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... mention it, that Osmond has been married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it mightn't be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died childless. It wasn't till after her death ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... years the junior of her husband, and in all respects different from him. Her hair and eyes were raven-black, her complexion dark and saturnine, and she wore an expression of care inconsistent with enjoyment. She had been for many years a childless wife, and it may be that early disappointment, occasioned by the want of children, uniting with a melancholy temperament, had imparted an appearance of dejection which the subsequent birth of a boy and girl after she had given up the expectation of offspring, was unable to remove. She seldom ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... childless, had each, like all women who have vainly desired children, fallen in love with a child. This fictitious motherhood, equal in strength to a real motherhood, needs an explanation which will carry us to the very heart of our drama, and will ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... so destructive to church and state; let us not fear to take this sword of the covenant of God into our hands, and say to this enemy of Christ, as Samuel said once to Agag, (at what time he said within himself, "surely the bitterness of death is past") "As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women." So hath prelacy flattered itself, finding such a party to stand up on its side among the rotten lords and commons, the debauched gentry, and abased people ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... is Rahel's expression, the tribute of admiration forced from the childless woman fresh from the Berlin salons, by the spectacle of Bettina romping with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... mothers, whose narrow world denied them so many of the finer thoughts and things, came to counsel with this childless woman, and to learn from her a little of the art of contentment and happiness. Strong men, of rude dress and speech, whose lives were as rough as the hills in which they were reared, and whose thoughts were often as crude as their half-savage ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... suddenly became cold,—so suddenly that she felt assured the reason was not that which a childless wife might have reason to fear. Unable to discover the real cause, she tried to persuade herself that she had been remiss in her duties; examined her innocent conscience to no purpose; and tried very, very ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... imperial house. The effect of such a marriage went to incapacitate the children who might be born under it, male or female, from succeeding. On that account, as well as because current report had represented her as childless, the widow lady escaped all attempts from the assassin. Meantime this lady, who was no other than Sister Madeline, had been thus indebted for her safety to two rumors, which were in fact equally false. She soon found means of convincing the emperor, who had ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... not very distinct but still not to be mistaken for anything else, of two people, a husband and wife, who are living somewhere in a large newly built house. The husband is a man of, I suppose, about forty— the wife is a trifle younger, and they are childless. The husband is an active, well-built man with light, almost golden hair, rather coarse in texture, and with a pointed beard of the same hue. He has fine, clean-cut, muscular hands, and he wears, as I see him, a rough, rather shabby suit of light, homespun cloth. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... himself, in contrast, was very brief. All he had to report was that his marriage had remained childless and his wife, a physician, overwhelmed with a sort of midwife practice, had to fight against the climate and was sick with longing for her father and mother and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... thousand small cares, and one great grief: that they were childless. But she never troubled her husband with her sorrow, taking care to bear it alone. He had bothers enough in the service; how often did she not hear his voice storming outside! He should have peace at home. One thing only she could not bear without complaining to him: the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... her lip, and stinging tears—an unusual phenomenon—blinded her eyes. But she was overstrung by a week of hard nursing; and some childless women never loss the tragic sense of incompleteness, the unacknowledged ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... to have twelve. But talk is cheap. The modern woman who's had even half that number has pretty well given up her life to her family. It's remarkable, by the way, the silent and fathomless pity I've come to have for childless women. The thought of a fat spinster fussing over a French poodle or a faded blond forlornly mothering a Pekinese chow gives me a feeling that is at ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady with a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with the most important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva, Princess Mary's aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had won ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... other. No services, no talents, no powers of pleasing, render it endurable. Gratitude, admiration, interest, fear, scarcely prevent those who are condemned to listen to it from indicating their disgust and fatigue. The childless uncle, the powerful patron can scarcely extort this compliance. We leave the inside of the mail in a storm, and mount the box, rather than hear the history of our companion. The chaplain bites his lips in the presence of the archbishop. The midshipman yawns at the table of the First Lord. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at the Hall. Lillian Earle lay nigh unto death. Many believed that the master of Earlescourt would soon be a childless man. He could not realize it. They told him how she lay with the cruel raging fever sapping her life, but he seemed to forget the living child in mourning for the ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... Percys, in the reign of Henry the Second, made a journey to Jerusalem, and died in the Holy Land. None of his four sons survived him. His eldest daughter Maud married the Earl of Warwick; but, dying childless, her sister Agnes became sole heir to the broad lands of the Percys. She married the son of the Duke of Brabant, the condition of her marriage being that he should either take the arms of the Percys, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... to his mind a nearly forgotten fancy of his own, together with echoes of the local gossip. Round Rodchurch the talk ran that the Right Honorable gentleman was still a rare one for the ladies. "And why not?" thought Dale. A childless old widower may keep up that sort of game as long as he likes, or as long as he can, without wounding any one's feeling. It wasn't as if her ladyship had been ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... their ordinances, and heavenly dainties. But when the days that I have spoken of, shall come, it will be to him a time of retaliation: for it shall then be done unto Antichrist, as he hath done to the church of God: As he hath made women childless, so shall he be made childless; as he has made Zion sit upon the ground, so now must this wicked one come down and sit in the dust; yea, as he has made many churches desolations, so now shall he be also made a desolation. Wherefore, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the finest Indian workmanship. She looked what she was, a person possessed of plenty of superfluous money, but not additionally blest with plenty of superfluous intelligence to correspond. This was the childless young widow of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the finest thing you could do," said the childless old lady. "Quite the finest! Are you going ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... Childless, he assures safety in the first scene of the opening tale to the widow of Glendinning and her two children—the elder boy challenging him at the moment, "I will war on thee to the death, when I can draw my father's sword." In virtually the last scene, the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... physical examination before marriage is to determine whether it is possible for both parties to have children. Sometimes expert medical advice and treatment make all the difference between a childless home and one that has the happiness of a well-rounded family. In every marriage children should be an essential feature—the most essential feature in the long run. In many countries sterility is sufficient grounds for divorce. In an ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... somewhat elaborate will—which has been previously hinted. Verner's Pride, with its rich lands, its fine income, was left to John Massingbird; in the event of John's death, childless, it went to Frederick; in the event of Frederick's death, childless, it passed to Lionel Verner. There the conditions ended; so that, if it did lapse to Lionel, it lapsed to him absolutely. But it would appear that the contingency of both the Massingbirds dying had been only barely ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and by whatever Tool the Devil wrought, 'tis certain that this was the Consequence, poor Abel was butcher'd, and thus the Devil made a second Conquest in God's Creation; for Adam was now, as may be said, really Childless, for his two Sons were thus far lost, Abel was killed, and Cain was curst and driven out from the Presence of the Lord, and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... the first heat of opposition was over, he led the weeping virgin to the tribunal of Ap'pius, and there plausibly exposed his pretensions. 10. Clau'dius asserted that she was born in his house, of a female slave, who sold her to the wife of Virgin'ius, who had been childless. That he had credible evidences to prove the truth of what he had advanced; but that, until they could come together, it was but reasonable the slave should be delivered into his custody, he being her proper master. 11. Ap'pius ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... until the village contained less than three hundred persons, chiefly laborers and small shop-keepers. Beside these, there were the doctor, and his wife, the rector and his family, and the squire—a childless widower, who was of rather less account than anybody else ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... before her fancy a girlish form, with pure, loving eyes, and a voice melodious as a mocking-bird's. Warm arms were about her neck, and a round, soft cheek laid against hers—as no human arms and face would ever caress her—her, the childless, whose had been the hopes, fears, pains—never ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... that she might remain a virgin. He stood in terror of an oracle which foretold his death at the hands of the children of Numitor. For this reason he had killed AEgestes and made the other a priestess of Vesta, that she might continue a virgin and childless. But she while drawing water in Mars's grove conceived, and bore Romulus and Remus. The daughter of Amulius by supplication rescued her from being put to death, but the babes she gave to Faustulus, a shepherd, husband of Laurentia, to expose in the vicinity of the river Tiber. These the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... when he reached the southern end of his beat. It was probably because the boy had loved the tales of the trapper and the trapper had found in the boy something which his life had missed, that an affection began to grow up between them. Solomon was a childless widower. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... York, married, 1791, Princess Frederica, daughter of the reigning King of Prussia. The couple were childless. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... and when she came out and married Prince Alex Laskine, I prayed that God's sunshine might light on my darling's head. Then, I myself married, and travelled with my husband in all kinds of strange, out-of-the-way places; in one of which he died, and I came back to St. Petersburgh, a childless, lonely widow! ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... forty noblemen who forced King John to sign the Magna Charta are what our Washington Mrs. Malaprop would call “legible,” the action attests a diseased condition of the community. Any one taking the trouble to remember that eight of the original barons died childless, and that the Wars of the Roses swept away nine tenths of what families the others may have had, that only one man in England (Lord de Ros) can at the present day prove male descent further back than the eleventh century, must appreciate the absurdity of our compatriots’ ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... identify the child. There had been a passenger list on board the steamer, but the list, with the officer who kept it, had been lost in the accident. The child was turned over to an orphan asylum, from which within a year it was adopted by the two kind-hearted and childless German people who brought it up as their ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... came to me, I was a coward, by reason of worldly considerations, and let it plead in vain, alas! And thus, although my friends were many in those days, my empty heart was always solitary, and now—my friends are mostly dead, and I am—a childless, lonely ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... war time twice as much. The Tories, on coming to power, made two unsuccessful attempts to fix on him charges of fraud. In October, 1714, George I made him Earl of Halifax and Viscount Sunbury. Then also he again became Prime Minister. He was married, but died childless, in May, 1715. In 1699, when Somers and Halifax were the great chiefs of the Whig Ministry, they joined in befriending Addison, then 27 years old, who had pleased Somers with a piece of English verse and Montague with Latin lines upon the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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 broken-hearted to the ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... desolate—the children for whom you toiled, and hoped, and planned, have been removed from us—nipped in the bud, or the first blossoming!—And oh, Cecil! take the words of a dying woman to heart, when she tells you, that you will go down childless to your grave, if you do not absolve our beloved Constance from her promise to him whom she can neither respect nor love. She will complete the contract, though it should be her death-warrant, rather than ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that. Ye were right to apprise me, Glennaquoich; he may look as black as midnight at Martinmas ere Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine shall say he does him wrang. Ah! I have nae male lineage, and I should bear with one I have made childless, though you are aware the blood-wit was made up to your ain satisfaction by assythment, and that I have since expedited letters of slains. Weel, as I have said, I have no male issue, and yet it is needful that I maintain the honour of my house; and it is on that ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... wilderness—old crones knocked aside to shrivel with famine, babies withering like blistered flowers from the flattened breasts of their mothers dying with hunger, fatigue, blows, violation, and despair. He thought of Poland childless and beyond pity; of the Serbian shambles. The talons of hunger a millionfold clutched ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... after all, the best judge for himself. Of course he is; and in time I know I shall be able to thank God he made this choice, but just now—just to-night—it seems to me I come nearer to envying you your childless wifehood than I would ever ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... year, was said to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe. She was of a good height and carriage, slight, and very gracefully built, of a ravishing fairness of skin and hair, whilst a look of wistfulness had come to invest with an indefinable tenderness her splendid eyes. Her childless marriage to the young King of France, which had endured now for ten years, had hardly been successful. Gloomy, taciturn, easily moved to suspicion, and difficult to convince of error, Louis XIII. held ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the birth of Christ, Vionest was king of Britain. Happy in his realm, his subjects were prosperous and contented, but care was in the heart of the monarch, for he was childless. At length his consort, Daria, bore him a daughter, who as she grew up in years increased in holiness, until all men regarded her as a saint, and she, devoting herself to a religious life, refused all offers of marriage, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... retracing, Left them free, The night alone embracing Childless me, I held I had not ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... childless, unmarried. The heir of the Monkshaven property was an Edinburgh advocate, a far-away kinsman of my lord's: the Hanbury property, at my lady's death, would go to the descendants of a third son of the Squire Hanbury in the ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... your visit relates to that subject, I trust I am now sufficiently composed to attend to you. Indeed, I ought to be prepared; for I had reason, for years, to expect the stroke; and yet, when it came, it seemed sudden!—it stunned me—put an end to all my worldly prospects—left me childless, without a single descendant or relation near enough to be dear to me! I ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Wales he had married a distant cousin, Ellin Owen, and on her death, childless, he took to wife, many years later, her younger sister, Gainor [Footnote: Thus early we shed the English prejudice against marriage with a deceased wife's sister.] for these Owens, our kinsmen, had also become Friends, and had followed my grandfather's ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... poor, gray-haired woman of pitiful dignity and breeding. ("I bet she's sixty!" Lily thought)—this old, childless woman, with a "Mrs." to her name, pleading with a mother to give up her boy, so he could have "music lessons"! "And Mr. Curtis's up against that," Lily thought, and instantly her anger at Maurice ebbed. "There, dear," she said, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... of course, the case was different. Without thought or struggle, or reason, every one loved the little girl. Coulson and his buxom wife, who were childless, were never weary of making much of her. Hester's happiest hours were spent with that little child. Jeremiah Foster almost looked upon her as his own from the day when she honoured him by yielding to the temptation ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... dreams of aged persons the possibility of attaching the young to them in sentimental bonds of strength to insure resistance to every other attachment is the idlest. Positive, practical, experienced though he was, the childless man had permitted this fantasy to get possession of him. He actually brought himself to believe Lael's love of him was of that enduring kind. With no impure purpose, yet selfishly, and to bring her under his influence until of preference ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... him certain of the Sadducees, they that say that there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote unto us, that if a man's brother die, having a wife, and he be childless, his brother should take the wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died childless; and the second; and the third took her; and likewise the seven also left no children, ...
— His Last Week - The Story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus • William E. Barton
... 'Telemaque,' a historical trace of which is found in a little island of the Dordogne, which is called 'L'Ile de Calypso.' It is recorded that the mother of the great Churchman and writer, when she feared that she would be childless, went on a pilgrimage to Roc-Amadour, and that Fenelon was the consequence of that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... death Absalom was childless, for all his children, his three sons and his daughter, died before him, as a punishment for his having set fire to a field of grain belonging ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... and childless mother; and from that day she was as one who had no fixed abode or resting-place; but, throughout the greater part of the year, wandered to and fro, no one could tell whither; and when she was found near the scenes of happier years, it was as a lonely dweller in the clay-built hovel ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... but too able) to hold forth, but absolutely unable to talk, to causer in the French sense, must have become rather oppressive. She and Alfieri were both growing elderly, and the hearth by which they were seated, alone, childless, with nothing but the ghost of their former passion, the ghost of their former ideal, to keep them company, was on the whole very bleak and cheerless. Alfieri, working off his over-excitement in a system of tremendous self-education, sitting ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... correspondent, whose hand he would esteem it an honor to touch, for the opportunity she had afforded him to do good in a graceful way. Mrs. Morris (Miss Wimple had written: "Let us know this poor lady as 'Mrs. Morris,' a childless widow") should be most welcome to his house; she need never be aware that the sad passages of her history had come to his knowledge, and by all over whom he exercised authority or influence her sorrows should be reverenced. He took the liberty to inclose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... II the crown descended to his eldest son Richard I, who dying childless, the right vested in his nephew Arthur, the son of Geoffrey his next brother; but John, the youngest son of king Henry, seised the throne; claiming, as appears from his charters, the crown by hereditary right[g]: that is to say, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... that he and my mother had strongly resembled each other, although he was ten years her senior. When quite young he had married a very worthy woman, and their union was blessed by two children, a son and daughter; but they had laid them both in the grave at an early age; therefore they were now childless. I had never seen my aunt, but my heart turned toward them, and my resolution was soon taken to visit them. They resided about three miles from the village of Littleton, in ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... with equanimity, dispensing with all that should have been her happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage in most matters, the widow was perhaps the more amiable for the one frailty that made her ridiculous. Being childless, she could not remain beautiful by proxy in the person of a daughter; she therefore refused to grow old and ugly on any consideration; she struggled with Time, and held fast her roses in spite of him, till the venerable thief appeared to have relinquished ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... flat was let to a childless couple: M. and Madame Arnaud. The husband, a man of between forty and forty-five, was a master at a school. He was so overworked with lectures, and correcting exercises, and giving classes, that he had never been able to find time to write his thesis: and at last he had given it up altogether. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... his household, as much of a technically capable individual as himself. He will be a father of several children, I think, because his scientific mental basis will incline him to see the whole of life as a struggle to survive; he will recognize that a childless, sterile life, however pleasant, is essentially failure and perversion, and he will conceive his honour involved in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... a widowah, suh, and a childless old man," continued the colonel; "my only boy fell in the wah ah, and it broke his mother's heaht. Pahdon me," he said, as his voice shook a little, and the least glimmer of a tear stood in his eye, "I rahely talk of these mattahs of a puhely pehsonal kind, but, as ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... she was a childless widow who had lately come to live at Sandycliffe in a pretty cottage about half a mile from the Grange, and with whom Margaret had become very intimate—a fair gentle-looking woman who had gone through much trouble, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and put out of their misery at once. Some confessed that they had had children by the devil; but no one who had ever been a mother gave utterance to such a frantic imagining, even in the extremity of her anguish. The childless only confessed it, and were burned ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... full meeting. The minutes were read, then came a discussion concerning dues for the coming year. All this time Sister Shaller had been presiding with her usual dignity. She was a beautiful woman, childless, and much praised for her interest in church works. She was rich and enjoyed the peculiar distinction of wearing very fashionable gowns even to church. Upon this occasion something reserved, potential and authoritative in her manner ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... none) of misprints in Wordsworth's own text is taken, in the notes to this edition. Sometimes an error occurred, and was carried on through more than one edition, and corrected in the next: e.g., in 'The Childless Father', the editions of 1827, 1832, and 1836 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... been married a quarter of a century or longer and had spent at least twenty years of their childless solitary life in a mud- built ranch, sheep-farming on the pampas, and had slowly accumulated a small fortune, until now they were possessed of about a square league of land with 25,000 or 30,000 sheep, and had built themselves a big ugly brick house to live in. They had thus secured ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... come, we childless parents were sitting together in the hut, silent; neither of us had a mind to speak, even if the tears had let us. We were looking idly into the fire. Just then something made a noise at the door. It opened, and a beautiful little maid, of ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... that among happy surroundings she had long ago forgotten his existence. He added that he had made up his mind to recall himself to her memory in consequence of a chance circumstance which had too vividly brought back to him the images of the past; he described his life, solitary, childless, joyless; he implored her to understand the grounds that had induced him to address her, not to let him carry to the grave the bitter sense of his own wrongdoing, expiated long since by suffering, but never forgiven, and to make him happy with even the briefest ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Their king despising with rebellious pride, And foes profess'd to all the world beside; 10 This pest of mankind gives our hero fame, And through the obliged world dilates his name. The prophet once to cruel Agag said, 'As thy fierce sword has mothers childless made, So shall the sword make thine;' and with that word He hew'd the man in pieces ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... formerly of Boston, came very near being an only child. If seventeen children had not come to bless the home of Benjamin's parents, they would have been childless. Think of getting up in the morning and picking out your shoes and stockings from among seventeen pairs of them. Imagine yourself a child, gentle reader, in a family where you would be called upon, every morning, to select your own cud of spruce gum from a collection ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... gentlemen," he at length remarked. "The tragedy is closed, the curse of Ellen Halloway is fulfilled, and I am—childless!—Blackwater," he pursued, endeavouring to stifle the emotion produced by the last reflection, "pay every attention to the security of the garrison, see that the drawbridge is again properly chained up, and direct that the duties of the troops be prosecuted ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... called the "Son of Heaven," and holds the supreme spiritual and temporal power in his hands. On his accession he gives an arbitrary name to his reign, which also becomes his own. He chooses his successor himself from among his sons. If he is childless he chooses one of his nearest relations, but then he adopts his future successor that the latter may make offerings to the souls of himself and his ancestors. The yellow robe and the five-clawed dragon are the emblems of the imperial house. The Emperor ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... both talking nonsense," said Jasmine, who had had time to recover her composure, "and remind me of my two old childless aunts," she added, laughing, "who are always quarrelling about the names they would have given their children if the goddess Kwanyin had granted them any half a century ago. As a matter of act, we are three friends reading for our M.A. degrees, neither ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... years of age was taken from a benevolent institution in Boston, and given to a childless sailor, on his way from a voyage to his home in Maine on the Penobscot River. The sailor knew not from what institution the child was taken, nor whence he came. He carried it home, without a name, or the least clue to his ancestry. The sailor's wife was a Christian woman, and ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... return upon each other at every step, and seem more and more lovely as we advance, whether we ascend or descend them, there lived, in a little house surrounded by vineyards, a half-insane man named Margaritis. He was of Italian origin, married, but childless; and his wife took care of him with a courage fully appreciated by the neighborhood. Madame Margaritis was undoubtedly in real danger from a man who, among other fancies, persisted in carrying about with him two long-bladed ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... find there nothing left to comfort me. The glad obedience I was wont to see Kindling in every eye, is smother'd now In discontent and gloom; each, pondering, weighs The changes which a future day may bring, And serves the childless king, because he must. To-day I come within this sacred fane, Which I have often enter'd to implore And thank the gods for conquest. In my breast I bear an old and fondly-cherish'd wish, To which methinks thou canst not be a stranger; I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... battle and campaign all over the broad lands of the United States until now, at the hour when most men turned for the placid joys of the fireside, the love of devoted and faithful wife, the homage and affection of children, the prattle and playful sports of children's children—homeless, wifeless, childless he stood at the border of the boundless sea, soldier duty pointing the way to far distant, unknown and undesired regions, content to follow that flag to the end of the world, if need be, and owning ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... not brought into fashion. In proportion to the rapid degeneracy of the manners under the emperors, celibacy grew into respect; insomuch, that we find (Annals xii. s. 52) a man too strong for his prosecutors, because he was rich, old, and childless. Valuitque ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... body it might be. The master of the house? He was very tall, and being in bad health might have died suddenly. My being received, argued nothing against this, since the first nine days after a death, the house is invariably crowded with friends and acquaintances, and the widow, or orphan, or childless mother must receive the condolences of all and sundry, in the midst of her first bitter sorrow. There seems to be no idea ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca |
