"Motherless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a star. No one who saw her but acknowledged it. He marvelled as he recalled the change wrought in the face of the matron and because of her gentleness to the little girl forgave her all that she had not been to his motherless boyhood. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... theory to the avocat. The beautiful, pious, and aristocratic mother of Paul de Senanges—a lady to whose superiority the Marquis had rendered the distinguished testimony of his dislike, not hesitating to avow that she was "much too good for his taste"—had been very fond of, and very kind to, the motherless daughter of Prosper Alix, and he held her memory in reverence which he accorded to nothing beside, human or divine, and taught his daughter the matchless worth of the friend she had lost. The Marquis knew this, and though he had little sympathy with the ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the music; and even civilians' children, who see the service devoid of sweet sounds, and under its blackest and most revolting aspect, still are strangely fascinated thereby. Julie had heard about one of these, a lonely motherless boy, whose chief joy was to harness Granny to his "hearse" and play at funeral processions round the drawing-room, where his dead mother had once ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... than most lads, Richard. You've a head on your shoulders. I've known you long; but you have never spoken—until to-night. It was your will that took you through your puny childhood, fatherless, motherless, and made your stern old uncle proud of you. Why now be down-hearted? I've heard you spoken of as a lad of spirit by Dr. Warren, aye, and ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... supported them, to be avoided of God and man, and perish, down to the baby at the breast. But I only tell you that if you ever renew that theme with me, I will renounce you; I will so dismiss you through that doorway, that you had better have been motherless from your cradle. I will never see or know you more. And if, after all, you were to come into this darkened room to look upon me lying dead, my body should bleed, if I could make it, when you came ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... nothing, nothing," replied his cousin, a look of ineffable pain passing over his fine features; "she was a mere infant when I was arrested. When I broke loose, I had to flee for my life. When I could set searchers after her, she had vanished. Poor motherless thing; I imagine she is the slave of some gay lady at Antioch or Ephesus or ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... whose uncircumscribed acres produce fruits and corn free to all, nor is a longer than annual tillage agreeable, and a successor leaves him who has accomplished his labor by an equal right. There the guiltless wife spares her motherless step-children, nor does the portioned spouse govern her husband, nor put any confidence in a sleek adulterer. Their dower is the high virtue of their parents, and a chastity reserved from any other man by a steadfast security; and it, is forbidden to sin, or the reward is death. O if there ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... She had never been called upon to do anything particular all her gentle life. Another fashion of woman might have found a call to action in the management of her father's house, or the education of her motherless young sister. But Miss Wodehouse had contented herself with loving Lucy—had suffered her to grow up very much as she would, without interference—had never taken a decided part in her life. When anything had to be done, to ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Then it came and settled and bade fair to remain and thrive upon the fat of his land. Anna's mother came to live with them. He now realized that he had been extremely shortsighted. He should have stipulated in his advertisement that none except motherless young ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... and spent a merry evening, all except poor Rose, who, ere she went back, had poured all her sorrows into Lady Grenville's ear. For the kind woman, knowing that she was motherless and guileless, carried her off into Mrs. St. Leger's chamber, and there entreated her to tell the truth, and heaped her with pity but with no comfort. For indeed, what comfort ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... it," answered the Old Maid. "It seemed so true. A thought suddenly comes to you. I think of them sometimes, as of little motherless babes creeping into our brains ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... Philip's own account confirmed, that his cousin had incited the little heir to the slide that would have been fatal save for his fall, she told with detail, and entreated that the grandfather might be warned, and some means be found of ensuring the safety of her darling, the motherless child! ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them poor motherless children,' said Mrs. Hackit to her husband, 'a-going among strangers, and into a nasty town, where there's no good victuals to be had, and you must pay ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... about the little body. There was gentleness and kindness in the touch. The old head was voluntarily drooped caressingly against the breast of her daughter; there was a long sigh, and Karin knew she was motherless. Repentant, sorrowing tears flowed fast. There was no opportunity left for reparation in this world. That loving last movement towards her was the only pleasant thought ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... dead; and then of her poor little motherless and fatherless baby, whom, if she had any consciousness in her death-hour, it must have been a sore pang to her to leave behind. And the tears gathered again and again in the good man's eyes, shutting out from his vision all the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... mourning yesterday, and no words can describe the scene of woe.[52] There was the venerable Queen with the motherless children, admirable in her deep grief, and her pious resignation to the Will of God! yet even now the support, the comfort of all, thinking but of others and ready to devote her last remaining strength and her declining years to her children and grandchildren. There was the broken-hearted, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well shaped, light-footed, had just taken up her knitting, and was seated with her niece, Dinah Morris. Another motherless niece, Hetty Sorrel, a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... wave seize thee; Mayest thou not taste the impurities of the river; Mayest thou not see the face of fear. May the fish come to thee without escape; Mayest thou reach unto plump waterfowl. For thou art the orphan's father, the widow's husband, The desolate woman's brother, the garment of the motherless. Let me celebrate thy name in this land for every virtue. A guide without greediness of heart; A great one without any meanness. Destroying deceit, encouraging justice; Coming to the cry, and allowing utterance. Let me speak, do thou hear and do justice; ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... over, to save it from confiscation in the event of the success of the American cause. To others came the bitterness of separation from parents, when they were sent across the sea to unknown relatives; while again some faint manuscript record tells of a motherless child brought from a comfortable home, no longer tenable, to whatever quarters could be found within the British lines. Fortunately, children usually adapt themselves easily to changed conditions, and in the novelty and excitement of the life around them, it is probable they soon forgot the luxuries ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... special guest, was Lieutenant "Hefty" Harris, of old Camp Bowie, and as Bright's special charge were 'Tonio, sometime chief of the Red Rock band of Apache-Mohaves, Kwonahelka, his associate and friend, with two young braves of the tribe, Kwonahelka's shy, silent wife and her ward, a motherless young Apache girl, sister to Comes Flying, he whose untimely taking off had so seriously complicated the Indian question in the district of the Verde. Bright had his Apache visitors comfortably stowed, and abundantly provided for, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... all is settled. She, having no mother to do the necessary grumbling at the inferior quality of the bridegroom's presents, comes to my room later on, and says: "I have been examining these, and perceive that the silver used is not pure in quality." Having shown that she, though motherless, is not easily taken in, she accepts my exhortation to be a good child and to be thankful for what she has, and without further ado begins her preparations for the day when she will "change ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... Tim, being father-and-motherless, called Mr Merryboy father and the wife mother. So did Martha, but Bobby Frog, remembering those whom he had left at home, loyally declined, though he did not object to call the elder Mrs ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... for feelings as much like love as childhood can know them, full of kindling charm and mystery. Her friendship had been of course different, but it also left deep mark. A tall, consumptive girl among the Cliff House pupils, the motherless daughter of a clergyman-friend of Miss Frederick's, had for some time taken notice of Marcella, and at length won her by nothing else, in the first instance, than a remarkable gift for story-telling. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would trust to no hands but her own,—conscious incapacity to be what all the women about her were, stirring, active, hardy housekeepers,—a vague sense of shame, and a great dread of the future,—her comfortless and motherless condition,—slowly, but surely, like frost, and wind, and rain, and snow, beat on this frail blossom, and it went with the rest. June roses were laid against her dark hair and in her fair hands, when she was carried to the lonely graveyard of Greenfield, where mulleins and asters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... sorry, yet I keep my grief within bounds. What seems to me so lamentable is that two honourable ladies should in the very spring-time of life have been carried off at the moment of becoming mothers. I am grieved for the infants who are left motherless at their birth; I am grieved for their excellent husbands, and grieved also on my own account. For even now I retain the warmest affection for their dead father, as I have shown in my pleading and my books. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Rose Mary with both a smile and a longing in her voice. "I came home in the winter of my junior year. My father was one of the Harpeth Valley boys who went out into the world, and he came back to die under the roof where his fathers had fought off the Indians, and he brought poor little motherless me to leave with the aunts and Uncle Tucker. They loved me and cared for me just as they did Uncle Tucker's son, who was motherless, too, and a few years after he went out into the world to seek the fortune he felt so sure of, I was given my chance at college. In my senior year his ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... few lines of importance I ask you to help me that much the lord will help you I am a christians I try to make a honest living a man ought to help another when he try to help his self. this is only one I will do any kind of work if any company pass in up their I can pay half of my fare. I am motherless and fatherless I dont care when I go I am gone trust in the lord if you yill help me the Lord will pay you I am with donfident I am not a loafer If my fare is advance up their it a written contract that I will work ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... few years of wedded life, the prospect of maternity began to grow less shadowy and more reliable, her heart did seem to swell at rare intervals with a real, or assumed pity for the little woman who had been left to wander about motherless and friendless, spending her young life, unheeded, among the cheerless apartments of her ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... stool at the fire. "'Twas a chance I got to come and see the folk at home while the master and mistress are in Galway seeing what they can save out of the ruin of their estate there. Ochone, it's bad times, Mike; indeed it is. Lonely enough for you and me and the motherless boys. I've a mind to stay where I am, and settle ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... could not, under the peculiar circumstances, but be embarrassing and disturbing on occasions; for the young man, besides being his nephew, was Sibyl's brother, and Sibyl, as a member of a royalist's family,—for her father on his departure for Barbadoes had left his motherless girl in her uncle's charge,—could not, of course, be allowed free intercourse with one who had placed himself in an attitude of active ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... the singer was led to speak of her own life, of her wretched, motherless childhood, her poverty, the discovery of her voice and ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... doted on his pretty sister, and often could not find it in his heart to rebuke her, because she was motherless, and had only him and Cary to look to; and Cary's office was not to rebuke any one, much less her dear little sister-in-law. So Barbara was spoiled and humoured; while the children were kept in high order—a proper discipline being exercised in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... him in a flash of revelation that, did she have a mother, it was to her she would have gone at this moment, and not to him, and his eyes were a little misty as he looked down at her. That she and her sister should have grown, motherless, to such sweet, triumphant womanhood struck him in this instant as a kind of miracle—he had never thought of it before. He had taken their beauty, their wit, their sanity, as matters of course; he had never looked at them, clearly, from the outside; he had never quite thoroughly appreciated them. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... of her grief-stricken daughter, she said: "farewell, my dearest husband; it is but a little parting; you will meet me there at last." Turning to the Sea-flower, with her hand still upon the head of her daughter, she added, "my child will soon be motherless; through you, she is what I could wish to see her; and when I am gone, will you never lose sight of her? make her to be like yourself!" In a feeble voice she continued, "thank God that we may see heaven upon earth; the gentle spirit is pointing me to my rest;" a slight trembling of her ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... their exiled sovereign. Hard service, wounds, and disappointment soon terminated his life; and three months after he had been laid in his grave my father was born— fatherless before he saw the light—and soon became motherless, for Madame O'Farrel survived her husband scarcely a year. The destitute condition of the orphan at length moved the compassion of some of his relatives of the Thurot family, who adopted him and brought him up under ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... opinions, proud and reticent, good as gold, but finding it hard to forgive the only son who left home and married against the wishes of his parents. When baby Marian's mother died her father had written home, asking that his motherless baby might be taken in and reared in the American land which he still loved. So one day Marian arrived in charge of a plain German couple, but her father had not seen her since and he still lived in far off Berlin. Once a year he wrote to ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... a kind of acid test that generally brings out the best—and worst—of travellers. There was something protective in Norah's nature that responded instantly to the lonely position of the girl who was going across the world to a strange country. Both were motherless, but in Norah's case the blank was softened by a father who had striven throughout his children's lives to be father and mother alike to them, while Cecilia had only the bitter memory of the man who had shirked his duty until he had become ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... she would be likely to occupy, I considered that my preparations were complete. Sound doctrine in the servants who waited on her; sound doctrine in the minister who preached to her; sound doctrine in the books that lay on her table—such was the treble welcome which my zeal had prepared for the motherless girl! A heavenly composure filled my mind, on that Saturday afternoon, as I sat at the window waiting the arrival of my relatives. The giddy throng passed and repassed before my eyes. Alas! how many of them felt my exquisite sense of duty done? An awful question. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... uncomprising mane of gray hair; probably they would have cast him for a feuding mountaineer, deadly with his rifle, or perhaps as an inventor whose device was stolen on his death-bed by his wicked Wall Street partner, thus leaving his motherless daughter at the mercy of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... frequently have been forced to drop his tools and, since his children were young and motherless, attend to this bothersome duty. For fathers played a more intimate part in the homes of that generation than they do now. At any rate he was certainly familiar with the problems that entered into the cooking of the family dinner—just ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... have where to lay her stately head—and she was La Favorita of Monterey, the proudest beauty in California! Her father had gambled away his last acre, his horse, his saddle, the serape off his back; then sent his motherless girl to his brother, and buried himself in Mexico. Don Antonio took the child to his heart, and sent for a widowed cousin to be her duena. He bought her beautiful garments from the ships that touched the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... midst, he elevated his ecclesiastical nose, and seemed to sniff the brimstone of Satan. When he learned that some of the dissenting members of his congregation had been guilty of the heinous sin of speaking kind words to the motherless child of a player, he shook his wise head knowingly and declared, "Truly Satan is kind to his own." He made the player a subject for his next Lord's day sermon, in which he sought to pervert the scriptures to suit ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... the seigneur of Cotenoir, which had developed from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, Captain Paget had discoursed with much eloquence upon the subject of his motherless daughter; and M. Lenoble, having daughters of his own, also motherless, lent him the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... days, a little more encouragement, and he would most certainly have offered her his name and the half of his worldly goods in return for her help in quelling the riotous behaviour of his motherless brood. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... up somehow. Though motherless and fatherless they were not quite friendless, and in the struggle for existence they held their ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... Socialist State of the future, people could therefore get rid of new-born babes far more easily than they now can of puppies and kittens. The institution round the corner would be the general foster-mother. Hordes of fatherless and motherless children would throng the State nurseries. The words "father" and "mother" would lose their meaning. However, we are told that "Socialism would begin by making sure that there should not be a single untaught, unloved, hungry child in the kingdom."[946] Love would evidently ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... matter who owes me, or where I am in debt. There are none to care for a girl who is fatherless and motherless, and whose nearest kin are the offcasts of all honest people. No, no; go, lady, and Heaven for ever bless you! I am better here, in this desert, where there are none ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... take them along, poor motherless baby?" asked the doctor when he saw the dolls lying as she had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... the Flemish city had been few and far apart, fondly though he loved his motherless girl. He had been a wanderer for the most part during those years, tossed upon troubled seas, fighting with Conde against Mazarin and Anne of Austria, and reconciled with the Court later, when peace was made, and his friends the Princes were forgiven; an exile from France of his own free will when ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... her hand in his while he made his adieux. He had determined, before Morris fired the bomb which shattered his hopes, to ask if he might see her again, and where, and if there could be found no place fitting and proper, she being motherless and Miss Felicia but a chaperon, to write her a note inviting her to walk up through the Park with him, and so on into the open where she really belonged. All this was given up now. The best thing for him was to take his leave as quietly as possible, without committing her to anything—anything ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the narrow window and fell right upon the motherless little group, as with a stifled exclamation he went forward and, stooping, lifted Faith ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... girl, interrupting him, though nearly choked by her own emotions; "do you believe all you hear about a poor, motherless girl? Is the foul tongue of Hurry Harry to blast ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... as preaches mair charity in a day ner ye'r ready to stand by in a twelvemonth. Come, Reuben, whip up yer dobbin. Let's away to my own house. I'd hev to be as poor as a kirk louse afore I'd turn my back on a motherless lad as is nigh ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... heavy silks of gleaming blue—was laid on a bamboo pyre. Dhoop Ki Dhil tenderly sprinkled flower-petals and incense-oils over all, and lighted the four corners for the motherless one, herself. Cadman and Skag watched the clean flames, till only silver ashes were on the ground. And all the while the people sang their great soft lullaby, without tears or any sign ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... I did not mean to say that. He has been most generous to me—kinder than I deserve. But I have borne much, and still must bear. The fatherless and motherless is in the world alone. He ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... all the letters evidences that little Rosanna was undergoing some slight changes in her way of thinking and acting. And Mrs. Horton did not care to have Rosanna change in the least. She was perfectly satisfied the way she was. It had not occurred to Mrs. Horton to wonder if poor little motherless Rosanna was satisfied with her ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... see my sister so I made up my mind to run off. One of old Master's motherless nephews lived with him and I got him to go with me one night to the potato bank and I got me a lap full of potatoes to eat so I wouldn't starve like old Master said I would. Dis white boy went nearly ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... girl, who stands by the side of an old woman, at the head of her companions in the court-yard, is immured in one of these subterranean jails. Sava was always about the Count, who, it was said, had brought him from some distant land, with his little motherless child. Sava placed her under the care of an old man and woman, who had the charge of the bees in a forest near the palace, where he came occasionally to visit her. But once, six long months passed, and he did not come! In vain Anielka wept, in vain ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... Yonowsky twins. It seemed to forbode restraint and, during their six tempestuous years, they had followed their own stubborn ways and had accepted neither advice nor rebuke from any man. The evening of the day which had seen their birth had left Leah motherless, and her father broken of heart and of ambition. Since then Mr. Yonowsky had grown daily more silent and morose, and Leah had been less and less able to cope with "them ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... can man look upon it. The travail of nature has been transformed into the pangs of the human mother; and the poet dwells much on the pathetic incident of death in childbirth, making [25] Dionysus, as Callimachus calls him, a seven months' child, cast out among its enemies, motherless. And as a consequence of this human interest, the legend attaches itself, as in an actual history, to definite sacred objects and places, the venerable relic of the wooden image which fell into the chamber of Semele with the lightning-flash, and which the piety of a later age covered ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of Edward had died when he was quite young, and he, their only child, had been left to the care and protection of dame Brandon; and well had she cared for him, and been as a mother to the motherless. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... could not understand how he could laugh and talk as if nothing had happened. She herself was more like her mother in temperament—that is, like the New-Englander who goes through life with the grief of a loss grown to his heart. Nothing could exceed Harry Edgham's tenderness to his motherless little girl. He was always contriving something for her pleasure and comfort; but Maria, when her father laughed, regarded him with ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Carmen's Senora de Guadalupe was only a negra! Then, for the first time, Carmen spoke so crossly to the child as to frighten her. But the pious woman's heart smote her the next moment for that first harsh word;—and she caressed the motherless one, consoled her, cheered her, and at last explained to her—I know not how—something very wonderful about the little figurine, something that made Chita's eyes big with awe. Thereafter she always regarded the Virgin of Wax as an object mysterious ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... was up at the mine attending to some last arrangements so that I could leave. I had made up my mind to take Winslow—that's what we'd named the little boy—out to Shanghai, for Tung-sha was no place for a motherless youngster. In broad daylight I heard the natives wailing and yelling, and then the mine workers began to cry out that Red Knife had swooped down from the hills. The white men who were with me pulled out their guns and we ran down to the bungalows. ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... this day oppose himself to two of his own countrymen to save a defenceless woman from injury. That woman was my daughter—some of you know her well—ah, Thompson! you may well hang your head—would you slay the deliverer of her whose good nursing saved the life of your motherless child?—Wilson, it was but last week that she sat beside your dying mother, and soothed and comforted her—but for this good and brave man she would now have been ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... idea of the kindergarten arose from his own unhappy childhood. He wished to make the first five years of life, which to him had been a chain of sorrows, happy and fruitful to children—especially to those who, like him, were motherless. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unconsciously attaching blame to the unoffending child and harboring an undefined resentment which may adversely affect both lives. The doctor can help the bereaved father to cling to his dream of family life, can assist him in building a happy home for his motherless child or children, or can advise him on problems which may arise out of finding ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... part of the day in the gymnasium, and took her midday meal with two other girls and their common chaperone—for it was still the custom to have a chaperone in the case of motherless girls of the more prosperous classes. The chaperone had a visitor that day, a man in green and yellow, with a white face and vivid eyes, who talked amazingly. Among other things, he fell to praising a new historical romance that one of the great popular story-tellers of the day had ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... and the attending physician had pronounced the patient much better; still, when Salome stooped to kiss her sister, the matron held her back, assuring her that perfect quiet was essential for her recovery. Kneeling there beside the motherless girl, Salome noted the changes that time and suffering had wrought on the delicate features; and, as she listened to the quick, irregular breathing, the fountain of tenderness was suddenly unsealed in her own nature, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... muttered and tossed on his narrow bed. The watcher's thoughts fled to the little messenger galloping over the long miles of lonely country—his motherless girl, whom he had sent on a mission that might so easily spell disaster. Horrible thoughts came into the father's mind. He pictured Bobs putting his hoof into a hidden crab-hole—falling—Norah lying white and motionless, perhaps far from the track. That was not the only danger. Bad characters ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... to stay. They did not care for her in the least as "Currer Bell," but had known and loved her for years as Charlotte Bronte. To them her invalid weakness was only a fresh claim upon their tender regard, from the solitary woman, whom they had first known as a little, motherless school-girl. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... calamities of the stream, mayest thou never see a face of fear, may the timid fish come to thee, and mayest thou obtain fine, fat waterfowl. O thou who art the father of the orphan, the husband of the widow, the brother of the woman who hath been put away by her husband, and the clother of the motherless, grant that I may place thy name in this land in connection with all good law. Guide in whom there is no avarice, great man in whom there is no meanness, who destroyest falsehood and makest what is true to ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... and lying charge, lord king," she said, "from whomsoever it may come. Naught have I said but praise of you and your courtesy to us motherless folk. 'T is a false and lying charge; and I am ready to stand test of its proving, come ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... told me in a flood of tears Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again. And this," said Dick kindly, "has made me pity all children ever since; and caused me to love thee, my poor fatherless, motherless lad. And, if ever thou wantest a friend, thou shalt have one ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... old enough to be your mother, and I speak after all to a motherless young girl who happens to have genius with, perhaps, some of the disadvantages of genius, when I urge you so to arrange your personal life that this body of quite respectable adverse opinion shall not find in it a handle ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... whole male arsenal. That is love, and only with this weapon is feminine education successfully carried forward." Tolstoy, in fact, betrayed a touch of orientalism in his attitude towards women. In part no doubt as a result of his motherless youth, in part to the fact that his idealism was never stimulated by any one woman as it was by individual men, his views retained this colouring on sex questions while they became widened and modified in almost every other field of human philosophy. ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... Countess of Beaumanoir, and mistress of fiefs and manors, rights of chase and warren, mills and hospices, the like of which were not in Picardy, was happy in all things but her family. Her one son had fallen in his youth in an obscure fray in Guienne, leaving two motherless boys who, after her husband's death, were the chief business of life to the Countess Catherine. The elder, Aimery, grew to manhood after the fashion of the men of her own house, a somewhat heavy country gentleman, much set upon rustic sports, slow at learning, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... much about you, Ralston, but your record is clean since you came here—despite some attempts to blacken it. I like your face—and if you can make my motherless girl happy when I'm gone, you'll have an old ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... bent over it. He looked with tender sympathy at the little marble image which yesterday was a poor, ragged peasant, to-day was a bright and winged angel. His thoughts flew back to the imperial palace, where his little motherless daughter was fading away from earth, and the father prayed for his only child. He took from the passive hands a rose, and softly as he came, he left the solitary cottage, wherein an angel ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... dearest of women; but her robust, matter-of-fact Scotch common sense could not always understand a temperament like my laddie's. What was lacking in her you have supplied. Between you, I think Paul's training in these two past years has been as nearly ideal as a motherless ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as bad circumstances as ever any poor Christians were ever in; for the cries of the widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless children are enough to pierce the hardest of hearts. Likewise it is a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their nakedness or keep them warm, but all they had consumed to ashes. These deplorable circumstances ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... unknown. The boy was coming South for the long vacation, and the affairs of Chiawassee Coal and Iron—already reaching out subterraneously toward the future receivership—would call the first vice-president North for the better portion of July. Would Mrs. Martha take pity on a motherless lad, whose health was none of the best, and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... however, it was the living bereaved father who turned in the bewilderment of his grief to the "dear patient heart" of his sister, to find a second mother for his two motherless boys. To Martin Field, Mary was a guardian daughter, to Charles K. and Roswell M. 1st, she was a loyal and mediating sister, and to Eugene and Roswell M. 2d, she was a loving aunt, as her daughter Mary was an indulgent mother and unfailing ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... through the many-paned open window into the dining-room. Three little girls and a boy were standing there, so close to the sill that their breath had touched Peggy's neck. They were Colonel Menard's motherless children. A black maid was with them, holding the youngest by the hand. They were whispering in French under cover of the music. French was the second mother tongue of every Kaskaskia girl, and Peggy heard what they said by merely taking ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Schoolmaster," said Mr. Keene. "Jim's a good boy; and Madge is good, Mr. Schoolmaster; and poor starved and stunted motherless Little Stumps, he is good as gold, Mr. Schoolmaster. And I want to be a mother to 'em—I want to be father and mother to 'em all, Mr. Schoolmaster. And I'll follow your advice. I'll put 'em all to work a-huntin' ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... Maisie had lived with their aunt, Miss Katharine Chester, since they had been babies. They had arrived one autumn day at Fieldside, all the way from India, two little motherless, white-faced things under the care of strangers, and from that time till now, when Dennis was a square-shouldered boy of ten, and Maisie a sunburnt little girl of eight, Aunt Katharine had been everything to them. Certainly father was in India, and would come home some day, and meanwhile ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... speculator and extortioner.—What is independence compared with you my wife? What have I gained by severing the ties of love and leaving a happy home, to struggle for the liberty of my country? A dead child—a dying wife—a child who will now be motherless; while I will be a wretched heart-broken man. Better, far better, had I resisted the calls of my country, and remained with you, than to return and find my happiness gone, and my family beggared, and tossing on ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... intentions uncontrollably effervescent. Had she told her husband all might have been stopped right there, but, as the demon of ill luck would have it, he had gone to a distant convention. So she sallied forth, brimming with eagerness to snatch this lovely brand from the burning, to turn this fair, motherless, guideless, possibly guileless girl to the contemplation of her dangers, to the knowledge of her peril, to banish Willett from the dove-cote,—wily hawk that he was,—and settle forthwith the fate of ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin, Pushed from her faintly want ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... and raucous voice was saying in the drawing-room, 'I reckoned I'd call and tell ye myself, Mister Carter, what I thought on it. My gell, a motherless gell, but brought up respectable; sixth standard at Whalley Range Board School; and her aunt a strict God-fearing woman! And here your son comes along and gets hold of the girl while her aunt's at the special service for Wakes folks in Bethesda Chapel, and runs off with her in my dogcart ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... These young people were motherless; the daughter reigned as mistress of her father's house, acknowledging no control save his, and that was of the mildest kind. Captain Tillotson was the most indulgent of parents; his wife had died while Clarissa was still too young to realize her ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the mark ever since, as you see,' said Steerforth; 'and she'll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one—though I can hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere. She was the motherless child of a sort of cousin of my father's. He died one day. My mother, who was then a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has a couple of thousand pounds of her own, and saves the interest of it every year, to add to the principal. There's the history ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... murmured Minty, in a child's voice—the grown-up woman, under that magic touch, having lapsed again into her father's motherless ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... tall mill woman, whose husband had gone down in the crash at the saddlery, came and took Nell's hand in hers and laid a strong arm around her shoulders, while Harriet went over and took from the arms of the young father the little motherless mite who had been rescued from the pillow floating on the river. Billy shook hands with a young tanner in tight but wholly new clothes, to whom Luella May Spain introduced him as ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the lamp and brought it close to Paula. "No, you hardly have any similiarity in your face, but your voice is like hers. Now, let me hug you once more, my treasure." And Teresa pressed to her heart the motherless child. ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... watching her with a gaze half uneasy and wholly tender. She was the delight of his old age, the center of all his affections, this motherless child of his dead brother. His cheek twitched painfully as he thought of the huge amount of his losings to Lablache. He shivered perceptibly as he rose from his seat and went over ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... and repeated lonely 'games', which had lost their savour, and were kept going by sheer inertness. Not unhappy, not fretful, but long,—long, long. It seems to me, as I look back to the life in the motherless Islington house, as I resumed it in that slow eighth year of my life, that time had ceased to move. There was a whole age between one tick of the eight-day clock in the hall, and the next tick. When the milkman went his rounds in our grey street, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... not to hear her voice, not to gaze upon her form, but to weep over her grave, and with his motherless child to sit in sorrow on the spot where she breathed her last. Such was the violence of her fever that she said but little, and left her husband without many of those tokens of kindness which surviving friends esteem of so ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... enough for you to know that Joy has great excuse for her faults. Even if they were twice as great as they are, one wouldn't think much about them now; the poor child is in great trouble, lonely and frightened and motherless. Think, if God took away ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of Fifth Avenue, millionaire, engaged the services of Alexander Y. Hedge, plenipotentiary representative of an Efficiency Company, to introduce economic reforms into his motherless household during his temporary absence, we regarded it as a most reasonable experiment. And for a time it made excellent fun. But after a while it began to wear thin for lack of fresh stimulus, and by the end of the Second Act there was a general ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Durham do you dwell?" She checked herself in her distress, And said, "My name is Alice Fell; I'm fatherless and motherless. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... whether any girl who was ever born into the world could boast a stranger or a happier upbringing than Miriam. She was, it is true, motherless, but by way of compensation Fate endowed her with several hundred fathers, each of whom loved her as the apple of his eye. She did not call them "Father" indeed, a term which under the circumstances they thought incorrect. To her, one and all, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... and rough on his friends; And he didn't have many, I'll let you know; He hated a dog and disgusted a cat, But he'd run off his legs for a motherless brat, And I ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... pleasant dinner-parties, Lord Glenmore, turning to Mrs. Rivers, said: "I know from happy experience that you and your good husband are always ready to lend a helping hand when one is in need. Now Laura and I want a little help. We have had a rather embarrassing arrival at the Castle,—the motherless little son and daughter of my brother, Colonel Montford. They were sent over from India, at our suggestion, but we hardly know what to do with them. They are shy and homesick, and thus far have had little to say ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... July 29, 1736, he preached for the last time to his people and baptized a little Eskimo to whom they gave his name, Hans. The following week he sailed for home, carrying, as all his earthly wealth, his beloved dead and his motherless children. ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis |
