"Firstborn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... command to let the people of Israel go; telling him that if he disobeyed terrible plagues would come upon his land. Pharaoh hardened his heart against God, and refused to let the people go; so ten dreadful plagues were sent, the last of which was that the firstborn of every Egyptian should die, whether it were man or beast. But not a single Israelite was to suffer harm. This plague God said should come in the night; when an angel would pass through the land, destroying the ...
— Mother Stories from the Old Testament • Anonymous
... "Yet shall Sarah bear a son, though old in winters, and fate shall be fulfilled according to My word. I will bless Ishmael, thy firstborn, with My blessing as thou dost ask, that his days may be long in the land, and his race may multiply. This will I grant thee. So also will I prosper Isaac, thy younger son, who is not yet born, with every good and pleasant ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... of the Goths, whose firstborn son is sacrificed by Titus Andronicus, determines to be revenged. She succeeds in her determination. Titus and his daughter are mutilated. Two of the Andronici, his sons, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... to the sorrow she had known when her firstborn went from her, when the aching void came into her life and robbed it of every joy and every zest, till the waif was brought to her, the care of whom filled her life with happiness and content. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... for another infant, a child of pardon, the only sign which would assure them that at last they themselves had been forgiven. But all was in vain. The cold, hard mother was deaf to all their entreaties, and left them under the inexorable punishment of the death of their firstborn, whom she had taken and carried away, and whom she refused to restore ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... months, Her firstborn son (came forth) like a lamb. There was no bursting, nor rending, No injury, no hurt; Showing how wonderful he would be. Did not God give her the comfort? Had he not accepted her pure offering and sacrifice, So that thus easily she brought ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... a mystery about the precise respective ages of Vannozza's two eldest sons, and we fear that at this time of day it has become impossible to establish beyond reasonable doubt which was the firstborn; and this in spite of the documents discovered by Gregorovius and his assertion that they remove all doubt and enable him definitely to assert that Giovanni was born in 1474 and ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... I am proud of them all, living or dead—here or there. So I said, 'Well, Miss Harlow, John is not my firstborn. There was a lovely little girl, who went back to God before she was quite a year old. People said I ought to think it a great honor to give my first child to God, but it was a great grief to me. Soon after her ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with this oppressive thought, that my wife could not but notice my trouble. But how could I tell her of the spectral inverted commas that dodged every move of her dear head?—tell her that our own original firstborn, just beginning to talk as never baby talked, 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 ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... killed my son, Macumazahn?" he asked in a hollow voice, the tears running down his handsome face, for he had loved his firstborn. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Christ in Hebrews 1, 3, refers to him as the express image of God's substance. Again, in Colossians 1, 15 he says of Christ: "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." We must take these words for what they say—that all creatures, even angels and men, are ranked below Christ. This classification leaves room for God only: taking away the creature, only God remains. It is one and the same thing, then, to say that Christ is the firstborn of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... been pitch night to me. We never learn. I thought I'd got by heart each turn and twist Of all Jim's stupid cunning: but even he's Outwitted me. Six sons, and not one left; All gone in bitterness—firstborn to reckling: Peter, twelve-year since, that black Christmas Eve: And now Jim ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... whom I ever met as yet upon this accursed stage of fools, you shall crush my new-budding hope that there is something somewhere which will make me what I know that I ought to be, and can be—If you shall crush that, I say, by any misdoing of yours, you had better have been the murderer of my firstborn; with such a hate—a hate which Jews alone can feel—will I ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... personal knowledge. With what feelings he regarded such teachers we may learn not only from his own epistle (Sec. 7), but from the sayings recorded by Irenaeus, "O good God, for what times hast Thou kept me, I recognize the firstborn of Satan." He was eminently fitted, too, by his personal qualities to fulfil this function as a depositary of tradition.... Polycarp's mind was essentially unoriginative. It had no creative power. His Epistle is largely made up of quotations from the Evangelical and Apostolic writings, from ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... angry passions of his vast audience, and having alarmed their fears by this pretended scheme against their firstborn (an artifice which was indispensable to his purpose, because it met 30 beforehand every form of amendment to his proposal coming from the more moderate nobles, who would not otherwise have failed to insist upon trying the effect of bold addresses to the Empress before resorting to any desperate ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... chattels, seems based upon the fallacy, that whatever costs money is money; that whatever or whoever you pay money for, is an article of property, and the fact of your paying for it, proves it property. 1. The children of Israel were required to purchase their firstborn from under the obligations of the priesthood, Num. xviii. 15, 16; iii. 45-51; Ex. xiii. 13; xxxiv. 20. This custom still exists among the Jews, and the word buy is still used to describe the transaction. Does this prove that their firstborn were or are, held as property? They ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to the Duke and Duchess was Lady Victoria Alexandrina Violet, born in 1890. She was highly honoured at her christening, for Queen Victoria acted as sponsor person, and held the baby in her arms. There is at Welbeck an autograph letter from the Queen, congratulating the parents on their firstborn. The next was the heir to the Dukedom, William Arthur Henry, Marquis of Titchfield, born March 16th, 1893, and the third Lord Francis ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... was first printed in The Gem, 1829. The Gem was then edited by Thomas Hood, whose child—his firstborn—it was thatinspired the poem. Lamb sent the verses to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... called, had taken his medical degree, and, by the indulgence of his father, whose heart yearned sympathetically toward his firstborn, opportunity was afforded him to spend a year in Paris. Mrs. Meeker groaned over this unnecessary expense. When she saw that on this occasion she was not to have her own way, she insisted that the money her husband was wasting on Frank should be charged against his 'portion.' She never for a moment ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure forever, and his throne as the days ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... Intercourse of good Offices between those dearest Relations of human Life. The Father, according to the Opportunities which are offered to him, is throwing down Blessings on the Son, and the Son endeavouring to appear the worthy Offspring of such a Father. It is after this manner that Camillus and his firstborn dwell together. Camillus enjoys a pleasing and indolent old Age, in which Passion is subdued, and Reason exalted. He waits the Day of his Dissolution with a Resignation mixed with Delight, and the Son fears the Accession ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... as a mother would her firstborn, Ruby placed a coat under her head, and bade his comrades stand back and give her air. It was fortunate for him that one of the foremen, who understood what to do, came up at this moment, and ordered him to leave off chafing the girl's ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... John's instructions in his will. But perhaps the most supreme joy of all was when they could play with the baby Benedict together alone for half an hour before he went to bed. Then they were just as foolish and primitive as any other two young things with their firstborn. He was a very fine and forward baby and already expressed a spirit and will of his own, and it always gave Denzil the very strangest thrill when he seized and clung firmly to one of his fingers with his tiny, strong, chubby hand. ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... measure beat, As mix and part in amorous maze Those floating arms and bounding feet. But none of all the race of Cain, Save those whom he hath deigned to grace With yellow robe and sapphire chain, May pass beyond that outer space. For now within the painted hall The Firstborn keeps high festival. Before the glittering valves all night Their post the chosen captains hold. Above the portal's stately height The legend flames in lamps of gold: "In life united and in death "May Tirzah and Ahirad be, "The bravest he ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... never clearly ascertained: this was a point—one of a large number—that Mr. Moreen's manner never confided. What it emphatically did confide was that he was even more a man of the world than you might first make out. Ulick, the firstborn, was in visible training for the same profession—under the disadvantage as yet, however, of a buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustache with no pretensions to type. The girls had hair and figures and manners and small fat feet, but had never been out alone. As for ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... with careering curves her central goal, Pour forth her day and stud her evening stole, Heedless of count; their numbers still unknown, Unmeasured still their progress round her throne; For none of all her firstborn sons, endow'd With heavenly sapience and pretensions proud, No seraph bright, whose keen considering eye And sunbeam speed ascend from sky to sky, Has yet explored or counted all their spheres, Or fixt or found their past record of years. Nor can a ray from her remotest sun, Shot forth when ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Only the firstborn married. The younger brothers and sisters worked under him and for him. In the lonely farms of the mountains of the South, far from all neighbours and every woman, brothers and sisters lived together, the latter serving and in all ways belonging to the former; a way of life analogous to that in ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... to share your glory, Let the sons whom the South has bred Lie side by side on your battlefields With England's heroes dead. A nation is never a nation Worthy of pride or place Till the mothers have sent their firstborn To look death on the field ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... The firstborn, Fritz, with his closely cropped hair and swarthy complexion, took after his dead father, who had been a Holsteiner—a mariner by profession, who had sailed his ship from the Elbe some years before for the last time, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... down. For they had done more than kill his story. They had killed the spirit of Youth in him. There would be other battles, he knew, and perhaps other victories—but never again that fine, careless rapture of Youth! For they had killed his firstborn! ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... nervous condition—a sleep visited by dreams that mingled in a strange way with the impressions of the storm, and more than once made her heart stop, and start again at its own stopping. One of these fancies she never could forget—a dream about little Concha,—Conchita, her firstborn, who now slept far away in the old churchyard at Barcelona. She had tried to become resigned,—not to think. But the child would come back night after night, though the earth lay heavy upon her—night after night, through long ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... now at her best. She was like a fair young mother radiant with the joys attaching to the birth of her firstborn. The striking of the quarter on the church clock was borne to her on the light wind; she heard a rumble and caught a glimpse through the young foliage of the white panelled carriages of ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... shall dog his footsteps; Misery and ruin stand ready by his side: The limbs of his body[225] shall be gnawed, Devoured by the firstborn of death.[226] ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... crumbled soon to dust. Drinking and gambling, sharks that swallow whole, Homes, jewels, money, reason, body, soul. Alone, for weeks to hear none call my name, And happier alone; then baby came, My firstborn, precious boy, I lived for him For months; then his bright eyes grew dim, And where the reeds and grass grew rank and wild, We made a grave for Willie, darling child. Ah, well I ween the night we laid him there, I went to watch his grave; day had been fair, But eve came up with thunder's ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... firmly believed that sacrifices of children took place in all classes of society: 'The justices of the peace were seen familiarly conversing with the foul fiend, to whom one in Dumfries-shire actually offered up his firstborn child immediately after birth, stepping out with it in his arms to the staircase, where the devil stood ready, as it was suspected, to receive the innocent victim.'[624] In the later witch-trials the sacrifice of the child ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... high-necked, long-sleeved silk shirt and a blanket, all of which could be done in five minutes. As babies lie still most of the time the first six weeks, they need no dressing. I think the nurse was a full hour bathing and dressing my firstborn, who protested with a melancholy ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... firstborn son into my arms, I had no high thoughts. I trembled, indeed, but it was with fear lest I should ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the firstborn affections— Those winged seekers of the world within, That search about in all directions, Some bright thing for themselves to win— Through pathless woods, through home-bred fogs, Through stony plains, through treacherous bogs, Long, long, have followed faces ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... tropic-bird and big ruffled owl, Up rises the firstborn child of the pali. He climbs, he climbs, he climbs up aloft, Kaholo-ku'-iwa, the pali of Ha'i. 5 Accomplished now is the steep, The ladder-like series of steps. Malu-o is left far below. [Page 68] Passed ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... came to pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet: . . . "Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son." And Joseph "knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son; and he called His name Jesus" ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... holy light, offspring of Heaven, Firstborn Or of the Eternal, co-eternal beam, May I express thee Unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity—dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate! Or hear'st thou, rather, pure Eternal Stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... still lay on his couch, but could speak and be glad, he rejoiced indeed, for a sore in his heart was healed, when two fair babes were brought to him,—a boy who would be as another firstborn son, and a little maiden who would bear that name which had become dear and saintly in the peculiar calendar of ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... would have been terrible, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Herbert, so full of pity for Christopher that she was willing to give him anything short of her firstborn. She was really a ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the proportion of illegitimate births very high, since in Berlin it is 17 per cent., and in some towns very much higher, but ante-nuptial conceptions take place in nearly half the marriages, and sometimes in the majority. Thus in Berlin more than 40 per cent, of all legitimate firstborn children are conceived before marriage, while in some rural provinces (where the proportion of illegitimate births is lower) the percentage of marriages following ante-nuptial conceptions is much higher than in Berlin. The conditions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... memory and sink into the heart: "The angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." And Joseph is moved by what he thinks to be a mistake, and would correct it, so as to give the larger blessing to his firstborn. But Jacob refuses. "I know it, my son, I know it ... he also shall be great, but truly his younger brother shall ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is His brother; in his sufferings the Saviour of the world has shared, when the foxes had holes, and the birds of the air had nests, while the Son of God had not where to lay His head. He is the King of the poor, firstborn among many brethren; His tenderness is Almighty, and for the poor He has prepared deliverance, perhaps in this world, surely in the world to come—boundless deliverance, out of the treasures ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... The sad event was to take place in June. I didn't go. The latest was a cream-laid affair, from another quarter, on which I was requested in letters of gold to honour certain near and dear relatives with my presence at the christening of their firstborn. As the affair was to take place in December, and I received the pressing invitation at the end of January—I was again unable to be present at another interesting ceremony. I have also received several invitations to Terpsichorean revels. My R.S.V.P. has been curtly to the effect that "Mr. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... 1526, as he announced to his friend Ruhel, his 'dear Kate brought him, by the great mercy of God, a little Hans Luther,'—her firstborn. With joy and thankfulness, as he says in another letter, they now reaped the fruit and blessings of married life, whereof the Pope and his ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... in me? Oh again, oh again! to enjoy the freedom of air with the bird, and the glow of the sun with the lizard; to sport through the blooms of the earth, Nature's playmate and darling; to face, in the forest and desert, the pard and the lion,—Nature's bravest and fiercest,—her firstborn, the heir of her realm, with the rest of her children ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the most High God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? . . . Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? . . . Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression; the fruit of my body for the sin of ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... inhabitants distributed in Thibet, upon a surface of 1,200,000 square kilometres, the Buddhists were forced to adopt polyandry. Moreover, each family is bound to enter one of its members in a religious order. The firstborn is consecrated to a gonpa, which is inevitably found upon an elevation, at the entrance of every village. As soon as the child attains the age of eighteen years, he is entrusted to the caravans which pass Lhassa, where he remains from eight to fifteen years as ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... trusting mortal! Love has heaved its firstborn sigh; But from the pellucid portal Of ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... and rest on the surface of the hymenium. Each of the cells of the spore emits exteriorly one or several of these corpuscles, supported on very short slender pedicels, which remain after the corpuscles are detached from them. This latter circumstance evidences that new corpuscles succeed the firstborn one on each pedicel as long as there remains any plastic matter within the spore. The latter, in fact, in consequence of this labour of production, becomes gradually emptied, and yet preserves the generative pedicels ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... and quieten him!' Mr. Knight commanded. 'It's like him to begin making a noise just now. I'll take a look at Susan—and my firstborn.' ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... deferred his journey to the last moment, in order to stand godfather to Nancy's healthy firstborn. John Lambert—honest man and proud father—had honoured the event with a dinner, and very nearly wrecked his own domestic peace by sending out the invitations in his own hand and including Mr. and Mrs. Wright. For weeks after, Nancy shuddered to think what might ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... strong, and beautiful, as only children born of great love and under healthful conditions can be. This child was a girl, to Alessandro's delight; to Ramona's regret,—so far as a loving mother can feel regret connected with her firstborn. Ramona had wished for an Alessandro; but the disappointed wish faded out of her thoughts, hour by hour, as she gazed into her baby-girl's blue eyes,—eyes so blue that their color was the first thing noticed by each person ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to someone in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... glory of his manhood, and a vision of his weakness. She watched him breathlessly. He put the garment down on the table and smoothed it out gently. There was in his face the combined look of a man who sees the cradle and the coffin of his firstborn. ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... 'tis a bootless endeavour. As the flight of a bird of the air Is the flight of a joke—you will never See the same one again, you may swear. 'Twas my firstborn, and O how I prized it! My darling, my treasure, my own! This brain and none other devised it - And now ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... such the inward vocation to the Deacon now within a month of the Priesthood. Was it not an evident call from Him by whom the whole Church is governed and sanctified? And surely the noble old man, who forced himself not to withhold 'his son, his firstborn son,' received his crown from Him who said: 'With ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... embracing her; and she would look at Birdalone's hands and her feet and her arms, and stroke them and caress them; and she wondered at her body, as if she had been a young mother eaten up with the love of her firstborn. And as for Birdalone, she was as glad of her mother as might be; and yet in her heart she wondered if perchance one of the fellowship might stray that way, and be partaker in her joy of this newfound ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... you even his heritage," Falkenberg promised. "Make of him a Frenchman or an American, if you will. He is your own son. Take him. I give my firstborn for my country. You will not refuse what ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... later, with the view of serving as a new instrument for her father's ambition. As the pope was not satisfied with an empty triumph of vanity and display for his son, and as his war with the Orsini had failed to produce the anticipated results, he decided to increase the fortune of his firstborn by doing the very thing which he had accused Calixtus in his speech of doing for him, viz., alienating from the States of the Church the cities of Benevento, Terracino, and Pontecorvo to form, a duchy as an appanage to his son's house. Accordingly ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the past, relic of the past; megatherium^; Sanskrit. tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law. V. be old &c adj.; have had its day, have seen its day; become old &c adj.; age, fade, senesce. Adj. old, ancient, antique; of long standing, time-honored, venerable; elder, eldest; firstborn. prime; primitive, primeval, primigenous^; paleolontological, paleontologic, paleoanthropological, paleoanthropic^, paleolithic, primordial, primordinate^; aboriginal &c (beginning) 66; diluvian^, antediluvian; protohistoric^; prehistoric; antebellum, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Tarbox, as the division of the spoil was being made, "there is a young maiden whom we all know in the settlement, the firstborn here, and the only one alive of our countrymen and countrywomen who once dwelt in the land. She is dowerless and friendless, except her young brother and an old grandfather, who maybe sleeps in his grave by this time. I am ready to give half of my share, and I invite those among us who have no kith ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... my Father's heir, his firstborn, and the only delight of his heart. I am therefore come up against thee in mine own right, even to recover mine own inheritance out of thine hand (Heb ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; 5 to enrol himself with Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with child. 6 And it came to pass, while they were there, the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... eyes upon her firstborn, and Sir Burnham, who did, readily reconciled himself to the loss of such a daughter. The announcement which should have appeared joyfully under the press-heading "Births" was unobtrusively inserted under "Deaths," and Sir Burnham being fortunately ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... and the end of the corn-harvest, and the autumn feast the vintage and the bringing home the corn from the threshing-floor. With the feast of unleavened bread (Massoth) is conjoined, especially in D, the feast of the sacrifice of the male firstborn of cattle (Pesah). ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... was to her own daughter I have already said. There was somewhat of the tendency towards "spoiling," which is mostly inseparable from the adoration which a young mother, of the right sort, feels for her firstborn child, but she never made any attempt to avert or counteract my endeavours to prevent such spoiling. When little Bice had to be punished by solitary confinement for half an hour, she only watched anxiously for the expiration of ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... before the Lord, and bow myself before the Most High God? shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... of descent, the firstborn or eldest son was the heir of the father's estate and any other rights or privileges that went with that estate, unless for some cause there should be an exception to the rule. Esau having been born a few moments before his brother ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... writes. 'Jesus Christ is in the proper sense [Greek: idios] the only Son begotten of God, being His Word [Greek: logos] and Firstborn Power' [Endnote 284:1]. Again, 'But His Son who alone is rightly [Greek: kurios] called Son, who before all created things was with Him and begotten of Him as His Word, when in the beginning He created and ordered all things through Him,' &c. Again, 'Now the next ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Theodorah on the head by letting her fall. Whereupon I took a good walnut stick and beat the Indian to purpose till she promised to do so no more." Mr. Thatcher was really a very kindly gentleman and a good Christian, but the natural solicitude of a young father over his firstborn provoked him to the telling use of the walnut stick ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... some few days buried in the churchyard of this parish of Ditchingham, I dreamed a very vivid dream as I slept one night at my wife's side. I dreamed that my dead children, the four of them, for the tallest lad bore in his arms my firstborn, that infant who died in the great siege, came to me as they had often come when I ruled the people of the Otomie in the City of Pines, and talked with me, giving me flowers and kissing my hands. I looked upon their strength and beauty, and was proud at heart, and, in my dream, it seemed ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... pass away from their bondage; you find Egypt resisting the command, and God sent among the people of Egypt signs and wonders, and plagues by the hand of Moses, but they submitted not. He called them to obedience, but they rebelled. By and bye, He slew their firstborn, the chief of all their strength, and then the people came out with silver and with gold. Nations are not simply chastised in this world, they are also punished. Every one of us shall give an account of himself to God at the last great day, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... let me note that the maid to us committed (assert they) Was but a fraud: her mate never a touch of her had, 20 * * * * * * * * But that a father durst dishonour the bed of his firstborn, Folk all swear, and the house hapless with incest bewray; Or that his impious mind was blunt with fiery passion 25 Or that his impotent son sprang from incapable seed. And to be sought was one with nerve more nervous endowed, Who could better avail ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... the silken lap in which the child was comfortably nestling, and in that attitude had a faint consciousness that Mrs. Horncastle was mischievously breathing into his curls a silent laugh. Barker lifted his firstborn with proud skillfulness, but that sagacious infant evidently knew when he was comfortable, and in a paroxysm of objection caught his father's curls with one fist, while with the other he grasped Mrs. Horncastle's brown braids and brought their heads ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... said to have appeared to her sons, and accosting Rhiwallon, her firstborn, to have informed him that he was to be a benefactor to mankind, through healing all manner of their diseases, and she furnished him with prescriptions and instructions for the preservation of health. Then, promising to meet him when her counsel was most ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... this firstborn's birth was, however, very quickly dimmed by the news of the death, only a few days later, of Mr. Browning's mother, to whom he was devotedly attached. Her death was very sudden, and the shock of the reaction completely prostrated him for a long time. The following letters ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... part of the century a Dakota woman fasted and prayed, and Thunder came to her in her vision. To the god she promised to give her firstborn child. When she became a mother, she forgot in her joy that the life of her little one did not belong to her; nor did she recall her fateful vow until one bright spring day, when the clouds gathered and she heard the roll of the thunder,—a sound which summoned all persons consecrated ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... Primrose, firstborn child of Ver; Merry springtime's harbinger, With her bells dim; Oxlips in their cradles growing, Marigolds on ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in, dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... we live! We spent our energies in profitless work; but now we bear fruit unto God. We were lonely and isolated, but now have come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable company of angels, and to the Church of the Firstborn. Our prayers were aimless and ineffective; but now we have the petitions we desired. New hope and joy have filled our hearts, as the ruddy clusters hang full and ripe in the autumn. Prove Him for yourself and see if this shall not be so for you also. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Virgin—when Hans Haller, Knight, Doctor, and Town councillor, the eldest of his ancient race, my dear lord and plighted lover, was carried to the grave. The velvet pall wherewith his parents covered the bier of their beloved and firstborn son was so costly, that the price would easily have fed a poor household for years. How many tapers were burnt for him, how many masses said! Favor and good-will were poured forth upon me, and wherever I might go I was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lest the room should indeed fall in, for Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.' Yea, and Polycarp himself also on one occasion, when Marcion confronted him and said, 'Dost thou recognize me?' answered, 'I recognize the firstborn of Satan.' Such care did the Apostles and their disciples take not to hold any communication, even by word, with any of those who falsify the truth, as Paul also said, 'A man that is a heretic after a first and ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... to expound its virtues with all the fond enthusiasm of a father showing off his firstborn, and wound up with a demonstration of the illuminating appliance. I'm afraid, though, he got little encouragement from Mr. Burnham. He considered the machine with a dispassionate air, it's true, and admitted its ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... kinds of men: the heavenly man and the earthly man.'[42] The long Life of Moses[43] represents him as the King, Lawgiver, High Priest, Prophet, Mediator. The Word, the Logos (which here everywhere hovers near, but never reaches, personality) is 'the firstborn son of God', 'the image of God'[44]; its types are 'the Rock', the Manna, the High Priest's Coat; it is 'the Wine Pourer and Master of the Drinking Feast of God'.[45] The majority of the Jews, who did not accept ...
— Progress and History • Various
... "I am Thoth,[FN255] the firstborn son, the son of Ra, and Tem and the Company of the gods have commanded me to heal Horus for his mother Isis, and to heal him that is under the knife likewise. O Horus, O Horus, thy Ka protecteth thee, and thy Image worketh protection ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Roper suggested a compromise. She was allowed to select one to take to school with her; the others were ADOPTED by certain of her friends, and she was to be permitted to visit them every Saturday afternoon. The selection was a cruel trial, so cruel that, knowing her undoubted preference for her firstborn, Misery, we would not have interfered for worlds, but in her unexpected choice of "Johnny Dear" the most unworldly of us knew that it was the first glimmering of feminine tact—her first submission to the world of propriety that ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... be that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother that is dead, that his name be not put out ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... of Witchcraft! firstborn child of Crime! Produc'd before the bloom of Time; Ambition's maiden Sin, in Heaven conceiv'd, And who could have believ'd Defilement could in purity begin, And bright eternal Day be soil'd with Sin? Tell us, sly penetrating ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... me on duty.) Our English missionary sister has also been passing through woman's time of trial and honour, and we are now able to rejoice with her and her husband in the gift of a little girl, their firstborn. God bless and ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... When the firstborn affections, Those winged seekers of the world within, That search about in all directions, Some bright thing for themselves to win, Through unmarked forest-paths, and gathering fogs, And stony plains, and treacherous bogs, Long, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... observe how the learned writer deals with the narrative. The Exode was "a struggle conducted by human means." (p. 59.) "Thus, as the pestilence of the Book of Kings becomes in Chronicles the more visible angel, so the avenger who slew the firstborn may have been the Bedouin host, (!) akin nearly to Jethro, and more remotely to Israel." (Ibid.) (It is really hardly worth stopping to point out that by 'Kings' the Reverend writer means 'the second Book of Samuel:' and to remind the reader that the Angel is mentioned ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... had seen the young mother going to the pagoda on the hilltop with a little offering of a few roses or an orchid spray, and pouring out her soul in passionate supplication to Someone—Someone unknown to her sacred books—that her firstborn might recover of his fever, and be to her once more the measureless delight of her life; and it would seem to me that she must believe in a God and in ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... rich deride, the proud disdain, These simple blessings of the lowly train; To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art; Spontaneous joys, where Nature has its play, 255 The soul adopts, and owns their firstborn sway; Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined. But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed— 260 In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, The toiling pleasure sickens into pain; And, e'en ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... from us, but only gone before us. We then must look forward, not backward. We shall meet him again, if we are worthy, in 'Mount Sion, and the heavenly Jerusalem,' in 'the company of many thousands of angels, the Church of the firstborn who are written in the heavens,' with 'God, the Judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament, and the blood which speaketh better things than that ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... ever in his life received all at once in a single payment—Guy little knew that Nevitt was really the chief friend and founder of the family fortunes, and was prepared to compel the "unknown benefactor" (for a moderate commission) to recognise his unacknowledged firstborn sons before all the world as the heirs to Tilgate. But yesterday, they were nameless waifs and strays, of uncertain origin, ashamed of their birth, and ignorant even whether they had been duly begotten in lawful wedlock; to-day, they were ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... on the field. Welsh archaeologists, however, maintain that these words are Celtic, and mean "behold the man;" their theory suggests that this was the phrase used by Edward I. when he presented his firstborn son to the Welsh people as their prince, and that the words thus became the motto of the princes of Wales. This is a rather far-fetched piece of reasoning, and one would certainly prefer to accept the more picturesque tradition which ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... like those of the salmon, are defined all around by a simple continuous margin; and no sooner was the division effected than it was found to cast a singularly clear light on the early history of the class. The earliest fishes—firstborn of their family—seem to have been all placoids. The Silurian System has not yet afforded trace of any other vertebral animal. With the Old Red Sandstone the ganoids were ushered upon the scene in amazing abundance; and for ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... her months, Her firstborn came forth like a lamb. There was no bursting, no rending, No injury, no hurt, In order to emphasise his divinity. Did not God give her comfort? Had He not accepted her sacrifice, So that thus easily ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... higher room of God's great House. The Apostle, speaking of the Church, says, "Ye are come, (not ye will come,) unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... saw the first birth of his real books, so the end of it saw that of the last of his children according to the flesh. His firstborn, as has been said, did not live. But Walter (born November 1799), Sophia (born October 1801), Anne (born February 1803), and Charles (born December 1805) survived infancy; and it is quite probable that these regular increases to his family, by suggesting that ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... wife, long estranged, met at the grave of their firstborn, the child of their youthful strength. Their strife had been bitter, their love had turned to hate, and they elected to tread life's path apart. They stood, one on either side, and looked coldly upon each other. Then they ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sides against his father; but all these difficulties his unselfish heart overcame, and he stands for all time as the noblest example of human friendship, and as not unworthy to remind us, as from afar off and dimly, of the perfect love of the Firstborn Son of the true King, who has loved us all with a yet deeper, more patient, more self-sacrificing love. If men can love one another as Jonathan loved David, how should they love the Christ who has loved them so much! And what sacrilege it is to pour such treasures of affection at the feet ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... January, 1563-64, the Chamber was found in debt to John Shakespeare 25s. 8d., as if he had been the finance Chamberlain of the two. Both of his daughters were dead when, on April 26, he christened his firstborn son William. That summer the plague raged in Stratford; the Council meetings were held in the garden, to avoid infection, and collections were made among the burgesses for the relief of the poor, to each ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... at the presumption of the lad, as if he wished to be above Moa the firstborn. He feigned an errand, and called the boy to come and scratch his back. The boy went to perform the operation, but on stretching out his hand was seized by his grandfather, and beaten with the handle of his fly-flapper. Lu made his escape, came ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... they be satisfied with any common blood such as generally contented their brethren in Chaldaea or Egypt: they imperatively demanded human as well as animal sacrifices. Among several of the Syrian nations they had a prescriptive right to the firstborn male of each family;* this right was generally commuted, either by a money payment or by ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... years ago, in the winter when they had used one of their two demolition-bombs to blast open a cavern in the mountains. It had been a hard winter; two children had died, then—Kyna's firstborn, and the little son of Kalvar Dard and Dorita. It had been their first encounter with the Hairy ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... woman so superlatively happy as to have a baby of her own to kiss," exclaimed Mrs. McBride, rapturously, as she fondled her firstborn. ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... the natural children of Abraham. By rights Ishmael should have enjoyed the prerogatives of the firstborn, if physical generation had any special value. Nevertheless he was left out in the cold while Isaac was called. This goes to prove that the children of faith are the real children ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... I had been neglected for the firstborn, I had enjoyed through this neglect an absolute freedom with regard to associating with fisher-boys and all the shoeless, hatless 'sea-pups' of the sands, and now, when the time had come to civilise me, my mother had found that it was too late. I was bohemian to the core. My childish intercourse ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and resolute, and glancing at the beautiful face at the end of the table, I saw in the pale lips and yearning eyes that the mother was offering up her firstborn, that ancient sacrifice. But not all the agony of sacrifice could wring from her entreaty or complaint in the hearing of her sons. That was for other ears and for the silent hours of the night. And next morning when she came ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... firstborn, when this little matter was referred to him, and his mother vehemently insisted that he should declare himself, was of the opinion of Mr. Washington, and Mr. Draper, the London lawyer. The boy said he could not help himself. He did not want the money: he would be very glad to think otherwise, and ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they are not only ignorant, but think it ladylike to remain uninformed until experience teaches them, and that teaching is often accompanied by heart-breaking sorrow. If you should make inquiry you would discover that a large proportion of mothers have buried their firstborn children, and should you ask them why, they would in all probability say, almost without exception, that it was because they did not know how to give them a dower of health, or how to care for their ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... moved us both to pity and repulsion, it was impossible not to admire her efforts to keep her stolid inarticulate husband in the right path and her intense wild animal- like love of her children—the three dirty-faced English-looking offspring of her strange marriage, and Dardo, her firstborn, the son of the wind. He, too, was an interesting person; small or short for his years, he was thick and had a curiously solid mature appearance, with a round head, wide open, startlingly bright eyes, and aquiline features which gave ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Hence Our Lord said (John 7:20) that circumcision was "not of Moses, but of his fathers." Again, among those who worshipped God, the priesthood was in existence before the Law by human appointment, for the Law allotted the priestly dignity to the firstborn. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... order that we may understand these words, and the destruction of the Hebrew commonwealth, we must bear in mind that it had at first been intended to entrust the whole duties of the priesthood to the firstborn, and not to the Levites (see Numb. viii:17). (166) It was only when all the tribes, except the Levites, worshipped the golden calf, that the firstborn were rejected and defiled, and the Levites ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... then, your master Moses a thief or a kubiustis? Or could he not make up his accounts properly?' The critic is then informed of a certain difference between 'sacred' and other coins; and he further gets a lesson in the matter of Levites and Firstborn, which silences him. Again, the Talmud decides that, if a man have bought a slave who turns out to be a thief or a kubiustis,—which has here been erroneously explained to mean a 'manstealer,'—he has no redress. He must keep him, as he bought him, or send him away; for he has bought ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... says one of our old divines, with the quaintness characteristic of his day, 'resemble the two sons of the patriarch; Reason is the firstborn, but Faith inherits the blessing. The image is ingenious, and the antithesis striking; but nevertheless the sentiment is far from just. It is hardly right to represent Faith as younger than reason: the fact undoubtedly being, that human creatures trust and believe, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... been peacefully surrendered to him in the summer, and announced that he should keep the Agenais and La Reole, as belonging to France by right of Charles of Valois' recent conquest. Bitterly mortified at this treachery, Edward took upon himself the title of "governor and administrator of his firstborn, Edward, Duke of Aquitaine, and of his estates". By this technical subtlety, he thought himself entitled to resume the control of the ceded districts and resist the attack which was bound to follow hard upon the new breach. Once more Charles ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... was still strong on the close air—but he had been having a good deal of stomach trouble of late, and the children made him nervous, and he had gone out for a walk. Poor May, smiling gallantly over the difficulties of her life, drew her firstborn to her knees, brushed back the child's silky, pale hair with bony, trembling fingers, and prophesied that things would be easier when mamma's girlies got to work: Evelyn was going to be a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... clumsy morally in his love for his firstborn, it must be acknowledged that he is so physically in ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... impression on his mind that he remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya passed into the care of one of her married daughters. I believe he changed his home a fourth time later on. I won't enlarge upon that now, as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor Pavlovitch's firstborn, and must confine myself now to the most essential facts about him, without which I could ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... it! And now the mother mourned unceasingly the loss of those little sons, and of one other whom Mary had never seen, and of whom they had no likeness. It was indeed hard that the one son left them,—their firstborn,—their hope and pride, should now be going away to leave them, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... may have felt glowing in his heart a sweet prescience of the peculiar comfort and joy he afterwards found in the loving devotion and noble character of his firstborn, that little blessing that would come, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... shout of victory, saying, "I know whom I have trusted, and I am persuaded He can keep what I have committed to Him until that day." All the children of God have known, loved, and trusted their Father, and have reflected that holy light which shone with unclouded and faultless lustre in the Firstborn of all the brethren; for Jesus ever held fast His confidence in God until His last cry of faith, "Father, into Thy hands I commit ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... seven times seven, Draw Thou mine eyes, draw Thou my heart above, My treasure ad my heart store Thou in Thee, Brood over me with yearnings of a dove; Be Husband, Brother, closest Friend to me; Love me as very mother loves her son, Her sucking firstborn fondled on her knee: 30 Yea, more than mother loves her little one; For, earthly, even a mother may forget And feel no pity for its piteous moan; But thou, O Love of God, remember yet, Through the dry desert, through ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... firstborn in a large family. Simone Buonarroti, his father, belonged to an ebbtide branch of the nobility that had lost everything but the memory of great ancestors turned to dust. This father had ambitions for his boy; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... of Reuben alive and well did much to assuage the father's grief; for there had been a time when he had not thought to look upon the face of his firstborn in this life. He was also greatly pleased to learn that he had another daughter in the person of gentle Gertrude, and he gladly undertook the negotiation of the purchase of his neighbour's house, so that he should not know ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Children of the Sun to revolt against their oppressors. He, more blessed than I who am his lord, has both wife and child, and if the prophecy is to be fulfiled, and I am to reign in the City of the Sun, then I will take his firstborn and instruct him in all the lore of our people and the duties of their ruler, and if he proves worthy he shall wear the Llautu ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... myrmidon, who were scampering towards the castle, he exclaimed: "The vapours of the hellish pool will not, one day, strike him with such horror, O Faustus, as this thy deed: his young and beloved wife was a few days ago delivered of her firstborn." ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... great deal, and, in fact, at this very date he was staying at an hotel in Rome. Though he had not once set eyes on Avice since parting from her in the room with her firstborn, he had managed to obtain tidings of her from time to time during the interval. In this way Pierston learnt that, shortly after their resumption of a common life in her house, Ike had ill-used her, till fortunately, the business to which Jocelyn had assisted him chancing to prosper, he became ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... foremost of the Yadus, was the father of Vasudeva. He had a daughter called Pritha, who for her beauty, was unrivalled on earth. And Sura, having promised in the presence of fire that he would give his firstborn child to Kuntibhoja, the son of his paternal aunt, who was without offspring, gave his daughter unto the monarch in expectation of his favours. Kuntibhoja thereupon made her his daughter. And she became, thenceforth, in the house of her (adoptive) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... went back to the sweetness of his baby prattle and the soft words of his tenderer youth. Until the last she clung to him, holding him guiltless, and to her thought they took to prison, not Joe Hamilton, a convicted criminal, but Joey, Joey, her boy, her firstborn,—a martyr. ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Heaven firstborn, Or of the Eternal coeternal beam May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee Bright effluence of bright essence increate. Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... then the cousins were forced to meet—at occasional children's parties, for instance. A little daughter, Peggy, had been born in the Deanery, replacing the lost firstborn, and festivals—to which came the extreme youth of Durdlebury—were given in her honour. She liked Marmaduke, who was five years her senior, because he was gentle and clean and wore such beautiful clothes and brushed his hair so nicely; whereas ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... strangely; it seemed to tell him things he had never known before, to speak a wisdom he had never dreamed of, to breathe a sweeter music than he had ever heard, to inspire ambitions purer and better than any he had ever felt—the voice of his firstborn—you know, fathers, what ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field |
