"Boyhood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be your fault, not mine, if we are not fast fiends, Judge. I have never forgotten the obligations of my boyhood; and never ceased to regret the alienation you have shown. To have seemed in your eyes ungrateful, has been a source of pain whenever I ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... tell Luke about the plays he saw, and the exile's heart ached with envy. They took long walks up the river or across the bridge into the wonderlands that were overflowed in high-water times. And they talked always of their futures. Boyhood was a torment, a slavery. Heaven was just over the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... owing to the troubled state of the times, had been neglected in his boyhood, though he was early instructed in all the generous pastimes and exercises of chivalry. [44] He was esteemed one of the most perfect horsemen of his court. He led an active life, and the only kind of reading he appeared to relish was history. It was natural that ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... shortly after Robin-redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the gold-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 description of spring, "And the voice of the turtle ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Lowell's. He 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 ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... title of the fragment, as it appeared in 'The Friend', No. 19, (Dec. 28, 1809,) was 'Growth of Genius from the Influences of Natural Objects on the Imagination, in Boyhood and Early Youth'. It first appeared in Wordsworth's Poems in the edition of 1815. It was afterwards included in the first book of 'The Prelude', ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... which the Rishi ate up the Asura Vatapi, and his connubial connection with Lopamudra from the desire of offspring. Then the story of Rishyasringa who adopted Brahmacharya mode of life from his very boyhood; then the history of Rama of great prowess, the son of Jamadagni, in which has been narrated the death of Kartavirya and the Haihayas; then the meeting between the Pandavas and the Vrishnis in the sacred spot called ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... of his boyhood for years, but he never ceased to think of those happy days. And although he tried hard, he could not believe that it was all a dream. Whenever he played a game of chess, which was his one pastime, he seemed to see ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... as a loan, no less a sum than four thousand pounds, the substance of his wealth, besides an equal amount from other sources, for which Mr Clayton had made himself accountable. Mr Clayton had implicated himself so seriously, as he said, for the advantage of the man whom he had known from boyhood, and raised from beggary, simply on account of the love he bore him, and in consideration of his Christian character. Of every farthing thus advanced, the minister had been defrauded, and within a month ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... observe that the scrape of his boyhood over the drowned Stingo had hardly been of the magnitude that besought for twenty pounds. He waived the personal appeal, and asked, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... old man. "I remember! Six hills in a row. Busters!"—looking wonderfully knowing, and, with feeble forefinger raised, nodding and winking at his great-grandchild,—as it were across the slim gulf of a hundred years which divided the gleeful boyhood of Joe from the second childhood of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... "—that's just the taste exactly, though I haven't experienced it since boyhood; but how can water from a flowing stream, taste thus, and what the dickens makes it so warm? It must be at least 70 ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... may be called. If thou cans't make this hour glide more swift, With idle chat of owls and haunted men, I'll take thee for a gossip. Sit you there And hide the hour-glass. There was a time In early boyhood, when a thing like thee Seemed horrible, but now my mouth is dry With other terror. Thou art a cap and bells: Play me a ditty on a tambourine. [Starting up.] Who goes there? [Rushes to Smith, who enters.] Tell me that ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... the quiet waters of the fish-pond. Now Li had been brought up in Fukien province on the seashore, and was a skilful swimmer. He dived and splashed to his heart's content, then floated on the surface. "It takes me back to my boyhood," he cried, "why, oh why, is it not the fashion to swim? I'd love to live in the water all the time and yet some of my countrymen are even more afraid than a cat of getting their feet wet. As for me, I'd give anything to stay here ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... have been recorded to his fame, for indeed he had noble traits. That we have not put fiery words into his mouth, with which to execrate the tyrant, while invoking the vengeance of heaven-and, too, that we are guilty of the crime of thus suddenly transferring him from boyhood to manhood, nor have hanged him to please the envious and vicious,—will find excuse with the indulgent reader, who will be kind enough to consider that it is our business to relate facts as they are, to the performance of which-unthankful though it may be-we have drawn from the abundance ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Of Dante's boyhood and early youth we have only stray indications, and those mainly gathered from his own writings. We can, indeed, form a pretty clear notion of what he was, but we know little enough about what he did. From a very early period he was made ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... learned the domestic part of his duty, which was easy enough, from the groom of her ladyship's chamber: serving the Countess, as the custom commonly was in his boyhood, as page, waiting at her chair, bringing her scented water and the silver basin after dinner—sitting on her carriage-step on state occasions, or on public days introducing her company to her. This was chiefly of the Catholic gentry, of whom there ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... boyhood had not been an altogether happy one. His earliest recollections carried him back to a time when he lived a wandering, desolate life with his father and mother, in an endless series of Continental hotels and pensions. He was prepared to assert, with confidence, that his mother ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the company joining in her entreaties she left him no peace till he gave way to her desire, and after that he had protested that his singing was no better than the twitter of a starling or a bullfinch, and his ditty only such as he remembered from his boyhood's time, he sang the song "It rained on the bridge and I was wet" in a voice neither loud nor fine, but purely, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... commemorative of people locally distinguished, especially the deans and canons of the Cathedral, with their relatives and families; and I found but two monuments of personages whom I had ever heard of,— one being Gilbert Wahnesley and the other Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It was really pleasant to meet her there; for after a friend has lain in the grave far into the second century, she would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emotions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds a rich ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... down in his hands on the table and would not budge. Every schoolboy knows, for we may here accurately use Macaulay's well-known expression, every schoolboy knows the courage that this implies. And even by the heedless generation of boyhood it was appreciated, for we find an Etonian writing to his parents to ask that he might go to Oxford rather than Cambridge, on the sole ground that at Oxford he would have the priceless advantage of Gladstone's influence and example. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Hill!! He had some trouble in gitting hisself acknowledged as Juke in France, as the Orleans Dienasty and Borebones were fernest him, but he finally conkered. Elizy knowd him right off, as one of his ears and a part of his nose had bin chawed off in his fights with opposition firemen during boyhood's sunny hours. They lived to a green old age, beloved by all, both grate and small. Their children, of which they have numerous, often go up onto the Common ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... a boyhood friend of your father's I have been most anxious to accede to your request for release from your present duties. I may say that in my desire to do the fairest thing by you, I went so far as to place the facts of the matter before the President himself. He agreed with me that your services entitled ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the prosecution and defense had been allowed fifteen minutes each to argue the case. The attorney for the defense had commenced his argument with an allusion to the old swimming-hole of his boyhood days. He told in flowery oratory of the balmy air, the singing birds, the joy of youth, the delights of the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... account of the philosophical life of Patience, set forth by me now in manhood (continued Bernard, after a pause), it is not altogether easy to return to the very different impressions I received in boyhood on meeting the wizard of Gazeau Tower. I will make an effort, however, to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... antiquity of the individual it becomes doubtful if it was anything more than the natural cynicism which arises from age and bitter experience, and the possession of extraordinary powers of observation. It is a well known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the question, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we get; indeed many of us are only saved by timely death from utter moral petrifaction if not moral corruption. No one will deny that a young man is on the average better than an old one, for he is without that experience ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... buried by the old governor, though I cannot learn that any of them have ever been enriched by their researches; and who is there, among my native-born fellow-citizens, that does not remember when, in the mischievous days of his boyhood, he conceived it a great exploit to rob "Stuyvesant's orchard" on a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... fed my childish fantasy, Whose mountains were my boyhood's wild delight, Whose rocks, and woods, and torrents were to me The food of my soul's youthful appetite; Were music to my ear—a blessing to ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... cry filled the universe. Amidst the tears of his people, the bowed heads of kings, and the lamentations of the nations, they laid him there to rest upon the banks of the river whose murmurs were his boyhood's music—that river which, rising in mountain fastnesses amongst the grandest works of nature and reflecting in its course the proudest works of man, is a symbol of his history, which in its ceaseless and ever-widening flow is a symbol ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... lad was taken from school and set to work under his father. But his education was by no means ended. There is a temptation to dwell on these early formative years because he himself was so fond of deducing lessons from the little occurrences of his boyhood; nor do I know any life that shows a more consistent development from beginning to end. There is, too, a peculiar charm in hearing the world-famous philosopher discourse on these petty happenings of childhood and ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... said to live for more than a hundred years. I am, however, not prepared to say that it was the same pair of birds that used, year after year, to build on the same rock-shelf among the precipices of Navity, from the times of my great-grandfather's boyhood to those of ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... at Nantwich.—I observe in the pamphlet entitled Historical Facts connected with Nantwich and its Neighbourhood, lately referred to in "N. & Q.," it is stated that according to local tradition General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, may in his boyhood have lived in the Yew Tree House, near Stoke Hall. Now as this brave warrior was a native of Kent, it is scarcely probable he would have been a visitor at the house alluded to, unless he had relatives who resided there. Is he known to have had any family connexion in that quarter, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... burden of honor had fallen upon him with the disclosure of a man's desires. His boyhood seemed suddenly to have gone from him like the light of a lamp blown out by a puff of wind. He felt old, and responsible to answer now for himself, since the enormity of his offense was ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... life are the children. One might almost say that in Cho-sen you very seldom see a boy, for boyhood is done away with, and from childhood you spring at once to the sedate existence of a married man. Astonishing as this may sound, it is nevertheless true. The free life of a child comes to an end generally ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... brown bees swung, and hummed their ceaseless hymn—laborare est orare. Following the winding path that led to the palings which shut out the poultry realm, the young minister leaned against the gate, overshadowed by a tall lilac, and looked across at the feathered folk, of which from boyhood he ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... marks the state of public opinion with regard to the monasteries as places of education—for education began now to be the desire of the day. Schools, therefore, in the present acceptation of the term, in Cranmer's boyhood there were scarcely any; and it was the crying want of them in London that induced Dean Colet to establish that of St. Paul's, which, under the fostering care of Lily, the first master, not only became ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... and sank back into his chair. For a little while there was silence, heavy and painful. Wanda's eyes grew misty. Not once since that day in the spring had she been disloyal to Red Reckless, whom she had known in his boyhood, who had fought her early battles for her, who had been the plumed knight of her early girlhood. She told herself now that he had not come back because he could not bear to return yet to the place where he and his brother had spent so many happy days together, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... thoughts of boyhood! We elders smile at them. The little world spins round; the little voices of an hour sink hushed. The crawling generations come and go. The solar system drops from space. The eternal mechanism reforms ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... over the professor. I wondered dreamily if he were very hot. I tried to picture his boyhood. I speculated on his future, and the ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... recently, in Japan been the custom for every Samurai to be named differ-ently In babyhood, boyhood, manhood, or promotion, change of life, or residence, In commemoration of certain events, or on account of a vow, or ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... it engenders, and the generally loftier platform on which it elevates the individual as a moral, spiritual, and social being—is every particle as true of women as of men. Are these things no important part of individual happiness? Let any man call to mind what he himself felt on emerging from boyhood—from the tutelage and control of even loved and affectionate elders—and entering upon the responsibilities of manhood. Was it not like the physical effect of taking off a heavy weight, or releasing him from obstructive, even if not otherwise painful, bonds? Did ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... familiar to the reader, seeing that every one must have encountered many such. Fellows of the kind are known as "gay young sparks," and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of frankness, directness, and enterprise ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... have great need To be forgiven: sadly I have 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 old— Wreath ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... left him wondering in the cloister. He knew now what had been missing by the river. "I was naked, and"—how ran the lines? He turned to go, recalling in a whirl snatches of truth he had never known since boyhood, never ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... tenth Gratitude, an eleventh Cheerfulness, a twelfth Exercise, a thirteenth Sobriety, &c. They are elected to duties of that kind, each one to that duty for excellence in which he is known from boyhood to be most suitable. Wherefore among them neither robbery nor clever murders, nor lewdness, incest, adultery, or other crimes of which we accuse one another, can be found. They accuse themselves of ingratitude ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... of Usna rejoice, for now might they sail south to the land upon which their father's castle had stood in their boyhood. ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... possession there is love, aye, more, a flood of love. Have you ever seen a flood? I remember one in the Schuylkill during my boyhood days and how it impressed me. Those who live along the valley of that treacherous mountain stream, the Ohio, know something of the power of a flood. How the waters come rushing down, cutting out new channels, washing down rubbish, tearing valuable property from ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... of playing "I-spy" through Kenilworth Castle with Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Mary Ann Evans and a youth I used to know in boyhood by the name of Bill Hursey. We chased each other across the drawbridge, through the portcullis, down the slippery stones into the donjon-keep, around the moat, and up the stone steps to the topmost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Miriam, a hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan, was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of the priests, and on his return to Palestine gave himself up to the practice of magic.[87] The Toledot Yeshu, however, goes on to say that on reaching manhood ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... course right, my good girl. And I believe I should do injustice to myself if I made you think that those ignoble motives are the strongest in me. No; it isn't so. From my boyhood I have had a passionate desire of literary fame, deep down below all the surface faults of my character. The best of my life has gone by, and it drives me to despair when I feel that I have not gained the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... wife is an educated and intelligent white woman of English descent, and they have four children. He is a friend of the white people, as well as of his own people. Brought up as an Indian, with no opportunity for learning during his boyhood, when he came to think for himself, he started out blindly for an education, without any means but ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... hour at night They do, for that matter, yet. The railroad came to town and the march of improvement struck it, after I had gone away. Century-old institutions were ruthlessly upset. The police force, which in my boyhood consisted of a man and a half—that is, one with a wooden leg—was increased and uniformed, and the night watchmen's chant was stopped. But there are limits to everything. The town that had been waked every hour of ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... really striking and beautiful picture in his incongruous habiliment. His strong and thoughtful face, over which yet clustered the curly hair of boyhood, just touched with gray, lit up by his earnest, sad eyes, seemed—how distinctly I recall it—almost ideally lovely that morning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola, only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I came ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... without the occasional relish of peril and the luxury of daring deeds. Amid the changes of time, the monotony of events, and the injustice of mankind, there is always accessible to the poorest this one draught of enjoyment,—danger. "In boyhood," said the Norwegian enthusiast, Ole Bull, "I loved to be far out on the ocean in my little boat, for it was dangerous, and in danger one draws near to God." Perhaps every man sometimes feels this longing, has his moment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... remedy, and speak of your own, for which I would fain find one. Now I entreat you, by what you owe me for the good-will I have shown you, and for the fact that we are of the same country, and were brought up together in boyhood, that you tell me what is the cause of your inordinate sadness. For even, admitting that captivity alone is enough to sadden the most cheerful heart in the world, yet I imagine that your sorrows have a deeper source; for generous spirits like ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... anchor in another quiet bay, so much like that of the night before, as all the bays and cays are along that coast, that you need to have sailed them from boyhood to know one ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... scenes, even now so beautiful and tranquil, the subject of our sketch was born and lived through his infancy and early boyhood.[1] ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... a single instance during my childhood or early boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and God's blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner. On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were gotten by the children very ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... graceful flow Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair, And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... new life! But not an hour is to be lost; this night—this day-oh, Mother of Mercy! what image have you conjured up! fly to Uzeda, if you would save my very reason. I myself have scarcely seen him since my boyhood—Lerma forbade me seek his friendship. But I ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Caesar, although "a man ought to rate the fatherland above a friend," as the liberators said. Matius took little heed of this talk. He had known of it from the outset, but it had not troubled him. Yet when it came to his ears that his friend Cicero, to whom he had been attached from boyhood, to whom he had proved his fidelity at critical moments, was among his accusers, he could not but complain bitterly of the injustice. Through a common friend, Trebatius, whose acquaintance he had made in Gaul, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... lay on the ground, Brightly shone the sun upon Virginia's forests. Evergreens—the holly and the running-pine— Made of woods a Christmas bower to put in mind Captive of his boyhood home in Lincolnshire. Merrie England! far away thou seemed then Unto him whose heart beat true to thee. Friendless Stood the Brave amid that horde of savages; Yet undaunted was his mien, his brow serene. Cruel ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... then more boldly: "I think the fault is largely yours and Matilda's. Matilda says your parents died when you were all young; and he admitted that he does not even remember them. And he also admitted, when I pressed him, that you and Matilda had not given him very much attention during his boyhood. You and Matilda are older; you should have brought him up more carefully; you are both seriously to blame for what he is. So I hope," she concluded, "that both of you will ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... haunted the boyhood of a man, we should have a rare help toward understanding the character he has developed. Those of the young Faber were, almost exclusively, of playing the prince of help and deliverance among women and men. Like most boys that dream, he dreamed himself rich ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of its purpose to give educational value and moral worth to the recreational activities of the boyhood of America, the leaders of the Boy Scout Movement quickly learned that to effectively carry out its program, the boy must be influenced not only in his out-of-door life but also in the diversions of ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... CHILTERN. [Pacing up and down the room.] Arthur, do you think that what I did nearly eighteen years ago should be brought up against me now? Do you think it fair that a man's whole career should be ruined for a fault done in one's boyhood almost? I was twenty-two at the time, and I had the double misfortune of being well-born and poor, two unforgiveable things nowadays. Is it fair that the folly, the sin of one's youth, if men choose ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... be afraid of nobody; but your modesty is really as provoking and unnecessary as a * *'s. I am very merry, and have just been writing some elegiac stanzas on the death of Sir P. Parker. He was my first cousin, but never met since boyhood. Our relations desired me, and I have scribbled and given it to Perry, who will chronicle it to-morrow. I am as sorry for him as one could be for one I never saw since I was a child; but should not have wept melodiously, except 'at the request ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... we have been informed by an acquaintance of his, a Rebel soldier who has known him from early life, has always been a sort of guerilla—deserting from his father's house in mere boyhood—fighting duels as a pastime—roving the country far and wide in search of pleasure or profit—a thorough student of human nature and of the country in which he operates—bold and daring to a fault and romantic ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... loss the captain could not help a grim smile stealing over his face at the boy's readiness for adventure, no matter where it might lead. But he had been a rover in his boyhood himself, and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... anxiety to get on he scarcely marked that at the moment, but afterwards he remembered its park-like shores, its forget-me-nots and raspberry-blossoms, and the dappled sunlight falling through the aspen-foliage. It was no different from the rivers of his boyhood in a sheltered land, with swimming-holes at the foot of the little rapids: only the fenced fields and the quiet cattle were lacking above the banks, and ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... temper which made him long to fly at the invisible foe and beat him about the head with his clubbed rifle. It was no especial satisfaction for a man in his position to climb up on his elbow and help to discharge a volley at an empty landscape. The war pictures he had been prone to study in his boyhood had been full of twisty-necked prancing horses and bright-coated swaggering men, all on their feet, and very hot and earnest. Here the picture was made up of a row of brown-clothed forms lying flat on their stomachs and, far ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... school Eleven, and excursions out of bounds, when his excess of pocket-money would enable him to stand treat all round? "Why not?" this friend of his used to say. "Was it so very impossible for one to get back the cares and interests, the ambitions, the amusements, the high spirits of one's boyhood?" And if he now were to tell her that a far greater miracle had happened to himself? That at an age when he had fancied he had done and seen most things worth doing and seeing, when the past seemed to contain everything worth having, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... generation. If there is an exception to this statement—and I know every part of Canada almost as well as I know my own home—I do not know it. Sifton, Van Horne, MacKenzie, Mann, Laurier, Borden, Foster, the late Sir John Macdonald—all came up from penniless boyhood through their own efforts to what Canadians rate as success. I said "what Canadians rate as success." I did not say to affluence, for Canadians do not rate affluence by itself as success. Laurier, Foster, Sir John Macdonald—each began as a poor man. Sifton began life as a penniless lawyer. Van ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... assented. "It reminds me of my boyhood days. This is good of you," and he turned to the captain, "to take ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... of Spain against French aggression was one who, if we may judge by his American career, needed only a wider field to rival the genius and the atrocities of Alva. Pedro de Menendez, when he had scarcely passed from boyhood, had fought both against the French and the Turks, and had visited America and returned laden with wealth. He then did good service in command of the Spanish fleet in the French war, and his prompt cooperation with the land force gave him a share in the glories of St. Quentin.[4] ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... had in their boyhood been taught to regard almost every form of recreation as a sin to be guarded against and repented of, were taught another doctrine, a new impulse was given to cricket, football, and all manner of athletics, and angling was quickly ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... boyhood in him stirs; The wonder of the morning skies, Of sunset gold behind the firs, Is kindled in his dreaming eyes: How far off is this sordid place, As turning from our sight away He crushes to his hungry face ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. For the same delusion makes strange friendships, and the General, in spite of his appearance of damaged reality, also inhabited that enchanted fairy-ring where no fact ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... are gone. Our men of wealth and character, of worth and power, have been early bound to some useful Employment. Many of them were unfortunate orphan boys, whom want compelled to work for bread—the children of penury and lowly birth. In their early boyhood they buckled on the armor of labor, took upon their little shoulders heavy burdens, assumed responsibilities, met fierce circumstances, contended with sharp opposition, chose the ruggedest paths of Employment because ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... my boyhood was when I was able to present her with a large and flaming red cotton handkerchief, wherewith in turban style she adorned her head. And my satisfaction was complete when my profound erudition enabled ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... name of Glycyrrhiza comes from the Greek words, glukus, "sweet," and riza, "a root." English Liquorice root, when dried, is commercially used in two forms, the peeled and the unpeeled. By far and away the best lozenges are those of our [322] boyhood, still attributed to one "Smith," ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... near Warsaw, in the year 1810. His boyhood was marked by no events that gave promise of the greatness of his future career. He early became the victim of ill health, which was almost the perpetual torment of his after life. He grew up in simple and quiet habits, surrounded by the purest influences, conversant ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from his little boyhood, when he first crossed the ocean up to the time of the last crossing, at the sad summons which had taken him to his dying father. No real moving picture, thought Zaidos, had ever been screened with so many thrills and exciting incidents as the real life-film ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... all things business, and the wooded knolls were calling to him. A horse was between his legs—a good horse, he decided; one that sent him back to the cayuses he had ridden during his eastern Oregon boyhood. He had been somewhat of a rider in those early days, and the champ of bit and creak of saddle-leather sounded good to ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... haunt the memory and sink into the heart. The school life of Dobbin, the ruin of old Sedley and the despair of Amelia, the last parting of Amelia and George, Osborne revoking his will, Sedley broken down, Rawdon in the sponging-house, the birth and boyhood of Georgy Osborne, the end of old Sedley, the end of old Osborne, are as pathetic and humane as anything in our literature. Mature men, who study fiction with a critical spirit and a cool head, admit that the only passages in English romance that ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... 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, and made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... From boyhood I have had a fancy for boats, and have seldom been without a share, usually more or less fractional, in a rather indeterminate number of punts and wherries. But when, for the first time, I found myself at sea as Commodore of a fleet of armed steamers,—for even the Ben De Ford boasted a six-pounder ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Maxted," said Uncle Richard quietly. "A thorough, true-hearted gentleman, who preserves all the best of his boyhood; but come now, work." ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... himself long after they were in their luxurious beds and David was asleep. No battlefield or shattered country he had seen was as ugly as this world would be if men like his brother Bayliss controlled it altogether. Until the war broke out, he had supposed they did control it; his boyhood had been clouded and enervated by that belief. The Prussians had believed it, too, apparently. But the event had shown that there were a great many people left ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... reminded him of her hand on his forehead. He might have gone back home, if she had not died long ago. Now, in spite of the many years that had passed over her grave, the memory of her came as strong, as sweet, as instinct with the fullness of life, as, if he were suddenly wafted back into boyhood. ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... this M. de Manicamp; a very intelligent young fellow, always poor, always needy, although he dipped his hand freely into the purse of M. le Comte de Guiche, one of the best furnished purses of the period. M. le Comte de Guiche had had, as the companion of his boyhood, this De Manicamp, a poor gentleman, vassal-born, of the house of Gramont. M. de Manicamp, with his tact and talent had created himself a revenue in the opulent family of the celebrated marechal. From his infancy he had, with ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... us more than to listen to father's stories. Mother Goose melodies were nothing beside them. In fact, we never heard fairy stories at home; and when father told of his boyhood days, the stories had a charm which only truth can give. I can hear him now, as he would reply to our request for a story by asking if he had ever told us how his father tried to have a "raising" without ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... venture to wander in casually, I was more afraid than ever, for at a window a small lady sat reading. I knew her at once for Jane Ryder, but that fact made me no bolder. On the contrary, I felt a timidity that was almost childish; it was a feeling that carried me away back to my boyhood, when I refused to go into a room where there was a company ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... remember Mr. Lenox?" asked Harry, staring at me. "Have you forgotten the pleasures of your boyhood, miserable ingrate? Have you no recollection of the big kite this benefactor of your youth made you, which dragged you down the hill and threw ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... losted. Tate me home, Boy!"; and he, with the superior knowledge of location which seven years gives over three, had led her safely back to Miss Eliza—ever since that long-past day, Arethusa had made up the most of Timothy's world. They had played together all through childhood and boyhood and girlhood, and quarreled violently and much over their play, and then made up with commendable immediacy; Timothy was the nearest approach to a brother Arethusa had ever known. But Timothy's feeling for Arethusa had ever been, and especially these last few years, more than a brother's love. ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... again, The ugly, dusty feet again that long ago I knew. I'd like to play first base again, and Sliver's curves to face again, I'd like to climb, the way I did, a friendly apple tree; For, knowing what I do to-day, could I but wander back and play, I'd get full measure of the joy that boyhood ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... one of their number was a very big man, whose legs, back, and neck were tattooed as the Kingsmill Islanders tattoo, and he (Flemming) had formed the idea, since his conversation with the manager of the plantation, that this big man was Binoke—the dear friend of his boyhood's days, the ever-wanted "Tommy Topsail-tie" of his brother and his sister Medora, the man who, with Jack Waterwitch, had stood to his father and mother in their poverty and distress, and had toiled night and day ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... village with a far glimpse on fair days of Kilimanjaro. Being born where he was, and dwelling where he did, he belonged to a certain Central European Power. Certain manifestations of that Power had made him uneasy from his goat-herding boyhood onwards. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... Alack! alack! How did I escape you, Dane, when mind and mood you mastered me? The auguries were fair. I, too, should have been a singer, and lo, I strive for science. All my boyhood was singing, what of you; and my father was a singer, too, in his own fine way. Dear to me is your likening of him to Waring.—"What's become of Waring?" He was Waring. I can think of him only as one who went away, "chose land travel ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... urgent admonitions to Mr. MacPherson to have locked up in the Company's safe various important papers which they had sent, at Stoddard's request, for signature, and which they supposed from the date, must be lying with his other mail. A boyhood friend telegraphed his intention of coming down from Massachusetts and joining the searchers. Stoddard had no near relatives. A grand-aunt, living in Boston, telegraphed to Mr. Hardwick to see that money be ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... their officer-beginners to sea, the admirals are not young, at least, in point of sea service. He got more out of the action than his elders; his impressions of the long cruises and the actions had the vividness of boyhood. Down in one of the caves, doing his part as the shells were sent up to feed the thundering guns above, the whispered news of the progress of battle was passed on at intervals till, finally, the guns were silent. Then he hurried on deck in the elation of victory, succeeded ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... in a natural way with the illustration of flower and bird and squirrel she can give the child first lessons in sex hygiene. It is the function of the mother in the child's younger years and of the father in adolescent boyhood to open the mind of the child to understand the life processes. The lack of knowledge brings sorrow and sin to the family and injures society. Seeking information elsewhere, the boy and girl fall into bad habits and lay the foundation ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... act. Particularly must this be the case on a soil as sacred to the American imagination as that of Edinburgh. The glories of the philosophic chair of this university were deeply impressed on my imagination in boyhood. Professor Fraser's Essays in Philosophy, then just published, was the first philosophic book I ever looked into, and I well remember the awestruck feeling I received from the account of Sir William Hamilton's classroom therein contained. Hamilton's own ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... not deceived, by it. For the sake of appearance he reproved Landoire, who, however, had done nothing more than execute the order he had received. How could he imagine I would submit to such treatment, considering that we had been friends since our boyhood, and that I was now living on full terms of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... think—and hope—that he is a very extraordinary representative of it. I have traced his history back to his boyhood, when he was a cabin-boy. Having apparently failed to recommend himself to his employers in that capacity, he became errand-boy to a sort of maitre d'armes at Melbourne. Here he discovered where his ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... that time a mere outpost of civilization in the wilderness, and it was in this wilderness that Cooper's boyhood was passed. And just as Irving's boyhood left its impress on his work, so did Cooper's in even greater degree. Mighty woods, broken only here and there by tiny clearings, stretched around the little settlement; ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... Blair. In the index, and scattered throughout all our books, was the name of Anon. He appeared in all styles of poetry and prose and dialogue. We wondered where he lived, what his age was, and how he looked, it was not until quite late in boyhood that we learned that Anon was an abbreviation for anonymous, and that he was sometimes the best saint and at other times ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... Preacher for a long time, but I never saw him in quite such a mood of hilarity. He and Mr. Starkweather told stories of their boyhood—and we laughed, and laughed—Mrs. Starkweather the most of all. Seeing her so often in her carriage, or in the dignity of her home, I didn't think she had so much jollity in her. Finally she discovered Harriet's ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... his Indian dancers gave an unusually fine exhibition of their tribal dances for the visitors. The General expressed his appreciation quite warmly to Joe after the dance ended, and asked Joe to pose with him for a picture. He was recalling other boyhood reading he had done, and his interest in the Indians was quite naive. Joe took him into the Hopi House and they spent an hour or so going over the ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... little apart from the rest and was gazing with rapturous awe at this object of his boyhood adoration. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... moment, and then declared he had restored it to me on the spot! I mildly but firmly denied the fact; while his lordship as sturdily reasserted it. In a short time, we were both in such a passion that Byron commanded me to leave the room. I edged out of the apartment with the slow, defying air of angry boyhood; but when I reached the door, I suddenly turned, and looking at him with all the bitterness I felt for his nation, called him, in French, "an English hog!" Till then our quarrel had been waged in Italian. Hardly were the words out of my mouth when his lordship leaped ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... is a period during the delirium of youthful fancy when the calmer pleasures are unappreciated at their value, but the Andante of existence follows the Allegro of boyhood; its precious strains fall deeper and more touchingly upon the Sense; and the full Soul longs to yield itself to them, and to share its emotions with the beloved one in tones heard only in her ivory ear——how beautiful! Oh pure of heart, how beautiful!——and, when the belle, still ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... case, that spirit of innovation which had shown itself timidly in the case of Hob by the admission of new manures, and which had run to waste with Gilbert in subversive politics and heretical religions, bore useful fruit in many ingenious mechanical improvements. In boyhood, from his addiction to strange devices of sticks and string, he had been counted the most eccentric of the family. But that was all by now; and he was a partner of his firm, and looked to die a bailie. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that in his boyhood he actually heard an old minister of the Church of Scotland declare in the General Assembly, 'We are not here to make the world better: we have only to pass through it on the way to glory.' 'No grosser travesty,' adds the author, 'was ever uttered. We ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... little else to tell of my father's boyhood, as most of his time was spent in the schoolroom. Outside the schoolroom he was conspicuous for high spirits in play, daring in mischief, and independence in everything. But a boy's playtime was so short in Yuchovitch, and his resources so limited, that even a lad ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... story of Colonel William F. Cody, "Buffalo Bill," as told by his sister and Zane Grey. It begins with his boyhood in Iowa and his first encounter with an Indian. We see "Bill" as a pony express rider, then near Fort Sumter as Chief of the Scouts, and later engaged in the most dangerous Indian campaigns. There is ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... his eyes from off her face; she tempted him—he had been so long unused to kindness. He gazed out of the window, far away across the frozen forest, and heard the dream of his boyhood calling to him to seek the city out of sight. His choice lay between this woman and El Dorado, in whose search he had wasted all his life. He did not deceive himself, whatever he might say aloud; his hesitancy did not arise out of unwillingness to desert Spurling, but from ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... send ten stamps by mail to J. B., and receive an infallible receipt, etc. I did not find, however, that these little enterprises prospered well in New England, and I had recalled to me very forcibly a story which my grandfather was fond of relating to me in my boyhood. It briefly narrated how certain very knowing flies went to get molasses, and how it ended by the molasses getting them. This, indeed, was precisely what happened to me in all my little efforts to better myself in the Northern States, until at length my misfortunes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... and he one of the players. What a fierce excitement of doubt, hope, and pleasure! What tremendous hazards of loss or gain! What were all the games of chance he had ever played compared to this one? Into all contests requiring athletic skill and courage, the young man, from his boyhood upwards, had flung himself with all his might. The champion of his school and his regiment, the bravos of his companions had followed him everywhere; from the boys' cricket-match to the garrison-races, he had won a hundred of triumphs; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with his account of himself in boyhood,—'It pleased God to put it into my parent's heart to put me to school, to learn both to read and write; though, to my shame I confess, I did soon lose that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... force—there was no permanent British naval service except the commissioned and warrant officers. Not till several years later did the new 'continuous service' men equal half of the bluejacket aggregate. Now, every bluejacket proper serves continuously, and has been in the navy since boyhood. The training of the boys is made uniform. No member of the ship's company—except a domestic—is now allowed to set foot on board a sea-going ship till he has been put through a training course which ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... boyhood is a large unpainted barnlike building standing at a point where three roads met at about the centre of the town. When all the inhabitants of the town were of one faith religiously, or at least the minority were not strong enough ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... unfastened the window's catch. From the blustering balcony a plump little man stepped inside. He had a market basket on his arm. His face was a stranger to razors; his hair to shears. He reminded Mr. Magee of the celebrated doctor who came every year to the small town of his boyhood, there to sell a wonderful healing herb to the ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... husband said, in the same language, "the greater part are sturdy fellows but, as they marched by, I observed some twelve or fourteen who were scarcely out of their boyhood. ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... eight or ten years, seemed to me already a grown person. I cannot recall the time when I did not know her. Later I came to love her as a sister, and her early death in her prime was one of the first real griefs of my boyhood. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... heart vanished, when he saw the yearning in the suffering man's face. Yet he stood for some time rooted to the spot, looking at the man who was no doubt his father. Every line of that face stood out boldly to Chester. How often, in his boyhood days he had pictured to himself what his father was like—and here he was before him. In those days he had nursed a hatred against that unknown sire, but now there was no more of that. If only,—Chester kneeled by the side of the minister's chair, letting ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... many kinds of play. He realised that much of the play of boyhood is exercise of physical power, and that it must be of a competitive nature because the boy wants to measure his power. Even in 1826 he urges the importance not only of town playgrounds but of play leaders, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... bow, or the straight pine for my arrow, or carving my mimic ship, did I muse upon these words of my father,—so deeply are the kind expressions of a judicious parent engraven on the heart and memory of boyhood. ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... to a gentle family in the Calendar of Monteith, and was celebrated even in boyhood for his feats of strength and daring. While still at school he could hold a hundredweight at arm's-length, and crumple up a horseshoe like a wisp of hay. The fleetest runner, the most desperate fighter in the country, he was already ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... my daughter, very good, indeed," the priest remarked with his mouth full. "Madame Roussillon has not neglected your culinary education." Alice filled a glass for him. It was Bordeaux and very fragrant. The bouquet reminded him of his sunny boyhood in France, of his journey up to Paris and of his careless, joy-brimmed youth in the gay city. How far away, how misty, yet how thrillingly sweet it all was! He sat with half closed ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... consideration for the feelings of others, he—so far as women were concerned—was altogether or almost a stranger. Such consideration is a virtue which can be learned only in the society of equals, where necessity obliges men to practise it. Henry had been a king from his boyhood; he had been surrounded by courtiers who had anticipated all his desires; and exposed as he was to an ordeal from which no human being could have escaped uninjured, we have more cause, after all, to admire him for those excellences ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... for his journey. As it was, he had to listen and reply to some of Calton's impressions of the neighbourhood and the season: the latter, it appeared, was seasonable, and the former had changed considerably—and not altogether for the worse—since Calton's boyhood (which had been spent there). The village shop in particular had greatly improved since the year 1870. It was now possible to procure there pretty much anything you liked in reason: which was a conveniency, because suppose anythink was required of a suddent (and he had known such things ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James |
