"Midwife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was born at Goa, of Canarin parents, a hairy monster like a monkey, having a round head and only one eye in the forehead, over which it had horns, and its ears were like those of a kid. When received by the midwife, it cried with a loud voice, and stood up on its feet. The father put it into a hencoop, whence it got out and flew upon its mother; on which the father killed it by pouring scalding water on its head, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... the mother. We begin with the earliest days of infancy. After the first bath the new-born child was put into swaddling-clothes, a custom not permitted by the rougher habits of Sparta. On the fifth or seventh day the infant had to go through the ceremony of purification; the midwife, holding him in her arms, walked several times round the burning altar. A festive meal on this day was given to the family, the doors being decorated with an olive crown for a boy, with wool for a girl. On the tenth day after its birth, when ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... allowed only two Protestant doctors within its precincts. In 1671 a decree was published commanding the arms of France to be removed from all the places of worship belonging to the pretended Reformers. In 1680 a proclamation from the king closed the profession of midwife to women of the Reformed faith. In 1681 those who renounced the Protestant religion were exempted for two years from all contributions towards the support of soldiers sent to their town, and were for the same period relieved from the duty ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... every inch of the road to retain your ground, or any part of it, against the new and abler physicians who must come with the growth of the country. You'll not be wanted by your best friends when it comes to a case of life and death. You'll become only a kind of licensed midwife rushing about from one accouchement to another, and, even for this, you must finesse and intrigue in the manner which has made the incompetents of your sex in medicine the bete noir of ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... an idiot, Hero or natural coward, shall have guidance Of a free people's destiny, should fall out In the mere lottery of a reckless nature, 310 Where few the prizes and the blanks are countless? Or haply that a nation's fate should hang On the bald accident of a midwife's handling The unclosed sutures ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for it." The voice of Birch was like ice. He was one of those who by nature are fitted for cold and ruthless action in time of stress. Most of his money had been made across the dissecting table of enterprises, and not at their birth. He was a financial surgeon, but no midwife, and had only been magnetized into his past support by the hypnotic personality of Clark. He was grimly mindful that Marsham, after waiting for years for his opening, had got more than even. Birch's cold mind now wondered for the first ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... fulfilled to Anna, she brought forth, and said to the midwife, 'What have I brought forth?' And she told her, ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... But ma'am,' I says to her, 'talk not of Margate, for if I do go anywheres, it is elsewheres and not there.' 'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, solemn, 'whence this mystery? If I have ever deceived the hardest-working, soberest, and best of women, which her name is well beknown is S. Gamp Midwife Kingsgate Street High Holborn, mention it. If not,' says Mrs. Harris, with the tears a standing in her eyes, 'reweal your intentions.' 'Yes, Mrs. Harris,' I says, 'I will. Well I knows you Mrs. Harris; well you knows me; ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... as the primal element, the original of all existences, and their theory has supporters among many primitive peoples. At the baptism festivals of their children, the ancient Mexicans recognized the goddess of the waters. At sunrise the midwife addressed the child, saying, among other things: "Be cleansed with thy mother, Chalchihuitlicue, the goddess of water." Then, placing her dripping finger upon the child's lips, she continued: "Take this, for on it ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... anxiety and regret in the minds of the parents. We have seen that it was not until after baptism that the child was allowed out of the room in which it was born, except under the skilful guardianship of a relative or the midwife; but, further than this, it was not considered safe or proper to carry it into any neighbour's house until the mother took it herself, and this it was unlucky even for her to do until she had been to church. Indeed, few mothers would enter any house until they had ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... immediate and instigating cause of the lady's journey to Garnock being the alarming intelligence which she had that day received of Mr. Craig's servant-damsel Betty having, by the style and title of Mrs. Craig, sent for Nanse Swaddle, the midwife, to come to her in her own case, which seemed to Mrs. Glibbans nothing short of a miracle, Betty having, the very Sunday before, helped the kettle when she drank tea with Mr. Craig, and sat at the room door, on a buffet-stool brought from the kitchen, while he performed ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... his Dialogues tells us, that Socrates, who was the Son of a Midwife, used to say, that as his Mother, tho she was very skilful in her Profession, could not deliver a Woman, unless she was first with Child; so neither could he himself raise Knowledge out of a Mind, where Nature had not ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... group, only two children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufelau, only one. Any violation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine.[1008] On the congested Gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children, never more than three. Abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposed of any subsequent offspring. Affection for children was very strong here, and infanticide of the living was unknown.[1009] In Samoa, also, Turner found the practice restricted to the period before birth; but in Tahiti and elsewhere it was enforced by the tribal village authorities ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Italian, with whom the queen-mother, her relative, married her after an "accident" which happened in the dressing-room of Catherine de' Medici herself; but which the young lady won the honor of having a queen as midwife. ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic gens. Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was twenty when ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... round to all her flower-beds to examine their state, for she has every little leaf in the garden by heart." Tom himself had been much moved by the birth of his first boy. He was called up at 11.30, sent for the midwife, was upset, walked about half the night, thanked God—"the maid, by the way, very near catching me on my knees." She might have caught Bessy on them every day, and no thought taken of so simple a thing. But Tom ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. . . . The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull With ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... she said; "call a cab quick. It was Rue de la Huchette where you said your midwife lives, wasn't it? opposite a copper planer's? Haven't you ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... that had been absolutely neglected by the adherents of the new dogmas. That other phase was the driving power of instinct, a power uncontrolled and unnoticed. The great fundamental instinct of sex was expressing itself in these ever-growing broods, in the prosperity of the slum midwife and her colleague the slum undertaker. In spite of all my sympathy with the dream of liberated Labor, I was driven to ask whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, was not at least partially responsible, along with industrial injustice, for the widespread ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp—a city of refuge—was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... favour), and she hired a bed-room in an adjacent street, to be ready to receive a woman in labour at a moment's notice. Her scheme was, when taken in labour, to have run out to that house, to be delivered by a midwife, who was to have been brought to her. She was to have gone home presently after, and to have made the best excuse she could for being out. She had heard of soldiers wives being delivered behind a hedge, and following the husband with the child ...
— On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children • William Hunter
... renown of which establishments was duly heralded on their respective fronts. It was a little house, and this was the more convenient; for Mrs Gamp being, in her highest walk of art, a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly had it, 'Midwife,' and lodging in the first-floor front, was easily assailable at night by pebbles, walking-sticks, and fragments of tobacco-pipe; all much more efficacious than the street-door knocker, which was so constructed as to wake the street with ease, and even spread alarms of fire in Holborn, without ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... difficult labor, according to Gilbert, are malposition, dropsy, immoderate size and death of the fetus, debility of the uterus and obstruction of the maternal passages. Malpositions are to be corrected by the hand of the midwife (obstetrix). Adjuvant measures are hot baths, poultices, inunctions, fumigations and sternutatories, and ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... house nearly as open as a barn, on a freezing winter night, our baby was born. The gaunt, dark room, the roaring fire upon the wide hearth, the ugly little kettle of herb tea steaming on the live coals, and the old mountain midwife, bending with her hideous scroll face over me, are all a part of the memory of an immortal pain. At the end of a dreadful day she had turned with some contempt from the fine lady on the bed, who could not give birth to her child, ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife, seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes destroyed it."—St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... mistakes both on the Ministers hand and the holder ups. Mr. James Vood was baptizing a man at St. Androws, and instead that he sould have baptized James, he called it John. The father, a litle bumbaized at this, after the barne is baptized and that he hes given it back to the midwife, he stands up and looks the Minister as griveously in the face and sayes, Sir, what sal I do wt 2 Johns, we have a John at home else, Sir? Whow would ye called then, Robin? quo' the Minister. James, Sir. James be the ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... left his property called Madywattons, at Shrawley, to his son George, with remainder to his daughter Annis, and L20 to his son Thomas. He left legacies to his brothers Nicolas and Thomas and his Aunt Ley, the midwife. His wife's name was Eleanor. His goods were prised at L8 6s. 8d. by Thomas and William Shaxper, among others. The will of Richard Shakespere, of Rowington, November 13, 1613, which caused so much heartburning, showed that his son William had a son John, and ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... sneezed, he did not evoke Jupiter to save him, the same as the people of some other countries did, but he, or some of his friends present, said Deiseal. When an infant was born, the midwife encircled it three times right about with a burning candle. These customs were no doubt commenced by the Highlanders in honour of the sun, which they once worshipped; but in later times people did as their forefathers ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... supposed to be signified the grand constellation called Draco, or the Dragon. And the figure is sublime. It is still more sublime in the Douai translation. "His obstetric hand hath brought forth the Winding Serpent." This is certainly a grand imagination—the hand of God, like the hand of a midwife, bringing forth a constellation out of the womb of the eternal night. But in the revised version, which is exact, we have only "His hand hath pierced the Swift Serpent!" All the poetry ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... agonizing labours seem to have been eased somewhat by the comfortable ministrations of a black and grinning muse. Midwifery, to be sure, seems an odd occupation for a lady whom one pictures rather in the role of a flapper: but a midwife was what the poet needed, and in that capacity she has served him. Apparently it is only by adopting a demurely irreverent attitude, by being primly insolent, and by playing the devil with the instrument of Shakespeare and Milton that Mr. Eliot is able occasionally to deliver ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... instrumentality; aid &c 707; subservience, subserviency; mediation, intervention, medium, intermedium^, vehicle, hand; agency &c 170. minister, handmaid; midwife, accoucheur [Fr.], accoucheuse [Fr.], obstetrician; gobetween; cat's-paw; stepping-stone. opener &c 260; key; master key, passkey, latchkey; open sesame; passport, passe-partout, safe-conduct, password. instrument &c 633; expedient &c (plan) 626; means &c 632. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... at that certainty in the matter, that I could venture to foretell what women would be affected with the disease, upon hearing by what midwife they were to be delivered, or by what nurse they were to be attended, during their lying-in; and, almost in every instance, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and to let them float at random along the canals, enjoying by anticipation all the curses that gondoliers would not fail to indulge in. We would rouse up hurriedly, in the middle of the night, an honest midwife, telling her to hasten to Madame So-and-so, who, not being even pregnant, was sure to tell her she was a fool when she called at the house. We did the same with physicians, whom we often sent half dressed to some nobleman who was enjoying excellent health. The priests fared no better; we would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... throughout life. The deity selected serves the child through life as a patron saint and protector. Frequently the village barber acts in the place of a priest and puts on the sacred thread. A similar thread placed around the neck of a child, and often around its waist by the midwife immediately after birth, is intended as an amulet or charm to protect from disease and danger. It is usually a strand of silk which has been blessed by some holy man or sanctified by being placed around the neck of ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... the children. My mother was a seamstress and had three younger seamsters under her, that she taught to sew. We made the clothes for all the house servants and fiel' hans. My mother made some of the clothes for my marster and missis. My mother was a midwife too, and useter go to all the birthings on our place. She had a bag she always carried and when she went to other plantations she had a horse and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... connected with this case. Nathaniel St. Andre was the surgeon and anatomist to the King, and Cyriacus Ahlers the King's private surgeon; John Howard was the apothecary. The imposture was finally brought to light before Sir Richard Manningham (the famous man-midwife who probably influenced Sterne) and Dr. James Douglas. Among the many contemporary pamphlets on this subject is one by ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... wretch, hot-headed, Nor worthy to be trusted with a woman In her first labor. Well, well! she shall come. —Observe how earnest the old gossip is, (Coming forward) Because this Lesbia is her pot-companion. —Oh grant my mistress, Heav'n, a safe delivery, And let the midwife trespass any where Rather than here!—But what is it I see? Pamphilus all disorder'd: How I fear The cause! I'll wait a while, that I may know If this commotion means ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... go to the church, the midwife goeth foremost, carrying the child; and the godfathers and godmothers follow into the midst of the church, where there is a small table ready set, and on it an earthen pot full of warm water, about the which the godfathers and godmothers with the child settle themselves. Then the clerk giveth ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... some women who will smother every feeling of modesty and morality, and trust their lives to one of these licentiates rather than commit themselves to the care of a thoroughly trained midwife of their own sex. Surely nothing can be more absurd ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... "find some one to nurse this infant; but first of all take away these rich coverings, and put on him others of the plainest kind. Having done that, you must carry the babe, without a moment's delay, to the house of a midwife, for there it is that you will be most likely to find all that is requisite in such a case. Take money to pay what may be needful, and give the child such parents as you please, for I desire to hide the truth, and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... twelve o'clock, and the watchman declared he believed her to be a common strumpet. She pleaded in her defence (as was really the truth) that she was a servant, and was sent by her mistress, who was a little shopkeeper and upon the point of delivery, to fetch a midwife; which she offered to prove by several of the neighbours, if she was allowed to send for them. The justice asked her why she had not done it before? to which she answered, she had no money, and could get no messenger. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... is not here said what shall be done in case a lawful Minister cannot be found; or whether the child ought to be baptized again, or no, when only a midwife, or some other such, hath baptized it before." According to the ancient custom of the church, recognized and affirmed in the case of Mastin v. Estcott (1841), a child baptized by a layman is validly baptized. It follows, that though Baptism by any other ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... fortunate are they, whom, as I write, Naked and whimpering, in her arms receives The midwife! They those longed-for days may hope To see, when, after careful studies we Shall know, and every nursling shall imbibe That knowledge with the milk of the dear nurse, How many hundred-weight of salt, and how Much flesh, how many ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... see, you will see, Grand Duke of Egypt! They are ethereal demons, every one of them. They are the pick of a thousand births. Do you think that I, old midwife that I am, don't know the squall of the demon child from that of the angel child, the very moment they are delivered? Ask a musician, how he knows, even in the dark, a note struck by Thalberg ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... in publishing at headlong speed. I would willingly, with pleasure, with feeling, in a leisurely way, describe the whole of my hero, describe the state of his mind while his wife was in labour, his trial, the horrid feeling he has after he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife and the doctors having tea in the middle of the night, I would describe the rain.... It would give me nothing but pleasure because I like to rummage about and dawdle. But what am I to do? I begin a story on September 10th with the thought that I must finish it by October 5th at the latest; if I ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... They got it all out of books, and at the first hint coming from any of our little progressive corners in Petersburg they were prepared to throw anything overboard, so soon as they were advised to do so, Madame Virginsky practised as a midwife in the town. She had lived a long while in Petersburg as a girl. Virginsky himself was a man of rare single-heartedness, and I have seldom met more ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... making of Engines, and other Instruments of War; because they conferre to Defence, and Victory, are Power; And though the true Mother of them, be Science, namely the Mathematiques; yet, because they are brought into the Light, by the hand of the Artificer, they be esteemed (the Midwife passing with the vulgar for the Mother,) as ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... a Feast, He thinks him that is soberest is most like a Beast: All Houses of Pleasure, breaks Windows and Doors, Kicks Bullies and Cullies, then lies with their Whores: Rare work for the Surgeon and Midwife he makes, What Life can Compare with the ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... had me fixed up for a midwife. Old Dr. Clark was the one started me. I never went to school a minute in my life but the doctors would read to me out of their doctor books till I could get a license. I got so I could read print till ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... moon the following ceremony is observed. After bathing the child they place an old broom in the mother's arms instead of the child; then the mother takes the child and throws it out on the dung heap behind the house. The midwife then takes an old broom and an old winnowing fan and sweeps up a little rubbish on to the fan and takes it and throws it on the dung hill; there she sees the child and calls out. "Here is a child on the dung heap" then ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... to leave the island, she went to the housekeeper, told her what she wanted, and they contrived for her to come the morning he was to go away. So up she got, and dressed herself, and set off to call her midwife, and going along, the first and second guard stopped her and asked her where she was going; she told them 'to call her midwife,' which she did. They went to this lady, and she went and acquainted his Majesty with the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... India is parcelled out into estates of villages.[3] The village communities are composed of those who hold and cultivate the land, the established village servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker (whose wife is ex officio the midwife of the little village community), potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c.[4] To these may be added the little banker, or agricultural capitalist, the shopkeeper, the brazier, the confectioner, the ironmonger, the weaver, the dyer, the astronomer or astrologer, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... "Grandma was a midwife and doctored all the babies on the place. She said they had a big room where they was and a old woman kept them. They et milk for breakfast and buttermilk and clabber for supper. They always had bread. For dinner they had meat boiled and one other ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... throats, but slanderous ears also; not only wicked inventions, which engender and brood lies, but wicked assents, which hatch and foster them. Not only the spiteful mother that conceiveth such spurious brats, but the midwife that helpeth to bring them forth, the nurse that feedeth them, the guardian that traineth them up to maturity, and setteth them forth to live in the world; as they do really contribute to their subsistence, so deservedly they partake in the blame due ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... still-born, the midwife places a Chinese dish close to its ear, and strikes against it several times with a lead sinker. If this fails to gain a response, the body is wrapped in a cloth, and is soon buried beneath the house. There is no belief here, ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... great feasts for them, that they might come often. At first they did not stir from thence all day.(297) Rabban Gamaliel the elder ordained, that they might go 2,000 cubits on every side. And not only they, but the midwife going to a birth; and they who go to rescue from fire, or from enemies, or from inundation, or from fallen buildings. These are as inhabitants of the place, and they have 2,000 cubits on ...
— Hebrew Literature
... began to fall. It was the first rain for many weeks, and foreign visitors, accustomed to think of Nepenthe as a rainless land, were almost as interested in the watery shower as in that of the ashes. Mud, such mud as the oldest midwife could not remember, encumbered the roofs, the fields, the roadways. It looked as if the whole island were plastered over with a coating of liquid chocolate. Now, if the shower would ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... a suspicion as to her virtue came into her husband's mind, but when he considered that she had never left her bed for fifteen months he thought the pregnancy impossible. Still the wife insisted that she was pregnant and was confirmed in the belief by a midwife. The belly continued to increase, and about eleven months after the cessation of the menses she had the pains of labor. Three doctors and an accoucheur were present, and when they claimed that the fetal head presented the husband gave ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... raise the salver and the party fares back to Vishnu's house, where a rude shrine of Satvai (the Sixth Mother) has been prepared. "For," whispers our guide, "Chandrabai died without worshipping Satvai and her spirit must perforce fulfil those rites." Close to the shrine sits a midwife keeping guard over a new gauze cloth, a sari and a bodice, purchased for the spirit of Chandrabai; and on a plate close at hand are vermilion for her brow, antimony for her eyes, a nose-ring, a comb, bangles and ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... 'er, doctor?' said Mrs. Hodges, bustling forwards authoritatively in her position of midwife ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... centuries—a great, eternal, holy people, God's people, an exemplar to all other peoples, the prototype of mankind: he created Israel. With greater justice than the Roman poet could this artist, the son of Amram and Jochebed the midwife, boast of having erected a monument more ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... first the babe Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up The feeble wretch, she to the father said, "A fine man-child!" What else could they expect? The father being, as I ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... midwife myself, to black and white, after freedom. De Thomson doctors all liked me and tole people to 'git Nancy.' I used 'tansy tea'—heap o' little root—made black pepper tea, fotch de pains on 'em. When I would git to de place where I had a hard case, I would send for de doctor, and he would help me ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... joy because of the suddenness of this meeting, yet I thank him therefor. For who is this goodly and gracious young man save the King's son of Oakenrealm, Christopher that was; and that to my certain knowledge; for he is my fosterling and my milk-child, and I took him from the hands of the midwife in the High House of Oakenham a twenty-one years ago; and they took him from Oakenham, and me with him to the house of Lord Richard the Lean, at Longholms, and there we dwelt; but in a little while they took him away from Longholms to I wot not whither, ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... land on the battered, black beach, for it was in the dead hour of the morning; of the three persons who are said to have met him on his way to Mary's, two were so tardy with their claims that a doubt has been cast on them. I do believe, tho, that Mother Polly Freeman, the west-end midwife, saw him and spoke with him in the light thrown from the drug-store window (where, had I only known enough to be awake, I might have looked down on them from my bed-room and got some fame of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... songs. While she is pregnant she is made to work in the house so as not to be inactive. After the birth of a child the mother remains impure for twelve days. A woman of the Mang or Mahar caste acts as midwife, and always breaks her bangles and puts on new ones after she has assisted at a birth. If delivery is prolonged the woman is given hot water and sugar or camphor wrapped in a betel-leaf, or they put a few grains of gram into her hand and then ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... personage to whom it belongs will be singularly fortunate in life. Well, gentleman, I was favoured, as I have already said, with one of those desirable headpieces; and great was the joy the circumstance gave rise to amongst the female friends and gossips who were assembled on the occasion. The midwife said that everything I should put my hand to would prosper, and that I would be, to a certainty, at the very least, a general, a bishop, or a judge; the nurse to whom I was subsequently consigned, on the same ground, dubbed me a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with the help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment in her business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and a great deal to those of dame Nature,—had acquired, in her way, no small degree of reputation in the world:—by which ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Madame Tonsard; "he needn't complain of the midwife who cut his string,—she made a good ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 'em to show her how to read a little book what she carried 'round in her bosom all de time, and to tell her de other things dey had larn't in school dat day. Dey larned her how to read and write, and atter de War was over Mammy teached school and was a granny 'oman (midwife) too. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... noble plot is fit for birth; And labouring France cries out for midwife hands. We missed surprising of the king at Blois, When last the states were held: 'twas oversight; Beware we ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Lorimer before these short and simple annals shall have ended. For there is nothing so joysome to record as the brightening story of a soul coming to its real birth from the travail of its sin and struggle. For perchance time itself is God's great midwife, and man's writhing agony is to the end that ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... three-quarters of a century, I could walk with my eyes closed straight to the flat stone where I first heard the soft chiming note of the Midwife Toad; yes, I should find it to a certainty, if time, which devastates all things, even the homes of Toads, has not moved it or perhaps left ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... a house on the east side of this lane, looking into Fleur-de-Lys Court, that (in 1767) Elizabeth Brownrigge, midwife to the St. Dunstan's workhouse and wife of a house-painter, cruelly ill-used her two female apprentices. Mary Jones, one of these unfortunate children, after being often beaten, ran back to the Foundling, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... wrapped in a hand-woven christening blanket—a "bearing-cloth"—the unfortunate young Puritan was carried to church in the arms of the midwife, who was a person of vast importance and dignity as well as of service in early colonial days, when families of from fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the altar the baby was placed in his proud father's arms, and received his first cold and ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... you know? Were you, perchance, the midwife of my mother, since you dare to affirm this ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... labourer, returning from late toil, felt it, and raised his head in a perturbed way, as though some one had brought him news of a far-off disaster. A midwife, hurrying to a lowly birth-chamber, shivered and gathered her mantle more closely about her. She looked up at the sky, she looked out over the sea, then she bent her head and said to herself that this would not be a good ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye'll be come in the canny moment, I'm thinking, for the Laird's servant— that's no to say his body-servant, but the helper like—rade express by this e'en to fetch the houdie, [*Midwife] and he just staid the drinking o' twa pints o' tippenny, to tell us how my leddy was ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... impression—was it too fantastic—of words carried over a medium, an invisible wire which brought the soul of them and left the body by the way. Duff Lindsay, so eminently responsive and calculable, came running with open arms; in his rejoiceful eye-beam one saw almost a midwife to one's idea. But the comparison was subtly irritating, and after a time she turned from it. She awoke once in the night, moreover, to declare to the stars that she was less worried by the consideration of Arnold's sex than she would have thought it possible ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... him, so that he ordered his gentleman to dismiss the old woman the same day; and without any difficulty I sent my maid Amy to Calais, and thence to Dover, where she got an English midwife and an English nurse to come over on purpose to attend an English lady of quality, as they styled me, for ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... occasion in this same year. Like a fruit hidden among its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid's confinement. Her pains were unbearable, and, as there was no midwife in Combray, Francoise had to set off before dawn to fetch one from Thiberzy. My aunt was unable to 'rest,' owing to the cries of the girl, and as Francoise, though the distance was nothing, was very late in returning, her ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... husband Taboos to be observed by the wife Taboos to be observed by both husband and wife Taboos enjoined on visitors Abortion Artificial abortion Involuntary abortion The approach of parturition The midwife Prenatal magic aids Prenatal religious aids Accouchement and ensuing events Postnatal customs Taboos The birth ceremony The naming and care of the child Birth anomalies Monstrosities ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... progress could not be stayed, the population was bound to go forward. A second epoch was about to begin. This little world very soon desired to be better clad. A shoemaker came, and with him a haberdasher, a tailor, and a hatter. This dawn of luxury brought us a butcher and a grocer, and a midwife, who became very necessary to me, for I lost a great deal of time over maternity cases. The stubbed wastes yielded excellent harvests, and the superior quality of our agricultural produce was maintained through the increased supply of manure. My enterprise could now develop itself; everything ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... a sister-in-law of Olae Christaphersen, Bastine Christaphersen, was in childbirth. The midwife said the child could not be born without medical help. Her husband started for Wilmer to get the doctor. At seven o'clock she began to get blue and lost consciousness. They sent for Brother Olae. When he came, he looked at his sister-in-law ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... dead to virtue, he permits himself Be carried like a pitcher by the ears, To every act of vice: this is the case Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh And close approach of blood and tyranny. Flattery is midwife unto prince's rage: And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant, Than that and whisperers' grace, who have the time, The place, the power, to ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... young, however, to make her case heard—the case all living things have against the Power that creates them without so much as asking leave. The riot she made being interpreted by both father and uncle as protest against Mrs. Twiggins, a midwife who made herself disagreeable—or, strictly speaking, more disagreeable; being normally unpleasant, and apt to snap when spoke to, however civil—it was thought desirable to call in the help of her Aunt M'riar, who was living with her ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... husband with an heir on the lawn in front of their mansion, while the family were awaiting the coming of the dynamite squad to blow up their magnificent residence. An Irish woman who had been called in to play the part of midwife at a birth elsewhere on Saturday, made a pertinent comment after the wee one's eyes were opened to the walls of its ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Maria died two days after the doctor's visit. She died late in the afternoon. All was silent on the road, in the workshop below, and in the upper room, where a few people from Waltheim went in and out, the minister, the doctor, a distant relative of Maria's and the midwife, who had been taking care ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... not permitted to share in the consummation of the conflict in which he had played so prominent, and spirited, and successful a part, he still deserves to be remembered with gratitude and affection by the nation, now grown big, at whose birth he so nobly played the part of midwife. James Otis was born at Great Marshes, now known as West Barnstable, February 5, 1725 (old style, February 5, 1724). His ancestor, John Otis, came from England about the year 1657, and settled in the town of Hingham. The family was from the first distinguished ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... the city that they founded Santissimo Nombre de Jesus, and placed the image in a church of their order erected in the city. There it remains in highest veneration, and has wrought many miracles, particularly in childbirths, whence it is both facetiously and piously called El Partero ["man-midwife"]. Each year it is borne in solemn procession from the church of St. Augustine to the spot in which it was found, where a chapel has since been erected. The procession takes place upon the same day when the discovery was made—namely, on the twenty-ninth of April, the feast of the glorious ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... the Pieterses were going to give a party. Juffrouw Laps had been invited, also the Juffrouw living over the dairy, whose husband was employed at the "bourse." Further Mrs. Stotter, who had been a midwife for so long and was still merely "very respectable." Then the widow Zipperman, whose daughter had married some fellow in the insurance business, or something of the kind. Also the baker's wife. That was unavoidable: it was impossible ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... protestants are too numerous to detail; but the treatment of Philip de Deux will give an idea of the rest. After the miscreants had slain this martyr in his bed, they went to his wife, who was then attended by the midwife, expecting every moment to be delivered. The midwife entreated them to stay the murder, at least till the child, which was the twentieth, should be born. Notwithstanding this, they thrust a dagger ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... know? Or were you my mother's midwife, perhaps, that you venture to speak with such assurance on ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... sources, and while all admit the power of the senses to be infallible, all strive to corrupt the judgment, by false metaphor and unjust premises. Toland traces the progress of superstition from the hands of a midwife to those of a priest, and shows how the nurse, parent, schoolmaster, professor, philosopher, and politician, all combine to warp the mind of man by fallacies from his progress in childhood, at school, at college, and in the world. How the child is blinded with an idea, and the man with ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... "one legend relates that Joseph went to seek a midwife, and met a woman coming down from the mountains, with whom he returned to the stable. But, when they entered, it was filled with light greater than the sun at noonday; and, as the light decreased, and ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... little, naked urchins, seemingly just ripened into life, and crying for succour: beneath, a woman holds up her apron, looking wistfully at the children, as if intreating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found it to be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch inscription prefixed ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... dawn Uncle Jase Burrell and a neighbour woman, versed in the homely practises of the midwife, came to the room where Parish Thornton sat with tightly clenched hands ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... O vox damnatorum! Not raging Hecuba, whose hollow eyes Gave suck to fifty sorrows at one time, That midwife to so many murders was, Us'd half ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... to be introduced to me! Indeed! I would see him, as he has been midwife to Masters; but he is so dull that he would only be troublesome—and besides, you know I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, and dwell upon ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of his head and his long locks were white as wool, and his eyes like the rays of the sun. When he opened his eyes, he lighted up the whole house, like the sun, and the whole house was very full of light.[1] And when he was taken from the hand of the midwife, he opened his mouth and praised the Lord of righteousness.[2] His father Lamech was afraid of him, and fled, and came to his own father Methuselah. And he said to him: "I have begotten a strange son; he is not like a human being, but resembles the children ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the charity to so many poor women, is greatly to be deplored. The medical board have the power to grant to any woman who passes the examination, the subjects of which are defined, a certificate as a skilled midwife, competent to attend natural labours. One midwife and four monthly nurses have already received certificates, and it is hoped that many more candidates will avail themselves of the opportunity thus readily afforded to them, and supply a want very generally ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... two women alighted, and after having once more raised their eyes to a strip of wood, some six or eight feet long by two broad, which was nailed above the windows of the second storey, and bore the inscription, "Madame Voison, midwife," stole quickly into a passage, the door of which was unfastened, and in which there was just so much light as enabled persons passing in or out to find their way along the narrow winding stair that led from the ground floor to the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... well, I come. 'Sbud, a man had as good be a professed midwife as a professed whoremaster, at this rate; to be knocked up and raised at all hours, and in all places. Pox on 'em, I won't come. D'ye hear, tell 'em I won't come. Let 'em snivel ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... which is laid near Beddgelert, runs, as translated by Professor Rhys, in this way:—"Once on a time, when a midwife from Nanhwynan had newly got to the Hafodydd Brithion to pursue her calling, a gentleman came to the door on a fine grey steed and bade her come with him at once. Such was the authority with which he spoke, that the poor midwife durst not refuse to go, however much it ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... understanding concludes) there are little dugs, and the embryos have small mouths by which they receive their nutriment. The Stoics, that by the secundines and navel they partake of aliment, and therefore the midwife instantly after their birth ties the navel, and opens the infant's mouth, that it may receive another sort of aliment. Alcmaeon, that they receive their nourishment from every part of the body; as ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... for placing under-petticoats in; two tubs to hold the placenta; a piece of furniture like an arm-chair, without legs, for the mother to lean against;[119] a stool, which is used by the lady who embraces the loins of the woman in labour to support her, and which is afterwards used by the midwife in washing the child; several pillows of various sizes, that the woman in child-bed may ease her head at her pleasure; new buckets, basins, and ladles of various sizes. Twenty-four baby-robes, twelve of silk ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... in Loddin, who used to be the midwife in the parish, and had also brought my child into the world. Of late, however, she had had but little to do, seeing that in this year I only baptized two children, namely, Jung his son in Uekeritze, and Lene Hebers her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... limits. Two years passed in extreme delight and ease. It happened that [my wife] the wazir's daughter, became pregnant; when the seventh and eighth months had passed, and she entered her full time, the pains came on; the nurse and midwife came, and a dead child was brought forth; its poison infected the mother, and she also died. I became frantic with grief, and exclaimed, what a dreadful calamity has burst upon me! I was seated ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... money, but Tim Gorman's soul. Money only came incidentally. However, there was no use arguing a point like that. There was no use arguing any point. I gave in and promised to see Ascher about the matter. I prefer Ascher to Gorman if I have to persuade any one to act midwife at the birth of a cash register. Gorman would be certain to laugh. Ascher would at all events ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... Pa name Sam Adair. I can't tell you about him. I heard em say his pa was a white man. He was light skinned. Old folks didn't talk much foe children so I don't know well nough to tell you bout him. Ma was a cook and a licensed midwife in Alabama. She waited on both black and white. Ma never staid at home much. She worked out. I come to Mississippi after I married and had one child. Ma and all come. Ma went to Tom McGehee's to cook after freedom. She married old man named Lewis Chase and they worked on where he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... born, the mother was attended by the mother-in-law, and two or three matrons, besides the midwife, &c. &c. They all knew my determination about the mother nursing the child, and every attempt was apparently made to carry it into effect. At length a hint was given of some fears as to its practicability. I would not listen to it[20] for a moment. Another ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... that the distinction between the Greek and the Hebrew method is most marked. Socrates, for example, called himself the midwife of men's thoughts. His maxim was, "Know thyself." His cross-examination was designed to make men see for themselves. That is, he taught by reason. But the prophet's claim was, "Thus saith the Lord!" He spoke out of his personal and passionate conviction, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... for a parson, girl, the forerunner of a midwife, some nine months hence. Well, I find dissembling to our sex is as natural as swimming to a negro; we may depend upon our skill to save us at a plunge, though till then, we never make the experiment. But how ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... which sickness is capable combined in their condition. There had been among them one or two cases of prolonged and terribly hard labour; and the method adopted by the ignorant old negress, who was the sole matron, midwife, nurse, physician, surgeon, and servant of the infirmary, to assist them in their extremity, was to tie a cloth tight round the throats of the agonised women, and by drawing it till she almost suffocated them ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... case. Astraea and Virtue meet with a personage called Intelligence, who furnishes them with a detailed account of current scandal calculated to still further depress the dejected Virtue. The trio are soon joined by Mrs. Nightwork, a midwife, who never breaks an oath of secrecy unless it be to her interest, and the character of whose contributions to the general fund of gossip may be easily imagined. This semi-allegorical method of narration is kept up during the first two volumes; in the third and fourth Mrs. Manley tells her story ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... trades which were practised on that side of the river. He inspired confidence in the people among whom he was thrown, and during the long hours that he waited in a stuffy room, the woman in labour lying on a large bed that took up half of it, her mother and the midwife talked to him as naturally as they talked to one another. The circumstances in which he had lived during the last two years had taught him several things about the life of the very poor, which it amused them to find he knew; and they were impressed because he was not deceived by their little subterfuges. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... with white, rose-coloured and light-blue stuff. Baby clothes are spread out here and there. A green dress hangs on the right-hand wall. Four Sisters of Mercy are on their knees, facing the door at the back, dressed in the black and white of Augustinian nuns. The midwife, who is in black, is by the fireplace. The child's nurse wears a peasant's dress, of black and white, from Brittany. The MOTHER is standing listening by the door at the back. The STRANGER is sitting on a chair right and is trying to read ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... pregnancy, of child-birth and of nursing, perhaps, out of fear of sooner losing their charms, and then forfeiting their standing with either husband or male friends, incur such criminal acts, and, for hard cash, find ready medical and midwife support. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... celebration of the nuptials between Captain Blifil and Miss Bridget Allworthy, a young lady of great beauty, merit, and fortune, was Miss Bridget, by reason of a fright, delivered of a fine boy. The child was indeed to all appearances perfect; but the midwife discovered it was born a ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... each with two shirts on, generated an opinion which has now become fixed and general in that parish, that it is unlucky to wear two shirts at once. We are not certain whether the caul is in general the perquisite of the midwife— sometimes we believe it is; at all events, her integrity occasionally yields to the desire of possessing it. In many cases she conceals its existence, in order that she may secretly dispose of it to good advantage, which ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... gained entirely from my own observation, but also from a knowledge of the high regard in which she was held by other women. Aside from her native talent and ingenuity, she was endowed with a truly wonderful memory. No other midwife in her day and tribe could compete with her in skill and judgment. Her observations in practice were all preserved in her mind for reference, as systematically as if they had been written upon the pages of ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... trembling all over, to deliver her husband's message, and then afraid to go upstairs again, she went into the drawing-room, where a fire was never lighted, now her parents were away. Soon she saw Simon run out of the house, and come back five minutes after with Widow Dentu, the village midwife. Next she heard a noise on the stairs which sounded as if they were carrying a body, then Julien came to tell her that she could go back to her room. She went upstairs and sat down again before ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... discouse [Transcriber's Note: discourse] I have explained myself when I design to treat of it in the famous subject of the Art of Printing. It hath been the labour of several years past, and if now I shall have assistance to midwife it into the world, I shall be well satisfied for the sake of the curious. For these 10 years past I have spared no cost in collecting books on this subject, and likewise drafts of the effigies of our famous printers, with other designs that ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... tumbleweeds tumbling at the heels of his broncho, his heart in his mouth, Seth madly rode in the wild midnight to fetch the weazened old woman who tended the women of the desert, rode as madly back again, leaving the midwife to follow. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... stood at the corner of the rue de la Tixeranderie and the rue Deux-Portes. There was nothing in the exterior of it to distinguish it from any other, unless perhaps two brass plates, one of which bore the words MARIE LEROUX-CONSTANTIN, WIDOW, CERTIFIED MIDWIFE, and the other CLAUDE PERREGAUD, SURGEON. These plates were affixed to the blank wall in the rue de la Tixeranderie, the windows of the rooms on that side looking into the courtyard. The house door, which opened directly on the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... two months too soon, I was in such a hurry. My mother was alone and had no help. When the midwife came I had arrived already. I was so feeble that the first few years great care had to be taken of me to keep me alive. I was well made enough, but not strong, and this was the source of many vexations ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... their hands, and trod on the wounded, but I got 'er goin' again. I got 'er to Poperinghe. Two soldiers died on the way, and a lunatic had fallen out somewhere, and a baby was born in the 'bus; and me with no conductor and no midwife. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... before mentioned must be paid quickly for the use of 'the prince (who lodged at the house in Market Street, now called the Palace Inn), or the house would be burnt down.' In this dilemma, the man-midwife calling first, and afterwards the physician, were both consulted by the ladies; when the former (a Tory) advised to send the money after them, whilst the latter (a Whig) thought it better to keep it till called ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... witnesses would be set up against her and her son; the King's mother had been impeached in the Long Parliament; and she was to look for nothing but violence. So the Queen took up a sudden resolution of going to France with the child. The midwife, together with all who were assisting at the birth, were also carried over, or so disposed of that it could never be learned what became ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... their back premises; whereas WE permit the foulest of profligacy to exist, and walk hand in hand with our women, and allow them to graduate as female doctors and to pull teeth, and all the rest of it. The truth is that they ought not to be allowed to advance beyond midwife, since it is woman's business either to serve as a breeding animal or opprobriously to be called neiskusobrachnaia neviesta [Maid who hast never tasted of marriage.] Yes, woman's ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... piece in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child, or party so affected to eat, doth certainly cure the thrush. From an experienced midwife. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... us see how this rule will work in other cases; how you can make a compromise between two opposite doctrines. The king of Egypt commanded the Hebrew nurses, 'When you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, if it be a son ye shall kill him.' I suppose it is plain to the Judge of the Circuit Court that this kind of murder, killing the new-born infants, is against 'the will of God;' but it is a matter ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Pleasant and Delightful History of Gillian of Croydon: Containing, Her Birth and Parentage: Her first Amour, with the sudden Death of her Sweetheart: Her leaving her Father's House In Disguise, and becoming Deputy to a Country Midwife; with a very odd and humoursome Adventure before a Justice of the Peace, for screening a Child under her Hoop-petticoat: Her discovery of a Love-Intrigue between her Mistress's Daughter, and a perjur'd, false-hearted Young-man, which she relates in the tragical ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... where Churms and Lelia comes along: He walks as stately as the great baboon. Zounds, he looks as though his mother were a midwife. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... a statuary, and Phaenarete, a midwife, was born B.C. 468. He lived all his life at Athens, serving indeed as a soldier at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and in the battle of Delium; but with these exceptions he never left the city; where he lived as a teacher of philosophy; not, however, founding a school or giving lectures, but frequenting ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... a wolf's yet unborn whelp, Till the best midwife, Nature, gave it help To issue: it could kill as soon as go. Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were, (Who, in that trade, of church and kingdoms there Was the first type,) was still infested so With this wolf, that it bred his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... is ill. So situated she cannot do washing. How negligent!"—"It makes no matter," replied Densuke recklessly. O'Mino did not like the tone of his voice. She eyed him sharply. Then more pressing matters urged. "Weary as you are it is to be regretted; but money must be in hand, for the midwife and other expenses. A few hours, and this Mino will be unable to leave her bed—for three turns (weeks). There is cooking and washing to be done. Please go to Kyu[u]bei San and ask the loan of a ryo[u]. Perhaps he will give half."—"He ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... never seen you like this before. You are acting almost as unreasonably as an inventor. You don't even want to hear what I have to say about this case. You should relax, Mr. Saddle. You are here as an advocate, not as a midwife." ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... the midwife is carried out in the filthiest parts of the city among the lowest of the city's population, both day and night, in sun and rain ... A patient whose 'address' was registered at the Triplicane Centre was searched for by a nurse on duty in the locality ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... respect to births, baptisms, and burials, are also curious. When the mother feels the fulness of time at hand, the priestess of Lucina, the midwife, is duly summoned, and she comes bearing in her hand a tripod, better known as a three-legged stool, the uses of which are only revealed to the initiated. She is received by the matronly friends of the mother, and begins the mysteries by opening every lock and lid in ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... his resting-place. By this time the weather had proved too much for all the mourners; they had dropped off one by one, and Mozart's body was accompanied only by the driver of the carriage. There had been already two pauper funerals that day—one of them a midwife—and Mozart was to be the third in the grave ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... time he kept the table in a roar of laughter, by declaring it was his opinion there was a kind of puppyism in pigs that they should wear tails—calling a great coat, a spencer folio edition with tail-pieces—Hercules, a man-midwife in a small way of business, because he had but twelve labours—assured them he had seen a woman that morning who had swallowed an almanac, which he explained by adding, that her features were so carbuncled, that the red lettered days ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... length exhausted his fancy in fabricating, shaping and denying particular charges, hardly one of which ever existed, he ranges up his whole artillery of vengeance;—the battle becomes general:—And the famous Doctor Slop, the man midwife, did not pour a more copious and continued shower of curses upon Obadiah, who had tied his bag of instruments with hard knots, than is thus suddenly let fly upon the devoted head of the Editor of the Saratoga Journal. "Really" said the Frenchman to an ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... violence; and I will not be so hypocritical and base as to deny that violence must be one of our means of action. Force is the midwife of society; and never has radical change been accomplished without it. What came by the sword by the sword must be destroyed: and only through violence can violence come to an end. Nay, I will go further and confess, since here if anywhere we are candid, that it is the way of violence to which I ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... shirts, she became quite pale. She was obliged to leave the work-shop, and cross the street doubled in two, holding on to the walls. One of the workwomen offered to accompany her; she declined, but begged her to go instead for the midwife, close by, in the Rue de la Charbonniere. This was only a false alarm; there was no need to make a fuss. She would be like that no doubt all through the night. It was not going to prevent her getting Coupeau's ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... after the Bettons had secured their patent, another was granted to John Hooper of Reading for the manufacture of "Female Pills" bearing his name.[11] Hooper was an apothecary, a man-midwife, and a shrewd fellow. This was the period in which the British Government was increasing its efforts to require the patentee to furnish precise specifications with his application.[12] When Hooper was called upon ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... The book went forward; yet, more than once recently, Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly delivered of the admirable volume were not he—Carteret—permanently at hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as between a father and daughter so ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... are, as I may call them, whole volumes of themselves, viz.: 1. The life of her governess, as she calls her, who had run through, it seems, in a few years, all the eminent degrees of a gentlewoman, a whore, and a bawd; a midwife and a midwife-keeper, as they are called; a pawnbroker, a childtaker, a receiver of thieves, and of thieves' purchase, that is to say, of stolen goods; and in a word, herself a thief, a breeder up of thieves and the like, and yet ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... metro. Metric metra. Metropolis cxefurbo. Mettle fervoro, kuragxo. Mew katbleki. Miasma miasmo. Mica glimo. Microbe mikrobo. Microscope mikroskopo. Midday tagmezo. Middle centro. Middle meza. Midnight noktomezo. Midsummer duonjaro, somermezo. Midwife akusxistino. Mien mieno. Might potenco. Mighty potenca. Mignonette resedo. Migrate migri. Milch laktodona. Mild dolcxa. Mildew sximo. Mildness dolcxeco. Mile mejlo. Militant milita. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes |
