"Pedigree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Isaac Bickerstaff, commenting on the letter in No. 59, printed above, says: "I have looked over our pedigree upon the receipt of this epistle, and find the Greenhats are a-kin to the Staffs. They descend from Maudlin, the left-handed wife of Nehemiah Bickerstaff, in the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... lived a man whose name was Homer, a blind or obscure man (for they are synonimous** terms) who occasionally published his book of sports, and to him we are obliged also for the pedigree of many Horses that were esteemed the best in his time. This man was said to be poor, in little esteem, and to travel about the country to sell his books; but though his circumstances were very low, his understanding, it seems, was not, for he always took care to pay his court to the ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... sun, the two wolves of the Gothic legends, the two comets, who devoured the sun and moon? And did the Miztec barbarians, in their vanity, claim descent from these monstrous creatures of the sky? Why not, when the historical heroes of antiquity traced their pedigree back to the gods; and the rulers of Peru, Egypt, and China pretended to be the lineal offspring of the sun? And there are not wanting those, ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... gain the heart of her Grace by his minute acquaintance with the Juggernaut pedigree; and having taken the opportunity, in one of their conversations, to describe Mrs. Felix Lorraine as the most perfect specimen of divine creation with which he was acquainted, at the same time the most amusing and the most amiable of women, that lady was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... section of the country. You've got to make a universal appeal. Look how the Northern publications have catered to the South and encouraged the Southern writers. And you've got to go far and wide for your contributors. You've got to buy stuff according to its quality without any regard to the pedigree of the author. Now, I'll bet a quart of ink that this Southern parlor organ you've been running has never played a note that originated above Mason & Hamlin's line. Am ...
— Options • O. Henry
... opened her back door. She was a woman of about forty; of a robust, large-boned figure; with broad, rosy visage, dark, handsome eyes, and well-cut nose: but inheriting a mouth so wide as to proclaim her pure aboriginal Irish pedigree. After a look abroad, to inhale the fresh air, and then a remonstrance (ending in a kick) with the hungry pig, who ran, squeaking and grunting, to demand his long-deferred breakfast, she settled her cap, rubbed down her prauskeen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... throwing him back on his own efforts, had helped that idea to compete with the idea of a busy Providence. He now suffers a new degradation within the compass of his own planet. Evolution, shearing him of his glory as a rational being specially created to be the lord of the earth, traces a humble pedigree for him. And this second degradation was the decisive fact which has established the reign ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... quiet water, fancied that he was a made man; he could almost see that box. But a few more yards and it was his. Alas! In his eagerness to secure "a smith of kind" he had made insufficient inquiries into that smith's ancestry. There was (as he discovered when too late) a flaw in his pedigree! Some ancestress, it was said, could not show her marriage lines, or something else was wrong. At any rate, there was a flaw, and that was sufficient to upset the whole thing, for the chain, not being made by ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the final bargaining took place. There was a difference of five hundred dollars between them, and the old man fought stubbornly for it; and though Orlando giggled, it was clear he was no fool at a bargain, and that he had many resources. At last he threw doubt upon the pedigree of a bull. With a snarl Mazarine strode into the house. He had that pedigree, and it was indisputable. He would show the young swaggerer that he could not be caught anywhere ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... other hand, are a most select class, whose pedigree is traced most carefully in the traditionary genealogies to the ancient head of some particular clan. One is chosen to bear the title, but there may be other individuals, who trace their origin to the same stock, call themselves chiefs ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... "every Scotchman has a pedigree." It is a national prerogative, as inalienable as his pride and his poverty. Sir Walter's pedigree was gentle, he being connected, though remotely, with ancient families upon both sides of the house. He was lineally ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... breeding, Parker's old trainer, Dan Leighton, arrived at the Palomar. Formerly a jockey, he was now in his fiftieth year, a wistful little man with a puckered, shrewd face, which puckered more than usual when Don Mike handed him Panchito's pedigree. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... there have been those who have attributed something like consciousness even to inorganic matter. If the doctrine of evolution be true, argues Professor Clifford,[4] "we shall have along the line of the human pedigree a series of imperceptible steps connecting inorganic matter with ourselves. To the later members of that series we must undoubtedly ascribe consciousness, although it must, of course, have been simpler than ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... well-regulated university, but Percy Bysshe Shelley could not have fitted easily into any system. Born at Field Place, Horsham, Sussex, on August 4, 1792, simultaneously with the French Revolution, he had more than a drop of wildness in his blood. The long pedigree of the Shelley family is full of turbulent ancestors, and the poet's grandfather, Sir Bysshe, an eccentric old miser who lived until 1815, had been married twice, on both occasions eloping with an heiress. Already at Eton Shelley was a rebel and a pariah. Contemptuous of authority, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... pocket. So strong is our faith in this protection by plutocracy, that we are more and more trusting our empire in the hands of families which inherit wealth without either blood or manners. Some of our political houses are parvenue by pedigree; they hand on vulgarity like a coat of-arms. In the case of many a modern statesman to say that he is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is at once inadequate and excessive. He is born with a silver knife in his mouth. But all ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... (April 22, 1907) of Fielding's birth affords a pretext for bringing together, in a fourth Appendix, some additional particulars which have been discovered or established since the issue of the last edition of this Memoir. These particulars relate to his pedigree, his residence at Leyden as a student, his marriage to his first wife Charlotte Cradock, his Will, his library, his family ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 15, 1773, Johnson mentions an uncle who very likely was Dr. Ford. In Notes and Queries, 5th S. v. 13, it is shown that by the will of the widow of Dr. Ford the Johnsons received 200 in 1722. On the same page the Ford pedigree is given, where it is seen that Johnson had an uncle Cornelius. It has been stated that 'Johnson was brought up by his uncle till his fifteenth year.' I understand Boswell to say that Johnson, after leaving Lichfield School, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... actions? No, I have always spoken of the low, sordid, and mercenary habits in which he was bred; I said nothing of his birth. But, my Lords, I was a good deal surprised when a friend of his and mine yesterday morning put into my hands, who had been attacking Mr. Hastings's life and conduct, a pedigree. I was appealing to the records of the Company; they answer by sending me to the Herald's Office. Many of your Lordships' pedigrees are obscure in comparison with that of Mr. Hastings; and I only wonder how he came to derogate from such a line of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... five years after the battle of Malplaquet, she was; where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the Queen. With the help of a "Wade's Chronology," I can make out ever so queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as many ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... schoolboys have a kind of freemasonry of your own, and outsiders are looked on by you much as I look on rabbits and all that isn't game. Ay, you may laugh, but it is so; and your friends will throw their eyes askance at me, and never think on my pedigree, which would beat theirs all to shivers, I'll be bound. No: I'll have no one here at the Hall who will look down on a Hamley of Hamley, even if he only knows how to make a cross instead ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the pedigree several equine generations. Shiloh tossed his head, looked over his shoulder at Drew, who entered the stall and began quieting the stallion with hands drawn gently over the back and up ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... if I remember righdy, tells of a sheep which was gradually accustomed to a flesh diet. Its wool began to take the coarseness of hair and the mild beast grew savage. The fore-runners of the larrikin were never very sheep-like in all probability, for if one could trace his pedigree, it would in most cases be found that he is the descendant of the true British cad. But he has improved upon the ancestral pattern and become a pest of formidable characteristics and dimensions. The problem he presents has never been faced, but it will have to be met in one way ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... corresponding with that of someone in the Bible. Above all, you had to pack the whole Irish past into the few thousand years since Noah came out of the Ark.—You get a glimpse in Wales of the struggle there was between Hebrao-Christian chronology and the Celtic sense of the age of the world: in the pedigree of an ancient family, where, it is said, about half way down the line this entry occurs after one of the names: "In his time Adam was expelled from Paradise." In Ireland, indeed, there was at least one man from before the Flood living in historic times: Fintan, whom, with ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... thus local and lonely, denizens of California only; one in limited numbers in a few choice spots on the Sierra Nevada, the other along the Coast Range from the Bay of Monterey to the frontiers of Oregon? Are they veritable Melchizedeks, without pedigree or early relationship, and possibly fated to be without descent? Or are they now coming upon the stage—or rather were they coming but for man's interference—to play a part in the future? Or are they remnants, sole and scanty survivors ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of them being knighted, another made a baron by Queen Elizabeth. {16c} One, Robert de Cheney, was a powerful Bishop of Lincoln (A.D. 1147-67) and built one of the finest castles in England, the ruins of which still remain in the Palace grounds at Lincoln. {16d} The Cheney pedigree is given in The Genealogist of July, 1901. They seem to have settled in Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire, as well as in Lincolnshire. Sir Thomas Cheney, K.G., was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... ugly as this; as a young girl I had beautiful golden hair, very much the color of my wig." She had worn from time immemorial an old blue satin dress, and a white crape shawl embroidered in colors; her appearance was ridiculous, but she had an interminable Teutonic pedigree, and her manners, in every presence, were easy and jovial, as became a lady whose ancestor had been cup-bearer to Frederick Barbarossa. Thirty years' observation of Roman society had sharpened her wits and given her an inexhaustible store of anecdotes, but she had ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in all the 25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the whale's; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the ideal strains of pedigree kine, for beef or dairy products, have been created as surely and even more scientifically than the sculptor has immortalized his ideals ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst
... dame, for he comes o' gude kin, An' boasts o' a lang pedigree; This night he maun share o' our gude cheer within, At morning's gray dawn he maun dee. He's gallant Wat Scott, heir o' proud Harden Ha', Wha ettled our lands clear to sweep; But now he is snug in auld Elibank's paw, An' shall swing frae our donjon-keep. Though ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... for speculation has scarcely bounds. O. excellens is certainly descended from O. Pescatorei and O. triumphans, O. elegans from O. cirrhosum and O. Hallii, O. Wattianum from O. Harryanum and O. hystrix. And it must be observed that we cannot trace pedigree beyond the parents as yet, saving a very, very few cases. But unions have been contracting during cycles of time; doubtless, from the laws of things the orchid is latest born of Nature's children in the world of flora, but mighty venerable by this time, nevertheless. We can identify the ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Borderland of gambling. Ranging between the extremes of unavoidable risk-taking and of gambling are a number of cases of a mixed nature. In nearly all wagers, judgment in some degree influences the choice of sides. One man bets on a horse whose pedigree and performances he knows thoroly; another judges by the horse's appearance as it comes upon the track. The professional bookmakers have the latest possible and most exact information on which to ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... her reflection went no deeper than the passing thought of one who was not quite so much delighted with her present company, as not to believe it capable of an agreeable addition. She was lending a patient ear to the account which the Constable gave her of the descent and pedigree of a gallant knight of the distinguished family of Herbert, at whose castle he proposed to repose during the night, when one of the retinue announced a messenger from the Lady ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Plantations," (and this before the settlement of New England,) but also that any drab would suffice to wive such pitiful adventurers. "Never choose a wife as if you were going to Virginia," says Middleton in one of his comedies. The mule is apt to forget all but the equine side of his pedigree. How early the counterfeit nobility of the Old Dominion became a topick of ridicule in the Mother Country may be learned from a play of Mrs. Behn's, founded on the Rebellion of Bacon: for even these kennels of literature may yield a fact or two to pay the raking. Mrs. Flirt, the keeper of a Virginia ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... third degree are very narrow indeed. Proceeding outwards, the connections soon become thinner than gossamer. The person represented by any one of these counters may be taken as the subject of a pedigree, and all the counters connected with it may be noted up to any specified width of band. In this book one of the counters is supposed to represent a Fellow of the Royal Society, whose name appears in the "Year-Book" of that Society for 1904, and the linkage proceeds outwards from him to the ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... Prince, Faithful to the Widowed Queen, Loved,—as oft before and since Truth and zeal have ever been,— His no pedigree of pride, His no name of old renown, Yet in honour lived and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... directly and buy one, Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on, Who hunt, if they e'er hunt at all, with the lion (Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one), Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one, And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on, 120 Whose pedigree, traced to earth's earliest years, Is longer than anything else but their ears,— In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key, He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey. Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters Yet he filled ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... faith; it was maintained, or rather taken for granted, by the gravest and most learned writers. One Kelston, who dedicated a versified chronicle of the Brutes to Edward VI., went further still, and traced up the pedigree of his majesty through two-and-thirty generations, to Osiris king of Egypt. Troynovant, the name said to have been given to London by Brute its founder, was frequently employed in verse. A song addressed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... that is saying a great deal for you. Hoity toity! I wonder my friend General Verner has not more sense; the idea of dismissing one of the finest officers in the service because he hasn't a rent-roll and cannot show a pedigree as many do a yard long, and without a word of truth from beginning to end. If a man is noble in himself what does it matter who his father was? The best pedigree, in my opinion, is that which a man's grandson will have ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... A long piece of pedigree this, but we must say who's who, and what's what, and, by the same rule, where's where; so here we have Beldale Mill and the boys—just the place they loved and looked forward to reaching again from the great school at Worksop, when the holidays ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... the "old Rob" of the village boys, was the fireman of the pumping engine at the colliery hard by. His father before him—the Stephensons were no pedigree-hunters, and traced their line no farther- -was a Scotchman who, so far as anything was remembered of him, had come into the north of England as a gentleman's servant. Robert was a favorite with the village children, to whom he gave ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... His name was Doctor Anastasius Dose, and he spent a blameless life in travelling up and down the world, on behalf of a Leipsic firm of which he was a member, in search of rare and curious books. For there are copies of books which have a well-known pedigree like famous jewels, and whose acquisition, a matter of infinite tact, gives rise, I was told by Herr Dose, to the most exquisite thrill known to man. He brought me on that morose afternoon a copy of the "Synonima," ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... The welcome it received must have completely restored its shaken faith in human nature. Tired as he was, Sandy went out and bought some milk. He wanted to establish a firm friendship; for if he was to stay in this lonely city, he must have something to love, if only a prodigal kitten of doubtful pedigree. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... with him a "barbarism" has to be qualified as meaning "not belonging to the Hunter District." But Mr. Threlkeld is not the only writer who will not acknowledge as aboriginal sundry words with an undoubted Australian pedigree. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... accurately traces the pedigree of God's fearers, who, at the expense of life, maintained the spirituality of divine worship. He commences with our early Reformers, Wickliff and Huss, to the later ones who suffered under Mary; continues ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... God" to himself. As for his small income, and his still smaller domestic establishment, he looked at them both from the same satirically indifferent point of view. He called himself a pauper with a pedigree. He abandoned the entire direction of his household to the slatternly old woman who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never to venture near his books, with a duster in her hand, from one year's end to the other. His favorite poets were ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... took any interest in pedigree or genealogy. They knew that their ancestors had lived and died on the same acres now possessed by them, but the acres had dwindled sadly, and the ancestors had seemingly left little for which to be grateful. Indeed, in Caleb's case they ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... feel uncomfortable. Had I realized what a very plainly written pedigree I carried about with me, I should have thought long before I visited Ruritania. However, I was in ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... forms, the foot came in suddenly when the backboned creatures began to live on the dry land—that is, with the frogs. How it came in is a question which still puzzles the phylogenists, who cannot find a sure pedigree for the frog. There it is, anyhow, and the remarkable point about it is that the foot of a frog is not a rudimentary thing, but an authentic standard foot, like the yard measure kept in the Tower ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... an ancient and illustrious race. It has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the great Danish sea-king, whose sails were long the terror of both coasts of the British Channel, and who, after many fierce and doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valour and genius of Alfred. But the undoubted splendour of the line of Hastings needs ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Burns as well as a Chaucer, a Keats as well as a Gower, yet I am glad that the result of my studies tends to prove that it is but an unfounded assumption. By the Spear-side his family was at least respectable, and by the Spindle-side his pedigree can be traced straight back to Guy of Warwick and the good King Alfred. There is something in fallen fortune that lends a subtler romance to the consciousness of a noble ancestry, and we may be sure this played no small part in the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... century. They were every one of them as proud as Lucifer, but said their prayers twice a day, and in all other respects were the best women in the world. If they saw a fine petticoat at church, they immediately took to pieces the pedigree of her that wore it, and would lift up their eyes to heaven at the confidence of the saucy minx, when they found she was an honest tradesman's daughter. It is impossible to describe the pious indignation that would rise in them at the sight of a man who lived plentifully on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... that this pedigree cannot, indeed, be historically traced, but that it presents none of the logical difficulties inherent in the animistic pedigree—namely, that the savage Supreme Being is the last and highest result of evolution on animistic lines out of ghosts. It does not run counter to the evidence ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... his ridiculous Assumptions. And there are few things more Contemptible, I take it, than for a Man of really good Belongings, and whose Lineage is as old as Stonehenge (albeit, for Reasons best known to Himself, he permits his Pedigree to lie Perdu), to hear an Upstart of Yesterday Bragging and Swelling that he is come from this or from that, when we, who are of the true Good Stock, know very well, but that we are not so ill-mannered as to say so, that he is sprung from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... foul, obscene monster of the prime, was only Adam in the making. He came after him, a long way, at all events; and if geology had been fashionable in his time, and he a savant, he might have chalked out for himself a very fine pedigree. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... open a biography with some account of the subject's ancestry. Chesterton, in his Browning, after some excellent foolery about pedigree-hunting, makes the suggestion that middle-class ancestry is far more varied and interesting than ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... female line. One of their families takes its name from its foremother, the warlock's daughter who was provided with the dogskin mentioned on a previous page. Another family deduces its name and pedigree from an earth-spirit married to one of its ancestors; but it does not appear whether any Swan-maiden myth attaches to her. The fish puttin is sacred among the Dyaks. On no account will they eat it, because they would be eating their relations, for they are descended from ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... she might mate with either—with the mad notoriety of Cliffe or the young distinction of Ashe. Darrell's bitter heart contracted as he reflected that only for him and the likes of him, men of the people, with average ability, and a scarcely average income, were maidens of Mary Lyster's dower and pedigree out of reach. Meanwhile he revenged himself by being her very good friend, and allowing himself at times much caustic plainness of speech in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... denial or protest Tom took off his hat and bent his head. Nick flashed a surprised look at his companion, waiting in reverent attitude, hesitated an instant, and then doffed his hat, bent his head and began. And the good Lord who heard his prayer did not need to ask his pedigree, for the Irish intonation with which he rolled the words off his tongue in honey-like waves told ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... Dutchmen of New Amsterdam never dreamed of; and rely more upon the merits of their forefathers than upon their own. They are extremely exclusive, and rarely associate with any but those who can "show as pure a pedigree." Their disdain of those whose families are not as "old" as their own is oftentimes amusing, and subjects them to ridicule, which they bear with true Dutch stolidity. They improve in their peculiar ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a chance. It must be an amusing affair, 'pon my soul! when a nice little female has to draw aside her vail before a court of very dignified judges, for the purpose of having her pedigree examined," said ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... in 1812, when we were at war with Great Britain, any number of privateers were fitted out at Rivermouth to prey upon the merchant vessels of the enemy. Certain people grew suddenly and mysteriously rich. A great many of "the first families" of today do not care to trace their pedigree back to the time when their grandsires owned shares in the Matilda Jane, twenty-four guns. ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... acquainted with the Chinese language, and adopting the Chinese costume, he penetrated into districts unvisited before by Europeans—excepting, perhaps, the Catholic missionaries—exciting no further curiosity as to his person or pedigree, than what was due to a stranger from one of the provinces beyond the great wall. His principal journeys were to Sung-lo, the great green-tea district, and to the Bohea Mountains, the great black-tea district; besides a flying visit to Kingtang, or Silver Island, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... clothes worn by actors a complete history is attached. The wardrobe of Munden, the comedian, contained a black Genoa velvet coat, which had once belonged to King George II.; while another coat boasted also a distinguished pedigree, and could be traced to Francis, Duke of Bedford, who had worn it on the occasion of the Prince of Wales's marriage. It had originally cost L1000! But then it had been fringed with precious stones, of which the sockets only ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... throne. The feeling was genuine and pathetic in its intensity. It is said that the natives like their king better, because he was truly, "above all," the last of a proud and imperious house, which, in virtue of a pedigree of centuries, looked down upon ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... homeliness, being an ashen roan, mottled with flecks and patches of divers hues; but his legs were flat and corded like a racer's, his neck long and thin as a thoroughbred's, his nostrils large, his ears sharply pointed and lively, while the white rings around his eyes hinted at a cross, somewhere in his pedigree, with Arabian blood. A huge, bony, homely-looking horse he was, who drew the deacon and Miranda into the village on market days and Sundays, with a loose, shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely and peculiar that the smart village chaps riding along in their jaunty turn-outs ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... a generalizing philosophic penetration, but it was also a very efficient preparation of the mind for the evolution problem, so far as the summing up of the organisms under a type and plan is only the ideal reverse of its realistic reduction to a common pedigree. ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... important office in the coronation ceremonies but the former class. They were said to be "ethel-born," and every member of the royal family was an "etheling," or son of the noble, emphatically. Ere Christianity dispelled the fables of divine descent, the pedigree of the monarch was always to be traced to Woden, and after the demi-god was no longer revered, the first of earthly families and "full-born" blood was seen ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... his renown that the descendants of Abraham, even on the distant plains of Asia, inquired of one another if he were not the servant of the King of Kings, whom they were looking for. A learned Rabbi even came from Asia to London for the purpose of investigating his pedigree, thinking to discover in him the "Lion of the tribe of Judah." If his policy had been followed out by his successors, Louis XIV. would not have dared to revoke the Edict of Nantes; if he had reigned ten years longer, there would have been no revival ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... The pedigree of the most energetic and important fiction now being written in the United States goes unmistakably back to that creative uprising of discontent in the eighties of the last century which brought into articulate consciousness ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... von Metternich, was born at Coblentz, on the Rhine, May 15, 1773. His father was a nobleman of ancient family. I will not go into his pedigree, reaching far back in the Middle Ages,—a matter so important in the eyes of German and even English biographers, but to us in America of no more account than the genealogy of the Dukes of Edom. The count his father was probably of more ability than an ordinary ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Passages in your book, like that to which I have alluded (and there are others almost as bad), greatly shocked my moral taste. I think, in speculating on organic descent, you OVER-state the evidence of geology; and that you UNDER-state it while you are talking of the broken links of your natural pedigree: but my paper is nearly done, and I must go to my lecture-room. Lastly, then, I greatly dislike the concluding chapter—not as a summary, for in that light it appears good—but I dislike it from the tone of triumphant confidence ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... prince of Eldorado should come, with a pedigree of lineal descent from some signory in the moon in one hand, and a ticket of good-behaviour from the nearest Independent ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the phrases, long decayed, Of paleologic pedigree, Musty, moldy, frazzled, and frayed— A doddering, dusty company? What shall be done with them? say we; And east and west the people bawl, Dump them into the Cannery!— Into the brine go ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... their ancient chronicles of their first settlements are generally tales confuted by their own absurdity. The settlement of the greatest consequence, the best authenticated, and from which the Irish deduce the pedigree of the best families, is derived from Spain: it was called Clan Milea, or the descendants of Milesius, and Kin Scuit, or the race of Scyths, afterwards known by the name of Scots. The Irish historians suppose this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... moment the Squire was of a mind to object, but said gaily, "By all means, Ann, call him Dixy if you like, and now breakfast, please." Here they heard Dixy's pedigree ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... and Ned we reckoned we had two saddle-horses—those were their names, Nell and Ned, a mare and a colt. Fine hacks they were, too! Anybody could ride them, they were so quiet. Dad reckoned Ned was the better of the two. He was well-bred, and had a pedigree and a gentle disposition, and a bald-face, and a bumble-foot, and a raw wither, and a sore back that gave him a habit of "flinching"—a habit that discounted his uselessness a great deal, because, when we were n't at home, the women could n't saddle him to run the cows in. Whenever ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... by Kentuckians; some of the old State's best families were represented there. A person's pedigree was his credentials in the society of the slumbering little town, nestled away among the blue hills of Missouri. It did not matter so much about one's past, for blood will have its vagaries and outflingings of youthful spirit; and even less what ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the highest man in his county. He had found time for a visit to the King-at-Arms and the Heralds' Office. He would have his pictures and his pedigree. His grandmother had been a Howard. Her branch, indeed, was a little under a cloud, keeping a small provision-shop in the town of Dwiddleston. But this circumstance need not be in prominence. She was a Howard—that was the fact he relied on—no mortal could gainsay it; and he would ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... only dated from James I. He would gently sigh if you spoke of the blood of the Fitzgeralds and De Burghs; would hardly allow the claims of the Howards and Lowthers; and has before now alluded to the Talbots as a family who had hardly yet achieved the full honours of a pedigree. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... matter tom e afterwards. Old Christy is the most ancient servant in the place, having lived among dogs and horses the greater part of a century, and been in the service of Mr. Bracebridge's father. He knows the pedigree of every horse on the place, and has bestrode the great-great-grandsires of most of them. He can give a circumstantial detail of every fox-hunt for the last sixty or seventy years, and has a history for every stag's head about the house, and every hunting trophy ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... those pains. I have not left Our talkers in the library, and climbed The wearisome ascent to this your bower In company with you,—I have not dared... Nay, worked such prodigies as sparing you Lord Mertoun's pedigree before the flood, Which Thorold seemed in very act to tell —Or bringing Austin to pluck up that most Firm-rooted heresy—your suitor's eyes, He would maintain, were grey instead of blue— I think I brought him to contrition!—Well, I have not done such things, (all ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... pedigree of William Steele, Esq., Lord Chancellor of Ireland temp. Commonwealth, extant; and do any of his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... Brahmans, and hence, in the view of the bards, of more honourable origin than the other clans. Similarly the Badgujar clan, also of solar descent, is shown by its name of bara or great Gujar to have been simply an aristocratic section of the Gujars; while the pedigree of the Rathors, another solar clan, and one of those who have shed most lustre on the Rajput name, was held to be somewhat doubtful by the Bhats, and their solar origin was not fully admitted. Mr. Smith gives two great clans as very probably of aboriginal or Dravidian origin, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the name of Laughter, from whom came that monstrous infant of which I have been speaking. I shall set down at length the genealogical table of False Humour, and, at the same time, place by its side the genealogy of True Humour, that the reader may at one view behold their different pedigree and relations:— ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... where monstrosities are impossible for the reason that we leave our bones on earth. Since gazing at the What-is-it, I have become a convert to Darwin. It is too true. Our ancestors stood on their hind legs, and the less we talk about pedigree the better. The noble democrat in search of a coat-of-arms and a grandfather should visit a grand moral circus. Let us assume a virtue, though we have it not; ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... be overcome. It is true that Madame du Barry was selected from a class sufficiently low. Her origin, her education, her habits, and everything about her bore a character of vulgarity and shamelessness; but by marrying her to a man whose pedigree dated from 1400, it was thought scandal would be avoided. The conqueror of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and wind. A keeper of cattle met them, and directed their course. He gave the information concerning the country of rocks; concerning its inhabitants male and female; the produce of moor and mount; the military force, the fashion of the armour; the favourite pursuits of the people; and the pedigree of the Fingalians. ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... Biglow's pedigree. Tolerably certain that there was never a poet among his ancestors. An ordination hymn attributed to a maternal uncle, but perhaps a sort of production ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... fettering dogmas of some romantic, realistic, or naturalistic creed in the free work of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of human perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors. It is a weakness of inferior minds when it is not the cunning device of those who, uncertain of their talent, would seek to add lustre to it by the authority of a school. Such, for instance, are the high priests who ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... the dyke-side a lady did dwell, At his table-head he thocht she 'd look well; M'Cleish's ae dochter, o' Clavers-ha' Lee, A penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... older than the Carstairs Collection. As I ran down the streets to the sea, the coin clenched tight in my fist, I felt all the Roman Empire on my back as well as the Carstairs pedigree. It was not only the old lion argent that was roaring in my ear, but all the eagles of the Caesars seemed flapping and screaming in pursuit of me. And yet my heart rose higher and higher like a child's kite, until I came over the loose, dry sand-hills and to the flat, wet sands, where Philip ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... more return! Taken mostly from the middle classes, sometimes even from the most humble ranks of society, the Popes ascended the Chair of Peter; and these men, who had been the sons of artisans and mechanics, but who had, by their virtue and talent, gained a merit which neither wealth nor a noble pedigree could bestow, became the arbiters between nation and nation, between prince and people, always prepared to weld together the chain of broken friendship, and to protect, by their power and authority, the rights of subjects oppressed by tyrannical rulers. It ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Hostile scribblers lost no time in contrasting this display of grandeur with the republican simplicity of Jefferson, who rode from Monticello to the capital on the back of a plantation nag without pedigree. But Jackson was not perturbed. At various points on the road he received returns from the elections, and when after four or five weeks the equipage drew up in the capital Jackson knew the general result. Calhoun had been elected ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... would he build dungeons and burn the flesh of his brother man with red hot irons? I think we came from the lower animals. When I first heard that doctrine I did not like it. I felt sorry for our English friends, who would have to trace their pedigree back to the Duke of Orangutan, or the Earl of Chimpanzee. But I have read so much about rudimentary bones and rudimentary muscles that I began to doubt about it. Says I: "What do you mean by rudimentary muscles?" They say: "A muscle that has gone into bankruptcy—" "Was ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... fine poise of the man—the entire absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage—seemed to carry out the idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did this gossip of mixed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... have your fling! Though Fate forbade you to adorn The pompous pedigree of Ming, No particle of scorn Shall ever fall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... I show him that pedigree of mine which I have ere now threatened to show you, would perhaps be less horrified at ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of Gasbag can have surprised no careful reader of these columns. His public performances have been uniformly wretched, save and except on the one occasion when he defeated Ranunculus in the Decennial Pedigree Stakes at Newmarket last year, and any fool could have seen that Ranunculus had an off hind fetlock as big as an elephant's. That comes of training a good horse on Seidlitz powders and bran-mash. The muddy-minded moon-calves who chatter in their usual addle-pated fashion about the chances ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... dissipated, in the pure atmosphere of his mind before the invigorating sun of science and learning. He knew that the tomb which recorded the worth of the deceased had more honest tears shed upon it than the pompous mausoleum which spoke only of his pedigree and possessions. Accordingly, although he had excellent blood flowing in his veins, Cotton sought connection with the good rather than with the great; and where he found a cultivated understanding, and an honest ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... cross-Channel visitors would class her with pigs, potatoes, and other fauna and flora of Ireland, and would expect her to make manifest her presence to them as being one of the sights of the country. She is a spirit with a lengthy pedigree—how lengthy no man can say, as its roots go back into the dim, mysterious past. The most famous Banshee of ancient times was that attached to the kingly house of O'Brien, Aibhill, who haunted the rock of Craglea above Killaloe, near ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... smile for everybody; and he had a good cook, and explained his dishes to those beside him, and used sometimes to toddle out himself to the cellar in search of a curious bon-bouche; and of nearly every bin in it he had a little anecdote or a pedigree to relate. And his laugh was frequent and hearty, and somehow the room and all in it felt the influence of his presence like the glow, and cheer, and crackle ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Victoria from the Conqueror is sometimes disputed, because it is not correctly traced, in consequence of the line of descent being carried back through Henry VII., instead of being carried through his wife, nee Elizabeth Plantagenet. It may not be uninteresting to state the royal pedigree, which is at times rather intricate, and full of sinuosities,—in part due to the occurrences of political revolutions, old English statesmen never having paid much regard to political legitimacy, which is a modern notion. Queen Victoria ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... usurper Loud and bitter vengeance swore. "Come, you dirty, green-scummed scoundrel, With your sneaking 'plan or two'! Just come out, you rope-necked buzzard! See how far you'll put them through. You can keep the eighty acres, Hell will write your pedigree, But I'll rub your crooked nose-piece In the ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... thing, and "went halves" with a jock who consented to rope a favorite at the Ducal. "Them swells, ye see, they give any money for blood. They just go by Godolphin heads, and little feet, and winners' strains, and all the rest of it; and so long as they get pedigree never look at substance; and their bone comes no bigger than a deer's. Now, it's force as well as pace that tells over a bit of plow; a critter that would win the Derby on the flat would knock up over the first spin over the clods; and that King's legs are too ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... by waving their hat at an engineer just in time to prevent the train from dashing over a precipice, or by chopping off somebody's head with a meat axe and burning the remains up afterwards, in which case the next day's paper gives a faithful account of their pedigree, and their photograph can be purchased at any respectable news-dealers, at a price ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... history of the ballad. Laidlaw, hearing his servant repeat some stanzas, asks Hogg for the full copy, which Hogg sends with a pedigree from which he never wavered. Auld Andrew Muir taught the song to Hogg's mother and uncle. Hogg took it from his uncle's recitation, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... done to be still murmuring against nature and fortune, as if it were their unkindness that makes you inconsiderable, when it is only by your own weakness that you make yourself so; for it is virtue, not pedigree, that renders a man either valuable or happy. Philosophy does not either reject or choose any man for his quality. Socrates was no patrician, Cleanthes but an under-gardener; neither did Plato dignify philosophy by his birth, but by his goodness. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... in the huge fireplace, tempering the sharpness of the early spring day and casting a ruddy glow upon the tapestried walls and polished floor in front, where dozed the Beaubien's two "babies," Japanese and Pekingese spaniels of registered pedigree and fabulous value. Among the heavy beams of the lofty ceiling grotesque shadows danced and flickered, while over the costly rugs and rare skins on the floor below subdued lights played in animated pantomime. Behind the magnificent grand piano ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a cable telegram to Lord Monck, and the last mail has brought a despatch to Lord Monck from the Duke of Buckingham to apprise me officially of Her Majesty's intentions, and to request me to send to the Colonial Office my pedigree and my coat of arms, for the preparation of the letters patent to be issued. I am now procuring all the information and things required by the Heralds' College. The first telegram to Lord Monck was to offer me the baronetcy, and to ascertain if I would accept ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... you must know that there was a twofold root or foundation of the children of Israel for their temporal being: Abraham was the root of the people; the kingdom was rent from Saul, and therefore David was the root of the kingdom; among all the kings in the pedigree none but he hath the name; and Jesse begat David the king, and David the king begat Solomon; and therefore so often as God did profess to spare the people, though he were angry, he says he would do it for Abraham's sake: so often as he professeth to spare the kingdom of Judah, he says he ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... to the answer of a poor little boy before a magistrate. M.—'Who were your parents?' Boy (rubbing his eyes with his jacket-sleeve)—'Never had none, sir.' Dr. Wardlaw says that the Scotch Independents are the descendants of the Puritans, and I suppose the pedigree is through Rowland Hill and Whitefield. But I was a member of the very church in which John Howe, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, preached, and exercised the pastorate. I was ordained, too, by ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... window, it caught the brown eyes of Mr. Pickwick considering him through a silvery, fringy thicket of hair. Mr. Pickwick was said to be royally descended; however that might have been, indubitably his pedigree harbored somewhere both a ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis |
