"Birthday" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was rumoured that Nabendu's name would be included in the forthcoming list of Birthday honours, and that he would mount the first step of the ladder to Paradise by becoming a Rai Bahadur. The poor fellow had not the courage to break the joyful news to his sisters-in-law. One evening, however, when the autumn moon ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... know the birthday of every child in the village, and was fond of hanging on the cottage door some little gift his loving hands had made. He could mend a child's broken windmill and carve quaint faces from walnut shells. He made beautiful crosses of silvery gray lichens, and pressed mosses and rosy weeds from the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... On their eighth birthday, Tuttu and Tutti assured their grandmother that they really intended to reform. They promised faithfully to give up tree climbing, fishing in the pond, and many other favourite sports, and commenced to dig in the piece of kitchen garden under their grandmother's direction. In fact ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... underlying desire of these appearing-artists, is to impress, perhaps startle and shock their audiences and at any cost. This may have some such effect upon some of the lady-part (male or female) of their listeners but possibly the members of the men-part, who as boys liked hockey better than birthday-parties, may feel like shocking a few of these picture-sitters with something stronger ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... At Shelby, Centre, and Bacon Colleges, in Kentucky, it is customary to select the best orators and speakers from the different literary societies to deliver addresses on the twenty-second of February, in commemoration of the birthday of Washington. At Bethany College, in Virginia, this day is observed in a ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the first of many that Pip paid to the gloomy house whose shutters were always closed. Next time he went he was taken into the chamber where the decayed wedding-cake sat on the table. The room was full of relatives of Miss Havisham (for it was her birthday), who spent their lives flattering and cringing, hoping when she died she ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... own key, a pretty one, with her initials on it, for her seventh birthday, so she wouldn't have to push the buzzer when she came home ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... birthday party, his mother expressed the hope that he had behaved politely at the luncheon table, and properly said, "Yes, if you please" and "No, thank you," when ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... animated by his glances, I shall for the first time appear in all the splendor of an imperial crown. Ah, they have no presentiment, my councillors and ministers, that I have selected the 18th of December for the ceremony precisely because it is the birthday of my beloved! He will know it, he will understand why his Anna has chosen this particular day, and he will thank me with one of those proud and glowing glances which always made my heart tremulous with overpowering happiness. Oh, my Lynar, what a blessed moment will be that ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... said Robin, impatiently. "Look here: I won't take it till you get the new one on your birthday. You can't be so mean as not to let me ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... II Abd-el-Kader at Toulon; or, The Caged Hawk The King of Brentford's Testament The White Squall Peg of Limavaddy May-Day Ode The Ballad of Bouillabaisse The Mahogany Tree The Yankee Volunteers The Pen and the Album Mrs. Katherine's Lantern Lucy's Birthday The Cane-Bottom'd Chair Piscator and Piscatrix The Rose upon my Balcony Ronsard to his Mistress At the Church Gate The Age of Wisdom Sorrows of Werther A Doe in the City The Last of May "Ah, Bleak and Barren was the Moor" Song of the Violet ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mary-'Gusta's fifteenth birthday—was the liveliest South Harniss had known. The village was beginning to feel the first symptoms of its later boom as a summer resort. A number of cottages had been built for people from Boston and New York and ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... two little girls ran down to breakfast the next morning, they wore very happy faces, for Dimple had just discovered that her birthday was only a week off, and she and Florence had been ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... "I'll be livin' in town,"—and he sighed heavily,—"where my kind of piano-playin' would bring the law on me, most-like. Now, that ole piano is hacked up some outside, but she's got all her innards yet and her heart's right. If you would be takin' it as a kind of birthday present, it's yours." ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... in the woods when Spring comes gaily in. Spring is the very Saviour, as it were, of all the numberless folk, great and small, which grow green and blossom there, wherefore the forest holds festival for his birthday and cradle feast as is but fitting! The fir-tree lights up brighter tips to its boughs, as children do with tapers at Christmastide. Then comes the largesse. It lasts much more than one evening, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to-night,' said the Phoenix. 'They sleep under the roof of the cook's stepmother's aunt, who is, I gather, hostess to a large party to-night in honour of her husband's cousin's sister-in-law's mother's ninetieth birthday.' ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... largely free from the industrial and social influences which evidently, to a great extent, control the conception-rate. It seems probable that the seasonal influence would here be specially well shown. The only attempt I have made in this direction is to examine a well-filled birthday-book. The entries show a very high and equally maintained maximum of conceptions throughout April, May and June, followed by a marked minimum during the next three months, and an autumn rise very strongly marked, in November. There is no December rise. As will be seen, there is here a fairly exact ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... another French professor, unofficially was quite one with the students. He would snatch a moment from his work to smoke a cigarette with them; he would sometimes look in at their little parties. I have seen him at a birthday party where the cakes and ale, to say nothing of the cigarettes and the unpawned banjo, were the direct products of a pawned microscope. I have seen him, I say, at a party like this, drinking a health to the microscope as the giver of all the good things on the table—he, the great Thenard, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... me, "but often he says of a night, speaking in general like, that an Englishman never knows when he's beat, and things like that; and when he went to Plymouth, he spent a month of his money and bought me a ring, with a proper precious blue stone in it for my sixty-sixth birthday. And nothing will do but I wear it on my rheumatic finger. In fact you can't be even with the man, and I feel like a bird ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... celebrated his eightieth birthday on October 31. With the beginning of the present semester he retired from the chair of chemistry at Munich in which he succeeded von Liebig in 1875.—The Romanes lecture before the University of Oxford will be delivered this year by Professor E. B. Poulton, Hope professor ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... in, and, before an interested throng of natives, started to unpack my trunks and boxes with a sense of genuine relief; for I had had four months of traveling and living out of steamer-trunks. But I returned to Oroquieta all in good time for the doctor's birthday and the annual Oroquieta ball. I found the doctor wandering about Aloran late one afternoon; for he had been attending a sick Chinaman. We started back together through the night, and, in the darkness, voices greeted us, or snarled ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... their principles—if they have literature enough, let them soak their honest minds in our great Chancellor's sage counsels; and he who promoted Anything and dubbed him his Darling, he will, no doubt, publish both a post and a title on his birthday ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... was composed on beholding a screen presented to the Empress by Prince Sadayasu at the festival held in honor of her fiftieth birthday, whereon was painted a man seated beneath the falling cherry blossoms and watching them ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Packard knew it and sought them out and held them to him. The oldest man there, saving Bill Royce only, was Blenham the foreman, and Blenham had yet to see his thirty-fifth birthday. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... my pet aversion. I would not even allow my daughter to accept a lovely Italian greyhound which Count Fagdalini sent her on her last birthday. That huge brute there would give me ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... out just at that particular moment; and as I saw from her face that she meant mischief, and as I have the strongest possible objection to seeing children punished, I just tipped my glass and saw the people of Nankin ringing the bells on the Porcelain Tower, to celebrate the Emperor's birthday. ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... I don't know, and yet I don't like it. Here's my beautiful necklace all broke to bits: she took it off my very neck, and gave me her birthday pearls instead; and I found it afterwards on the table, all smashed to pieces; and all she wanted it for was to take and break it. Why that? It frightens me, Mr. Anthony, it ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... confident that the design, if it was ever really formed, would not have been carried into effect. But the passage is the most painful one in his letters. The net result of his military administration, however, was that the people at Inverness were willing to celebrate the Duke of Cumberland's birthday, though they were not willing to comply with the insolent demand of Colonel Lord Bury, who had come down to take the command for a short time, that they should celebrate it on the anniversary of Culloden. It is a highly ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... letter, but I cannot write very fast when I like the person I am writing to, because that makes me think about them, and I like you, and so I tell you. Besides, it is just eight o'clock at night, and I always go to bed at eight o'clock, except when it is my birthday, and then I sit up to supper. So I will not say anything more besides this—and that is my love to you and Neptune; and if you will drink my health every Christmas Day ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... occasion, being a cyclopean bowl of iced punch. The lady was in grand condition; festive, playful, positively flirtatious. She nibbled, between her libations, at a savoury biscuit (she hated solid food, as a rule) in order, she said, to staunch her thirst; she told everybody that it was her birthday. Yes, her birthday! In fact, she was quite a different creature from the bashful visitor at the Duchess's entertainment; she ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... midnight, and one of the oldest and most exclusive of West-end clubs was in a state of great bustle and excitement. Sir Allan Beaumerville was giving a supper party to his friends to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, and ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... journey, as nothing after; unless it be mournful vigils by the side of the brother she nursed—the almost demented brother, whose life was wrecked by his idleness and a great unfortunate passion; who became an incurable opium-eater and drunkard. Then, shortly before her twenty-ninth birthday, on a December afternoon, as she sat in the little whitewashed parlour combing her long black hair, the comb slipped from the fingers that were too weak to retain it, and fell into the fire; and death came to her, more silent even than life, and bore her away from the pale embraces of the ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... City to finish his education in the office of William P. Van Ness, an old Columbia County neighbour, at that time making his brilliant and bitter attack as "Aristides" upon the Clintons and the Livingstons. A year later, in 1803, Van Buren celebrated his twenty-first birthday by forming a partnership in Kinderhook with a half-brother, James J. Van Alen, already established in the practice. In 1808, he became surrogate; and when the Legislature convened in November, 1812, he took a seat in the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... homestead. While in this house there were times when we still longed for home and the old surroundings. Sister Mary wanted her instrument which she supposed she would never have again. Our friends, knowing this, quietly consulted father in regard to securing a piano as a birthday offering. But as Christmas Day was the date of her birth, it was too late for the year 1851. We had already entered upon the year 1852, and it would take almost a year to get a piano here, as Mr. Atwill had not imported any instruments ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... my cabin, and around it had played with the chipmunks and ridden the burros, and she had made a few climbs with me up through the woods. We often talked of going to the top of Long's Peak when she should become strong enough to do so. This time came just after her eighth birthday. As I was as eager to have her make the climb as she was to make it, we started up the next morning after her aunt had given permission for her to go. She was happy when I lifted her at last into the saddle, away up on old "Top's" back. She ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... the birthday of our much-revered Sovereign King George III, now in the fiftieth year of his reign, the shipping of the Lighthouse service were this morning decorated with colours according to the taste of their respective captains. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... twenty-eight architects came down, and not one escaped death. This accident occurred a short time previous to the 8th of January, two years after Jesus had commenced preaching; it took place on Herod's birthday, the same day that John the Baptist was beheaded in the Castle of Marcherunt. No Roman officer attended these festivities on account of the affair of the aqueduct, although Pilate had, with hypocritical politeness, been ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... he liked. He loved him also because he always gave him something nice—a dainty, a picture, an amusing toy. The little man's return was a joy for the children, for he always had some surprise for them. Poor as he was, he always contrived to bring them each a present, and he never forgot the birthday of any one of the family. He always turned up on these august days, and brought out of his pocket some jolly present, lovingly chosen. They were so used to it that they hardly thought of thanking him; it seemed natural, and he appeared to be sufficiently repaid by the pleasure ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... ever had a wish ungratified; but had been spoilt and petted at home, and courted and flattered abroad. Think what it must have been to go alone and friendless among strangers; to earn, by the irksome task of teaching, no more a year than she had been accustomed to receive in a birthday present or Xmas gift. She was fortunate enough to meet with very kind people, who made her as comfortable as it was possible for her to be under the circumstances. But still she found her position a very trying one, and was often ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... walked the water, and stilled the storm, and cast out devils by His word, and by one strong cry broke the gates of Death, and caused Lazarus to "Come forth!" ... O the solemn independent testimony borne by Creeds, from the very birthday of Christianity,—(whether planted in Syria or in Asia Minor, in Africa or in Italy, in Greece or in Gaul; "in Germany or in Spain, among the Celts or in the far East, in Egypt or in Libya, or in the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... his return from his German dominions. The university thought they had reason to complain of the little regard paid to their remonstrances, touching a riot raised in that city by the soldiers there quartered, on pretence that the anniversary of the prince's birthday had not been celebrated with the usual rejoicings. Affidavits had been sent up to the council, which seemed to favour the officers of the regiment. When the house of lords deliberated upon the mutiny-bill, by which the soldiers were exempted from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... ever since has hailed the Day of His Nativity with exceeding great joy. The Puritans strove with all their ardor to destroy it, but happily did not succeed. The argument used against it, that the Birthday of the Child Jesus is not known, and, therefore, cannot be preserved, does not prevail against the universal longing to celebrate in some way this great event. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that from the very earliest period Christmas was observed. St. Chrysostom, ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... only income. It mostly went in buying birthday presents; but it WAS an income, and he ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... was also an indefinite something which spoke of due balance and repose. Nasmyth was more convinced than ever that he had not met any other woman fit to compare with her. Her age, as he knew, having given her many birthday presents, was twenty-four. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... long step backward in time, in fact more than a hundred years, before we reach the birthday, in 1794, of Thomas Corwin, one of the most gifted Ohioans who ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... thought of the absent member, gone from them since the last Christmas Day, and Gail reached over to remove the extra dishes, when Hope stopped her by saying, "Teacher read us a beautiful poem of how some people always set a place for the Christ Child on His birthday, hoping that He would come in person to celebrate the day with them, and I thought it was ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... "My birthday is on the fourth of November, and I am eighty-five years old. You can count back and see what ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... that the chance to exercise is a social success. So then the sound is not obtrusive. Suppose it is obtrusive suppose it is. What is certainly the desertion is not a reduced description, a description is not a birthday. ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... of the farm plan, and there he told me what he had said to my parents. He would not bind me, for he said he might never come back. But I said it would make no difference to me—if he never returned I would wait just the same. We exchanged rings—one which had been given me for my birthday and one he had received on his twenty-first birthday. When he left that night mother gave him a paper, but I never knew what was in it until later. When news of his bravery and death came home, the letter contained a ring and a small daguerreotype picture of me. Then ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... admiral, as entirely removed all the misunderstanding between the two crowns; and could not fail of being agreeable to the Portuguese monarch, thus respected, soothed, and deprecated by a mighty nation, in the very zenith of power and prosperity. On the sixth of June, being the birthday of the king of Portugal, the marriage of his brother don Pedro with the princess of Brazil was celebrated in the chapel of the palace where the king resides, to the universal joy of the people. The nuptials were announced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... one of her large receptions. She received her guests from a sort of elevated dais. When I came up - very shy - to make my salute, she asked me how old I was. 'Seventeen,' was the answer. 'That means next birthday,' she grunted. 'Come and give me a kiss, my dear.' I, a man! - a man whose voice was (sometimes) as gruff as hers! - a man who was beginning to shave for a moustache! Oh! ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... flowery taffeta for Mary's new gown: Here's black velvet, all the rage, for Dick's birthday coat. Pearly buttons for you, Mary, all the way down, Lace ruffles, Dick, for you; you'll be a ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... Stone Lodge, standing on the hearthrug, warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby delivered some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus took up a commanding position, from ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... dull picture into her slow, unrevealing eyes; a sluggish, hackneyed weariness creeping into her brain; a curious feeling, that all her life before had been a silly dream, and this dust, these desks and ledgers, were real,—all that was real. It was her birthday; she was twenty. As she happened to remember that, another fancy floated up before her, oddly life-like: of the old seat she made under the currant-bushes at home when she was a child, and the plans she laid for herself, when she should be a woman, sitting there,—how ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... place, that she wants an attraction. She had a bespeak when her mother-in-law died, and a bespeak when her uncle died; and Mrs Crummles and myself have had bespeaks on the anniversary of the phenomenon's birthday, and our wedding-day, and occasions of that description, so that, in fact, there's some difficulty in getting a good one. Now, won't you help this poor girl, Mr Johnson?' said Crummles, sitting himself down on a drum, and taking a great pinch ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and after Edna had gone she said to her mother, "Mother, I think I will spend part of my money on a birthday gift for Edna. It was all her doings about the puzzle and I would like to have her have something I could buy with the ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... again,' whispered the little man, 'won't you bring me to the castle meadow, where the wee river is, and we'll float races with daisies and buttercups—the way you did on my birthday.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... humour, American humour, such as we are accustomed to expect from Mark Twain—humour not unmixed with a strong spice of wit. But Mark Twain was capable of wit, pure and unadulterated, curt and concise. I once saw him write in a young girl's birthday book an aphorism which he said was one of his favourites "Truth is our most valuable possession. Let us economize it." The advice he once gave me as to the proper frame of mind for undergoing a surgical operation has always remained in my memory: "Console ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... writing a single line to my American friends. On or about the twenty-eighth of May we reached London, and expected to have gone into our old quiet lodgings at the Adelphi; but we found every hotel full. The sitting of Parliament, the birthday of the King, and the famous celebration of the music of Handel, at Westminster Abbey, had drawn together such a concourse of people that we were glad to get into lodgings at the moderate price of a guinea per ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... personal in their allusions, and not of general interest. One of them is a Requiem on the Prince de Ligne, who died in 1814, and whom Goethe calls "the happiest man of the century," and the other was composed in honour of the 70th birthday of his friend Zelter the composer, when Goethe was himself more than 79 (1828). The following sweet aria introduced in the latter is, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Continent from the dominion of that French criticism of which he was himself, to the end of his life, a slave. Yet even the enthusiasm of Germany in favor of Frederic hardly equalled the enthusiasm of England. The birthday of our ally was celebrated with as much enthusiasm as that of our own sovereign; and at night the streets of London were in a blaze with illuminations. Portraits of the Hero of Rosbach, with his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... though only twelve years old,—his thirteenth birthday comes next month,—helps me about the farm, and is very useful in doing chores. He likes farm-work, and will be ready to succeed me in time. As for Sarah, she is a good, sensible girl, and helps her mother in a good many ways. Though I am a poor man, and always ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Of course she had my banker's address and could cable to me from time to time. I got one cable from her in December—on my birthday, it was—and she said she was writing, but I never got ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... proved a great source of amusement to Carmen. She gladly reciprocated the warm affection lavished upon her by the petted heiress, and every letter which reached Wolmershain teemed with the pleasure the two friends took in each other's society. Adele told how Carmen had passed her eighteenth birthday, and now wore pink instead of red; how Carmen had undertaken to teach some of the English classes, and how all the girls loved ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... happened at school, until the anniversary of my birthday came round in March. The great remembrance by which that time is marked in my mind seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections, and ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... great camp the other side of Elsburg. What I said about that officer as I stumbled over rocks, ant hills, and holes, in these, my cooler moments, it would not become my dignity to record. The next day, Thursday (my birthday) promised to be an eventful one, and was. Johannesburg was to be attacked if it did not surrender by ten o'clock. With well-cleaned rifles and tightly-girthed horses, we moved out with our Battalion at nine o'clock to take up our position. Our duty was to attack the waterworks, if there was ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Even his wife, who had thought it an excellent joke that her husband should have written a book, had to take him seriously as an author when she found that their social position was steadily improving. With feminine tact she gave him a fountain-pen on his birthday, from which he was meant to conclude that she believed in his mission as ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... might mean. It was not this, however, which delayed William; he was not ready. It is possible that had he been able to advance during the summer the whole history of England might have been different. As it was, when autumn was at hand with the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin, Harold's men were out of provisions and weary of waiting; they were allowed to disperse, Harold himself went to London and the fleet beat up into the Thames, not without damage and loss, against the wind, which, had he but known ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... time for the end. Here it is—in a little poem, which, on her next birthday, the curate ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... lot about life this morning, coming home from church. You know the 27th of November is Mother's anniversary.... Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, always a great Catholic Feast ... Father's birthday was the 23rd of December, he was buried on Christmas day—their wedding anniversary was December 3lst— my birthday is January first, J—'s the seventh, Mother's the fifth. So the whole season is full of memories, churches, masses, prayers, associations. And it ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... Buccleuch. Distracted with mortification that her husband's rich inheritance would descend to his son by his first wife, she secretly resolved to compass the destruction of her step-son, and determined to execute her hateful purpose at the festivities held in honour of the young laird's twentieth birthday. Having taken into her confidence one John Lally, the family piper, this wretched man procured three adders, from which he selected the parts replete with the most deadly poison, and, after grinding them to fine powder, Lady Thirlestane mixed ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared. When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road in front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to see that she did not stray too far away, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... couple of hours passed before they returned, and no child watched with greater eagerness the opening of a birthday present than Smith watched the undoing of the numerous parcels with ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... steamboat from some landing stage among the docks. The steamer picked up passengers at every station on the river, and at London Bridge a band came aboard. As they sailed under St. Paul's the boat was crowded with people going west to see the celebrations in honour of the birthday, and the band was playing And her Golden Hair was hanging ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... said Mr. Wilbur solemnly. "She was married three months before her twenty-second birthday, and her husband was just the kind of man that was predicted. Wasn't ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... is here meant the sacred kakemono, or picture, exposed to public view in the temples only upon the birthday of the Buddha, which is the eighth day of the old fourth month. Honzon also signifies the principal ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the rugged rock Washed by the sea, or on the gravelly bank Thrown up by wintry torrents roaring loud, Fearless of wrong, reposed his weary strength. Those barbarous ages past, succeeded next The birthday of invention; weak at first, Dull in design, and clumsy to perform. Joint-stools were then created; on three legs Upborne they stood. Three legs upholding firm A massy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a stool immortal Alfred ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... consequently, older than he says, although he looks younger. He was born in February; and this month is determined by the deposition of a witness, to whom the accused offered, during the voyage, a bottle, with the words, 'To-day is my birthday.' ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... McCloy claimed on his Advisory Committee's first birthday that the Army had "largely eliminated discrimination against the Negroes within its ranks, going further in this direction than the country itself."[2-82] He was a little premature. Not until the end of 1944 did the Advisory Committee succeed in eliminating the most glaring examples of discrimination ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... men, rejoice and sing; 'Tis the birthday of our King, Carol, Christians, joyfully; The God, the Lord, By all ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... interrogation, and he felt ashamed of himself for finding it singularly childish. No doubt she simply echoed what was said for her; but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday, and he wondered at what age "nice" women began ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... should have been willing to have had it drawn by a comparative stranger, if that is what you are thinking. Summarised in a few words, the will left everything to me, and appointed my Uncle Henry as my guardian and the sole executor of the estate until I should have reached my twenty-fifth birthday. It provided for a certain sum each year to be paid to my uncle for his services as executor; and at the expiration of the trust period—that is, when I was twenty-five—bequeathed to him the sum ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... not that just like you, all over? You will always be making me out older than I am. I am not turned of eighty-one, child, not till next year. My birthday comes the first day ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... me a sense that, far from being willing to deliver me they were only laying new snares to ruin me more effectually, and to make Father La Mothe known to the king, and esteemed by him. On the day mentioned, which was my birthday, being forty years of age, I awaked under an impression of Jesus Christ in an agony, seeing the counsel of the Jews against Him. I knew that none but God could deliver me out of prison, and I was satisfied that He would do it one day by His own right hand, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... do not care to be accused of a superstitious faith in dream-books, but I do want to say that I have found all sorts of inspiration in a philosophical acceptance of that oracle attaching to my unfortunate birthday. If Saturday's child must work for her living, why not make the best of it? Why not make the most advantageous terms possible with Fate? why not work with, and not against, that inexorable Forelady, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... in Southern Indiana. When he reached Spencer County in 1816, he was seven years of age; when he left in 1830, he had passed his twenty-first birthday. This period of a life shows usually the natural bent of the character, and we have found in these fourteen years of Lincoln's life signs of the qualities of greatness which distinguished him. We have seen that, in spite of the fact that he had no wise direction, that ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... week. Try your interest and bring the duchess up by the birthday. I did not think to have named her any more in this letter. I find I am a little foolish about her; don't you be a great deal so, for if she will not come, do you come ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... ago, on Tom's birthday, Tiger arrived as a present from Tom's uncle, and as he leaped with a dignified bound from the wagon in which he made his journey, Tom looked for a moment into his great, wise eyes, and impulsively threw his arms around his shaggy neck. Tiger, on his part, was pleased with Tom's bright face, and ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... spend the day, but it turned out that the time of our visit was rather critical for Maida. She was in the act of having her twentieth birthday; and it seemed that in her father's will he had "stipulated" (that's the word the cousin-Mother-Superior used) that his daughter should be sent to travel in Europe when she was twenty, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wrapped in a silk handkerchief, saying, "Accept this from my saint." Piotrowski, repelled by the sight of the uniform, shook his head. The other flushed: "You are a Pole, and do not understand our customs. This is my birthday, and on this day, above all others, I should share what I have with the unfortunate. Pray accept it in the name of my patron saint." He could not resist so Christian an appeal. The parcel contained ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... legend of my slinking life; to take the cry that pursues me, waking, to my breast in sleep; to have it staring at me, and clamouring for me, as soon as consciousness returns; to have it for my first-foot on New-Year's day, my Valentine, my Birthday salute, my Christmas greeting, my parting with ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... State committees, a general meeting of prominent Republicans and anti-Nebraska politicians from all parts of the North, and even from a few border slave-States, came together at Pittsburgh on Washington's birthday, February 22. Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania sent the largest contingents; but around this great central nucleus were gathered small but earnest delegations aggregating between three and four hundred zealous leaders, representing twenty-eight States and Territories. It was ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... of that general union of disfavour that surrounded, watched, and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he had little comfort or society from that alliance, and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel, and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversational. For the others, they were beyond hope and beyond endurance. Never had a young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smile. "One and all," he remarked, "entertain the same idea. Hence it is that his mother doats upon him like upon a precious jewel. On the day of his first birthday, Mr. Cheng readily entertained a wish to put the bent of his inclinations to the test, and placed before the child all kinds of things, without number, for him to grasp from. Contrary to every expectation, he scorned every other object, and, stretching forth his hand, he simply took hold ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... cane, his chin resting on his hand and looked sadly across the terrace where Felice directed her workers. He, like Piqueur, was growing "too old." He was really seventy-four that summer. Margot knew when his birthday came and tried to make a little feast but he ignored it. He tried to pretend a polite interest in the reconstruction of the garden but his heart was not in it. He liked better to sit indoors in his carved chair. Even on the warmest days when evening came ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... second son, who had followed his father to France, died, it is said, of poison, at Grenoble, at the age of twenty-two; lastly Caesar, the third son, died at Ferrara, before he had attained his eighteenth birthday. ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... husbandry, and was amazed at the growth of the New Zealand spinach, the widespread rhubarb, the exuberant tomatoes, and towering spikes of Indian corn. Thanks to the four great doctors before mentioned, he remained hale and hearty up to December, 1878, in which month he celebrated his eighty-seventh birthday. A few weeks later he was attacked by bronchitis, which, owing to an unsuspected weakness of the heart, he was unable to throw off. He died in his house on the Via Sistina, close to his favourite Pincio, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... morning of his first birthday, Finn, with his sister Kathleen and Tara and the Master, walked down to the little local railway station and was weighed. He weighed 119 lbs., exactly 26 1/2 lbs. more than his sister, and thirteen pounds less than his mother. With the standard pressed down upon his shoulder-bones ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... children could hardly smother their excitement at the sight of them. Not people or animals only were they, but all kinds of odd objects also, such as no one could expect to see running about loose. A Birthday Cake was there, with lighted candles; a little pile of neatly darned socks and stockings, a white-cotton Easter Rabbit with pink pasteboard ears, a Jolly Santa Claus, a smoking hot Dinner, a Nice Nurse who rocked a smiling baby, a brown-faced grinning Organ-Man, ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... is mother's birthday, and, if you please, I want you. There are a few late peaches hanging too high for my arms, and such grape-clusters! just beyond my finger tips. Will you be so kind as to gather them for me? I intended ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Her hands, large, plump, with flexible broad-tipped fingers, were ivory-colored and satin-textured, and her teeth, narrow and slightly overlapping, would go down to the grave with her if she lived to be eighty. Two months before she had passed her eighteenth birthday and was now of age and in possession of more money than she knew how to spend. She was easily amused, overflowing with good nature and good spirits as a healthy puppy, but owing to her sheltered environment and ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the british monarch, from a reason, which within the jurisdiction of the lord mayor of London and of most corporate towns in England, will be considered to carry considerable weight. The envoy did not celebrate the late birthday of his sovereign by a jolly, and convivial dinner. The fact was, Mr. M——, who by the sudden return of Mr. J——, became unexpectedly invested with the dignity of an ambassador, was in constant expectation of being ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house was in trouble. Arthur was just going to be married. His mother was not well. His father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents, was given a paltry, poor job. Miriam was an eternal reproach. He felt he owed himself to ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... have a birthday in March. Why can't we have a big house-warming, and ask all the county families and a lot ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... 10th of May, 1884, which happened to be my birthday, the statue of John Marshall, formerly Chief Justice of the United States, was dedicated. This is a bronze statue in a sitting posture, erected by the bar of Philadelphia and the Congress of the United States. A fund had been collected shortly after the death of Marshall, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Bassee and Bethune, this being the Kaiser's birthday; the French claim that the German loss is 20,000; indecisive ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... escaping with Banty Herrick, and the big Peckham boy, to show them his Belgian hares. Billie never had liked kissing games, and one of the Judge's favorite stories was how he had tried to give Billie a birthday party once, when he was seven years old. Most of the guests were the Judge's friends, with a small scattering of youngsters, and it appeared that just as the Judge had lined up some sweet-faced old ladies ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... whom the dear boy meant that jewel," Mrs. Vanderlyn went on. "He had bought it as a present for me on my birthday, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the girlhood of this delightful heroine that carry Rebecca through various stages to her eighteenth birthday. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... birthday of Agnes we were married. Oh! calendar of everlasting months—months that, like the mighty rivers, shall flow on for ever, immortal as thou, Nile, or Danube, Euphrates, or St. Lawrence! and ye, summer and winter, day and night, wherefore ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... celebrated in Syria and Egypt, was remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a loud cry, "The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!" The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic lands she was ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... After stopping there from the beginning of May to the 28th of August, he takes his departure (that is the time when they sprinkle the white mares' milk as I told you), and returns to his capital Cambaluc. There he stops, as I have told you also, the month of September, to keep his Birthday Feast, and also throughout October, November, December, January, and February, in which last month he keeps the grand feast of the New Year, which they call the White Feast, as you have heard already with all particulars. He then sets out ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... giving it—it is Mother's birthday and they want to celebrate. It is to be on Pavilion Hill. They want ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... published in the Morning Post, October 21, 1800 (Coleridge's birthday) under the signature VENTIFRONS: reprinted in the Lake Herald, November 2, 1906. Now first included in Coleridge's Poetical Works. Venti Frons is dog-Latin for Windy Brow, a point of view immediately above the River Greta, on the lower slope of Latrigg. Here it was that on Wednesday, August ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... shawl had been a good deal worn ten years ago; but the costly object, now always kept in its sandal-wood box, seemed to the old maid ever new, like the drawing-room furniture. So she brought in her handbag a present for the Baroness' birthday, by which she proposed to prove the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... parting with her mother at Tottie's, nevertheless she felt strangely shaken, as if, somehow, she had been swept from her bearings. She attributed this to the fact that never before had she and her mother spent a night under different roofs. Until Sue's twenty-fourth birthday, there had been the daily partings that come with a girl's school duties. (Sue had continued through a business college after leaving high school.) But beyond the short trip to school and back, Mrs. Milo did not permit her ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates |
