"Boyhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... usual evening chapter in the Bible, and had received his mother's kiss and blessing, he laid himself down with a thankful heart, in the little garret-room, as in his childish years. The young artist's dreams that night, were a mingled crowd of fancies; the memories of his boyhood reviving in their old haunts, accompanied by more recent images brought from beyond the Ocean, and linked with half-formed plans and ideas for the future. Among these visions of the night, were two more distinct than the rest; one was ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... been slack In guardianship, and by so much betrayed My promise to our mother's passing soul. Myself in cares immersed, I left the child Among his toys—and turn to find him man— But yet so much a boy that boyhood can (Wistfully) Laugh in his honest eyes? Forgive me, Lucio! Tell me, whate'er have slackened, there has slipped No knot of love. To-morrow we'll make sport, Be playmates and invent new games, and ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... to express what it represented to me of pure unmixed delight in my youth and boyhood, long before I ever dreamed of being an artist myself! It stands out of the path with such names as Dickens, Dumas, Byron—not indeed that I am claiming for him an equal rank with those immortals, who wielded a weapon so much more potent than a mere caricaturist's pencil! But if an artist's ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... skylark and thrush, with the more gentle warbling of the finch and linnet. It was indeed a brilliant morning, teeming with life and beauty, and recalled to my memory a thousand affecting associations of sanguine boyhood, when I was thoughtless and happy. The barbarians around me were all cheerful and full of joy. I have heard that like sorrow, joy is contagious, and I believe that it is, for it inspired me with ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... hated Holmes. He met her alone in the morning; but when he saw how pale she grew, expecting his outbreak, and how she glanced timidly in at the room where Stephen was, he relented. Something in the wet brown eye perhaps recalled a forgotten dream of his boyhood; for he sighed sharply, and did not swear as he meant to. All he said was, that "women will be women, and that she had a worse job on her hands than the House of Refuge,"—which she put down to the account of his ill-temper, and only laughed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... traffic could not follow. He threw himself upon the ground and stared upward at the gray misty skies, where no blue showed through and where black dots of birds went sailing. Here was the ground of his boyhood dreams,—he knew it with a tinge of bitterness,—dreams that had ended always under gray skies, upon the bleak hills of the uplands. Here, where the full shy heart of him had first known the secret of its power in those long-gone boyhood days, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... more variety and imagery, to which they work themselves up with laborious, and therefore necessarily unsuccessful, efforts. The model for correcting their error is to be found in the inspired volume. We can, in general, be but incompetent judges of this, because we have been used to it from our boyhood. But let us suppose a person, whose ideas of poetry were entirely gathered from modern compositions, taking up the Psalms for the first time. Among many other remarkable differences, he would surely ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... sure I had utterly forgotten .to have ever written, was a hasty indigested sketch, like the rest of my scribblings, and never calculated to lead such well-meditated and accurate works as yours. Having lived familiarly with Mr. Cole, from our boyhood, I used to write to him carelessly on the occasions that occurred. As it was always on subjects of' no importance, I never thought of enjoining secrecy. I could not foresee that such idle Communications would find a place ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... boyhood has little understanding or sympathy for a soul like Paul's; a soul woven of dreams and harmonies which knows no means of attuning itself to the material. This lad walked with his head in the clouds and his thoughts ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... paper, an inch broad or more, and 83 feet 4 inches in length, and stretch it along the wall of a large hall, or round the walls of an apartment somewhat over 20 feet square. Recall to memory the days of your boyhood, so as to get some adequate conception of what a period of a hundred years is. Then mark off from one of the ends of the strip one-tenth of an inch. The one-tenth of an inch will then represent a ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Hamleys to find this dinner pleasant; and they did. Mr. Gibson was fond of these two young men, both for their parents' sake and their own, for he had known them since boyhood; and to those whom he liked Mr. Gibson could be remarkably agreeable. Mrs. Gibson really gave them a welcome—and cordiality in a hostess is a very becoming mantle for any other deficiencies there may be. Cynthia and Molly looked their best, which was all the duty Mrs Gibson absolutely ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... as he sailed, that a sailor should be superstitious? He was separated in boyhood from his home, before he had forgotten the ghost stories of childhood. While the simple heart still loved to dwell upon the marvellous, he was placed amid all the marvels of the sea. In the dark, out of the howl of wind and din of waves, he would hear strange ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... arrives shortly after Robin-Redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the Golden-Winged Woodpecker, alias, "High-Hole," alias, "Flicker," alias, "Yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence,—a thoroughly melodious April sound. I think how Solomon finished that beautiful climax on Spring, "And the voice of the turtle is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... in the illustration stated that he had since his boyhood been engaged in trading with a small vessel among some twenty little islands in the Pacific. He supplied the rough chart of which I have given a copy, and explained that the lines from island to island represented the only routes that he ever adopted. He always started ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... fairy-land to him, fresh from the treeless prairie. As he walked on under them, showers of powdered rubies and diamonds fell down upon him; the colonnades seemed like those leading to some enchanted palace, such as he had read of in boyhood. Every shrub in the yards was similarly decked, and the snug cottages were like the little house which he had once seen at the foot of the Christmas-tree in ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... well,' said Parnesius. 'Old men who have followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire is more wonderful than first ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... for the life of Canada, and have expressed it to the world with some accuracy and fidelity, it is apparent that the capacity for understanding could not be limited absolutely to one environment. That I understood Canada could not be established by the fact that I had spent my boyhood there, but only by the fact that some inner vision permitted me to see it as it really was. That inner vision, however, if it was anything at all was not in blinders, seeing only one section of the life of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... face, sighed twice, and looking tenderly into Lady Alicia's blue eyes, began in a gentle, reminiscent voice, "My boyhood was troubled and unhappy: no kind words, no caresses. I was beaten by a cruel stepfather, ignored and insulted for my physical deformities by a ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... captain and her when I was present; but I was resolved that I would let her know that I was in the secret; and I thought that the reply to me would be a guide as to the correctness of the fact, which, with all the hastiness of boyhood, I considered as incontrovertible, although I had not ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... for the instrument raised its standing considerably. It is unnecessary to give here a detailed list of those of his writings in which the Violin takes part—they are happily known to most players. Mozart played the Violin from boyhood, and was taught by his father. It is gratifying to know that nearly all the great composers played upon stringed instruments, if not with proficiency, yet enough to enable them to make pleasurable use of their acquirements. Sebastian ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... great love, with its inevitable thought, makes even these solvents superfluous. Goethe studies the cemetery, the chapel, the school, the gallery, the burial-service, the estate,—whatever is nearest. He finds astonishing values in labor, trade, production, art, science, war. In his boyhood he built an altar with his playthings and burned incense to Deity on a pile of shells and stones. That act of worship foreshadowed his whole career; he took every creature and thing from God's hand with reverent expectation, and never rested ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... imagination are inmates of the human breast. The heaven 'that lies about us in our infancy' is only a new world, of which we know nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we wish. In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the world of desire, and of fancy: it is experience that brings us down to the world of reality. What is it that in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening star? That makes the daisy look so bright? That perfumes ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... shadowed, as hers had been, and yet he smiled, too, as he said, "That portfolio is really an omnium gatherum. I had no idea this had found its way there. When I first read Mrs. Hemans' poem of 'The Bird's Release,' it reminded me of this scene of my boyhood, though if I have never spoken to you of my darling Grace, you will not ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... the Aeneid, the sun goes back for us on the dial; our boyhood is recreated, and returns to us for a moment like a visitant from a happy ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... she seems almost to consider them as her own, from their having grown up under her eye. The Oxonian, however, is her favourite, probably from being the youngest, though he is the most mischievous, and has been apt to play tricks upon her from boyhood. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... the benefits of participation. More frequently the blame lies in the fact that parents desire to shield children from labor. Some would have them grow up without knowing what they count as the degradation of toil. But a boy who knows nothing of the "chores" has missed half the joys of boyhood, and has a terribly hard lesson ahead of him when he goes out to relate himself to life. No matter what one's station may be, there is a part to be played, and one's piece of work to be done. The greatest unkindness we can do our children is to train them to lives that do not play ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... most noticeable trait in boyhood was his fondness for the water. He was a magnificent swimmer and learned to handle a small boat with the skill of a veteran sailor. Some of his dare-devil exploits in cruising among the Farallones and down the coast caused his father ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... of life at birth is only a little breath on a baby's lips; the air asks no consent to fill the lungs, the heart beats, the senses awaken, the mind begins, and the first handwriting of life is a child's smile; but as boyhood gathers fuller strength, and youth hives a more intimate sweetness, and manhood expands in richer values, life is not less entirely a gift. As well say a self-born as a self-made man. Nature does not intrust to us her bodily processes ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... calamities, when the population were every where flying before triumphant armies, and the dikes of Holland had been opened for the ravages of the sea in order to avoid the more cruel ravages of war, that William was called to be at the head of affairs. He had scarcely emerged from boyhood; but his boyhood was passed in scenes of danger and trial, and his extraordinary talents were most precociously developed. His tastes were warlike; but he was a warrior who fought, not for the love of fighting, not for military glory, but to rescue his country from a degrading ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Senate lay dying at Washington—I mean Henry Clay, of Kentucky. His pastor sat at his bedside and the "old man eloquent," after a long and exciting public life, trans-Atlantic and cis-Atlantic, was back again in the scenes of his boyhood, and he kept saying in his dream over and over again: "My mother! mother! mother!" May the parental influence we exert be not only potential but holy, and so the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in heaven, in which place may we all meet—father, mother, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... in the path, had little doubt who the tall man was. It was Ferris Stanhope, returning to the home of his boyhood and sublimely unaware of the nature of the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... been a study and a pastime. Every cleric is familiar with the prose translations which aided his boyhood's labours in rendering the poetry of Horace and Euripides into modern speech. But prose efforts are one thing, and poetical efforts are another, and just as many have laboured to present Virgil and Homer in modern language, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... then, to examine into your course of life from boyhood? I conclude you would. Do you remember that before you put on the robe of manhood, you were a bankrupt? That was my father's fault, you will say. I grant it—it is a defence that speaks volumes for your feelings as a son. It was your own shamelessness, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... successful revolt. The army accustomed to activity, and now in idleness, was very restive. The old Norman generals, ambitious and haughty, were disposed to pay but little respect to the claims of a prince who was yet in his boyhood. But Providence had provided for this exigence. Olga, the mother of Sviatoslaf, assumed the regency, and developed traits of character which place her in the ranks of the most extraordinary and noble of women. Calling to her aid two of the most influential of the nobles, one of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... were really anything wonderful, though they were very expensive; but the circumstances under which he received them gave them a peculiar relish; and it was in regard to them that Bert fought and won the sharpest battle with the tempter of all his early boyhood. It happened in ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... and many days I rode, My horse's head set toward the sea; And as I rode a longing came to me That I might keep the sunset road, Riding my horse right on and on, O'ertake the day still lagging at the west, And so reach boyhood from the dawn, And be with ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... boyhood is not so well remembered as is that of most of his leading contemporaries, probably because he had no parents to bring him frequently before the people, as was the custom with the wellborn, whose every step in their progress toward manhood was publicly announced ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... was an elderly schoolboy of English education and Irish extraction. His English education, at one of the great public schools, had preserved his intellect perfectly and permanently at the stage of boyhood. But his Irish extraction subconsciously upset in him the proper solemnity of an old boy, and sometimes gave him back the brighter outlook of a naughty boy. He had a bodily impatience which played tricks upon him almost against his will, and had already rendered him rather too radiant ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... expedition an excellent idea, and carried her off with her eyes as round and sparkling as those of the children going to Christmas parties. He stole glances at her as if her fresh innocent looks were an absolute treat to him, and when he talked, it was of Robert in his boyhood. 'I remember him at twelve years old, a sturdy young ruffian, with an excellent notion of standing up ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... great hole in his forehead. "Say to her also that I have no fear of defeat, I from whom doom is, as I think, still far away, though the Opener-of-Roads has told me that among a strange people I shall die in war at last, as I desire to do, who from my boyhood have ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... as natural as anything to me now. But call me Jack, will you? I wish you would. Do you know, when I heard the old name the night before last, I—I—but there, I can't tell you. It seemed to open a new world to me,—all my boyhood came back, all those things which made life wonderful. Yes, that's it, call ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... variety of tribal offices to fill. In this way the men of the tribe are graded, and they pass from grade to grade by a selection practically made by the people. And this leads to a constant discussion of the virtues and abilities of all the male members of the clan, from boyhood to old age. He is most successful in obtaining clan and tribal promotion who is most useful to the clan and the tribe. In this manner all of the ambitious are stimulated, and this incentive ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... ardent soul in those spirit searching days. Growing up happily under the care of the simple monks of Beaulieu he had never looked beyond their somewhat mechanical routine, accepted everything implicitly, and gone on acquiring knowledge with the receptive spirit but dormant thought of studious boyhood as yet unawakened, thinking that the studious clerical life to which every one destined him would only be a continuation of the same, as indeed it had been to his master, Father Simon. Not that Ambrose expressed this, beyond saying, "They ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mendel, was born in Dessau in 1728, and died in Berlin in 1786. His father was poor, and he himself was of a weak constitution. But his stunted form was animated by a strenuous spirit. After a boyhood passed under conditions which did little to stimulate his dawning aspirations, Mendelssohn resolved to follow his teacher Fraenkel to Berlin. He trudged the whole way on foot, and was all but refused admission ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... "From his boyhood Oglethorpe uniformly enjoyed the friendship and confidence of his gallant and eloquent countryman, John Duke of Argyle; who, in an animated speech in Parliament, bore splendid testimony to his military talents, his natural generosity, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... was conscious of her womanhood, only of that possessing sense of happiness in youth. As for Hamilton, he had never felt otherwise than young, although he was a college-bred man, something of a scholar, and he had seen more or less of the world since his boyhood. But the intensity and ardour of his nature had received no check, neither were they halfway on their course; and he had never loved. It had seemed to him that the Island opened and a witch came out, and in those confused hours he hardly knew whether she were good or bad, his ideal ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... political connection in the local service, while the delegated body, most of whom had themselves served in the country, had, and were likely to have, such connections. This guaranty for impartiality would be much impaired if the civil servants of government, even though sent out in boyhood as mere candidates for employment, should come to be furnished, in any considerable proportion, by the class of society which supplies viceroys and governors. Even the initiatory competitive examination would then be an insufficient security. It ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... then, and begin with us to-night, all you young men. You cannot begin this lifelong study and this lifelong pursuit of self-denial too early. For, even if you begin to read our books and to practise our discipline in your very boyhood, when you are old men and very saints of God you will feel that your self-love is still so full of life and power, that your self-denial has scarcely begun. Ah, me! men: both old and young men. Ah, me! what a life's ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... open, strip your own foul passions bare: Down with Reticence, down with Reverence—forward, naked—let them stare. Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer; Send the drain into the fountain lest the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... lasted, I have not had a moment's peace. I have even lost my sleep over it, and you are the only person who has this power over me; I know nothing that disturbs me to this degree. This influence comes from my old affection for you and from my recollection of what you did for me in my boyhood, and I am much more dependent than you think on feelings of that sort.... Take your position in an hereditary monarchy and be the first of my subjects. That is a fine enough position, to be the second man in ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... minds of Americans, as Switzerland. Its valleys and lakes, its streams and cataracts, its lofty mountains and the seas of ice and deserts of snow which crown their summits, have been the Ultima Thule of the traveller, from whatever land. But we have dwelt upon them from the very days of boyhood, with an interest belonging to scarcely any thing earthly, because we regarded all this magnificent and beautiful display, as the mere scenery and decoration of the stage, on which an important act in the great drama of liberty, was exhibited. In the christian, these magnificent objects ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... still I yearn to see the foam Of wild waves on thy pebbled shore, Dear Albion! to ascend once more Thy snow-white cliffs; to hear again The murmur of thy circling main— To stroll down each romantic dale Beloved in boyhood—to inhale Fresh life on green and breezy hills— To trace the coy retreating rills— To see the clouds at summer-tide Dappling all the landscape wide— To mark the varying gloom and glow As the seasons come and go— Again the green meads to behold Thick strewn ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... maiden, boyhood friend, Down the road beyond the bend, Where the trees made welcome shade Trysting place for ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... our illustration has long borne the title of Jean Grusset Richardot and his Son. This Richardot was a celebrated Flemish diplomat of the sixteenth century, and president of the Privy Council of the Low Countries. As he died in Van Dyck's boyhood, his portrait could not have been made by our painter directly from life. Nor can we believe with some that years after the diplomat's death Van Dyck copied from some old picture the likeness seen ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... it. William Aveleyn was also nearly half a foot taller; and a blush which suffused his handsome face at being surprised alone with Amber, intimated that the feelings of a man were superseding those of boyhood. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Perk was thrilled to the core with the sense of mystery that brooded over this most peculiar locality—to him it already assumed a condition bordering on some of those miraculous things he could remember once reading in his boyhood's favorite book "The Arabian Night's Entertainment," the glamour of which had never ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... his head on his shoulders,"—a peculiar elegance which was most noticeable in those later days when I knew him. Lady Byron long afterwards spoke of him as more like her husband in appearance than any other person she had met; but Mr. Phillips, who remembers the first bloom of his boyhood and youth, thinks he was handsomer than any portrait of Byron represents the poet. "He could not have been eleven years old," says the same correspondent, "when he began writing a novel. It opened, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the churchyard of historic old Saint John's, that once echoed to the words of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Poe's mother lay in an unidentified grave. In Hollywood slept his second mother, who had surrounded his boyhood with the maternal affection that, like an unopened rose in her heart, had awaited the coming of the little child who was to be the sunbeam to develop it into perfect flowering. On Shockoe Hill was the tomb of "Helen," his chum's mother, ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... golden beams upon the yellow poplar leaves, the same air, sweet and genial, in him the same heart, and before him the same face, but sweeter it seemed, and eyes the same that danced with every sunbeam and lured him on. He was living again the rapture of his boyhood's ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... I looked serious; when they were sorrowful, I wept hysterically; when they were joyous, I laughed loudly. Reminiscences of yet a young life's battles and hard struggles came surging into the mind in quick succession: events of boyhood, of youth, and manhood; perils, travels, scenes, joys, and sorrows; loves and hates; friendships and indifferences. My mind followed the various and rapid transition of my life's passages; it drew the lengthy, erratic, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... at the fire; fire struck from the rock which it afterwards consumes. Except one doubtful allusion to a journey, there are almost no incidents. But there is much of the bright, sharp, unerring skill, with which in boyhood he gave the look of age to the head of a faun by chipping a tooth from its jaw with a single stroke of the hammer. For Dante, the amiable and devout materialism of the middle age sanctifies all that is presented by hand and eye; while Michelangelo is always ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... favor of the survivor." Thus the young duke, Charles, had united all the possessions of the house of Bourbon; and he held at Moulins a brilliant princely court, of which he was himself the most brilliant ornament. Having been trained from his boyhood in all chivalrous qualities, he was an accomplished knight before becoming a tried warrior; and he no sooner appeared upon the field of battle than he won renown not only as a valiant prince, but as an eminent ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... well marked as the progress of one man. There are thoughts and actions appertaining to specific periods in the one case as in the other. Without difficulty we affirm of a given act that it appertains to a given period. We recognize the noisy sports of boyhood, the business application of maturity, the feeble garrulity of old age. We express our surprise when we witness actions unsuitable to the epoch of life. As it is in this respect in the individual, so it is in the nation. The march of individual existence ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Thomas Wilbraham Wilbraham, ex-M.P., last respectable member of his ancient line. And Sir Thomas gave the box of instruments to Cyril, and shook hands with him. And everybody was very well dressed. Samuel, who had never attended anything but a National School, recalled the simple rigours of his own boyhood, and swelled. For certainly, of all the parents present, he was among the richest. When, in the informal promiscuities which followed the prize distribution, Cyril joined his father and mother, sheepishly, they duly did their best to make light ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... between Bonaparte and Bourrienne began in boyhood, at the school of Brienne, and their unreserved intimacy continued during the most brilliant part of Napoleon's career. We have said enough, the motives for his writing this work and his competency for the task will be best explained in M. de Bourrienne's own words, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Since boyhood he had known Philistia For the black thing it was, a plague opposed Always against the loveliness of Israel, And when his father Saul was anointed king By Samuel in Ramah, then Jonathan knew How all the lessons of his youth had been ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... intelligence Is stamped on every line, Banqueting our craving sense With minist'rings divine. If thy Boyhood be so great, What will be the coming Man, Could we overleap the span? Are there treasures in the mine, To ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... of his courtship, and in opposing these objections, formed an interest in the heart of the young lady. He was, indeed, a man born to charm the imagination of the romantic, if not at that period of his youth, to rivet affection by esteem. In his boyhood, although he made some degree of progress in classical attainments, and even in philosophy and mathematics, thus proving that natural ability was not wanting, he was far more successful in attaining mere accomplishments, which add a powerful ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... is just as Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman) the full-blooded Sioux, says in his book on Indian Boyhood: "There is scarcely anything so exasperating to me as the idea that the natives of this country have no sense of humour and no faculty for mirth. This phase of their character is well understood by those whose fortune or misfortune it has been to live among them ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... another, even if he really be so, where the man with the spade in his hand will beard the millionaire, and where you are compelled to submit to the caprice and insolence of a domestic, or lose his services, it is evident that every man must from boyhood have learnt to control his temper, as no ebullition will be submitted to, or unfollowed by its consequences. I consider that it is this habitual control, forced upon the Americans by the nature of their institutions, which occasions ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... official work, and not caring to leave the child to the management of servants, had placed him at that early age in a college directed by priests. Julien thus passed his second term of childhood, and his boyhood was spent behind these stern, gloomy walls, bending resignedly under a discipline which, though gentle, was narrow and suspicious, and allowed little scope for personal development. He obtained only occasional ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... "Life of Mozart," the Standard says: "Mozart supplies a fascinating subject for biographical treatment. He lives in these pages somewhat as the world saw him, from his marvellous boyhood till his ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... one darling object, and that was revenge. He had deeply and fearfully sworn never to rest until he had drawn the heart's blood of Humphries, a member of Morgan's corps, and his greatest enemy. They had been mortal foes from boyhood, and a blow Humphries had given Blonay had fixed their hatred for life. He had pursued him from place to place with untiring vigilance, and had watched, day after day, and month after month, for an opportunity to glut his revenge, ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... for my illustrious actions? For I was one who, though it was in my power to reap more profit from leisure than most men, on account of the diversified sweetness of my studies, in which I had lived from boyhood—or, if any public calamity had happened, to have borne no more than an equal share with the rest of my countrymen in the misfortune—I nevertheless did not hesitate to oppose myself to the most formidable tempests and torrents of sedition, for the sake of saving my countrymen, and at my ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... England Puritan taught sternly. He was a patriarchal head of his family. In my boyhood, Saturday evening or perhaps better Thanksgiving Day, when their descendants all gathered together as long as either of the grandparents lived, we had an illustration of something very like Heine's touching picture of an old Jewish ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... substantial danger, and I must take the chance,—if a loon could dive at the flash, why not I? If I were once ashore, I should have to cope with the Rebels on their own ground, which they knew better than I; but the water was my ground, where I, too, had been at home from boyhood. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... nook on my private shelf for Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. Though I bar them from my library (I mean my Library with a big L) I have no right to exclude them from my private collection of favorites, for once I loved them. I scarcely know why or how. If there had been in those far-off days of my boyhood, children's libraries and children's librarians, I might not have known them; as it is, they are incidents in my literary past that can not be blinked, shameful though they may be. The re-reading of such books as these is interesting ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... She was really a little gold-haired blue-eyed dryad, whose true home was a wild white cherry-tree that grew in some scattered woodland behind the old country-house of my boyhood. In spring-time how that naughty tree used to flash its silver nakedness of blossom for miles across the furze ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... sensibility to enter into sympathy with the magnificent dreamer, who was regarded by his own generation as the fool of an idea. A more prosaic treatment would have utterly failed to represent that mind, which existed from boyhood in an ideal world, and, amid frustrated hopes, shattered plans, and ignoble returns for his sacrifices, could always rebuild its glowing projects, and conquer obloquy and death itself ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... learn that Epicurus was by nature delicate and sensitive. At seven years of age, we are told, he could not support himself on tiptoe, and called himself the feeblest of boys. It is said that in his boyhood he had to be lifted from his chair, that he could not look on the sun or a fire, and that his skin was so tender as to prevent his wearing any dress beyond a simple tunic. These physical characteristics suggest the makings of a first ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... could not give it him—could not even tell what it was. It was misery! One day he managed to write: 'If you are in trouble, go to Riley & Bonner—ask them.' They were his solicitors, whom he had depended on from his boyhood. But since his death I have never wanted anything from them but a little help in business. They have been very good; but—I could not go and question them. If there was anything to know—papa had not been able to tell me—I did not ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chin for all the Germans (p. 067) in the world. When I was mounted, we started off at a good gallop across the fields to the Ypres road. It was an exciting ride, and I must confess, looking back upon it, a thoroughly enjoyable one, reminding me of old stories of battles and the Indian escapes of my boyhood's novels. When we arrived at the main road, I had to deliver up my horse to its owner, and then I decided to walk to Ypres, as by so doing I could speak to the many Imperial men that were marching up to reinforce the line. I refused many kind offers of lifts ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... Thus, as the local Burns, he stands unrivalled. His poetic effusions speak for themselves, but there are other traits in his career which he wished to convey to the public, which might while away an occasional half-hour in the reading of his stories of the tricks of his boyhood, the adventures of his early manhood, and to learn how he became—well, what he is! He has been caught in divers moods and at sundry times, and his words have been taken in shorthand, the endeavour always being to keep the transcript as faithful as circumstances would allow. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... desert. When I went to Utah, three or four years ago, the first thing that struck my mind forcibly in traveling around through the state was the absolute lack of any nuts. Being born and brought up in Massachusetts, I naturally noticed this, as one of the pleasures of my boyhood days consisted in gathering chestnuts, hickory nuts, hazelnuts and beechnuts. We found them all around the fence corners and pastures and in the woods, and I missed this in Utah, and it occurred to me immediately to look up the cause of the lack of nuts in the state and I found no good ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... Saxony, and the third, the Cardinal Archbishop Albert. George, born in 1507, was made in 1518 canon at Merseburg, and afterwards prebendary of Magdeburg cathedral. The Cardinal had taken peculiar interest in him ever since his boyhood, on account of his excellent abilities, and he did honour to his office by his fidelity, zeal, and purity of life. The new teaching caused him severe internal struggles. His theological studies showed him how rotten were the foundations ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the formal sense reduces itself to a minimum. In very early boyhood he attended a species of dame-school, which, according to some of his biographers, he had apparently to leave because he was too clever to be tolerable. However this may be, he undoubtedly went afterwards to a school kept by Mr. Ready, at which again he was marked ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... with himself because he could not recall the circumstances. Had it been on the other side of the Mississippi, it would have been no wonder, for, from his earliest boyhood he had been accustomed to seeing red men, and it would be impossible to remember them all; but he was convinced he had met the Indian since he and ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... between the young men was a joyful one, for though George Douglas was a little sore on the subject of Rose, he would not suffer a matter like that to come between him and Henry Warner, whom he had known and liked from boyhood. Henry's first inquiries were naturally of a business character, and then George Douglas spoke of the young ladies, saying he was only anxious to see Maggie, for he knew of course he should ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... post the article in the Victorian Institute with respect to frogs' spawn. If you remember in your boyhood having ever tried to take a small portion out of the water, you will remember that it is most difficult. I believe all the birds in the world might alight every day on the spawn of batrachians, and never transport ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... founder of the great house of Steinway and Sons, has had a career not unlike that of Mr. Chickering. He also, in his native Brunswick, amused his boyhood by repairing old instruments of music, and making new ones. He made a cithara and a guitar for himself with only such tools as a boy can command. He also was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, and was drawn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Remembering my own boyhood on cold mornings, I looked behind him to see if he also were under compulsion, but there was no other mouse in sight. He would scoop up a double handful of water in his paws, rub it rapidly up over ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... She mentions only, that in consequence of some ominous circumstances relating to the title of Valois, which was the proper second title of the Orleans family, her son, the Regent, had assumed in his boyhood that of Duc de Chartres. His elder brother was dead, so that the superior title was open to him; but, in consequence of those mysterious omens, whatever they might be, which occasioned much whispering ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... destined to be like his father. It was not until "Young Ed" had reached his full manhood that his defects had become recognizable evil tendencies, that his infirmity had developed into a disease. Like sleeping cancers, the Austin vices had lain dormant in him during boyhood; it had required the mutation from youth to manhood, and the alterative effect of marriage, to rouse them; but, once awakened, their ravages had been swift and destructive. Ed's marriage to Alaire had been inevitable. They had been playmates, and their parents had considered ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... From his boyhood days Samuel Pierpont Langley, so he tells us, had asked himself that question, which he was later to answer. Langley, born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1834, was another link in the chain of distinguished inventors who first saw the light ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... brings us to our most versatile man-of-letters—James Russell Lowell. Born at Cambridge, in the old house called "Elmwood," so dear to his readers, spending an ideal boyhood in the midst of a cultured circle, treading the predestined path through Harvard, studying law and gaining admission to the bar—such was the story of his life for the first twenty-five years. As a student at Harvard, he had ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... most charming accounts of Hawthorne's ancestry and family; his boyhood and youth; his courtship and marriage; his life at Salem, Lenox, and Concord; his travels and residence in England and Italy; his later life in America; and his chief works and their ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... were then in the Commissions of Peace and Lieutenancy not one in twenty went to town once in five years, or had ever in his life wandered so far as Paris. Many lords of manors had received an education differing little from that of their menial servants. The heir of an estate often passed his boyhood and youth at the seat of his family with no better tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce attained learning enough to sign his name to a Mittimus. If he went to school and to college, he generally returned before he was twenty to the seclusion of the old hall, and there, unless his mind were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... race boasted, perhaps, the most superb models of masculine beauty which the land blessed by Apollo could afford. The laws that regulate marriage ensured a healthful and vigorous progeny. Gymnastic discipline from early boyhood gave ease to the limbs, iron to the muscle, grace to the whole frame. Every Spartan, being born to command, being noble by his birth, lord of the Laconians, Master of the Helots, superior in the eyes of Greece to all other Greeks, was at once a Republican and an Aristocrat. ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... the railway-carriage window! You have paid your money, and to the verdict of your pale morality or absurd sense of art in fiction I am therefore absolutely indifferent. You are too angelic for me; I am too fiendish for you. Let us agree to differ. I say nothing about my boyhood. Twenty-five years ago a poor boy-but no matter. I was that boy! I hurry on to the soaring period of manhood, 'when the strength, the nerve, the intellect is or should be at its height,' or are or should be at their height, if ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... frontiersmen besides, to act as guides and interpreters. Of all these the principal one, the one who best knew the country, was Ben Clark, a young man who had lived with the Cheyennes during much of his boyhood, and who not only had a pretty good knowledge of the country, but also spoke fluently the Cheyenne and Arapahoe dialects, and was an adept in the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... indeed, over and over; turning them, surveying them, making the very most of all their possible significance, with men and women to whom his relationship was half brotherly and wholly comradely, and whom, in the small, fresh, clear world, where he had spent his life, he had known since boyhood. It was a very ethical and intellectual little world, this of Jack's, where impressions passed from each to each, as if by right, where some suspicion was felt for those that could not be shared, and where to keep anything so worth while to oneself ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was intensely bitter about it. "But you have not all the traitors," he wrote. "My heart has been rent by the defection of some of our bravest men, and most trusted; and one who has seemed almost a brother to me, as we played together in boyhood, and have kept step in many things. I had cherished a curious hope that he might disarm thy girlish bitterness, Primrose, and that sometime his true worth would be apparent to you. And from the first, though he never confessed any further than that he envied me my pretty little sister, I ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... manager named Samuel Jerrold, and was born in London on the 3d of January, 1803. His father was for a long time manager of the seaport theatres of Sheerness and Southend,—which stand opposite each other, just where the Thames becomes the sea. Douglas spent most of his boyhood, therefore, about the sea-coast, in the midst of a life that was doubly dramatic,—dramatic as real, and dramatic as theatrical. There were sea, ships, sailors, prisoners, the hum of war, the uproar of seaport life, on the one hand; on the other, the queer, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... that he was a native of Genoa, a dozen places still demand the honor of being considered his birthplace, and two claim to possess his bones. Nothing is certain about his parentage, and his age is the subject of dispute. The stories of his boyhood adventures are mythical, and his education at the University of Pavia ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... not been definitely aware that he was inventive till he came into daily contact with Uncle Charles's teapot. In his boyhood he had often fixed up little things for Edith,—she was three years older than he, and was even then canning and preserving and ironing,—little simplifications and alleviations of her labour; but they had been just toys, things that had amused ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... the other parts, so as at once neither to miss any touch of the luck (one keeps coming back to that), incurred by them, or to let them suffer any want of its own rightness. It was as right, through the spell he cast altogether, that he should have come into the world and have passed his boyhood in that Rugby home, as that he should have been able later on to wander as irrepressibly as the spirit moved him, or as that he should have found himself fitting as intimately as he was very soon to do into any number of the incalculabilities, the intellectual at least, of the poetic temperament. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... long, black, luxuriant—the forehead low and white—the brows black, finely pencilled; and, last of all, the eyes!—and as they met my frenzied gaze and smiled, smiled right down into the depths of my livid soul, I recognised them—they were the eyes of my mother, my mother who had died in my boyhood! Seized with a madness that knew no bounds, I sprang to my feet. The figure rose and confronted me. I flung open my arms to embrace her, the woman of all women in the world I loved best, the only woman I had ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... "I have had one object before me from my boyhood, and since you told me that I was to be your husband, that object has grown from a vague intention to a fixed purpose. Alice, I want to buy back the acres of my forefathers; I wish, I intend, that another Buckley shall be the master ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... he could have wished altered,—not a word that would have been better omitted,—the only thing it lacked was a title, and this was the question on which he now pondered. The subject of the poem itself was not new to him—it was a story he had known from boyhood, ... an old Eastern love-legend, fantastically beautiful as many such legends are, full of grace and passionate fervor—a theme fitted for the nightingale-utterance of a singer like the Persian Hafiz—though even Hafiz would have ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... that in course of time, after he has passed the years of boyhood, he may recover his old strength, and ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... as soon as the young American approaches manhood, the ties of filial obedience are relaxed day by day: master of his thoughts, he is soon master of his conduct. In America there is, strictly speaking, no adolescence: at the close of boyhood the man appears, and begins to trace out his own path. It would be an error to suppose that this is preceded by a domestic struggle, in which the son has obtained by a sort of moral violence the liberty that his father refused him. The same habits, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... his life that he had at fourteen. He would, he remarks, be an excellent man on a jury; he would say little, but would starve the eleven other obstinate fellows out. Amongst politicians he was a faithful Abdiel, when all others had deserted the cause. He loved the books of his boyhood, the fields where he had walked, the gardens where he had drunk tea, and, to a rather provoking extent, the old quotations and old stories which he had used from his first days of authorship. The explanation of the apparent paradox ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... least variation in his religious or philosophical creeds in his latter works, written long after the resurrection, from those composed by him before, or a few years after, Christ's birth? Some of Philo's earlier works must have been written when our Lord was in his infancy, or at least boyhood. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the scene of all scenes. Half, at least, of those present, were residents of, or from near West Lynne. They had known Richard Hare from infancy—they had admired the boy in his pretty childhood—they had liked him in his unoffending boyhood, but they had been none the less ready to cast their harsh stones at him, and to thunder down their denunciations when the time came. In proportion to their fierceness then, was their contrition now; Richard had been innocent all the while; they had ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in the outside air and perhaps like measles runs through boyhood. Jack, I want you to stand up for yourself though I don't admire ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... name some who had been very young when he left, and who, hearing their names, came forward now as grown men, hardly recognisable, but much pleased at being remembered. He returned his sisters' carresses, begged his uncle's forgiveness for the trouble he had given in his boyhood, recalling with mirth the various corrections received. He mentioned also an Augustinian monk who had taught him to read, and another reverend father, a Capuchin, whose irregular conduct had caused much scandal in the neighbourhood. In short, notwithstanding his prolonged absence, he seemed to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... earlier years. George was grown up before I had well left the nursery, and his hot, quick temper had always kept us youngsters somewhat in awe of him. Jack was four years older than Alan, and, besides, his profession had, in a way, cut his boyhood short. When my uncle and aunt were abroad, as they frequently were for months together on account of her health, it was Alan, chiefly, who had to spend his holidays with us, both as school-boy and as undergraduate. And a brighter, sweeter-tempered ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... I can," he answered. "I learned in my boyhood; but last summer, on the dairy farm of Gilli of Trondhjem, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... to connect him, in his strong, attractive boyhood, with the frail old man, but they had lived together for five years, and ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... conquered nothing for himself; he travelled throughout the world, not coveting for himself but liberating the countries which he conquered, an enemy to bad men, a defender of the good, a peacemaker both by sea and land; whereas the other was from his boyhood a brigand and desolator of nations, a pest to his friends and enemies alike, whose greatest joy was to be the terror of all mankind, forgetting that men fear not only the fiercest but also the most cowardly animals, because of their ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... to a white man, have no special features and no guiding points, was really marvellous. We had travelled at least 120 miles eastward from Youldeh, and when there, this old fellow had told us that he had not visited any of the places he was going to take me to since his boyhood; this at the very least must have been forty years ago, for he was certainly fifty, if not seventy, years old. The knowledge possessed by these children of the desert is preserved owing to the fact that their imaginations are untrammelled, the denizens of the wilderness, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me: The smiles, the tears Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm'd and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... them were thoroughly acquainted with the Red River plains in all directions, but Rollin was more versed in the action of water. The greater part of his boyhood had been spent in canoeing and hunting expeditions with his father, from whom he inherited the French tongue and manners which showed so much more powerfully than the Scotch element in his composition. ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... you are the first man who has ever spoken thus to me; let me kneel at your feet! From boyhood I have been chased from every door like a dog without a master; I had to steal or beg every morsel I eat; no one gave me a hand but those who were worse than myself, and who led me further astray. I have led a shameful, miserable life, full of deceit and treachery, and I tremble ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... their preparation the question arose whether the book to be written was to be of my life, including ancestry and boyhood, or to be confined to the financial history of the United States with which I was mainly identified. This was settled by the publishers, who were more interested in the number of copies they could sell than in the finances of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... rested her head in his arms, where she soon fell asleep. Edward was also soon in the land of dreams, while Sidney watched over them with the care of a mother. Here his whole life passed before him. His orphanage, the care of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan, the tenderness they had bestowed upon him, his boyhood, and dawning manhood, his capture by the Indians, and providential escape, up to the present moment, and finally his present position. Long did the children sleep, and long did he watch without a ray of light, in a darkness ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... unrest of spring was upon him. He had brought many conveniences among the Abenaquis, and taught them some civilized arts. They were his adopted people. But he felt a sudden separateness from them, like the loneliness of his early boyhood. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... unique," he agreed eagerly, his eyes burning like two coals of fire, so intense was his interest. "I have been from boyhood," he added, noticing my glance, "a lover of tales of mystery. They have for me a fascination I cannot explain; there is in my blood something that responds to them. I feel sometimes that I would have made a great detective—or a great ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... up with the British in the afternoon. General Harrison drew up his men in two lines, and secured his left flank, which was opposed to the Indians, by a division thrown back en potence; and without any previous engagement by infantry, ordered his mounted Kentuckians (accustomed from their boyhood to ride with extraordinary dexterity through the most embarrassed woods) to charge at full speed upon (the open line of) the British, which had effected before the latter had time to discharge their third fire. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... in that frugal establishment. There is Wolden for Hofmarschall, our old Custrin friend; there is Colonel Senning, old Marlborough Colonel with the wooden leg, who taught Friedrich his drillings and artillery-practices in boyhood, a fine sagacious old gentleman this latter. There is a M. Jordan, Ex-Preacher, an ingenious Prussian-Frenchman, still young, who acts as "Reader and Librarian;" of whom we shall hear a good deal more. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... order of nature that domestic life should be preparatory to social, and that the mind and character should first be formed in the home. There the individuals who afterwards form society are dealt with in detail, and fashioned one by one. From the family they enter life, and advance from boyhood to citizenship. Thus the home may be regarded as the most influential school of civilisation. For, after all, civilisation mainly resolves itself into a question of individual training; and according as the respective members of society are well or ill-trained in youth, so will the community ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... country home down on the Hudson is the same one we have had in the family for over two hundred years. My babies are to-day runnin' over the same turf that I rolled on in my boyhood, and their great-great-grandmothers played on in ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... the very large class of partisan judgments—judgments based, not upon a free appreciation, but upon some personal predilection or transient appeal. To this class belong the special preferences of boyhood and youth—the liking for Cooper and Jules Verne, for example— and those due to nationality, like the Englishman's choice of Thackeray and the Frenchman's of Balzac, or, what is a more flagrant case, the long ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... In our boyhood, I replied, when Agathon won the prize with his first tragedy, on the day after that on which he and his chorus ...
— Symposium • Plato
... struggle would end. Then my mind flew back to Parkhurst, and I tried to imagine what they must think there of our absence. Had they missed us yet? Should I ever be back in the familiar house, or—but I dared not think of that. Then I tried to pray, and the sins of my boyhood came up before my mind as I did so in terrible array, so that I vowed, if but my life might be spared, I would begin a new and better life from that time forward. Then, by a strange impulse, my eyes rested on Charlie, as he sat there quietly holding the tiller in his ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... remembering how his own Tom had been fettered and tongue-tied by that same tyrant in boyhood. 'But he ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we spoke of Robert, and she told me stories of his boyhood, amusing Eton scrapes, and later feats. And how brave and splendid he had been in the war; and how the people all adored him at Torquilstone; and of his popularity and influence with them. "You must make him go into ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... in learning what is to be found in Nazareth where Jesus spent his boyhood. Archaeologists have located the "Fount of the Virgin," and the rock from which the infuriated inhabitants attempted ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... remarkable for his ugliness as well as his bravery. Lean and spare in figure, he had hollow cheeks, a long nose, a broad wrinkled forehead, heavy moustaches, and a sharp pointed chin. He had from his boyhood been fighting against the Protestants. He had learned the art of war under the cruel and pitiless Spanish general Alva in the Netherlands, of which country he was a native, and had afterwards fought against them in Bavaria, in Bohemia, and the Palatinate, and had ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... commonly spoke of his life as a professor with whimsical disparagement, as Henry Adams wrote of his own teaching with a somewhat cynical disparagement. But the fact is that both of these self-depreciating New Englanders were stimulating and valuable teachers. From his happily idle boyhood to the close of his fruitful career, Lowell's loyalty to Cambridge and Harvard was unalterable. Other tastes changed after wider experience with the world. He even preferred, at last, the English blackbird to the American bobolink, but the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... business direction, into special study for the engineering trades, for the profession of soldiering, [Footnote: I may perhaps explain that my conception of military organization is a universal service of citizens —non-professional soldiers—who will be trained—possibly in boyhood and youth, to shoot very well indeed, to ride either horses or bicycles, and to take up positions and move quickly and easily in organized bodies, and, in addition, a special graduated profession of soldiers who will be in their various ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Iran borrowed her pathologic love from the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and not from the then insignificant Greeks. But whatever may be its origin, the corruption is now bred in the bone. It begins in boyhood and many Persians account for it by paternal severity. Youths arrived at puberty find none of the facilities with which Europe supplies fornication. Onanism[FN399] is to a certain extent discouraged by circumcision, and meddling with the father's slave-girls and concubines ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... cried, "the memories that overwhelm me! Oh, my weak and trembling spirit, wilt thou surely ascend to heaven, borne upward by this holy song!" He began to think of his happy boyhood, of his early home; then as the glorious music of the choir swelled higher and higher, he became gentler and thought more tolerantly ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... and shambled out of the cave. Long afterwards I heard that he shot it through the dining-room window on a dart of hazelwood while my aunt and Mrs Cottier were at lunch. That was the last letter I wrote for many a long day. That was my farewell to boyhood, that letter. ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... turning again into Main Street, continued on toward the Thief River stage barn. He knew an old Scotch Medicine Bend barnman that worked there, a boyhood friend; but the man, McAlpin, was out. After looking the horses over and inspecting the wagons with a new but mild curiosity, awakened by Jeffries's proposal, de Spain walked back toward the station. He had virtually decided not to take the job that Jeffries painted ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... brighter days in the far-off time of his youth; but none with so much sunshine of prosperity in them that the chill, the depression, the narrowness of means, in his declining years, can have come upon him by surprise. His life has all been of a piece. His subdued and nerveless boyhood prefigured his abortive prime, which likewise contained within itself the prophecy and image of his lean and torpid age. He was perhaps a mechanic, who never came to be a master in his craft, or a petty tradesman, rubbing onward between passably to do and poverty. Possibly ...
— The Old Apple Dealer (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Edwards, it was learned, was a general favorite about the country. A good-natured, honest old farmer, who had lived there from boyhood, and was known to all the farmers and their families for miles around. Even in his old age, for he was long past sixty now, he cherished his old love for gunning and fishing, and held his own right manfully among those who were many ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... in Hampden's regiment, madam, and went all through the war. When the King came back I had friends who stood by me, and bought me this boat. I was used to handle an oar in my boyhood, when I lived on a little bit of a farm that belonged to my father, between Reading and Henley. I was oftener on the water than on the land in those days. There are some who have treated me roughly because I fought against ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... home, where I grew from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to youth, I shall never forget. It was a large house on the slope of a hill, just high enough to overlook several miles of our level country, and smooth enough with its soft grassy carpet ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... Colman in his boyhood met Johnson and Gibbon. 'Johnson was in his rusty brown and his black worsteds, and Gibbon in a suit of flowered velvet, with a bag and sword. He condescended, once or twice in the course of the evening, to talk with me;—the great historian was light and playful, suiting his matter ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... "Of my boyhood, dearest. Yonder is the first city I ever beheld. Shall I tell you of it—and of that shy country lad who came hither to learn something of deportment, so that he might venture to enter an assembly and forget ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... and strongly to its zenith, what the pains and shadows of the declining life might be. And yet more strange is it that the memory, by some subtle alchemy, has the power of involving in a delicate golden mist days of childhood and boyhood which one knows as a matter of fact not to have been happy. For instance, my own memory continues to clothe my early schooldays with a kind of sunlit happiness, though I was not only not consciously happy, but distinctly and consciously unhappy. But memory refuses to retain the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... much. She had the habit of the girl; she respected her, she even loved her. The children, as she thought of them, had known each other from their earliest days; Jeff had persecuted Cynthia throughout his graceless boyhood, but he had never intimidated her; and his mother, with all her weakness for him, felt that it was well for him that his wife should be brave enough to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... tell me not yon gilded hell That has from boyhood soothed my grief Must fall into ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... has been placed by some writers in the year 1771. Ruddell states that it occurred in 1768, three years earlier, and this, we think, is probably the true period. His early boyhood gave promise of the renown of his maturer years. After the death of his father, which occurred when he was in his sixth year, he was placed under the charge of his oldest brother, Cheeseekau, who taught ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... the village of Newtown, Wales, in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-one. After being away from his native village for many years, he returned, as did Shakespeare and as have so many successful men, and again made the place of his boyhood the home of his old age. Owen died in the house in which he was born. His body was buried in the same grave where sleeps the dust of his father and his mother. During the eighty-seven years of his life he accomplished ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the evening's conversation. It had disclosed to him a new source of comfort, for hitherto his grief had never known the relief of sympathy. His whole soul had been fixed on one object from his boyhood; the hopes of deserving Helen had been his incentive to exertion in his youth, and when disabled by sickness, he had always looked forward to a new commencement of active usefulness with her. It had been a life of waiting: ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with little education and no influential friends. When at last he had begun the practice of law it required no little daring to cast his fortune with the weaker side in politics, and thus ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... could not have carried the dignity of splendour more naturally than he. Whilst in his secret heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance, fixed in his memory was the impression of poverty and suffering that he had passed through in his boyhood days, when, in the streets of Paris, he was on the verge of starvation and at one time obliged to sell his meagre possession of books to find food for the mouth of his brother Louis, and went without himself. To his intimate friends ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... to the country with his father in boyhood, was taken by Wouter van Twiller into the service of the Company as an assistant, and afterwards became a tobacco planter. The Company has aided him with necessaries as it is to be seen by the books, but they ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... graphic illustration of these words. It is in the old prophecy of Daniel, tenth chapter. The story is this: Daniel is an old man now. He is an exile. He has not seen the green hills of his fatherland since boyhood. In this level Babylon, he is homesick for the dear old Palestinian hills, and he is heartsick over the plight of his people. He has been studying Jeremiah's prophecies, and finds there the promise plainly made that after seventy years these exiled Hebrews are to be allowed to ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... fact that the "Ledger" was losing money every day, his friends could not dissuade him from buying it, and in 1864 the dreams of his boyhood found fulfilment. He doubled the subscription price, lowered the advertising rates, to the astonishment of everybody, and the paper entered upon a career of remarkable prosperity, the profits sometimes amounting to over four hundred thousand dollars a year. He always ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of higher melody, a warble nearer, farther, fainter, a "sweet jargoning" among them all, that lifts his soul in unconscious praise. At first there is a glimmer of mystery, then he remembers,—it is his boyhood's home. There were just such songs in Aunt Marcia's time, when he slept up under the eaves of the steeply ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... days. It was very dull and wearisome business, imprisoned in a rocky defile and unable to do anything, while the Philistines were stealing the harvests that grew on the very spot where he had spent his boyhood. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... born at Ednam, on the banks of the Tweed, on September 11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father, who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the same vocation. ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... occasion I sat by Robert Chambers, and heard him relate some portion of the difficulties and distresses of his own and his brother's early boyhood (the interesting story has lately become generally known by the publication of their memoirs); and I then found it very difficult to swallow my dinner, and my tears, while listening to him, so deeply was I affected by his simple and touching account of the cruel ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble |
