"Stepmother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remained 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, and I ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... strange quarter of Paris, and had frequently to inquire the way. At length he reached home, and ascended the stairs to a small room in which Lucretia usually sat, and which was divided by a narrow corridor from the sleeping-chamber of herself and Dalibard. His stepmother, leaning her cheek upon her hand, was seated by the window, so absorbed in some gloomy thoughts, which cast over her rigid face a shade, intense and solemn as despair, that she did not perceive the approach ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He had been quite confident that, though no absolute promise had been made from her to him, or from him to her, there had then been no reason for him to doubt. In spite of that, she might have married now, or been promised in marriage. He knew that she must have been poor and left in want when her stepmother had died. She had told him of the intentions for her life, and he had answered that perhaps in the course of events something better might come up for her. Then he had been called a pauper, and had gone away to remedy that evil ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... find out how—should it be necessary—she could communicate with Halcyone. And then she was informed by Mrs. Porrit that her master would be away for a fortnight, and that Miss Halcyone La Sarthe had been taken off by her stepmother—she did not know where—and that the two old ladies had actually gone that day, with Hester and old William, to some place on the Welsh coast they had known when they were children, for a change to ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... were not rich—in pursuit of economy in fact, and Munich was very cheap. Her father was the younger son of some noble house; he had married a second time and had a lot of little mouths to feed. She was the child of the first wife and she didn't like her stepmother, but she was charming to her little brothers and sisters. I once made a sketch of her as Werther's Charlotte, cutting bread and butter while they clustered all round her. All the artists in the place were in love with her but she wouldn't look at 'the likes' of us. She was too ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of the tricks of destiny that she was not spared to witness more of his rising fame, being cut off in 1754, when she was only forty-six. Matthias Haydn promptly married again, and had a second family of five children, all of whom died in infancy. The stepmother survived her husband—who died, as the result of an accident, in 1763—and then she too entered a second time into the wedded state. Haydn can never have been very intimate with her, and he appears to have lost sight of her entirely in her later years. ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... 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 killed, is ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... guy. She was 'is only child and 'er mother was dead. The old man, whose name was Portman,—Albert Portman, the banker,—was considering a second venture into matrimony at the time. Mary was eighteen and she didn't want a stepmother. She raised such a row that he sent 'er off to school so as he could do 'is courting in peace and plenty. She was a wayward gal,—leastwise she says so 'erself—and very impetuous-like. One day a circus comes to the town where she was attending school. The young ladies were took ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... handsome and bright, grown prematurely coarse in feature and soured in mind by daily toil and care; the whole household squalid, cheerless, and utterly void of elevating inspirations... Only when the family had "moved" into the malarious backwoods of Indiana, the mother had died, and a stepmother, a woman of thrift and energy, had taken charge of the children, the shaggy-headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old, "began to feel like a human being." Hard work was his early lot. When a mere boy he had to help in ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... The stepmother was envious of the stepson and daughter and began to use them hardly. She scolded them without any reason, sent them away from home as often as she wished, and gave them scarcely enough to eat. Finally ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... weeks—marry young, like his 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 to take to ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... the wit to be also a good Luke Gospeler. But her tongue was harder than her heart. Father and mother alike thought the wide world of their boy, though the child was brought up under an iron rod. Joan, too, loved her half-brother, Tom, very dearly, and took a pride only second to her stepmother's in the lad's progress and achievements. More than once, though only Joan and he knew it, she had saved his skin from punishment, and she worshiped him with a frank admiration which was bound to win Mrs. Tregenza's regard. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... she made herself thoroughly ill through overwork, so ill that she had to give up Newnham altogether and go abroad with her stepmother. She made herself ill, as so many girls do in those university colleges, through the badness of her home and school training. She thought study must needs be a hard straining of the mind. She worried her work, she gave herself no leisure ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... marries again it won't be for Pansy's sake," Madame Merle replied. "She'll soon be sixteen, and after that she'll begin to need a husband rather than a stepmother." ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... creep into his bed. It is all like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when the earth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and they shall not be thankless, nor she a stepmother any more. ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... ample, and life was fenced about with protections for her "feelings." It filled young Benham with inexpressible indignations that his sweet own mother, so gay, so brightly cheerful that even her tears were stars, was never to be mentioned in his stepmother's presence, and it was not until he had fully come to years of reflection that he began to realize with what honesty, kindness and patience this naturally not very happy lady had nursed, protected, mended for and generally ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Gothland, who sent his son, Randwer, and one of his servants, Sibich, to escort the bride to his kingdom. Sibich was a traitor, and as part of a plan to compass the death of the royal family that he might claim the kingdom, he accused Randwer of having tried to win his young stepmother's affections. This accusation so roused the anger of Ermenrich that he ordered his son to be hanged, and Swanhild to be trampled to death under the feet of wild horses. The beauty of this daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun was such, however, that even the wild steeds could not be induced to harm her ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... eyes were clear grey, with dark lines round the iris, and her hair was the exact shade of one of her father's best English gold picture frames. She was a clever, capable girl, with a great love for music, and was beginning to play the violin rather well. She got on quite tolerably with her stepmother, and was fond of the little half-brothers and sisters, though the warmest corner of her heart was reserved for Madox, who was the baby of the elder ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... blind man. He has a cruel stepmother and a selfish, petulant younger brother. This boy, the pet of his parents, treated Shun with insolence; and the father and mother joined in persecuting the elder son. Shun, without showing resentment, cried aloud to Heaven and obtained ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... was evident in every word, look, and action. We were always hypocritically polite to her, called her chere maman, and noted that at first she was fond of calling herself stepmother, and that she plainly felt the unpleasantness of her position. Her disposition was very amiable and she was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... belong to his set or circle, and he felt out of place and embarrassed. He had not meant this: a mere afternoon of pleasant walking with Arabella, that was all he had meant. He did not stay longer than to speak to her stepmother, a simple, quiet woman without features or character; and bidding them all good night plunged with a sense of relief into the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... have discovered her affection, and then admiration on his part would have done the rest. It is, I own, much better as it is; his children will love her more, regarding her in the light of his sister and their aunt, than had she become their stepmother. But why did you seem so surprised at my prophecy, Nelly? Was there anything very impossible in ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... were Medon, and Podarkes resolute in war. Now the one, Medon, was the bastard son of noble Oileus, and brother of Aias, and he dwelt in Phylake, far from his own country, for that he had slain a man, the brother of his stepmother Eriopis, wife of Oileus. But the other, Podarkes, was the son of Iphiklos son of Phylakos, and they in their armour, in the van of the great-hearted Phthians, were defending the ships, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... its infancy found many powerful opponents, who, not understanding the nature of the newly-born babe, strove to strangle it. But the infant grew into a healthy child in spite of its cruel stepmother, and cried so loudly and talked so strangely that the world was forced to listen to its utterances. These were regarded with distrust and aversion by the theologians of the day, for they were supposed ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... middle finger, gave her a fierce fillip on the nose, and she had to swallow her tears and play on. Barty was almost wild with angry pity, but dissembled, for fear of making her worse enemies in her father and stepmother. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... most fiery personality that appeared in the ranks of the anarchists after the death of Bakounin. A cruel stepmother, a pitiless employer, a long sickness, and an operation which left his face deformed forever are some of the incidents of his unhappy childhood. He received a poor education, but read extensively, and as a bookbinder worked at his trade in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Switzerland. He ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... was now wellnigh run. The Princess Maya despaired of home. The earth seemed a harsh stepmother, and its children rather stones than clay. A vague sense of some fearful barrier between herself and her kind haunted the woman's soul within her, and the unquenchable flames of the Spark seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... is the very first sweetheart she has had. Well, as I am 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 always said; not a poor clodpole, like Tom there with the red waistcoat (he was one that asked ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... feeling, despised himself for it, struggled with it nay, internally yielded to it and cherished it, long before he suffered the slightest expression of it, by word, action, or look, to escape him. He watched Alice's docile obedient ways to her stepmother; the love which she had inspired in the rough Norah (roughened by the wear and tear of sorrow and years); but above all, he saw the wild, deep, passionate affection existing between her and her child. They spoke little to ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... I am perishing!" she said in French, dropping down before Orlov, and laying her head on his knees. "I am miserable, I am exhausted. I can't bear it, I can't bear it. . . . In my childhood my hateful, depraved stepmother, then my husband, now you . . . you! . . . You meet my mad love with coldness and irony. . . . And that horrible, insolent servant," she went on, sobbing. "Yes, yes, I see: I am not your wife nor your friend, but a ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... above the waters, and frightened the horses so that they ran away and dashed the chariot to pieces. Hippolytus was killed, but by Diana's assistance Aesculapius restored him to life. Diana removed Hippolytus from the power of his deluded father and false stepmother, and placed him in Italy under the protection ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... intimacy is.' But from Johnson's letter to Mrs Thrale we see looming ahead a crisis. 'He got two and forty guineas in fees while he was here. He has by his wife's persuasion and mine taken down a present for his mother-in-law,'—an error, doubtless, for 'stepmother.' He had entered himself this time at the Temple, and Johnson was his bond. He left to be in time for practice before the General Assembly, finding 'something low and coarse in such employment, but guineas must be had'—a feeling quite different from that of Lord Cockburn who thought ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... ungrateful temporary stepmother, France, did not know it, at least the waiters in the cafes, shopkeepers, and other people in the Latin Quarter were aware that Field and I were among the extremely small and select number of gentlemen who had operated at the barricades for the health of Freedom, and for some time we ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... had little schooling. He accompanied his sister Sarah [Footnote: This daughter of Thomas Lincoln is sometimes called Nancy and sometimes Sarah. She seems to have borne the former name during her mother's life-time, and to have taken her stepmother's name after Mr. Lincoln's second marriage.] to the only schools that existed in their neighborhood, one kept by Zachariah Riney, another by Caleb Hazel, where he learned his alphabet and a little more. But of all those advantages for the cultivation ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... in buttons. Fanny Russell, the Colonel's grown-up daughter by his first wife, looked sad enough over the prospect of her father's departure at his age, with his shattered constitution, and over what was to become of herself, left behind with the frivolous, unreasonable young stepmother with whom Fanny had never ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... 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 admitted ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... so she clung, weeping without stint, as a maiden all alone weeps, falling fondly on the neck of her hoary nurse, a maid who has now no others to care for her, but she drags on a weary life under a stepmother, who maltreats her continually with ever fresh insults, and as she weeps, her heart within her is bound fast with misery, nor can she sob forth all the groans that struggle for utterance; so without stint wept Alcimede straining her son in her arms, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... 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
... lived a short distance outside the town, and this was one of the first places they went to, although Easton did not think it likely she would go there, for she had not been on friendly terms with her stepmother, and as he had anticipated, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... This was Pittacus's reply to Myrsilus, and it was spoken in jest, quoth Thales; nor was it an old king I said I should marvel at, but an old pilot. In this mistake however, I am much of the youth's mind who, throwing a stone at a dog, hit his stepmother, adding, Not so bad. I therefore esteemed Solon a very wise and good man, when I understood he refused empire; and if Pittacus had not taken upon himself a monarchy, he had never exclaimed, O ye gods! how hard a matter it is to be good! And Periander, however ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Crowned Heads. "This year 1740," says he, "though the weather throughout Europe had been extraordinarily fine," or fine for a cold year, "had already witnessed several Deaths of Sovereigns: Pope Clement XII., Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, the Queen Dowager of Spain [Termagant's old stepmother, not Termagant's self by a great way]. But that was not enough: unfathomable Destiny ventured now on Imperial Heads (WAGTE SICH AUCH AN KAISER-KRONEN): Karl VI., namely, and Russia's great, Monarchess;"—an audacity ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... after the Frau Ahavzi had gone out, one of the little dogs who was treated by her in a very stepmother-like manner, but whose favor he had in a great degree gained by various acts of kindness, pulled him by his wide pantaloons, and acted as if he wanted Muck to follow him. Muck, who always gladly played with him, did so, and perceived that the dog ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... one hand in her pocket and fingered a silver coin, but poverty is a grim, tyrannous stepmother to tender aestheticism, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... "But her second husband might have misused the children." Might? So the guardian might, and that where they had no mother to protect them. Had the father been left a widower, he might have made a half-dozen successive marriages, have brought stepmother after stepmother to control these children, and no court could have interfered. The father is recognized before the law as the natural guardian of the children. The mother, even though she be left a widow, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... might have expected), on receiving such treatment. She had been used to that sort of thing, poor child. Before coming to the service of her little mistress, she had been brought up—(it would be more strictly correct to say that she had been kicked, and cuffed, and pinched, and battered up)—by a stepmother, whose chief delight was to pull out handfuls of her woolly hair, beat her nose flat, (which was adding insult to injury, for it was too flat by nature), and otherwise to maltreat her. When, therefore, Poopy received the slap referred ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... sort of agent at Southampton for business connected with the timber which was yearly cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and had only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of his stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in his sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though for the last few months Stephen ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... looking-glass that magnifies instead of in his ordinary mirror, he imagines that he is suddenly swollen and puffed with disease, and so is led lamenting to bed, leaving the coast clear for the nonce. Isabella, however, has made an assignation with Lodwick at the same time that her stepmother eagerly awaits her own gallant, and in the dark young Knowell is by mistake escorted to Lucia's chamber, whilst Wittmore encountering Isabella, and thinking her Lady Fancy, proceeds to act so amorously that the error is soon discovered and the girl flies ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... a singer of merit, a player on the harp, and a person of education. She certainly had no seraglio notions of wanting to be petted and pampered and taken care of, or she would not have assumed the office of stepmother to that big family and married a poor man. Bach never had time to make money. Very soon after their marriage Bach began to dictate music to his wife. A great many pieces can be seen in Leipzig and Berlin copied ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... but money was the only thing Gabriel's father cared for, and when the older brothers earned any they tried to keep it a secret from the father lest he should take it away from them. Gabriel had a stepmother, but she was a sorry woman, too full of care to be companionable. So he sought his comrades among the wild things in the woods, to get away ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... died we have had no good days; our stepmother beats us every day, and if we go near her she kicks us away; we have nothing to eat but hard crusts of bread left over; the dog under the table fares better; he gets a good piece every now and then. If our mother only knew, how she would pity us! Come, let us go together out into ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... afterwards came by that son's death to sole power as emperor. The worst character is given to Zeno by the national historians. His conduct was so vile, and his government so discredited by irruptions of the Huns on the Danube, and of Saracens in Mesopotamia, that his wife's stepmother Verina, the widow of Leo I., conspired against him, and was able to set her brother Basiliscus on the throne. Zeno took flight; Basiliscus was proclaimed emperor. He declared himself openly against the Catholic faith in favour of the Eutycheans. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... its weight in gold to him, namely, a young slave girl, who 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 faithfully as true woman ever loved man, and saved him and his from a hundred dangers. And the ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... breakfast, perhaps in anticipation of a sort of Roman holiday in which his usually late and apologetic stepmother would furnish the amusement. They were both surprised to find her there before them, looking uncommonly fresh in crisp, sheer white, with deep-toned violets ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the city of Alanchan, [53] capital of the kingdom of Lao, where they were kindly received by the king of the country. They found that Prauncar Langara, king of Camboja, and his elder son and daughter had died, and that only his son Prauncar survived, and the latter's stepmother, grandmother, and aunts. They related the condition of affairs in Camboja, the arrival of the Spaniards, and the death of the usurper Anacaparan. The same news was brought by a Cambodian from Chordemuco, who also added that since the death of Anacaparan, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... 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
... which long before the time of Cicero largely consisted of enfranchised slaves or their descendants; it was to this that Scipio Aemilianus alluded in his famous words to the contio he was addressing after his return from Numantia, "Silence, ye to whom Italy is but a stepmother" (Val. Max. 6. 2. 3). Had manumission been held in check or in some way superintended by the State, there would have been more good than harm in it. Many men of note, who had an influence on Roman culture, were libertini, such as Livius Andronicus and Caecilius ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... Our Stepmother! Yes, it was her, Her arms around us all— 'Cause Tom slid down the bannister And peeked in from the hall.— And we all love her, too, because She's purt ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... of animals, and an Irish Circe in the Rennes Dindsenchas called Dalb the Rough changed three men and their wives into swine by her spells.[1112] This power of transforming others is often described in the sagas. The children of Lir were changed to swans by their cruel stepmother; Saar, the mother of Oisin, became a fawn through the power of the Druid Fear Doirche when she rejected his love; and similarly Tuirrenn, mother of Oisin's hounds, was transformed into a stag-hound by the fairy mistress of her husband Iollann.[1113] In other instances in the sagas, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... exception, and I was one. I daresay I should have got over my nostalgia if I had treated it with contempt, and then I should not have wasted ten years of my life in the bosom of my cruel stepmother Venice. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... haunted eyes—a little boy, terrified and forsaken. "Oh, I have no right to soil you with it. But I came back to tell some one about it—I had to, I had to. I had to wait until father and Audrey went away. I knew they'd hate to see me—she was my stepmother, you know, and she always loathed me, and he never cared. In East Africa I used to stay awake at night thinking that I might die, and that no one in England would ever care—no one would know how I had loved her. It was worse than ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that he was going to see Lizzie Pye over at Avonlea, and I knew it was time to be stirring, if anything were to be done. If it had been Jane Miranda I don't know that I'd have bothered; but Lizzie Pye wouldn't have done for a stepmother for Althea's boys at all. She was too bad-tempered, and as mean as second ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... left his native hills of Connecticut, to sell clocks, first in the South and then in the lumber camps of Michigan. There, the business of Yankee pedlar having failed, he found himself stranded. His father was a prosperous farmer; but a stepmother ruled the household. So young Palmer hired out to a Michigan farmer, for he was one of those hardy New Englanders who ask no favors of fortune. Imagining a pretty frontier girl to be a sylvan goddess, with a Puritan's devotion he made love to her, only to be scorned for his modesty. But ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... 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
... her stepmother would have had her killed, but the Huntsman had spared her life, and how she had wandered about the Whole day until at last she ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... headquarters of the Jacobites. Probably for this reason Gibbon, whose father professed Jacobite opinions, belonged to it on coming to live in London (see his journal for November, 1762, and his letter to his stepmother, January 18, 1766: "The Cocoa Tree serves now and then to take off an idle hour"). Byron was ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... "I have brought you where none may hear what I wish to say to you. I am Mave, the daughter of the king of Erin. By the magic arts of my cruel stepmother I was changed into a trout, and cast into this lake a year and a day before the evening when you restored me to the waters the second time. If you had not done so the first night the otter brought me to you I should ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... thought he read too much. "It will spile him for work," he said. "He don't do half enough about the place, as it is, now, and books and papers ain't no good." But Abraham, with all his reading, did more work than his father any day; his stepmother, too, took his side and at last got her husband to let the boy read and study at home. "Abe was a good son to me," she said, many many years after, "and we took particular care when he was reading not to disturb him. We ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... would come, and somehow he would find a way of putting straight this hideous nightmare in which she found herself living. How happy, in comparison, had been her life in Belgium, in the household of her adopted father and stepmother! She could have found it in her heart to wish she had never left their roof; but that would have involved never making the acquaintance of David, a possibility she ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Leopold's grip: to all his urgencies the little Kaiser in red stockings answered only in evasions, refusals; and would quit nothing. We noticed also what quarrels the young Electoral Prince, Friedrich, afterwards King, had got into with his Stepmother; suddenly feeling poisoned after dinner, running to his Aunt at Cassel, coming back on treaty, and the like. These are two facts which the reader knows: and out of these two grew a third, which it ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 pale ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the parlor, her hand extended. The two other women in the big parlor remained motionless. They would be the sisters, Geraldine Varcek and Nelda Dunmore. Rand didn't wonder that they resented Gladys so bitterly; economic considerations aside, girls seldom enthuse over a stepmother so near their own age who is so ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... had once reigned paramount in the vicarage as universal pet. But he had been dethroned by Samuel, who now reigned in his stead. Samuel felt no triumph at that revolution; Francis no anger. But the nurse suffered the pangs of a baffled stepmother, and looked with novercal eyes of hatred and disgust upon little Sam that had stolen away the hearts of men and women from one that in her eyes was a thousand times his superior. In that last point nurse was not so entirely wrong, but that nine-tenths of the world (and therefore, we fear, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... daughter, who had not been in time to bid her father farewell, had not been in time to receive his blessing, after many years of anger, which had borne heavily on the head of the blameless young woman, was so evidently sincere, and produced such a deep impression on everyone, that her stepmother also ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Majesty and of our daughter. But it is from me that Your Imperial Majesty must receive the assurance of the many qualities of mind and heart that distinguish the latter. What might seem the exaggerated affection of a father cannot be suspected from the pen of a stepmother. Be sure, my brother, that my happiest days will be those that come to you in consequence of the alliance that is about to unite us. Accept the friendship and high esteem with which I am Your Imperial Majesty's ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the tongue of his stepmother, too active- minded not to indulge in freakish sports and experiments in life very astounding to commonplace minds, sometimes when in dire distress even helping himself to his unpaid allowance from his father's mails, and always with buoyant high ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cared to live there, and Mary doubtless stayed there as little as possible, feeling opprest by the recollections of her youth spent there with an indulgent father whom she had cruelly wronged, and a stepmother whom she had once loved with sisterly as well as filial affection, and from whom she had parted with passionate grief on her marriage, only nine years before. The Stone Gallery and the late apartments of the royal mistresses ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... they weren't much more than feathered. Biddy stepped right in and raised them, with thirteen of her own. Hers were well grown—Biddy always got down to business early in the spring, she was so forehanded. She raised the Plymouth Rocks fine, too! She was a born stepmother. Well, she got shut out one night, and froze her feet, and lost some good claws, too; but I knew she'd manage some way, and of course I did not let her set, because she could not scratch with these stumpy feet of hers. But she found a job all right! She stole chickens from the other ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... 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 disposal, thought himself of tremendous ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... give us pleasure by your coming," she said gently and at once. "My father wishes your advice as to the ordering of his library; and you know that my pretty stepmother likes you well." ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Nursing-mother—rather a Stepmother of the Stoniest sort—was this Sir Basil Hopwood, Knight and Alderman of London, that contracted with the Government to take us Transports abroad. Sure there never was a man, on this side the land of Horseleeches, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... as Barcelo was a Majorcan and the other an Ivizan all the honors and decorations were bestowed upon the former. If there were such a thing as justice the sea ought to swallow the haughty island, the stepmother of Iviza. Suddenly the old man recollected that Febrer was a Majorcan and he was ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... splendour; again all London steeples were musical with bells. A font of gold was presented for the christening. Francis, in compensation for his backslidings, had consented to be godfather; and the infant, who was soon to find her country so rude a stepmother, was received with all the outward signs of exulting welcome. To Catherine's friends the offspring of the rival marriage was not welcome, but was an object rather of bitter hatred; and the black cloud of a sister's jealousy gathered over the cradle whose innocent occupant had robbed ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... having once done so, it seems only reasonable to look up the members of my unlucky family and take care of them, and if possible put them through—not on the lines of a charitable institution, which must inevitably be a rather mechanical, stepmother kind of arrangement at best, but on the lines of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... she hoped our brilliant scholar, Mister Champneys, knew now what the boy got for his chestnuts. The class laughed as good scholars are expected to laugh on such occasions. Peter came to the conclusion that Herod, Nero, Bluebeard, and The Cruel Stepmother all probably began their bright careers ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Dumbiedikes, with his old laced hat and empty tobacco-pipe, came and enjoyed the beatific vision of Jeanie Deans day after day, week after week, year after year, without proposing to accomplish any of the prophecies of the stepmother. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "ye'd want mair ner the strength of men and pitchforks to stand again the like of that. Why, the water is as biting as a stepmother welcome on a winter's mornin' same ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... thought her stepmother had gone out to visit a neighbor, as she had said something about doing so earlier in the morning. Mr. Langmore had gone to the bank in town at nine o'clock and Margaret saw him come home about half-past ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... idleness (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. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... out of these troubles. He had been commissioned by an old lady of Leipzig, called Fraulein Leplay, a rich and very miserly old maid, to find a cheap lodging in Paris for her and for his stepmother, with whom she intended to travel. As our apartment, though not spacious, was larger than we actually needed, and had very quickly become a troublesome burden to us, we did not hesitate for a moment to let the larger portion of it to her for the time of her stay ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... mother died, Again with father to reside, Black shoes, clean knives, run far and wide? My Stepmother. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... in England: Canute, the Dane, when acknowledged King of England, married Emma, the widow of his predecessor, Ethelred. Ethelbald, King of Kent, married his stepmother, after the death of his father Ethelbert; and, as late as the ninth century, Ethelbald, King of the West Saxons, wedded Judith, the widow of his father. Such marriages are intelligible only if we suppose that the queen had the power of conferring the kingdom upon her consort, ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the group forbid certain unions in marriage. A man may not marry his mother, his stepmother, or a sister of either. He may not marry his daughter, stepdaughter, or adopted daughter. He may not marry his sister, or his brother's widow, or a first cousin by blood or adoption. Sexual intercourse between persons in the above relations is considered ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... from Lady Adelaide. But when, kneeling beside him, she bent her face as if the wind that sighed among the grass stalks could carry her words to ears long dulled in death,—"My POOR child! I will be a mother to your son!"—Jan's heart turned back with a gush of gratitude to his good stepmother. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... restraints to which they now found themselves subjected; and as to Carl, his easy tact, notwithstanding the independent position which he enjoyed in his home as salaried member of a coast commission, enabled him to keep on the best of terms with his imperious stepmother. His duties would detain him about home for another year, to be still feted by the town, and idolised by his sisters, who were never tired of speculating upon eligible ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... stepmother!" thought the girl swiftly. But she hoped he would not mention Janet; it ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... did Mr. Hastings 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
... children remained a constant subject of dissension. M. Dudevant was beginning to get into pecuniary difficulties in the management of his wife's estate. Sometimes he contemplated resigning it to her, and retiring to Gascony, to live with his widowed stepmother on the property which at her death would revert to him. But unfortunately he could not make up his mind to this course. No sooner had he drawn up an agreement consenting to a division of property, than he seemed to regret the sacrifice; upon which ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... roused himself and emerged from his self-absorption into a frank crossness which wore away but slowly. A motherless childhood when he was alternately teased and spoiled by his older sisters and brother had helped on the trouble, and not even the wisdom of his father and the devotion of his stepmother could cure the complaint. At his best, Allyn was the brightest and most winning of his family; at his worst, it was advisable to let him severely alone. In the whole wide world, only two persons could manage him in his refractory moods. One was his father; the other was his sister Theodora, ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray |
