"Great-uncle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the second Thomas, the President's great-uncle, from whom his middle name came to him, was a soldier at Concord Bridge on the 19th of April, 1775, in the Lincoln Company of which my grandfather, Samuel Hoar, was Lieutenant and my two great-grandfathers ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Signor Racah, being his great-uncle, performed the duties of godfather and ever from that day, and up to the year of his death, he evinced the liveliest interest in the welfare of his godson; when the latter was grown up the affection ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... go upstairs, dears," she said. "I am tired, but I am not going to let myself be over-anxious. I shall try to put things aside, as it were, till I hear from Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot. I have the fullest confidence in ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... belongs to her. She was born here, a million years ago, more or less, when there were still a few basket-making Indians left in the valley. Her father and mother both died, and she was brought up by the old Great-uncle Crittenden's family. Then my husband's Uncle Burton inherited the house and brought his bride here, and Toucle just stayed on. She always makes herself useful enough to pay for her food and lodging. And when his wife ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... ears and low on her forehead, which made of her face a small and delicate oval. In the big hall, with a roaring fire in the wide fireplace, she dispensed comforting hospitality to the adoring Admiral. And when she had given him his tea she sat on a stool at his feet. "Oh, wise great-uncle," she said, "I am going to tell ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... lacking none of the author's usual raciness and vigour; but, if at the end we find Mr. Fergus Rowley still unable to reinstate himself, and left with no better consolation than the "Heigho" of his famous great-uncle Anthony, the fault, I feel, was his own. He ought to have looked in at the Kingsway Theatre and provided himself with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... the beginning of last century she and her two brothers, William and Robert Hale, were living in Colchester. William Hale moved to Homerton, and became a silk manufacturer in Spitalfields. Homerton was then a favourite suburb for rich City people. My great-uncle's beautiful Georgian house had a marble bath and a Grecian temple in the big garden. Of Robert Hale and my grandfather I know nothing. The supposed connexion with the Carolean Chief Justice ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... mother was born, Margaret, the eldest daughter of Robert, your great-great-uncle: he married one of the daughters of Rowland Eyes, of Bradway, in the same county of Derby, by whom he had twelve sons and two daughters: that family remains ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... who ever lived—and to me the dearest." Jolyon's voice had lost its irony, and his son and daughter gazed at him solemnly, "He was just and tenacious, tender and young at heart. You remember him, and I remember him. Pass to the others! Your great-uncle James, that's young Val's grandfather, had a son called Soames—whereby hangs a tale of no love lost, and I don't think I'll tell it you. James and the other eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five alive, may be said to have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Yours received; also interesting copy of P. WHISTLES. 'In the multitude of councillors the Bible declares there is wisdom,' said my great-uncle, 'but I have always found in them distraction.' It is extraordinary how tastes vary: these proofs have been handed about, it appears, and I have had several letters; and - distraction. 'AEsop: the Miller and the Ass.' Notes ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been expected that my books saw little of me; but, on the contrary, I found in them a pleasure and a companionship that has lasted through my life. Thus it happened that I made considerable progress. So much so that the good Bishop, my great-uncle, often flattered me with the ambitious hopes of some day filling his Episcopal chair—a hope that, I need ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... my great-uncle," said the courteous Jonah, "and there was no one in Ullerton better acquainted with Rebecca Caulfield. I've heard my grandmother talk of her many a time. She used to send him poultry and garden-stuff from her house at Dewsdale, and at his instigation she contributed handsomely to the erection ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... nothing about them, only that my father and mother were second cousins; but I don't even know to which of them my great-uncle Underwood was really uncle.' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a long story, but it boils down to this," he said. "I'm looking for a Patrick Henry Considine, but I don't know what he's like. I don't know whether there is such a chap, in fact, but if there is, I've got to find him. A great-uncle of mine died out here a long while ago, and we believe he left a son; and if there is such a son, it turns out that he would be entitled to a heap of money. It has been heaping up for years in Chancery, and all that sort of thing, you know," he added, vaguely. "My people thought I might ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... there was no one but my Great-uncle Rodman Warfield. I had to get something to do—so I came here, and Uncle Rod went to live with a ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... stayed behind in Germany. And the emperor of the Greeks goes off happily and in joyous mood. Cliges, brave and courteous, calls to mind his sire's command. If his uncle, the emperor, will give him his permission, he will go and ask him for leave to return to Britain and there converse with his great-uncle, the King; for he is desirous of seeing and knowing him. So he presents himself before the emperor, and requests that he consent to let him go to Britain to see his uncle and his friends. Gently he proffered his request. But his uncle refused, when he had listened to the request ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... division is the name in common for all daughters, or all sons of one family of sisters. The daughters take the name from their maternal grandmother, the sons from their maternal great-uncle. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... enough, the first thing he did was to take down the thermometer and look at it. Gone out to bathe in a temperature like that! His mind ran like lightning, while he hung the thing back upon its nail, over Harrie's ancestry. Was there not a traditionary great-uncle who died in an asylum? The whole future of three children with an insane mother spread itself out before him while he ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of this place, who is in his 80th year, is related to this family. The said William Chapman being his great-uncle (maternal). ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... had always lived there. The family could be traced back to the sixteenth century, living in the town or its neighborhood: for of course they had a great-uncle who had devoted his life to drawing up the genealogical tree of their obscure line of humble, industrious people: peasants, farmers, artisans, then clerks, country notaries, working in the subprefecture of the district, where Augustus Jeannin, the father of the present ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... you know? in the part of the country where your grandfather and your great-uncle Bidault belong, in the arrondissement of the deputy who ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... fit to tell his niece, the Duchess of Burgundy, a part of Maintenon's history, in the vexation he felt at her having estranged the Princess from him, and not choosing that she should behave affectionately to her great-uncle, that was not our fault. She was as jealous of the Dauphine as a lover is of ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... having a very great deal of responsibility and worry during the long school terms, as he was not only head master, but owned the school as well, which he had purchased from his great-uncle, used to leave almost the day the holidays began and travel abroad with my mother. This partly accounts for the very unusual latitude allowed to us boys in coming and going from the house—no one being anxious if now and again we did not ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... smooth-skinned, very dignified, very venerable. He was pure Swahili, though of the savage branch of that race, and had none of the negro type of countenance. In fact, so like was he in face, hair, short square beard and genial dignity to a certain great-uncle of mine that it was very hard to remember that he had on only a small strip of cloth, that he was cherishing as a great treasure a piece of soap box he had salvaged from the shore, and that his skin was red chocolate. I felt inclined to talk to him ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... at all. Great Aunt Sophronisba was my aunt not by blood but by marriage; she having, when she was no longer what is known as a spring chicken, met my Great-Uncle Johnny Scarlett and scandalized all Hyndsville by marrying him ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... of 1623 has greater literary merits— the merits of mere smoothness, clearness, grammatical coherence, and intelligibility—than the autograph; and I can understand the preference of some students for the former, though I do not share it Michelangelo the younger added fluency and grace to his great-uncle's composition by the sacrifice of much that is most characteristic, and by the omission of much that is profound and vigorous ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... strange theories were offered to account for it. Davie Paine, in his deep, rolling voice, sent shivers down our backs by his story of a ghost-ship manned by dead men with bony fingers and hollow eyes, which had sailed the seas in the days of his great-uncle, a stout old mariner who seemed from Davie's account to have been a hard drinker. Kipping was reminded of yarns about Malay pirates, which he told so quietly, so mildly, that they seemed by contrast thrice as terrible. Neddie Benson lugubriously recalled the prophecy of the charming ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... strongly intent on business, little on pleasure; by these virtues he engaged the attention of all men And the people, sensible that they owed their liberty and very existence to his family, and remembering that his great-uncle Maurice had been able, even in more early youth, to defend them against the exorbitant power of Spain, were desirous of raising this prince to all the authority of his ancestors; and hoped, from his valor and conduct alone, to receive protection against those imminent dangers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Pretty lifelike, I call it—well, there ain't anything in it yet, but my great-uncle Bradly's shirtstuds are in the Bartlett pear, just beyond, and that orange contains a Honiton lace collar that my mother wore the day she ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... have been married,' said Aunt Maria suddenly. 'That's his picture in the hall between the carp and your Great-uncle Carruthers.' ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... happened that caused them both no little perplexity. The Nevitt estate had lost its direct heir, and that of Leah Nevitt was next in succession, after an old great-uncle, who sent for the boy to be brought up in English ways and usages. Sir Wyndham Nevitt was not a Friend, though several branches of the family were. And if Philemon Henry failed, the next heir was a dissolute fellow up in London, who would soon make ducks ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... a descendant of the Ferrar family, through his great-uncle, Dr. John Mapletoft, (see Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors), who was the great-nephew of Nicholas Ferrar, possessed one of the three curious volumes arranged by members of the family, {446} ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... is a great curtailer of pleasure," said Miss Munns, gazing solemnly into space over the edge of her spectacles. "In my own family we have had sad experiences of the kind. My great-uncle was in most comfortable circumstances, and kept his own brougham and peach- houses before the failure of the Glasgow Bank. They removed to Syringa Villas after that, and did the washing at home. I shall never ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a stuffy, boring place. You remember the house—enormous, tidy, hideous, uncomfortable. Well, we had such a dinner last night after I arrived—soup, fish, everything popped on to the table for Great-uncle John to carve at one end, and Great-aunt Maria at the other! A regular aquarium specimen of turbot sat on its dish opposite him, while Aunt Maria had a huge lot of soles. And there wasn't any need, because there were four men-servants in the room who ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... while I was asleep I had returned without the least effort to an earlier stage in my life, now for ever outgrown; and had come under the thrall of one of my childish terrors, such as that old terror of my great-uncle's pulling my curls, which was effectually dispelled on the day—the dawn of a new era to me—on which they were finally cropped from my head. I had forgotten that event during my sleep; I remembered it again immediately I had succeeded in making myself wake up to escape my great-uncle's ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... journey. For the first time since my terrible desertion I had an opportunity to think, and I did think, if the pulse of an overwhelming pain, perpetually recurring like the beat of a loaded wheel, can be called thought. Although there is no insanity in our family nearer than a great-uncle, I marvel that I retained my wits under this terrible blow. I seriously contemplated suicide, and probably should have taken my life had not my mental condition gradually undergone a change. I was no longer conscious of suffering, nor of a desire to end my life. I was simply indifferent. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... I distinctly remember the Chartist riots in 1848. William Bridges Adams, the engineer, an old friend of my great-uncle, Philip Taylor, had a workshop at Bow, and my mother helped to start a library for the men, and sometimes attended meetings and discussed politics with them. They adored her, and when people talked of possible danger she ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... meeting with Maurice, she ate her lunch with a glance every few minutes at her great-uncle Allan on the opposite wall. A very black portrait, it seemed only a meaningless blur till in a certain light the strong face and stern eyes shone out of the surrounding gloom with startling effect. She sometimes wondered rather anxiously if the uncle to whose home-coming she looked forward, ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... His great-uncle, William, Lord Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey, had died, and the big-eyed, lame boy was the nearest heir—in fact, the only living male who bore the family-name. The next day at school, when the master ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... for they were wearied of the pressure of feudalism, and he concentrated the whole power of the realm in his own hands. He took up the projects which had been left untouched since the death of his great-uncle, Prince Henry the Navigator. The dream of his life was to find the direct sea route to India. To achieve this end he collected at his Court all the learned men he could attract; he improved the methods of shipbuilding, and began to build ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... time to witness my great-uncle's last moments. He recognised me, clasped me to his breast, blessed me at the same time as Edmee, and put my hand into ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... first addressed the prince's great-uncle, Cardinal Fesch, requesting him to advise the Duchess of St. Leu to remove the young prince from Rome for ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... that the Caliph must be of the family of Koreish, who was a direct descendant from Abraham. Mouawiye and the Ommiades, fourteen in all, were of the same branch as Osman, the third Caliph. The Abassides of Kufa, Bagdad, and Cairo, fifty-four in all, descended from Abas, the great-uncle of the Prophet. There were many others who at different times usurped the name of Caliph, but these seventy-two are all who are recognized as universal Caliphs. Mohammed XII., the last of these died in obscurity in Egypt in 1538. The power of the Caliphs ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Lord Cecil Talbot, her father; he fell at Naseby. There in that corner is another James, his brother, one of Prince Rupert's men, wounded at Marston Moor. Here is Sir Hilary, slain at the Boyne; and this old man is Lord Philip, your great-uncle. He was out in the '45, and was beheaded. These are your people, Hilary," she said, standing very straight, her head thrown back, her eyes aflame with pride and determination, "and these struck, fought, lived, and died for their king. I could bear to see you dead," she laid ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... temper and a will, and there was another cousin one degree further removed than himself, a good-natured, good-looking and highly-aristocratic Jack Trevellian, who was thirty years old, and a great favorite in the best society which London afforded, and who, if a great-uncle and two cousins were to die without heirs, would become Sir Jack, and who, it was thought, had an eye on the ten thousand a year. So Neil was very gracious, and sugared Blanche's strawberries for her at breakfast, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... uncle, and is great-uncle to Kabba Rega; and he can give more information than any ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... traits of the Emperor seem so exemplary that, if he fails to meet the heroic needs of the hour, the world is disposed not to reproach him, but rather to feel pity for the young ruler who has had thrust upon him such an insoluble problem. His character recalls somewhat that of his great-uncle Alexander I. We see the same vague aspiration after grand ideals, and the same despotic methods in dealing with things in the concrete. No general amnesty attended his coronation, no act of clemency has been extended to political exiles. Men and women whose hairs have whitened ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... two uncles, and neither of them, are our own natural-born relatives. One is a great-uncle, and the other is the uncle from his birth of Albert, who used to live next door to us in the Lewisham Road. When we first got to know him (it was over some baked potatoes, and is quite another story) we called him Albert-next-door's-Uncle, and then ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... alone with her much-feared Great-uncle Henry. He nodded to her, and drew out from the bottom of the wagon a warm, large cape, which he slipped over her shoulders. "The women folks were afraid you'd git cold drivin'," he explained. He then lifted her high to the seat, tossed her satchel into ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... Great-uncle Ed," proceeds the wife, kinda dreamy. "If he hadn't died so sudden, he'd of been worth ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... of his great-uncle and godfather, the Cardinal, who lived in Italy, and who had—or so his family liked to ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was fifteen. My great-uncle, my guardian, is a wholesale grocer in Chicago; he has a large palace and a ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... still more gallantly continuing the tradition, entered the army, loaded himself with debt, was forced to sell out, took refuge in the Marines, and was lost on the Dogger Bank in the war-ship MINOTAUR. If he did not marry below him, like his father, his sister, and a certain great-uncle William, it was perhaps because he never married ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from her, finding a good omen in both of the facts. He expected her, desired her, to have character; his wife SHOULD have it, and he wasn't afraid of her having much. He had had, in his earlier time, to deal with plenty of people who had had it; notably with the three four ecclesiastics, his great-uncle, the Cardinal, above all, who had taken a hand and played a part in his education: the effect of all of which had never been to upset him. He was thus fairly on the look-out for the characteristic in this most intimate, as she was to come, of his associates. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... grand-nephew, Octavius; who had been in camp at Apollonia in Illyricum since he had coolly proposed to his great-uncle that the latter, being Dictator, and about to start on his Parthian campaign, should make him his Master of the Horse. He had been exempted from military service on account of ill-health; and Julius had a sense of humor; so he packed him off to Apollonia to 'finish' a military training ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... N. M. (for so I will call the victim of this delusion) made a practice of reading and of marking booksellers' catalogues; further investigation developed that N. M.'s great-uncle on his mother's side had invented a flying-machine that would not fly, and that a half-brother of his was the author of a pamphlet entitled '16 to 1; or the ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... a nice stone with a vase a-top of it to his great-uncle,' she remarked, 'and the captain's grandfather he's got two angels crying and a skull at the bottom; it's a ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... rebel, no man was ever less a revolutionary. As much a constitutionalist as Hampden or Washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. The tradition of parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations. Two years after his birth his great-uncle, John Edward Redmond, from whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as Liberal member for the borough of Wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place, commemorating good service rendered. Much of the rich flat land ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Caesar's youngest sister, Julia, was married to Marcus Atius Balbus, and their daughter Atia, again, was married to Caius Octavius, a nobleman of the plebeian order. From this marriage sprang the present Octavius, who afterwards became the Emperor Augustus. He was mainly educated by his great-uncle, was advanced to the patrician order, and was adopted as his son and heir; so that his full and proper designation at this time was Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The text gives a right taste of the man, who always stood firm as a post against Antony, till the latter finally knocked ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... the king a note, entitled: Historic Evidences as to the Causes of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and M. de Malesherbes had himself presented to Louis XVI. a scheme for a law. "It is absolutely necessary," said he, "that I should render the Protestants some kind offices; my great-uncle De Baville did them so much injury!" The Assembly of notables appealed to the king's benevolence on behalf of "that considerable portion of his subjects which groans under a regimen of proscription equally opposed to the general interests of religion, to good morals, to population, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... answered. He went on to tell me what he knew of the matter in his clean, pithy sentences, often brutally cynical, as though he had not a spark of interest in any of it. Mr. Cooke's claim to the land came from a maternal great-uncle, long since deceased, who had been a settler in these regions. The railroad answered that they had bought the land with other properties from the man, also deceased, to whom the old gentleman was alleged to have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... great-uncle of the mother's side, he was one of the masons that set up the stone slab. Before then it was thick glass, and you could see the dead man lying inside, as he'd left it in his will. He was lying there in a glass coffin with his best clothes—blue satin and silver, my ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... next in succession, Christoph, was a Protestant pastor; and to the same sacred calling belonged his son, Caspar Nikolas, who lived into the middle of the last century. After comes the grandfather, George Christian, Doctor of Laws; and among collaterals signally shines the great-uncle, Johann Daniel Overbeck (died 1802, aged 88);[2] this memorable man was Doctor of Theology, Rector of the Lubeck Gymnasium, and a voluminous writer; he published thirty or more treatises; among the number are 'The Spirit of Religion,' 'Grounds of Agreement in Religion through ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... how it came about that her maid was able to read a difficult script with ease, or was able to read at all; and this was the first question she had condescended to put to the girl. Editha replied that she had been taught as a child by a great-uncle, a learned man; that she had been made to read volumes in a great variety of scripts to him, until reading had come easy to her, both ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... chap with the big feet?" inquired Terence, craning his neck. "That's great-uncle O'Brannigan. He used to keep a ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... Close to Martha on the stage stands her brother, William Taylor Money, Elsie's great-uncle. We greet him gladly, for he was a man of character. He was a friend of Wilberforce, and a Member of Parliament when the Anti-Slavery Bill was passed. Afterwards "he owned a merchant vessel, and gained great honour by his capture of several of ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... mother married a Bradleigh—a mere nobody at that time—and was on that account cut by her relations. But very singularly the other branch of the family died out one by one—three of them, and Miss Aldclyffe's great-uncle then left all his property, including this estate, to Captain Bradleigh and his wife—Miss Aldclyffe's father and mother—on condition that they took the old family name as well. There's all about it in the "Landed Gentry." 'Tis ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... stout simpering lady in enamel on the cover. Miss Heredith directed Colwyn's attention to the portrait, remarking that it was a likeness of a princess of the reigning house, who had given it and the box to her great-uncle, Captain Sir ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... be a power in an ambassade," suggested another, "for he hath a gift in diplomacy and law which, verily, did astound the old Giustinian. The eloquence of his great-uncle Sebastiano hath fallen upon him.—If he were not so young—! Here in Venice he is rolling up influence, and the charm of his inamorata is also a danger; and already in the Consiglio all eyes ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... he had worn them this one evening. Mr. Beljus himself had said that he would not even think of letting them go at fourteen to anybody else, and as for the two poor baskets of worn and useless articles offered in exchange, and a bent scarfpin and a worn-out old silver watch that had belonged to great-uncle Ben—why, the ten dollars and forty cents allowed upon them was beyond all ordinary liberality; it was almost charity. There was only one place in town where evening clothes were rented, and the suspicious persons ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk—a hundred times bigger than that in which they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Dickens, Jr. It is a terrible thing, one would say, to a mind of honorable feeling, to be pointed out as somebody's son, or uncle, or granddaughter, as if the excellence were all derived. It must be a little humiliating to reflect that if your great-uncle had not been somebody, you would be nobody—that, in fact, you are only a name, and that, if you should consent to change it for the sake of a fortune, as is sometimes done, you would cease to be anything but a rich ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... father and mother and what-not to her. Now supposing she'd had a crape mantle with handsome bugle fringe for Sundays; that's what I should have called paying proper respect to the departed; instead of a short jacket with ordinary braid on it, that you might wear for a great-uncle as hadn't left ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... great-uncle has not given him this grotto. But as he often comes and spends hours in it by himself, we all ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Lady Gertrude's father was a parvenu, of very mean extraction. Her great-uncle had made the family fortune, partly in trade, but mostly by petty peculations; and her father, who had attracted the Queen's eye when a young lawyer, had been rapidly promoted through the minor grades of nobility, until he had reached his present standing. Gertrude was not noble in respect ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... can be found. Even if we accept his excuse at its face value, the event proved his folly. It is strange that in this, the supreme victory of the Cross over the Crescent on the sea, a Doria should have tarnished his reputation so foully, even as his great-uncle Andrea had tarnished his in the battle of Prevesa. It seems as if in both, as Genoese, the hatred of Venice extinguished every other ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... sacrificed to the needs or fancies of Byron's great-uncle, the "wicked Lord." One splendid oak, known as the "Pilgrim's Oak," which stood and stands near the north lodge of the park, near the "Hut," was bought in by the neighbouring gentry, and made over to the estate. Perhaps by the Druid oak Byron meant to celebrate this "last ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a certain ancestor—or was he only a great-uncle?—I forget—had a taste for mechanics, even to the craze of the perpetual motion, and could work well in brass and iron. The creature was probably some invention of his. It was a real marvel how, after so many years of idleness, it could now ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... duty to speak to you about it. It was my great-uncle, Captain Silas Hardin. He was my father's ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... our celebrations were over that we noticed that anything was wrong in Fairfield. 'T was shoemaker who told me first about it one morning at the Fox and Grapes. "You know my great-great-uncle?" he ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... "So, our friend Poulain was once called in by you to attend old M. Pillerault, the Countess Popinot's great-uncle; that is one of your claims to my devotion. Poulain goes to see your landlord (mark this!) once a fortnight; he learned all these particulars from him. M. Pillerault was present at his grand-nephew's wedding—for he is an uncle with money to leave; he has an income of fifteen thousand ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... heirs heard that their uncle and great-uncle Minoret was really coming to live in Nemours, they were seized (in spite of the political events which were just then weighing so heavily on Brie and on the Gatinais) with a devouring curiosity, which ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... sunless morning. The dream, with its dream-ages of duration, had not crossed the shallows of the dawn. Quickly he gathered his few things into his knapsack—fortunately their number had nowise increased—took his great-uncle's bamboo, saw that his money was safe, stole quietly down the stair, and softly and safely out of the house, and, ere any of its inhabitants were astir, had left the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Gentleman of marked nautical proclivities, who has lately, through the demise of a great-uncle, come into the possession of a Penny Steamer in a very fair condition of repair, is anxious to meet with one or two persons of similar tastes who would be disposed to start with him on a Summer Tour, for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... still and looked at him, wishing he would speak faster. Could her great-uncle in India be come home, and want her to make him a visit in London? How delightful! If it had been anybody but Papa, she would ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not sixteen when he first showed of what temper he was. His great-uncle, the Count d'Arques, had set up a claim to the duchy, and was besieged in his castle at Arques by Walter Gifford, Count de Longueville, when the King of France succeeded in sending him such considerable reinforcements ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... thing!" said she, at last, slowly; and her breath came like a gasp with her words. "My great-uncle, Mr. Oldways." ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... out: well, you are lucky! Let me sit down and write a letter to my great-uncle at the Cape. You must post it when you can. He is ninety-four, and rather soft, but I dare say he will like to hear from me," and she hurried into the house to give her aged relative—who, by the way, laboured under the impression that she was ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... who, in Cromwell's time, christened all their children by names taken from the scripture.' 'A foolish pique indeed. (cried Mrs Tabby), and even sinful, to fall out with your name because it is taken from holy writ. — I would have you to know, you was called after great-uncle Matthew ap Madoc ap Meredith, esquire, of Llanwysthin, in Montgomeryshire, justice of the quorum, and crusty ruttleorum, a gentleman of great worth and property, descended in a strait line, by the female side, from ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... "Imagine your great-uncle's feelings, when suddenly his office door opened, and a gentleman appeared leading those two ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... enacting that people standing in a certain degree of kinship or consanguinity shall marry. If Dr Durkheim's theory of the origin of the eight-class system is correct, it should also apply to the Dieri. Now the rule that a man must marry his maternal great-uncle's daughter clearly prevents intermarriage with one of the mother's totem; but this cannot be the object of the rule, for it is prevented already by the phratry system. Dr Durkheim's theory therefore finds no support ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas |
