"Early childhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... traces back, in her introduction to the latest edition of "The Scottish Chiefs." her enthusiasm in the cause of Sir William Wallace to the influence an old "Scotch wife's" tales and ballads produced upon her mind while in early childhood. She wandered amid what she describes as "beautiful green banks," which rose in natural terraces behind her mothers house, and where a cow and a few sheep occasionally fed. This house stood alone, at the head of a little square, near the high school; the distinguished Lord Elchies formerly ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... No ladies here? Good-evening, gentlemen. We going to have a little music? Some of you gentlemen going to play for me this evening?" It was the soft, amiable negro voice, like those I remembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subservience in it. He had the negro head, too; almost no head at all; nothing behind the ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool. He would have been repulsive if his face had not been so kindly ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... fact that Beethoven composed some of his grandest symphonies when stone deaf shows the extraordinary musical faculty he must have preserved to bear in his mind the grand harmonies that he associated with visual symbols. Still, it is impossible that Beethoven, had he been deaf in his early childhood, could ever have developed into the great ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... seemed in good health as she sat before her granddaughter's comfortable fire. She spoke quietly, with little excitement, and readily recalled events of her early childhood. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... astral world no support is necessary; food is no longer needed, shelter is not required, since he is entirely unaffected by heat or cold; and each man by the mere exercise of his thought clothes himself as he wishes. For the first time since early childhood the man is entirely free to spend the whole of his time in doing just exactly what ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... shaded by dark thick lashes, so long that when the lids were closed they traced a clear black curve on either cheek. The other maiden had, like their mother, and, I believe, like the younger matrons, the bright hair—flaxen in early childhood, pale gold in maturer years—and the blue or grey eyes characteristic of the race. My host spoke two or three words to the chief of the party, indicating me by a graceful and courteous wave of the hand, upon which the person addressed slightly bent her head, laying her hand at the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... do usually end their days either in a prison or in a hospital. A man, remember, whether rich or poor, should do something in this world. No one can find happiness without work. Woe betide the lazy fellow! Laziness is a serious illness and one must cure it immediately; yes, even from early childhood. If not, it will ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... in my own way. If in early childhood Paul had been scalded on his shoulder by boiling water, he would have a scar whose appearance ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... "little shepherd," did not know who he was nor whence he came—he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery—a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... communication. There simply was no adequate communication! From that, all else stemmed. Each of these creatures, these—he searched for the term—these "Man" as they called themselves, was an island, an isolation of ego in a flood of dark fears that began lapping about them in early childhood and never ceased to rise. And this, by its own conception, was a "normal" specimen! It had "matured" in a thoroughly competitive society instead of the completely cooeperative society of the Challon. ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... said De Valette; "though her parents, I have heard, were Catholics, and Lucie has herself told me, that in her early childhood she was ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... mind which leads a child to believe instinctively whatever is told him. That we all do thus believe until by slow and painful experience we learn to do otherwise, needs no demonstration. Everybody's experience attests the fact. It is equally plain that the existence and maturity of this faculty in early childhood is a most wise and beneficent provision of nature. How slow and tedious would be the first steps in knowledge, were the child born, as some teachers seem trying to make him, a sceptic, that is, with a mind which refuses to receive anything as true, except what it ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... Cumberland river. David Scott had one son, William Scott, as noble a lad as ever lived. He was honest, true, and like Estelle, was loved by all. William was just two years older than Estelle, and together they had played from early childhood. During Estelle's sickness no one, unless her parents, seemed more anxious about her than did William Scott. Never a day or night passed but that William Scott called at the Ramon home to inquire about Estelle during the whole time of her illness. After she ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... well-marked phobia, the fear of falling downstairs. It had never been absent all his life, and he had grown used to making the descent of the stairs clinging firmly to the stair-rail. Family tradition assigned this infirmity to a fall downstairs in early childhood. But all children fall downstairs and are none the worse. The persistence of the fear was due, I make no doubt, to the attitude of the parents or nurse, who made much of the accident, impressed the occasion strongly on the child's memory, and surrounded him thereafter ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... advocated by Freud in Germany. The plan is to study the subconscious mind of the nervous patient by means of hypnotism, to assist the patient to recall all the mental experiences of his past,—even his very early childhood,—and in this way to make clear the origin of the misconceptions and the unfortunate impressions which have presumably exerted their influence through the years. The new system includes, also, the interpretation of dreams, their effect upon the conscious ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... From early childhood up to the time of his Illumination Tolstoi indulged in seriousness of thought. Like Mohammed, great and overpowering desire to fathom the mystery of death took possession of him. He was ever haunted by an excessive dread of the "darkness of the grave," ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... early childhood the foreskin should be pushed back at least twice a week while the child is in his bath, and the parts thus exposed washed gently with absorbent ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... were extant. Miss Nussey asked me if I would write something around what might remain of the unpublished letters, and if I saw my way to do anything which would add to the public appreciation of the friend who from early childhood until now has been the most absorbing interest of her life. A careful study of the volume made it perfectly clear that there were still some letters which might with advantage be added to the Bronte story. At the same time arose the possibility of a veto being placed upon their publication. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... fields, the mountains, and the sea, the last glorifies the beautiful river that brings life to his native soil. More than either of the other long poems, it is an act of affection for the past, for the Rhone of the poem is the Rhone of his early childhood, before the steam-packets churned its waters, or the railroads poured up their smoke along its banks. Although the poet has interwoven in it a tale of merest fancy, it is essentially realistic, differing ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... early childhood she danced round the tree with her companions. She wove garlands for the image of Notre-Dame de Domremy, whose chapel crowned a neighbouring hill. The maidens were wont to hang garlands on the branches of l'Arbre-des-Fees. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... against the current. The water lay flat under the still air, reflecting the gloomy trees on the banks, and the deepening colours of the sky. He fell into a lazy, swinging stroke, watching the maid. Her arms and shoulders moved easily, with the grace of one who had tumbled about a canoe from early childhood. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... less uncommon than the absence of either ovary is the persistence of both through the whole or greater part of life in the condition which they present in infancy and early childhood, with scarcely a trace of graafian vesicles in their tissue. This want of development of the ovaries is generally, though not invariably, associated with want of development of the uterus and other sexual organs; and I need not say that women in whom it exists are sterile."—Lectures ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... Pennsylvania Dutch the Hope Chest has long been considered an important part of a girl's belongings. During her early childhood a large chest is secured and the stocking of it becomes a pleasant duty. Into it are laid the girl's discarded infant clothes; patchwork quilts and comfortables pieced by herself or by some fond grandmother or mother or aunt; ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... disease of the ill-fed and neglected, usually developing in early childhood, and persisting throughout life. It is extremely rare, even in its milder types, in this country. Clinically and pathologically it bears ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... the remainder of the years spent in Florida, was often in later days pointed out as Mark Twain's birthplace. It missed that distinction by a few months, though its honor was sufficient in having sheltered his early childhood.—[This house is no longer standing. When it was torn down several years ago, portions of it were carried off and manufactured into souvenirs. Mark Twain himself disclaimed it as his birthplace, and once wrote on a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the reality; and, strangely enough, this very feeling, I am told, is one of the signs of real old age, of our nearing the land that at one time we fancied so "very far off"—farther off, it seems to me, in middle age than in early childhood, when it is easier for us to believe in what we cannot see, when no clouds have come between us and the ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... by birth as few writers have been. He was the son of a worthy nobleman who gave him, from early childhood, a most carefully conducted education. He never tires in praising the good qualities of his father, who had followed Francis I. to his Italian campaigns, and, like that monarch, had conceived a preference for those classical studies which were then again reviving. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... different and perhaps more intimate way than even Shakespeare, he possessed the key of those tears that succeed the hysteria of laughter, and of that laughter which succeeds the passion of tears. From early childhood, and all through youth and manhood, he had been collecting observations upon human nature in ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... neighborhood as a pious, charitable, and saintly woman. The unhappy Kohlhaas thought it only too probable that the Squire, stripped as he was of all necessities, had taken refuge in this nunnery, since the abbess was his own aunt and had been his governess in his early childhood. After informing himself of these particulars, Kohlhaas ascended the tower of the castellan's quarters in the interior of which there was still a habitable room, and there he drew up a so-called "Kohlhaas mandate" in which he warned the country not to offer assistance to Squire Wenzel ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... father and mother, unmarked, except by a rude stone, to guide them to the place where their kind neighbors had gently laid them down to rest from the turmoil of life's uneven ways. The summer months were spent among strangers and the scenes of her early childhood, and visiting the burial-place of her parents weekly, to water the moss-rose and the eglantine she had planted on their graves, and scatter the most beautiful flowers that bloomed in that region upon their graves at ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... and flowers, with low flowering bushes waving over dusky headlands, for it was dark as they crossed the plain; and they had heard rather than seen the rushing stream, bubbling out of the earth, making music in the still night. He knew the stream from early childhood, but he had never really known it until he stood with Jesus under the stars by the narrow pathway cut in the shoulder of the hill, whither the way leads to Capernaum, for it was there that Jesus took his hands and said the words: "Our Father which ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... our humble dwelling stood the residence of Dr. Gray, the village physician. His only child was a son of nearly the same age as myself, and we had been firm friends from the days of early childhood. When of sufficient age we were sent to the same school, where we occupied the same desk, and often conned our daily lessons from the same book. The uncommon friendship existing between us had often been remarked by the villagers. This ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... unthought in the past. And Ruth has proven that the mystery was adequately solved. She married the kind of man so excellent a woman should have, and went through the trying weeks of her motherhood and has cared for her boy through the demanding months of early childhood without a complication. And all this in the face of Aunt Melissa's ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... sacrifice themselves in folly's funereal flame. The bare idea of marriage to gain a foreign title has always been exceedingly repugnant to me. With passing years, I am each day more thankful that since my early childhood there has been buried deep in my heart, a determination that when the time came for me to select a husband, the only title of the one chosen should be the stamp of honor which marked him as a true type of an American citizen—a real American genius; a truly noble soul, perfectly and beautifully ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... eyes throw down and drag away, I know not where, the pillar with the beautiful image of Mary, the masterpiece of Erhard Heydenreich, the architect of the cathedral, which stood in front of the new parish church. Songs had been composed in her honour, and she was dear and precious to you from early childhood, as well as to every native of Ratisbon; the precentor—God rest his soul!—read to me from your letter from Rome what exquisite works of art you saw there every day, but that you still remembered with pleasure the beautiful Virgin ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... From early childhood, an ardent love of beauty had characterized this girl, whose covetous gaze wandered from a gorgeous scarlet and gold orchid nodding in dreams of its habitat, in some vanilla scented Brazilian jungle, to a bed of vivid ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... others experience a very peculiar sensation, which comes upon me at intervals unexpectedly and inexplicably in a certain kind of scene, and on reading a certain type of book—I have known it from my early childhood, as far back as I can recollect anything. It is the sensation of being quite close to some beautiful and mysterious thing which I have lost, and for which in a blind way I am searching. It contains within it ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Born at Winnebago City, Minnesota. Lived in New York City since early childhood. Privately educated. Chief interests: decorative art, gardening, people. First published story: "Burned Hands," Harper's Bazar, Nov., 1918. Lives ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... silence till the brief service concluded, and then, after prostrating themselves before the altar, they beckoned vehemently to the monk to follow them, and conducted him up a narrow winding stair, but little used, to the large sleeping chamber which the three brothers had shared ever since their early childhood. ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... has painted a noble picture of the meeting of SOLOMON and the Queen of SHEBA, and Mr. T. MCLEAN exhibits it at 7, Haymarket. I once saw a picture of this Queen on an ancient corner-cupboard; that was in early childhood, and the Queen of those days was a very Dutch Lady. Mr. POYNTER'S is quite unlike that one; in fact, she is extremely beautiful. But why is she overcome? SOLOMON might have been pardoned for blushing when he saw her, but he takes it quite as a matter of course. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... of the requirements of a profession is oftentimes most amusingly erroneous. We remember a father who told us that he was quite certain that his son was born to be a ruler of men. When we asked why, he told us in all seriousness that from early childhood his boy's blood boiled with indignation against people who had committed indignities upon kings and princes. Of course, in one sense of the word, this parent was insane, and yet his bad judgment was scarcely more ridiculous ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... not only the joy and the pride of Windy Jordan's life, but she's his entire available assets. Bull and bulline, she'd been with him from early childhood. In fact, Windy was the only parent Emily ever knew, she having been left a helpless orphan on account of a railroad wreck to the old Van Orten shows back yonder in eighteen-eighty-something. So Windy, he took her as a prattling infant in arms when she didn't weigh an ounce over ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... thing of all was, that this young girl had not come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale sunlight ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... report of Cynthia's early childhood; the girl herself had sweetly and pathetically referred to it—and they thought he was that kind, eh? Well, he would show them! Having accepted the fate of the man on a desert island, Lans Treadwell meant to treat the natives he found there, fairly ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... side of gold; but, had they been ten times as great as they were, he could not have helped his bankers or croupiers to load the dice and pack the cards to make sure his winning the stakes. At least he was bound to profess disapproval — or thought he was. From early childhood his moral principles had struggled blindly with his interests, but he was certain of one law that ruled all others — masses of men invariably follow interests in deciding morals. Morality is a private and costly luxury. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... ever-joyous rivulet, Dost dimple, leap, and prattle yet; And sporting with the sands that pave The windings of thy silver wave, And dancing to thy own wild chime, Thou laughest at the lapse of time. The same sweet sounds are in my ear My early childhood loved to hear; As pure thy limpid waters run; As bright they sparkle to the sun; As fresh and thick the bending ranks Of herbs that line thy oozy banks; The violet there, in soft May dew, Comes up, as modest and as blue; As green amid thy current's ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... the most beautiful of all his poems Wordsworth calls by the cumbrous name of Intimations of Immorality from recollections of Early Childhood. This is his way of saying that when we are small we are nearer the wonder-world than when we grow up, and that when we first open our eyes on this world they have not quite forgotten the wonderful sights ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... only daughter of an old soldier, had lost both her parents, her mother within a few months. Mrs. Meldrum had known them, disapproved of them, considerably avoided them: she had watched the girl, off and on, from her early childhood. Flora, just twenty, was extraordinarily alone in the world—so alone that she had no natural chaperon, no one to stay with but a mercenary stranger, Mrs. Hammond Synge, the sister-in-law of one of the young men I had just seen. She had lots of friends, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... had happened to him since that shock of ruthless attack. From early childhood, when he had been thrown on his own to scratch a living—a borderline existence of a living—on the Dumps of Tyr, he had had to use his wits to keep life in a scrawny and undersized body. However, since he had been eating regularly from Survey rations, he was not ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... who was born in Verona, and was the son of Jacopo dal Nassaro, a shoemaker, gave much attention in his early childhood not only to design, but also to music, in which he became excellent, having had as his masters in that study Marco Carra and Il Tromboncino, both Veronese, who were then in the service of the Marquis of Mantua. In matters of intaglio he was much assisted by two ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... therefore, from the best authorities with which I am acquainted, and from an intimacy of nearly twenty years, is this memoir of my late lamented friend compiled. He commences one of the notes above alluded to, with his early childhood. ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... sex-instruction should not be concentrated in a short period of youth is that it is impossible to exert the most desirable influence upon health, attitude, and morals except by instruction beginning in early childhood and graded for each period of life up to maturity. Most young people who in early adolescence receive their first lessons from parents and teachers have already had their attitude formed by their playmates. Even ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... from the days of early childhood are the forms of the Egyptian Pyramids, and now, as I approached them from the banks of the Nile, I had no print, no picture before me, and yet the old shapes were there; there was no change; they were just as I had always known them. I straightened ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... in early childhood to read "with most believing heart" all the legends of saints, martyrs, Spanish martyrs, who ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... reading attentively and seeking light from foreigners and natives on all questions at issue. Living from birth in slave countries, both foreign and American, and passing through one slave insurrection in early childhood, the saddest and also the pleasantest features of slavery have been familiar. If the South goes to war for slavery, slavery is doomed in this country. To say so is like opposing one drop to a roaring torrent. This is a good time to ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... brought before the magistrates at Kippletringan. The dying declaration of Meg Merrilies was proved by the surgeon and the clergyman who had heard it. Bertram again told his recollections of early childhood. Gabriel, the gipsy, the same man who had avoided meeting Bertram's eye when out hunting with Dandie Dinmont, told the whole story of Kennedy's murder, as he was at Warroch Point on the day of its occurrence. He stated that Glossin was present and accepted ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... I tore open and devoured with my ward-companion a tin of salmon which I bought from a Jew along the line. But, strange to say, after a few days of this regime, which in its chronological sequence of meals and its strange simplicity recalled the memories of early childhood, my internal economy seemed to have adapted itself to the changed environment, and after five o'clock with its tea and bread I no longer wished for more food. Exactly the same experience befalls those ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... Smith, daughter of Peter H. Day, was a native of New York city. Her education was provided for by her energetic widowed mother, to whom she ascribes the secret of her success. From early childhood she showed strong power of mind, and inherited from her mother that force and determination of purpose which prefigure success in whatever is undertaken. As a pupil, she was prompt and energetic, and never failed to win one of the Ridgeway prizes for good ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... ode, which he calls "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" (1807), Wordsworth sums up his philosophy of childhood; and he may possibly be indebted here to the poet Vaughan, who, more than a century before, had proclaimed in "The Retreat" the same doctrine. This kinship with nature and with God, which glorifies childhood, ought to extend through a man's ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... soothing, calm, and holy submission. Still the gloom of her father's spirit cast a pensive shade over her own feelings, and infused a tone of melancholy and an air of unnatural reflection into her character. By nature, Jane was endowed with a soul of unusual delicacy. From early childhood, all that is beautiful or sublime in nature, in literature, in character, had charms to rivet her entranced attention. She loved to sit alone at her chamber window in the evening of a summer's day, to gaze upon the gorgeous hues of sunset. As her imagination roved through ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... herself on the moor, and the friendly stars looked down at her, and the moon came out and shone on her poor forsaken little figure, an old verse she used to say in her early childhood returned to her memory. It was the verse of a hymn—a hymn her mother was fond of, and used often to sing, particularly about the time of the New Year, ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... her side. He made some remark upon the beauty of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the woods, and about the crows whose voices Margaret had heard; and about the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and about other matters of high ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... It is not from lack of intelligence or education, for the men you meet in the woods, as outers or sportsmen, are rather over than under the average in these respects. Perhaps it is because it has been dinned into our ears from early childhood, that an appetite, a healthy longing for something good to eat, a tickling of the palate with wholesome, appetizing food, is beneath the attention of an aesthetic, intellectual man. Forgetting that the entire man, mental and physical, depends on proper aliment and the ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... days turned Numa gray, and withal he was not satisfied with their outcome. In the midst of the struggle he had weakened in one manly resolve—against his will he married. The lady was a Fusilier, Agricola's sister, a person of rare intelligence and beauty, whom, from early childhood, the secret counsels of his seniors had assigned to him. Despite this, he had said he would never marry; he made, he said, no pretensions to severe conscientiousness, or to being better than others, but—as between his Maker and himself—he had forfeited the right to wed, they all ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... story: the course of Honore Fouchard's and Silvine Morange's love had not run smooth. She, a pretty, meek-eyed, brown-haired girl, had in early childhood lost her mother, an operative in one of the factories of Raucourt, and Doctor Dalichamp, her godfather, a worthy man who was greatly addicted to adopting the wretched little beings whom he ushered into the world, had conceived the idea of placing her in Father Fouchard's family as small ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the time, one of whom was a young woman whose health had given way over her lace pillow, and Rachel was eloquent over the crying evils of the system (everything was a system with Rachel) that chained girls to an unhealthy occupation in their early childhood, and made an overstocked market and underpaid workers—holding Fanny fast to listen by a sort of fascination in her overpowering earnestness, and great fixed eyes, which, when once their grasp was taken, would not release ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ten, I was at ease over its safety; but if over ten years, I was distressed unless I could hear of some words from the one taken away, that would indicate a preparation for the change of worlds. The vividness of those early childhood impressions are frequent reminders of the importance of giving clear explanations to children, in regard to important religious truths, as their young hearts are much more impressible than ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... sweetness, impossible to disturb. Was it real improvement? Concealment it was not, for Lucilla had always been transparently true. Was it not more probably connected with that strange levity, almost insensibility, that had apparently indurated feelings which in early childhood had seemed sensitive even to the extent of violence? Was she only good-humoured because nothing touched her? Had that agony of parting with her gentle father seared her affections, till she had become like a polished gem, all bright glancing ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those who seem to have been born without much interest in religion or fear of the here-after, and in a way I am like you, but with a difference: I acquiesced in early childhood, and accepted traditional beliefs, and tried to find happiness in the familiar rather than in the unknown. Whether I should have found the familiar enough if I hadn't met you, I shall never know. I've thought a good ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... was—how shall I say what he was? To this day I can only surmise many things of him. He was a Scotchman born, and I know now that he had a slight Scotch accent. At the time of which I write, my early childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his hunting shirt and leggings and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He was a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bringing to mind joys he had woven into our early childhood. Especially tender and precious thoughts were associated with that night long ago when he hurried home to inspect a daguerreotype that had just been taken. Grandma handed it to him with the complaisant remark, "Mine and Georgia's sind fine; but Eliza's shows that she ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... these years of Abraham Lincoln's early childhood we know almost nothing. He lived a solitary life in the woods, returning from his lonesome little games to his cheerless home. He never talked of these days to his most intimate friends. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... impressed on the mind as the memory of our early childhood, and with the exception of the two scenes I have just described to you, all my earliest reminiscences ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The early childhood of George Borrow was spent in stirring times. Without, there was the menace of Napoleon's invasion; within, every effort was being made to meet and repel it. Dumouriez was preparing his great scheme of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... it ascended steeply all the way, and made the solemn, much-enduring Earl pant for breath; but the Queen, her rheumatics for the time entirely in abeyance, bounded on with the mountain step learned in early childhood, and closely followed the brisk Emmott. The last ascent was a steep pull, taking away the disposition to speak, and at its summit Mary stood still holding out one hand, with a finger of the other on ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... story combines a number of the most significant episodes in the life of the central figure; in other words, those events of his career from early childhood to the close of the book which have been most instrumental in building up his character and experience. The episodes are of every kind, serious, humorous, tender, awakening, disillusioning, and they are narrated without any padding whatever, each one beginning as abruptly as in life; although ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted—in a word, are big children all their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of the word. Consider how a young girl will toy day after day with a child, dance ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... (312), a group of five islands off the coast of Valencia, in Spain, Majorca the largest; inhabitants in ancient times famous as expert slingers, having been one and all systematically trained to the use of the sling from early childhood; cap. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... went to see his Corporal, big Tannhauser did not recognize him. He was quite out of his head and was conversing with his own family in the language of his early childhood. The Kansas boys had singled him out for special attention. The mere fact that he kept talking in a tongue forbidden on the surface of the seas, made him seem more friendless and alone ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... comforted, as they told her she ought; there was the lady herself, at once sorrowful and yet earnestly thankful; there was Sylvester Enderby, hearing and following the prayers he had been used to in his early childhood, with a growing feeling that here lay the right and the truth; there was Deborah, weeping, grieving over her own fault, and almost heart-broken at the failure of him on whom she had set her warm affections, yet perhaps in a way made wiser, and taught to trust ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arguments before used, and crossing, we may generally suspect in germ; but I repeat it does not follow, that the change should be apparent till life fully developed; any more than fatness depending on heredity should be apparent during early childhood, still less during foetal existence. In case of horns of cattle, which when inherited must depend on germinal vesicle, obviously no effect till cattle full-grown. Practically it would appear that the [hereditary] peculiarities characterising our domestic races, therefore resulting ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... examples of the poet even welcoming the solitude that society forces upon him, because it affords additional opportunity for self-communion. Everyone is familiar with Wordsworth's insistence that uncompanionableness is essential to the poet. In the Prelude he relates how, from early childhood, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... brought up from his early childhood in the house of Ruberto Martelli, where, by his good qualities and by his zealous talent, he won the affection not only of Martelli himself but of all that noble family. As a youth he wrought many things, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... spirit (conceived of as incarnate in some animal) is selected for a child at its birth.[890] Some such custom is said to exist among the Eskimo of the Yukon district in Alaska; a guardian animal is selected by a boy when he arrives at the age of puberty, or it is selected for him in his early childhood ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... necessary human tasks, then our problem of education is greatly simplified: we aim to develop human souls; to make all intelligent; to discover special talents and genius. With this course of training beginning in early childhood and never ceasing must go the technical training for the present world's work according to carefully ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... fence, and told some story of an ancestor of mine who was the best swordsman in the country, and kept all comers at bay in some old fight long ago. I took the long bit of springy steel, and found it extraordinary comfortable to the hand. Practice with the fiddle-bow since early childhood gave, I may suppose, strength and quickness to the turn of my wrist; however it was, the marquis cried out that I was born for the sword; and in a few minutes again cried to know who had taught me tricks of fence. Honesty knows, I had had no teaching; only my eye caught ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... back in his seat so as to shut all this from view. His excitement was intense, extraordinary, and from the deep, hidden recesses of his mind there began to emerge spectres of early childhood, old beliefs, banished superstitions. The coachman proposed another route; he shook his head and said that he would wait. He leaned forward to get a better look at the card-reader's house ... Then he made a gesture of ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... identical with the tale of "Chicken Little." "The Wee, Wee Woman" is supposedly an adaptation of the old English story of "Teeny Weeny." It is given here in the form in which it was told to the author by a friend. "The Little Long Tail" will be recognized by many as a prime favorite of their early childhood. ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... his early childhood. But the cloud grew darker over him when he had reached the age of ten. It was then that the news came one morning that Mr Sutterby had died, leaving no will, for indeed he had nothing to bequeath except a few small personal effects, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... feuds, both of gods and heroes, with their own kindred and relatives; but if we would persuade them that never at all should one citizen hate another, and that it is not holy, such things as these are rather to be told them in early childhood; and the poets should be obliged to compose consistently with these views * * * Young persons are not able to judge what is allegory and what is not, but whatever opinions they receive at such an age are wont to ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... ideas, who care for the principles of things, and who make life rich in resource and interest are comparatively few. America needs poetry more than it needs industrial training; though the two ought never to be separated. The time to awaken the imagination, which is the creative faculty, is early childhood; and the most accessible material for this education is the literature which the race created in its childhood. The creative man, whether in the arts or in practical affairs, in poetry, in engineering or in business, is always ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... had scarcely departed before Mrs. Taylor began questioning Clotelle concerning her early childhood, and became more than ever satisfied that the slave-girl was in some way connected ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... old habit when the voice of the forest called—when school and city and travel had palled and tortured—Diane had traveled feverishly north with Aunt Agatha, and thence to the Adirondack lodge which had been her hermitage since early childhood and to which, by an earlier compact, Aunt Agatha ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... behind her. At sight of her a sneer curled his lip. How he hated her! Not that she ever had done aught to harm him, but rather because she represented to him in concrete form all that he had learned to hate and loathe since early childhood. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... at this last proposition. Why, he could hardly have told. During Janet's babyhood and early childhood he had assumed all household duties himself. Later he and Janet had shared them together over tub and table, but that Janet should wash for the ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... in early childhood; but she had grown out of it. Only on occasions of stress and strain did the tendency re-assert itself. She hadn't lisped for a year; and now at this very moment, when she was so especially desirous of appearing grown up and sophisticated, she must go and lisp like a baby! It was too mortifying; ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... colleagues. Seeking for chance to do his bit in connection with the War, at request of Army Council he undertook unpaid post of Civil Member on Claims Commission in France. Comes back to Treasury Bench as Postmaster-General, in succession to the INFANT SAMUEL, who, in accordance with the tradition of early childhood, has, since first promoted to Ministerial office, been "called" several ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... as they passed through early childhood, never saw their parents but happy and good-spirited. They never saw them worried nor ever saw them sad. That was, as one might say, Rosalie's chief offering to her darlings. It was splendid to Rosalie that her way of life, far from causing her (as prejudice would have prophesied) ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... days that followed, every doubt he might have had as to her identity was dispelled. She talked freely of their early childhood, of their father's death, of their mother; she even spoke of her brother's coldness and hostility in terms which drove away the last shadow of doubt whether she was really his sister. But at first he made no corresponding revelations, remaining ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... on the floor. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and never repent, and thus would have to be punished much more in hell. So God in his mercy called it out of the world in its early childhood." Of these diabolical horrors, drawn out through hundreds of pages, the orthodox Protestant may say, "Oh, this is only a piece of Popish superstition. We all repudiate it as a most repulsive ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... saying in this place that I have myself restored this ancient collegiate church, moved by Christian piety and by the affection which I bear to the venerable building, because it was my first instructress in my early childhood. This I did also because it appeared to me to be as it were abandoned, and it may now be said to have been called back to life from the dead. Besides increasing the light, for it was very dark, by enlarging the original windows and making new ones, I also took away the choir, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... my early childhood that Captain Kidd, the historic and lordly pirate, who reigned supreme upon the high seas during the seventeenth century, was supposed to have buried some of his booty on Money Island. Everybody was familiar with the tradition; and I doubt if there is, even now, a single person reared ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... came uppermost in his mind, as it swayed and rocked in the tempest of emotion, was the strange reminiscence of early childhood in it all. It was like being a little boy again, nestling in an innocent, unthinking transport of affection against his mother's skirts. The tears he felt scalding his eyes were the spontaneous, unashamed tears of a child; the tremulous and exquisite ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... 1542, James V. of Scotland had died leaving a daughter just a week old. When Elizabeth ascended the English throne, the Northern country had for sixteen years been governed or misgoverned by regents and Councils of regency. From early childhood, the little queen had been brought up at the French court, under the more particular tutelage of her uncles, the Duke of Guise and his brothers. In 1558, at the age of fifteen, she was married to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... "Magicians" of Mexico and Central America Dr. Brinton tells us much in his interesting little book (413). These sorcerers recruited their ranks from both sexes, and "those who are selected to become the masters of these arts are taught from, early childhood how to draw and paint these characters and are obliged to learn by heart the formulas, and the names of the ancient Nagualists, and whatever else is included in these written ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... days and weeks of her young life passed for little Maya among the insects in a lovely summer world—a happy roving in garden and meadow, occasional risks and many joys. For all that, she often missed the companions of her early childhood and now and again suffered a pang of homesickness, an ache of longing for her people and the kingdom she had left. There were hours, too, when she yearned for regular, useful work and association with ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... remember. I don't seem to be able to recall much about my early childhood, before I was five or six years old, but these dreams are among my earliest recollections, and I would sometimes awake crying with fright. After I met Jack, and he began teaching me, my mind was so taken up with study, that the dreams became less frequent, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... the blush to age, Darwin says that early childhood knows nothing about blushing. It happens in youth more frequently than in old age, and oftener among women than among men. Idiots blush seldom, blind people and hereditary albinos, a great deal. The somatic process of blushing ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... From early childhood I had been subject to a peculiar malady. I say malady for want of a better and truer word, for my condition had never been one of physical or mental suffering. According to my father's opinion, an attack of brain fever had caused me, when five years old, to lose my memory ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... are connected has been held in all ages and has often found expression in literature. The English poets have not infrequently alluded to it. See Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Early Childhood, 'Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting' etc.; also, in Tennyson's Two Voices the passage ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... NO ONE who stands so near the girl as the mother. From early childhood she occupies the first place in the little one's confidence—she laughs, plays, and corrects, when necessary, the faults of her darling. She should be equally ready to guide in the important laws of life and health upon which rest her future. Teach your daughters that in ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... scene in my early childhood, and originated in the Valley of the Jhelum, in the Punjab. The officer and lady were my parents. It was the last time I ever saw them. I was ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... Brown, was born in Canaan, N.Y., in 1783. Her father, George Hinsdale, who died in her early childhood, must have been a man of good abilities and religious feeling, being the reputed composer of the psalm-tune, "Hinsdale," found in ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Keith, "How is it with you, Marcia?" she asked; "you have attained to your four-score years, and have been in the service since early childhood. What have you to say for ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... You'll hear the story some day. She didn't know who you were, then. When she learned your name, although she wasn't conscious of having heard it in the past, it affected her strangely. She seemed to associate it with wakeful nights in her early childhood, and the sound of a woman's sobs ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... still in existence in my early childhood, and the manner of its conduct was primitive enough, the barter system still prevailing by force of necessity. Those who brought the huge sticks of oak and pine timber for masts and planks were rarely paid in money, which was of comparatively ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... turned, with smiling eyes and a hand upraised to her disordered hair, to note the new-comer. It was Dormer Colville, who laid aside his waterproof as he came and greeted her as an old friend. He had, indeed, known her since her early childhood, and had always succeeded in keeping pace with her, even in the rapid changes of ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... average capacity of the Japanese student in drawing is, I think, at least fifty per cent, higher than that of European students. The soul of the race is essentially artistic; and the extremely difficult art of learning to write the Chinese characters, in which all are trained from early childhood, has already disciplined the hand and the eye to a marvellous degree—a degree undreamed of in the Occident—long before the drawing-master ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... upon her with so much pity and earnestness, she looked down again with a blending of gratitude and shame. She well knew that, notwithstanding her reason now taught her the folly and madness of her superstitious terrors, the impressions of her early childhood were burnt into her memory and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the signal honour of knowing what we do not know in our early childhood, at a time when thought is already manifesting itself, far superior, however feeble it be, to the dull understanding of the animal? Has it the power to foresee an ending, an attribute which in its case would be inconvenient and useless? Before deciding, let us consult, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... asleep. Instead of that he was perched upon a table, and with large, wide-opened blue eyes was gazing with all the innocence and inquiry of infancy into his father's face, as if he would there read the mystery of life and creation, which the wondering gaze of early childhood seems for ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various |
