"Heirloom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dated from him, and he was "hedged" accordingly by a certain sacredness or "divinity." I well remember with what surprise and pride I found myself asked by a blacksmith's wife in a remote hamlet among the hop-gardens of Kent, if I was "the son of the Self-interpreting Bible." I possess, as an heirloom, the New Testament which my father fondly regarded as the one his grandfather, when a herd laddie, got from the Professor who heard him ask for it, and promised him it if he could read a verse; and he has in his beautiful small hand written in it what follows: ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... a curious one. It took the form of a pearl necklace, her one possession of value, last surviving heirloom of the Quineys, of whom she was the last surviving descendant: her last tangible evidence, too, of those bygone better days. She never wore it, and it never saw the light save when she unlocked the worn jewel-case to make sure that her treasure ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... this passed to an heiress, who married Mr. Cecil (the Earl of Exeter of Alfred Tennyson), and was divorced from him. Lord Exeter sold or carried away the fine library, family plate, and nearly everything curious or valuable that was not an heirloom in the Vernon family. He laid waste the extensive gardens, and sold the elaborate iron gates, which now adorn the avenue to Mere Hall in the immediate neighbourhood. The divorcee married a Mr. Phillips, and dying without surviving issue, the estates passed to a distant ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... the family portraits were in severe black and gold frames; in the centre of the table, in the place of honor, there was a large Bible that had been printed in the sixteenth century. This was a precious heirloom that had come down to us from our Huguenot ancestors who had, at that time, been persecuted for their faith. We had baskets and vases of flowers disposed about the room, a custom which then was not so usual ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the high-valued jewels Thou to me hast allotted. The lord of the Geatmen May perceive from the gold, the Hrethling may see it When he looks on the jewels, that a gem-giver found I Good over-measure, enjoyed him while able. And the ancient heirloom Unferth permit thou, The famed one to have, the heavy-sword splendid, The hard-edged weapon; with Hrunting to aid me, I shall gain me glory, or grim death shall take me." The atheling of Geatmen uttered these words and Heroic did ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... sitting at his secretary, a rather clumsy cylindrical desk, which, however, he did not care to part with, as it was an heirloom. Effi was standing behind him, and had embraced and kissed him before he could ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... and this casket, and the cross mentioned in this scroll, there is a mysterious link. The cross is an amulet, an heirloom of dreadful potency for good and ill. It has been disturbed; it has been stolen from my father's grave, and there is but one way of setting right that disturbance. To avert unspeakable calamity from falling upon two entire families (the family of Aylwin and that ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... mother's 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 ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... Anders came to get an armful of wood. Baard stood in the corner and saw him distinctly; he had put off his threadbare Sunday clothes and wore the uniform he had brought home with him from the war, the match to Baard's, and which he had promised his brother never to touch but to leave for an heirloom, Baard having given him a similar promise. Anders' uniform was now patched and worn; his strong, well-built frame was encased, as it were, in a bundle of rags; and, at the same time, Baard heard the gold watch ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... inflicted the pang courted by the advocate, and asked if you were for sale. And then the ruined advocate clasped his hands, rubbed them, set his head heart-brokenly on one side, took you down, heaved a sigh, shrugged his shoulders, and sold you—you! a family heirloom! Well, at least you are old, and you represent to me acres of dim, religious canvas in that beloved land; and here is the dollar now asked for you: I could not have bought you for so ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... ugly, black, bronzy, oily, noisy, leaking, sizzling, snapping steam radiators that are always in the way and keep the air in the room so dry that everybody has catarrh, the doors won't latch, and the furniture falls to pieces? You know how the old heirloom mahogany chair collapsed under Madam Abigail at Mrs. Hunter's party—went to pieces in a twinkling like the one-horse shay—and all on ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... 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
... 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. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... sufficient faith in the reality of the vision to increase his nervous condition considerably, and he resolved to lie down with his "arms handy." These arms consisted of a flint-lock blunderbuss, an heirloom in his father's family, and a bowie-knife, which had been presented to him by an American cousin on his leaving England. Twice during that day's march had the blunderbuss exploded owing to its owner's inexperience in fire-arms. Fortunately no harm had been done, the muzzle on each occasion having ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... rounds of the treasure room, pointing out and giving the history of each precious family heirloom or art object with an encyclopedic knowledge that should have caused his companion to wonder how he knew so much. Several times he slipped in the pronoun I, hoping that this might have some effect in waking Helen from ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... but the good woman did not dare hint at such a thing, so the seven plates were put upon the table, and the china cups brought from the little cupboard at the side of the chimney, and the silver teapot, which was a family heirloom, and had been given Mrs. Markham by her mother, was brought also and rubbed up with what Eunice called a "shammy," and the pickles, and preserves, and honey, and cheese and jellies, and the white raised biscuits and fresh brown bread, and shredded cabbage and cranberry sauce, with golden butter, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... 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 ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... design where the rats had spared the carving, what 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 ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... them, and, although I have often suffered great privations, I could never part with my only treasure. But to-day I do so joyously. Give me my iron rings!" She took those handed her, and placed them on her finger. "Farewell, sir," she said. "These will be my daughter's heirloom, and I know she will rejoice over them." She had not yet crossed the threshold when another lady appeared, and another, and more followed in rapid succession. The newspapers, containing the request, had been read in the whole city; all the married women hastened to comply with ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... however, such as took place in the case of other deities, was neither possible, nor, indeed, desirable. It was not possible, because of the antiquity of the Ea cult and the peculiar position that he, as a common heirloom of all Babylonia, occupied; nor was it desirable, for to do so would be to cut off completely the bond uniting Babylon to its own past and to the rest of Babylonia. The solution of the problem was found in making Ea, the father of Marduk—the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... woman of nine-and-twenty can make a good husband out of very unpromising material. The Templar wore a scared look in those days and went home betimes. His cronies knew the fun was over when they heard what happened to the great punchbowl—she made it a swine-trough. It was the heirloom of a hundred years, and as much as a man could carry with his arms out, a massive curio in stone; but to her husband's plaint about its degradation, "Oh," she cried, "it'll never know the difference! It's been ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... "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
... on earth the New! The girdle of the lands is loosen'd[16]—hurl'd To dust the forms old Custom deem'd divine,— Safe from War's fury not the watery world;— Safe not the Nile-God nor the antique Rhine. Two mighty nations make the world their field, Deeming the world is for their heirloom given— Against the freedom of all lands they wield This—Neptune's trident; that—the Thund'rer's levin Gold to their scales each region must afford; And, as fierce Brennus in Gaul's early tale, The Frank casts in the iron of his sword, To poise the balance, where the right may fail— Like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... afterwards judged that I had special qualifications for the part of Princess. Like the youths in Comus, my unrazored lips in those days were as smooth as Hebe's, and I had a slenderness that was quite in keeping. Dressed in an old brocade gown, an heirloom from the century before, with a lofty white wig, and proper patches upon my pink cheeks, I essayed the role of une belle dame sans merci. Brooks and I were rivals for the affection of Tom Thumb, and I do not recall which succeeded. The tragedy ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... 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 was ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... possessions to the uttermost farthing, and part company for ever. With merchant-like exactness, every tittle was reckoned up and shared. The old house was to be sold to a Jew for a sum already agreed on, and one item only remained which they could not divide, an heirloom's value being fixed upon it. That was the Coverdale Bible with which their grandfather ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... a fault. It is a beauty, an heirloom, a distinction. A local accent is like a landed inheritance; it marks a man's place in the world, tells where he comes from. Of course it is possible to have too much of it. A man does not need to carry the soil of his whole farm ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... of the Hegelian philosophy: yea, it would perhaps be no exaggeration to say that, in the subordination of all strivings after education to reasons of State, Prussia has appropriated, with success, the principle and the useful heirloom of the Hegelian philosophy, whose apotheosis of the State in this subordination certainly reaches ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... domain, demesne; farm, plantation, hacienda; allodium &c. (free) 748[obs3]; fief, fieff[obs3], feoff[obs3], feud, zemindary[obs3], dependency; arado[obs3], merestead[obs3], ranch. free lease-holds, copy lease-holds; folkland[obs3]; 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. impedimenta; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "there is a cimeter which is an heirloom. It was brought from the East during the Crusades by an ancestor. While there, he was wounded and taken prisoner by a Saracen emir named Hayreddin. This Saracen treated him with chivalrous generosity, and a warm friendship ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and some poems on it. In the summer of 1891, as her uncle proposed to make his home with his cousins, the Cartlands, in Newburyport, his niece had this ancient desk sent there. Mr. Whittier was greatly pleased, upon his arrival, to find in his room the heirloom which was hallowed by so many associations connected not only with his ancestry, but with his own early life. Nearly all of the literary work of his last year was done upon this desk. To ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... 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
... a 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 ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... testify his toleration of his lady friend. There never was a greater mistake. Mr. Gish merely presented her a sheaf of assorted angle-worms, neatly bound with a pink ribbon tied into a simple knot. The dog is an heirloom and will descend to the Gishes of the next generation, in the direct line ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... 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 ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... 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 dream, why not the way to sharpen ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... we can do is to consign him to Madge," said Mrs. Arnold, with an affected air of deep regret. "It is certain that he clings to the family, and his great wealth would be an heirloom ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... 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 ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... instruments, 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 ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Mr. Sutherland," 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
... at the farm where you went last night. But her parents won't let me have her; they say I have too little, and that is true too.' 'Hm, man,' says he, 'you look as if you had a pair of strong arms of your own; that is a good heirloom, and she has some pennies,—in a couple of days you might go and see what the old man's mind is. I'll help along the best I know how.' I listened to that, for evil upon them, those gipsies—they are not such fools. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... chain that is, Georgia." She hoped her voice sounded more natural to Georgia than it did to herself. "Is it a family heirloom?" ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... mused. "Fine name for it, too. The 'Luck' being that old heirloom—just as I planned it. Wonder ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... have inherited their profession as an heirloom from their fathers and grandfathers generally possess some valuable knowledge, the result of long and close observation; but if a man can not say that the medical art is in his family, he may be considered a ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... he lives. Upon marriage a Belgian gets a little book, giving his name and his wife's, their ages, their occupations, and address. As children are born their names are added. A Belgian holds as fast to this book as a woman to a piece of jewellery that is an heirloom. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... 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
... horn, however, is the most coveted acquisition. It is believed to have peculiar virtues, and is popularly supposed by its mere presence in a house to mitigate the pains of maternity. A rhinoceros horn is often handed down from generation to generation as a heirloom, and when a birth is about to take place the anxious husband often gets a loan of the precious treasure, after which he has no fears for the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... still has in his possession, as a cherished heirloom, the sword and sash of his grandfather, the owner of Tanshelf House, Pontefract, as well as of residences at Lofthouse ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... the cure; "an heirloom. Amateurs set a high value on it—M. Marescot especially." As for him, thank God, he had no love of curiosities; and, as they appeared not to understand, he declared that he had seen them ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... three chief parts, Luther considered a sacred heirloom from the ancient Church. "For," says he in his Large Catechism, "the holy Fathers or apostles have thus embraced in a summary the doctrine life, wisdom, and art of Christians, of which they speak and treat, and with which ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... 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 their original ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... Persian misrule. The Romans came and took away from Grecian dynasties, in Asia and Egypt, when they became enfeebled by prosperity and self-indulgence, the powers they had usurped, without destroying Grecian civilization. That remained, and will remain, in some form, forever, as an heirloom of priceless value to all future nations. The Greeks, when they conquered the Persians, had also spared the most precious monuments of their former industry and genius. The Romans, also, when they conquered Greece itself, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... late as 1824, but are now for ever lost; to say nothing of the painted Renaissance architecture and the historic legends which looked like solid realities when the facade was studied. But "Mizraim is become merchandise"; and all that is now left of what should have been a treasured and priceless heirloom is but a monument to the shame of that citizen, a banker, who could condemn such a thing to destruction as indifferently as if it had been a cowshed, and to the shame of the municipality which, at any ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... 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 finished, and never will be, and good enough for it, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rude broker has already laid his grimy fingers; they hang over the back and fondle the padded arms; and the old grandmother, with clasped hands, entreats that, if able to raise the money in a few days, they may be allowed to buy back that loved heirloom. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... fellow galloping away from five wild redskins, who not only desire to kill him then and there, but have, further, the sportsman-like anxiety to strip his scalp, and hang the dearly-beloved trophy in some filthy lodge, where it will gradually dry up, and remain the most valued heirloom in the family of the "Big Snake," or the "Screeching Eagle," or some other no ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the heirloom with a little cry of joy. Then she threw her arms about Betty's neck, and began ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... Abigail is but one wife of many; that there is an element of pure, single, all-absorbing love absent at least in David's heart, which was present in the hearts of our forefathers in many a like case, and which they have handed down to us as an heirloom, as precious as that of ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... at the grim heirloom that stood there reaching from floor to ceiling; it seemed to grow, as they watched, into a monument over the ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... physician, was a tall man, older considerably than the rest of the class. He used to wear an old-fashioned blue, straight-bodied coat with brass buttons, a buff vest, and nankeen pantaloons which were said to have come down as an heirloom in his family from a remote generation. He was addicted to rather a pompous style of speech. He was very fond of playing the bass-viol, of which he was by no means a very skilful master. He had, as a subject for his mock part, "The Base Violation of all Rules of Harmony." One Sunday evening he ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... want to try experiments of their own with life, and shake off the shackles of old moral laws and religious creeds, and be free to do and think as they please, and put the Bible away on the shelf, and shove prayer aside as a sort of worn-out heirloom, and have a merrier and better time than the old folks knew. That was the course which Manasseh took, just as headstrong and ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... and our aims are just! Behold, we seek Not merely to preserve for noble wives The virtuous pride of unpolluted lives, To shield our daughters from the ruffian's hand, And leave our sons their heirloom of command, In generous perpetuity of trust; Not only to defend those ancient laws, Which Saxon sturdiness and Norman fire Welded forevermore with freedom's cause, And handed scathless down from sire to sire— ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... up 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
... obsequious to their master the day before, so prompt to sing and dance before his Northern visitors, were all swift to transform themselves into fiends of retribution now; show them sword or musket and they grasped it, though it were an heirloom from Washington himself. The troop increased from house to house,—first to fifteen, then to forty, then to sixty. Some were armed with muskets, some with axes, some with scythes; some came on their masters' horses. As the numbers increased, they could be divided, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... he, "were republics—commercial and maritime—placed under the same sky, surrounded by the same neighbours, and rent by the same struggles between Oligarchy and Democracy. Yet, while one left the world an immortal heirloom of genius, where are the poets, the philosophers, the statesmen of the other? Arrian tells us of republics in India, still supposed to exist by modern investigators; but they are not more productive of liberty of thought, or ferment of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... But I reflected that probably the censorship of plays was an inactive monstrosity; not exactly a survival, since it seemed obviously at variance with the genius of the people, but an heirloom of past ages, a bizarre and imported curiosity preserved because of that weakness one has for one's old possessions apart from any intrinsic value; one more object of exotic virtu, an Oriental potiche, a magot chinois conceived ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... emphatically nodding the head that looked so 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 Mr. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but, alas! for human intentions, downstairs she found a commotion that drove M. Linders, M. le Docteur, and everything else out of her head for the time being. Madame la Comtesse au premier had lost her diamond ring—her ring, worth six thousand francs, an heirloom, an inestimable treasure; lost it? it had been stolen—she knew it, felt convinced of it; she had left it for five minutes on her dressing-table whilst she went to speak to some dressmaker or milliner, and on her return it had vanished. Unpardonable carelessness on her part, she admitted, but ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... 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 manuscript for ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... 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
... member of the elder branch of the family, was a contemporary and friend of Ben Jonson, and his portrait in oils, by Romney, is now an heirloom."—Provincial Paper. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... what else is left to inspire to us? We are bankrupt. What is there in all the Churches to help humanity if not their ethics—ethics which are not the perquisite of any sect, no mere provincialism of any Church or nation, but the heirloom ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... drawn his sword. It was an ancient heirloom, keen of edge and bright. Many a time it had been dyed in blood; many a time it had won ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... celestial mysteries and holy wisdom, came down as an heirloom into the hands of Abraham, and he by means of it was able to see ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... those women of far-off lands— I have heard it before—they are not weak as we are; they do not fear to pass from thought to deed. [Takes up a goblet which stands on the table.] 'Twas in this beaker that Gudmund and I, when he went away, drank to his happy return. 'Tis well-nigh the only heirloom I brought with me to Solhoug. [Putting the goblet away in a cupboard.] How soft is this summer day; and how light it is in here! So sweetly has the sun not shone ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... of this memorable Sunday that Sir Everard entered the library, where he narrowly missed surprising our young hero as he went through the guards of the broadsword with the ancient weapon of old Sir Hildebrand, which, being preserved as an heirloom, usually hung over the chimney in the library, beneath a picture of the knight and his horse, where the features were almost entirely hidden by the knight's profusion of curled hair, and the Bucephalus which he bestrode ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... dues had now mounted to L10 6s. Again the cup was dashed from her lips, for I had only given her L9. But she went to the Rabbi, and offered if he supplied the balance to repledge the Sabbath silver candlesticks that were the one family heirloom in the bundle, and therewith repay him instantly. While she was pleading with him, in came a noble Jew, paid the balance, lodged her and fed her, and saw her safely on board with ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... came to them when her future mother-in-law presented her with a beautiful diamond cross, which was an old family heirloom, and must belong by ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... believers and youths on horseback, with ribbons flying, carried banners and shrines. Marshals kept the lines steady, and four were in constant attendance on a gorgeous carriage, all gilt and carving (the heirloom of the parish), in which reclined the figure of a handsome lad, impersonating John the Baptist, with long golden hair, dressed in rich robes and skins— a sceptre in his hand, a snowy lamb at his feet. The rude symbolism was softened and toned to an ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... safely away behind his neighbour's house, the new hut rose as if by magic. This continual pilfering, I was assured, was a serious tax on the cultivation of the estates around. But I was told, too, frankly enough, by the very gentleman who complained, that this habit was simply an heirloom from the bad days of slavery, when the pilfering of the slaves from other estates was connived at by their own masters, on the ground that if A's Negroes robbed B, B's Negroes robbed C, and so all round the alphabet; one more evil instance of the demoralising effect of a ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... closed upon a goose; I have a scar upon my thimble finger, Which chronicles the hour of young ambition. My father was a tailor, and his father, And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors; They had an ancient goose,—it was an heirloom From some remoter tailor of our race. It happened I did see it on a time When none was near, and I did deal with it, And it did burn me,—O, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... 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 daresay she will be pleased to have pretty things to wear. Besides, you forget, Mr. Otis, ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... "I know what I am speaking about. The man whose name I mentioned has sworn to accept the bloody heirloom of Abd-el-Kader and before four weeks have elapsed the revolutionary flag will again wave throughout ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... 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 baseness ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the Fair.' Poets, Historians, Statesmen, Novelists, and Essayists furnished contributions prepared expressly for its columns; and their efforts in behalf of the noble charity which the paper represented, should alone entitle the volume to be cherished as a most valued memento and heirloom. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the people of India are agriculturists, men and women who are dependent upon what they can wrest from the soil for their existence. Their plough, an heirloom from remote antiquity, merely scratches the earth. The use of superior implements would result in superior tillage and augmented crops; but it would be as simple to induce the peasant to change his religion as to get him to forsake the ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... generation, she left her card, saying that if Miss Lloyd ever changed her mind about selling the jug, she would find that she, the aforesaid collector, had not changed hers about buying it. People who make a hobby of heirloom china must meekly overlook snubs, and this particular person had never seen anything she coveted so much ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 be ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... 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 characteristic touch of brutality ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... commendable! Her manner said as much—it also implied, however, that she could not possibly be held responsible for transatlantic connections by a former marriage. Momma was nervous, but collected. She bowed a distant Wastgaggle bow, an heirloom in the family, which gave Mrs. Portheris to understand that if any cordiality was to characterise the occasion, it would have to emanate from her. Besides, Mrs. Portheris was poppa's relation, and would naturally have to be guarded ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... given them, and that one they fulfilled as it had never been fulfilled before; as it will never need to be fulfilled again; for the Greeks' work was done not for themselves alone but for all races in all times; and Greek Art is the heirloom of the whole human race; and that work was to assert in drama, lyric, sculpture, music, gymnastic, the dignity of man—the dignity of man which they perceived for the most part with their intense aesthetic sense, through the beautiful in man. Man with ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Moco handle knives and forks mounted in gold which I bought at Rome, and likewise the whole length portraits of the late Duke of Kingston and of the present Duchess of Kingston, to be put up at Thoresby which as well as all the plates shall be reputed as an heirloom to the said house; and I also give him the several pieces of cannon and the Ships ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... blade which only left Montgomery's hands, when in his death- throes he 'like a soldier fell,' and the pitiless snow became his winding-sheet. On a table below this interesting and valuable historic relic, now in possession, as an heirloom, of J. Thompson Harrower, Esq., of this city, was exhibited the full uniform of an artillery officer of the year 1775. Several quaint old sketches and paintings were placed around the Library, which, with the Museum, was ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... lamp, the old Metz Bible, several hymn-books and the papers read in that home,—a weekly religious paper, the weekly town paper, and a well-known farm journal. A low walnut organ which Phoebe's mother brought to the farm and a tall walnut grandfather clock, the most cherished heirloom of the Metz family, occupied places of honor in the room. Not a single article of modern design could be found in the entire room, yet it was an interesting and habitable place. Most of the Metz furniture had stood in the old homestead ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... century had bronzed it with its harvest suns and blown on it with its winter winds. She wore always the same garb of homely dark-blue serge, always the same tall white head-gear, always the same pure silver ear-rings that had been at once an heirloom and a nuptial gift. She was always shod in her wooden sabots, and she always walked abroad with a staff of ash. She had been born in the Berceau de Dieu; had lived there and wedded there; had toiled there all her life, and never left it for a greater distance than a league, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... 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 ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 modern ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... wear it," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's a woman's ring, of course. But as for accepting it, you need have no scruples. It's an old Blanchemain gem, that was in the family a hundred years before I came into it. It's properly an heirloom, and you're the heir. I give it to you for a purpose. Should you ever become engaged, I desire you to placcit upon the ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... charters, and added some further immunities, concluding with the declaration that their ancient customs and liberties were to be held as of inheritance from the king and his heirs. They became, therefore, the property of the citizens, and were bequeathed from father to son, as a cherished heirloom. It is true that under Richard I. they were exposed to some extortion, for which they received ample amends during the reign of his weak and inglorious successor. Not only did they obtain five different charters ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... Suffering is her heirloom. Disasters, which would crush the spirit of man, often turn her heart to steel, and she performs deeds grand and heroic. Disheartened by continuous neglect, she will make heroic efforts to throw her influence all the more affectionately over her home. ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... she 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 regarding ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... to conquer them in yourselves more and more; to profit by the discipline which you may gain by this movement; and bequeath it, as a precious heirloom, to your ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... reached, and it is believed that the thief, or thieves, managed to pass in unobserved and throw the bag out upon the line to some confederate awaiting it. The bag contained a magnificent diamond necklet—a historic heirloom of the Imperial family of the Hapsburgs—and is valued ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... his 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
... gone to pay for Terence's schooling, for Terence's clothes, for one thing and another that required money. They had gone, oh! so quickly; had melted away so certainly. That first visit of her son's to England had cost Mrs. O'Shanaghgan her long string of pearls, which had come to her as an heirloom from her mother before her. They were very valuable pearls, and she had sold them for a tenth, a twentieth part of their value. The jeweler in Dublin, who was quite accustomed to receiving the poor ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... 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 does a fine avenue of shade trees give to real ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... On the bell-tower he is grown up, 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. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... soon. When my uncle took leave of us, my father, noticing the family talisman—which, by the way, was picked up by our ancestor, Raoul-de-Netherbie, the great Crusader, on the battle field of Acre, and was said to have belonged to an Eastern magician, and has remained an heirloom with the head of our family ever since—inquired of his brother whether he was going to wear that outre jewel in open view upon his finger. My uncle answered that he was; and half laughing, and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... very affecting to see the decoration laid on that already gasping breast, without any consciousness on the part of the poor hero. His mother and wife, at least, before they buried him, could take the glorious emblem to hand down as heirloom and as instruction to his three little ones. It is a noble idea of the French Government, to give the decorations of soldiers killed by the enemy to their families—their widows, their orphans, or, if they are not married, ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... can I thank you enough for your magnificent present? It is, indeed, kind of you thinking of me, and I can assure you that the spurs shall remain an "heirloom" to decorate the dinner-table (a novel ornament) and match the silver spur poor old White Melville gave me. Why you should have so honoured me I do not know, but that I fully value your ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... 16: "A decided predilection for the aristocracy appears to have lingered as an heirloom of the past in the older ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... to frown. "Foolish girl," said she, "you should have kept the essence-box at least, as an heirloom. It was a present from Henry the Seventh's Queen to your great grandmother's aunt, who was her maid of honour. There was the union of the two roses wrought upon it; the King, standing with a red rose in his hand, and the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Johnson shall not be made to pay our debts. There's Uncle John's gold watch, left as a kind of heirloom, and very dear on that account. I've carried it long, but now it must go. There's a pawnbroker's office opened in Frankfort—take it there this very afternoon, and get for it what you can. I never shall redeem it. There's ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... 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 it ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... shoes, laid it on the sleeves, and cut out thus good uppers and sewed them carefully; then soaked the soles and sewed the cloth to them. I am so proud of these home-made shoes, think I'll put them in a glass case when the war is over, as an heirloom. H. says he has come to have an abiding faith that everything he needs to wear will come out of that trunk while the war lasts. It is like a fairy casket. I have but a dozen pins remaining, so many I gave away. Every time these are used they are ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... keys of Lady Keith's private possessions, she was decisively silenced, and the next day these same keys were given to Alick, with a request that his wife would as soon as possible look over and take to herself all that had belonged to his sister, except a few heirloom jewels that must return to Scotland. Alick demurred greatly, but the old man would not brook contradiction, and Rachel was very unwillingly despatched upon the mission on one of Alick's days of prostration at home. His absence was the most consoling part ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... often a treasured heirloom in families of the better class, and at the advent of each scion of the family tree was suspended about the neck of the infant at baptism, being supposed to exert some beneficent influence. Especially in the East, about the seventh century, we find that a small vessel, or spoon, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... market a seasoned bachelor is just a shop-worn remnant; a divorce is a cast-off, second-hand article; but a widower is a treasured heirloom ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... breezes coming in from the bay of Naples. Some courageous citizens returned, searching in the hot ashes for the crashed-in roofs of their villas, to recover this or that. Perhaps they hoped to salvage the strong box in the atrium, or a heirloom from the triclinium. But soon they gave up. Despairing, or hoping for better days to come, they vanished in the mist of time. Pompeii, the fair, the hospitable, the gay city, just like any individual out of luck, was and stayed forgotten. The Pompeians, their ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... condition that she received back the sub-prioret. Whereupon Sidonia loosed her veil with the one golden key, and restored it to Dorothea with the Judas kiss; then bid her fetch the veil of the abbess with the two golden keys, for this was an heirloom in the cloister. When it arrived, Sidonia goes to her trunk, and takes out a large regal cape that looked like ermine, but was only white cat's skin. She hung this upon her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... incipiency of joy for freedom bestowed he could not properly estimate the factors necessary to form an homogenous citizenship. The ways for two centuries had been divergent paths. The dominant claiming and exercising, as an heirloom, every civil and political right; the subordinate, with knowledge the most meager of their application or limits, by compulsion was made to concede the claim. Neither is it singular that participation in the exercise of these rights by the freedman should have created a determined opposition ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... was 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... share of care and pain, No holiday was life to him; Still in the heirloom cup we drain ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... O Father! be for thee an heirloom, and a memorial of Patroclus' funeral games—of him, whom thou wilt never see again! I give it to thee since thou mayest not contend in boxing, nor in wrestling, nor in throwing the lance, nor in the foot-race; for rueful old ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... 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
... The delicate porcelain and heirloom silver were missing now, and so was the filmy lace, but the tired mistress, could sleep as long as she pleased, thank Heaven! and the same loving care be given her. And the meal could be as nicely served, even though the thick cup cost ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the cardcase 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
... it isn't likely. For all, I came honestly by the article. It's an heirloom in our family; belonged to my great-great-grandfather, and's descended through several generations. For know, Senor, my ancestors were not deformed like poor me. Some of them were gallant soldiers, as yourself. Indeed, one of them rose to the rank of sergeant—that was my ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... so sure about 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 ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher |
