"Mother-in-law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where the ends of justice are not satisfied unless a life is given for a life, where magistrates are venal, and the laws of evidence lax. Occasionally a young wife is driven to commit suicide by the harshness of her mother-in-law, but this is of rare occurrence, as the consequences are terrible to the family of the guilty woman. The blood relatives of the deceased repair to the chamber of death, and in the injured victim's hand they place ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... of their inconsistent feet, the daughter became the wife of the father and the mother-in-law of her own mother. And the mother became the wife of the son and the daughter-in-law of her own daughter. And as time passed, sons and daughters were born ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... here?" At the same time he whispered the little wench to call Mr. Lawford, the town-clerk, to come thither as fast as he possibly could. The good-daughter of Peg Thomson started off with an activity worthy of her mother-in-law. ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... figures—the lay preacher Hans Nilsen and Skipper Worse—surpass all that the author had hitherto produced in depth of conception and brilliancy of execution. The marriage of that delightful, profane old sea-dog Jacob Worse with the pious Sara Torvestad, and the attempts of his mother-in-law to convert him, are described not with the merely superficial drollery to which the subject invites, but with a sweet and delicate humor which trembles on the verge of pathos. In the Christmas tale, "Elsie," Kielland has produced ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... spot, although he was sober himself at the time. On another occasion he shot himself in the breast, but recovered. Presently he fell in love most desperately with an hysterical woman and married her. The mother-in-law, who was an eccentric, mischievous person, started a bitter feud between the two families. He became greatly wrought up over the affair and demanded of his wife to stop the quarrel at once. As she demurred, he ended her life with a bullet ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... make the fire, skilfully removing the ashes, without sprinkling them upon the floor. Then quickly go to the stable, clean the stable, take food to the cattle, feed all the animals on the farm. For already the cow of your mother-in-law will be lowing for food; the horse of your father-in-law will be whinnying; the milch cow of your sister-in-law will be straining at her tether; the calf of your brother-in-law will be bleating; for all will be waiting for her whose duty it is to give them hay, whose ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... sweetheart, and claimed damages laid at one hundred dollars. The defendant pleaded that after an intimate acquaintance with the family, he found it was impossible to live comfortably with his intended mother-in-law, who was to take up residence with her daughter after the marriage, and he refused to fulfil his promise. "Would you rather live with your mother-in-law, or pay two hundred dollars?" inquired the judge. "Pay two hundred dollars," was the prompt reply. Said the judge: "Young ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Lyndon should detest her was quite natural. She is not the first of woman or mankind either that has hated a mother-in-law. I set my mother to keep a sharp watch over the freaks of her Ladyship; and this, you may be sure, was one of the reasons why the latter disliked her. I never minded that, however. Mrs. Barry's assistance and surveillance were invaluable ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I have come to send a sword, I have come to put division between a son, and his father; the mother, and the daughter; the daughter-in-law, and her mother-in-law." "Think ye, (said he to his disciples) that I have come to put peace on earth, I tell you nay, but rather division." Again, "I have come to put fire on the earth." These are not the characteristics of the Messiah of the prophets of the Old ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... severe looks, and the harsh and threatening expressions of the First Consul soon, however, convinced her how much she was mistaken. To evince her repentance, she on the very next day attended her mother-in-law to church, who was highly edified by the sudden and religious turn of her daughter, and did not fail to ascribe to the efficacious interference of one of her favourite saints this conversion of a profane sinner. But Napoleon was not the dupe of this church-going mummery of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... professional tone and manner, he said with a satisfied air: "Well, now, that's done. Believe me, that is the best thing to do." The two hands, joined for a moment, separated immediately. Julien, not daring to kiss Jeanne, kissed his mother-in-law on the forehead, turned on his heel, took the arm of the baron, who acquiesced, happy at heart that the thing had been settled thus, and they went out ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... sensitive beauty, which no after happiness has ever succeeded in fully dispelling. Matters went better after Gwendolen came, but in reckoning up the possible defects in Mrs. Ocumpaugh's character you should never forget the twist that may have been given to it by that mother-in-law." ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Dowie's whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... advantageous settlement (in Ireland) by the trustees—my life threatened last month (they put about a paper here to excite an attempt at my assassination, on account of politics, and a notion which the priests disseminated that I was in a league against the Germans,)—and, finally, my mother-in-law recovered last fortnight, and my play was damned last week! These are like 'the eight-and-twenty misfortunes of Harlequin.' But they must be borne. If I give in, it shall be after keeping up a spirit at least. I should not have cared so much about it, if our southern ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... irreverent comparison), had gone to London before them, and impressed himself, apparently by sheer gravity, on the political world as a good young man. Introduced by him, Sydney Smith soon became one of the circle at Holland House. It is indeed not easy to live on invitations and your mother-in-law's pearls; but Sydney reviewed vigorously, preached occasionally, before very long received a regular appointment at the Foundling Hospital, and made some money by lecturing very agreeably at the Royal Institution on Moral Philosophy—a subject of which he honestly admits ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... yourself in a rage. No matter whether her family be rich or poor, when a woman is performing her duties in her husband's house, she must look upon her husband's parents as her own. If her honoured father-in-law or mother-in-law fall ill, her being able to plait flowers and paint pictures and make tea will be of no use in the sick-room. To shampoo her parents-in-law, and nurse them affectionately, without employing either shampooer or servant-maid, is the right ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... your mother-in-law sent her daughter to a boarding school, do you believe that this was out of solicitude for her daughter? A girl of twelve or fifteen is a terrible Argus; and if your mother-in-law did not wish to have an Argus in her ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... all about the little King of Rome." He greeted Maria Louisa with a beaming smile, and then repaired to the seat which the Emperor Francis had occupied, at the left side of the Empress Ludovica. The smile was still on his face; he sat down on this chair, and, turning to the empress, his mother-in-law, asked her, almost humbly, if she would grant him the happiness ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... expect it, but this little creature is obviously a literalist. I imagine Harrie hardly remembers how it happened. He probably was surprised to find himself engaged. However, he's determined to go through with it. A million-dollar mother-in-law has a good deal in her favor. But something is the matter with the boy. ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... wanted her freedom. She clamored for a divorce, but there were no grounds upon which to obtain it. She yearned for the right to select her own associates; to do what she liked; to have a good time, and to be responsible to nobody. There was a mother-in-law in the case, of course, and, although the brand has become tiresome, this particular lady was necessary in order to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... who owned the cottage was mother-in-law to the man by whom it was occupied; she died and left her property, which consisted chiefly of cottages, to be divided equally among her children. Soon after the funeral the family met in this very house to arrange the division of the estate. The plan adopted was to draw lots for ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... Molly had won his approbation and admiration, there was no doubt that she had earned it somehow. And, when she next returned to her place, Mrs. Gibson greeted her with soft words and a gracious smile; for it does not require much reasoning power to discover that if it is a very fine thing to be mother-in-law to a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw, it presupposes that the wife who makes the connection between the two parties is in harmony with her mother. And so far had Mrs. Gibson's thoughts wandered into futurity. She only wished that the happy chance had fallen to Cynthia's instead ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... my child," said her future mother-in-law, highly pleased, "you must keep an eye on the servants and use your hands, too, occasionally, if you want to get on in this world. You'll make a fine housekeeper. But come, now, we must go to ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... the father, he adds Jr. to his name. Upon the death of the father he omits it. This abbreviation is sometimes added to a woman's name on her card when her husband has the same name as his father, and it is necessary to distinguish between the cards of the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law. ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... dying left old Mrs. Pelley alone in a big house, and her being pretty feeble, she felt that Harry and Ivy ought to come and live with her. Well,—Ivy went—but she vowed that there were two things she would do, mother-in-law or no mother-in-law. She said she'd put as many onions in her hamburger steak and Irish stew as she pleased—you know Mrs. Pelley can't stand onions—and she'd have a fire in the fireplace as often as the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... (Pitre, No. 148) called, "The Peasant of Larcara," in which the bride's mother imagines that her daughter has a son who falls into the cistern. The groom (they are not yet married) is disgusted and sets out on his travels with no fixed purpose of returning if he finds some fools greater than his mother-in-law, as in the Venetian tale. The first fool he meets is a mother, whose child, in playing the game called nocciole,[R] tries to get his hand out of the hole while his fist is full of stones. He cannot, of course, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... be only presumption in us to attempt giving in any other than the beautifully simple words of Scripture the story of Ruth and her mother-in-law. The narration is inimitable, and needs nothing to make it stand out like a picture before the mind. Suffice it then that we now attend only to the lessons which may be gathered from it, and endeavor to profit by them through all our coming lives. Nor let ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... already stood at her door, and was seated in the carriage almost before it had stopped. She wore a black dress, a dark shawl covered her shoulders, at her throat was her old silver crucifix, which had again come into her possession after her mother-in-law's death, and on her head was a black silk kerchief, which set off her beautiful face so marvellously that one might have supposed she had studied the effect, had not this grave, strong woman been so wholly incapable of ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... 50 I am, and my heavy head Clings to the pillow; But out in the passage My Mother-in-law ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... never dare to say a word about it to Mrs. Mac, for I'm dreadfully afraid of her, she is so stern, and how I'm ever to get on when she is my mother-in-law I don't know!" cried Kitty, clasping her hands in dismay at ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Remember when What's-his-name, her husband, died? Did she go back to her home town? No, she didn't. She'd lived there all her life, and she knew better. She said to Naomi, her mother-in-law, 'Whither thou goest I will go.' And she went. And when they got to Bethlehem, Ruth looked around, knowingly, until she saw Boaz, the catch of the town. So she went to work in his fields, gleaning, and she gleaned away, trying to look just ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... bring with me. The end of last week I spent in Dresden, where I called upon our friends, the Ritters. Sascha Ritter, our Weymar Court musician, has been blessed with a little daughter, whose god-father I shall have the honour to be. His mother-in-law has been staying here for some weeks, and Johanna Wagner is ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... next HUNDRED.' Then she kinder groaned an' said, 'I guess maybe I'd better make it the next ninety-nine.' Well, sir, that sot me to thinkin', an' the more I thought, the more I realized what a lot o' common sense that mother-in-law o' your'n ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her. After having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not alter her drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as her mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime. Then returning to ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... 1716, and the next year he joined his relations in this country. His son was the Rev. James Maury, of Albemarle, Virginia, a very estimable and useful clergyman of the Church of England. James was another son of the French preacher who made America his home, bringing with him his wife, child, mother-in-law, and thirteen servants, in 1717. Francis, in 1719, was ordained by the Bishop of London, on the particular recommendation of the Archbishop of Dublin, and then also sailed for Virginia. He became a very eloquent and popular preacher, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "promise me if I ever get dusty in the garret, that Lord Algy here will tell me one of his funny wheezes and put me out of pain. You could not bear to hear me knocking Boston as poor father did. And I feel it coming—already my mother-in-law has bluffed me into admitting that Red Gap has a right to be on the same map with Boston if ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... replied that the pig-faced lady was his mother-in-law, and that he trusted the President would not violate the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... difference in the appearance of the children, a few Spanish women have followed suit; but it requires a good deal of courage to break away from old traditions and set one's face against the sacred superstitions of ages—and the mother-in-law! ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... mother-in-law, and consequently a pretty old fowl in ferreting out things of this sort. She determined to discover the why and wherefore of ANN'S departure. If she could confront the Hon. MICHAEL with proofs of ANN'S indiscretion, it would be the loudest kind of feather ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... no introduction to this stranger to Mr. Willis, who in a gentle, well-bred voice, with a certain mournful cadence in it, announced herself as "Mrs. Clemm—the mother-in-law of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... you know why I have taught your wife to regard me as a rival? Why I have blackmailed you to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds? Do you know why I have done all this and more? I will tell you. Because I am your Mother-in-law! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... movements of the people. And yet, so dry are some of these little German newspapers of news, that it is refreshing to read, now and then, that the king, on Sunday, walked out with the Duke of Hesse after dinner (one would like to know if they also had sauerkraut and sausage), and that his prospective mother-in-law, the Empress of Russia, who was here the other day, on her way home from Como, where she was nearly drowned out by the inundation, sat for an hour on Sunday night, after the opera, in the winter garden of the palace, enjoying the most ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the certificate, for he had implicitly believed his brother's denial of the marriage, and he said Miss Headworth was so childish and simple that she might easily have been taken in by a sham ceremony. He said that he now saw he had done very wrong in letting his mother-in-law take all the letters about "that unhappy business" off his hands without looking at them, but he was much engrossed by my mother's illness, and, as he said, it never occurred to him as a duty to trace out what became of the poor ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "he is a shifting sand." Moreau said to Decaen, "I am too old to bend my back"; but the latter was of opinion that the real source of the mischief was that Moreau had married a young wife, and that she and his mother-in-law considered they were entitled to as much attention as Madame Bonaparte received. Pride, jealousy and vanity, he declared, were the real source of the quarrel. Decaen, indeed, has a story that when Madame Moreau once called upon Josephine at Malmaison, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... her daughter-in-law's confinement. Being a black Protestant, she wouldn't hear of the child being brought up a Catholic or even baptized in a Catholic Church. The child was now a week old and Rean was fairly distracted, for neither his own mother nor his mother-in-law would give way; each was trying to outdo the other. Mrs. Rean watched Mrs. Egan, and Mrs. Egan watched Mrs. Rean, and the poor mother lay all day with the baby at her breast, listening to the two ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... your mother-in-law, denotes there will be pleasant reconciliations for you after some serious disagreement. For a woman to dispute with her mother-in-law, she will find that quarrelsome and unfeeling people ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... he was asked. And then SIMPANG IMPANG put to him the question of the bamboo and of the banana plant; and the wind-spirit said, "They have no branches because human beings are always offending against custom; they often utter the names of their father-in-law and mother-in-law, and sometimes they walk before them in going through the jungle; that is why the bamboo and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... blue eyes as her little son; she bore no resemblance to the elder woman, and looked, as she indeed was, superior to her surroundings. Two years ago she had come with her child to make her home amongst her husband's people, and though at first her mother-in-law, Mrs. Platt, was inclined to look upon her contemptuously as a poor, delicate, useless creature, time proved to her that for steady, quiet work no one could eclipse her daughter-in-law. Young Mrs. John, as she was called, was now her right ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... Blanche. "He waited patiently for news of my aunt's arrival in England; but as mail after mail came without bringing him any intelligence he grew uneasy, and finally wrote to his mother-in-law asking an explanation of the unaccountable silence. This letter remained unanswered; but just when his uneasiness had increased to such a pitch that he had determined to apply for leave of absence in order to proceed to England, it was ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... he, "that profane swearing is vulgar, but I must say damn that woman. What an inquisitor she would make. I hope Kennedy is right about her heart. Think of her as your mother-in-law!" ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... spoke very kindly to Ruth, and told her to stay with his maidens, and freely drink of the water drawn for them, and Ruth bowed before him and asked why he should be so kind to a stranger. He told her that he knew all her kindness to her mother-in-law since the death of her husband, and how she had left her own family and country to come among strangers, ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... not be imagined that his mother-in-law's look-in of a month made his wife more contented. She kept on wishing for her new friends in another quarter, and (more strongly) for the familiar scenes of the other side. Raymond did not wish the expense involved ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... fact is, that Snevellicci has had so many bespeaks in this place, that she wants an attraction. She had a bespeak when her mother-in-law died, and a bespeak when her uncle died; and Mrs Crummles and myself have had bespeaks on the anniversary of the phenomenon's birthday, and our wedding-day, and occasions of that description, so that, in fact, there's some difficulty in getting a good ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... insupportable. Mrs. Quimby said it was Almira herself, not the life. Clash followed clash; there came sneers, tears, squabbles, rows, and at last practical banishment. Old Quimby could stand it no longer. Almira went to live with her prospective mother-in-law, who was not sorry, and who, hearing for weeks only her side of the story, believed all she said about home troubles and their inciting cause. She could not hear enough about Percy, and so who so ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Gervaise, who sat by the side of her mother-in-law. She called to Lorilleux and with his aid carefully wiped every drop of rain from her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... delivered from this place.[278] Now when the Shepherds had shown them all these things, then they had them back to the palace, and entertained them with what the house would afford. But Mercy being a young and breeding woman, longed for something that she saw there, but was ashamed to ask. Her mother-in-law then asked her what she ailed; for she looked as one not well. Then said Mercy, There is a looking-glass hangs up in the dining-room, off which I cannot take my mind: if, therefore, I have it not, I think I shall miscarry. Then said her mother, I will mention thy wants ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... their grief and great sorrow. One morning after the child's funeral, her husband being abroad, about eleven in the forenoon, Mrs. Leckie the younger goes up into her chamber to dress her head, and as she was looking into the glass she spies her mother-in-law, the old beldam, looking over her shoulder. This cast her into a great horror; but recollecting her affrighted spirits, and recovering the exercise of her reason, faith, and hope, having cast up a short and silent prayer to God, she turns about, and bespeaks her: 'In the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... king Kuntibhoja also obeyed Gandhari in everything. Draupadi and Subhadra and the other ladies of the Pandavas behaved towards the old king and the queen as if they were their own father-in-law and mother-in-law. Costly beds and robes and ornaments, and food and drink and other enjoyable articles, in profusion and of such superior kinds as were worthy of royal use, were presented by king Yudhishthira unto Dhritarashtra. Similarly Kunti behaved ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the punctilio above the law of God; one may trust him, if he has eaten one's salt, to respect one's daughter as he would his own, but if he happens to be under no such special obligation it may be hazardous to trust him with even one's charwoman or one's mother-in-law. And the man of morals, confronted by a moral situation, is usually wholly without honour. Put him on the stand to testify against a woman, and he will tell all he knows about her, even including ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... across, drop a stone on the far side, and then drink. If he cuts his nails, he must throw the parings into a thicket. If he drink from a stream, and also cross it, he must eject a mouthful of water back into the stream. He must be particularly careful not to look his mother-in-law in the face. Hundreds of omens by the manner of their happening may modify actions, as, on what side of the road a woodpecker calls, or in which direction a hyena or jackal crosses the path, how the ground hornbill flies or alights, and the like. He ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... his bed, which was in the same room as ours; and things went on much as before the marriage, except that our new mother-in-law did not show any kindness towards us; indeed during my father's absence, she would often beat us, particularly little Marcella, and her eyes would flash fire, as she looked eagerly upon the fair ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... it looked as if the old woman's instinct were awry. Henry did not go to the races, nor did Fanny have to fall back on her mother-in-law for the maintenance of herself and her two children, Becky and Joseph. On the contrary, she doubled her position in the social scale by taking a four-roomed house in the Holloway Road. Its proximity ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... admiring inhabitants of West Chester County in many ways, but there is a difference between authorities as to whether it was she that used to drive four superb black horses over the bad roads of the county, or whether it was her mother-in-law, the second lord's wife. Certainly it was the latter that was killed by a fall from a carriage, and certainly both had fine horses and magnificent coaches, and drove over bad roads,—for all roads were bad in those days, even in Europe, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... at Paris; people paid court to her friends and acquaintances, Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne sought to please her, was respectful to her, attentive to her friends, not always with success. She acted towards Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne like a mother-in-law, and sometimes spoke with such authority and bluntness to Madame de Bourgogne as ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the eldest son with his wife and family, and a daughter or two with their husbands and children. The eldest son, who inherits the house and land, almost invariably brings his wife to his father's house, where she often becomes little better than a slave to her mother-in-law. By rigid custom she literally forsakes her own kindred, and her "filial duty" is transferred to her husband's mother, who often takes a dislike to her, and instigates her son to divorce her if she has no children. My hostess had induced her son to divorce his wife, and she ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... distance from the ships, and had an intricate navigation to go through, we were in haste to set out from Mooa. When I took leave of Poulaho, he pressed me much to stay till the next day, to be present at a funeral ceremony. The wife of Mareewagee, who was mother-in-law to the king, had lately died, and her corpse had, on account of the Natche, been carried on board a canoe that lay in the lagoon. Poulaho told me, that, as soon as he had paid the last offices to her, he would attend me to Eooa, but, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... There were two Lady Luftons,—mother-in-law and daughter-in-law,—who at this time were living together at Framley Hall, Lord Lufton's seat in the county of Barset, and they were both thoroughly convinced of Mr Crawley's innocence. The elder lady had lived much among clergymen, and could hardly, I think, by any means have been brought to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the widow. "Let me see, what will the relationship be? You will be my son-in-law's brother, and consequently I shall be your mother-in-law once removed. You will have a mother younger than yourself, Mr. Tom. I hope you will not presume upon her youth ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... instantly appeared; a few drops even stood on her dilated nostrils—raindrops on the eaves. Even had the day been cool she must have been warm, for she wore more layers of clothing than usual, having deposited some fresh strata in honor of her wealthy mother-in-law. ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... without a Tail." We had to make him without a tail owing to the smallness of the stage. He had once had a tail. But that was a long story: added to which there was not time to tell it. Little Sally St. Leonard played his wife, and Robina was his mother-in-law. So much depends upon one's mood. What an ocean of boredom might be saved if science could but give us a barometer foretelling us our changes of temperament! How much more to our comfort we could plan our lives, knowing that on ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... not been well since her daughter's marriage and has felt the desolation of her position very much. She is weak and nervous, and I think you had better let Hester come alone.' Had Caldigate known his mother-in-law better he would not have suggested a visit from himself. No one who did know her would have looked forward to see her old hatred eradicated by an absence of nine months. Hester therefore went into Cambridge alone, and was taken up to the house by her father. As ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the private soup-kitchens for the relief of the sufferers was that opened at Dingle under the joint initiative of Lady Ventry, Mrs. Hickson, my future mother-in-law, and Mrs. Hussey, my mother. So as not to pauperise the people, subscriptions of one penny a week were asked from every house in the town. At ten in the morning those who wanted it could get a pint per head of really excellent soup for themselves and their families. Those who were ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... had evidently formed some of the habits of thrift evinced by his mother-in-law, Mollie Welsh, for it is on record that in 1737 within a few years after receiving his freedom he purchased a farm of 120 acres from Richard Gist, paying for it 17,000[152] pounds of tobacco, which in those days served as a legal medium of exchange. This farm, located on ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... have Marie about again, blithe and pretty; and to be rid of this pack. He thought of his mother-in-law and the nurse as ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... one thing. There are many who set perilous snares for married folk, especially in case of incest; and when any one (for these things can happen, nay, alas! they do happen) has defiled the sister of his wife, or his mother-in-law, or one related to him in any degree of consanguinity, they at once deprive him of the right to pay the debt of matrimony, and nevertheless they suffer him not, nay, they forbid him, to desert his wife's bed. What monstrous thing is this? What new remedy for sin? ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... him Bertram's letter to his wife; it would have made him wish to kill the truant Count; but she went back to Rousillon and handed her mother-in-law the second letter. It was short and bitter. "I have run away," it said. "If the world be broad enough, I will be always far ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... The mother-in-law of Kwei-li was an old-time conservative Chinese lady, the woman who cannot adapt herself to the changing conditions, who resents change of methods, new interpretations and fresh expressions of life. She sees in the new ideas that her sons bring from the foreign schools disturbers only ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... her hopes should prove false. Having hastily summoned Servius, after she had shown him her husband almost at his last gasp, holding his right hand, she entreated him not to suffer the death of his father-in-law to pass unavenged, nor to allow his mother-in-law to be an object of scorn to their enemies. "Servius," said she, "if you are a man, the kingdom belongs to you, not to those, who, by the hands of others, have perpetrated a most shameful deed. Rouse yourself, and follow the guidance ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... nurse!" His wife continued, in a tone to convey the fact that she was just as much disturbed as her mother-in-law could possibly be by the ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... was not cataract; but noticing that the eyeballs rolled upwards when the child was spoken to, I asked the mother whether, when she was with child, she had seen anybody turn their eyes in that manner. She replied that she had attended her mother, or mother-in-law, who was supposed to be dying, whose eyes rolled in a similar fashion. This was the cause of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... triumphantly in spite of the open and contemptuous opposition of one of the five sisters. For John himself was one of seven in his father's home, and whoever married John must go there to live, to be only a daughter in a mother-in-law's house, and take a daughter's share of the brunt of everything. "And nothing to be got except a living, and it was a poor living the McDonald farm gave beside the McIntosh," the McIntosh sisters said. And, moreover: "The saint did not ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... looking fresh, straight, healthy, and as if he were but twenty. The smith, who had watched everything closely and attentively, invited them all to supper. He, however, had an old half-blind crooked, mother-in-law who went to the youth, and with great earnestness asked if the fire had burnt him much. He answered that he had never felt more comfortable, and that he had sat in the red heat as if he had been ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... customary to put on black, although for a father- or mother-in-law it is customary, in the best society, to dress nearly as for ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... up, threw his table-napkin down, and rushed upstairs, while his wife, who thought it was some trick of her mother-in-law's, followed more slowly, shrugging her shoulders, as if to express her doubt. When they got upstairs, however, they found the old woman lying at full length in the middle of the room; and when they turned her over, they saw that she was insensible and motionless, while ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... represent the unhappy Ruth, returning poor and widowed with her mother-in-law, who, after so prolonged an absence, found herself as unknown as in a foreign land. Domingo and Mary personated the reapers. The supposed daughter of Naomi followed their steps, gleaning here and there a few ears ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... to be a mother-in-law, then you can have your turn," said her Father, smiling. "Your son's ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... they had come without any message from John; so I do not know why we should lay any stress on that, or even speak of it. The simple fact is that we have opened our house to two strangers in distress. Your husband," continued Mr. Hale's mother-in-law, "does not require to know more. As to the letter and package, we will keep that for further consideration. It cannot be of much importance, or they would have spoken of it before; it is probably some trifling present as a return for your hospitality. I should use no INDECOROUS haste ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... came her gentlewoman; a little pack of spaniels barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress—then, behold, the viscountess herself "dropping odours". Esmond recollected from his childhood that rich aroma of musk which his mother-in-law (for she may be called so) exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder towards sunset, so, in the decline of her years, the cheeks of my lady dowager blushed more deeply. Her face was illuminated with vermilion, which appeared ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... linen sheets and two pair of piller-cases done up with 'em I made myself. I want you to use that bed in your own room, Mis' De-Mond (I started to hear that name applied to myself), and for the sake of the good Lord who sent salvation to me through your blessed mother-in-law, in prayer for yourself don't never forget me. I've said all the hateful things I ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... to shuffle their feet and talk about other things; the old mother-in-law proposes betel all round, and hands us some grimy-looking leaves with a pressing invitation to partake. The various onlookers make remarks, and the girl devotes herself to her baby. But she is thinking; one can ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... remained within, for Absalom avoided the chill night air, and crouched over the smouldering fire. Peter's wife sedulously held aloof from the ostracized Quimbey woman. But her mother-in-law had fallen into the habit of sitting upon the porch these moonlit nights. The sparse, newly-leafed hop and gourd vines clambering to its roof were all delicately imaged on the floor, and the old woman's clumsy figure, her grotesque sun-bonnet, her awkward arm-chair, were faithfully reproduced ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was superintendent in Arnstadt, Thuringia, and superintendent in Goettingen till 1549, when he was compelled to leave because of his opposition to the Augsburg Interim. Recommended by Elizabeth Duchess of Braunschweig-Lueneburg, the mother-in-law of Duke Albrecht, he was appointed preacher at the Dome of Koenigsberg in 1550. Clearly understanding that solid comfort in life and death is possible only as long as our faith rests solely on the aliena iustitia, on the objective righteousness of Christ, which is without us, and is ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... of Adolphe, subjects herself to the pressure of tight corsets. When her daughter laughs, she weeps; when Caroline wishes her happiness public, she tries to conceal hers. After dinner, the discerning eye of the co-mother-in-law divines the ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... would be very pleasant to her grace's tender heart to exalt her prostrate house once more and bring it into consideration again, and she would therefore gladly see her brother's daughter some day a reigning Princess. Besides, the future Electress would then owe her mother-in-law a lifelong debt of gratitude, and the Dowager Electress might exert great influence and share in the government ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... do something to help support herself and her mother-in-law, so she begged Naomi to let her go into the fields and glean after the reapers—that is, to gather up the barley that was left after they had made up the sheaves—and Naomi told her that she ...
— Wee Ones' Bible Stories • Anonymous
... recalled the look of patient resignation one so often detects in ill-treated and neglected animals. Possibly, in former days, she might have possessed that fleeting attraction called the beaute du diable; but now she looked almost as old as her wretched mother-in-law. Sorrow and privation, excessive toil and ill-treatment, had imparted to her face a livid hue, reddening her eyes and stamping deep furrows round about her temples. Still, there was an attribute of native honesty about her which even the foul atmosphere in which she ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... woman, very gaily dressed, was presented to the Lyndsays as Mrs. M'Nish, a married daughter. Her husband was a loud-voiced, large-whiskered consequential-looking young man, whose good humour and admiration of himself, his wife, his father and mother-in-law, and the big house, appeared inexhaustible. His young wife seemed to look upon him as something super-human; and to every remark she made, she appealed to Wullie, as she called him, for ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... against the good sense of his elders is dragged bleeding along a rough way. So I married Lydia, and began life in gladness and content. I liked her family and they liked me. It puzzles me to see how the English mother-in-law, who is a grum-voiced, dogmatic and belligerent person with a jointure to bequeath, came to be engrafted on our literature. The inoffensive delicacy of an American elderly woman forbids her the role of her British ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Places, I will pray for thee; but I should love thee to go thither with me, that thou mightest look on the Elders of the Faith that resort thither, and they should pray for thee, according to thy desire." "O my mother," said Num, "I conjure thee by Allah, take me with thee!" "Ask leave of thy mother-in-law," replied the old woman, "and I will take thee." So Num said to her mother-in-law, "O my lady, ask my master to let us go, thee and me, one day, with this my old mother, to pray and worship with the fakirs in the Holy Places." Presently, Nimeh came in and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... said that a smothered sob was heard from a corner of the room. Lars Gunnarson, who had been sitting with head devoutly bowed, arose at once. Crossing the floor on tiptoes, so as not to disturb the meeting, he went over to his mother-in-law, placed his arm around her, and led her up to the table. Seating her in his own chair, he stationed himself behind it and looked down at her with an air of solicitude; then he beckoned to his wife to come and stand beside him. Every one understood of course that Lars wanted ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... impotent. Stunned by the death of their youthful chief, they were hopelessly weakened and disorganised by the dissensions and rivalries which surrounded the cradle of the infant Prince of Orange. The princess royal quarrelled with her mother-in-law, Amalia von Solms, over the guardianship of the child. Mary asserted her right to be sole guardian; the dowager-princess wished to have her son-in-law, the Elector of Brandenburg, associated with her as co-guardian. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... again took a portfolio, it was to be Home Secretary in the coalition cabinet of Lord Aberdeen (1852-55). He had become the warm friend and admirer of Lord Shaftesbury, whose mother-in-law, Lady Cowper, was now Lady Palmerston, the most gracious and skilful helpmeet that any statesman could wish to have. His inclination and his position enabled him to put through much legislation suggested by the philanthropic peer for the welfare of the working- ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... of his estate. Nor did the young wife herself appear to possess much real affection for poor Antony, of whom she had seen very little. There must have been great faults on his side; yet certainly Richard felt that there was some excuse for him in the mother-in-law, and that if the unfortunate young man could have married Cicely his lot might have been different. Yet the good Captain felt all the more that if Cis had been his own he still would never have given ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Wharncliffe still continue my neighbours and dearest friends. Mrs Turnbull died a few months back, and I am now in possession of the whole property. My father and mother-in-law are well and happy. Mr Drummond will retire from business as soon as he can wind up his multifarious concerns. I have but one more to speak of—the old Dominie. It is now two years since I closed the eyes of this worthy man. As he increased in years so did he in ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... almost twice as old as the other, they became, as it were, sisters. The same nourishing milk flowed from both their fruitful bosoms. And gleams of light penetrated their mourning: they began to laugh when they saw those little cherubs laugh, and nothing could have been gayer than the sight of that mother-in-law and that daughter-in-law side by side, almost mingling, having but one cradle between them, amid an unceasing florescence ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... promoter of the present troubles, he admitted that he had a countless number of times prayed to God that He would either change his heart or rid the kingdom of him. But he appealed to the testimony of Madame de Ferrare (Renee de France, the mother-in-law of Guise), and all who had ever heard him, when he said that never had he publicly mentioned the duke by name. As for Poltrot himself, he had ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... courteously requested the honour of an introduction. I had broken the ice at last; from that moment he was cordiality itself, until—I will not say, until he had called her his own—a few little misunderstandings!—not with his countess. You see, a resident aunt is translated mother-in-law by husbands; though I spare them pretty frequently; I go to friends, they travel. Here in London she must have a duenna. The marriage at Madrid, at the Embassy:—well, perhaps it was a step for us, for commoners, though we rank with the independent. Has her own little pin-money—an inheritance. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... royalty, as before those from whom they have nothing to hope or fear; the result being, that most minds quail before them. There were two Gitanas at Madrid, one Pepita by name, and the other La Chicharona; the first was a spare, shrewd, witch- like female, about fifty, and was the mother-in-law of La Chicharona, who was remarkable for her stoutness. These women subsisted entirely by fortune-telling and swindling. It chanced that the son of Pepita, and husband of Chicharona, having spirited away a horse, was sent to the presidio of Malaga for ten years ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... was kind and motherly, and Mary felt that it was so: but although there were no actual faults of spelling, it was evidently not the production of a cultured woman, and she thought with some dread of her future mother-in-law. It would all be very tolerable if Tom did not think so over much of his own kin, but he evidently looked on his women-folk as the most superior of ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... like a glove. No shams and disguises on this field-day of my life. And her mother! A glance at her comfortable amplitude banished my one fear. There's not a sharp angle about her. I was satisfied about Miss Sue, but the term 'mother-in-law' suggests vague terrors to any man until reassured.—Ah, Miss Banning," he said, "this coffee would warm the heart of an anchorite. No wonder you are inspired to fine things ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... When Simon's mother-in-law was lying sick with violent fever, Peter and Andrew besought the Lord for her: "And He stood over her and commanded the fever and it left her, and immediately she arose and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... neither felt nor expressed the slightest sorrow at the estrangement between herself and her mother-in-law. Isaac, for the sake of peace, had never contradicted her first idea that age and long illness had affected Mrs. Scatchard's mind. He even allowed his wife to upbraid him for not having confessed this to her at the time ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... beginning to utter his first delicious, stammering monosyllables, it was with great gravity that she realized that motherhood was approaching her again, that at Thanksgiving she would have a second child. She was wretchedly languid and ill during the entire spring, and found her mother-in-law's and Alice Valentine's calm acceptance of the situation bewildering ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... stammers out, 'Is your mistress in?' says I. 'Yes, sir,' says she; 'walk in.' And in I walked; but I declare I didna ken whether the floor carried me, or I carried the floor; and wha should I see but an auld leddy wi' spectacles—the maiden's mistress, sure enough, though no mine, but my mother-in-law that was to be. So she looked at me, and I looked at her. She made a low curtsey, and I tried to mak' a bow; while all the time ye might hae heard my heart beatin' at the opposite side o' the room. 'Sir,' says she. 'Ma'am,' says I. I wad hae jumped out o' the window had ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... not allow that the letters are forgeries, and rather suspects the novelist, his lady(728) for the authoress; and if she is, probably Miss Charlemagne is not quite innocent of the plot: though she still maintains that her mother-in-law elect did give her much encouragement; which, considering her grace's conduct about her children, is not the most incredible part of this strange story. I have written this at twice, and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... was under a room which was used occasionally as a barn and apple-chamber, into which the fowls sometimes found their way; and, in scratching among the chaff, scattered the dust on the pans of milk below, to the great annoyance of my mother-in-law. In this a favourite cock of hers was the chief transgressor. One day in harvest she went into the dairy, followed by the little dog, and finding dust again on her milk-pans, she exclaimed, 'I wish that cock were dead!' Not long after, she being with ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... be silent. But as the maid knelt before her to unfasten her sandals, Katharina herself took up the story again, asking her whether the shoemaker's pretty young wife had also been attacked. The girl said that she was still alive, but that the old mother-in-law and all the children had been shut into the house, and even the shutters barred as soon as the corpse had been brought out. The authorities had ordered that this should be done in every case, so that the pestilence might not pervade the streets or be disseminated among the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wrinkled across the back, and how the bourgeois whiskers were indicated. This obscene drawing is matched by many equally odious. Abject domesticity, ignominies of married life, of middle-age, of money-making; the old common jape against the mother-in-law; ill-dressed men with whisky—ill- dressed women with tempers; everything that is underbred and decivilised; abominable weddings: in one drawing a bridegroom with shambling sidelong legs asks his bride if she is nervous; she is a widow, and she answers, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell |
