"Stepmother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stay here, my Didine. All is at an end. And is this fortune so lightly earned after all? Must I not marry a gawky, tow-haired creature, with a red nose, the daughter of a notary, and saddle myself with a stepmother who could give Madame de Piedefer points on the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... growl of the large one, sufficiently indicated that the attempt would be not a little perilous. The result was that she was obliged to abandon her design. In killing the cock I can scarcely think that the dog understood the precise import of my stepmother's wish, as his immediate execution of it would seem to imply. The cock was a more recent favourite, and had received some attentions which had previously been bestowed upon himself. This, I think, had led him to entertain a feeling of hostility to the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... covet a place where I can witness the grand tourney at Whitehall. It may suit your mood, Mary, to live always on this hilltop, with naught to see and naught to do; with no company but a cross-grained stepmother, and the cows and sheep. I am sick of it. Even a run down to the village is a change. Yes, I am going; one hour, and I ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... father before him. The girl, young Althea, rather resembling her mother,—her own mother,—was beginning to think less of large hair-bows and more of longer dresses. Her father was quite wrapped up in her and her stepmother seemed ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... shivered miserably because the spring sun was not high enough in the morning to warm them, she fed with pap, and cherished in cotton-wool, and nursed and watched with eager, happy eyes. O blessed Ivy Geer! True Sister of Charity! Thrice blessed stepmother of a brood whose name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... expectations. Even the diners themselves were satisfied—a rare thing at such affairs. Goose was a prominent item in the menu. After the repast the replete guests were entertained from the platform, the Mayor being, of course, in the chair. Harry sang 'In Old Madrid,' accompanied by his stepmother, with faultless expression. Mr. Duncalf astonished everybody with the famous North-Country recitation, 'The Patent Hair-brushing Mashane.' There were also a banjo solo, a skirt dance of discretion, and a campanological ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Lightfoot well enough. This astounding stepmother had been her humble but faithful friend. Lightfoot was a ruling woman spirit wherever she was, and she knew it, though she bowed at all times to the rule of strength as the only law. Nevertheless she knew how to get her own way. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... well as a girl, but only a stepmother, and apparently a detail; for the girl has the money and the strength of will. The two are stopping in a pension near Madame de Blanchemain's house. The girl is a Miss McNamarra, with freckles and no figure, but engaged to an officer, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... death to the General's daughter, Pauline, and her lover, the son of a soldier of the First Empire, who, by deserting Napoleon, had fallen under the Comte de Grandchamp's ban. The situation is, however, complicated by the guilty passion which Gertrude, the stepmother of Pauline and wife of the General's old age, feels for the lover of Pauline. The main interest of the drama lies in the struggle between these two women, every detail of which is elaborated with true Balzacian gusto and insight. We expect to see virtue triumphant, and Pauline united to ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... thus she walked for many and many a long day, until at last she came to a great mountain. Outside it an aged woman was sitting, playing with a golden apple. The girl asked her if she knew the way to the Prince who lived with his stepmother in the castle which lay east of the sun and west of the moon, and who was to marry a princess with a nose which was three ells long. "How do you happen to know about him?" inquired the old woman; "maybe you are ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... wonder why I didn't find a mother nearer by, but I haven't any living of my own, except a stepmother, who wouldn't understand, and all the other mothers I know wouldn't qualify for the job any better. I've been looking at your picture ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... loved to recline and muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called "Calvin's vine." He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had renounced, and which he called "a stepmother and a prostitute"; and on the presents of a queen gallant, whose morals and piety he lauded, continuing to assist at the Catholic service, and composing Latin orations, which were delivered out of the assembly of the synod, at the temple of St. Peter. He left the court ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... he had spent his youth at the court of Nicomedia, and looked upon the East as his home. Rome, moreover, had tragic associations for him. It was there that he had caused his young son Crispus, falsely accused of treason by his stepmother Fausta, to be put to death. The young Caesar had been brave and upright and a favorite with all. Too late did his father learn that he was innocent. Fausta paid the penalty for her evil deed, but her death could not give life to ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... was mercifully inclined, and by siding with Dorothy she would be supporting her husband. Therefore she could not agree with the angry declamations of her stepmother. ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... after his father's decease, which occurred when he was a child, his mother had married a Russian trader, who, when she died, carried the boy to Moscow. There Wenzel bade fair to be brought up a Russian; but when a stepmother came home, which took place while he was still a youth, he had returned to his native country, built himself a hut in the woods of Lithuania, and lived a lonely hunter till the time of my story, when he was still a robust, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... school-teaching. Now mother has gone, and my uncle died six months ago and left me quite a little property, and I've given up my school, and I've come for Agnes. I guess she'll be glad to go with me, though I suppose her stepmother is a good woman, and has always done ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... somewhat of her," said Joan, "from the Lady Julian my grandmother. She was a Leybourne born, and she wedded my grandfather, Sir John de Hastings, whose stepmother was the Lady Isabel La Despenser, your father's sister. I think, from what she told me, your mother ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... that way. My stepmother, the only mother I've known, was like that," Lavendar went on, dropping suddenly again into personal talk, as they had done before. He and she, it seemed, could not keep barriers between them very long; every hour they spent ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was the second son of an English nobleman. A German lady was his first wife, and my mother. Left a widower, he married for the second time; the new wife being of American birth. She took a stepmother's dislike to me—which, in some degree at least, I ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... wondered that she did not return to her father, upon her husband's death. But her home had not been a comfortable one, before her marriage; for her father had taken a second wife, and she did not get on well with her stepmother. She thought, therefore, that anything would be better than returning with her boy to a home where, to the mistress at least, she would be ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... wish our Stepmother were back, albeit we are soe comfortable without her! Mary, taking the Maids at unawares last Night, found a strange Man in the Kitchen. Words ensued; he slunk off like a Culprit, which lookt not well, while ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Boer stepmother, is to be married tomorrow. She is gone to town today, and the wedding feast is to be at her brother's farm. Em and I are going to ride over on horseback, but her cousin is going to ride in the buggy with that German. I don't think I've written to you since she came back from school. I don't ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... an awful blow was impending! She never could have suspected it, but there, in that boat, sat her future stepmother in cap and apron!—his own ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... grandfather's old, half-forgotten diary—by the way, the diary habit seems to run in the family—a very passion of secrecy has possessed me. If I had told Helen, I should have had to dread that even in her sweet sleep she might whisper something to put that ferret, her stepmother, on the scent. Oh, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... such a thing out of Cairo; there many of the daughters of the Alim learn—those who desire it. His wife died two years ago, and six months ago he married again a wife of twelve years old! (Sheykh Yussuf is thirty he tells me; he looks twenty-two or twenty-three.) What a stepmother and what a wife! He can repeat the whole Koran without a book, it takes twelve hours to do it. Has read the Towrat (old Testament) and the el-Aangeel (Gospels), of course, every Alim reads them. 'The words of Seyyidna ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... do? Improving upon the preceding transaction, improving on it by a kind of refinement in corruption, he drives away the lawful mother from her lawful guardianship; the mother of nature he turns out, and he delivers her son to the stepmother to be the guardian of his person. That your Lordships may see who this woman was, we shall read to you a paper from your Lordships' minutes, produced before Mr. Hastings's face, and never contradicted by him ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... house he saw his stepmother placing a dish of fried bacon upon the table, which was covered with a "watered" oilcloth of a bright walnut tint. At her back stood Sarah Jane with a plate of corn bread in one hand and a glass pitcher containing buttermilk in the other. She was a slight, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... and gossiped very contentedly, and moreover ate and smoked. I was obliged to have the wife, children, and relations of the deceased pointed out to me, for I was unable to recognise them by their demeanour. In a little time, the stepmother and wife rose, and throwing themselves on the coffin, howled for half an hour; but it was easy to see that their grief did not come from the heart. Their moaning was always pitched in the same monotonous ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... be Joe's mother's maiden name. But it was unlikely this character could have known that. Joe had been born in Naples and his mother had died in childbirth. His father hadn't brought him to the States until the age of five and by that time he had a stepmother. ...
— Gun for Hire • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Sarah, handing her stepmother a cloth, "remimber you have to go to Darby Skinadre's for meal. I'd go myself, an' save you in the journey, but that I'm afraid you might fall in love wid one another in my absence. Be off now, you ould stepdivle, an' get the meal; or if you're not ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Bianca Capello was cradled in the palace of her father, one of the greatest men of Venice, Senator and Privy Councillor. As a child she was as beautiful as she was wilful; the pride of her father, the despair of his wife, her stepmother—her little head full of romance, her heart full of rebellion against any kind of discipline ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... fourteenth year I was apprenticed to Valentine, King & Co., cotton importers, Liverpool, as a "pair of legs." My father had died suddenly, leaving me and his property in the possession of my stepmother and my guardian. It was in deference to their urgent advice that I left my home in London (with little reluctance, since my life there had never been happy) to study the art of money-making. On arriving at the ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... difference to Ross. It would make a difference to the Redfields. Traitorous as it seemed, it was a great relief—a joy—to know that her own mother, her real mother, had been "nice." "She must have been nice or Lize would not have said so," she reasoned, recalling that her stepmother had ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the grandfather's second family, for the first time, into close as well as friendly contact with the first. Mr. Browning had always remained on outwardly friendly terms with his stepmother; and both he and his children were rewarded for this forbearance by the cordial relations which grew up between themselves and two of her sons. But in the earlier days they lived too far apart for frequent meeting. The old Mrs. Browning was now a widow, and, in order to ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... followed his father's marriage, John's stepmother's brother came to live with the family; and the influence of this stepuncle, whose name was Ed, was as bad or worse than Will's or Charley's could ever have been; for Ed was older and wiser, and knew ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... non-belief are dangerous. Hippolitus died because his stepmother was believed. Troy fell because Cassandra was not believed. Therefore the truth should be investigated long before foolish opinion can properly ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... middle-aged man. You're set. You like life to jog along at a peaceful walk. This girl wants it to be a fox-trot. You've got habits which you have had for a dozen years. I ask you, is she the sort of girl to be content to be a stepmother to a middle-aged man's habits? Of course, if you were really in love with her, if she were your mate, and all that sort of thing, you would take a pleasure in making yourself over to suit her requirements. But you aren't in love with her. You are simply caught by her looks. I tell you, you ought ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... climbing to the princess's window is not a prince at all,' answered the young man. 'He is the son of the master of the horse to the great king who dwells across the river, and he fled from his own country to escape from the hatred of his stepmother.' ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... especially as two-thirds of the constituents of these honourable gentlemen would be not Englishmen but Dutchmen? Yet if the stoppage of supplies of this kind would be one of the first results of the transformation of the mother country into the stepmother Union, what motive would South Africa have for entering it? On the other hand, is there any reason to suppose that South Africa would contribute towards the maintenance of cruisers to keep French convicts and others out of the Pacific, or towards expeditions ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... to act thus, but also Miss Henrietta's interest. The day on which they part you, you will be inconsolable; but you will also be free to act. She, on the other hand, will be forced to live under the same roof with Miss Brandon; and you do not know what a stepmother can do to torture the child ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... recorded, cut off at twenty-seven—that fairest period in a happy woman's life—was Roddy's mother, the mother of all the little van Cannan children, living and dead. The woman who had ousted her memory from all hearts save loving, loyal Roddy's was the second wife and stepmother. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... as congenial to the young girl as it might have been, for a stepmother reigned supreme there, and all of her love was lavished upon her own daughter Claire, a crippled, quiet girl of about Faynie's own age, and Faynie was left to do about as she pleased. Her father almost lived in his library among his books, and she saw little ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... and the daughter of Cymbeline, king of Britain, describes her own condition at the beginning of the story. The theme of the long and complicated tale that follows is her fidelity under this affliction. Neither her father's anger, nor the stealthy deception of the false stepmother, nor the base lust of her brutish half-brother Cloten, nor the seductive tongue of the villainous Italian Iachimo, her husband's friend; nor even the knowledge of her own husband's sudden suspicion of her, and his instructions to have her slain, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... yearned with a painful pity that returned upon herself over the two girls. She saw in what light they regarded the thought of a stepmother. Her heart ached to think that she had not the remotest chance of ever standing in such a relation towards them. Yet, in despite of that, she was full of tender distress when she considered that if such a blissful possibility could ever draw near, the love of all these children ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... had such a mother!" cried my lord. "But I have only the advantage of a stepmother, and she draws me. There is the dinner-bell. Shall we go into the eating-room?" And taking his young friend's arm, my lord led him to the apartment ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... died when I was three years old. I can only just remember her. In a little while father married again, and pretty soon he died—he was awful good to me! I cried when they said he wasn't goin' to get well. Then my stepmother married Mr. Dinnan. So, you see, I ain't any relation really, and they're prob'ly glad not to have me to feed any more. And I guess I'm glad—my! But I can't b'lieve it yet! Say, I'm goin' to your school, and Mrs. Jocelyn is comin' to take ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... higher ground of the chateau. It may be then—we hope it is not so, but it may be—that it was within this ditch that Humphrey and Drogo and William of the Iron Arm were so carefully brought up by their good stepmother, that it was here that the Wiscard played his first childish tricks, with the yet smaller Roger as a willing younger brother. Tancred's estate, we are told, was not large enough to feed his two batches of children; that was the reason why they went to seek their fortunes so ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... see to whom he was speaking, and saw standing in the doorway a little thin woman, with a sharp, cross face, and dull, tired eyes, eyes which looked as though they never brightened, or lost their look of weary hopelessness. This was her stepmother. She gave no sign of welcome, no word of comfort to the child, yet, somehow, Jessie's heart went out to her a little. It might have been only that in her terror of her father, she was ready to cling to any one who might stand ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... years of age. He had refused to go to college and had never even finished high school. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him to the care of a stepmother who had little affection for him. At the age of twenty-one the boy came into control of his immense fortune. So it was not remarkable that Charlie Meyers, who had almost no education, no home influence and a vast sum of money at his ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... future is the guiding motive of her whole conduct. There was first the danger of their being left fatherless, a dire calamity in the heroic age. She could meet that danger by dying herself. Then followed the danger of a stepmother. She meets that by making Admetus swear never to marry. In the long run, I fancy, the effect of gracious loveliness which Alcestis certainly makes is not so much due to any words of her own as to what ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... stepmother. Hoping to win his affection this new parent has been very lenient with him, while his father, feeling his responsibility, has been unusually strict. The boys of the neighborhood, who had taken pains to warn Robert of the terrible character of stepmothers in general, recently waited ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... war-god's wood; and that it was the fleece of the wondrous ram, who bore Phrixus and Helle across the Euxine Sea. For Phrixus and Helle were the children of the cloud nymph, and of Athamas the Minuan king. And when a famine came upon the land, their cruel stepmother, Ino, wished to kill them, that her own children might reign, and said that they must be sacrificed on an altar, to turn away the anger of the gods. So the poor children were brought to the altar, and ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... much loved by our grandmothers; and I am indebted to some old story, read in childhood, for the suggestion of "Dust Under the Rug," which was a successful experiment in a kindergarten to test the possibility of interesting little children in a story after the order of Grimm, with the wicked stepmother and ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... than is Cellini's memoir of the times in which he lived. His father was master of a vessel, and took him to sea when he was eleven. His mother was a pious Dissenter, who was at great pains to store his mind with religious thoughts and pieces. She died when he was young, and his stepmother was not pious. He began to drag his religious anchor, and at length, having read Shaftesbury, left his theological moorings altogether, and drifted into a wide sea of ungodliness, blasphemy, and recklessness of living. Such ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... strangers to the joy of the forgiveness of sins, his first care was for their salvation. On the Sunday that he found peace, he spoke to his brothers one by one, waking them from sleep, and they too, were led into the light. Then he roused his father and stepmother, and they besought him to pray for them, and peace came to their souls. And the climax was reached, when next day his sister found the Lord. Thus the whole family through his exhortations and prayers, became earnest followers ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... my mass in a church close by. For I was a priest by nature and heart, and I had grown so used to my sin of sacrilege, that I shut my eyes, and told myself that it was the wish of Heaven. But the truth is, I was a coward. It was then that you first knew me and you know how my father died and my stepmother married again, and how I undertook to be the tutor of poor Bosio Macomer. But with years, the city grew distasteful to me, and I wished to be alone, for Bosio was grown up, and I had no heart for teaching ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... have to say first, and make your protestations afterwards. You needn't be alarmed; you won't find me quite as bad as the stepmother one reads about in the story-books, who puts her stepdaughter into a pie, and all that kind of thing. I suppose stepfathers have been a very estimable class, by the way, as it is the stepmother who always drops in for it in the story-books. You'll find mo very easy to deal with, Mr. Hawkehurst, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... furnishes all that is wanted in the kitchen, and all the store of house-linen. If my mother had lived, it would have been laid by for me, as she could have afforded to buy it, but my stepmother will have hard enough work to provide for her own four little girls. However," she continued, brightening up, "I can help her, for now I shall never marry; and my master here is just and liberal, and pays me sixty ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... Pa, Susie," laughed Rushford. "I can see through you! You'll be trying to make me believe next that you want a stepmother." ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... political suspicion, the death of the young Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous purposes toward his stepmother Fausta, but is generally regarded as innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip II. toward Don Carlos, of Peter the Great toward his son Alexis, and of Soliman the Great toward his son Mustapha. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... movements, had something of the same soothing effect upon his nerves that a cat's purring has upon some people's. He began to think that he should be fortunate if he could win her, for his own sake. Yesterday he had looked upon her more as a possible stepmother for Molly; to-day he thought more of her as a wife for himself. The remembrance of Lord Cumnor's letter gave her a very becoming consciousness; she wished to attract, and hoped that she was succeeding. Still they only talked of the countess's state for some ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... body is his—how infinitely more perfect the correspondence between organism and environment in his case than in ours, who have made our own conditions, who have not only houses to live in, but a vast army of sanitary inspectors, physicians and bacteriologists to safeguard us from that wicked stepmother who is anxious to get rid of us before our time! In all this miserable year, during which I have met and conversed with and visited many scores of gipsies, I have not found one who was not in a cheerful frame of mind, even when he was under a cloud with ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... king thought it best tell the queen all that had happened and how matters stood. "All this," said the queen, "is the rede of your stepmother, and it would be well indeed if she could do you no more harm by it than she has already tried to do. She has chosen such difficulties she thought you would not easily get over, but I can do something here. The tent is in my possession, so there is that difficulty ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... known to her—ready to help to welcome her daughter, prepared to show her the home and cherished haunts of her mother's youth. As the carriage drew up, young girls threw wreaths into it. Beside the Duchess of Kent were the Duchess and Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, Prince Albert's sister-in-law and stepmother. The staircase was full of cousins. "It was an affecting but exquisite moment, which I shall ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... in the pecuniary result, but sympathy for her stepmother induced her to remain at home, week after week, when her presence there was no longer of service. At last she made preparations to return; but, as she was on the point of departure, Mrs. Preston—whose face then wore ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... faith, who still lives at Sardhana,[5] but she had become insane, and has ever since remained so. By this first wife he had a son, who got from the Emperor the title of Zafar Yab Khan, at the request of the Begam, his stepmother; but he was a man of weak intellect, and so little thought of that he was not recognized even as the nominal chief on ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... artistic splendors, and how much this early environment contributed to his correct taste and habit of subdued elegance, no man can say. When Giovanni Sanzio realized that death was at his door, he gave Raphael into the keeping of the priest Bartolomeo and the boy's stepmother. The typical stepmother lives, moves and has her being in neurotic novels ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Fanshawe failings were exaggerated to a monstrous and almost laughable degree. Whatever may be said against me, it cannot be denied I was a pattern daughter; but it was in vain that, with the most touching patience, I submitted to my stepmother's demands; and from the hour she entered my father's house, I may say that I met with nothing ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the remarkable women mentioned by the Princess was her stepmother, Azze-bint-Zef, who seems to have completely ruled the Sultan, and to have settled all questions of home and foreign policy; while her great-aunt, the Princess Asche, was regent of the empire during the Sultan's minority, and was the heroine of the siege of Mesket. Of her the Princess ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a little awkwardly, before the boy went in to say good-bye to his stepmother and go off with his father to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Ridge's new novel, an animated story of London life, concerns a girl sent out to service by her stepmother. Taking the management of her career into her own hands, and holding the reins, goes first to a house on the north side of Regent's Park, afterwards to the neighbourhood of Berkeley Square; and her adventures in both situations, her acquaintances, and the person to whom she is devoted, are described ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... settle the dispute[79]. Here the claim of Edward was fully admitted, and he was crowned and anointed by Dunstan, at Kingston, accordingly, in the year 975—to be sacrificed to the ambition of his cruel stepmother, in less than ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... to do so. She was still summoned like a child to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in her, and who were kind enough to wish to see her—Madame d'Argy, for example, who had been the dearest friend of her dead mother. The death of that mother, who had been long replaced by a stepmother, could hardly be said to be deeply regretted by Jacqueline. She remembered her very indistinctly. The stories of her she had heard from Modeste, her old nurse, probably served her instead of any actual memory. She knew her only as a woman ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... others from his own share. When there were two mothers, the two families shared equally in the father's estate until later times when the first family took two-thirds. Daughters, in the absence of sons, had sons' rights. Children also shared their own mother's property, but had no share in that of a stepmother. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Mississippi. Mother died when I was a child. I was three months old, they said, when I lost her. Father lived to be very old. My mother was Ella Geeter and my stepmother was Lucy Evans. My father's name was Si Hubbard. My parents married after the War. I remembers Grandma Harriett Hubbard. She said she was sold. She was a cook and she raised my papa up with white folks. Her children was sold with her. Papa was sold too at the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... adultery" of stepson with his stepmother, hanging is awarded to the man. In the same case Swanwhite, the woman, is punished, by treading to death with horses. A woman accomplice in adultery is treated to what Homer calls a "stone coat." Incestuous ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... to his companion's ear—"So you see," he said, "when that youngster was born, Lady F. was Mrs. M.—wasn't she? and for the matter of that, Lady F. is Mrs. M. to this very hour. That's the real chat; ain't it, Sir Thomas? My stepmother, you know. The governor could take her away with him to-morrow if he chose, according to the law ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... to his life, when he dreams that the personification of Kuvera, the god of riches, appears before him in the form of a Jaina mendicant—a conclusive proof of the Buddhistic origin of the story.—A trunkless head performs the same part in the Russian folk-tale of the Stepmother's Daughter, on which Mr. Ralston remarks that, "according to Buddhist belief the treasure which has belonged to anyone in a former existence may come to him in the form of a man, who, when ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... age, and that wife was not the mother of the brothers; and she did ill to her step-children, but served Thorbiorn the worst, for that he was hard to deal with and reckless. And on a day Thorbiorn Angle sat playing at tables, and his stepmother passed by and saw that he was playing at the knave-game, and the fashion of the game was the large tail-game. Now she deemed him thriftless, and cast some word at him, but he gave an evil answer; so she caught up one of ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... the months and years went by, more and more people came to him whenever they needed a lawyer to advise them. For a long time he was poor, but little by little he paid off his debts. With his first big fee he bought a quarter section of land for his stepmother who had been ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, and a sole cause of this and many other maladies, the devil's cushion, as [1540]Gualter calls it, his pillow and chief reposal. "For the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... had been born near Mexico, and knew the language. She was very clever, and very beautiful; and soon learnt to speak Spanish. She had been a princess in her own country, and was sold as a slave by her cruel stepmother. They made a Christian of her, and called her Dona Marina,—her Indian name was Malinche,—and she became Cortez's interpreter to the Indians, and his secretary. And she loved him and served him as ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... much longer, for in that quiet life the advance of one's years was not likely to be noticed. I am sure Miss Edgeworth looked no older to me when I left her than when I first saw her. But she was obliged to go into England to nurse her sick stepmother, and after her departure the place had no attractions for me, ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... which had first set him thinking—namely, that Steel's Corner owned a laboratory—two, for the matter of that; that old Dr. Corfield was a clever toxicologist; that Leam had stayed there during her father's honeymoon; and that her stepmother had died on the night of her arrival. "And your average Englishman calls himself a creature with brains and inductive powers!" was his unspoken commentary on the finding of the coroner's jury and the verdict of the coroner. "Bull is a fool," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... saying, I was bred up here in the village—father and mother died very young, and I was left a poor orphan—well, bless us! if Thomas haven't kissed her!—to the care of Mrs. Score, my aunt, who has been a mother to me—a stepmother, you know;—and I've been to Stratford fair, and to Warwick many a time; and there's two people who have offered to marry me, and ever so many who want to, and I won't have none—only a gentleman, as I've ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eldest to the youngest, like a row of Pan pipes; at the head of them standing Heddegan. He smiled pleasantly through the grey fringe of his whiskers and beard, and turning to the girls said, 'Now come forrard, and shake hands properly with your stepmother.' ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... in the world! How can I object to a stepmother who is playing Blind Man's Buff at the present moment with the Norwegian nobility? I am not so overstrained as all that. But really I cannot allow my old friend HIALMAR, with his great, confiding, childlike mind, to remain in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... say that you are forty years old, that you have practically built up a business which will be ruined if you leave it, that you are the sole support of a stepmother and a family of young half-brothers and sisters, but that you have felt it your duty to attest without appealing for exemption, we applaud your patriotism. But, when you go on to complain that your neighbour, aged twenty-two, living in idleness on an allowance, and married ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... a small court-yard between these apartments, the dishes were served to both tables. Don Balthazar de Castillo, uncle to the bride, acted as usher of the hall at this entertainment. I came to the house towards the end of supper, to attend my father and stepmother home at night. I went to the upper end of the hall, where the governor sat, who was pleased to make me sit down on the chair beside him, and reached me some comfits and sweet drink, with which boys are best pleased, I being then fourteen years ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Ealing. The new wife gave her children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not why. So he was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing. The unjust stepmother gave him plenty to eat before he went away, and did not beat him once, but told the children to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... reflecting on her stepmother, thought how marvellously true it all was. Had he known her personally, which so far as she was aware was not the case, the preacher could not have described her better. Also it was certain that Mrs. Humphreys and her friends had not the slightest intention ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... of her in any of the family records with which we are acquainted; so it is hardly probable that little George Austen (Jane's father), who had lost both his parents when he was six years old, continued under the care of his stepmother. However, all that we know of his childhood is that his uncle Francis befriended him, and sent him to Tonbridge School, and that from Tonbridge he obtained a Scholarship (and subsequently a Fellowship) at St. John's College, Oxford—the ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Cinder-wench! this harsh stepmother was a sore trial to her; and how often, as she sate sadly by herself, did she feel that there is no mother like our own, the dear parent whose flesh and blood we are, and who bears all our little cares and sorrows tenderly as in the apple ...
— Cinderella • Henry W. Hewet
... which brings kings and kingdoms to ruin. In England it appears, despite of Christianity and monastic discipline, in its most atrocious form after the death of Edgar. His eldest son, for some years his successor, was treacherously murdered by his stepmother (who wished to advance her own son to the throne), at a visit which he paid her as he returned from hunting. It was that Edward whose innocence and leaning towards the Church have gained him the name of Martyr. The son of the murderess did ascend the throne, but the guilt ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... early days would have been wretched enough, if his elastic spirits had allowed him to give way to misery. His father was a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the death of his first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at another's chicks, would not, as a stepmother, leave the little Paul in peace. She was continually putting her own children forward, and ill-treating the late 'anointed' son. The father gave in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be set free from his unhappy home. There may be some excuse in this for the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... a snake down the gutter of the gravel path. It had just appeared. It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and the ways of the earth ("our dull stepmother") bored her unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was amusing, and she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she wrote feverishly, "The subject of this memoir first saw the light in the middle of the night. It ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... at the ill-concealed mirth of the young girls, who on the stairs were watching her retrograde movements. The hum of voices increased, until at last there was a great deal more talking than working. The Unitarian minister's bride, Lilly Martin's stepmother, the new clerk at Drury's, Dr. Lay's wife's new hat and its probable cost, and the city boarders at the hotel, were all duly discussed, and then for a time there was again silence while Mrs. Johnson, president of the society, told of the extreme destitution in which she had that morning ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... may develop into something larger, truer, and finer; but not so far away were other and very different hearts growing and budding, each in its own way. There was little Miss Dearborn, the pretty school teacher, drifting into a foolish alliance because she did not agree with her stepmother at home; there was Herbert Dunn, valedictorian of his class, dazzled by Huldah Meserve, who like a glowworm "shone afar off bright, but looked at near, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the course of years to look upon the older brothers of her stepmother as in some sort her uncles, but for Harold, who was so much nearer her own age, she entertained a sincere sisterly regard. And he was worthy of it and of the warm place his many noble qualities had won for him in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... the wind like raven's wings. A sudden jealousy gripped him; Mr. Tiralla had spoken of a nice young fellow. And Mikolai was also a young fellow. Two young fellows, and with her day and night under the same roof. Stepmother? Pooh! She was still young and ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... father, Professor Heron, died this year. She lives with her stepmother. She's a nice girl, a pretty girl, but ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... days after our arrival, when my father told us in the morning, that, from the actions of the horses, he perceived there were Indians lurking about in the woods, and he said to me, "John, you must not go out of the house to-day." After giving strict charge to my stepmother to let none of the little children go out, he went to the field, with the negroes, and my elder brother, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... but a slight difference, because even this stepmother of a society against whom we are in revolt has also been compelled to temper her individualist principles; she, too, has had to make concessions in a communist direction and under the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... did not, however, really like the Prince's visit, and was reluctantly telling his fellow attendants that, owing to a certain circumstance which had taken place at Iyo-no-Kami's[47] residence, his wife (Ki-no-Kami's stepmother) had taken up her abode with him that very evening, and that the rooms were all ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... experiment of bringing together two families for once succeeded. Mr. Smith's two eldest daughters, Jean and Janet, fervent in piety, unwearied in kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate and to attract the stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps, easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and opinionated, must have ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nine years old when he lost his mother, whom he remembered to the end of his life with tender affection. He always spoke gratefully of the invariable kindness and affection of his father, who married again in 1803, and of his stepmother, but he felt that the shyness and reserve which often caused him to be misunderstood and thought cold were largely due to the loss of his mother in his childhood. He was educated at Westminster, but he was not robust enough to stand a rough ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... colours, that Albinia was often incurring her displeasure, and risking that of Lucy, by the deep blues and sober browns which alone looked fit to be seen with those beetle brows and sallow features. Her face looked many years older than that of her fair, fresh, rosy stepmother; nay, her father's clear olive complexion and handsome countenance had hardly so aged an aspect; and Gilbert, when he came home at Midsummer, declared that Sophy had grown ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been called as a Jewess, Hannah, had spent her girlhood under the rule of a stepmother. Peter was a young man earning a fair salary as a clerk at the Town Hall. He was a frequent visitor at Bendet's wine-shop. And Peter was an expert judge of the comeliness of Jewish maidens in general ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... the reception of a testimonial of royal approbation, seems sufficiently to prove the loyalty of the Philippines, and the little probability of their revolting, especially if the mother-country does not show herself wholly a stepmother to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... marriage cruelly treated the children of his first wife, but conceived a criminal passion for the youngest of them, a beautiful girl named BEATRICE, whom he outraged, upon which, being unable to bring him to justice, she, along with her stepmother and a brother, hired two assassins to murder him; the crime was found out, and all three were beheaded (1599); this is the story on which Shelley founded his tragedy, but it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
