"Heirloom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a snatch that lingered in his memory from the old days in Adams Street, St. Louis, where he first caught it from the lips of Mr. Buskett, in whose family it was an heirloom. Field finally traced it to its source through persistent letters written to himself in his "Sharps and Flats" ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... for the most part, inherited that precious heirloom of contentment and elasticity, and were as happy in nooks and corners in bedroom, nursery, staircase or kitchen, as they could have been in extensive play-rooms ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about here our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had been an heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older sexton, who had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the village for forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and desert our kitchen for his little brown house under ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... more than a child. But I might shorten it a bit. I sometimes answer to the name of Soozles, but I suppose that would only do for really intimate cheques. How would 'S. Beverley T.-Jones' do? I shouldn't like to lose the 'Beverley' as it's a kind of family heirloom, and I always use it, even when I'm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... considerably increased, and the treasure was ultimately sold for fifty-six thousand two hundred and fifty-four pounds. Only Ida kept back enough of the choicest coins to make a gold waistband or girdle and a necklace for herself, destined no doubt in future days to form the most cherished heirloom of the Quaritch family. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... never doubt it." Mrs. Toomey endeavored to make her tone convincing. "Let's have tea in the heirloom before we part with it," she suggested brightly. "It's never been used that ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... perhaps I should rather say skirmish, of Villers en Couche? If I am rightly informed, it must be one of the most remarkable actions on record, when the comparative numbers of the troops engaged are taken into consideration. We have, as an heirloom in our family, a medal won by an officer on that occasion: it is suspended from a red and white ribbon, and is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... freshness and sweet savour which our citizens lack mightily. I would fain merit your esteem, heedless of those pursy fellows from hulks and warehouses, with one ear lappeted by the pen behind it, and the other an heirloom, as Charles would have had it, in Laud's Star-chamber. Oh, they are proud and bloody men! My heart melts; but, alas! my authority is null: I am the servant of the Commonwealth. I will not, dare not, betray ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... losing its soft curves and rose tints. Celia was another of his favorites, and he knew she was having her battle with misfortune, meeting it as bravely as a young woman could. Thomas Gilpin might so easily have smoothed the way for her. The spinet was an interesting heirloom, no doubt, but would not help Celia solve the problem of ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... that I can name. One worn but perfect MS copy is to be found in a private library in the United States. Another might yet be sought in far Australia, if still owned by descendants of Mr. Antrobus's young ward. Only by a special personal interest in the matter, and with a sense of risk to an heirloom, I am permitted to make ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... are mentioned frequently, but the point is, where are they to be found? Neither the "teepan-tlalli" nor the "tlatoca-tlalli," still less the "calpulalli," show any trace of individual ownership. "Eredad" (heirloom) is called indiscriminately "milli" and "cuemitl" (Molina, Parte Ia, p. 57). The latter is also rendered as "tierra labrada, o camellon" (Molina, Parte IIa, p. 26). It thus reminds us of the "chinamitl" ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... mother and grandmother; and she remembered some happy smiles which it had reflected. Of course, if she could have offered the priests a certain sum of money in place of the mirror, she could have asked them to give back her heirloom. But she had not the money necessary. Whenever she went to the temple, she saw her mirror lying in the court-yard, behind a railing, among hundreds of other mirrors heaped there together. She knew it by the Sho-Chiku-Bai in relief on the back of it,—those three fortunate emblems of ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... There was no cheating him of his due. "Slum" was his sobriquet by the courtesy of prairie custom. "Ranks" was purely a paternal heirloom and of ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... this psalm awhile, for it is a precious heirloom to mankind. It has been a guide and a comfort to thousands and tens of thousands. Rich and poor, old and young, Jews and Christians, Romans, Greeks, and Protestants, have been taught by it the character of God; and taught to love Him, and trust in Him, in whom is mercy, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... and public spirit of our citizens be better shown than in the planting of shade trees. Regarded simply from a commercial point of view one cannot make a more paying investment than setting out an oak, elm, maple or other shade tree about his premises. To a second generation it becomes a precious heirloom, and the planter is duly held in remembrance for those finer qualities of heart and head, and the wise forethought which prompted a deed simple and natural, but a deed too often undone. What an increased value ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... in a whirlwind of dust, in an infernal clangour, with the blare and fury, the port and horror of Mars attended. The horses stretched neck, shook mane, breathed fire; the horsemen drained to the lees the encrusted heirloom, the cup of warlike passion. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... put up with that little beast until I can endure it no longer. Patience has ceased to be a virtue. Either it must go, or I shall. Look at Dick! His heart is beating itself almost out of his poor little body, he is so frightened. And there's that china dragon, that has been a family heirloom for generations,—all broken! And my precious little keepsakes, that I have cherished since childhood, all scattered or lost! Oh, Tom, you do not know how cruelly ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... was worth more than a few dollars, but the watch was of gold, and I presume it must have cost fifty or sixty dollars. It was an heirloom and I ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... something magnificent to use as a lover's offering to herself in public, that wore a different complexion. And if the article were recognized by the spectators as the same that Charlotte had worn at the ball, the presentation by De Stancy of what must seem to be an heirloom of his house would be read as symbolizing a union of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the heirloom with a little cry of joy. Then she threw her arms about Betty's neck, ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... at the moment buttering a delicious French roll and she was daintily pouring tea from an old family heirloom. The contrast between this and the dust and the grease of a midday meal at the end of a "chuck wagon" lent accent ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... smoothly banded, and from its demure shelter her eyes looked gravely out. Her vest was a fine tawny brown, of a sprigged pattern, both gown and vest as artistically harmonious as the product of an Eastern loom. Pieces of both were sewn into a patchwork quilt, now a family heirloom."[10] ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... newspapers which had undertaken to boom the "Valley House Heirloom Theft" had almost limitless circulations. One of them possessed a Continental edition, and the other was immensely popular ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... desire to leave these Amended Obituaries neatly bound behind me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family, and as an heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite commercial value for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... do to make a collection of the signatures of the presidents and cashiers of national banks of the United States in the above manner? An album containing the autographs of these bank officials would not only be a handsome heirloom to fork over to posterity, but it would possess intrinsic value. In pursuance of this idea, I have been considering the advisability of issuing ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... flush of the night; whereas now the gloom Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould, And damp old web of misery's heirloom ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... his share of care and pain, No holiday was life to him; Still in the heirloom cup we drain The bitter ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "set in silver. But then, it's big, and a very pure stone, my mother says; and quite shows that the family must have been something, for it is an heirloom." ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... their instruments, the smith being able to put a better edge on. Other blacksmiths or carpenters, if they required a particularly good edge for some purpose, came to him. This art he had acquired from his grandfather as a sort of heirloom or secret. The grandfather while at work used to trouble and puzzle himself how to get a very sharp edge, and at length one night he dreamed how to do it. From that time he became prosperous. If a celebrated sonata was revealed in a ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... an auction," ventures Luttrell, mildly. "Go on, Potts; I like your stories immensely, they are so full of wit and spirit. I know this one, about your mother's bonnet, well; it is an old favorite,—quite an heirloom—the story, I mean, not the bonnet. I remember so distinctly the first time you told it to us at mess: how we did laugh, to be sure! Don't forget any of the details. The last time but four you made the bonnet pink, and it must have been so awfully ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... healing of the Sick, which, by the Blessing of God, were made successful for the recovery of many." "His son John, a member of the Royal Society, speaks of himself as 'Dr. Winthrop,' and mentions one of his own prescriptions in a letter to Cotton Mather." Our President tells me that there was an heirloom of the ancient skill in his family, within his own remembrance, in the form of a certain precious eye-water, to which the late President John Quincy Adams ascribed rare virtue, and which he used to obtain from the possessor of the ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the other side being filled with a bookcase and books. There were two or three pictures on the walls; one was a portrait of Voltaire, another of Lord Bacon, and a third was Albert Durer's St. Jerome. This latter was an heirloom, and greatly prized I could perceive, as it was hung in the place ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... cryptic instruments, each designed for some particular task, and every implement named. It is sad to have to admit it, but I know I possess only a home-made gimlet to test for dry-rot, and another implement, a very ancient heirloom, snatched at only on blind instinct, a stone ax. But these are poor tools, and sooner or later I shall ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... said Mr. Arnold, "have you succeeded in deciphering that curious inscription yet? I don't like the ring to remain long out of my own keeping. It is quite an heirloom, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... that, sir," he said. "You're aware that there were certain small matters at Hathercleugh of what we may term the heirloom nature, though whether they were heirlooms or not I can't say—the miniature of himself set in diamonds, given by George the Third to the second baronet; the necklace, also diamonds, which belonged to a Queen of Spain; the small picture, priceless, given to the fifth baronet by a Czar of ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... class beneath them lay in the privilege of spending more than they could afford on house and clothing; with rare exceptions they had no hope, no chance, of reaching independence; enough if they upheld the threadbare standard of respectability, and bequeathed it to their children as a solitary heirloom. The oldest looked the poorest, and naturally so; amid the tramp of multiplying feet, their steps had begun to lag when speed was more than ever necessary; they saw newcomers outstrip them, and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... say, by the look in her eyes. But though a green turban's as good as an heirloom, and extorts respect wherever it goes, even a Hadji may have jealous detractors. I have mine. Another green turban in this town, whose genuineness is doubted for some obscure reason or other, has sneered ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... an heirloom in the family—that stone which came to you from the saintly Emperor Theodosius—to sell that of all things! Nay-to throw it away; not to rescue your father either, but merely—yes child, for that is the truth, merely because you lack patience to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... took it with a determination to guard it as a precious treasure, and to leave it as an heirloom to his children. He penned upon its flyleaf the beautiful words of the poet Morris, as they so explicitly expressed the incidents which were ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... a perfect Bedlam," rejoined Harlan, making a poor attempt at a joke and laughing mirthlessly. In his heart he began to doubt the wisdom of marrying on six hundred dollars, an unexplored heirloom in Judson Centre, and an overweening desire to ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... famous heirloom of the Redclyffes," said the Warden, "on the possession of which (as long as they did possess it) they prided themselves, it is said, more than on their ancient manor-house. It was a Saxon ornament, which a certain ancestor was ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... adollarable, and so is the Tobacco and Standard Oil and the rest; but in the assets of the nation, more valuable, to my mind, is the heirloom of the tradition of gentle manners and cordial kindliness held so well in trust by the people of ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... exclaimed; "it is one I myself gave her mother, telling her that it was an heirloom, and that she should bestow it upon her daughter. I doubt not that she fastened it round her neck before she fled from home, that should she and the child be separated, she might again recognise her by it. And you say the little girl you met was called Elizabeth? That ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... that their sacredness is gone, their dignity has degraded into dinginess, and the faded, patched chintz sofa, that was not only comfortable, but respectable, in the old wainscoted sitting-room, has suddenly turned into "an object," when lang syne goes by the board and the heirloom is incontinently set adrift. Undertake to move from this tumble-down old house, strewn thick with the debris of many generations, into a tumble-up, peaky, perky, plastery, shingly, stary new one, that is not half ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... debate was spent on how voting qualifications should be regulated, and whether the old county court should be abolished or not. Fairfax County's representatives in the convention voted for retaining the county court, arguing that the monthly sessions had significant social values—an "heirloom of great psychological importance." Ultimately, however, the vote went against retention of the county court and it was abolished. Its judicial functions were assigned to the circuit court, and its legislative and administrative ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... miniature, and there was no reasonable doubt but that some one would do it again. For a moment she questioned if it would not be sufficient if she bought the ring and allowed the watch to remain. But she recognized that the ring meant more to her than the watch, while the latter, as an old heirloom which had been passed down to him from a great-grandfather, meant more to Philip. It was for Philip she was doing this, she reminded herself. She stood holding his possessions, one in each hand, and looking at the young woman blankly. She had no doubt in her mind that at ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... called her beautiful, and not without good reason. With the old manuscript volume—a family heirloom of some Quaker friends of mine—from which I have drawn the facts of this narrative, came also an old miniature, the work of a well-known English artist of that period. The colors have faded considerably, but the general contour and the features are well preserved. The face is oval, with a rather ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... his hand in a princely way—this gesture was an heirloom from his ancestry. "I understand your feelings—I've seen what has been going on—but naturally I want my daughter to marry one worthy of her. You shall have my Marg when you have proven yourself! I've misjudged you, Jed, but this will wipe ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... talisman in sapphire, with many Eastern characters; I was told it had been an heirloom in the family of the child, and was put about his neck at the birth, by the hands of his ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the moths had left of the tapestries, all testified to that; and, as for the evil days, they hung about the place, evident even by the light of one candle guttering with every draught that blew from the haunts of the rats, an inseparable heirloom for all who disturbed ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... hesitate for a moment. Breaking into a run, he dashed across the hall toward a wall where hung a heavy sword, an heirloom that had not been used for a hundred years. Before he could be stopped he tore it from its fastenings and started toward the nearest of the ruffians, who brought him to a standstill with ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... return, more than twenty years afterwards, to New York, when Bishop of Nova Scotia, he disinterred a magnificent silver coffee pot which he had buried on the eve of his hurried departure, and found in the place he had left it. That coffee pot is a precious heirloom in Colonel Laurie's family. There is a brass tablet to the memory of Dr. Inglis in St. Patrick's Cathedral, erected there by the enthusiasm of Chancellor H.V. White, Rector of St. Bartholomew's, whose own ministry was for ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... scattered all about were samples of Hen Tomlins' art. Hen was a rare workman, their minister told them. With his box of tools and his cunning hands Hen had taken old, broken but still beautiful heirloom furniture and refashioned it into new ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... as well as the piano and organ. He is the proud possessor of a genuine Stradivarius violin—a family heirloom—which he naturally prizes beyond the intrinsic value. The feat of playing on several instruments at once presents no difficulty ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... family heirloom which needs but a little restoring, is a precious thing for the Mason, ever sparing of her time. We find so many of the old homes repaired and restocked that I suspect the Bee of laying new foundations only when ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... errand at Sonnenburg. Majesty is going to preside to-morrow "at the Installation of young Margraf Karl, new HERRMEISTER (Grand-Master) of the Knights of St. John" there; "the Office having suddenly fallen vacant lately." Office which is an heirloom;—usually held by one of the Margraves, half-uncles of the King,—some junior of them, not provided for at Schwedt or otherwise. Margraf Albert, the last occupant, an old gentleman of sixty, died lately, "by stroke of apoplexy while at dinner;" [21st ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Zeus exclaimed from his throne in the skies To the children of man—"take the world I now give; It shall ever remain as your heirloom and prize, So divide it as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... love, north, east, south, and west. So she sent a rather spiky one in the direction of her husband who was sitting due east, so that it probably got to him at once, and smiled the particular hard firm smile which was an heirloom inherited from her ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... I offered for this heirloom of the Templeton family? Ten? Ten! Fifteen over there, thank you, Mr. Cody. Why, gentlemen, that bed cannot be duplicated in America! A real product of Colonial art! Look at the colour of it! Where will you find such depth of colour in any ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... an heirloom myself, I can therefore readily sympathise with those who own a similar treasure—such, for example, as the famous, or rather infamous, Drummer of Cortachy Castle, who is invariably heard beating a tattoo before the death of a member of ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... pounds of gold apiece; and further they asked to carry to Rolf Stake those costly things which they in his behalf should choose. These were the helmet Battleboar, and the corslet Finnsleif, which no weapon could pierce, and the gold ring called Sviagriss, an heirloom from Adils' forefathers. But the King denied them all the costly things, nor did ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the homely proverb, though some metaphysicians may dispute it, but whether debatable or not in the abstract, William Douglas had the good fortune, as he deemed it, to grow up in the bosom of a family in which the characteristic of worth was cherished and transmitted as an heirloom. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... things happen in this volume, starting with the running over of a hamper of good things lying in the road. A precious heirloom is missing, and how it was traced up is told with absorbing interest. Mrs. Penrose's books are as safe as they are interesting and should be on the bookshelf of every ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... sufficiently commend your zeal and prudence, and the sympathy and interest which you showed in the smallest matters, as if the purchase were for yourself. The count wishes to reserve two oil paintings in the saloon, which are an heirloom from his father. We cannot but let the ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... his books might remain in France. A fine copy of the Forteresse du Foy belonged to Claude d'Urfe, whose library of 4000 books, 'all in green velvet,' was kept in his castle at La Bastie; when all the others were dispersed the Gruthuyse volume remained as an heirloom, and descended to Honore d'Urfe, the dreariest of all writers of romance. In 1776 it belonged to the Duc de la Valliere, and was purchased for the French Government at one of his numerous sales. Some of the Flemish books remained in ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... rights, were the same who, in times of peace, knew no burdens of life save those they voluntarily assumed. The women who sewed night and day upon garments for field and hospital, were the same who were wont to employ their white hands with fragile china and heirloom plate, or dally with needlework in the morning room. These were the mothers who, standing by the slaughtered first-born, gave his sword to the next son, and bade him go at his country's call. There was the spirit of heroism not surpassed by the heroes of the sterner sex. ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... examined the place in the wall.... Under the tapestry hangings it turned out there was a secret door. And her betrothal ring had gone from off her hand. This ring was of an unusual pattern; seven little gold stars alternated on it with seven silver stars; it was an old family heirloom. Her husband asked her what had become of the ring; she could give him no answer. Her husband supposed she had dropped it somewhere, searched everywhere, but could not find it. He felt uneasy and distressed; he decided to go home as soon as possible and directly the doctor allowed it—they ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... in the morning with scrupulous care, put my hair in a queue, shaved cheek and chin, and put at my shoulder the old heirloom brooch of the house, which, with some other property, the invaders had not found below the bruach where we had hid it on the day we had left Elngmore to their mercy. I was all in a tremor of expectation, hot and cold by turns in hope and apprehension, but always with ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... in the Frari he is growing older, and at Siena he is shown as old as Biblical history would permit. The St. John in the Casa Martelli, oltra tutti singolare,[62] was so highly prized that it was made an heirloom, with penalties for such members of the family who disposed of it. This St. John is a link between the Giovannino and the mature prophet. He is, as it were, dazed, and sets forth upon his errand with open-mouthed wonder. He has a strain ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... boy, you will be honoured to-night. You must save this scarf as an heirloom, for when you get it back it will be deeply stained with ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... eyes from the leaves of the book which he was examining, "I hope your coat has not been injured; it is of an elegant cut. An heirloom, I presume, from your paternal ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... many holders of town notes for small amounts, a safe investment that paid six per cent. and escaped taxation. These people didn't want to be paid. In many cases their fathers had loaned the money to the town, and the safe and sound six per cent. seemed an heirloom too sacred ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... any one else who presumed to do so. Indeed Griff had defended its hue in single combat, and his eye was treated for it with beefsteak by Peter in the pantry. We were immensely, though silently, proud of her in her white embroidered cambric frock, red sash and shoes, and coral necklace, almost an heirloom, for it had been brought from Sicily in Nelson's days by my mother's poor young father. How parents and doctors in these days would have shuddered at her neck and arms, bare, not only in the evening, but by day! When she was a little younger she could so shrink up from her clothes that Griff, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preceded their separation, but that they likewise retained the names of some of their deities, some legends about their gods, some popular sayings and proverbs, and in these, it may be, the seeds of parables, as part of their common Aryan heirloom. Their mythological lore fills, in fact, a period in the history of Aryan thought, half-way between the period of language and the period of literature, and it is this discovery which gives to mythology its importance in the eyes of the student ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... him, isn't a bit romantic. But he suddenly blossomed out into all sorts of pleasant American ways, sent Caro flowers and things every day, though I fancy he couldn't afford it, gave her a lovely solitaire diamond ring, which I'm sure he couldn't, and a "guard," an heirloom ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... returning to her cave she found that her cat had just brought in a fine rabbit. In their later prosperous years they had a picture of the cat and the rabbit made on a box which has descended as a family heirloom. Doubtless there were preserved many other interesting reminiscences of the brief camp life. These Quakers were all of the thrifty, industrious type which had gone to West Jersey a few years before. Men of ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... a moldering heirloom, its companion, An oaken chest, half-eaten by the worm, But richly carved by Antony of Trent With scripture stories from the life of Christ; A chest that came from Venice, and had held The ducal robes of some old ancestors— That, by the way, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... passed over their nation. There was an infinite difference between them and the old Hebrew writers. They had lost something which those old prophets possessed. I invite you to ponder, each for himself, on the causes of this strange loss; bearing in mind that they lost their forefathers' heirloom, exactly in proportion as they began to believe it to be their exclusive possession, and to deny other human beings any right to or share in it. It may have been that the light given to their forefathers had, as they thought, really departed. ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... dear. Why not? It is quite natural that Mrs Ferriers should wish to give you some little remembrance as you were the means of restoring a valuable heirloom. It is a good stone. You must be careful not to ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... trader; 'too good for a Kanaka.' 'How much you got? I take him all,' replied his majesty, and became the lord of seventeen boxes at two dollars a cake. Or again, the merchant feigns the article is not for sale, is private property, an heirloom or a gift; and the trick infallibly succeeds. Thwart the king and you hold him. His autocratic nature rears at the affront of opposition. He accepts it for a challenge; sets his teeth like a hunter going at a fence; and with no mark of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a handsomely carved mahogany sideboard, a family heirloom, containing china and silver which belonged to mother and grandmother, and here hang very old steel engravings of Washington and Lincoln. The large, light kitchen, with its hard coal range, is a favorite apartment, and Miss Anthony especially enjoys ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... into the vitals of my great grandfather and dwelt there many years, tormenting the old gentleman beyond mortal endurance. In short it is a family peculiarity. But, to tell you the truth, I have no faith in this idea of the snake's being an heirloom. He is my own snake, and no ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... egad, I believe that if I were heartless enough to take them from her, the wicked old fellow would be out of his grave in a fortnight, leading me the devil of a life. As for their being heirlooms, nothing is an heirloom that is not so mentioned in a will or legal document, and the existence of these jewels has been quite unknown. I assure you I have no more claim on them than your butler, and when Miss Virginia grows up, I dare say she will be pleased to have pretty ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... going to ask Mrs. Tupman to take them home herself," said Mrs. Triplett, "but she left earlier than I thought she would, and I had no chance to say anything about them. We oughtn't to trust anything as valuable as gold beads that are an heirloom to any outsider, no matter how honest. They might be lost. Suppose you just wear them home to her. Do you feel like doing that? And keep them on your neck till she unclasps them with her own hands. Don't leave them with ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... times in Denmark this brought them a rich harvest. They persuaded the farmers' wives that they must have inherited silver, or they could do nothing against evil influences, and acquired thereby many an old-fashioned heirloom. With us they have never pursued, as you suggest, a ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... but yet, with so much artifice and intrigue did she envelope in mystery his lost condition, that, even in the Palace of the Louvre, his own nearest relations were ignorant how near approached the hour, which, by leaving the crown as heirloom to a successor far away in a distant country, opened a field to the ambitious designs of so many struggling parties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... imposing within its memorable wig,—"do this, and the profit shall be all your own! You will shortly need it; for it is not in your days as it was in mine, when a man's office was a life-lease, and oftentimes an heirloom. But, I charge you, in this matter of old Mistress Prynne, give to your predecessor's memory the credit which will be rightfully due!" And I said to the ghost of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... valuable,' said poor mother. 'It's an heirloom, quite irreplaceable. I do not know how I shall ever have courage to tell my father-in-law. No, I can't blame my maid. I told her not to touch it, as the General had fastened it himself all ready. But how can ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... walls the old Blake portraits still presided, and he found, for the first time, an artless humour in the formality of the ancestral attitude—in the splendid pose which they had handed down like an heirloom through the centuries. Among them he saw the comely, high-coloured features of that gallant cynic, Bolivar, the man who had stamped his beauty upon threegenerations, and his gaze lingered with a gentle ridicule on the blithe candour in the eyes and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... leave he presented Edward with the splendid silver-hilted sword which he wore, itself an heirloom of the Stuarts. Then he gave him over into the hands of Fergus Mac-Ivor, who forthwith proceeded to make Waverley into a true son of Ivor by arraying him in the tartan of the clan, with plaid floating over his shoulder and buckler glancing ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... not have written this. You—" He was reading impetuously now, his brain, alert and keen, sorting and sifting out, as it were, the salient, vital points, "... old Colonel Milford and his wife... Louisiana... letter... family heirloom... French descent... old setting, three large diamonds pendant from necklet of smaller ones... ten to twelve thousand dollars... steel bond box... lower right-hand drawer of desk... plan of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... realm, empire, protectorate, sphere of influence. manor, honor, domain, demesne; farm, plantation, hacienda; allodium &c (free) 748 [Obs.]; fief, fieff^, feoff^, feud, zemindary^, dependency; arado^, merestead^, ranch. free lease-holds, copy lease-holds; folkland^; chattels real; fixtures, plant, heirloom; easement; right of common, right of user. personal property, personal estate, personal effects; personalty, chattels, goods, effects, movables; stock, stock in trade; things, traps, rattletraps, paraphernalia; equipage &c 633. parcels, appurtenances. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... messighit. A red-cotton drapery, thrown over bronze limbs, is her only garment, but a diamond glistening on her dark hand looks incongruous with the scanty clothing. The gem seems a talisman or heirloom, but a request to examine it terrifies the owner, and she rushes away into the woods to safeguard the precious possession from perils suggested by the presence of the white pilgrim from across the seas. The delicious breeze which always spring up ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... worn as a festival dress, is now seldom met with; but Captain Bob had often shown us one which he kept as an heirloom. It was a cloak, or mantle, of yellow tappa, precisely similar to the "poncho" worn by the South-American Spaniards. The head being slipped through a slit in the middle, the robe hangs about the person in ample drapery. Tonoi obtained sufficient coarse brown tappa to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... more saddening than the actual loss of the cloak, though that bereft her wardrobe of far and away its most valuable property, which should have descended as an heirloom to her little Katty, who, however, being at present but three months old, lay sleeping happily unaware of the cloud that had come ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... prescriptive right to receive the clothes in which the bridegroom goes to the bride's house, as on the latter's arrival he is always presented with new clothes by the bride's father. As the bridegroom's clothes may be an ancestral heirloom, a compact is often made to buy them back from the barber, and he may receive as much as Rs. 50 in lieu of them. When the first son is born in a family the barber takes a long bamboo stick, wraps it round with cloth and puts ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... our forefathers, and of many another nation in Europe, an instinct even deeper, and tenderer, and more unselfish—the instinct of chivalry; and the widowed queen, or the prince, became to them a precious jewel committed to their charge by the will of their forefathers and the providence of God; an heirloom for which they were responsible to God, and to their forefathers, and to their children after them, lest their names should be stained to all future generations by the crime of ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... New Africa shall extend her limits,—whether the country shall be occupied a century hence by a civilized or by a barbarous race. Every rood of ground yielded to the pretensions of the masters of slaves is so much of the heirloom of freedom and of civilization lost without hope of recovery. Slavery ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Baron's feet was lying Gracefully the worthy tom-cat, Hiddigeigei, with the coal-black Velvet fur and mighty tail. 'Twas an heirloom from his long-lost, Much-beloved, and stately consort, Leonore Monfort du Plessys. Hiddigeigei's native country Was Hungaria, and his mother, Who was of the race Angora, Bore him to a Puszta tom-cat. In his early youth to Paris He ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... named was considerably less than its market value, but sell it she could not. It was a sacred trust, and the last link (except the silver spoons marked "J.") that bound the squalid present to the comfortable past. It was an heirloom, and she could never bring herself to part ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... gown was of point lace with a very long court train of embroidered satin. Her veil, of old lace, was an heirloom from her mother, and was held by a wreath of orange blossoms. Roger's gift of a diamond pendant ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... home-stead, of the feast of the Terminalia with its slain lamb, of libations of ruddy wine and offerings of bright flowers on the clear waters of some ancestral spring, of the simple hearth of the farmhouse, of the family table resplendent with the silver salinum, heirloom of generations, from which the grave paterfamilias makes the pious offering of crackling salt and meal to little gods crowned with rosemary and myrtle, of the altar beneath the pine to the Virgin goddess, ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... you can read a verse in this book, you may have it." Forthwith the lad read the verse off glibly, and was permitted to carry off the Testament in triumph. You may well suppose that the little volume is a sacred heirloom in the Brown family, which for four generations has been famous. Of course, the author of "Rab and His Friends" had several pictures of the illustrious dog that figured in his beautiful story, and I noticed a pet spaniel ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... I am, sir. Was not the O'Caharney your ancestor? Is it likely that an old race had not traits of feature and lineament that ages of descent could not efface? I'd swear that strong brow and frank look must be an heirloom.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... there is still a much-prized heirloom now in Glasgow—a rustic chair used by the Prince when in Skye. The story is that, secreted in one of his cave dwellings, he espied a lad in his immediate vicinity tending some cows. Hunger made him reveal himself, with the result that he was ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... result is that the English language occupies a unique position among the tongues of the earth. It is unique in two dimensions—in altitude and in expanse. It soars to the highest heights of human utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the earth's surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious heirloom of our race, and as such we must reverence and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as though we hold it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans-Atlantic kinsfolk merely a conditional usufruct of it. Their property ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... it knows the smell of gunpowder as well as any bit of scarlet in the service;" while he added, in a whisper, "it's the ould Roscommon Yeomanry. My uncle commanded them in the year '42, and this was his coat. I don't mean to say that it was new then; for you see it's a kind of heirloom in the Quill family, and it's not every one I'd ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... gone out in the afternoon into the great city, bidding Jeanie carefully guard their small luggage—a few treasures tied up in a silken kerchief, and Granny's precious umbrella, which was a sort of heirloom ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... directed,' he announced, 'my watch came tumbling down from the air into my right hand! You may be sure I locked the heirloom in my safe ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the castle of Giltner, the home of peace. Within was Forseti, god of justice, holding the scales. Many more pictures were graven on the great ring, showing the conflict between light and darkness. High in the centre was a cluster of rubies bright as the sun in the heavens. This circlet was a family heirloom, for Frithiof's mother was a descendant ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... held and looked at the sacred heirloom so carefully stitched into its cover of faded linen. It was her sole legacy. Tears came to my eyes as I thought of her generosity—greater, far greater than that which has brought me gifts of silver and gold—although my curiosity ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller |
