"Great-grandmother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me that, during the Revolution, his great-grandmother, on the mother's side, who then occupied this house and whose husband was guillotined, remained hidden in that recess for thirteen months. At that time the curtain was covered with woodwork similar ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... certain black cherries, hard as marbles, sour as sloes. Sarah held that sugar was the only orthodox condiment to be used in that process; mademoiselle maintained—and proved it by the practice and experience of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother—that treacle, "melasse," was infinitely preferable. She had committed an imprudence in leaving Sarah in charge of the preserving-pan, for her want of sympathy in the nature of its contents had induced a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... with, it was exceedingly short, and well done. The table was decorated with that flower which some people call Johnny jump-up, and some heartsease, and of which all that I can state positively is that it is the great-grandmother of the pansy family. We had some tag-ends of Moet and Chandon '84 to drink and a bottle of the old Chartreuse. In the second place, it was the last time I was ever to sit at meat under John Fulton's roof. The dinner had psychological peculiarities. I was in love with my hostess; she ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... n't thought of that frolic this forty years. Poor, dear, giddy Sally Pomroy, and she 's a great-grandmother now!" cried the old lady, after reading one of the notes, and clearing the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... do much for Tommy this morning," said the doctor when she had finished, "for I'm only here between trains. But I'll tell you what you might do. You might pack Tommy and all the bears into a trunk and visit your great-grandmother. Then ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... attended his father in his expedition to Syria. After his return, he lived first with his mother, and, when she was banished, with his great-grandmother, Livia Augusta, in praise of whom, after her decease, though then only a boy, he pronounced a funeral oration in the Rostra. He was then transferred to the family of his grandmother, Antonia, and afterwards, in the twentieth ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... a little girl, Virginia," remarked Aunt Jane, with the air of immense age and wisdom which she occasionally assumed, "my grandmother—your great-grandmother, of course, my love—would never allow me to name my dolls a second time. She did not approve of changeableness. And I am sure it must be partly due to your great-grandmother's teaching that I always know my own mind directly ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... bonny, wee place!" said Elspeth. "Did you never hear the old folks tell that your great-grandmother, that was among the persecuted, loved it? When your father was a laddie they often used to sit here, the two of them. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... all their pride, their energy, their puritanical, conservative, and aristocratic spirit, and the moment she appeared, all hopes were centered in her. Although she was a sort of feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life resembled her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless maligns her for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca. The fact that Messalina, even with her implacable hatred, failed to bring about her downfall under the Lex de adulteriis, proves the unreliability of ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... made for my great-great-grandmother, when she was a little girl, and I value it exceedingly. Unfortunately the last two or three years worms have got into the wood, and have eaten it so it is ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... totems so general among the tribes were said to have descended to them from their great-grandmother's clan, and the legend was often quoted in support of our close friendship with the animal people. I have sometimes wondered why the scientific doctrine of man's descent has not in the same way apparently increased the white man's respect ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... which were taken from Arlington, about which you inquire, Mrs. Lee is indebted to our old friend Captain James May for the order from the present administration forbidding their return. They were valuable to her as having belonged to her great-grandmother (Mrs. General Washington), and having been bequeathed to her by her father. But as the country desires them, she must give them up. I hope their presence at the capital will keep in the remembrance of all Americans the ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... Great-grandmother. Sir Archy M'Sarcasm insisted on fighting Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan on a point of ancestry. The Scotchman said that the Irish are a colony from Scotland, "an ootcast, a mere ootcast." The Irishman retorted by saying that "one Mac Fergus O'Brallaghan went from Carrickfergus, and peopled all ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... so soundly, you shall do some hard work to-day," said the giant. "I will spare you your head if you will clean out my stables. They contain five hundred horses and they have not been cleaned for seven hundred years. I am anxious to find my great-grandmother's slumber-pin which was lost somewhere in these stables. The poor old soul never slept a wink after losing it, so she died for want of sleep. I want the slumber-pin for my own use, as I am a ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... "Your great-grandmother made it," said the chief. "Wear it on your first journey into the larger world than this island, and do nothing in all your life that would make her regret, were she alive, to see it ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... it father!" exclaimed one of the twins. "She was my great-grandmother—and George's too; wasn't she, father! You never saw her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn't you, Sis! Sis has seen her most a hundred times. She was awful deef—she's dead, now. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... flexibility in all American kindness, which is never sufficiently stodgy to be called good nature. The Englishman does sometimes wonder whether if he had been a Russian, his hosts would not have remembered remote Russian aunts and uncles and disinterred a Muscovite great-grandmother; or whether if he had come from Iceland, they would not have known as much about Icelandic sagas and been as sympathetic about the absence of Icelandic snakes. But with a fair review of the proportions of the case he will dismiss ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... complexion, your talents, capabilities, tendencies, your likes and dislikes, your faults as well as your virtues are repetitions of those who preceded you in this living network of existence of which you form a part. If you are not like father or mother you may be like grandfather or great-grandmother. If you do not find yourself repeating the characteristics or personality of any one ancestor, you may find yourself a composite photograph of several. And even if you cannot trace in yourself a likeness to any family ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... no other playmates than a decrepit old man and a kitten, and no better atmosphere within- doors than the odor of decayed apothecary's stuff, nor gayer neighborhood than that of the adjacent burial-ground, where all her relatives, from her great-grandmother downward, lay calling to her, "Pansie, Pansie, it is bedtime!" even in the prime of the summer morning. For those dead women- folk, especially her mother and the whole row of maiden aunts and grand- aunts, could not but be anxious about the child, knowing that little Pansie ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the character of her great-grandmother Marie Thrse, or that of her great-aunt Marie Antoinette. She rather resembled the wife of Louis XIV. or that of Louis XV. She would have led a calm, modest, harmless life, like those two queens, if her fate had not placed her amid unforeseen and terrible events, the shock of which she could not ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... let the tears fall. She came from a brave race. Her great-grandfather had fought in the Revolution; his sword and regimentals were packed in the fine carved chest in the best room. Over the kitchen shelf hung an old musket with which her great-grandmother, guarding her home and children, had shot an Indian. In a little closet beside the chimney was an old pewter dish full of homemade Revolutionary bullets, which Submit and her brothers had for playthings. A little girl who played with Revolutionary bullets ought ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... it, and a narrow red ribbon was shot through the collar. Her hat was a pretty white straw, with red artificial flowers upon it. She wore at her throat a medallion brooch: one of the two heirlooms of the Lavilette family. It had belonged to the great-grandmother of Monsieur Louis Lavilette, and was the one security that this ambitious family did not spring up, like a mushroom, in one night. It had always touched Christine's imagination as a child. Some native instinct in, her made her prize it beyond everything ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "cosy" to cover the hot teapot or coffee pot. This "cosy" is made of quilted cotton; and looks like the quilted hood that your great-grandmother used to have. This keeps the heat in the tea or coffee, so that you can have a second cup ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... and I'll show 'em an American garden if it does unhinge both mine and Dabney's backs and make Cockrell swear I'm crazy when he audits my accounts once every month. No, Madam, your own grandmother and great-grandmother, in conjunction with Goodloe's maternal ancestors, conceived and laid out the beginning of the great American garden, and we will combine to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... full length, sitting in his arm-chair, in a velvet cap and flowered robe, with a globe by him, to show the range of his commercial transactions, and letters with large red seals lying round, one directed conspicuously to The Honourable etc. etc. Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown satin, lace very fine, hands superlative; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, angular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Margravine with another blush. 'But my great-grandmother was nevertheless a Mandeville, the daughter of that Field-marshal Herbert who fought so well at Lutzen. His picture, painted when he was a young cuirassier, still hangs in my palace, and, indeed, it was the extreme likeness of the chevalier to that portrait, which ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... his grandfather and grandmother on his father's side were born in Ireland, of Irish-Scotch parents. To his paternal great-grandfather, Alexander MacDowell, the composer traced the Scottish element in his blood; his paternal great-grandmother, whose maiden name was Ann McMurran, was born near Belfast, Ireland. Their son, Alexander, born in Belfast, came to America early in the last century and settled in New York, where he married a countrywoman, Sarah Thompson, whom he met after his arrival in the New World. A son, Thomas (Edward's ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... you, Alec. Evil influences were set afloat by your father's crime that will undoubtedly work against you many a time, but you must remember all the good that lies on the other hand to counteract them. Even your great-great-grandmother's prayers must count for something in your behalf. I remember that Alexander Macklin planted an apple orchard after he was eighty years old. He never lived to gather even its first harvest, but you have been enjoying it all your life. He did a thousand unrecorded kindnesses that brought ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Arter Hawkins and my mother was named Frances. My grandmother on my mother's side was Malvina. I forget the name of my great-grandmother, but I believe it was Elizabeth. She was one hundred nine years old and I was twelve years old then. Her mind was just like a little sparrow floating in the air. That was my great-grandmother on my mother's side. My grandfather on my father's side was named Alec Young. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... gold lace, Pat having also surrounded the cuffs with a band of the same material. The inside was lined with white silk, and there were patches of white cloth on the collar. The waistcoat, which came down to my hips, was of flowered silk, made out of one of my great-grandmother's petticoats, which had long been laid by, and was now by unanimous consent devoted to my use. The breeches were very full, Pat observing that I should be after growing rapidly on the salt sea, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... great-grandmother's grizzly gray greenish cat into the middle of next month!" I says. "Tech me if you dare! I paid my money, and you jest ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... guests and point out the scene of the duel. Happy and illusory days of Romance now dead and gone! It is not conceivable that, generations hence, the head of a family will exhibit with pride the stained newspaper cuttings containing the unsavoury details of the divorce case of his great-great-grandmother. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... his basket-hilt sword. The action at the Tilt-yard you may be sure won the fair lady, who was a maid of honor, and the greatest beauty of her time; here she stands the next picture. You see, sir, my great-great-great-grandmother has on the new-fashioned petticoat, except that the modern is gathered at the waist. My grandmother appears as if she stood in a large drum, whereas, the ladies now walk as if they were in a go-cart. For all this lady was bred at court, she became an excellent country wife, she brought ten ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... raised by my great-grandfather, the fourth Duke of Gordon, in 1794, or perhaps more accurately, by my great-grandmother, Jean, the beautiful Duchess of Gordon. Duchess Jean, then in the height of her beauty, attended every market in the towns round Gordon Castle, and kissed every recruit who took the guinea she offered. The French Republic had declared war on Great Britain ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... have inherited some portion of the talent and spirit of her father, and to have transmitted them to her daughter. The misfortunes of Constance may be said to have commenced before her birth, and took their rise in the misconduct of one of her female ancestors. Her great-grandmother Matilda, the wife of Conan III., was distinguished by her beauty and imperious temper, and not less by her gallantries. Her husband, not thinking proper to repudiate her during his lifetime, contented ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... are introduced to Mrs. Ross's great-grandmother, Mrs. Taylor, who 'was called, by her intimate friends, "Madame Roland of Norwich," from her likeness to the portraits of the handsome and unfortunate Frenchwoman.' We hear of her darning her boy's grey worsted stockings while holding her own with Southey and Brougham, and dancing ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... late Dr. Mott, will readily recall the genial Doctor speaking of the first Boston he ever owned, named "Muggy Dee," and how intelligent he was, and what a number of tricks the Doctor taught him, will be interested to know that Lottie was his great-grandmother, and she was equally intelligent. We had several bitches by the celebrated Mr. Mullen's "Boxer" out of her, (this is going back to ancient history), one of which, "Brownie," was, to my fancy, the nicest dog we ever had. She, with the rest of the litter, had the ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... looked up at his eager face with a light of unwonted pleasure in her eyes. "Yes," said she, "my granddaughter would have been on her way to Whitfields. She has always been thought extremely like the picture: it is her great-grandmother. Good-by; pray let us see you at Fairford again;" and they said farewell once more, while Tom Burton promised something, half to himself, ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great-grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... did your great-grandmother. It's not laudanum. Did you ever smell vinegar in laudanum, or nutmeg? Give it here! God A'mighty, if I could reach you with my ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... her great-great-grandmother, but we have kept the Revolutionary period so warm lately that it seems near—was a Newport belle, who married an officer in the suite of Rochambeau what time the French defenders of liberty conquered the women of Rhode Island. After the war was over, our ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... where his viol hangs by his basket-hilt sword. The action at the tilt-yard you may be sure won the fair lady, who was a maid of honour, and the greatest beauty of her time; here she stands the next picture. You see, Sir, my great-great- great-grandmother has on the new-fashioned petticoat, except that the modern is gathered at the waist: my grandmother appears as if she stood in a large drum whereas the ladies now walk as if they were in a go- cart. For all this lady was bred at court, she became an excellent country-wife, she ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the mullioned window on his right. It was an enchanting Romney—a young woman in a black dress holding a spaniel in her arms. The picture breathed a distinction, a dignity beyond the reach of Romney's ordinary mood. It represented Sir Arthur's great-grandmother, on his father's side, a famous Irish beauty of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... like this?" she asked. "I'm proud of my mantilla, you know. It came to me from my great-grandmother, as all the best ones do come to Spanish girls; and I've two lovely white mantillas which I wear on great feast days when I want ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... His wife, my great-grandmother, was Marion Moor, and her family is said to have been in some way related to Hannah More, the pious and popular English authoress ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... extreme lowliness can well reply, or would probably be suffered to reply, to this Hindu profession of reverence. Accordingly the woman so honoured makes an offering of cakes and oil to the souls of her mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and great-grandmother-in-law, in gratitude for their giving her a good husband. And to go back for a moment to Ruskin's contrast of the two races, it was assuredly under the stress of some too rash reasoning that he judged ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... um h'm! ah ha! Well, she soon will. Child, you look very like a picture of your great-grandmother that hangs in my house in Edinburgh. A bonny lassie she must have ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... of course. This is the fourth church in which I have preached since coming to Brooklyn, and how much of the difficult work of church building that implies you can appreciate. This church had its mother and its grandmother, and its great-grandmother. I could not tell the story of disasters without telling the story of heroes and heroines, and around me in all these years have stood men and women of whom the world was not worthy. But for the most part the twenty-five years have been to me a great happiness. With all good ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... century a company was founded, under the auspices of the late Queen Christina of Spain (great-grandmother of the present King Alfonso XIII.), which was also an utter failure. I was told that the company had spacious offices established in Manila, whence occasionally the employees went up to the mines, situated near the Caraballo Mountain, as if they were going to a picnic. When they arrived there, all ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... great-grandmother, my dear," said Mrs. Julaper, lowering her eyes. "It was a dreadful pity it was spoiled. The boys in the pantry had it for a year there on the table for a tray, to wash the glasses on and the like. It was a shame; that was the prettiest picture ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... other, when Paul Vence introduced you? You were seated near a screen. You were looking at the miniatures. You said to me: 'This lady, painted by Siccardi, resembles Andre Chenier's mother.' I replied to you: 'She is my husband's great-grandmother. How did Andre Chenier's mother look?' And you said: 'There is a portrait of her: a ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... but the polished window, where lace and china and bits of old silver were displayed. It seemed to me that a person intelligent enough to combine odds and ends with such fetching effect ought to be the man to appreciate my great—or great great-grandmother's scarf. I didn't run to taxis when alone, and would as soon have got into one of those appalling motor buses as leap on to the back of a mad elephant that had berserkered out of the Zoo. Consequently, I had to walk. It was an untidy, badly dusted day, with a hot wind; and I realized, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have believed it. His father was a Bassett; his mother a Le Compton; his great-great-great-grandmother was a Rolfe: there is no cur's blood in him. After the first shock he will have found the spirit and dignity of a gentleman to sustain adversity: these men of fashion are like that; they are better ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... right, Roger. Miss Elvira is going to make me a lot out of great-grandmother's clothes she wore in Washington to dance with Lafayette," Patricia confided to Roger as they stood under the rose vine in the moonlight at the late hour of ten-thirty that evening after she had helped him transplant a lot of ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Corona. At any other time she would have been filled with dismay over the untoward fate of her green and yellow bowl, which had belonged to her great-grandmother and had stood on the hall table to hold flowers as long as she could remember. But just now her heart was so sore over the Quarrel that there was no room for other regrets. "Well, well, crying won't mend it. I suppose it is a judgment on me for staying abed so late. Go and sweep up ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... went on they did not need to live in poverty, for Boaz married Ruth at the end of the wheat harvest; and this Moabite girl became the great-grandmother of King David, the most famous king of Israel, and one of the ancestors of ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous
... suspicion of having robbed a bank in Texas, or murdered your great-grandmother in Tasmania. The point is, he'll keep you locked up till ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... air moved the leaf and a tiny drop of water, scarcely discernible to the naked eye rolled over the forests and plains, and before it passed to the other side of the leaf a great lake covered the spot. My great-great-grandmother has an acute conductor of sound that she has invented, so exquisite in mechanism as to reveal the voice of the tiniest insect. She put it to my ear, and the bellowing of the animals in battle, the chirp of the insects and the voices of the feathered mites ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time; and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... who in 1680 married, as his second wife, William Grant of Ardoch, with issue. She was maternal great great-grandmother of the Rev. Gustavus Aird, D.D., Creich, ex-Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly, and who has in his possession a copy of the marriage contract ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... "Oh, my great-grandmother! Don't try to kid the youngsters! What an idea! In your days, did actresses control their—how did you put it? Fiddlesticks! They didn't control ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... said Mrs. Nevis, "as may appear, if what you say is true. Colland McTavish, your great-grandfather, and The McTavish's great-grandfather, were brothers—and the poor bereft mother that put up this tablet was your great-great-grandmother, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... cried the marquis, "your scruples are absurd. You know full well that her great-grandfather led our great-grandmother astray. Now we are quits! I am delighted at the retaliation, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... was an unblushing plagiarism of his great-great-great-grandfather, that our love was nothing but the expansion of a line of Keats, and that our whole life was one hideous mockery of originality? 'Woman,' I felt inclined to shriek, 'be yourself, and not your great-grandmother. A man may not marry his great-grandmother. For God's sake let us all be ourselves, and not ghastly mimicries of our ancestors, or our neighbours. Let us shake ourselves free from this evil dream of imitation. Merciful Heaven, it is killing me!' But surely that was a quotation too, and, accidentally ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... who has lived continuously at Tuttletown since 1850, coming there at the age of ten, told me she received her education at the Tuttletown public school, as did her children and her children's children—she is now a great-grandmother! She said most positively that she never saw Bret Harte in her life, but had frequently seen "Dan de Quille" and Mark Twain. The latter, she said, made periodic visits to Tuttletown, and always stayed with "Jim" Gillis—called by Twain, ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... grandmother would be impossible to me, unless I had reason to believe her to have been a respectable person. Her relationship, unless I had had the advantage of her personal acquaintance, would weigh I fear, but little with me, and that of my great-grandmother nothing at all. The whole notion of ancestry—unless one's ancestors have been distinguished people—seems to me ridiculous. If they have not been distinguished people—folks, that is, of whom some record has been preserved—how ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... ruminative, fixed his dull brown eyes on the ground and thought it over. "I believe it's all my eye and Betty Martin," he said, at length, quoting a saying which had been used in his family as an expression of disbelief since the time of his great-grandmother. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... head of grandchildren. And I been grandmother to eleven head. I been great-grandmother to twelve head of great-grandchildren. I got one twenty-three and another nineteen or twenty. Her father's father was in the army. She is the oldest. Lotas Robinson, my granddaughter, has four children that are my great-grandchildren. Gayden Jenkins, my grandson, has two girls. I got ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told it to her daughter, my mother, who repeated it to her daughter, my own sister, that it was a very great art to talk eloquently and well, but an equally great one to know the right moment to stop. I therefore shall follow the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Jewess," said Emanuel. "An Oriental. She chooses by instinct the colors that her great-grandmother might have worn to grace the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... about his handsomeness. It was a bodily kind of beauty, of colour rather than of form; there was not much character in it. Had he lived, I daresay he would have become ugly like the rest of his family, none of whom, except his great-great-grandmother, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... lovely one with the amethyst in the centre and the ring of little pearls in a quaint old setting. It used to be her great-grandmother's. Mine wasn't much to lose, and I felt sure until to-day that it would turn up, but it hasn't, and now I'm afraid it was ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... of a great-grandmother grew much perplexed at the sight of a letter in an unfamiliar hand, and perhaps, too, as is the way of womankind, she studied the outside a long time before she opened it. As the months passed by, the handwriting ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... prevent someone from marrying his great-grandmother, I wonder what he is doing with his Tales of a Grandfather here,' thought Logan, but he only smiled, and said, 'Assuredly—my own opinion. I wish I could respect ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... prepared for your reception. Don Angelo, our priest, has been warned of your coming, and the boy who serves mass has been washed. You may imagine that a great festivity is expected. Giovanni has turned the castle inside out, and had a room hung entirely with tapestries of my great-grandmother's own working. He says that since the place is so old, its antiquity should be ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... lass in my life. I'm—I'm not a lady's man. They are all very nice to me, and all that; but I never feel completely comfortable unless it happens to be a woman who could be my great-grandmother." ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... few pounds more, but what of that? A large entrance-hall is really essential; and as it is easier to keep large rooms and wide staircases clean than small ones, your servants will have less to do and you will save the extra rent in that way. Now here is your great-grandmother's receipt for plum-pudding—two dozen eggs, three pounds raisins, one pound citron. Hilda, I particularly want to give you a hint about the spice for this pudding; ah, and I must speak also about this white soup—it ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... did he ever throw him an evil word; while we trembled lest for the smallest of his offences the tyrant would have him impaled, and more than once he himself expected it.' This straightforward account of matters inside the bagnio is the more valuable and interesting if we recollect that Cervantes' great-grandmother was a Saavedra, and that the soldier alluded to in the text was really himself. It is impossible to explain satisfactorily the sheathing of the tiger's claws on his account alone; did Cervantes exercise unconsciously ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... brought up throughout her girlhood in a home in which there is no adequate employment for her; trained to no tasks, or, at any rate, to tasks (like dusting the dining-room and counting the laundry) so petty, so ridiculously irrelevant that her great-grandmother did them in the intervals of her real work; going then into marriage with none of the discipline of habitual encounter with inescapable toil; taken by her husband not to share his struggle but his prosperity—that sort of New Woman they had, just as we have her in smaller number, it ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... confidence, than a private individual. His acuteness, however, showed itself also in savage moods as unsparingly, sarcastically, and maliciously destructive. Where did he get this disposition? Was it Brandenburg blood? Was it an inheritance from his great-grandmother, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and his grandmother, Queen Sophia Charlotte, those intellectual women with whom Leibniz had discussed the eternal harmony of the universe? The harsh school of his youth certainly had had something to do with it. His insight into the foibles of others ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Abraham, yet it was at the same time his reward for not having betrayed Abraham in Egypt, when he pretended to be the brother of Sarah.[187] But a greater reward still awaits him. The Messiah will be a descendant of his, for the Moabitess Ruth is the great-grandmother of David, and the Ammonitess Naamah is the mother of Rehoboam, and the Messiah is of the line of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... effect that when Joseph was a bare-legged little Hebrew, making mud-pies in the land of his forefathers, his daddy called him "Joe"; that the Bible refers to Egypt and Egyptians just "two hundred and eighty-nine times," and that "Egypt is our great-grandmother." ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... that there's something wrong with it, Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir's Nor Granny's, surely. Call up one of them. They have best right to be heard in this place." "You seem so partial to our great-grandmother (Nine times removed. Correct me if I err.) You will be likely to regard as sacred Anything she may say. But let me warn you, Folks in her day were given to plain speaking. You think you'd best tempt her at such a time?" "It rests with us always to cut her off." "Well then, it's Granny ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... and I believe it was, when anecdotes were many and writers were few. But things are changed now. Fifty years ago, if a man were seen running away with the pace of a lunatic, and you should sing out, 'Stop that fellow; he is running off with the shin-bone of my great-grandmother!' all the people in the street would have cried out in reply, 'Oh, nonsense! What should he want with your great-grandmother's shin-bone?' and that would have seemed reasonable. But now, to see how things are altered, any man of sense would reply, 'What should he want with my great-grandmother's ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... I came of a reading race, which has always loved literature in a way, and in spite of varying fortunes and many changes. From a letter of my great-grandmother's written to a stubborn daughter upon some unfilial behavior, like running away to be married, I suspect that she was fond of the high-colored fiction of her day, for she tells the wilful child that she has "planted a dagger in her mother's heart," and I should not be surprised if it were from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Charles Lamb could hold the balance in such an essay as Dream Children. Great-grandmother Field is just in her place, upright, graceful, and the best of dancers; and Alice's little right foot plays its involuntary movement in the nick of time; and when Uncle John died, the "children fell a-crying" at the narrative and asked about the mourning which they were wearing. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... everything and the table was a mass of soft pink roses that were shedding perfume and nodding at one another in their most society manner. There is no glimmer in the world like that which comes from really old polished silver and rosewood and mahogany, and one's great-great-grandmother's hand-woven linen feels like ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... she observed with fitting pride. "How many times my great-grandmother was she, Aunt Abigail? It's no wonder I'm a ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... wild and naked, with a poor old house; though, if I recollect right, there are two turrets which mark an old baron's residence. Lord Monboddo received us at his gate most courteously; pointed to the Douglas arms upon his house, and told us that his great-grandmother was of that family, 'In such houses,' said he, 'our ancestors lived, who were better men than we.' 'No, no, my lord,' said Dr Johnson. 'We are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser.' This was an assault upon one of Lord Monboddo's capital dogmas, and ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... caskets, but her shaking hands could not press the springs by which they were secured. Bertha lifted their lids and disclosed the diamonds and emeralds which had been the bridal jewels of Lady Katrine Nugent, Madeleine's great-great-grandmother; the jewels which Madeleine had been forced to part with to obtain herself subsistence; the jewels whose design she had imitated on the dress which first made her "fairy fingers" known to Vignon; the jewels Bertha had recognized when they were worn by Madame de Fleury; ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... than "that poor wretched mother of your grandfather's, my dear," or "that dreadful farming creature whom your grandfather married." I once asked my Aunt Dorothea—that is, Uncle Charles's wife—if this wretched great-grandmother of mine had been a very bad woman. But she said, "Oh no, not bad"—and I think she might have told me something more, but my Uncle Charles put in, in that commanding way he has, "Could not have been worse, my dear Dorothea—connected ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... were—every one of us that wasn't tied down to a bed. There was something promising in that announcement. Besides, the greenest of us were taken in by that chapel-cut business. Besides, it was free! College students are just like the rest of the world. They'd go to their great-grandmother's funeral if the admission was free. Our gang put on big crepe bows, just to be doing something, and marched into the stadium that afternoon with hats off. It was packed. Talk about promotion work. Rearick had pasted up bills until all Jonesville was red in the face. And the Faculty ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... composed. She composed it under great grief and excitement, just after her husband had died from the bite of a wolf, and just before the birth of her twin-daughters—her only children—one of whom was my great-grandmother." ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... How simple and tender! Here, when looking around me, honoured I felt for ever be her memory, not only for these touching sentiments, worthy of our race even before the fall, and when the image of God was not yet effaced; but also in respect that she who uttered these words was the great-grandmother of David, and as of the generation of Jesus. Here also I looked back to the city of Bethlehem with lingering regret, uttering a common-place farewell to the scene, but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... "Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when she was married," said Hepzibah to Phoebe. "She was a Davenport, of a good family. They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it. But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dear,' said my grandmother. 'They are certainly not like what you get now-a-days, if that is what you mean by queer. See here, Nelly, this is your great-grandmother's wedding dress—white Padusoy embroidered in gold—why, child, it would stand alone! And this salmon-coloured satin, with the pea-green slip—will the stuffs they dye now keep their colour like that a hundred ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... great superiority over Mrs Honour on several accounts. First, her birth was higher; for her great-grandmother by the mother's side was a cousin, not far removed, to an Irish peer. Secondly, her wages were greater. And lastly, she had been at London, and had of consequence seen more of the world. She had always behaved, therefore, to Mrs Honour with that reserve, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and philandering of monarchs, the second Charles; and for great-grandmother, the lovely and frail Louise Renee de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, the most seductive of the beautiful trio of women—the Duchesses of Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin—who spent their days in "open dalliance" with the "Merrie Monarch," and their nights at the basset-table, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... to make it not only their home, but his own. The young widow, after spending two years with her brother-in-law, forsook the world and retired to a convent, there to lay her burden of grief at the feet of her Lord. Her children she committed to the care of their great-grandmother, the Princess de Carignan; and Eugene was left to the solitude of a bachelor home, without one friendly voice to bid him welcome to ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... exactly), which had been discarded at the time we began housekeeping as too old-fashioned and peculiar. Of equal import was a disreputable-looking mahogany desk with brass handles and claw feet which had belonged to my great-grandmother before it was banished to the garret within a month after our wedding ceremony, on the plea that none of the drawers would work. They don't still, for that matter. A cumbersome, stately Dutch clock and a toast-rack of what Josephine ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... strolling troupe were here, there, and everywhere—from pillar to post. But I never lost sight of her, and I saw her grow up a pretty, slender, bright-eyed lass, well dressed, well fed, and happy—perfectly happy in her wandering life. Her great-grandmother—old Peter Dane's wife—was a gypsy, Mr. Walraven, and I dare say the wild blood broke out. She liked the life, and became the star of the little band—the queen of the troupe. I kept her in view even when she crossed the Atlantic last year, and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Then, with a feeling that it was better to acknowledge a poverty of which both her companions were cognizant than an ignorance of style, she said, with a slight kindling of the eye, "I decided on this dress from economical considerations, and the lace is some which my mother's great-grandmother brought from Holland.—I have reminded them, at least, that I had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... before stated, to their children as well to the latest day of her life, and the older she becomes the more she is reverenced as being nearer to heaven, dearer to the gods; and it is considered of much moment to any family to be able to boast a great-great-grandmother living. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Revolution; others supposed it to have been won by conducting the Mexican campaign in the columns of the Warrior, after the manner of modern editors; and a few ignorant souls believed he had been born with it in his mouth, instead of a silver spoon. As to the man himself, his great-great-grandmother was a Huguenot; his grandissimo-grandfather came over with Lafayette, and when he made affirmation on "my stars and garters," he was supposed to have reference to certain insignia of nobility, heirlooms in the family from the time of Charlemagne. He had not stature enough for tallness, nor bulk ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this generation! Ah, well! I must perforce content myself with that miniature of you as "Madam," in your lavender brocade, with the feathers in your powdered hair, and the row on row of pearls about your throat. Very stately and dignified you look there; and yet, Great-grandmother Dorris, I can see the spice of "innate depravity," as I doubt not your grave pastor would have called it, and catch a glimpse of the quick temper and warm heart in those bright eyes and that saucy ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... scare you," Nina admitted. "That's why I never showed you before." Her hair was softly falling into place again, and she was gazing curiously at her great-grandmother lying on ...
— The Putnam Tradition • Sonya Hess Dorman
... years of age he lived at Plassans with his mother, who had married a saddler named Anselme Thomas. Charles was a degenerate who reproduced at a distance of three generations his great-great-grandmother, Adelaide Fouque. He did not look more than twelve years old, and his intelligence was that of a child of five. There was in him a relaxation of tissues, due to degeneracy, and the slightest exertion produced hemorrhage. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field,[335-1] who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene—so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country—of the tragic incidents which they had ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... do," interrupted Peterkin; "but, pray, restrain your declarations at this time, and let's have supper, for I'm uncommonly hungry, I can tell you; and it's no joke to charge a whole herd of swine with their great-grandmother bristling like a giant porcupine ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... dwelling-house and plantation buildings. I have heard your great-great-grandfather laugh and tell how Williams once came to the house, and, with a sweeping bow and great assumption of courtesy, made your great-great-grandmother welcome to remain in his house. After the suit had been settled, Williams had occasion to come again to the house, feeling, no doubt, rather crestfallen. Mrs. Devereux met him at the door and, making him a sweeping curtsy, ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... strength. This is sometimes startling in the wilder effects, but it is always agreeable. These Moscow gypsy girls have a great name in their art, and it was round the shoulders of one of them—for aught I know it may have been Sarsha's great-grandmother—that Catalani threw the cashmere shawl which had been given to her by the Pope as "to the best singer in the world." "It is not mine by right," said the generous Italian; "it ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... Well, everything on this tray is at least a hundred years old: these cups, these spoons, this ewer, are all heirlooms; my great-grandmother left them to my grandmother, she to my mother, and my mother brought them with her from England to Switzerland, and left them to me; and, ever since I was a little girl, I have thought I should like to carry them back to England, whence ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Isabella who transformed the straggling Turkish town into one of the most prosperous cities of the Levant by making it their home. And to-day the Jewish women of Salonika, the older ones at least, wear precisely the same costume that their great-grandmother wore in Spain before the persecution—a symbol and a reminder of how the Israelites were hunted by the Christians before they found refuge in ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Bob's old granny isn't dirty, though she's extremely queer, like her house. People say she's a gipsy, but she's lived there so long that no one is sure where she comes from. She's as old as old! I shouldn't wonder if she were really Bob's great-grandmother.' ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... declared Mrs. Claiborne. "Chester Hunt's mother's great-grandmother was a niece of old Edmund Waller's, the English founder of the Waller family. ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... Samuel sitting opposite to his wife, and Miss Insull nearly against the wall (owing to the moving of the table), the baby rolled about on the hearthrug, which had been covered with a large soft woollen shawl, originally the property of his great-grandmother. He had no cares, no responsibilities. The shawl was so vast that he could not clearly distinguish objects beyond its confines. On it lay an indiarubber ball, an indiarubber doll, a rattle, and fan. He vaguely recollected all four items, with their respective properties. The fire also was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett |
