"Firstborn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sure," said Mrs. McNally nervously. She was very much in awe of her firstborn, who was indeed possessed of a considerable amount of determination. "The young man, of course, 'ull make his own choice, but I must say I think it 'ud be only becoming if ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... read and did not learn to write until her firstborn had gone away from the home nest. Then it was that she sharpened a gray goose-quill and labored long and patiently, practising with this instrument (said to be mightier than the sword) and with ink she herself had mixed—all that she might write a letter to her boy; and how sweetly, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... ascertained: this was a point—one of a large number—that Mr. Moreen's manner never confided. What it emphatically did confide was that he was even more a man of the world than you might first make out. Ulick, the firstborn, was in visible training for the same profession—under the disadvantage as yet, however, of a buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustache with no pretensions to type. The girls had hair and figures and manners and small fat feet, but had never ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... fulfilled her months, Her firstborn son (came forth) like a lamb. There was no bursting, nor rending, No injury, no hurt; Showing how wonderful he would be. Did not God give her the comfort? Had he not accepted her pure offering and sacrifice, So that thus easily she brought forth ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... Wildgrave and his myrmidon, who were scampering towards the castle, he exclaimed: "The vapours of the hellish pool will not, one day, strike him with such horror, O Faustus, as this thy deed: his young and beloved wife was a few days ago delivered of her firstborn." ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; 5 to enrol himself with Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with child. 6 And it came to pass, while they were there, the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... that bright May day it seemed Monday all along the way; for dames with baskets balanced on their heads were making their way to the waterside, followed by troops of barefoot or sabot-shod children. There was one fine young woman with a baby in her arms, and the innocent firstborn was busily taking its breakfast as the mother walked calmly along, bearing on her well-poised head the family wash. And a mile farther on, as if she had seen her rival and gone her one better, was another woman with a two-year-old cherub perched secure on top of the gently ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... deals with the narrative. The Exode was "a struggle conducted by human means." (p. 59.) "Thus, as the pestilence of the Book of Kings becomes in Chronicles the more visible angel, so the avenger who slew the firstborn may have been the Bedouin host, (!) akin nearly to Jethro, and more remotely to Israel." (Ibid.) (It is really hardly worth stopping to point out that by 'Kings' the Reverend writer means 'the second Book of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... comes the Nazir (the Moudir's sub.), and courbashes the whole Gezeereh, not Mustapha, of course, but the poor fellaheen who were doing his corvee instead of the Pasha's by the Moudir's order. I went to the Gezeereh and thought that Moses was at work again and had killed a firstborn in every house by the crying and wailing, when up came two fellows and showed me their bloody feet, which their wives were crying over like for a death, Shorghl el Mizr—things ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... quieten him!' Mr. Knight commanded. 'It's like him to begin making a noise just now. I'll take a look at Susan—and my firstborn.' ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... and the autumn feast the vintage and the bringing home the corn from the threshing-floor. With the feast of unleavened bread (Massoth) is conjoined, especially in D, the feast of the sacrifice of the male firstborn ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... married but two years, and our babe was some few days buried in the churchyard of this parish of Ditchingham, I dreamed a very vivid dream as I slept one night at my wife's side. I dreamed that my dead children, the four of them, for the tallest lad bore in his arms my firstborn, that infant who died in the great siege, came to me as they had often come when I ruled the people of the Otomie in the City of Pines, and talked with me, giving me flowers and kissing my hands. I looked upon their strength and beauty, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's passover. 12. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. 13. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. If his children forsake my law and walk not in my judgements; if they break my statutes ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... redemption by blood, is the heart-endearing consideration! This is that which will make the water stand in our eyes, that will break a heart of flint, and that will make one do as they do that are in bitterness for their firstborn. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... The firstborn, Fritz, with his closely cropped hair and swarthy complexion, took after his dead father, who had been a Holsteiner—a mariner by profession, who had sailed his ship from the Elbe some years before for the last time, and left his wife to bring up her fatherless boys by the sweat ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... finest in the country, and he worshiped them. He had never been known to lend a horse to his best friend, and no one but himself had ever been allowed to feed or groom them. He was prouder of them than a father might be of his firstborn son, and as careful of them as any doting mother. Therefore his assent to Scipio's request was quite staggering to his companions. Nor did he know why he did it, and a furious anger followed immediately upon this ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... courage to give him the second place, and the Quaker, David Claridge, the first place. Why Luke Claridge, his grandfather, chose the course he did, does not concern me, no more than why you chose secrecy, and kept your own firstborn legitimate son, of whom you might well be proud, a stranger to you and his rights all these years. Ah, Eglington, you never knew what love was, you never had a heart—experiment, subterfuge, secrecy, 'reaping where you had not sowed, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Spirit" . . . This came to pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet: . . . "Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son." And Joseph "knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son; and he called ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... I am proud of them all, living or dead—here or there. So I said, 'Well, Miss Harlow, John is not my firstborn. There was a lovely little girl, who went back to God before she was quite a year old. People said I ought to think it a great honor to give my first child to God, but it was a great grief to me. Soon after ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and duties they are not only ignorant, but think it ladylike to remain uninformed until experience teaches them, and that teaching is often accompanied by heart-breaking sorrow. If you should make inquiry you would discover that a large proportion of mothers have buried their firstborn children, and should you ask them why, they would in all probability say, almost without exception, that it was because they did not know how to give them a dower of health, or how to care for ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... 25 And it came to pass that they chose even the firstborn of the brother of Jared; and his name was Pagag. And it came to pass that he refused and would not be their king. And the people would that his father should constrain him, but his father would not; and ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... he had been called opened pleasantly and increased in happiness and opportunity, except for the sadness of bereavements, for, in the first few years, his brilliant brothers Edward and Charles died, and soon afterward Waldo, his firstborn son, and later his mother. Emerson had left traditional religion, the city, the Old World, behind, and now went to Nature as his teacher, his inspiration. His first book, "Nature," which he was meditating while in Europe, was finished here, and published in 1836. His practice during ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... passed away while her father was absent with me on duty.) Our English missionary sister has also been passing through woman's time of trial and honour, and we are now able to rejoice with her and her husband in the gift of a little girl, their firstborn. God bless and keep ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... Rankin Little Hands Laurence Binyon Bartholomew Norman Gale The Storm-Child May Byron "On Parent Knees" William Jones "Philip, My King" Dinah Maria Mulock Craik The King of the Cradle Joseph Ashby-Sterry The Firstborn John Arthur Goodchild No Baby in the House Clara Dolliver Our Wee White Rose Gerald Massey Into the World and Out Sarah M. P. Piatt "Baby Sleeps" Samuel Hinds Baby ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Apostle, speaking of the Church, says, "Ye are come, (not ye will come,) unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... presumption of the lad, as if he wished to be above Moa the firstborn. He feigned an errand, and called the boy to come and scratch his back. The boy went to perform the operation, but on stretching out his hand was seized by his grandfather, and beaten with the handle of his fly-flapper. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... her own life and her child's, and it was not till the gray autumn morning, after a day and night which left a permanent mark on Robert, that he was summoned at last, and with the sense of one emerging from black gulfs of terror, received from his wife's languid hand the tiny fingers of his firstborn. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... come before the Lord, and bow myself before the Most High God? shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... poor old gardener, a brown-black funeral cloak thrown over his homely dress, and supporting his wife with steps scarcely less feeble than her own. He had come to church that afternoon, with a promise to her that he would return to lead her to the funeral of her firstborn; for he felt, in his sore perplexed heart, full of indignation and dumb anger, as if he must go and hear something which should exorcize the unwonted longing for revenge that disturbed his grief, and made him conscious of that great blank ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and to take sides against his father; but all these difficulties his unselfish heart overcame, and he stands for all time as the noblest example of human friendship, and as not unworthy to remind us, as from afar off and dimly, of the perfect love of the Firstborn Son of the true King, who has loved us all with a yet deeper, more patient, more self-sacrificing love. If men can love one another as Jonathan loved David, how should they love the Christ who has loved them so ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... principal inhabitants, both nobles and respectable citizens, are placed in the temples and wear the same dress from the age of seven or eight years until they are taken out to be married; which occurs more frequently with the firstborn, who inherits estates, than with the others. The priests are debarred from female society, nor is any woman permitted to enter the religious houses. They also abstain from eating certain kinds of food, more at some seasons of the year than others. Among these temples there is one ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... houses. The flesh they were to eat in the night, roasted, with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, as the inauguration of the Passover. The Lord meant to pass through the land in the dark, and slay all the firstborn in Egypt; and lest he should make some mistakes he required the Jews' houses to be marked with blood so that he might distinguish them. We should expect God to dispense with such "aids to memory." What followed must be told in the language of Scripture: "At midnight ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... the inward vocation to the Deacon now within a month of the Priesthood. Was it not an evident call from Him by whom the whole Church is governed and sanctified? And surely the noble old man, who forced himself not to withhold 'his son, his firstborn son,' received his crown from Him who said: 'With ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brother, so although he was sick at heart at the thought of being left behind, he said nothing against the project, but tried to make it easy for Vito with their mother. The old woman could not bear the thought of her firstborn leaving her, and declared, with the tears running down her face, that she should never see him again, but at last she yielded to their persuasions and gave Vito her blessing. It would be only a little while before she and Toni would ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... and ruddy cheeks. What delight her husband had taken in painting it! And now the mother mourned unceasingly the loss of those little sons, and of one other whom Mary had never seen, and of whom they had no likeness. It was indeed hard that the one son left them,—their firstborn,—their hope and pride, should now be going away to leave them, going ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... States, whether republics or despotisms, lies, not the only, but the chief reason for the early development of the Italian. To this it is due that he was the firstborn among the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... wife, long estranged, met at the grave of their firstborn, the child of their youthful strength. Their strife had been bitter, their love had turned to hate, and they elected to tread life's path apart. They stood, one on either side, and looked coldly upon each other. Then they looked down ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... there they trace Their blank infinitudes of time and space, Vault with careering curves her central goal, Pour forth her day and stud her evening stole, Heedless of count; their numbers still unknown, Unmeasured still their progress round her throne; For none of all her firstborn sons, endow'd With heavenly sapience and pretensions proud, No seraph bright, whose keen considering eye And sunbeam speed ascend from sky to sky, Has yet explored or counted all their spheres, Or fixt or found their past record of years. Nor can a ray from her remotest ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... surface of the hymenium. Each of the cells of the spore emits exteriorly one or several of these corpuscles, supported on very short slender pedicels, which remain after the corpuscles are detached from them. This latter circumstance evidences that new corpuscles succeed the firstborn one on each pedicel as long as there remains any plastic matter within the spore. The latter, in fact, in consequence of this labour of production, becomes gradually emptied, and yet preserves the generative pedicels of the corpuscles, even when it no ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... prevails chiefly, almost entirely, from June to October, the season when all out-of-door influences are most tempting and most needed. The weekly record of August and September is that of a pestilence. The destroying angel carries off the firstborn, and, oftener still, the last-born, out of almost every household in certain districts, as in the heaviest curse laid on Egypt. Thousands have fled the city, as they deserted London in the season of the plague; but thousands are left to follow in the funeral procession of those who were ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... believed that sacrifices of children took place in all classes of society: 'The justices of the peace were seen familiarly conversing with the foul fiend, to whom one in Dumfries-shire actually offered up his firstborn child immediately after birth, stepping out with it in his arms to the staircase, where the devil stood ready, as it was suspected, to receive the innocent victim.'[624] In the later witch-trials the sacrifice of the child seems to have been made after ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... When the firstborn affections— Those winged seekers of the world within, That search about in all directions, Some bright thing for themselves to win— Through pathless woods, through home-bred fogs, Through stony plains, through treacherous ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... on the anniversary of the Death of the Firstborn, and of this matter it pleased him to talk to me. Up and down the chamber he walked and, watching him by the lamplight, I noted that of a sudden he seemed to have grown much older, and that his face had become sweeter even than it was before. He was more thin also, and ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... what you would have done. I insist on your supposing yourself to be a weak, superstitious, conceited, fanatical fool. You understand? Now, tell me, then. Could you keep away from your wife, when you were called back to her in the name of your firstborn child? ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... as he was called, had taken his medical degree, and, by the indulgence of his father, whose heart yearned sympathetically toward his firstborn, opportunity was afforded him to spend a year in Paris. Mrs. Meeker groaned over this unnecessary expense. When she saw that on this occasion she was not to have her own way, she insisted that the money her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 6:58 But we thy people, whom thou hast called thy firstborn, thy only begotten, and thy fervent lover, are given into ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... down. For they had done more than kill his story. They had killed the spirit of Youth in him. There would be other battles, he knew, and perhaps other victories—but never again that fine, careless rapture of Youth! For they had killed his firstborn! ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... in good health and spirits, and with the hope and apparently the prospect of many years of service before him. And yet, just as the summer was beginning, he was called to the presence of the King, and to the perfect work and fellowship of 'the Church of the firstborn.' Had he been able to choose his fate he would hardly have wished it other than it was. His work in Mongolia was steadily growing; slowly, it is true, but yet gaining a strength and impetus that ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... based upon the fallacy, that whatever costs money is money; that whatever or whoever you pay money for, is an article of property, and the fact of your paying for it, proves it property. 1. The children of Israel were required to purchase their firstborn from under the obligations of the priesthood, Num. xviii. 15, 16; iii. 45-51; Ex. xiii. 13; xxxiv. 20. This custom still exists among the Jews, and the word buy is still used to describe the transaction. Does this prove that their firstborn ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... George Esmond, her firstborn, when this little matter was referred to him, and his mother vehemently insisted that he should declare himself, was of the opinion of Mr. Washington, and Mr. Draper, the London lawyer. The boy said he could not help himself. He did not want the money: ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... education, and Tom Pipes, at his own petition, put into livery, and appointed footman to the young squire. Mr. Pickle approved of the plan, though he durst not venture to see the boy; so much was he intimidated by his wife, whose aversion to her firstborn became every day more inveterate and unaccountable. Her second son, Gam, now in the fourth year of his age, had been rickety from the cradle, and as the deformity increased, the mother's fondness was augmented. Though she no longer retained the notion of Perry being an impostor, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the place as it used to be five hundred years ago. It was wild then. Out of broken and rocky ground rose the ancient Church of Aracoeli, the Church of the Altar of Heaven, built upon that altar which the Sibyl of Tivoli bade Augustus raise to the Firstborn of God. To the right a rude fortress, grounded in the great ruins of Rome's Archive House, flanked by rough towers, approached only by that old triumphal way, where old women slowly roasted beans in iron chafing-dishes ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... attempting to define or explain the first God in the Platonic system, who has sometimes been thought to answer to God the Father; or the world, in whom the Fathers of the Church seemed to recognize 'the firstborn of every creature.' Nor need we discuss at length how far Plato agrees in the later Jewish idea of creation, according to which God made the world out of nothing. For his original conception of matter as something which has no qualities ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... have appeared to her sons, and accosting Rhiwallon, her firstborn, to have informed him that he was to be a benefactor to mankind, through healing all manner of their diseases, and she furnished him with prescriptions and instructions for the preservation of health. Then, promising to meet him when ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... my Father's heir, his firstborn, and the only delight of his heart. I am therefore come up against thee in mine own right, even to recover mine own inheritance out ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... Only the firstborn married. The younger brothers and sisters worked under him and for him. In the lonely farms of the mountains of the South, far from all neighbours and every woman, brothers and sisters lived together, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... is clumsy morally in his love for his firstborn, it must be acknowledged that he is so physically in the manifestation of ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... the odour of tobacco was still strong on the close air—but he had been having a good deal of stomach trouble of late, and the children made him nervous, and he had gone out for a walk. Poor May, smiling gallantly over the difficulties of her life, drew her firstborn to her knees, brushed back the child's silky, pale hair with bony, trembling fingers, and prophesied that things would be easier when mamma's girlies got to work: Evelyn was going to be a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... word the old lady spoke, "Joyce, he has come at last. He has come! Come here, dear. Kiss your brother. This is my firstborn—my little Steve." ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... Protestant Sweden. Nono (the ninth) suited him better than any one around him suspected. The tiny Italian was really the ninth baby that had come to the golden house. Karin had now six children. She had laid her firstborn in the grave long ago, and lately her little Gustaf had been placed beside him ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... share your glory, Let the sons whom the South has bred Lie side by side on your battlefields With England's heroes dead. A nation is never a nation Worthy of pride or place Till the mothers have sent their firstborn To look death on the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... king is called God's son (Ps. ii. 7). In another psalm, which Jesus himself quotes (John x. 34), magistrates and judges are called "sons of the Most High" (lxxxii. 6). Another Old Testament use casts light on this,—the designation of Israel as God's son, his firstborn (Ex. iv. 22; Hos. i. 10), with which may be compared a remarkable expression in the so-called Psalms of Solomon (xviii. 4), "Thy chastisement was upon us [that is, Israel] as upon a son, firstborn, only begotten." In all these passages that which constitutes ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... I do this? It is not because I am a coward, for there are few men who are in reality braver than I am. I carried my firstborn in my arms round the drawing-room when she was a week old, and I have done other things equally brave, the enumeration of which I spare you. But I could no more think of getting my hair cut without previously informing my wife than I could think of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... Epistle is the work of St. Paul. It is full of Pauline thought, and is well attested by external evidence. It is apparently quoted in the very ancient work known as the Epistle of Barnabas, and Justin Martyr quotes the title of Christ "the firstborn of all creation" (Col. i. 15). It is included in Marcion's canon and in the Muratorian Fragment, as well as in the Old Latin and Peshitta Syriac versions. The notion that it is only a weak reflection of Ephesians seems incredible, for neither of the two Epistles is appreciably inferior ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... turned back to the sorrow she had known when her firstborn went from her, when the aching void came into her life and robbed it of every joy and every zest, till the waif was brought to her, the care of whom filled her life with happiness and content. Her big motherly heart was trying to understand something of the anguish she would have known had ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... shield thee, trusting mortal! Love has heaved its firstborn sigh; But from the pellucid portal Of ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... mother would not conveniently permit her to suckle this her firstborn at her own breast, and those happy ages were now no more, in which the charge of nursing a child might be left to the next goat or she-wolf, she resolved to improve upon the ordinances of nature, and foster him with a juice much more energetic than the milk of goat, wolf, or woman; this ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... kept repeating. "The tender worm of 'en! But I'll have 'en back, if I've to go to the naughty place to fetch 'en. Why, what sort of a tale be I to pitch to my Dan'l, if he comes home and his firstborn gone?" ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Yadus, was the father of Vasudeva. He had a daughter called Pritha, who for her beauty, was unrivalled on earth. And Sura, having promised in the presence of fire that he would give his firstborn child to Kuntibhoja, the son of his paternal aunt, who was without offspring, gave his daughter unto the monarch in expectation of his favours. Kuntibhoja thereupon made her his daughter. And she became, thenceforth, in the house of her ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... made themselves; the thought of his father's grief at former doings of theirs, which had fallen so far short of the atrocity of this. He knew that his father had rather have seen each one of his five sons slain, or helpless cripples like the firstborn, than have been thus avenged. Nay, had he this morning prayed for the pardon of a crime, to which he would ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Adam Craig's grandson. His firstborn, Tom, was wild, and went to sea—the old story—leaving wife and unborn child for his father to look to. Six years had gone—the seventh began at New Year's; the boy was born, burnt, saved alive, and not idiotic; its mother had died; Adam's ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... calyx—we have walked those temples; we are the sacrifice on those altars. And the future floats on the current of our blood like a secret argosy. We hear the ideals of our descendants, like songs in the night, long before our firstborn is begotten. We, in whom the pollen and the dust, sprouting grain and falling berry, the dark past and the dark future, cry and call—we ask, Who is this Singer that sends his voice through the dark forest, and inhabits us with ageless and immortal music, and sets the ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... 7, 1526, as he announced to his friend Ruhel, his 'dear Kate brought him, by the great mercy of God, a little Hans Luther,'—her firstborn. With joy and thankfulness, as he says in another letter, they now reaped the fruit and blessings of married life, whereof the Pope and his ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... with all the sturdy Spartan virtues of her mind. In features and in mental characteristics, he resembled her very closely. There were six children born to her in all, but the five have been nearly lost sight of in the splendid success of the firstborn. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... dream?" There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to someone in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Sanskrit. tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law. V. be old &c. adj.; have had its day, have seen its day; become old &c. adj.; age, fade, senesce. Adj. old, ancient, antique; of long standing, time-honored, venerable; elder, eldest; firstborn. prime; primitive, primeval, primigenous[obs3]; paleolontological, paleontologic, paleoanthropological, paleoanthropic[obs3], paleolithic, ; primordial, primordinate[obs3]; aboriginal &c. (beginning) 66; diluvian[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 6-8. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the most High God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? . . . Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? . . . Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression; the fruit of my body for the sin ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... two years ago, in the winter when they had used one of their two demolition-bombs to blast open a cavern in the mountains. It had been a hard winter; two children had died, then—Kyna's firstborn, and the little son of Kalvar Dard and Dorita. It had been their first encounter with ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... limited application. But it proves true in some unexpected places outside of the realm of theology. Was there something prophetic in the legend that it was only by the sprinkling of the blood of the Paschal Lamb above the doorway that the plague of the firstborn could be stayed? To-day the guinea-pig is our burnt offering against a plague as deadly as any ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... speak from the grave!" returned the husky tones of Esther, as the wagon passed the spot where the criminal stood. "It is the voice of my firstborn, calling aloud for justice! God have mercy, God have mercy, on ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... movement of her head satisfied the mother that her four firstborn were safe and well disposed. Immediately then, with never a thought of rest, her nose thrust the new-comer into position between her fore-paws, and she proceeded to administer the life-giving and stimulating tongue-wash. Over and over the little shapeless grey ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... to frame for another man such laws of physical and mental torment as every code reveals, their laws for women were the best they could devise, and were those which led to the freedom of the women of to-day. A law of England still favors only the first-born son, and he only because he is the firstborn. What wonder that girls have been denied succession; and what an evidence of man's desire to show favor and not the "insult incident to sex," that he has placed woman on thrones upon which he has had to sustain her ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... would have been terrible, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Herbert, so full of pity for Christopher that she was willing to give him anything short of her firstborn. She was really a ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... and it seemed as if she might never have enough of clipping and embracing her; and she would look at Birdalone's hands and her feet and her arms, and stroke them and caress them; and she wondered at her body, as if she had been a young mother eaten up with the love of her firstborn. And as for Birdalone, she was as glad of her mother as might be; and yet in her heart she wondered if perchance one of the fellowship might stray that way, and be partaker in her joy of this newfound dear friend; and she said, might it be Viridis; but in her inmost heart, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... a new instrument for her father's ambition. As the pope was not satisfied with an empty triumph of vanity and display for his son, and as his war with the Orsini had failed to produce the anticipated results, he decided to increase the fortune of his firstborn by doing the very thing which he had accused Calixtus in his speech of doing for him, viz., alienating from the States of the Church the cities of Benevento, Terracino, and Pontecorvo to form, a duchy as an appanage to his son's house. Accordingly this proposition was put forward ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to him God's command to let the people of Israel go; telling him that if he disobeyed terrible plagues would come upon his land. Pharaoh hardened his heart against God, and refused to let the people go; so ten dreadful plagues were sent, the last of which was that the firstborn of every Egyptian should die, whether it were man or beast. But not a single Israelite was to suffer harm. This plague God said should come in the night; when an angel would pass through the land, destroying the Egyptians but ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... had fulfilled her months, Her firstborn came forth like a lamb. There was no bursting, no rending, No injury, no hurt, In order to emphasise his divinity. Did not God give her comfort? Had He not accepted her sacrifice, So that thus easily she ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... peacefully surrendered to him in the summer, and announced that he should keep the Agenais and La Reole, as belonging to France by right of Charles of Valois' recent conquest. Bitterly mortified at this treachery, Edward took upon himself the title of "governor and administrator of his firstborn, Edward, Duke of Aquitaine, and of his estates". By this technical subtlety, he thought himself entitled to resume the control of the ceded districts and resist the attack which was bound to follow hard upon the new breach. Once more Charles IV. pronounced the sequestration ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... that name. She always spoke to and of my mother as "mammy." What she was to her own daughter I have already said. There was somewhat of the tendency towards "spoiling," which is mostly inseparable from the adoration which a young mother, of the right sort, feels for her firstborn child, but she never made any attempt to avert or counteract my endeavours to prevent such spoiling. When little Bice had to be punished by solitary confinement for half an hour, she only watched anxiously for the expiration ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... first. In a few days he was promoted to Doctor Jim, and soon he was plain "Doc" to all. By every mouth that opened he found Juno's name blessed, and many were the tales of what she had done. She had saved wild Jay Dawn's little girl and Lum Chapman's firstborn. She had brought old Aunt Sis Stidham back from the shadow of the grave, and had turned that tart, irreverent old person's erring feet back into the ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... is in the proper sense [Greek: idios] the only Son begotten of God, being His Word [Greek: logos] and Firstborn Power' [Endnote 284:1]. Again, 'But His Son who alone is rightly [Greek: kurios] called Son, who before all created things was with Him and begotten of Him as His Word, when in the beginning He created and ordered all things ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Primrose, firstborn child of Ver; Merry springtime's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Sarah bear a son, though old in winters, and fate shall be fulfilled according to My word. I will bless Ishmael, thy firstborn, with My blessing as thou dost ask, that his days may be long in the land, and his race may multiply. This will I grant thee. So also will I prosper Isaac, thy younger son, who is not yet born, with every good and pleasant thing all the days ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... months of his engagement one of his favorite occupations was to take her out of an evening and show her the constellations. It is even said that, among the daydreams in which they indulged, one was that their firstborn might be an astronomer. Probably this was only a passing fancy, as I heard nothing of it during my childhood. The marriage was in all respects a happy one, so far as congeniality of nature and mutual regard could go. Although the wife died at the early age of thirty-seven, the husband ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose firstborn son is sacrificed by Titus Andronicus, determines to be revenged. She succeeds in her determination. Titus and his daughter are mutilated. Two of the Andronici, his ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... a strange way with the impressions of the storm, and more than once made her heart stop, and start again at its own stopping. One of these fancies she never could forget—a dream about little Concha,—Conchita, her firstborn, who now slept far away in the old churchyard at Barcelona. She had tried to become resigned,—not to think. But the child would come back night after night, though the earth lay heavy upon her—night after night, through long distances of Time and Space. Oh! the fancied ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... on the part of the South? The answer is written in flames of light along the sky, and in letters of blood upon the breadth of the land. Slavery first, slavery middle, and slavery last. Accursed slavery! firstborn of the evil one—the lust of dominion over others for one's own selfish purposes, in its naked, most shameless, and undisguised form. Dominion of man over man in other modes, such as absolute monarchy, aristocracy, feudalism, ecclesiastical rule—all these justify their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the sun with the lizard; to sport through the blooms of the earth, Nature's playmate and darling; to face, in the forest and desert, the pard and the lion,—Nature's bravest and fiercest,—her firstborn, the heir of her realm, with the rest of her children ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as gently as a mother would her firstborn, Ruby placed a coat under her head, and bade his comrades stand back and give her air. It was fortunate for him that one of the foremen, who understood what to do, came up at this moment, and ordered him to ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... His brother; in his sufferings the Saviour of the world has shared, when the foxes had holes, and the birds of the air had nests, while the Son of God had not where to lay His head. He is the King of the poor, firstborn among many brethren; His tenderness is Almighty, and for the poor He has prepared deliverance, perhaps in this world, surely in the world to come—boundless deliverance, out of the ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... compromise. She was allowed to select one to take to school with her; the others were ADOPTED by certain of her friends, and she was to be permitted to visit them every Saturday afternoon. The selection was a cruel trial, so cruel that, knowing her undoubted preference for her firstborn, Misery, we would not have interfered for worlds, but in her unexpected choice of "Johnny Dear" the most unworldly of us knew that it was the first glimmering of feminine tact—her first submission to the world of propriety that she was now entering. "Johnny Dear" was undoubtedly the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... countless hands the measure beat, As mix and part in amorous maze Those floating arms and bounding feet. But none of all the race of Cain, Save those whom he hath deigned to grace With yellow robe and sapphire chain, May pass beyond that outer space. For now within the painted hall The Firstborn keeps high festival. Before the glittering valves all night Their post the chosen captains hold. Above the portal's stately height The legend flames in lamps of gold: "In life united and in death "May Tirzah and Ahirad ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a mystery about the precise respective ages of Vannozza's two eldest sons, and we fear that at this time of day it has become impossible to establish beyond reasonable doubt which was the firstborn; and this in spite of the documents discovered by Gregorovius and his assertion that they remove all doubt and enable him definitely to assert that Giovanni was born in ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... never set eyes upon her firstborn, and Sir Burnham, who did, readily reconciled himself to the loss of such a daughter. The announcement which should have appeared joyfully under the press-heading "Births" was unobtrusively inserted under "Deaths," ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Blessed Virgin—when Hans Haller, Knight, Doctor, and Town councillor, the eldest of his ancient race, my dear lord and plighted lover, was carried to the grave. The velvet pall wherewith his parents covered the bier of their beloved and firstborn son was so costly, that the price would easily have fed a poor household for years. How many tapers were burnt for him, how many masses said! Favor and good-will were poured forth upon me, and wherever I might go I was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wife, and the four remaining children, Susan, Jim, Bessy, and Charley, graduating uniformly though at wide stages from the age of sixteen to that of four years—the eldest of the series being separated from Dick the firstborn by a ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... here now," said the little mother, as she put her arms about the neck of her stalwart firstborn and kissed his bearded face. There were handshakings and greetings and laughter. Only Nanny, far back in the shadows of the firelit hall, swallowed a resentful sob, and wiped two bitter tears from her eyes with her ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... before he got the significance of it. It hit him where he lived, and he began jerking frantically at his encased feet and sobbing low in his throat. They'd hear him if he kept that up. He stopped and covered his ears to close out the cry of his firstborn. A light went on in the house, and when it went off again, the ...
— The Hoofer • Walter M. Miller
... a dear, and ask him to come here," said Mrs. Morpher, without noticing a sudden irregularity of conduct in her firstborn. "Run quick!" ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... young April's husband showers Shall bless the fruitful Maia's bed, We'll bring the firstborn of her flowers To kiss thy feet, and crown thy head: To thee, dear Lamb! whose love must keep The shepherds while they ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so no more." Mr. Thatcher was really a very kindly gentleman and a good Christian, but the natural solicitude of a young father over his firstborn provoked him to the telling use of the walnut ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Tarbox, as the division of the spoil was being made, "there is a young maiden whom we all know in the settlement, the firstborn here, and the only one alive of our countrymen and countrywomen who once dwelt in the land. She is dowerless and friendless, except her young brother and an old grandfather, who maybe sleeps in his grave by this time. I am ready to give half of my ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... perverse children, who mother trunk thought at one time were going to ruin her life, but you know lives aren't so easily ruined after all. 'Now you go right up there at an angle of twenty-two degrees,' she said to her eldest child. 'Not at all,' said the firstborn, 'I intend to lean right over here at whatsoever angle will best express my individuality.' And though the mother grieved for a long time she knows now—Karl—how foolish we are! But listen. You hear that bird who is trying to ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... it aloud, let us proclaim it in our fall and in our defeat, this is the greatest of all ages! and do you know the reason why? because it is the mildest. This age, the immediate issue, the firstborn offspring, of the French Revolution, frees the slave in America, raises from his degradation the pariah in Asia, abolishes the suttee in India, and extinguishes in Europe the last brands of the stake, civilizes Turkey, carries the Gospel into the domain ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... since come to pass; but of the evil of being slaughtered by a foreign foe on our own doorsteps there was no shadow. Nature gave us a very long credit; and we abused it to the utmost. But when she struck at last she struck with a vengeance. For four years she smote our firstborn and heaped on us plagues of which Egypt never dreamed. They were all as preventable as the great Plague of London, and came solely because they had not been prevented. They were not undone by winning ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... woman so superlatively happy as to have a baby of her own to kiss," exclaimed Mrs. McBride, rapturously, as she fondled her firstborn. ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... has He been guilty of exaggeration? We were dead, but behold, we live! We spent our energies in profitless work; but now we bear fruit unto God. We were lonely and isolated, but now have come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable company of angels, and to the Church of the Firstborn. Our prayers were aimless and ineffective; but now we have the petitions we desired. New hope and joy have filled our hearts, as the ruddy clusters hang full and ripe in the autumn. Prove Him for yourself and see if this shall not ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Hearken to the word of Jahveh. If thou wilt not let the people go, then shall all the firstborn of Khem, of the Prince and the slave, of the ox and the ass, be smitten of Jahveh. Wilt ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... through and through, As every mother thinks she knows her sons, Have been pitch night to me. We never learn. I thought I'd got by heart each turn and twist Of all Jim's stupid cunning: but even he's Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left; All gone in bitterness—firstborn to reckling: Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve: And now ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... to expound its virtues with all the fond enthusiasm of a father showing off his firstborn, and wound up with a demonstration of the illuminating appliance. I'm afraid, though, he got little encouragement from Mr. Burnham. He considered the machine with a dispassionate air, it's true, and admitted its practical advantages, but wasn't ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... son, Macumazahn?" he asked in a hollow voice, the tears running down his handsome face, for he had loved his firstborn. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... early part of the century a Dakota woman fasted and prayed, and Thunder came to her in her vision. To the god she promised to give her firstborn child. When she became a mother, she forgot in her joy that the life of her little one did not belong to her; nor did she recall her fateful vow until one bright spring day, when the clouds gathered and ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... seen the young mother going to the pagoda on the hilltop with a little offering of a few roses or an orchid spray, and pouring out her soul in passionate supplication to Someone—Someone unknown to her sacred books—that her firstborn might recover of his fever, and be to her once more the measureless delight of her life; and it would seem to me that she must believe in a God and in ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... deride, the proud disdain, These simple blessings of the lowly train; To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art; Spontaneous joys, where Nature has its play, 255 The soul adopts, and owns their firstborn sway; Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined. But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed— 260 In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, The toiling pleasure sickens into pain; And, e'en while ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... only children born of great love and under healthful conditions can be. This child was a girl, to Alessandro's delight; to Ramona's regret,—so far as a loving mother can feel regret connected with her firstborn. Ramona had wished for an Alessandro; but the disappointed wish faded out of her thoughts, hour by hour, as she gazed into her baby-girl's blue eyes,—eyes so blue that their color was the first thing noticed by each person who ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... high-necked, long-sleeved silk shirt and a blanket, all of which could be done in five minutes. As babies lie still most of the time the first six weeks, they need no dressing. I think the nurse was a full hour bathing and dressing my firstborn, who protested with a melancholy wail ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... had not improved. His entire lack of tact and refinement was painful to his young wife, whose tenderest feelings he ruthlessly and thoughtlessly trampled upon. Things were looking unpromising, when, happily for her, Madame Godefroy died in giving birth to her firstborn. When he spoke of his deceased wife, the banker waxed poetical, although had she lived they would have been divorced in six months. His son he loved dearly for several reasons—first, because the child was an only son; secondly, because he was a scion of two such houses as Godefroy and Neufontaine; ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... child I had been neglected for the firstborn, I had enjoyed through this neglect an absolute freedom with regard to associating with fisher-boys and all the shoeless, hatless 'sea-pups' of the sands, and now, when the time had come to civilise me, my ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I won't enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor Pavlovitch's firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most essential facts about him, without which I could ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... firstborn child of Crime! Produc'd before the bloom of Time; Ambition's maiden Sin, in Heaven conceiv'd, And who could have believ'd Defilement could in purity begin, And bright eternal Day be soil'd with Sin? Tell us, sly penetrating Crime, How cam'st thou there, thou fault sublime? How didst thou pass the ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... the eternal Word, the eternal Christ, manifesting in his clean, strong, upright soul, so that the young Jewish rabbi and prophet, known in all his community as Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary and whose brothers and sisters they knew so well,[E] became the firstborn—fully born—of the Father. ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... increase his glory and render it more durable; and there entered into the prayers she made for him since the burning disgrace of the divorce, even the hope that he might be happy in his private life, and that his new wife might bear this child, this firstborn of his dynasty, to him whom she herself could not make ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Polycarp's personal knowledge. With what feelings he regarded such teachers we may learn not only from his own epistle (Sec. 7), but from the sayings recorded by Irenaeus, "O good God, for what times hast Thou kept me, I recognize the firstborn of Satan." He was eminently fitted, too, by his personal qualities to fulfil this function as a depositary of tradition.... Polycarp's mind was essentially unoriginative. It had no creative power. His Epistle is largely made up of quotations from the Evangelical and Apostolic writings, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in, dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... their bondage; you find Egypt resisting the command, and God sent among the people of Egypt signs and wonders, and plagues by the hand of Moses, but they submitted not. He called them to obedience, but they rebelled. By and bye, He slew their firstborn, the chief of all their strength, and then the people came out with silver and with gold. Nations are not simply chastised in this world, they are also punished. Every one of us shall give an account of himself to ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... of a dainty invitation to the wedding of a friend. The sad event was to take place in June. I didn't go. The latest was a cream-laid affair, from another quarter, on which I was requested in letters of gold to honour certain near and dear relatives with my presence at the christening of their firstborn. As the affair was to take place in December, and I received the pressing invitation at the end of January—I was again unable to be present at another interesting ceremony. I have also received several invitations ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... in a single payment—Guy little knew that Nevitt was really the chief friend and founder of the family fortunes, and was prepared to compel the "unknown benefactor" (for a moderate commission) to recognise his unacknowledged firstborn sons before all the world as the heirs to Tilgate. But yesterday, they were nameless waifs and strays, of uncertain origin, ashamed of their birth, and ignorant even whether they had been duly begotten in lawful wedlock; to-day, they ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... of "Grand Mansions" were now growing to very "big childhood," and the inevitable day came when Lydia's heart must bear the wrench of having her firstborn say good-bye to take his college course. She was not the type of mother who would keep the boy at home because of the heartache the good-byes must bring, but the parting was certainly a hard one, and she watched his going with a sense of loss that was almost ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me? And Laban said, It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... 1,500,000 inhabitants distributed in Thibet, upon a surface of 1,200,000 square kilometres, the Buddhists were forced to adopt polyandry. Moreover, each family is bound to enter one of its members in a religious order. The firstborn is consecrated to a gonpa, which is inevitably found upon an elevation, at the entrance of every village. As soon as the child attains the age of eighteen years, he is entrusted to the caravans which pass Lhassa, where he remains from eight to fifteen years as a novice, in ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... we may understand these words, and the destruction of the Hebrew commonwealth, we must bear in mind that it had at first been intended to entrust the whole duties of the priesthood to the firstborn, and not to the Levites (see Numb. viii:17). (166) It was only when all the tribes, except the Levites, worshipped the golden calf, that the firstborn were rejected and defiled, and the Levites chosen in their stead (Deut. x:8). (167) When I reflect on ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... be counted almost as the beginning of his manhood. His father—and fathers had even then a certain paternal pride—had come to recognize in a degree the vigor and daring of his son. The mother, of course, was even more appreciative, though to her firstborn she could give scant attention, as Ab had the small brother in the cave now and the little sister who was still smaller, but from this time the youth became a person of some importance. He grew rapidly, and the sinewy stripling ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the silken lap in which the child was comfortably nestling, and in that attitude had a faint consciousness that Mrs. Horncastle was mischievously breathing into his curls a silent laugh. Barker lifted his firstborn with proud skillfulness, but that sagacious infant evidently knew when he was comfortable, and in a paroxysm of objection caught his father's curls with one fist, while with the other he grasped Mrs. Horncastle's brown braids and brought their heads into contact. Upon which humorous situation ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... Berlin it is 17 per cent., and in some towns very much higher, but ante-nuptial conceptions take place in nearly half the marriages, and sometimes in the majority. Thus in Berlin more than 40 per cent, of all legitimate firstborn children are conceived before marriage, while in some rural provinces (where the proportion of illegitimate births is lower) the percentage of marriages following ante-nuptial conceptions is much higher than in Berlin. The conditions in rural Germany have been especially investigated ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Thomas Jefferson was sure to be the child of many prayers on the mother's part; and perhaps of some naturally prideful hopes on Caleb's. When a man touches forty before his firstborn is put into his arms, he is likely to take the event seriously. Martha Gordon would have named her son after the great apostle of her faith, but Caleb asserted himself here and would have a manlier name-father for the boy. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... angry passions of his vast audience, and having alarmed their fears by this pretended scheme against their firstborn (an artifice which was indispensable to his purpose, because it met 30 beforehand every form of amendment to his proposal coming from the more moderate nobles, who would not otherwise have failed to insist upon trying the effect of bold addresses ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... his journey to the last moment, in order to stand godfather to Nancy's healthy firstborn. John Lambert—honest man and proud father—had honoured the event with a dinner, and very nearly wrecked his own domestic peace by sending out the invitations in his own hand and including Mr. and Mrs. Wright. For weeks after, Nancy shuddered to think what might ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shared in the exercise of supreme power, and had the same right of inheritance and possession as regards sovereignty that women had in human law.[*] Isis was entitled lady and mistress at Buto, as Hathor was at Denderah, and as Nit at Sais, "the firstborn, when as yet there had been no birth." They enjoyed in their cities the same honours as the male gods in theirs; as the latter were kings, so were they queens, and all bowed down before them. The animal gods, whether entirely in the form of beasts, or having ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... fountains of living waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes." By the anticipations of faith, we are "come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... warming it into life, so too Baal was regarded sometimes as the friend and helper of man, sometimes as a fierce and vengeful deity who could be appeased only by blood. In times of national or individual distress his worshippers were called upon to sacrifice to him their firstborn; nothing less costly could turn away from them the anger of their god. By the side of Baal was his colourless wife, a mere reflection of the male divinity, standing in the same state of dependence towards him as the woman stood to the ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... printed in The Gem, 1829. The Gem was then edited by Thomas Hood, whose child—his firstborn—it was thatinspired the poem. Lamb sent the verses to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... when he appeareth in heaven. He shall sail into the Sky, with his son Horus by his fingers. He shall announce him, he shall make him rise up like the Great God in the Sky. They shall cry out concerning Unas: Behold Horus, the son of Osiris! Behold Unas, the firstborn son of Hathor! Behold the seed of Keb! Osiris hath commanded that Unas shall rise as a second Horus, and these Four Spirit-souls in Anu have written an edict to the two great gods in the Sky. Ra set up the Ladder[1] in front of Osiris, Horus set up the Ladder in front ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Michelangelo was the firstborn in a large family. Simone Buonarroti, his father, belonged to an ebbtide branch of the nobility that had lost everything but the memory of great ancestors turned to dust. This father had ambitions for his boy; ambitions in the line of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... a son, her firstborn, named Cairbry, who was King of Ireland after Cormac. It was during the lifetime of Cormac that Cairbry came to the throne, for it happened that ere he died Cormac was wounded by a chance cast of a spear and lost one of his ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... instructions in his will. But perhaps the most supreme joy of all was when they could play with the baby Benedict together alone for half an hour before he went to bed. Then they were just as foolish and primitive as any other two young things with their firstborn. He was a very fine and forward baby and already expressed a spirit and will of his own, and it always gave Denzil the very strangest thrill when he seized and clung firmly to one of his fingers with his tiny, strong, chubby hand. And over all his qualities and perfections his parents ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... those hidden perils that lurk where sanitation and hygiene are unpractised sciences, Joe's numerous family throve and multiplied. The baby carriage which had held his firstborn,—Arthur, now aged fourteen,—was still in use, the luster of its paint much dimmed and its upholstery but a memory. It had trundled a succession of little Montgomerys among the cinder piles; indeed, it was almost a feature of the landscape, for Joe's ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... sleep, Thy mother sings to her firstborn; Sleep, O boy, sleep, Thy father cries out to his little child. Thousands of praises we sing to thee, A ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... mother, who had borne him, nursed him, reared him; who had loved him with that love—like none other in the world—the love of a woman for her firstborn son, all these ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Wales it is allowed upon all hands is the finest baby ever sent into this naughty world since the firstborn of Eve. At a day old he would make three of any of the new-born babes that a month since blessed the Union bf Sevenoaks. There is, however, a remarkable providence in this. The Prince of Wales is born to the vastness of a palace; the little Princes of Pauperdom ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... In Heb. xii. 22 mount Zion is taken as the symbol of Christ's Church; and the readers are addressed as members thereof, together with the spirits of just men made perfect, who are enrolled in heaven as the general assembly and church of the firstborn. Thus the {113} Church, or Society of Saints includes the imperfect, and those who are made perfect; those who are alive there, and those who are alive here. The condition of membership is briefly described in Acts ii. 38, 42 Repentant, Baptized, having the Gift of the Holy Ghost, Apostolic Doctrine ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... of Glory Jehovah. The "I am" That Worthy Name The Doctrine of Christ The Pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus Christ Ye are Christ's—Christ is God's The Wonderful Honor and Glory unto Him Christ's Resurrection Song The Glory Song The Firstborn The Waiting Christ A Vision of the King The Fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord Out of His Fulness, The Twenty-second Psalm The Exalted One A Glorious Vision My Brethren The Patience of Christ He Shall Not Keep Silent The Love of Christ The Joy of the Lord This same Jesus The ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein |
