First cousin

“ The risk of marrying a cousin, even a first cousin, is greatly diminished, provided there is no decided hereditary taint in the family. And when such hereditary taint does exist, the danger is little more than in marrying into any other family where it is also found. Indeed, a certain German author has urged the propriety of such unions, where the family has traits of mental or physical excellence, as a means of preserving and developing them! ”

“ If, as he believes, "The parents of adult children are on the average more alike than first cousins, then it follows that any evils which may flow from first cousin marriage depend not on likeness of characters, but on sameness of stock." ”

“ The maternal uncle was known, while in his early twenties, to have indulged in solitary onanism before boys around the age of twelve, but all his adult life he appeared to be unusually attracted toward girls aged from ten to twelve, but I do not believe he ever corrupted any, as he was always popular in his community.
A female first cousin is a psychical hermaphrodite, and while married to a man, has always retained a woman sweetheart, who has evidently occupied a place in my cousin's affections much above the husband. ”

“ And how’s your cousin?”
“I’m quite well, thank you,” the Muley Cow replied. “But which cousin do you mean? You know, half the herd is related to me. I have first cousins, second [49] cousins, third cousins, fourth cousins——”
“Yes! ”

“ Although the number of marriageable second cousins is usually several times as great as that of first cousins, the number of marriages between second cousins is probably somewhat less than the number of marriages between first cousins, but the number of second cousin marriages combined with the number of 1-1/2 cousin marriages probably exceeds the number of first cousin marriages alone. ”

“ I shouldn't have let her come along—I had my doubts of the weather, but it was a chance to see the relatives she's got scattered through the group. They're constantly visiting one another; blood means a lot down here where they recognize degrees of consanguinity absurdly farfetched to our minds. First cousins are like brothers, second and third cousins considered members of one's immediate family, and so on through the descendants of remote ancestors. ”

“ If we allow three generations to a century, and calculate that the degree of cousinship is determined by the number of generations less two, since first cousins appear only in the third generation, the first being that of the parents and the second that of the sons and daughters, we find that 30th cousins at the present time would have had a common ancestor about one thousand years ago or approximately at the time of William the Conqueror. ”

“ We have here a phenomenon probably unique in the whole range of anthropology—a people who for generations have married their first cousins and still continue to do so, and among whom the offspring of first cousins were not only more numerous but have greater vitality than the children of persons unrelated. Nay more, the children of concubitants—of first cousins whose parents were brother and sister—have immense advantages over the children of first cousins who were the children of two brothers or two sisters respectively. ”

“ Gordon. "Your cousins are coming to make us a visit first, and your Uncle Alan says we may look for them next week."
"Hurrah! won't we have fun going about seeing things," and Don started another dance, for he was very fond of his two little cousins, Janet and Marjorie Lindsay, and thought them far nicer than most lassies, for they could keep up with him on a day's climb over the moors, and play games almost as well as Sandy. ”

“ Flo Some pumpkins, first I am small potatoes, and now I'm some pumpkins.
Asa But she, she can milk cows, set up the butter, make cheese, and, darn me, if them ain't what I call raal downright feminine accomplishments.
Flo I do believe you are right cousin, so Mary do allow me to congratulate you upon not being small potatoes.
Mary Well, I must look to my dairy or all my last week's milk will be spoiled. Good bye, Florence, dear. Good bye, Mr. Trenchard. Good morning, sir. [Exit into Cottage.]
Asa [Following her to door.] Good morning, Miss. I'll call again. ”

“ However unwise the removal, in England, of the prohibition against marrying a deceased wife’s sister, may have been—because she is so frequently a husband’s housemate—there is little reason, in America, in discouraging the marriage of first cousins. In the cases of aunt and nephew, and of uncle and niece, the incest-relation is possibly a distinct consideration. ”

“ Miss Arabella Jane—dat's your dear dead-an'-gone grandma's second cousin—had seven childern by her first husband,—he was a Patterson,—and nine by her second,—he was a McKim,—and five—but 'tain't no use, honey; you don't 'pear to take no int'res' in yer own kith and kin, no more dan or'nary white trash. I 'spec' you don't know de diff'ence, dis minnit, 'twixt yer poor old Aunt Judy and any no-account poor-house nigger." And so my Cousin Georgiana, of whom I had never heard before, remains a myth to me, one of Aunt Judy's Mrs. ”

“ I’d feel ashamed to go claiming relations with folks that didn’t even know I existed. I can’t see what makes you do it.”
“Oh, just for fun! You see we really and truly are kin. We are just as close kin as some of the people Cousin Ann Peyton visits, because you see she takes in anybody and everybody from the third and fourth generation of them that hate to see her coming. Yesterday in Louisville I looked up the family in some old books on the early history of Kentucky at the Carnegie Library and I found out a lot of things. In the first place the Bucks weren’t named for Buck Hill.” ”

“ Marrying First Cousins is dangerous to offspring. The observation is universal, the children of married first cousins are too often idiots, insane, clump-footed, crippled, blind, or variously diseased. First cousins are always sure to impart all the hereditary disease in both families to their children. ”

“ For me, I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence.
"Give dear love, too, to my brothers; and first to my eldest, faithful friend! Eugene; a sister's love to Ellen; love to my kind and good aunts, and to my dear cousin. E.,—God bless them!
"I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. ”

“ No doubt there were other first cousins as badly off, or perhaps worse, as to whom the Duchess would care nothing whether they were rich or poor,—married or single; but then they were first cousins who had not had the advantage of interesting the Duchess. ”

“ He describes in simple, but strong and vivid, verse their struggles, sorrows, weaknesses, crimes, and pleasures, sometimes with racy humour, oftener in sombre hues, His pathos, sparingly introduced, goes to the heart; his pictures of crime and despair not seldom rise to the terrific, and he has a marvellous power of painting natural scenery, and of bringing out in detail the beauty and picturesqueness of scenes at first sight uninteresting, or even uninviting. ”

“ He can come for a month."
"Then I'll stay for the first week. I must go to Hereford before the summer is over. Shall I write to him?" Then it was settled as she had proposed. She wrote all her uncle's letters, even to her cousin Henry, unless there was, by chance, something very special to be communicated. On the present occasion she sent the invitation as follows:—
Llanfeare, 17th June, 187—, Monday. ”

“ The first says, "To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit, this only a Webster can do." W. revels in the horrible, but the touch of genius saves his work from mere brutality, and evokes pity and sorrow where, without it, there would be only horror and disgust. ”

“ His muse is tender and graceful, pervaded by a contemplative melancholy, and a love of solitude and the silence of the woods. Though he was brought up to admire Pope, and in his early youth imitated him, he was one of the first American poets to throw off his influence. ”

“ He's gentle enough at first, is Mr Cheekey."
"What is it all to me?" asked Cousin Henry.
"Oh, nothing, sir. To a gentleman like you who knows what he's about it's all nothing. What can Mr Cheekey do to a gentleman who has got nothing to conceal? But when a witness has something to hide,—and sometimes there will be something,—then it is that Mr Cheekey comes out strong. He looks into a man and sees that it's there, and then he turns him inside out till he gets at it. That's what I call skinning a witness. ”

“ C. exercised a very powerful influence upon the thought of his age, not only by his own writings and personality, but through the many men of distinction both in literature and active life whom he imbued with his doctrines; and perhaps no better proof of this exists than the fact that much that was new and original when first propounded by him has passed into the texture of the national ideas. His style is perhaps the most remarkable and individual in our literature, intensely strong, vivid, and picturesque, but utterly unconventional, and often whimsical or explosive. ”

“ Novelist, began life as a miniature painter, but was led by the success of his first book, Tales of the O'Hara Family, to devote himself to literature. The object which he set before himself was to become to Ireland what Scott has been to Scotland, and the influence of his model is distinctly traceable in his writings. His strength lies in the delineation of the characters of the Irish lower classes, and the impulses, often misguided and criminal, by which they are influenced, and in this he has shown remarkable power. ”

“ For such a purpose Mr Apjohn, no doubt, would be the proper person, but there was no one of whom he stood so much in dread as of Mr Apjohn. Were he to carry the book and the paper to the lawyer and attempt to tell his story, the real truth would be drawn out from him in the first minute of their interview. The man's eyes looking at him, the man's brow bent against him, would extract from him instantly the one truth which it was his purpose to hold within his own keeping. He would find no thankfulness, no mercy, not even justice in the lawyer. ”

“ A shy and timid child, the death of his mother when he was 6 years old, and the sufferings inflicted upon him by a bullying schoolfellow at his first school, wounded his tender and shrinking spirit irrecoverably. ”

“ By propounding the binomial theorem, the differential calculus, and the integral calculus, he began in 1665 the wonderful series of discoveries in pure mathematics, optics, and physics, which place him in the first rank of the philosophers of all time. ”

“ It is not, however, as a churchman that he is remembered, but as the author of the Ingoldsby Legends, a series of comic and serio-comic pieces in verse, sparkling with wit, and full of striking and often grotesque turns of expression, which appeared first in Bentley's Miscellany. ”

“ If Mr Apjohn were to bring everything out here for the purpose, the expense would be tremendous. In going there, it will only be the fly, and it will all be done in five minutes."
"Who will be there?" asked Cousin Henry after a pause.
"I shall be there," answered the clerk, not unnaturally putting himself first, "and Mr Apjohn, and perhaps one of the lads."
"There won't be any—barrister?" asked Cousin Henry, showing the extent of his fear by his voice and his countenance.
"Oh, dear, no; they won't be here till the assizes. A barrister never sees his own client. ”

“ It will be seen how he had endeavoured to reconcile things. When it was found that Henry Jones was working like a steady man at the London office to which he was attached, that he had sown his wild oats, then Uncle Indefer began to ask himself why all his dearest wishes should not be carried out together by a marriage between the cousins. "I don't care a bit for his wild oats," Isabel had said, almost playfully, when the idea had first been mooted to her. "His oats are too tame for me rather than too wild. Why can't he look any one in the face?" ”

“ Though the object, first of a kind of contemptuous dislike, then of an intense opposition, he rose to be universally regarded as, at all events, a great political force, and by a large part of the nation as a great statesman. As a writer he is generally interesting, and his books teem with striking thoughts, shrewd maxims, and brilliant phrases which stick in the memory. ”

“ Novelist, b. in Philadelphia, belonged to a Quaker family, became a lawyer, but exchanged law for literature, and has the distinction of being the first American to adopt a purely literary career. He wrote several novels, including Wieland (1798) , Ormond (1799) , Arthur Mervyn (1800-1) , and his last, Jane Talbot (1801) . With a good deal of crudeness and sentimentality he has occasional power, but dwells too much on the horrible and repulsive, the result, perhaps, of the morbidity produced by the ill-health from which he all his life suffered. ”

“ His influence on his time was very great, at first in the department of art, in which he was for a time regarded as the supreme authority, later and increasingly in the realms of economics and morals, in which he was at first looked upon as an unpractical dreamer. ”

“ While still a boy he went to London, and worked as a shoemaker under an elder brother, enduring extreme poverty. His first and chief poem, The Farmer's Boy, was composed in a room where half a dozen other men were at work, and the finished lines he carried in his head until there was time to write them down. The manuscript, after passing through various hands, fell into those of Capel Lofft, a Suffolk squire of literary tastes, by whose exertions it was pub. ”

“ Though not, perhaps, a writer of commanding power or originality, I., especially in his earlier works, imparted by his style and treatment a singular charm to every subject he touched, and holds a high place among American men of letters, among whom he is the first who has produced what has, on its own merits, living interest in literature. ”