"Puberty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... issue; infant, babe, baby, tot, bairn, brat; bastard (illegitimate); orphan; foundling, waif; cockney (spoilt child); minor. Associated Words: pediatrics, prolicide, infanticide, puberty, philoprogenitive, philoprogenitiveness, misopedia, filicide, putti, filial, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... pipestem at Stanton. "Ah. You frown, my friend. Have I made them sound heartless, without the finer feelings of which we humans are so proud? Not so. When Junior Nipe fails his puberty tests, when Mama and Papa Nipe are sent to their final reward, I have no doubt that there is sadness in the hearts of their loved ones as the honored T-bones are passed around ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and women file and blacken the teeth. When a boy or girl has reached the age of puberty, it is time that this beautifying should be done. There is, however, no prohibition to having it performed earlier if desired. The candidate places his head against the operator and grips a stick of wood between his teeth while each tooth is filed so as to leave only the stump, ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... which we belong stands high in the scale of civilisation, to produce in most cases a limited number of offspring; so that even for these of us, child-bearing and suckling, instead of filling the entire circle of female life from the first appearance of puberty to the end of middle age, becomes an episodal occupation, employing from three or four to ten or twenty of the threescore-and-ten-years which are allotted to human life. In such societies the statement (so profoundly ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... people always in flight. Their wives live in these wagons, and there weave their miserable garments; and here, too, they sleep with their husbands, and bring up their children till they reach the age of puberty; nor, if asked, can any one of them tell you where he was born, as he was conceived in one place, born in another at a great distance, and brought up in another still ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... and a brazen shield; for he thought that such a dress had least resemblance to that of women, and was excellently adapted for the field of battle, as it is soonest made splendid, and is longest in growing soiled. He permitted also those above the age of puberty to let their hair grow, as he thought that they thus appeared taller, more manly, and more terrible in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... thirty-six years of age. In that year he was succeeded by his son Hezekiah, who was twenty-five years of age. This would mean that King Ahaz was married at the age of ten, which, making all allowance for the earlier puberty of Eastern boys, does not seem probable; and the explanation is much more likely to be found in the chronological inaccuracies of our author, to which, if we have been observantly reading his book through, we shall by this time have become quite accustomed." [Footnote: Inspiration ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... between nocturnal enuresis and sexual activities, sometimes masturbation. Children not infrequently believe that the sexual acts of their elders have some connection with urination and defecation, and the mystery with which the excretory acts are surrounded, helps to support this theory. Up to puberty scatologic interests may be regarded as normal; at this age the child has still much in common with the primitive mind, which, as mythology and folklore show, attributes great importance to ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... are governed by certain rules, which vary in different countries, particularly as to the age of girls, i.e. whether they are over or under puberty. Among the witches there appears to have been a definite rule that no girl under puberty had sexual intercourse with the Devil. This is even stated as a fact by so great an authority as Bodin: 'Les diables ne font point de paction expresse auec les enfans, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... puberty in girls takes place from the tenth to the twelfth year, but few become mothers at a very early age. When parturition is about to take place the woman retires to a little distance in the bush, and is attended by an experienced ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... it sometimes is called, is meant the monthly hemorrhage that takes place in the uterus or womb during the child-bearing period of the normal woman except during pregnancy and lactation, when it nearly always is suspended. The child-bearing period commences at the age of puberty and ends with ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... the most part learn To plague themselves withal, they know not why: 'T was strange that one so young should thus concern His brain about the action of the sky; If you think 't was philosophy that this did, I can't help thinking puberty assisted. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Rule in manifestation; we see in the one to whom we are merciful ourself in another form, under different conditions, and we do to him as we would have him do to us. It seems to require a certain maturity of mind, acquired or inherited; children below puberty seldom have it. It is easily forfeited, and indifference to the suffering of others is readily established. It is to be guarded and developed as a sacred possession of man at his highest, and constantly nourished by thought and deed. And no ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Charms, Medicines Mourning Language Indications of Tribe or Rank Vain Desire to Attract Attention Objects of Tattooing Tattooing on Pacific Islands Tattooing in America Tattooing in Japan Scarification Alleged Testimony of Natives, Misleading Testimony of Visitors "Decoration" at the Age of Puberty "Decoration" as a Test of Courage Mutilation, Fashion, and Emulation Personal Beauty versus Personal Decoration De Gustibus non est Disputandum? Indifference to Dirt Reasons for Bathing Corpulence versus Beauty Fattening Girls for the Marriage ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... reached, so to speak, by a Jacob's ladder upon which aspiration and grace ascended and descended continually. Birth had its sacramental consecration to the supernatural in baptism, growth in confirmation, self-consciousness in confession, puberty in communion, effort in prayer, defeat in sacrifice, sin in penance, speculation in revealed wisdom, art in worship, natural kindness in charity, poverty in humility, death in self-surrender and resurrection. When ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that is voiced here is no more an embattled faith—it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit. The physiologists, at all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in the living organism, the result of degeneration. A faith of this sort is not furious, it does not denounce, it does not defend itself: it does not come with "the sword"—it does not realize how it will one day set man against man. It does ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... receives his first lessons regarding sex from ignorant and vicious associates. Curiosity is one of the greatest natural factors in the child's proper development, if rightly directed. When wrongly led, however, it may have the worst consequences. Even before puberty occurs, a boy's attention may be quite naturally drawn to ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... haematuria."[14] This is bestowing upon ignorant and savage negroes a psychical acuteness which far transcends that of the laity of civilized races! What do the Wa-kamba know of sanitation, haematuria, and the larva of Bilharzia![E] Circumcision among these people always occurs at puberty, and is, unquestionably, a phallic rite. Parenthetically, it may be stated here that a few of the primitive peoples still in existence appear to have grasped the idea of the life-giving principle, and to have established worship of the functio generationis without having experienced ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... They had a large number of cut-and-dried orations, which professional rhetoricians delivered on all important occasions in life. The new-born child was harangued at, in good set terms, when it was but a few days old. Betrothals, marriages, festivals, the commencement of puberty and of pregnancy, etc., were all celebrated by the delivery of discourses. Fathers taught their children, teachers their pupils, monarchs their vassals, war chiefs their soldiers, by such declamations. The general name for these speeches was ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... that sphere claiming to an ever increasing degree control over mere impulse. Yet no one is sure that he has found the way to teach the barest facts as to sexual instinct either before or during the period of puberty, without ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... arrest of the brain of the Bantu at the age of puberty owing to the closing of the sutures of the skull at an earlier age than happens with Europeans is another popular notion for which a sort of pseudo-scientific authority may be quoted from encyclopaedias and old books of travel. The opinion of modern ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... allowed under adequate medical control, and should be increased very gradually. In the case of girls, let them run, leap and climb with their brothers for the first twelve years or so of life. But as puberty approaches, with all the change, stress and strain dependent thereon, their lives should be appropriately modified. Rest should be enforced during the menstrual periods of these earlier years, and milder, more graduated exercise taken at other times. In the same way all mental strain should ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... has professors, schoolmasters, letter-writing priests, and the authors of manuals to make the meshes fine, comes between him and English literature, substituting arguments and hesitations for the excitement at the first reading of the great poets which should be a sort of violent imaginative puberty. His hesitations and arguments may have been right, the Catholic philosophy may be more profound than Milton's morality, or Shelley's vehement vision; but none the less do we lose life by losing that recklessness Castiglione ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... who have sons for whom they think proper to provide wives. the compensation given in such cases usually consists of horses or mules which the father receives at the time of contract and converts to his own uce. the girl remains with her parents untill she is conceived to have obtained the age of puberty which with them is considered to be about the age of 13 or 14 years. the female at this age is surrendered to her sovereign lord and husband agreeably to contract, and with her is frequently restored by ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... that generally speaking the native women seldom have more than four children, or if they have, few above that number arrive at the age of puberty. There are, however, several reasons why the women are not more prolific; the principal of which is that they suckle their young for such a length of time, and so severe a task is it with them to rear their offspring that the child is frequently ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... ecclesiastics. Women are learning from experience and specialists are discovering by investigation that the "safe period" is anything but safe for all women. Some women are never free from the possibility of conception from puberty to the menopause. Others seemingly have "safe periods" for a time, only to become pregnant when they have begun to feel secure in their theory. Here again, continence must give way, as a method of birth control, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... Vedas,[12] to a Brahmana that cooks for Sudra, to one that too by birth is a Brahmana but who is destitute of the occupations of his order, is in vain. The gift to one that has married a girl after the accession of puberty, to females, to one that sports with snakes, and to one that is employed in menial offices, is also in vain. These sixteen kinds of gifts are productive of no merits. That man who with mind clouded with darkness ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the individual are rapidly progressing, the reproductive powers remain almost inactive, and that the commencement of reproduction not only indicates an arrest of growth, but, in a great measure, contributes toward it. From infancy to puberty, the body and its individual organs, structurally as well as functionally, are in a state of gradual and progressive evolution. Men and women generally increase in stature until the twenty-fifth year, and it is safe to assume that perfection of function is not established ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... accomplished thief, he pillaged shop and cellar, and sold his plunder in remote parts of the town under assumed names. It is difficult to understand how his strength supported the fatigue of this double existence; he had barely arrived at puberty, and art had been obliged to assist the retarded development of nature. But he lived only for evil, and the Spirit of Evil supplied the physical vigour which was wanting. An insane love of money (the only passion he knew) brought him by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... too, they relaxed their strict rules and allowed their young men to dress their hair and ornament their shields and costumes, taking a pride in them such as one does in high-mettled horses. For this reason, although they all let their hair grow long after the age of puberty, yet it was especially in time of danger that they took pains to have it smooth and evenly parted, remembering a saying of Lykurgus about the hair, that it made a well-looking man look handsomer, and an ugly man ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... be detailed and reach back into his early life. Yet not too much stress must be laid upon certain influences in regard to certain qualities. For example, the average child is not influenced greatly by immorality until near puberty, but dishonesty and bad manners strike at him from early childhood. The large group, the small group, family life, gang life influence character, but not necessarily in a direct way. They may act to develop counter- prejudices, for there is no one so bitter against alcoholism as the man whose ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... well-known influence of puberty on the imagination of both sexes, expressing itself in day-dreams, in aspirations toward an unattainable ideal,[28] in the genius for invention that love bestows upon the least favored. Let us recall also the mental ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... decision. It seems certain that moral restraint is the only virtuous and satisfactory mode of escape from the evils of over-population. Without such moral restraint, and if it were the custom to marry at the age of puberty, no virtue, however great, could rescue society from a most wretched and desperate state of want, with ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... difficult to solve. Whether it be owing to perversion of the sexual instinct, which is not unlikely, or to other cause, it is not proposed to discuss. Be that as it may, the prevalence of the habit among the Eskimo is confined to the female sex, who are tattooed on arriving at the age of puberty. The women of Saint Lawrence island, in addition to lines on the nose, forehead and chin, have uniformly a figure of strange design on the cheeks, which is suggestive of cabalistic import. It could not be ascertained, however, whether such is the case. The lines drawn on ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... lupus and syphilitic diseases it has been found that lupus commonly developes before puberty while syphilis appears in the ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... besides, to collect, of these same races, their half-breeds, and the white race, more minute particulars than as yet obtained, on the duration and difficult phases and epoch of puberty. ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... and seriously. The teaching has been deferred too long. The young of either sex, long before puberty, have acquired some knowledge of the mystery—which should have been no mystery at all—and late teaching, however sound and wise, but gives an added and inviting direction to the subject suddenly made to assume a new and startling importance. It arouses curiosity, and ...
— Every Girl's Book • George F. Butler
... authorized, the general use of torture. They protected all persons of illustrious or honorable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors of the liberal arts, soldiers and their families, municipal officers, and their posterity to the third generation, and all children under the age of puberty. But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason, which included every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from a hostile intention towards the prince or republic, all privileges were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... in favour of bathing, that some fish are believed to continue to a great age, and continually to enlarge in size, as they advance in life; and that long after their state of puberty. I have seen perch full of spawn, which were less than two inches long; and it is known, that they will grow to six or eight times that size; it is said, that the whales, which have been caught of late years, are much less in size than those, which were caught, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... life of the boy or girl, the possibilities for stuttering or stammering to secure a firm hold on their muscular and nervous system are very great. Next to the age of second dentition, children at the age of puberty are most susceptible ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... within a few days after their birth; and from the moment they are betrothed the parents cease to have any control over the future settlement of their child. Should the first husband die before the girl has attained the years of puberty she then belongs to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... of puberty, with a constitution extremely ardent, without knowing or even wishing for any other gratification of the passions than what Miss Lambercier had innocently given me an idea of; and when I became a man, that childish taste, instead of vanishing, only associated ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... to exist as a tie is unnatural and tends to be harmful. At a certain stage in the development of the child the physical tie with the parent is severed, and the umbilical cord cut. At a later stage in development, when puberty is attained and adolescence is feeling its way towards a complete adult maturity, the spiritual tie must be severed. It is absolutely essential that the young spirit should begin to essay its own wings. If its energy is not equal to this adventure, then it is the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... seized by orders from her husband, and thrown into confinement. Thus, Europe saw with astonishment the best and most indulgent of parents at war with his whole family; three boys, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty, required a great monarch, in the full vigour of his age and height of his reputation, to dethrone himself in their favour; and several princes not ashamed to support them in ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... readily believe, that a vow of chastity given before puberty, neither holds nor binds, because he who made the vow was ignorant of what he was promising, since he had not yet felt the "thorn of the flesh." [2 Cor. 12:7] It is my pious opinion that such a vow is counted by God as foolish and void, and that the fathers ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... for cutting secretly by night [another's] crops acquired by tillage [shall be] in the case of an adult hanging and death [by sacrifice] to Ceres;[46] a person under the age of puberty (under 15 years of age) [shall] either be scourged at the discretion [of the magistrate] or make composition by [paying] double ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... approach the age of puberty, seem possessed with the idea that the unfrequent action of the bowels is a desirable habit. They do not associate with the duty a proper regard for health, but consider it as an inelegant and repugnant practice. The consequence is, that at this susceptible ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... whiteness and moisture; the lips are cornelians or rubies; the gums, a pomegranate flower; the dark foliage of the myrtle is synonymous with the black hair of the beloved, or with the first down on the cheeks of puberty. The down itself is called the izar, or head-stall of the bridle, and the curve of the izar is compared to the letters lam ( ) and nun ( ).[FN308] Ringlets trace on the cheek or neck the letter Waw ( ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... this form of disease occurs in both sexes; that it may exist before puberty, and at all ages between that and 40 or 50, at which time it seems to occur most frequently; but that no case occurs beyond the age of sixty. Hence that it is probably not a disease ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... be married before or after puberty, but the Golkars of Chanda insist on infant marriage, and fine the parents if an unmarried girl becomes adolescent. On the other hand, the Kaonra Ahirs of Mandla make a practice of not getting a girl married till the signs of puberty have appeared. It is said ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... adult life, is called the period of adolescence. The period of adolescence is ushered in by a series of physical and psychical changes which make a well defined initial period called puberty. The period of puberty is about two years in length, and in the average case among American boys, covers the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth years, and is completed when the youth can produce fertile semen capable ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... love-business among themselves it is a very different matter, so far as I can understand it. The fairy child is initiated at the age of puberty and is then competent to pair. He is not long in selecting his companion; nor does she often seem to refuse him, though mating is done by liking in all cases and has nothing whatever to do with the parents. It must be remembered, of course, that they are subject to the primitive law from which ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... be sort of self-eliminating?" Brion asked. "Anti-survival? People who die before puberty would find it a little difficult to pass on a mutation to their children. But let's not beat this one point to death—it's the totality of these people that I find so hard to accept. Any one thing might be explained away, but not ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... presence at this return to humane conditions which, not an hour after Mamma had refused to come up to my room and had sent the snubbing message that I was to go to sleep, raised me to the dignity of a grown-up person, brought me of a sudden to a sort of puberty of sorrow, to emancipation from tears. I ought then to have been happy; I was not. It struck me that my mother had just made a first concession which must have been painful to her, that it was a first step down from the ideal she had formed for me, and that for the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... cried out with delight, "Ah, look at that good omen!—now our journey will be sure to be prosperous." After fording the stream, we sat down to rest, and were visited by all the inhabitants, who were more naked than any people we had yet seen. All the maidens, even at the age of puberty, did not hesitate to stand boldly in front of us—for evil thoughts were not in their minds. From this we rose over a stony hill to the settlement of Vihembe, which, being the last on the Usui frontier, induced me to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... all intercourse between the married men and their wives is tabooed. They are required to sleep in the kasgi with the bachelors. Neither is any girl who has attained puberty (Wingiktoak) allowed near the bladders. ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... instrument made of a deal-board and human hair, announced that the rite is in process of performance, so that neither women nor children might approach. Tufts of moss are placed in the axilla and on the pubis, to represent puberty, and among some tribes the skin of the penis is divided to the scrotum with a stone knife, while others content themselves with simply making a circular incision, which removes the prepuce, after the Jewish manner, the excised portion ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... growth our own, or the various bodily functions which correspond to each stage of our lives; at one time comes the loss of childhood's teeth, at another, when our age is advancing and growing into robuster manhood, puberty and the last wisdom-tooth marks the end of our youth. "We have implanted in us the seeds of all ages, of all arts, and God our master brings forth ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... of puberty in boy or girl; this, like all emissions of semen, voluntary or involuntary, requires the Ghuzl or total ablution before prayers can be said, etc. See vol. v. 199, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Tahiti, where, as through all Polynesia, the girls have their fling at promiscuity from puberty to the late teens or early twenties, when an immense and increasing population compelled the thinking men to devise a remedy for the starvation which in times of drought or comparative failure of the feis or breadfruit or a scarcity of fish menaced the nation! That the cruel remedy ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the corresponding age. It thus seems quite clear that, as we should expect, these differences in the blood, which are certainly, as Dr. Havelock Ellis says, fundamental, make their appearance definitely at puberty—a fact which supports the view that fundamental differences of practical importance between the two sexes before that age are not to be found. Careful comparative study of the pulse of children is hitherto somewhat inconclusive, though it is well known that ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... what it amounts to, is carried to an extreme by parents who contract their daughters at an early age to the parents of some boy, and the children are regarded as man and wife, though of course each remains with the parents until the age of puberty is reached. Whether or not the whole payment is made in the beginning or only enough is paid to bind the bargain, I do not know, but I do know that cases of this kind may be met with frequently among ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... and many babies do not go on. Then the death rate sinks; at eleven and twelve it is very low, very low, indeed, only perhaps two or three in a thousand, in many countries. Nature is giving them a chance to see whether they will get ready for the second examination. Right after or during puberty the death rate rises. At eighteen, nineteen and twenty, it has gone up. That is Nature's second examination, to see whether that boy or girl is fit to send out into the world to take part in the great drama of life, and if she is conditioned at this time, then it means invalidism ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... though naked and helpless, individual. The Middle Ages were the period of childhood, in which the new creature, though immature, found itself able to live and grow independently. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with their marked characteristics of transition, may stand for puberty, and the centuries since the year 1500 for our prime. The metaphor works out sufficiently well to throw light on our particular problem: the legacy bequeathed to the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... prevailed throughout the southern states that the first born of each slave maiden should be the son or daughter of her master and the girls were forced into maternity at puberty. The mothers naturally resisted this terrible practice and Harriott was determined to prevent ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... among the Filipinos." In regard to circumcision he states that it "is a very ancient custom among the Philippine indios, and so generalized that at least seventy or eighty per cent of males in the Tagal country have undergone the operation." Those uncircumcised at the age of puberty are taunted by their fellows, and such are called "suput," a word formerly meaning "constricted" or "tight," but now being extended to mean "one who cannot easily gain entrance in sexual intercourse." The "operation has no religious significance," nor is it done ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... fathers. The infant daughters are often betrothed by the father to men who are grown, either for themselves or for their sons, for whom they are desirous of providing wives. The compensation to the father is usually made in horses or mules; and the girl remains with her parents till the age of puberty, which is thirteen or fourteen, when she is surrendered to her husband. At the same time the father often makes a present to the husband equal to what he had formerly received as the price of his daughter, though this return is optional with her parent. ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... of Central Brazil have no "private parts." In men the little girdle, or string, surrounding the lower part of the abdomen, hides nothing; it is worn after puberty, the penis being often raised and placed beneath it to lengthen the prepuce. The women also use a little strip of bast that goes down the groin and passes between the thighs. Among some tribes (Karibs, Tupis, Nu-Arwaks) a little, triangular, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... difference that, although everyone becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and complete organism, everyone does not become equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate personality. The feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not always developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the lucky in life, for they ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... rudimentary in the other, but that their development is connected with the functional maturity and activity of the gonads. There is usually an early immature period of life in which the male and female are similar, and then at the time of puberty the somatic sexual characters of either sex, generally most marked in the male, develop. In some cases, where the activity of the gonads is limited to a particular season of the year, the sexual characters or organs are developed at this season, and ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... Whoever can do more than his wishes demand has strength to spare; he is strong indeed. Of this, the third stage of childhood, I have now to speak. I still call it childhood for want of a better term to express the idea; for this age, not yet that of puberty, ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of the "baser sort," who yielded without difficulty to the solicitations of the sailors. "Some of them," says he, "who came on board for this purpose, seemed not to be above nine or ten years old, and had not the least marks of puberty. So early an acquaintance with the world seems to argue an uncommon degree of voluptuousness, and cannot fail of affecting the nation in general. The effect, which was immediately obvious to me, was the low stature ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... is very common for a few years after puberty, shows a bad condition of the blood. Even during the changes that occur at puberty no disease will manifest in healthy boys and girls. About this time the young people eat excessively, the result being indigestion and impure ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... is represented as having scarcely attained the age of puberty. He is naked, and his attitude has some affinity to that of Mercury. However, his countenance seems to be impressed with that cast of melancholy, by which all his portraits are distinguished: Hence has been applied to him that verse of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... equal to any of the former kings both in the arts of war and peace, and in renown. His sons were now nigh the age of puberty; for which reason Tarquin was more urgent that the assembly for the election of a king should be held as soon as possible. The assembly having been proclaimed, he sent the boys out of the way to hunt just before the time of the meeting. He is said to have been the first ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... of the human race give birth to children from puberty to sterility. She may give birth a dozen times, but nature finally calls a halt, and the whole system of life sustaining nerves of the womb which are in the fascia, with blood in great abundance to supply foetal life, ceases to go farther with the processes of ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... protected all persons of illustrious or honorable rank, bishops and their presbyters, professors of the liberal arts, soldiers and their families, municipal officers, and their posterity to the third generation, and all children under the age of puberty. [165] But a fatal maxim was introduced into the new jurisprudence of the empire, that in the case of treason, which included every offence that the subtlety of lawyers could derive from a hostile ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... unfit is duly initiated; whereas, with us, the higher education is offered to some who are unfit, whilst many who are fit never have the luck to get it. The initiation-custom is intended to tide the boys over the difficult time of puberty, and turn them into responsible men. The whole of the adult males assist in the ceremonies. Special men, however, are told off to tutor the youth—a lengthy business, since it entails a retirement, perhaps for six months, into the bush with ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... constituted in general a valid title. When a Roman died, his heirs succeeded to all his property, by hereditary right. If he left no will, his estate devolved upon his relations in a certain order prescribed by law. The power of making a testament only belonged to citizens above puberty. Children under the paternal power could not make a will. Males above fourteen, and females above twelve, when not under power, could make wills without the authority of their guardian; but pupils, lunatics, prisoners of war, criminals, and various ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of marriage,—an artificial condition largely determined by social customs, by modern educational systems, and by standards of living. While society has set forward, generation after generation, the age at which marriage seems feasible, the age of puberty has remained virtually the same. This unnatural condition—as artificial as the clothes we wear—is a phase of the emergency which should be considered by those who condemn as unnatural and forced the education of adolescent boys and girls in sexual hygiene and morals. ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... Girls at Puberty in Africa, pp. 22-32.—Girls at puberty forbidden to touch the ground and see the sun, 22; seclusion of girls at puberty among the Zulus and kindred tribes, 22; among the A-Kamba of British East Africa, 23; among the Baganda of Central Africa, 23 sq.; among the tribes ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... with the mother-right, after it had ceased to be a ruling social principle, stood certain customs, which modern writers, ignorant of their meaning, designate as "prostitution." In Babylon, it was a religious duty with the maid, who had reached puberty, to appear once in the temple of Mylitta in order to offer her maidenhood as a sacrifice, by surrendering herself to some man. Similarly happened in the Serapeum of Memphis; in Armenia, in honor of the goddess Anaitis; in Cyprus; in Tyrus and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... philosophers who read Bacon, as well as by the peasants who read nothing at all. "In Cornwall, when a child is born in the interval between an old moon and the first appearance of a new one, it is said that it will never live to reach the age of puberty. Hence the saying, 'no moon, no man.' In the same county, too, when a boy is born in the wane of the moon, it is believed that the next birth will be a girl, and vice versa; and it is also commonly said that when a birth takes place on the 'growing of ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... white traders lived, when our informant was a child, and returned when he had become a boy of about ten years. He went again, and returned when it was time to knock out his son's teeth. As that takes place at the age of puberty, he must have spent at least five years in each journey. He added that many who went there never returned, because they liked that country better than this. They had even forsaken their wives and children; and children ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... young boys of a certain desert tribe, and for eight hours of every day, until their puberty, confined them ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... is of essential significance and must not be undervalued. It has been much studied and the notion has been reached that children mainly (in particular during the period of puberty), and idiotic and weak persons, suffer much from home-sickness, and try to combat the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of polish from foreign travel. Milton alludes almost scornfully to Comenius in his preface to Hartlib, but his tract is nevertheless imbued with the Moravian's principles. His aim, like Comenius's, is to provide for the instruction of all, "before the years of puberty, in all things belonging to the present and future life." His view is as strictly utilitarian as Comenius's. "Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known." Of the study of language as intellectual discipline he says nothing, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... of this kind occurred in the case of a young man, the son of an opulent family. He had arrived at puberty, but from the early age of ten had been accustomed to indulge in indecent familiarities with young girls, who had gratified him by lascivious manipulations; the consequence was an entire loss of the erectile power. Travelling being recommended, he proceeded to France, where he ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... all their lives have been familiar with the mystery of birth, who at puberty have been instructed in the delicacy of the sexual organs and processes and in the care they must exercise to bring them to normal development, are now ready to be taught the vital necessity of subordinating the animal to the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... to act as a stimulant to the growth of bone and the soft supporting and connecting tissues like tendons and ligaments comes into play. If the overaction or excess of secretion begins in childhood or adolescence, that is, before puberty, there results a great elongation of the bones, so that a giant is the consequence. Now giants have always appealed to the imagination of the little man, and have had all kinds of wonderful abilities ascribed to them by him. The giants and ogres of folk-lore and fairy tales ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... We can readily imagine African or American tribes who were accustomed to revere bulls, rams, snakes, and so forth, ascribing the heads of all their various animal patrons to the deity of their confederation. We can easily see how such races as practise the savage rites of puberty should attribute to the first being the special organs of Phanes. But on the Neo-Platonic hypothesis that Orpheus was a seer of Neo-Platonic opinions, we do not see why he should have veiled his ideas under so savage an allegory. This part of the Orphic ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... in lawful wedlock when they are united according to law, the man having reached years of puberty, and the woman being of a marriageable age, whether they be independent or dependent: provided that, in the latter case, they must have the consent of the parents in whose power they respectively are, the necessity of which, and even of its being given before ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... a rule the boy remains at school for a year or two at least under strict discipline. At Rome it meant, on the contrary, that he was "of age," and in the eye of the law a man, capable of looking after his own education and of holding property. This was a survival from the time when at the age of puberty the boy, as among all primitive peoples, was solemnly received into the body of citizens and warriors; and the solemnity of the Roman ceremony fully attests this. After a sacrifice in the house, and the dedication ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... his day unique for beauty and loveliness, nor in his time was there his peer for comeliness and seemlihead amongst women or amongst men. Now when he had attained the age of ten and was approaching puberty, his sire betrothed him and wedded him to a fair wife who loved him with fondest love even after marriage. There was also in Misr a Kazi al-'Askar, a Judge of the Army, who had a daughter singular for form and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... difficult problems of the educator are found in connection with changes which take place in the child at the age of adolescence or puberty. This age has never been so carefully and systematically studied as at the present time, and it is proving an unsuspected key for solving many puzzling problems of racial evolution as well as of individual development. Personally it is a time of tremendous stress,—physical, ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... boys and girls, prior to the age of puberty, are alike. The growth of the larynx, which in each is quite rapid up to the age of six years, then, according to all authorities with which the writer is conversant, ceases, and the vocal bands neither lengthen nor thicken, to any appreciable extent, before the time of change of ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... past, and needs to be isolated for that period. Earache and noises in the ear frequently accompany mumps, and rarely abscess of the ear and deafness result. The most common complication occurs in males past puberty, when, during recovery or a week or ten days later, one or both testicles become painful and swollen, and this continues for as long a time as the original mumps. Less often the breasts and sexual organs of females are ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... the larger kind to be found; they however find subsistence in the variety of edible roots which the country affords. They have the character of being honest, quiet, and well-disposed towards the whites. As soon as the young women attain the age of puberty, they paint their faces after a fashion which the young men understand without explanation. They also dig holes in the ground, which they inlay with grass or branches, as a proof of their industry; and when they are in a certain state they separate from ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... of life being shown by the greater or less distance of the line of life from the level line at the bottom. Infant life being very fragile, the line steadily rises till it reaches its highest point, between thirteen and fourteen. In both cases there is then a rapid fall, the age of puberty being a critical age. But from fifteen, when the female line begins to right itself, only showing by a gentle curve downwards the added risks of the child-bearing period in a woman's life, the male line, which ought, without these risks, to keep ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... palm-oil, and also in a similar manner wear the hair long, and in curls or ringlets, well stiffened with the above composition. The children of both sexes, or those who have not obtained the age of puberty, have the hair cut short, and are not permitted to use any artificial covering to the body. One trait is, perhaps, peculiar to the women of this country, and may be regarded by some as an indication of their good ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... surprise that I saw the natives of the east coast of New South Wales so nearly portrayed in those of the south-western extremity of New Holland. These do not, indeed, extract one of the upper front teeth at the age of puberty, as is generally practised at Port Jackson, nor do they make use of the womerah, or throwing stick; but their colour, the texture of the hair, and personal appearance are the same; their songs run in the same cadence; the manner of painting themselves is similar; their belts ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... tattoo; the only people in the hills who tattoo are certain tribes of the Bhoi country which are really Mikir. These tattoo females on the forehead when they attain the age of puberty, a straight horizontal line being drawn from the parting of the hair down the forehead and nose. The line is one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch broad. The Lynngams occasionally tattoo a ring ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... and girl, before reaching the age of puberty should have a knowledge of sex, and every man and woman before the marriageable age should be informed on the subject of reproduction and the dangers of venereal diseases. Superficial information is not true education. On the other hand, it is a mistake to ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... himself. The epoch of entire liberty is a dangerous period, and calls upon him for all his discretion, that he may not make an ill use of that, which is in itself perhaps the first of sublunary blessings. The season of puberty also, and all the excitements from this source, "that flesh is heir to," demand the utmost vigilance and the strictest restraint. In a word, if we would counteract the innate rebelliousness of man, that indocility of mind which is at all times at hand ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... contributes to the happiness of childhood. As spring commences, the young leaves on the trees are similar in color and much the same in shape; and in the first years of life we all resemble one another and harmonize very well. But with puberty divergence begins; and, like the radii of a circle, we go ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... streets one meets many men and women with large goitres, a malady attributed to the bad quality of the water running in the town conduits, and drunk by the inhabitants in its natural state. It appears in men at the age of puberty, and in women when they marry." (Proc. R. G. S. 2 ser. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... manner I conceive the vessels of the jaws to produce those of the teeth; those of the fingers to produce the nails; those of the skin to produce the hair; in the same manner as afterwards, about the age of puberty, the beard and other great changes in the form of the body and disposition of the mind are produced in consequence of new developments; for, if the animal is deprived of these developments, those changes do not take place. These changes I believe to be ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... appear when called, and render answers to such questions as the viewer should propose. It is remarkable that the sage himself did not pretend to see the spirit; but the task of viewer, or reader, was entrusted to a third party, a boy or girl usually under the years of puberty. Dr. Dee, an excellent mathematician, had a stone of this kind, and is said to have been imposed upon concerning the spirits attached to it, their actions and answers, by the report of one Kelly who acted as his viewer. The unfortunate ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... observed in the natives of the islands in Torres' Strait, nor at Keppel, Hervey's, or Glass-house Bays, on the East Coast; yet at Port Jackson, further south, it is the custom for the boys, on arriving at the age of puberty, to have one of the upper front teeth knocked out, but no more; nor are the girls subjected to the same operation. At Twofold Bay, still further south, no such custom prevails, nor did I observe it ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... the age of puberty. His stature, however, was rather tall for his age, but exquisitely moulded and proportioned. Very fair, his somewhat round cheeks were tinted with a rich but delicate glow, like the rose of twilight, and lighted by dimples ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... and generally are forced by the parents to marry before the age of puberty, but the bridegroom, or his father or elder, has to purchase the bride at a price mutually agreed upon by the relations. These people live in cabins on posts or trees 60 to 70 feet from the ground, and defend themselves from the attacks of their traditional enemies, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... nearly naked, having merely a loin-cloth of some woven stuff or an animal's skin thrown round their hips. Their heads were either shaven, or adorned with tufts of hair stiffened with gum. The children of both sexes wore no clothes until the age of puberty; the women wrapped themselves in a rude garment or in a covering of linen, and carried their children on the hip or in a basket of esparto grass on the back, supported by a leather band which passed across the forehead. One characteristic of all these tribes was their love of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... are baffled when we talk about the beginning of anything in nature or in our own lives! In our experience there must be a first, but when did manhood begin; when did puberty, when did old age, begin? When did each stage of our mental growth begin? When or where did the English language begin, or the French, or the German? Was there a first English word spoken? From the first animal sound, if we can conceive of such, up to the human speech of to-day, there is ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... observations in children of from 3 to 15 years of age, and found there was a gradual increase in the systolic blood pressure from 3 to 10 years, and a more rapid rise from 10 to 14, with a rapid elevation during the fourteenth year, or the age of puberty. The systolic pressure varied from 91 mm. in the fourth year to 105.5 in the fourteenth year, while the diastolic pressure remained almost at a uniform level. The pressure pulse, therefore, increased progressively with the increase of ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... after puberty that sexual perversion becomes manifest, it is clear that much cannot be expected ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... economies; but neither boys nor girls discover, in the world into which they are growing up, any truly helpful ideas of what it is comely to be and to think. Lingering peasant notions of personal fitness and of integrity keep them from going viciously wrong, so that when they come to puberty their perplexed spirits are not quite without guidance; yet, after all, the peasant conditions are gone, and seeing that the new wage-earning conditions do not, of themselves, suggest worthy ideas of personal bearing, the children's faculties for that sort of thing ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... paternal uncles, seven cousins, and their paternal grandfather, were all similarly affected by a skin-disease, called pityriasis versicolor; "the disease, strictly limited to the males of the family (though transmitted through the females), usually appeared at puberty, and disappeared at about the age of forty or forty-five years." The second case is that of four brothers, who when about twelve years old suffered almost every week from severe headaches, which were relieved only by a recumbent position in a dark ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... out of the bath which was in the house; for she was scented with essences and reek of aromatic woods, and her face shone like a circle of the moon on the fourteenth night. She began to sport with me, and I with her. Now I had just reached the age of puberty; so my prickle stood at point, as it were a huge key. Then she threw me on my back and, mounting astraddle on my breast, fell a wriggling and a bucking upon me till she had uncovered my yard. When she saw it standing with head erect, she hent it in hand and began rubbing it upon the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... followed by a multitude of symptoms which cannot be distinguished from syphilis, viz., characteristic ulcers and eczematous eruptions, swellings of the axillary and other lymphatic glands, atrophy of the mammary glands in the breasts of women and of girls above the age of puberty, etc. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... is the period when childhood passes from immaturity of the sexual functions to maturity. Woman attains this state a year or two sooner than man. In the hotter climates the period of puberty is from twelve to fifteen years of age, while in cold climates, such as Russia, the United States, and Canada, puberty is frequently ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... men of Sodom, both old and young, flock to Lot's house? Is it likely that every male in the city, past the age of puberty, should burn with unnatural lust at one and the same time? Did they suppose that all of them could abuse the two strangers? The story is as silly ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... seduced from his alliance, and in which proposals had been agreed to for the marriage of the prince of Spain with the daughter of France. Charles, during the lifetime of the late king, had been affianced to Mary, Henry's younger sister; and as the prince now approached the age of puberty, the king had expected the immediate completion of the marriage, and the honorable settlement of a sister for whom he had entertained a tender affection. Such a complication, therefore, of injuries gave him the highest displeasure, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... The etheric sheath falls away at that period, and then the "birth" of the etheric body occurs. But man is still surrounded by an astral sheath, which falls away between its twelfth and sixteenth year (at the time of puberty). This is the "birth" of the astral body; and at a still later period the real ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... it was common for the writers of that time, as well as Shakespeare's Jaques, to divide the life of Man into seven ages, viz. Infancy, Childhood, Puberty, Youth, Manhood, Old Age, and Decrepitude; "which last, (says Denores) in some sort answers to Infancy," or, as Shakespeare expresses ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... the critical age between childhood and puberty, were in a condition to be readily worked upon; it is the age when the nervous system is disorganized, the moral sense unformed, and the imagination ignorant and unbridled. Many children are liars and deceivers, and self-deceivers, then, who afterward develop ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... such peril might be apprehended, vigilant inspectors are stationed with telegraphic communications to the hall in which chosen sages take it by turns to hold perpetual sittings. These inspectors are always selected from the elder boys approaching the age of puberty, and on the principle that at that age observation is more acute and the physical forces more alert than at any other. The second service of danger, less grave, is in the destruction of all creatures ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... judges, and then flog him." "He returned to his bad habits?" "He is to be judged before twenty-three judges, but he is not to be stoned till the three first (judges) are present, as is said, 'this our son' who was flogged before you." "He ran away before his judgment was finished, and afterward came to puberty?" "He is free." "But if he ran away after the decision and then came to puberty?" ...
— Hebrew Literature
... and girls arrive at the perfect age of puberty, they visit each other familiarly, and are suffered so to do. The girls, sensible that they will be no longer mistresses of their heart, when once they are married, know how to dispose of it to advantage, and form their wardrobe by the sale of their favours; for there, as well as in other countries, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... a lance" is a knightly & sumptuous phrase, & I honor it for its hoary age & for the faithful service it has done in the prize-composition of the school-girl, but I have ceased from employing it since I got my puberty, & must solemnly object to fathering it here. And, besides, it makes me hint that I have broken one of those things before in honor of the Maid, an intimation not justified by the facts. I did not break any lances or ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... at the age of puberty, when male nature asserts itself in the most timid, and finds means of getting its legitimate pleasure with women. I did, and then my recollection of things became more perfect, not only as to the consummations, but of what ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... the royal son of Nahusha sported like a celestial for many years in joy and bliss. And when her season came, the fair Devayani conceived. And she brought forth as her first child a fine boy. And when a thousand years had passed away, Vrishaparvan's daughter Sarmishtha having attained to puberty saw that her season had come. She became anxious and said to herself, 'My season hath arrived. But I have not yet chosen a husband. O, what hath happened, what should I do? How am I to obtain the fruition of my wishes? Devayani hath become mother. My youth is doomed to pass away in vain. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... subject, by meeting and imparting suggestions, make all the ideas of each the common stock of all. Hyperboreans have a mental disease which renders them liable to suggestion. The women are afflicted by hysteria before puberty. Later they show the phenomena of "possession,"—dancing and singing,—and still ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... on their mothers' backs or laid sprawling upon the ground for the first two years [26]: they are circumcised at the age of seven or eight, provided with a small spear, and allowed to run about naked till the age of puberty. They learn by conversation, not books, eat as much as they can beg, borrow and steal, and grow up healthy, strong, and well ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... privileged class? In the ruder communities the power was strictly personal. It was revealed to its possessor by the character of the visions he perceived at the ordeal he passed through on arriving at puberty; and by the northern nations was said to be the manifestation of a more potent personal spirit than ordinary. It was not a faculty, but an inspiration; not an inborn strength, but a spiritual gift. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... starve to death. A girl may be married to inanimate objects as already seen, or to an old man or a relative without any intention that she shall live with him as a wife, but simply so that she may be married before reaching puberty. If she goes through the ceremony of marriage she is held to be married. Yet the motive for infant-marriage is held to be that a girl should begin to bear children as soon as she is physically capable of doing so, and such a marriage is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... time, in Persia, and long afterwards by various other nations, baptism, a rite performed at puberty, was connected only with the sexual obligations of the person receiving it, but in the age which we are considering it became especially a cleansing or regenerating process, and was the means by which the pious devotee became initiated ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... flow up the mountain masses, and ebb again when the September snows return. It is essential to the modern ideal of life that the period of education and growth should be prolonged to as late a period as possible and puberty correspondingly retarded, and by wise regulation the statesmen of Utopia will constantly adjust and readjust regulations and taxation to diminish the proportion of children reared in hot and stimulating conditions. These high mountains ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... pregnant or menstrual condition. Among all primitive nations, including the ancient Hebrews, we find an elaborate code of rules in regard to the conduct and treatment of women on arriving at the age of puberty, during pregnancy and the menstrual periods, and at childbirth. Among the Cherokees the presence of a woman under any of these conditions, or even the presence of any one who has come from a house where such a woman resides, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... and indeed of all the tribes on the Upper Nile, go quite naked till near the age of puberty. A girl unmarried is distinguished by a sort of short leather apron, composed of a great number of leather thongs hanging like tassels from a leather belt fastened round the waist: and this is all her clothing, being no longer than that of our mother Eve after her fall. The married women, ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... other system would be possible under past and present conditions in India. In the case of infant marriages, the children concerned have, of course, neither knowledge of, nor special interest in, the matter. Even in cases where the future bride and bridegroom have attained puberty, no sentiment is ever allowed to enter, as a consideration, into the matter. The first question asked is whether the parties belong to the same caste and are connected by family ties. If so, the marriage may be a suitable one. It is strange that the children of brothers ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... singing-lessons begin? Some say the earlier the better. Others hold that, under no circumstances, should a boy or girl be taught to sing before the age of puberty, before the voice has mutated. Those who believe that singing can be taught in childhood and safely continued even during the critical period of mutation, point out that the muscles of the voice-producing organs are most flexible and adapt themselves most easily to the task in ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... quite young, the chimpanzee is either nervous or hysterical. After six years of age it is irritable and difficult to manage. After seven years of age (puberty) it is rough, domineering and dangerous. The male is given to shouting, yelling, shrieking and roaring, and when quite angry rages like a demon. I know of no wild animal that is more dangerous per pound than a male chimpanzee over eight years of age. When young ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday |
