"Step-" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but she had not done so and Mrs. Masters had more than once said that that kind of thing must be all over;—meaning that Mary was to drop her intimacy with high-born people that were of no real use. And then there was Mr. Twentyman and his suit. Mary had for some time felt that her step-mother intended her to understand that her only escape from home would be by becoming Mrs. Twentyman. "I don't think it will ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... hot and hard bumpe, or swelling, tearmed, a fellon" (Cotgrave). Another Latin name for it was tagax, "a felon on a man's finger" (Cooper), lit. thievish. One of its Spanish names is padrastro, lit. step-father. I am told that an "agnail" was formerly called a "step-mother" in Yorkshire. This is a good example of the semantic method in etymology ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... brutal way. It is even said that he hired assassins to murder two of his sons on their return from a journey to Spain. The story also relates that his cruelty to Beatrice was such that, with the aid of her step-mother and her brother, she killed him. At all events, these three were accused of this crime and were executed for it in 1599. Other accounts say that he was murdered by robbers, and his wife and children were made to appear as if guilty. Clement ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... set out for Clanranald's house, Saturday, June 21st, and at one of the fords was taken prisoner by a party of militia, she not having a passport. She demanded to whom they belonged? And finding by the answer that her step-father was then commander, she refused to give any answers till she should see their captain. So she and her servant, Neil MacKechan, were ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... anyone with such qualifications—young, docile, with every advantage of a modern education, speaking French like a native, and above and beyond all else, requiring no pay? It would be flying in the face of Providence to ignore such a chance. Wherefore Cecilia continued to lead her step-sisters and brother in the paths of learning, and life became a thing of utter weariness. For Mrs. Rainham, though shrewd enough to get what she wanted, in the main was not a far-sighted woman; and in her ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... of the lonely survivor also. Re-marriage is regarded by such people as a posthumous bigamy. There is certainly a very strong and logical case to be made out for a marriage bond that is indissoluble even by death. It banishes step-parents from the world. It confers a dignity of tragic inevitability upon the association of husband and wife, and makes a love approach the gravest, most momentous thing in life. It banishes for ever any dream of escape from the presence and service of either party, or of any ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... that behind her fan she could give way to her terrible anxieties about her little son, who might be crossing to France, and her husband, suffering from fearful nose-bleeding, and wellnigh alone among traitors and deserters, the step-daughter, on the other side of the great hearth, chattered away complacently to ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! the world, that cruel step-mother, beats the poor child the harder to make ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... he finally agreed to all the Clutching Hand said. Opening a trap door in the floor of the room in which they were standing, he led Bennett down a step-ladder into the subterranean chamber in which Tong Wah had so recently been preparing his mysterious potion. As Bennett sank into a chair and passed his hands over his brow in utter weariness, Long Sin poured into a cup some of the liquor of death which Tong Wah had mixed. He handed it ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... slain by Sikhandin. Ye kings, without doubt, my heart is made of adamant, for it does not break even at the disappearance of that son from my sight! At the Self choice at Kasi, he vanquished on a single car the assembled Kshatriyas and ravished the three princesses (for his step-brother Vichitravirya)! There was no one on earth that equalled him in might. Alas, my heart does not break upon hearing the slaughter of that son of mine by Sikhandin!' The puissant Krishna, hearing the goddess of the great river indulging in these lamentations consoled her with many ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... dynamo. How the current acts in a dynamo. Its force in a motor. Loss in power transmission. The four ways in which power is dissipated. Disadvantages of electric power. Its advantages. Transmission of energy. High voltages. The transformer. Step-down transformers. Electric furnaces. Welding by electricity. Merging the ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... upon marriage; had we been married under an equitable law or had he emigrated to Minnesota, as he proposed, before I thought of going, there would have been no separation; but after fifteen years in his mother's house I must run away or die, and leave my child to a step-mother. So I ran away. He thought I would return; enlarged and improved the house, wrote and waited for us; could make no deed without my signature; I would sign none, and after three years he got a ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... step-mother ... that won't matter ... it doesn't even concern her! I do as I please! I have my mother's fortune, you ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... wayfarers. It is, in fact, a neglected topic. Its derivatives are obscure, its facts doubtful. Questions spring from it, sucker-like, numberless, which none may answer. Why, for instance, in apportioning his gifts among his posterity, did Phoebus assign the laurel to his step-progeny, the sons of song, and pour the rest of the vegetable world into the pharmacopoeia of the favored AEsculapius? Why was even this wretched legacy divided in aftertimes with the children of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... cried On peut aller! with a lively satisfaction so completely shared by Mignot, that that worthy person was on the point of letting Renaud's blouse go, in order to indulge in gestures of delight. The step-cutting went on merrily after this announcement, and one by one we came to the arch and passed through, finding it rather a trough than an arch; the breadth was about 4 feet, and the height from 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 feet, and, as we pushed through, our breasts were pressed on to the ice, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... servants of his word, and that I had not fled like a hireling from his flock, but on the contrary, till datum shared sorrow and death with it. Whether she were able to walk five or ten miles a day; for that then we would beg our way to Hamburg, to my departed wife her step-brother, Martin Behring, who is a great merchant in ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... likeness, than the boys. One cannot so easily forecast their grown-up appearance. At times, during the day, they come in house with a rush, but say little, except to blurt out some (usually inaccurate) piece of news, or to tell their step-mother that: "Thic Jimmy's out to baych—I see'd 'en—playin' wi' some boys, an' he's got his boots an' ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... of time, become indifferent to the blandishments of him who daily for the last two months has been trying to convince me that I cannot reach the summum bonum of human happiness until I have invested four dollars in Perkins' patent automatic garden rake and step-ladder combination. The gentleman who has the smoke-consumer, the gentleman who deals in shrubbery, the gentleman who advocates lightning rods, and the other gentlemen who represent the tantamount interests of lawn statuary, fancy ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... others dwell in the vaults beneath, like rabbits in any warren. No one else hath lived there since Earl Robert's day, which belike was an hundred years agone. The story goeth that Earl Robert's brother—or step-brother—was murdered there, and some men say by the Earl himself. Sin that day it ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... room the latter placed the step-ladder near the cupboard and, taking down the bottle of beer, handed it to Linden with the remark, 'Get some of that acrost yer, matey; it'll ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... college, two weeks late for the beginning of his Senior year. There was much concern among his friends, for he had gone on a two months' hunting-trip into the wilds of Idaho, and had planned to return in time for college. I met him his first afternoon in Berkeley. He was on the top of a step-ladder, helping put up an awning for our sorority dance that evening, uttering his proverbial joyous banter to any one who came along, be it the man with the cakes, the sedate house-mother, fellow awning-hangers, or the ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... the one that settles their quarrels and puts terror into the evil-doer. Who was it that put the fear into Bill Plunkett when he blackened his wife's eyes, and who was it that brought in the two children from the Settlement, that were abused by their step-father, and took the old ruffian's guns away from him and marched him in too! That's a job for a second-rate doctor, isn't it? I hear the people talking about you, and I have to turn my back for fear they hear my eyes shouting out, 'That's my man you're ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... the man who threw a stone at a bitch, but hit his step-mother, on which he exclaimed, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... so that you won't think it is worse than it really was. It wasn't such an awful thing, and she was laughing more at her own smartness than at you. She said—she said you was the only man under the sun who had gone so far as to adopt a step-father-in-law. Now, that wasn't ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... the power of any man or any woman to "break" a child's "will." They may kill the child's body, in trying, like that still unhung clergyman in Western New York, who whipped his three-year-old son to death for refusing to repeat a prayer to his step-mother. ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... was an old lady and her three daughters who sat on the camp-stools by the step-ladder; the same fat old lady, bedizened with finery, and the same three young ladies, with strong features and dismal dresses, which the traveler encounters all over the Continent of Europe. The old lady was in a state of chronic agony lest the young ladies should be forcibly ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... has donned her mantle and hood, She is bound for shrift at St. Mary's Rood:— "Oh! the taper shall burn, and the bell shall toll, And the mass shall be said for my step-son's soul, And the tablet fair shall be hung on high, Orate pro anima ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Mary Polly Polwarne with her Nine Days' Wonder, and Amelia Trownce with the twins, and Deb Hicks with the child she christened Nonesuch, thinkin' 'twas out of the Bible; and William Spargo's second wife Maria with her step-child, and Catherine Nance with her splay-footed boy that I can never remember the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and more to become meaningless and conventional, and, in the chief school of dancing, purely technical. The Spanish school is still alive, reinforced by the North African, and in the main showing some tendency, often perfectly restrained, towards the indecent. Our own step-dancing remains popular, and for a while the hybrid skirt-dancing triumphed, chiefly because of the genius of Kate Vaughan and talent of her successors, one of whom, Katie Seymour, worked out a ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... mountain stream, that the revelation came. Skag was looking to see which was the business-end of his tooth-brush that morning when Cadman broke his sheath knife. The accident was a calamity, because Skag's was already worn out cutting step-way to climb out of khuds, and this was all they had left to ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... of the Wades when one morning the mail brought them a letter from Sharon, Illinois. Rose wrote that she was miserably unhappy with her step-mother. Could she live with them until she found a job? She had been to business college and was a dandy stenographer. Maybe Uncle Martin could help her get ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... only treasure, his drunken step-mother had deliberately pulled to pieces, scattering ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... Cypriano's village on the 28th, we found that his step-father had died after we had passed, and, according to the custom of the country, he had spent more than his patrimony in funeral orgies. He acted with his wonted kindness, though, unfortunately, drinking has got him so deeply in debt that he now ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... and shut himself up in grief in the great Jeronymite monastery. Elizabeth was praying for her step-son before the miraculous images of the same city. During the night of the 9th of May prayers went up for Don Carlos in all the churches of Toledo, Alcala, and Madrid. Alva stood all that night at the bed's foot. Don Garcia de Toledo sat in the arm-chair, where he had now sat night and day for more ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... revived, and she experienced a longing to return to her old home. Of course, there was joy before the angels and her brother Alan at the penitent's return. Being absolutely dependent for her creature comforts on her step-daughter, there was nothing for it but for Laura to accompany the invalid, and prepare to spend some of her time in the house of a rigid professor of a religion which her father had taught ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... and statesman subtle wiles ensure, The cit and polecat stink and are secure; Toads with their venom, doctors with their drug, The priest and hedgehog in their robes are snug. Oh, Nature! cruel step-mother and hard To thy poor naked, fenceless child, the bard! No horns but those by luckless Hymen worn, And those, alas! not Amalthaea's horn! With naked feelings, and with aching pride, He bears the unbroken blast on every side; Vampire booksellers ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... had tried to play with her little step-sister; but Philippina had chased her from the room. Once she turned against the enraged daughter of Jason Philip Schimmelweis, and said: "I'll tell ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... had been sent for safety to the sister of her dead mother in another county. When peace came, old Jasper married again and the girl refused to come home. Lately the step-mother, too, had passed away, and then she came back to live. All this the old miller told in answer to Rome's questions as the two walked away in the twilight. This was why he had not recognized her, and ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... as dangerous as himself. He brooded over what he considered his wrongs until he went a little mad. He lived only to avenge himself. At the first opportunity he was prepared to kill his father and his step-mother. Then, a few weeks ago, he learned that these two were coming to America and that on their way to Vancouver they would pass through Bleak House Station. He went completely mad then, and planned ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... own manager. If your crops do not pay, then Pancho Cueto is cheating you. He is capable of it. Get rid of him. But I didn't come here to talk about Esteban's hidden treasure, nor his plantations, nor Pancho Cueto. I came here to talk about your step-daughter, Rosa." ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... already claimed that with the use of currents of high voltage for carrying the power, and "step-down transformers" converting these into a suitable medium for the driving of machinery, a fairly economical transmission can be ensured along a distance of 100 miles. It therefore seems plain that the natural forces derived from such sources as waterfalls can safely be reckoned ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... lame ploughman, smiling and limping forward round the corner of the house; Trudie, the house girl, trying to pass him by; Johanna wildly dancing; Aunt Virginia, her hands up, calling to heaven from the red cavern of her mouth; Uncle Leviticus, her husband, Cornelius's step-father, holding the pawing steed; gladness on every face, and the mistress of Rosemont drawing from the horseman's arm to ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... secluded abode of happiness there were no cross old women, no cruel step-dames, no withered spinsters, no lovesick maidens, no sour old bachelors, no inattentive husbands, no melancholy young men, no blubbering youngsters, and no squalling brats. All was mirth, fun and high good humour. Blue devils, hypochondria, and doleful dumps, went and hid themselves ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... and buttoned cap," which he had by some means contrived to procure, he set out again on his forlorn journey, making for the nearest sea-port, Bristol, where the police were looking out to receive him. His choice of Bristol was peculiarly unlucky. The "chapman" of the town was the step-father of Cole, the Oxford proctor: to this person, whose name was Master Wilkyns, the proctor had written a special letter, in addition to the commissary's circular; and the family connection acting as a spur to his natural activity, a coast guard had been set before ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Munchausen's horse did not hang to the steeple by his bridle; that the beanstalk could not have supported a stout lad like Jack; that General Monk was not sent to Holland in a cage; that Remus and Romulus had not a devoted lady wolf for a step-mother; in fact, that loads of things, of which the most undeniable proof exists in plain print all over the world, never were done or never happened. Bessy was killed, Rely was killed later, Diana died in performing ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... contrast to Goethe," says Mr Baildon, "Stevenson was but little affected by his relations to women, and, when this point is fully gone into, it will probably be found that his mother and nurse in childhood, and his wife and step-daughter in later life, are about the only women who seriously influenced either his character ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... suddenly to understand that there was some reason for the question, and answered quite readily: "It belonged to my father's first wife, Barry, most of it. And it went to her daughters, my step-sisters, they are older than I ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams, Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch 205 Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 210 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... feelings towards France; and he was the brother-in-law of the Emperor of Russia, who had married his sister, and was at war with Napoleon. His other sister, Frederica Caroline, had married the Elector of Bavaria, and he was betrothed to the step-daughter of this Electress, the young Princess Augusta. They were said to be much attached to each other, but their plans of happiness were destined to be sacrificed to Napoleon's imperious will, for he proposed to arrange the matches of the German Princes as he did those of his own ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... could not say. There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... hm... yes... And meanwhile my daughter by my first wife has grown up; and what my daughter has had to put up with from her step-mother whilst she was growing up, I won't speak of. For, though Katerina Ivanovna is full of generous feelings, she is a spirited lady, irritable and short—tempered.... Yes. But it's no use going over that! Sonia, as you may well fancy, has had no education. I did make an effort four years ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... whether you would undertake to look over Borrow's Books and MSS., and I write his Step-daughter to that effect. But I hope you will find it not inconvenient or unpleasant so to do: and ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... a height. The few occasions on which I have climbed a step-ladder have always left me dizzy and weak in the knees. The top of the Washington monument is as impossible to me as the elevation of the presidential chair. And yet—I climbed out on to the Sunnyside roof without a second's hesitation. Like a dog on a scent, like my bearskin progenitor, ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... brother. Let us act the part of the cunning heir, who walks in the funeral procession with loud lamentations, laughing to himself the while, under the cover of his handkerchief. 'Tis true we may be troubled with a harsh step-mother. Be it so—we will let her scold, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the men there, as everywhere with us, were mostly slovens; and I was glad to find that the good taste and the correct fashion were without a colour-line; there were some mulatto ladies present as stylish as their white sisters, or step-sisters. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was larger than that of his step-daughter, but was as plainly furnished. A camp-bed, a small wooden shelf full of books, mostly of a technical character, an armchair beside the bed, a plain wooden chair against the wall, a round table, and a large ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... was Catherine Barton, Newton's step-niece. She married John Conduitt, master of the mint, who collected materials for a life ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the White Chief to blame?" said DuLuth to the blushing Winona. "The White Chief is blameless," she said, "but the heart of Winona will follow Wherever thy footsteps may lead, O blue-eyed brave Chief of the white men. For her mother sleeps long in the mound, and a step-mother rules in the teepee. And her father, once strong and renowned, is bent with the weight of his winters. No longer he handles the spear, —no longer his swift, humming arrows Overtake the fleet feet ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... durin' de war. After freedom, mammy marry a ugly, no 'count nigger name Mills Douglas. She had one child by him, name Janie. My mammy name her dat out of memory and love for old mistress, in slavery time. I run away from de home of my step-pappy and got work wid Major Thomas Brice. I work for him 'til I become a full grown man and come to be de driver of de ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... stick as you passed by, and that even when weighed down by its summer greenery would bemock you if you made a casual clutch at its foliage, and laugh at you in its leaves. I went inside and returned with a step-ladder and an umbrella and a carving-knife, and I stood on the summit of the ladder and made abortive slashes at space with my right hand, while the open umbrella in my left made equally abortive efforts to soar with me skywards. After nearly stabbing the partner of my bosom I went in, both of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... place at the head of the household, and was hard on everybody, but more especially on her son's wife and her little girl. If there had been children, she might have been different; but she almost resented her son's warm affection for his little step-daughter. At any rate she was determined that little Emily should be brought up as children used to be brought up when she was young, and not spoiled by over-indulgence as her mother had been; and the process was not a pleasant one to any ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... price. Harrod kept on buying all around Clinch and posted trespass notices. That meant ruin to Clinch. He was walled in. No hunters care to be restricted. Clinch's little property was no good. Business stopped. His step-daughter's education became expensive. He as in a bad way. Harrod offered him a high price. But Clinch turned ugly and wouldn't budge. And that's how ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... and I saw by Bob's looks that he was not at all behind me in the outflow of his sympathy. I had read stories enough about "awful step-mothers" to form an idea of Kate's situation, though I had no prejudices against step-mothers, as such. Bob Hale's father had married a second wife, but Bob and his sister would never have known from her treatment of them, that she ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... His deathbed was placid and resigned, and comforted by those religious hopes which he had so often suggested to others, and the value of which he is said, in an anecdote of doubtful authority, to have now inculcated in a parting interview with his step-son. He died at Holland House on the 17th of June 1719, six weeks after having completed his 47th year. His body, after lying in state, was interred in the Poets' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her at Cadiz a few months ago," said Ashby. "Her father had been a merchant there, and had died about a year before. She was there with her step-mother, who took no particular care of her—a miserable beast of a woman. She was in correspondence with her sister in England, a Mrs. Russell, whom she kept urging to come on and take Katie away from Spain. This Mrs. Westlotorn had induced her husband before his death to ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Lulu cried, throwing her arm round her young step-mother's neck, and bursting into tears, "is baby still getting better? and will you forgive me? I am, ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... little interval during which Mrs. Wilberforce was occupied with her tea. She was cold and damp, and the steaming cup was pleasant to see; but she was not to be kept in silence even by this much-needed refreshment. "I should think," she resumed, "that the boy would be the chief difficulty. A step-mother is a difficult position; but a step-father, and one ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... in short, which, combined, realise the ideal of beauty, were fully hers. I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature: I admired her with my whole heart. Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood; and, forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of struggle! Narrow means, Discouragement, the haunting fear of debt! One summer day, a day reminding her Of days supremely beautiful, immortal, (Since hallowed by undying love and joy), A little girl, the step-child, much endeared, Of a poor artisan who dwelt near by On the same floor with Linda, came to her And said: "You promised me, Miss Percival, That some fine day you'd take me in the cars Where I could see the grass and pluck the flowers." "Well, Rachel Aiken, we will go to-day, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... so it's called. 'Tis Turlogh owns Castleroe, but 'tis my Lady of Cantire owns Turlogh. He durst not bless himself if she forbid. She wants no English step-daughters, I warrant ye; or if she do, 'twill be to buy and sell with, and further her own greedy plans. I know my Lady; and I know how it will fare with my sweet maid. I tell thee, Master Humphrey, Turlogh, brave lad as he was, must now ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we step on it!—Let the Hero rest. It was not to men's judgment that he appealed: nor have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... he do—the father who had just given his children a new mother, they being old enough not only to understand this, but previously taught; as most people are so fatally ready to teach children, the usual doctrine about step-mothers, and also quite ready ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... rank shrubs. For a long way there was no house except Sylvia Crane's. There was one cellar where a house had stood before Barney could remember. There were a few old blackened chimney-bricks still there, the step-stone worn by dead and forgotten feet, and the old lilac-bushes that had grown against the front windows. Two poplar-trees, too, stood where the front yard had met the road, casting long shadows like men. Sylvia Crane's house was just beyond, and Barney ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... riches are always the mark of envy. But if the heiress is married to a good Catholic and loyal subject of the king, who can cavil at rights sanctified by the laws of God and man? Think it over, my dear Adrian, think it over. Step-mother or wife—you ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... return from Cambridge his wife died, leaving him a man of a narrow, unsettled estate, and—having buried five—the careful father of seven children then living, to whom he gave a voluntary assurance never to bring them under the subjection of a step-mother; which promise he kept most faithfully, burying with his tears all his earthly joys in his most dear and deserving wife's grave, and betook himself to a most retired and ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... to this prostitute every favor that she could desire, (and money must be the natural object of such a person,) Mr. Hastings deposes the Nabob's own mother, turns her out of the employment, and puts at the head of the seraglio this prostitute, who at the best, in relation to him, could only be a step-mother. If you heard no more, do your Lordships want anything further to convince you that this must be a violent, atrocious, and corrupt act,—suppose it had gone no further than the seraglio? But when I call ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... recommended to him to give up the Saxon princess, and connect himself, instead, with the Franks, as he himself had done. The prince entered into these views; his father died, and he immediately afterward married his father's youthful widow—his own step-mother—a union which, however monstrous it would be regarded in our day, seems not to have been considered any ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Rebecca's sister's second husband with his new wife an' their little boy, an' Uncle Jason an' his stepson, the one that has fits, an' Cousin Sally Simmons an' her daughter, an' the four little Riley children an' their Aunt Lucretia, an' Step-cousin Betsey Skiles with her two nieces, though I misdoubt their comin' this year. The youngest niece had typhoid fever here last Summer for eight weeks, an' Betsey thinks the location ain't healthy, in spite of it's bein' so near the sanitarium. She was threatenin' ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... temptation. She was drawn towards evil by her lust." Alas! in the wretchedness, the hunger of those days, nothing of that kind could have ruffled her even into a hellish rage. An amorous woman, jealous and forsaken, a child hunted out by her step-mother, a mother beaten by her son (old subjects these of story), if such as they were ever tempted to call upon the Evil Spirit, yet all this would make no Witch. These poor creatures may have called on Satan, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... step-daughter had a needle in her bosom, but when she threw it on the floor, it fell into a crack, and we couldn't find it ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... sight of his wife's tomb, Mr. Mill was also frequently in London, whither he came especially to facilitate the new course of philosophical and political writing on which he entered. He found relief also in excursions, one of which was taken nearly every year, in company with his step-daughter, Miss Helen Taylor, into various parts of Europe. Italy, Switzerland, and many other districts, were explored, partly on foot, with a keen eye both to the natural features of the localities, especially in furtherance of those botanical studies to which Mr. Mill now returned with the ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... Phoebe R. Lamborne, West Liberty; photograph-album, Viola J. Angie, Spencer; step-ladder, Mrs. Mary J. Gartrell, Des Moines; baking-powder can with measure combined, Mrs. Lillie Raymond, Osceola; egg-stand, Mrs. M. E. Tisdale, Cedar Rapids; egg-beater, and self-feeding griddle-greaser, Mrs. Eugenia Kilborn, Cedar Rapids; tooth-pick holder, Mrs. Ayers, Clinton; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Taira family through Ota Chikazane, a great-grandson of Taira Kiyomori. The father of Chikazane had perished in the wars between the Taira and Minamoto families, and his mother had married as her second husband the chief man in the village of Tsuda in the province of Omi. The step-child was adopted by a Shinto priest of the village of Ota in the province of Echizen, and received the name of Ota Chikazane. When he grew up, he became a Shinto priest and married and became the father of a line of priests. One of this succession was Ota Nobuhide, who ...
— Japan • David Murray
... haven't told you half," sez she. "All of my sisters but one had trouble with their husbands. Robert's step-ma wuz the only one who had a good husband, but he died before they'd been married a year, and she follered him in six months, leaving twins, who died also, and I took Robert, to whom I had got attached, to the boarding-house, and took care on him until he wuz sent away to school ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... I were dead," said Elinor, "but, mother, everything that Tage has said is true, and it never can be right that at our age you should give us a step-father." ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... opinions, and was a Puritan in religious faith. Oliver Cromwell was his model of a statesman, and Praise-God Barebones his type of a Christian. While he was a boy his father married a second time, and, as is very frequently the case, there was no harmony between the step-mother and step-son. Their jarrings soon ripened into open war. To avoid expulsion from the paternal roof he "bundled and went." Nor did he rest until, in the heart of the Cherokee nation of Indians, he found ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... more. One to wait, like a poor mewling baby, till Fate save or ruin him; the other to take his troubles in his hand, and to perish or be saved at once. It is no point of morals; both are wrong. Either way this step-child of Providence must fall; which shall he choose, by doing ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she's right! Wait until I get the step-ladder from the kitchen." Rupert was gone almost before he ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... dancing to the prattle and laughter, a bright child, never stupidly weary. At times his very happiness would seem to her like a menace of misfortune to come. Was there not with herself the curse of that unsisterly action? and not far from him, the terrible danger of the father's, the step-mother's jealousy, the mockery of those half- brothers to come? Ah! how perilous for happiness the sensibilities which make him so exquisitely happy now! Before they started on their dreadful visit to ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... saw Carl Switzer, the German comedian, climbing a high step-ladder with a pail of paste in one hand, and a roll of wall paper in the other. He was in a scene representing a room, which ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... been having some sick spells lately, snapped three or four ribs out of place several years ago, and was in bed for six weeks after my wife died ten year ago. But my step-daughter here nursed me through it. Doctor says he doesn't see how I keep on living. But they take good care of me, my sons and step-daughter. They live here with me, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Then he brought a step-ladder, and filled a little basket with pears. "They'll ripen nicely in your drawer," he said, "and I shouldn't wonder if you found 'em kind of nourishing to your soul as well as body, now you ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... enquired for refreshment, the Count, attended by his son, went to look over some part of the chateau, and Lady Blanche reluctantly remained to witness the discontent and ill-humour of her step-mother. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... concerning his ancestry, see vol. i.; sensitive regarding it; his own statements; anxious to appear of respectable stock; his genealogy as established later; his reputed illegitimacy; his birth; his references to his mother; his childhood; befriended by his step-mother; his education; early reading; early attempts at humorous writing; storytelling; youthful exploits; let out by his father; helps his father settle in Sangamon County, Ill.; works for himself; his trip to New Orleans for Offut; impressed with slavery; in Offut's store; fights ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... "moody man," let it be always remembered, was a good husband and father. His wife was devoted to him, his step-daughter carries now to an old age a profound reverence and affection for his memory. Grieved beyond all words was she—the Henrietta or "Hen" of all his books—at what is maintained to be the utterly fictitious narrative ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... left to the care of ignorant and selfish relatives, who intermeddled, and often in the child's hearing, with a significant nod of the head, would utter the piteous inuendo, "Who knows how soon the poor thing may have a step-mother!" ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... could not even sweep a room and be just Elizabeth Bruce. Saturdays usually found her in imagination Cinderella; and consequently harsh words from Dorothea, who in her eyes was a cruel step-sister, would have found more favour with her than ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... of Sir Stephen Rusport, a City knight, and step-mother of Charlotte Rusport. Very proud, very mean, very dogmatical, and very vain. Without one spark of generosity or loving charity in her composition. She bribes her lawyer to destroy a will, but is thwarted in her dishonesty. Lady ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to keep at work, for the local was in the hole nearly three hundred dollars for to-night's affair, and it must succeed, even though half the civilized world had gone suddenly insane. So Jimmie continued to climb step-ladders and tie bunting. ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... upon the sun-smitten waves and violet-shadowed hills that we behold to-day; here in this embrasure, long despoiled of its marble seat, must have brooded the fierce and unscrupulous Sigilgaita, thinking of how best to rid herself of her step-son Bohemond, in order that her own children might inherit their father's realms. The ghosts of princes and popes are around us, yet the only living inhabitant of the roofless castle is the ragged little goat-herd, whose unsavoury charges are cropping ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... we supposed that, if he thought of it, he would probably take the desired step-at least, that he might be led to do so. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... with artistic elegance. He was something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-mother, always reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face as compared with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheecked, jaunty young author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight. I took the leaves ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and his anger was kindled against Roland insomuch that the expression of his countenance changed in sight of all. He arose from the ground and throwing the mantle of sable fur from his neck, said fiercely to Roland, "Men know full well that I am thy step-father, and that there is no love between us; but thou art a fool thus openly to show thy malice. If God but give me to return alive, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... This Ascanius, wheresoever and of whatever mother born, (it is at least certain that he was the son of AEneas,) Lavinium being overstocked with inhabitants, left that flourishing and, considering these times, wealthy city to his mother or step-mother, and built for himself a new one at the foot of Mount Alba, which, being extended on the ridge of a hill, was, from its situation, called Longa Alba. Between the founding of Lavinium and the transplanting ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... who says that this doctrine was "justified by all the people," gives full particulars of another instance. Among the Danish converts in Utah was Rosmos Anderson, whose wife had been a widow with a grown daughter. Anderson desired to marry his step-daughter also, and she was quite willing; but a member of the Bishop's council wanted the girl for his wife, and he was influential enough to prevent Anderson from getting the necessary consent from the head of the church. Knowing the professed ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... "When the storm first came on, several of the passengers came up the hatchways and got up on the deck to see it; and then we could not get down again, for the ship gave a sudden pitch just after we came up, and knocked away the step-ladder. We were terribly frightened. The seas were breaking over the forecastle and sweeping along the decks, and the shouts and outcries of the captain and the sailors made a dreadful din. At last they put the step-ladder in its place again, and we got down. Then ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... venerable abuses consisted of Hindoos praying to their own three-legged stools, and keeping sacred monkeys in honour of the ape Hanyuman, it was a question whether one could be a Christian oneself, and suffer it undisturbed. It was coming it too strong, when I was requested to lend my own step-ladder for the convenience of an exhibition of a devotee swinging on hooks in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... 'expressed his extreme aversion to his father's second marriage.' Letters of Boswell, p. 255—On Sept. 2, 1775, he thus described his step-mother:—'His wife, whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don't know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost exertion ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... year 1672 his great-grandson, Peter, the son of another Feodor, was born. When the child was ten years old, his step-sister Sophia took possession of the Russian throne. The little boy was allowed to spend his days in the suburbs of the national capital, where the foreigners lived. Surrounded by Scotch barkeepers, Dutch traders, Swiss apothecaries, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... waiting? Besides, they don't really care—except for the sake of showing authority and proving to girls that they ought to be contented slaves. They know now that I am no slave. I do believe my esteemed step-father—or step-stepfather, if there is such a word—would consent to emancipate me if he could do so with the proper ceremonial—the slap on ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... with the Apaches, which culminated in the Peck raid of April 27, 1886, when Apaches jumped his ranch, killed his wife and a man named Charles Owens and carried off Peck's niece. Apparently satisfied with this, they turned Peck loose, after burning the ranch house. The unfortunate man's step-niece was found some six weeks later by Mexican cowpunchers in the Cocoapi ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... midnight, called upon to enter his defence against a capital charge of treason. You will readily excuse my referring to the arts by which the son was rendered guilty in the eyes of the father. Be it enough to say, that the unfortunate young man fell a victim to the guilt of his step-mother, Fausta, and that he disdained to exculpate himself from a charge so gross and so erroneous. It is said, that the anger of the Emperor was kept up against his son by the sycophants who called upon ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... year the people of each region meet one another on Evolution day, in the regionic capital; once in four years they all visit the national capital. There is no danger of the decay of patriotism among us; our country is our mother, and we love her as it is impossible to love the step-mother that a competitive or monopolistic nation must be ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... Cairo. He is going to make them the fashion in America, next year. Yes, Madame Rechid Bey is a most explosive protegee for a girl to have, on her way to Egypt. I'm not sure even I am not innocuous by comparison; though I do wish you hadn't reminded me of my poor little step-daughter Esme, in her convent-school. If any one should get the idea that Monny—but I won't put it in words! Besides me, and the brand-new bride of Rechid Bey ('Wretched Bey' is our name for him), there's ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... our arrival at the city, we met an ambassador, whom the usurping king, Anacaparan, had sent from Camboja, in order that he might reach Lanchan before we did, and see what was going on there. He feigned excuse and pretext of asking for the old queen, who was the step-mother of the dead king Prauncar, and whom Anacaparan claimed to be his father's sister. The king of Lao was sending her, but at our arrival, and on our assuring him of Anacaparan's death, he ordered her to return, and the ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga |
