"Motherless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made no comment. Mathilde went to the door, but paused there. Without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. They had grown from childhood together—motherless—with a father whom neither understood. Together they had faced the difficulties of life; the hundred petty difficulties attending a woman's life in a strange land, among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... "Motherless, friendless, lone, alone forever, undone, undone!" she murmured. Her head sank upon the shoulder of her fearful counsellor, unconscious of its resting-place, and she burst into tears,—tears which perhaps saved her reason ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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, and averse ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... tender mood came over him. "Tubby," he said in a weary voice, "you've got to be a good girl ... What do you suppose it costs me to see to it that you are? To bring up a motherless child is no easy job for an old sinner. Go, child, brew me a grog, a fine one ... an infernally fine one ... that'll ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... incredible luxuries from the Charity doctor (of which all could taste), but it brought in its train the assiduous attendance of Mrs. Simons. To see the kindly brown face bending over it with smiling eyes of jet, to feel the soft, cool hand pressed to its forehead, was worth a fever to a motherless infant. Mrs. Simons was a busy woman and a poor withal, and the Ansells were a reticent pack, not given to expressing either their love or their hunger to outsiders; so altogether the children did not see so much of Mrs. Simons ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... suicide!" sniffed Hephzy when she read me the letter. "He thinks too much of his miserable self ever to hurt it. But, oh dear! I wish Pa had told me of this letter instead of hidin' it away. I might have sent somethin', not to him, but to poor, motherless ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was not a bad woman. She spent much in feeding those who perhaps were not hungry; but she fed the hungry also: she indulged a good deal in silk brocades; but she bought ginghams as well, and calicos for poor women, and flannel petticoats for motherless girls. She did go to sleep sometimes in church, and would sit at a whist-table till two o'clock of a Sunday morning; but having been selected from a large family by an uncle as his heir, she had divided her good things with brothers and sisters, and nephews and nieces. And so there were some hearts ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the tumult of her great-grandfather's descent, and was pounding against the door of the breakfast-room in her haste to come at him. The Doctor opened it, and there she stood, a rather pale and large- eyed little thing, quaint in her aspect, as might well be the case with a motherless child, dwelling in an uncheerful house, with no other playmates than a decrepit old man and a kitten, and no better atmosphere within- doors than the odor of decayed apothecary's stuff, nor gayer neighborhood than that of the adjacent burial-ground, where all her relatives, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... skilfully for this lovely lady a dozen years ago, when she was spending a gay season in his own town; and how the gentle old seamstress, with her simple faith and tender sympathy, her wise warnings to the gay, motherless girl, had won a place in ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... it that Mr. Rayner was not among the number of those who sighed for Kate Travers's guarded smiles. Her earlier victims were kept a-dangling until Rayner, too, succumbed, and then were sent adrift. She meant that no penniless subaltern should carry off her "baby sister,"—they had long been motherless,—and a season at the sea-shore had done her work well. Steven Van Antwerp, with genuine distress and loneliness, went back to his duties in Wall Street after seeing them safely on their way to the West. "Guard her well for me," he whispered to Mrs. Rayner. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what they called supports to their brother's motherless children. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... 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 to any one but their dusky old Ayah, their Indian nurse. Now, children can ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... painful objections. The horse reached around and bit him sharply in the neck. It hurt, hurt awfully, but he persisted, only to receive another sharp bite, this time more savage. Sounding a baby whimper of despair, he ran back to the door and out into the motherless corral. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... I have not deserved this at your hands," he sobbed. "I turned from you when you came to my house, a little, desolate motherless one, ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... From Sunbury the motherless boy was sent with his elder brother to Westminster, in 1803, and the same year the Duke married Lady Georgiana Gordon, a daughter of the fourth Duke of Gordon, and her kindness to her stepchildren was marked and constant. Westminster ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Jim, who had been reading a sea novel in a corner of the living room, "you shouldn't say that about those two poor, motherless Gilman boys, unless you've got certain proof. Jest because their father ain't none too honest isn't any reason for calling them thieves. It's more likely it's been the robins took your cherries. They're turrible thick ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... charm of the people and the natural beauty of the place there came a period of sorrowing and grief. The motherless daughter of an official of the Lord of the Manor, a beautiful girl who was the idol of her family and loved by everybody, fell a victim to the villainy of her father's assistant to whom she was engaged to be married; ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Miss Ludington lived had become, through habit, so endeared to her that when, a few years after she had been settled in her ghostly village, a cousin died in poverty, bequeathing to her with his last breath a motherless infant boy, it was with great reluctance that she accepted the charge. She would have willingly assumed the support of the child, but if it had been possible would have greatly preferred providing for him elsewhere to bringing him home with her. This, however, was ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... went to bed, about half-past nine it was this night, and I was lying quietly in bed, looking up to the ceiling; no light on account of the mosquitoes, and Maud, the little girl I was caring for, a romping dear of seven or eight, a motherless child, had been tossing about restless like, and her arm was flung over me. All at once I saw a lady standing by the side of the bed in her night dress and looking earnestly at the child beyond me. She then came nearer, took Maud's arm off me, and gently ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... passion is taking him too far, that I see. His own folly, I fear, will break through the veil I have kept between the world and our home. However, I have held that curtain steady for twenty-three years, and have wept behind it —motherless, I, without a friend to trust, with no help but in religion—I have for twenty-three years secured ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... be a responsible one," continued the lady, scrutinising Anna's face, and smiling again at what she saw there. "Taking charge of a motherless girl always is. And the circumstances in this case ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... sorely perplexed and pushed away his half-eaten supper. He knew himself what it was to be friendless and lonely, and his heart softened toward this worse than motherless child. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... wasted pretty nigh to a shadder; and we shall p'rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her next Michaelmas, and shall die o' broken hearts among strange folks, and leave the children fatherless and motherless." ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the heart of Australia under the impression that I was now really motherless, and under that impression I have lived ever since. I cannot now detail to you all my wanderings and adventures. I will only say that I became deeply interested in the Australian gold mines, bought up ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... 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 ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... 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 ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... 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, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... "My mother was a motherless girl. My daddy said he looked at her struggling along. All the other girls were trying to have a good time. But she would be settin' down trying to make a quilt or something else useful, and he said to a friend ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence, flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmaeon, who made his mother pay with her life for the ornament she received to betray his father; and Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple; and the head of Cyrus, thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... softly and 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 ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... her feet, and said to herself, "Oh, what a selfish soul I am to be spending all my strength this way! I shan't be fit for any thing to-morrow if I go on so." Then she patted the lamb on its head, and said with a comforting sense of comradeship in the little creature's presence, "Good-night, little motherless one! Sleep warm," and then she went to ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... indicate that 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
... Lord, to find in our new life the peace and the virtue that was not in the old and bless and guard my motherless little Marjorie, O God, and save her from the fate that overwhelmed her mother for her father's fault. I am leaving her asleep here in Thy charge, O God. When she wakes in the morning let Thy angels comfort her and dry her tears. Let me not hear her crying for ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... in her belief that some day the boy would come back—she and one other whose faith in his last boyish promise, phrased in bitterness, also endured. For during the next five years there was not a summer which brought Allison into the hills but what the first question of his daughter Barbara, motherless now herself, was ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... and Ambrose's plans were efficiently carried on, so that all went well till Alice's marriage; and, a year or two later on, Dorothy's death, in giving birth to her little girl, no woman was left at the farm but a rough though kind-hearted old convict, who did her best for the motherless child. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will send the eagle's talons, Send to thee the beaks of vultures, To devour thine evil body, Hurl thy skeleton to Hisi. Much more quickly cruel Lempo Left my vitals when commanded, When I called the aid of Ukko, Called the help of my Creator. Flee, thou motherless offendant, Flee, thou fiend of Sariola, Flee, thou hound without a master, Ere the morning sun arises, Ere the Moon withdraws to slumber!" Wainamoinen, ancient hero, Speaks at last to old Wipunen: "Satisfied am I to linger In these old and spacious caverns, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... foolish. It would not be kind to the children, Katherine (as you wish me to call you). In the course of a year or two you will marry, and then the creatures who had learned to love you and look on you as a mother would be again motherless. Do not take them ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... Nan pondered. Her own motherless life had given her a very tender sympathy for those whose "folks" were dead. For the first time she felt sorry for Miss Blake. She was uneasy and distressed. It made her shift about uncomfortably in ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... tenderness to her voice, as she went from one shunned sick-room to another like a living sunbeam, bringing the freshness of a May morning with her, and seeming always to come solely for her own pure pleasure. And when poor motherless Janet Mudge was struck down too with the dreaded disease, and had no one but servants to care for her, her own aunt, who lived in Joppa, being afraid to so much as go to the house to ask after her, it seemed perfectly natural to everybody that Phebe Lane, who had no cares at home and no one ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... only a few days after Marion had been buried and I 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. We were too late, ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... peasant 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 ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... knees; I cry—but hush, p'tit Jacques! I cry now only in ze story, only—to—to show thee how it would be! I say, 'It is me, Marie, Mere Jeanne! I come to show thee my little son, to take thy blessing. And my little friend, too!'" She turned to pat Petie's head; she would not let the motherless boy feel left out, even from a world in which he had ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... a lady of noble birth named Princess Terute. Very different in character, alas! to the good and wise Princess Murasaki, this woman had a cruel, bad heart. She did not love her step-daughter at all, and was often very unkind to the little motherless ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... march, "too sad to talk, too dumb to pray." But ten weeks after, our Willie, the baby, was buried in the sands of the Burnt River mountains. Reaching Oregon in the fall with our broken household, consisting of my father and eight motherless children, I engaged in school-teaching till the following August, when I allowed the name of "Scott" to become "Duniway." Then for twenty years I devoted myself, soul and body, to the cares, toils, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... slumbers beneath the heavy sod in the village grave-yard; I am standing upon the very brink of eternity; I have no relatives living on this side of the Atlantic, and when I am gone, what is to become of my poor friendless, motherless child? I know there is One above who has promised to take care of the orphan, but still, it would give me a pleasure to know, that when my mouldering body reposes in 'that bourne whence no traveler returns,' that the light of a pleasant home would shed its radiance on her girlish years. I fear ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... enemy of that sacred flag; but, as has been said, that was before it was pointed out to him that this was the Honorable M. C. from the Pelican State, now prominent as a member of the House Committee on Military Affairs. Motherless and sister-less was the wounded boy, yet gentle and almost caressing hands had blessed his pillow and helped to drive fever and delirium to the winds. It was twelve days after they brought him back to Frayne before the father could hope to reach him, coming post haste, too; but ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... she said, "you ARE 'big, and splendid, and fine,' or you never would be going to Chicago after this little motherless child. You haven't said a word, but I know from the joy of you and Robert during the past months that Mrs. Southey isn't troubling you any more; and I'm sure enough to put it into words that when you get ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... opposition, and even Mrs. Peyton felt herself impelled to come forward with an outstretched hand scarcely less frank than her husband's. Then Clarence lifted his eyes. He saw before him the woman to whom his childish heart had gone out with the inscrutable longing and adoration of a motherless, homeless, companionless boy; the woman who had absorbed the love of his playmate without sharing it with him; who had showered her protecting and maternal caresses on Susy, a waif like himself, yet had not ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the carriage roll away): Poor girl! Poor, happy, unconscious, motherless child! If only I had the power to stay the blow! ... Who can it ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... so quiet and deep in the tenderness of this poor motherless child that it did not affect one superficially, like a child's loud momentary affection, in which we know that the first toy will replace us. I kissed my little cousin's pale face and said, "And I too, Blanche, have my crystal; and when I consult it, I shall be ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... If we see any of our brethren sick, we claim it to be the will of God. If we see the father of a family taken away, we bow our heads and say God's will be done. If we see a family of children left motherless, again we bow our heads and say God's will be done. If we see a beautiful infant snatched by death from the breast of it's heart-broken mother, we meekly bow again, and, with heart full of sorrow, say, it's the will of God. I tell you it is not the will of God, the ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... into greater prominence before the mind and heart of Mr. Muller: it was the thought of making some permanent provision for fatherless and motherless children. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... and Harald, and embraced Susanna. She sank more and more together. She seized the hands of her mistress and of Harald, and said with great difficulty, earnestly praying—"My little Hulda! The fatherless ... motherless ... think of her!" ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... he could not leave his little ones motherless when they were so young, and so he determined to marry again, and this time he was not so fortunate, for he chose a rather plain, cross woman, many years older than himself, who was a widow. He thought perhaps ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... I am a man with five poor motherless children. My wife died of falling down a flight of steps ten years agone—praise the Lord for His mercies. For He is ever mindful of us, the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... always a silver lining to the cloud that hovers over the small boy, even when the cane is descending upon him. Trifles please the poor little fellow and help him to forget the gloom which surrounds him. Coventry Patmore, in that most touching poem, "The Toys," tells of a father who struck his motherless son, and sent him weeping to bed, and, being tardily remorseful, the father looked at the sleeping boy, whose undried tears were still on his cheek, and found that before going to sleep the stricken lad had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... why Elizabeth Ann did not go back and cry and sob and say she couldn't and she wouldn't and she couldn't, as she would certainly have done at Aunt Harriet's. You remember that I could not even tell you why it was that, as the little fatherless and motherless girl lay in bed looking at Aunt Abigail's old face, she should feel so comforted and protected that she must needs break out crying. No, all I can say is that it was because Aunt Abigail was Aunt Abigail. ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... sister, seldom leaving her for any other playmate. He remembered his dying mother's charge. She had called both children to her bed side, before her death, and placing Fanny's hand in Frank's, had said, "My son, in a few hours you and Fanny will be motherless; promise me that you will try to fill my place; that you will cherish and love your sister, with all the care and tenderness of which you are capable; and Fanny, my little darling, you must remember mamma, and try never to be peevish and fretful, so that Frank will love ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... in that of her husband, the other upon the head 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 ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... millions required to complete the projects already under way. This was the signal. From all the stock-market sub-cellars and rat-holes of State, Broad, and Wall streets crept those wriggling, slimy snakes of bastard rumors which, seemingly fatherless and motherless, have in reality multi-parents who beget them with a deviltry of intention: "George Westinghouse had mismanaged his companies"; "George Westinghouse, because of gross extravagance, had spread himself and his companies until they were involved beyond extrication ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... was deeply distressed, she wished Logan at the Indies, if only he would first settle Flemington on herself. 'If it be God's will, I desire never to have a child to him,' she said. 'I have a guess what this mystery means, woe's me for his motherless children,' that is, children of former marriages. Later, Lady Restalrig had a daughter, Anna, ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... not easily have found two people who suited each other better, or who lived on terms of more intimate friendship, than the Pastor and his eighteen-year-old daughter. She had been motherless from childhood; but there was so much that was womanly in her gentle, even-tempered father, that the young girl, who remembered her mother only as a pale face that smiled on her, felt the loss rather as a peaceful sorrow than as ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... picture of the five grave men—Holbein, his two executors, the one a goldsmith, the other an armourer, and his two witnesses, a "merchaunte" and a "paynter"—hurrying along the plague-infected streets to get this document legalised as some protection for two motherless babies, in the event of their father's death. No man knew whose turn would come within ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... darlings! they are bringing back the life in her heart already. There is actually a little colour in her cheek—the dawn, I trust, of the eternal life. That is Miss St. John's way. As often as she gets hold of a poor hopeless woman, she gives her a motherless child. It is wonderful what the childless woman and motherless child ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... when the tales had at last kindled to flame the parent fire of that wildness in her which slept unsuspected in the breast of the blacksmith, then old as the way of life runs, and he had closed his cabin and his forge, given his two motherless girls to the wife of Jacques Baptiste, joined a party going into the wilderness, and gone ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... breaking. I wept, and I have not done that before since my mother died," and now I saw that there was the moisture of tears about her eyes. It was near to making me cry myself when I thought of all that poor child had been through. Motherless and unprotected; hunted across a savage, primeval world by that hideous brute of a man; exposed to the attacks of the countless fearsome denizens of its mountains, its plains, and its jungles—it was a miracle that ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I really meant to stay on, she began to feel rather ashamed of herself. 'Mother,' said I, 'you are not going to get rid of me, even if you abuse me! And so long as I stay, Panchu stays also. For you see, do you not, that I cannot stand by and see his motherless little ones sent out ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... sacred privacy of her own household, surrounded by faithful servants, is struck down by the dagger of the assassin. Her youth, her beauty, the sanctity of slumber, all were powerless to shield her. Full of life, and hope, and happiness, she is foully and hideously murdered—her babe left motherless, her young husband bereaved and desolate. If anything were needed to make the dreadful tragedy yet more dreadful, it is, that Sir Victor Catheron lies, as, we write, hovering between life and death. The blow, which struck her down, has stricken him too—has laid him upon what may be his death-bed. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... motherless thing!" she cried when she had assured herself of the girl's identity, and with this she enfolded her. "I'd like to know what they've been doing to my pet!" ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... woman yearned after an occupant for the old wooden cradle, and treasured up the bits of baby things that had belonged to Tom and Bill, and nursed up any young thing that came to hand and wanted care, bringing up a motherless blind kitten with assiduous care and patience, as if the supply of that commodity was not always largely in excess of the demand, and lavishing more care on a sick lamb or a superfluous young pig than most of the neighbours' ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... the grave of his deceased companion, he directed all his thoughts to the preservation of the little one she had left him; and when he quitted the spot his anxiety might be directed to the child, in the idea that he might one day see his Ba-rang-aroo revive in his little motherless Dil-boong. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... It is growing dark over my dwelling; God is descending upon us in a cloud. 'Behold, he taketh away, who can hinder him? Who will say unto him, what doest thou.' O, you never lost a wife, my dear sir, nor looked on a motherless family, as I begin to do. God help me, for I ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... said the father. "To think of her worse than motherless! That little bit of a helpless thing! And it's my fault that she's here ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... to Kendrick as he listened with interest to Old Nat's homily upon the caprices of the eternal feminine—that this high-spirited motherless girl and her father were very close to each other and, paradoxically, that he knew nothing of her present masquerade as a stenographer in Ferguson's office. For masquerade it evidently was, and Kendrick's mind raced along new channels of speculation ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... at the hotel he found Rupert Filgee standing moodily by the window, while his brother Johnny, overcome by a repletion of excitement and collation, was asleep on the single arm-chair. Their presence was not unusual, as Mr. Ford, touched by the loneliness of these motherless boys, had often invited them to come to his rooms to look over his books and ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... A.D.T. Whitney's novel, Hitherto, a sensitive, imaginative, morbid, motherless girl who is "all the time holding up her soul ... with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 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 ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 covert wonder ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... different social station. In any event the baby was given the father's name, and every care and attention was paid the tiny voyager. This father was as foolish as most fond mothers, for he dreamed out a great career for the motherless one, and made ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Could modesty itself be indignant with true service? How should the proudest woman, conscious of my every action, cherish against me the least sense of disgracing wrong? How reverently had I not touched her! As a father his motherless child, I had borne and tended her! Had all my labour, all my despairing hope gone to redeem only ingratitude? "No," I answered myself; "beauty must have a heart! However profoundly hidden, it must be there! The deeper buried, the stronger and truer will it wake at last in its beautiful ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... forgotten all about it. The pleasantest woman in Savannah, young or old, is to be your compagnon de voyage, Miss Harz, and the most determined widower on record her escort; a perfect John Rogers of a man, with nine little motherless children, her brother Raguet ('Rag,' as we called him at school, on account of his prim stiffness, so that 'limber as a rag' seemed a most preposterous saying in his vicinity). He is handsome, however, and intelligent, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... "You pore, motherless, unprotected boy," she sobbed. "I can't bear it a bit longer. Me 'n' Luke wus the cause o' yore comin' to this oncivilized place anyway, an' you've been treated wuss 'an a dog. Ef Luke had one speck o' manhood left in ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... with her the children before the mother's death, continued her care till they returned to the father on the 17th. Mrs. Fenwick, who had been in constant attendance on Mary, then took care of them for a time. Indeed, Mary's fame and character brought forward many willing to care for the motherless infant, whose life was only saved from a dangerous illness by this loving zeal. Among others Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson appeared with offers of help, and as early as September 18 we find that Godwin had requested Mr. Nicholson to give an opinion as to the infant's physiognomy, with ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... Motherless, she was utterly desolate. It would be long, long before she could find any one to fill her mother's place, if she ever did. For the present she was satisfied to stay with Miss Payne, but she did not think she could ever love ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... handful of reignited cinders (which the night before might have warmed some lord), cinders raked up from the streets, he would drive away dolor, by talking with his one only surviving, and now motherless child—the spared Benjamin of his old age—of the far Canaan beyond the sea; rehearsing to the lad those well-remembered adventures among New England hills, and painting scenes of rustling happiness and plenty, in which the lowliest shared. And here, shadowy as ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... relatives were gone Daniel Mueller was still in the ship with his little son and daughters. Certainly he was not a very salable redemptioner with his three little motherless children about his knees. But at length, some fifteen days after the arrival of the ships, Frank Schuber met him on the old customhouse wharf with his little ones and was told by him that he, Mueller, was going to Attakapas. About ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... with displeasure; her instinct of truth and obedience was lost for the time, and Eleanor saw it with the utmost pain. Adeline had been her especial darling, and cold as her manner had often been towards the others, it ever was warm towards the motherless little one, whom she had tended and cherished with most anxious care from her earliest infancy. She had left her gentle, candid, and affectionate; a loving, engaging, little creature, and how did she find her now? Her fair bright ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Arcis, like Simon Giguet. Born about 1807; son of the former huntsman of the Simeuse family, enriched by the purchase of public lands. (See preceding biography.) Early left motherless, he came to Arcis to live with his father, who abandoned the abbey of Valpreux. Went to the Imperial lyceum, where he had Simon Giguet for school-mate, whom he afterwards met again on the benches of the Law school ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... rich treasure, Dona Pia lost her gayety, became very sad and was never seen to smile again. Every one, even to Captain Tiago, declared that it was a pure caprice. A puerperal fever put an end to her grief, leaving a beautiful daughter motherless. Father Damaso baptized the child, and, as San Pascual had not given the son which had been asked for, the name of Maria Clara was given to it in honor of the Virgin of Salambau and of Santa Clara. The little girl grew up under the care of her aunt Isabel,—that good old lady ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... I am a poor foolish girl, that would fain do well, but have done ill, most ill, most unwisely; and now must bear the shame. But, father, I love you, with all my faults, and will not you forgive my folly, and still love your motherless girl?" ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... farm-laborer who did an occasional day's labor for her father, was Mrs. Nixey, the tenant of a farmhouse, which lay at the head of a valley running up into the range of hills. Mrs. Nixey had given as much supervision to Phebe's motherless childhood as her father had permitted, in his jealous determination to be everything to his little daughter. Of late years, ever since old Marlowe in the triumph of making an investment had communicated that important fact to her ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... that speak to her more clearly. Let us watch her closely, both to penetrate the secret of her condition and to protect the other children. What a joy, what a triumph to say to her some dear day, a few years hence, "You poor, motherless bairn, we have swept away the cobwebs of your dreams, given you back your will, put a clue to things in your hand: now go on and learn to live and be mistress of your own life ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... did not think of the wrong then. You were a motherless babe, then, and I was a childless mother. For you must know, you must have felt in your inmost soul that I was not your ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... he was able to speak, and he told Mrs. Newton his sad little history; how he had no one in the whole world to look with pity on him, or his motherless child; and how God alone was his hope in this day of calamity. His father had been displeased with him because he had married that young woman, whom he dearly loved; and he had given him some money that was his portion, and would ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... was at a low ebb. The firm of Denny & Carson announced that the boy's father had refunded the full amount of the theft and that they had no intention of prosecuting. The Cumberland minister had been interviewed, and expressed his hope of yet reclaiming the motherless lad, and his Sabbath-school teacher declared that she would spare no effort to that end. The rumor had reached Pittsburgh that the boy had been seen in a New York hotel, and his father had gone East to find him and bring ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... starting forward. 'You shall not, sir! No policeman shall touch me. I know nothing of the brooch, but I know this: ever since I was four-and-twenty, I have thought more of your wife than of myself: ever since I saw her, a poor motherless girl, put upon in her uncle's house, I have thought more of serving her than of serving myself! I have cared for her and her child, as nobody ever cared for me. I don't cast blame on you, sir, but I say it's ill giving up one's life to anyone; ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... vicar stood lost in amazement, it drew near him, and looked up in his face with its tender and beautiful eyes, and then at the child, and then in his face again, as much as to say—Here is a poor motherless one; she has no friends in the wide world; who will take care of her, if you do not? Indeed, he fancied that it did say so; and that a voice softer than silence whispered to him, "Feed my Lambs." His heart was touched with pity, and he lifted her ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Sir,' said Mrs. King. 'You see I am up a good deal most nights with Alfred, and we have fire and candle almost always alight. I should only be glad to do it for a poor motherless lad like that, except for the cost; and I thought perhaps if you could speak to the Guardians, they might allow him ever so little, because there ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recollection. Plump, full-bosomed, rosy-cheeked Peggy (fifteen years younger than Tom) supplied the touch and voice, and all the tenderness as well, that these sad memories recalled, and all that the motherless ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the Shell had known that far away, in a tiny cottage at Boulogne, this same contemptible Frenchman was keeping alive from week to week, with his hard-earned savings, a paralysed father and three motherless little girls, who loved the very ground he trod on, and kissed his likeness every night before they crept to their scantily- covered beds—if they had known that this same poor creature said a prayer for his beloved France ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... record the good conduct and life Of this well-beloved, motherless boy, In the hope that it may to his absent sire's heart Convey some consolation ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... 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 with her ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... thought, and wise-hearted art thou grown: It were well if thine eyes were blinder, and we each were faring alone, And I with my eld and my wisdom, and thou with thy youth and thy might; Yet whiles I dream I have wrought thee, a beam of the morning bright, A fatherless motherless glory, to work out my desire; Then high my hope ariseth, and my heart is all afire For the world I behold from afar, and the day that yet shall be; Then I wake and all things I remember and a youth of the Kings I see— —The child of the Wood-abider, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... "why should not there be a woman to listen to the prayers of women? A mother in heaven for all motherless girls like me? In all God's thought and care for us, can he have withheld this boon, which ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... well fortified with arguments against prayer for the departed, had been nursing her sick sister and taking care of the little daughter of the house. The sister died, and the same evening the motherless girl knelt down at her aunt's side to say her prayers. "Auntie, may I say God bless dear mother?" The whole drift of the aunt's training and theology would have led her to say "No" point blank. There was no time for argument or explanation, for facing the inevitable "If not, why ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... 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
... again twins were born, but before the infant boys knew their mother, she died. So sorely did Lir grieve for his beautiful wife that he would have died of sorrow, but for the great love he bore his motherless children. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... 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 friend. The last ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... ago, as one of Tryon's underlings. Madge was even then motherless; the same little wilful prat-a-pace she has ever been. I would you knew her, Jack. 'Twould make this shiftiness of mine seem less ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... herself, when going over the conversation with Christina, was quite inclined on second thoughts not to interfere in Sophy's affairs, though both were anxious and sorrowful about the motherless little woman. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... rule Dr. Trenire was only too gentle and kind and patient with his four motherless children; but to-day, when they slowly, and at a discreet distance, followed Jabez into the study, Kitty felt a sudden conviction that things were not going to be quite as simply and easily got over as usual. She saw a look cross her father's face such as she had never seen on it before, ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... feel near me," said Pete. "I never did the Lord no harm that I know of, but He's taken my young wife and left my poor innocent lil one motherless." ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... deposits its body in the forest. If the mother dies in childbirth the child, unless someone takes pity on it and adopts it, is killed by the father, who, it may be presumed, is indisposed to take the trouble, perhaps indeed incapable of doing so, of rearing the motherless babe. That the child, in any case, immediately after birth, is plunged into cold water, is not perhaps a conscious method of eliminating the weak, though it must operate in that direction. At a ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... worse guess. It was his daughter he talked about that way. She was all right enough, though astounding when you had expected something highly zoological and mouthless instead of motherless. She was a tall roan girl with the fashionable streamline body, devoted to the ukulele and ladies' wearing apparel. But not so young as that sounds. Her general manner of conduct was infantile enough, but she had tired eyes and a million little ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... position, I believe. It never occurred to me before. Only think! Gathering up little bits of motherless humanity like this, and training them into noble men and women. They would go on perpetuating my work long after my eyes were sleeping under the daisies. Why that would be next thing to the immortality most of ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... his brother-in-law, Chia Cheng, recommending Yue-ts'un, his daughter's tutor, to his consideration. Dowager lady Chia sends to fetch her granddaughter, out of commiseration for her being a motherless child. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... prayer the loss of my own loved one, it was with added sympathy and sorrow that I felt for Dr. Parker, when, in the autumn of the same year, his own wife was very suddenly removed. It being necessary for the doctor to return at once with his motherless children to Glasgow, temporary arrangements had to be made for the conduct of the Mission Hospital in Ningpo, for which he alone had been responsible. Under these circumstances he requested me to take up the work, at least so far as the dispensary was concerned. ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... to him on January 20, 1825, and he was now left with three motherless children to provide for, and without the sustaining hope of a speedy and permanent reunion with them ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... under a leaden sky. One brother these five sisters had, a brilliant but superficial boy, with no stable character, who became a drunkard and died after lingering on for years, a source of intense shame to his family. The girls were left motherless at an early age. Four were sent to a boarding school for clergymen's daughters, but two died from exposure and lack of nutritious food, and the others, starved mentally and physically, returned to their home. This was ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... keep me from worse, George, while I am alive, and do something for the boy afterwards, and I am content. You're going to get married, I know, and I wish you well. But don't forget this poor little thing when it's motherless. If you do, and let him fall into vice, you'll ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... was our great sorrow that we were childless, and I fervently thanked God on the day she told me our hopes were to be realized. Had I known the trouble that child was to cost me, I would have been less fervent. A little girl was born to us, and a week later she was motherless." ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... broke the stillness of the hour. They thought she slept; and she did sleep; but she never woke again. The early dawn showed the change that had passed over her face, and Lilias knew that she was motherless. ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... His own loveless experience with his aunt at Tipton gave him some reason for this. The boy was worse off than he was, though, for Frank had kind-hearted, affectionate parents, while the farmer boy was motherless. The latter had eaten half of the orange and was quite engrossed in the book given him. Frank was about to start another effort to make friends, when the train came to a station and a passenger came ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... from a dangerous fit of illness, through which my kind, well-meaning aunt had patiently nursed me. At the first news of my sickness she had, unsummoned, left her comfortable home in Rockland, in mid-winter, and had crossed the mountains to watch beside the feverish pillow of her motherless niece. Careful and kind was her nursing; and even the physicians owned that to her patient watchfulness I owed my life. How grateful was I; and with what looks of love did I gaze on her trim, spinster figure, as she moved earnestly and pains-taking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... it, but taking potshots at the enemy when they present themselves is rather fun. When you watch them scattering like ants before the shell whose direction you have ordered, you somehow forget to think of them as individuals, any more than the bear-hunter thinks of the cubs that will be left motherless. You watch your victims through your glasses as God might watch his mad universe. Your skill in directing fire makes you what in peace times would be called a murderer. Curious! You're glad, and yet at close quarters only in hot blood would you ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... cheerful Athens, blown by the invigorating Northern breezes, little Amelia bloomed and developed into a lovely and happy girl. She was fortunate, indeed, in her friends. One near at hand must have been an invaluable adviser for a motherless, impressionable girl. Mrs. John Taylor was so loved that she is still remembered. Mrs. Barbauld prized and valued her affection beyond all others. 'I know the value of your letters,' says Sir James Mackintosh, writing from Bombay; 'they rouse my mind on subjects which interest us in ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... mend your manners?—And what are ye maundering and greeting for, as if a word were breaking your banes?—Gang in by, and be a better bairn another time, and tell Peggy to gie ye a bicker o' broth, for ye'll be as gleg as a gled, I'se warrant ye.—It's a fatherless bairn, Mr. Saddletree, and motherless, whilk in some cases may be waur, and ane would take care o' him if they could—it's a ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was rapid. Old Lefort's private forge was in his own court-yard. Here, among the rustling bananas and the flowering pomegranates, where he had played, a motherless infant, the slim, emaciated lad sat or walked about in the November sunshine. And while Marcel hung about, the smith, hammering out the delicate Lefort wrought-iron work so prized in New Orleans to-day, anathematized indiscriminately General Jackson, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... impenetrated with vice and profligacy. Morals, religion, virtue, were swamped by sensualism. The character of woman had become depraved. Conjugal fidelity was disregarded; maternity was held in reproach; family and home were alike corrupted. Domestic purity no longer bound society together. France was motherless; the children broke loose; and the Revolution burst forth, "amidst the yells and the fierce violence ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... with the humble home life, of which the motherless boy had seen, and was throughout his career to see so little, is a fit place to introduce two anecdotes associated with those early days which his biographers have transmitted to us. We of these critical times have learned to look with incredulity, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... answered sternly, and his answer vibrated through the room, "I have never admired, pitied, or loved Jeanne so much as now that I know that she has been—motherless." ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... world of unconscious longing in Patricia's voice; no one, not even Daddy, knew quite what the coming of her grandmother meant to the little motherless girl. And a grandmother she had not seen since babyhood. The coming weeks seemed to ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... that he had spoken the truth, and then he tried to push himself farther into the wall in order to occupy less space in the hall. For fully ten minutes the boys stood there, first on one foot and then on the other, like motherless chickens in a rain-storm, and then the turning of the handle of the door caused them to straighten up into what they intended should be careless attitudes, which should say that they had intended to go right away, but had been delayed by the discussion of some important question. ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... laid her by the side of her husband, and the gray-haired, childless old people, and the golden-haired, fatherless and motherless boy, returned together broken-hearted ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of Life good when He let Waboose's mother die in the midst of war and weakness? Was He good to Waboose when He left her fatherless and motherless?" ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... The scene of the first story was in America, nearly five and twenty years ago; that of the second story was in London, only a few weeks since. A young English girl had taken service in a family going to America, and her special duty was the charge of the three motherless children of her widowed master. One cold day in December they all embarked in a great Mississippi steamboat bound for the far North West. Day after day they steamed through the swollen river, where pieces of ice were already showing, past dark and gloomy shores, lined with lonely forest. One ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... that a player was in their 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 his prejudices. The subject of witchcraft was beginning to excite some attention, ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... inquiry she calmly replied. Not so he. At the sight of that face back again To his mind came the ghost of a long-stifled pain, A remember'd resentment, half check'd by a wild And relentful regret like a motherless child Softly seeking admittance, with plaintive appeal, To the heart which resisted its entrance. Lucile And himself thus, however, with freedom allow'd To old friends, talking still side by side, left the crowd By the crowd unobserved. Not unnoticed, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... he squealed. For a few hours he sulked; he was not used to such treatment. But hunger subdued him, and thenceforth he held his new guardian in wholesome respect. She, too, began to take an interest in the poor motherless little wretch, and within a fortnight Johnny showed signs of developing a new character. He was much less noisy. He still expressed his hunger in a whining Er-r-r Er-r-r Er-r-r, but he rarely squealed now, and ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... houseless, wandering, motherless child!" cried the old man, gazing as if for the first time upon her anxious face, her travel-stained dress, and bruised and swollen feet. "Has all my agony of care brought her to this at last? Was I a happy man once, and have I lost happiness and ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... little knew the workings of his mind. He seemed to return a little to his senses, when he saw that his cruelty had probably caused the death of the poor woman, and rendered a large family of helpless children motherless. His countenance became more dark and gloomy, and he scarcely raised his eyes to notice ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... 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
... assumed a somewhat different aspect. Gertrude van Floote proved to be not exactly a gentlewoman. It is true that her father had been a well-to-do man for his station in life, and had very much spoiled and indulged his one motherless child. Yet her education was so slight that she could do little more than read and write, besides speaking a little English, which she had picked up from the yachtsmen frequenting her native town. The professor ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... she offered it to Madame Bernard and waited. The beautiful face instantly became soft with pity. "My dear child," she breathed. "My dear little motherless child!" ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... home to which Emily Bronte clung with the passionate love of the Swiss for his white mountains, with a homesickness in absence that strained the very cords of life. Yet her childhood in that motherless home had few of the elements of childish happiness, and its busy strictness of daily life was saddened by the loss of Maria and Elizabeth, dear, never-forgotten playfellows. Charlotte, now the eldest of the family, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... at the goal he stands: Ah, did they know, did they dream of it, counting the cost and the worth? The ways of her days, did they seem then good to the new-souled earth? Did her heart rejoice, and the might of her spirit exult in her then, Child yet no child of the night, and motherless mother of men? Was it Love brake forth flower-fashion, a bird with gold on his wings, Lovely, her firstborn passion, and impulse of firstborn things? Was Love that nestling indeed that under the plumes of the night Was hatched and hidden ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to the marriage of Alexis with Natalia, his second wife. He was dining with one of his boyars and was attracted by a young girl, who was serving him. She was motherless, and had been adopted by her uncle the boyar. The Tsar said to his friend soon after: "I have found a husband for your Natalia." The husband was Alexis himself, and Natalia became the mother of Peter the Great. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... boast, when twitted about the fact, that "the Lord only knew what she might 'a' done if it hadn't been fer them eye-teeth!" Her first husband had been Bud Molloy, a genial young Irishman who good-naturedly allowed himself to be married out of gratitude for her care of his motherless little Nance. Bud had not lived to repent the act; in less than a month he heroically went over an embankment with his engine, in one of those fortunate accidents in which "only the ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... have affidavits to the fact, a la mode de New England, if you require them. Do not mistake my motive, nevertheless, Miss Effingham, which is any thing but vulgar curiosity"—here Mrs. Bloomfield looked so kind and friendly, that Eve took both her hands and pressed them to her heart—"you are motherless; without even a single female connexion of a suitable age to consult with on such an occasion, and fathers ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the North—that my little girl was motherless—and fatherless; and then came my little girl herself. She was a very little girl then; a sad and lonely little girl; but"—Sir Peter cleared his throat, and spoke huskily and slowly—"but she brought comfort to me. There ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... Summary: A motherless girl of 9 1/2 years, following her complaint of local symptoms, which proved to be due to vulvitis, accused her father and brother of incest. She was a bright child and normally affectionate, even towards these ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... it! Why not spend the winter with us, and do this lovely work, keeping up other studies if you are strong enough? It will be so sweet for you to feel that out of your own sadness you can comfort and brighten the lives of these lonely, suffering children and these motherless or fatherless ones. It will seem hard to begin, no doubt; but new life will flow in your veins when you take up your active, useful work again. The joyousness that God put into your soul before you were born, my Polly, is a sacred trust. You must not ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... brought her straight to the door of the house where he had been born and brought up! What a beautiful, happy boyhood he must have had with a mother like that! Hazel found herself thinking wistfully, out of the emptiness of her own motherless girlhood. Yes, she would go back and see the sweet mother some day; and she fell to planning how ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... formed a most unfortunate attachment, which came near resulting in a clandestine marriage. Although the world would have judged her harshly, and the marriage could only have been exceedingly disastrous to her future life, the motherless girl was not very much to blame. Even among the mature there is a proverbial blindness in these matters. She was immature, misled by her imagination, and the victim of uncurbed romantic fancies. But, after all, the chief incentive to her folly was a natural craving for the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin, Pushed from ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... best. Lady Frances was her second cousin. In the days when he was trying to find excuses for marrying Robina, it was in considering her connections that he found his finest. The Vicar had informed his conscience that he was marrying Robina because of what she could do for his three motherless daughters—and himself. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... grew up somehow. Though motherless and fatherless they were not quite friendless, and in the struggle for existence they held ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... she determined to make the best of Alden's choice. Something in her stirred in answer to the infinite appeal in the girl's eyes. At the crowning moment of her life, Rosemary stood alone, fatherless, motherless, friendless, with only brown alpaca to take the place of all the pretty ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... compelling circumstances, would it have called her admirable then? Yet beyond those natural promptings of remorse which forced her to do the best she could for the child whom her fatal crime had rendered motherless, Leam did honestly behave well, if this means doing irksome things without complaint and sacrificing self to a sense of right. And this was all the more praiseworthy in that sympathy of nature between these two young creatures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... 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 |
