Filly

“ As in a glass darkly, I have seen what I might feel as child, wife, mother, but I have never really approached the close relations of life. A sister I have truly been to many, — a brother to more, — a fostering nurse to, oh how many! ”

“ Alone though she was the sensitive colour flamed into her cheeks, and she hid her face in the pillows with a quivering sob. A child that would be his and hers, a child—a boy with the same passionate dark eyes, the same crisp brown hair, the same graceful body, who would grow up as tall and strong, as brave and fearless as his father. ”

“ Those of my mother's—so familiar, so plaintive, so tenderly resigned at breeding-time—attracted me strongly towards them. If a young girl feels like a mother for the doll which she dresses, how much more so for a living creature which responds to her caresses! ”

“ Cinderella looked at her with wonder. “I am weeping,” she said, “because my sisters have gone to the ball without me, and because I wished to go too.”
“Then dry your tears,” said the little old woman, “I am your fairy godmother, and if you are a good girl and do exactly as I say, there is nothing you can wish for that you shall not have. Run to the garden and fetch me a pumpkin; and let me see the mousetrap; if there are six fine fat mice in it they will be of use.” ”

“ It is because of this curious presentiment of mine that I write down for thee, my baby—my baby Paul—this story of thy father and thy mother, and the great love that gave thee to the world. It is but right, before thou comest into thy kingdom, that thou shouldst know—thou and thou alone—the secret of thy birth, that thou mayst carry with thee into the big world thy birthright—the sweetness of a supreme love. ”

“ Now it is customary in all happy families, when father and mother are expecting the cradle soon to be filled, to choose a name for the baby, and to have its clothes ready. This is done, so that the poor little thing, on coming into the world, will not get a chill, or sneeze, or have a cough, and die. Moreover, if it have a name, no one will mistake one baby for another, unless they arrive as twins, when some mark, such as a blue ribbon for a boy, and a pink one for a girl, is necessary. ”

“ A lad with a noble face and gentlemanly manner, a fair young girl whom to look upon was like seeing her own reflection in the glass, except that this face was somewhat more youthful, lacking the maturity, sorrow, and care far more than years had brought to hers, and a little girl with a sweet, winsome face, blue eyes, and soft, flaxen curls, stood before her. ”

“ The children, if they read, will laugh. Have you not seen the mirthful wonder that spreads on a girl's face when she comes by chance on some relic of her father's wooing, a faded wreath that he has given her mother, or a nosegay tied with a ribbon and a poem attached thereto? She will look in her father's face, and thence to where her mother sits at her needle-work, just where she has sat at her needle-work these twenty years, with her old kind smile and comfortable eyes. ”

“ But the serpent said to the prince, “Well, 272 which of my daughters dost thou think the loveliest?”
“The youngest is the most beautiful,” said the prince, “and her will I wed.”
“Good!” said the serpent, “but I will not let thee have my daughter till thou hast done all my tasks. If thou doest my tasks, thou shalt have my daughter; but if thou doest them not, thou shalt lose thy head, and all thy suite shall perish with thee.” ”

“ It reminded one of a strong father with his tiny babe in his protecting arms; the handsome avenues are perfect bowers of beauty; the little birds in the foliage twitter softly but incessantly. It is all life, but in a subdued, gentle monotone, soft as the last lullaby over the little child who has closed its eyes and, with a smile, joined that heavenly band to which it rightly belongs. ”

“ One only daughter lives, and she the least;
The queen close clasped the daughter to her breast.
"Ye heavenly powers, ah! spare me one," she cried.
"Ah! spare me one," the vocal hills replied
In vain she begs, the Fates her suit deny;
In her embrace she sees her daughter die. ”

“ To promise them heather and blue heather blooms.
Kiit up your green plaidie, walk over yon hill,
For a sight of your Highland face does me much ill,
For I will wed my daughter, and spare pennies too,
To whom my heart pleases and what’s that to you.
My plaid it is broad it has colours anew,
Goodman for your kindness I’ll leave it with you,
I have got a warm cordial keeps the cold from me.
The blithe blinks of love from your daughter's eye. ”

“ To decide therefore which three of you my daughters shall marry I make this suggestion: let all of you stand in the garden in a row and let each of my daughters throw down a golden apple from a balcony. Then each princess must wed the man to whom her apple rolls. My lords, do you all agree to this?”
The nobles all agreed and the king sent for his daughters. The princesses, still thinking of the unknown knight, were not enthusiastic over this arrangement, but not to shame their father they, too, agreed. ”

“ His sister's eye with tears was dim:
She said, "I'll plant that tree for him."
"Its roots are deep," the mother said;
"Beyond the darkling grave they spread:"
"Thy hand is weak," the father cried;
"Too young thou art to be a bride." ”

“ A little girl had come into the room, a girl of between five and six years, but so small that one would scarcely have guessed her to be four,—a beautiful child, but transparent of coloring, and bearing in her delicate face the pathetic patience which only sick children, of all human creatures, ever show. ”

“ Why, two boys, two beautiful young princes, with hair as golden as the stars on their foreheads, and each so like the other, that at the first glance every one would have known them for twins.
The boys grew fast. In every day they grew a year's growth, and in every night another year's growth, but at dawn, when the stars were fading, they grew three years' growth in the twinkling of an eye. And they grew in other things besides height, too. ”

“ Renee, I am still without a child. The time will surely come—it must come—when our hermitage will need a father's and a mother's care to brighten it, when we shall both pine to see the little frocks and pelisses, the brown or golden heads, leaping, running through our shrubberies and flowery paths. ”

“ A single sheet fell out; it was signed with the name I had heard whispered in my ear from early childhood, and always in connection with riches and splendor and pleasures,—it was rapture to dream of. This was an agitation in itself, but the words—the words! I have never told them to mortal being, but I must tell them now; I remember them as I remember the look of my child’s face when she was first put in my arms, the child—”
She had underrated her strength. ”

“ Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or more commonly the afterbirth, is regarded as a living being, the brother or sister of the infant, or as the material object in which the guardian spirit of the child or part of its soul resides. ”

“ A child resembles, say, a mother as a rule, but at some emotional, angry, or vexed moment, lines are marked in the face by muscular movements which bring out like a mask a striking likeness, say, of the father, or of some other progenitor. ”

“ You see them of all ages and statures in family groups; the aged grandsire, gray-haired and wise, deep in meditation, the father watching the gymnastics of the younger members of the family, as they strengthen their muscles by swinging from the tree-boughs, while the mother nurses her hairy pet upon her knee. ”

“ Every little girl and boy baby that comes into the world, has stored within its body, in a wonderfully organized capsule, a part of the ancestral stream of life that unceasingly has flowed down through the centuries from father to son and from mother to daughter. ”

“ As he grew into the handsome, courtly man, whom all admired, she must have smiled as she looked sometimes at the little shoes he had worn as her baby and which she carefully kept with other treasures—such as the cradle in which she had rocked all her boys and little girl. ”

“ I have seen one in the early bloom of youth, and amid the temptations of affluence, so aiding, cheering, and influencing a large circle of brothers and sisters, that the lisping student came to her to be helped in its lesson—and the wild one from its sports, brought the torn garment trustingly to her needle—and the delighted infant stretched its arms to hear her bird-like song—and the cheek of her mother, leaning on so sweet a substitute, forgot to fade. ”

“ How many young mothers, sitting in their nurseries, love to recall the pleasant picture of their mother in hers. The neat dress—the shining hair, the beaming face. So let your children remember you. Be not pretty and tidy, only when company comes. ”

“ Somewhere between ten and eleven years ago, a wild, reckless boy of seventeen, very much spoiled by the indulgence of a fond, doting father, who loved and petted him as the only son of his departed mother, was spending a few months in one of our large Southern cities, where he met, and soon fell desperately in love with, a beautiful orphan heiress, some two years his junior. ”

“ And the Queen answered sadly: 'Dear child, they belong to your twelve brothers.'
'But where are my twelve brothers?' said the girl. 'I have never even heard of them.'
'Heaven alone knows in what part of the wide world they are wandering,' replied her mother.
Then she took the girl and opened the locked-up room; she showed her the twelve coffins filled with shavings, and with the little pillow laid in each. ”

“ The lifeless babe no dread to his mind brought;
To mother's arms he bore the drooping form—
"Poor baby cold! make pretty sister warm."
The lustrums sped. A girl of lightsome heart
Was told, "He comes! with him thou must depart." ”

“ If we wait for twenty-five years, we see the true state of affairs; the hair has grown dark like the father's, the nose, the most telling item of the face, has also approximated to his type, likewise the character--in fact the offspring is clearly built on paternal lines. ”

“ She broods in spirit till her child looks into her eyes, bearing the image, in face and mental impress and spirit, which the brooding months have given. She broods over the inarticulate days when the babe cannot tell the felt needs except to a brooding mother's keen insight. ”

“ The lives of the parents are but partially subordinated at times when the young are being reared. And then there are long intervals between breeding-seasons, during which the lives of parents are carried on for their own sakes.... ”

“ A brawny, large, and handsome man was the father, on whose shoulder the little fellow was riding, while a demure, pale-faced sister of about ten, walked by the side of the two. Father and little sister might have been met with anywhere, any day, but the baby once in a lifetime. ”

“ Once, when the wife went into the room upstairs, her little daughter followed her, and said,
"Mother, give me an apple."
"Yes, my child," said the mother, and gave her a fine apple out of the chest, and the chest had a great heavy lid with a strong iron lock.
"Mother," said the little girl, "shall not my brother have one too?" ”

“ The old woman had listened to this all and now she [103] cried out, “I swear my son is just such a man as she says, and he is to buy me my third shroud and of the best town stuff. A very good son, neighbors, and I wish as good a one to each of you, and especially to you, cousin’s wife, for I see your belly swollen as a ripe melon!” ”

“ She yielded to the Cow-herd and soon became his wife, and as the years passed by a boy and girl were born to them, little star children, twins, such as are seen near by the Spinning Girl in her heavenly home to-day. ”

“ A child, who has been set to watch beside the cradle of a baby brother or sister, and wants very badly to be off to play, may learn a lesson of patience from the way in which these little workers take care of the babies which are their special charge—for I suppose an ant's egg may be considered in its tiny way like a baby in its cradle. ”

“ Till after puberty, then, we ought not to compare the child with its parents, if we would judge accurately of the resemblance, as then the son frequently resembles his father, and the daughter her mother, and frequently the child resembles both at once. Sometimes children resemble the grandfathers or grand-mothers, and even uncles and aunts. ”

“ As she sat at the door spinning, she kept mumbling to herself:
"My daughter ate five pies to‐day,
My daughter ate five pies to‐day."
The king was going by, and he heard the woman mumbling.
"What are you saying, woman?" asked the king.
The woman did not like to tell him about the pies, so she said:
"My daughter spun five skeins to‐day,
My daughter spun five skeins to‐day."
"Well, well, well!" said the king, "I didn't know that any one could spin so much as that!"
"My daughter knows how to spin," said the woman.
[28]
The king thought a little while. ”

“ ONCE upon a time there was a King who had seven children. The first three were boys, and he was glad about this because a King likes to have three sons; but when the next three were sons also, he was not so glad, and he wished that one of them had been a daughter. So the Queen said, "The next shall be a daughter." ”

“ He explained to the child, who listened with the greatest attention, that the mother is like the soil and the father like the gardener; that the father provides the seed which grows in the mother, and thus gives origin to a baby. ”