"Mother-in-law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw (for his occupation took him often from home, which was rendered too hot for comfort, by the temper of his mother-in-law), was invariably kind to me. When he came in from the stables he would tell me funny stories, and sing me jolly hunting songs; and what I liked still better, would give me a ride before him on the fine hunters he had under his care: promising that when I was ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... father-in-law, "Go home and look for your mother-in-law; if she is asleep, then go into the taboo temple; if you see a gourd plaited with straw and feathers mounted on the edge of the cover, that is the gourd. Do not be afraid of the great birds that stand on either side of the gourd, they are not real birds, only wooden birds; they are ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... I am the victim of the most absurd and annoying mistake. I have been arrested for Schirmer, the betting man who murdered his mother-in-law and escaped from Paris yesterday. They will not let me communicate with any one till tomorrow morning and I have had great trouble in getting this line to you. For heaven's sake bring Schreiermeyer and anybody else you can find, to identify me, as soon as possible. I am locked up ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... vengeance of Balder is more clearly given by the Dane, and with a comic force that recalls the Aristophanic fun of Loka-senna. It appears that the story had a sequel which only Saxo gives. Woden had the giantess Angrbode, who stole Freya, punished. Frey, whose mother-in-law she was, took up her quarrel, and accusing Woden of sorcery and dressing up like a woman to betray Wrind, got him banished. While in exile Wuldor takes Woden's place and name, and Woden lives on earth, part of the time at least, with Scathe Thiasse's ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... do no such thing as pay you," said Madam Black-and-White in a surprisingly clear, resolute, authoritative voice. "If you haven't any shame for yourself, Robert Chapman, you've got a mother-in-law who can be ashamed for you. No strangers shall be charged for food or lodging in any house where Mrs. Matilda Pitman lives. Remember that I've come down in the world, but I haven't forgot all decency for all that. I knew you was a skinflint when Amelia married you and you've made her as bad as ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... etiquette to be practised after marriage among both the Kowraregas and Gudangs, a man must carefully avoid speaking to or even mentioning the name of his mother-in-law, and his wife acts similarly with regard to her father-in-law. Thus the mother of a person called Nuki—which means water—is obliged to call water by another name; in like manner as the names of the dead are never mentioned ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... make her happy. Had his wife told him to lie down whilst she drove a carriage-wheel across his neck, Mr. Hartley would have unhesitatingly obeyed her; how readily, then, he set about finding what most men are so glad to be without, viz., a mother-in-law, can easily be imagined. He promised his wife that so soon as business permitted him he would take steps to discover her mother's whereabouts, but that night he was awakened out of a deep sleep ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Richard Frazer came to the funeral; Violet was unable to do so; he represented her and supported his mother-in-law too. The banker, Mr. Ponsonby, also made the tedious journey to Halgrave; he came out of respect for death in the abstract, and also because he expected affairs would want looking to, and it would suit him better to do it now than later. These two with Johnny, Julia and her mother, were the ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... his castle in that city, who had a fancy to consult the young prophetess, sorceress—who could tell what she was?—on the subject apparently of his illness. He was the son of Queen Yolande of Anjou, who was mother-in-law to Charles VII., and it would no doubt be thought of some importance to secure his good opinion. Jeanne gave the exalted patient no light on the subject of his health, but only the (probably unpleasing) advice to flee from the wrath of God and to be reconciled with his wife, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... her cushion; then came her gentlewoman; a little pack of spaniels barking and frisking about preceded the austere huntress—then, behold, the viscountess herself "dropping odours". Esmond recollected from his childhood that rich aroma of musk which his mother-in-law (for she may be called so) exhaled. As the sky grows redder and redder towards sunset, so, in the decline of her years, the cheeks of my lady dowager blushed more deeply. Her face was illuminated with vermilion, which appeared the brighter from the white paint employed ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your name, I guess I might as well tell you mine, hey? Conne is my name—Carleton Conne. Sounds like a detective in a story, don't it? My great-great-grandfather's mother-in-law on my sister's side was German. I'm trying to live ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... perversity of reason! At some period before his marriage, it not unfrequently happens that a man actually is fond of his mother-in-law! At this time our good General vowed, and with some reason, that he was jealous. Mrs. Lambert made much more of George than of any other person in the family. She dressed up Theo to the utmost advantage in order to meet him; she was for ever caressing her, and appealing to her when ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more important to her. Was her girl to become the wife of a young lord,—to be a future countess? Was she destined to be the mother-in-law of an earl? Of course this was much more important to her. And then through it all,—being as she was a dear, good, Christian, motherly woman,—she was well aware that there was something, in truth, much more ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... was Martha, the eldest,— Soon set me to work Like a slave for her pleasure. And Father-in-law too One had to look after, Or else all his clothes To redeem from the tavern. 90 In all that one did There was need to be careful, Or Mother-in-law's Superstitions were troubled (One never could please her). Well, some superstitions Of course may be right; But they're most of them evil. And one day it happened That Mother-in-law 100 Murmured low to her husband That corn which is stolen Grows faster and better. So Father-in-law ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... insinuated. The apothecary had been an apprentice to the London apothecary who attended me; he had seen me often at the time I was at the worst; he had heard the reports too, and he had heard opinions of medical men, and he was brought to assert whatever his future mother-in-law pleased, for he was much in love with the young girl. This combination was formed about the period when I first became attached to Miss Montenero: the last stroke had been given at the time when Mr. Montenero and ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Scotch song; it's always running in my head. 'The prince shall hae his ain again!' Well, but, you know, Morton, he didn't get his ain again; so I've heard nurse Bertha say. She's a wise woman, your mother-in-law, and my good cousin, too. Well, well; there are ups and downs in this life. All don't get their ain, that's poz; if they did, another'd be sitting on George's throne; but that's treason, ye ken; and another'd be ruling in Wardhill's room, but that's treason, too; so I'd better be holding ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... tell his name if he can avoid it. He believes that if he should speak his name, he would be unfortunate in all his undertakings. It was considered a gross breach of propriety for a man to meet his mother-in-law, and if by any mischance he did so, or what was worse, if he spoke to her, she demanded a very heavy payment, which he was obliged to make. The mother-in-law was equally anxious to avoid meeting ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... I have a sute to you: I am this night bidden foorth to supper, you shall be my guest, onely I will crave so much favour, as after supper for a pleasant sporte, to make relation what successe you have had in your loves. For that I will not sticke, quoth he, and so he conveyed Lionello to his mother-in-law's house with him, and discovered to his wive's brethren who he was, and how at supper he would disclose the whole matter; For, quoth he, he knowes not that I am Margaret's husband. At this all the brethren bad him welcome, and so did the mother to, and Margaret, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... to unite them more closely. Then laying aside his professional tone and manner, he said with a satisfied air: "Well, now, that's done. Believe me, that is the best thing to do." The two hands, joined for a moment, separated immediately. Julien, not daring to kiss Jeanne, kissed his mother-in-law on the forehead, turned on his heel, took the arm of the baron, who acquiesced, happy at heart that the thing had been settled thus, and they went out ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... I only wanted to send my mother-in-law, knowing that the house must take fire some night. However, I'll read the play to her instead; if she ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... promised coronet vanished. She afterwards married Sir William Leman, and was forgotten before her reign had transpired beyond the confines of Westminster! (70) Her names were Sophia Dorothea ; but I call her by the latter, to distinguish her from the Princess Sophia, her mother-in-law, on whom the crown of Great Britain was settled. (71) Konigsmark behaved with great intrepidity, and was wounded at a bull-feast in Spain. See Letters from Spain of the Contesse D'Anois, vol. ii. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Master Stanhope came seeking the bird that had flown," twitted Radisson's mother-in-law. "Faugh—faugh—to have had the bird in his hand and to let it go! But—ta-ta!" she laughed, tapping my arm with her fan, "some one else is here who keeps asking and asking for Master Stanhope. Boy," she ordered, "tell thy ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... was being deceived by her lover were not things which would put her in the right frame of mind for a place dedicated to enjoyment; she had, however, to remain where she was and later go to supper in the company of the Duchess de Montpensier, her mother-in-law. ...
— The Princess of Montpensier • Madame de La Fayette
... uttered their passion. I heard one who had married Mr. Patrick's sister's daughter report to Mr. Douglas, that Mr. Hugh Binning, with Mr. Patrick, in Kirkaldy, had spoke like a distracted man, saying to Mr. Douglas's own wife, and the young man himself, and his mother-in-law, Mr. Patrick's sister, 'that the commission of the kirk would approve nothing that was right; that a hypocrite ought not to reign over us; that we ought to treat with Cromwell and give him security ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... "that will be splendid! I like Mrs. Leland. At one time, do you know, I rather fancied she might become my step-mother, now it seems I shall have to greet her as a mother-in-law. She was bound to come into the family one way or another. When ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... I am, and my heavy head Clings to the pillow; But out in the passage My Mother-in-law Begins ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... His mother-in-law having been taken ill on Saturday, the 14th of November, he went on foot from Smithembottom to Town, a walk of five hours, in order to avoid breaking one of the commandments, by riding in a carriage on the Sabbath. Unfortunately on his arrival, he found she had already expired. Prompted by religious ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... would be glad to see me. I certainly should have been glad to see him, if he was anything like those guests of his who had so ingenuously cultivated me in a far land of strangers, where a man might have been glad to form the acquaintance of his mother-in-law. This is not the way people form acquaintances in New York; but if I had wanted that, why not have stayed there? As a cosmopolite, and on general principles of being, I prefer the Dalles way. I have no doubt I should have found in that circle of spontaneous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the female line; for example, sisters have great privileges; all the horses that a young man steals or captures in war are brought by him to his sister. He can demand from his sister any object in her possession, even the clothing which she is wearing, and he receives it immediately. The mother-in-law never speaks to her son-in-law, unless on his return from war he bring her the scalp and gun of a slain foe, in which event she is at liberty from that moment to converse with him. This custom is found, says Maximilian, among the Hidatsa, but not among the Crow and Arikara. While the Dakota, ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... Member replied that the pig-faced lady was his mother-in-law, and that he trusted the President would not violate the sanctity ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... not the accomplice. The leathern fragments now produced by Mr. Shapira were, as he alleges, obtained by him from certain Arabs near Dibon, the neighborhood where the Moabite stone was discovered. The agent employed by him in their purchase was an Arab "who would steal his mother-in-law for a few piastres," and who would probably be even less scrupulous about a few blackened slips of ancient or modern sheepskin. The value placed by Mr. Shapira on the fragments is, however, a cool million sterling, and at this price ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Love is a most beautiful thing, and it does not seem to make very much difference who supplies it. Stepmother-love, Lincoln used to say, was the most precious thing that had ever come his way. I know a man who loves his mother-in-law, because she pitied him. Our Oneida friends had "Community Mothers," who took care of everybody's babies, just as if they were their own, and with marked success, for the genus hoodlum never evolved at Oneida. Grandmother-love served all purposes for little ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the door, because I was frightened and dreaded the worst. Then there were reconciliations, the consequences of which were only to increase the miserable nervous tension in our home. One day I had to put my mother-in-law out of the house as a way of securing peace. Even my wife realised that it was necessary to do it. We loved each other, and in spite of all that happened, we both had the best intentions. We have three children, Albrecht, Bernhard and Annemarie. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... to grow on a bald head and give courage to a henpecked husband. A girl who has been whipped by her mother mutters to herself how she would love and serve a husband if she only had one, even going to the extent of calling that much-despised mother-in-law her mother, and when overheard by her irate parent and asked what she was ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on the falling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct your destination! I once walked outside of London, making my start at Dorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law had once lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hour of his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquis of Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pestered with the Reverend Mr. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... unintentionally aggravated this fatal disposition. She was observed to eclipse her mother-in-law by the superior magnificence of her costume: if Napoleon required more reserve, she resisted, and even wept, till the emperor, either through affection, fatigue, or absence of mind, was induced to give way. It is also asserted that notwithstanding ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... another family to which she also belonged, and a far-off individual who stood to her in the nominal relation of husband. But it did not please her Ladyship to remember any such thing. She liked queening it in her father's palace; and she did not like the prospect of yielding precedence to her mother-in-law, which would have been a necessity of her married life. As to the Lord Le Despenser, she was absolutely indifferent to him. Her childish feeling of contempt had not been replaced by any kindlier one. It was not that she disliked ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... that she had earned it somehow. And, when she next returned to her place, Mrs. Gibson greeted her with soft words and a gracious smile; for it does not require much reasoning power to discover that if it is a very fine thing to be mother-in-law to a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw, it presupposes that the wife who makes the connection between the two parties is in harmony with her mother. And so far had Mrs. Gibson's thoughts wandered into futurity. She only ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... State[384] before you deliver it to her, and you will observe that there is a fund of hers (I don't mention that of five hundred Scots a-year); as the interest of my mother-in-law's portion in the Countess of Errol's hands, with, I believe, a considerable arrear upon it; which, as I have ordered a copy of all these papers to that Countess, I did not care to put in. There is another thing of a good deal of moment, which I mention ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Jonas, who probably was dead at the period when Jesus came to stay on the borders of the lake. These two brothers were Simon, surnamed Cephas or Peter, and Andrew. Born at Bethsaida,[1] they were established at Capernaum when Jesus commenced his public life. Peter was married and had children; his mother-in-law lived with him.[2] Jesus loved this house and dwelt there habitually.[3] Andrew appears to have been a disciple of John the Baptist, and Jesus had perhaps known him on the banks of the Jordan.[4] The two brothers continued always, even ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... bow, wade across, drop a stone on the far side, and then drink. If he cuts his nails, he must throw the parings into a thicket. If he drink from a stream, and also cross it, he must eject a mouthful of water back into the stream. He must be particularly careful not to look his mother-in-law in the face. Hundreds of omens by the manner of their happening may modify actions, as, on what side of the road a woodpecker calls, or in which direction a hyena or jackal crosses the path, how the ground hornbill flies or ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... was kind and motherly, and Mary felt that it was so: but although there were no actual faults of spelling, it was evidently not the production of a cultured woman, and she thought with some dread of her future mother-in-law. It would all be very tolerable if Tom did not think so over much of his own kin, but he evidently looked on his women-folk as the most ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... change my conduct. Their manner of living was very different from that in my father's house. My mother-in-law, who had long been a widow, regarded nothing else but economy. At my father's house they lived in a noble manner and great elegance. What my husband and mother-in-law called pride, and I called politeness, was observed there. I was very much surprised at this change, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... the law-courts an attachment on the dead body, by which its interment was interdicted till the termination of the suit. In vain the rich merchant had kidnapped the bridegroom in his carriage at dead of night, the boy was pursued and recaptured, to lead a life of constant quarrel with his mother-in-law, and exchange flying crockery at meal-times; to take refuge in distant tutorships, and in the course of years, after begetting several children, to drift further and further, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... mental as well as physical power; so the presence of her mother appeared to revive and cheer her. Again she had some one near her who loved her. Her mother, whom she had so grievously offended, had come to her in trouble, and she was roused and comforted. The mother-in-law, who had been so anxious to take her from her parents, did not fill ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... wife, usually stated the consequences to which each party was liable for repudiating the other. These by no means necessarily agree with the Code. Many conditions might be inserted: as that the wife should act as maidservant to her mother-in-law, or to a first wife. The married couple formed a unit as to external responsibility, especially for debt. The man was responsible for debts contracted by his wife, even before her marriage, as well as for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... surely I shall!—I have observed that your integrity, your honor is that of the olden time, your judgment righteous and inflexible. Also, you have a knowledge of business; and these qualities combined are precious helps to a man. With a mother-in-law, as I may say, of your powers, I should find my home life relieved of a crowd of cares and details as to property, which hinder a man's advance in a political career if he is forced to attend to them. I admired you deeply on Sunday evening. Ah! you were fine! How you did manage matters! ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the Pansy Stief-mutter, because figuratively the mother-in-law appears in the flower predominant in purple velvet, and her own two daughters gay in purple and yellow, whilst the two poor little Cinderellas, more soberly and scantily attired, are squeezed in between. Again, another fable says, with respect ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of Mrs. Clover, heretofore seldom in his mind, notwithstanding her brightness and comeliness and the friendship they had so long felt for each other. Minnie he had forgotten; the mother came before him in such a new light that he could hardly believe his former wish to call her mother-in-law. This strange emotion was very disturbing. As if he had not ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... with a black eye, who slowly filled a large Dutch pipe with most capacious bowl. Tupman and Snodgrass were of the company and smoked cigars. Sam Weller's father smoked his pipe philosophically. If Sam's "mother-in-law" "flies in a passion, and breaks his pipe, he steps out and gets another. Then she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics; and he smokes wery comfortably 'till she comes to agin." What better example could there be of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... don't imagine that the happy pair set up a separate establishment, as you expect to do when you marry. No; the wife goes in every case to reside with her mother-in-law, to whom, as also to her husband's father, she renders implicit obedience. This obedience to parents is the most conspicuous duty in their religion. Should the daughter-in-law be disrespectful, even, to her husband's parents, these would be upheld in putting her away, even ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... bearable. To this day I wonder what kept me from tackling my father on the state of his soul. The result would have been extremely salutary for me: for he had an easy sense of humour, a depth of conviction of his own which he united with limitless tolerance, and a very warm affection for his mother-in-law. Let it suffice that I did not: but for two or three years at least my childhood was tormented with visions of Hell derived from the pulpit and mixed up with two terrible visions derived from my reading—the ghost of an evil old woman in red-heeled slippers from Sir Walter ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of his wife and mother-in-law, had all been tolerably short and pithy, written in a straight hand, with the lines very close together. Sometimes the whole letter was contained on a mere scrap of paper. The paper was very yellow, and the ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... she had longed for any amount of retribution on Alice's hard-hearted employers, but it was a very different thing to witness such grief and self reproach. He had in truth much more developed ideas of duty, both as man and priest, than when he had passively left a disagreeable subject to his mother-in-law, as lying within a woman's province; and his good heart was suffering acutely for the injustice and injury in which he had shared towards one now invested ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with the blind frenzy of the blindest of all the passions, to the facts straight before her; and, looking back to the last of many quarrels between them which had ended in separating the elder lady and herself, had seized on the conclusion that Miss Gwilt's engagement was due to her mother-in-law's vindictive enjoyment of making mischief in her household. The inference which the very servants themselves, witnesses of the family scandal, had correctly drawn—that the major's mother, in securing the services of a well-recommended governess for her son, had thought it no part ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... mother-in-law, my uncle, my two sisters, Maitre Marcel and his daughter Rose; a neighbour called Claude Perrin, who got drunk at the wedding feast; also Giraud, the poet, who composed verses ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sure a laugh in New York as the mother-in-law in a London music hall. "All cities begin by being lonesome," a comedian explained, "and Brooklyn has never gotten ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... he continued, with forced cheerfulness, "why people always cry at weddings and engagements and such things? A husband or wife is the only relative we are permitted to choose—we even have very little to say when it comes to a mother-in-law. With parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins all provided by a generous but sometimes indiscriminating Fate, it seems hard that one's only choice should be ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... old hag gets my fur up. I had a mother-in-law once tried them tricks on me till I learned her they wouldn't work. But the old hag ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... gentleman, who started out to visit his wife when she was staying with her mother and failed to find her after three days' search, excuses himself on the ground that he had forgotten her maiden name. He puts it down to absence of mind; and his mother-in-law is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... of unblemished reputation, nice looking, and not—not one of those modern women who are bound to cause anxieties. Under any circumstances one could count upon Morella Winmarleigh behaving with absolute propriety. A girl born to be a mother-in-law's joy. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never disclosed to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments, disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,—which Lady Byron denies,—and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female dependant, who is the subject of the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ninth of May Lyon borrowed an old dress from Blair's mother-in-law, completing the disguise with a thickly veiled sunbonnet, and drove through Camp Jackson. That night he and Blair attended a council of war, at which, overcoming all opposition, answering all objections, ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... March 29th, and was glad to hear from you and of your wellfare, and hoping these lines will find you and yours enjoying the same blessings of health and happiness. "I have to tell you of the death of my mother-in-law. She departed this life April 22nd. Your sister Jane is very well at present. "The rest of your family are all well. If you see fit to come out in the spring your friends will be glad to see you. It will be best for you to get a lumber vessel if you can. There ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... us! I should never dare to say a word about it to Mrs. Mac, for I'm dreadfully afraid of her, she is so stern, and how I'm ever to get on when she is my mother-in-law I don't know!" cried Kitty, clasping her hands in dismay ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... or animal. Hence the savage makes it a rule to shun the shadow of certain persons whom for various reasons he regards as sources of dangerous influence. Amongst the dangerous classes he commonly ranks mourners and women in general, but especially his mother-in-law. The Shuswap Indians think that the shadow of a mourner falling upon a person would make him sick. Amongst the Kurnai of Victoria novices at initiation were cautioned not to let a woman's shadow fall across them, as this would make ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... sides insisting on a family alliance between them, he married Antony's step-daughter Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia by Publius Claudius, although at that time she was scarcely marriageable; and upon a difference arising with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her untouched, and a pure virgin. Soon afterwards he took to wife Scribonia, who had before been twice married to men of consular rank [199], and was a mother by one of them. With ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Place.] and Lely; Sir Simon (the rake), with Naseby Field in the background: Sir Richard's grandfather, Thomas, Remembrancer to Queen Elizabeth; Alice, the second wife of Sir Richard's cousin, John of Parsloes (the daughter of his cousin Sir Thomas Fanshawe of Jenkins, and the mother-in-law of the Duke of Monmouth's half-sister, Mary Walter); Sir Richard's nephew, Thomas, the second Viscount (in breastplate and flowing wig), and his second wife, Lady Sarah, the daughter of Sir John Evelyn and widow of Sir John Wray. [Footnote: The ancient Lincolnshire family of Wray is mentioned in ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... not consent. Upon which his mother-in-law can no longer suppress her feelings, and comes forward to entreat him. (She was a good, pious matron, and as fat as her husband was thin.) So she stroked his cheeks—"And where in the land, as far as Usdom, could he find such fine muranes and maranes [Footnote: The great marana weighs ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... necessary edifices for the mission, such as a chapel, a missionary residence, an hospital, a fort, houses for the new converts, together with the habitations for the French. The D'Auteuil family had their country seat on the hill back of Pointe a Puiseaux; and the venerable Madame de Monceau, the mother-in-law of the Attorney-General Ruette D'Auteuil, was in the habit of residing there from time to time, in a house she had ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a cross old woman who lay all day long on the stove, incessantly grumbling and scolding; her sons paid no attention to her, but she kept her daughters-in-law in the fear of God. Very significantly the mother-in-law sings in the Russian ballad: 'What a son art thou to me! What a head of a household! Thou dost not beat thy wife; thou dost not beat thy young wife....' I once attempted to intercede for the daughters-in-law, and tried to rouse Hor's sympathy; but he met me with the tranquil rejoinder, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... fun if you don't feel sorry for him as I do," Alice thoughtfully responded. "They say he was magnificent as a gambler. He admitted to me to-night that he longed to go back to the camp, but that he had promised his wife and mother-in-law not to do so. I never ran a gambling-saloon, but I can imagine it would be exciting as a play all the time, can't you? Here, as he said to me, he can only sit in the sun like a lizard on a log. It must seem wonderful to her—having all this money and that big ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... had broken the ice at last; from that moment he was cordiality itself, until—I will not say, until he had called her his own—a few little misunderstandings!—not with his countess. You see, a resident aunt is translated mother-in-law by husbands; though I spare them pretty frequently; I go to friends, they travel. Here in London she must have a duenna. The marriage at Madrid, at the Embassy:—well, perhaps it was a step for us, for commoners, though we rank with the independent. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "you would have made this woman my mother-in-law! Do you think it was from any regard to us that she came here to propose a marriage between her son and me? No, indeed, dear papa, it was for the purpose of securing the property, which her brother left me, for him who would otherwise have inherited it. And do you imagine for ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was now pastor of a distinguished English colony, not only his wife Marjory, but his wife's mother too. Here his two sons, Nathaniel and Eleazar, afterwards students at Cambridge and ministers of the Church of England, were born. But in 1559 wife and mother-in-law accompanied or followed him from the Continent to Edinburgh. During the anxious and critical winter which followed, Mrs Knox seems to have acted as her husband's amanuensis, but 'the rest of my wife hath been ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... mother-in-law of the doctor, were commission merchants in the wool-trade, and did a double business by selling for the producers and buying for the manufacturers of the golden fleeces of Berry; thus pocketing a commission on both sides. In this way they grew rich and miserly—the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Barbara that Sir George had left off laughing for some time. He looked haggard—uneasy—miserably expectant. She liked him better than she liked Lady Monkton, and, though reserved with both, relaxed more to him than to her mother-in-law. For one thing, Sir George had been unmistakably appreciative of her beauty, and her soft voice and pretty manners. He liked them all. Lady Monkton had probably noticed them quite as keenly, but they had not pleased her. They were indeed an offence. They had placed her in the wrong. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... "Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist her sympathy. "I've got the carriage here. Now, be a good girl, and put on your hat and come with me for a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of Sex was worshipped as the "giver of life," the heads of families were female and descent was traced from the mother only. The male parent was scarcely more than an intruder and the necessity to please the entire family and, above all, the mother-in-law, the generic head of the family has left its mark upon the masculine mind, even unto this far-off day, when by virtue of this ordeal of primitive man, an idea seems to exist, that a mother-in-law is to be both feared ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... The mother-in-law of Kwei-li was an old-time conservative Chinese lady, the woman who cannot adapt herself to the changing conditions, who resents change of methods, new interpretations and fresh expressions of life. She sees in the new ideas that her sons bring from the foreign schools ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... queen-mother with that soft and gentle smile which constituted her principal charm, and as she did not approach sufficiently close, Anne of Austria signed to her to come nearer. Madame then entered the room, and with a perfectly calm air took her seat beside her mother-in-law, and continued the work which Maria Theresa had begun. When La Valliere, instead of the direction which she expected to receive immediately on entering the room, perceived these preparations, she looked ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would bring, pressed sorely on him, for he loved his children, and hoped much from his boys. He wrote to his father-in-law, James Armour, at Mauchline, that he was dying, his wife nigh her confinement, and begged that his mother-in-law would hasten to them and speak comfort. He wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, saying, "I have written to you so often without receiving any answer that I would not trouble you again, but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness which has long hung about me in all probability will speedily ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... who owned the cottage was mother-in-law to the man by whom it was occupied; she died and left her property, which consisted chiefly of cottages, to be divided equally among her children. Soon after the funeral the family met in this very house to arrange the division of the estate. The plan adopted was to draw lots for houses, ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... would seem that perpetual continence is not required for religious perfection. For all perfection of the Christian life began with Christ's apostles. Now the apostles do not appear to have observed continence, as evidenced by Peter, of whose mother-in-law we read Matt. 8:14. Therefore it would seem that perpetual continence is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Tocqueville, 'when my mother-in-law first married. She spent in it a month and could never be ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... one of the leading doctors at Varallo whether the figure was man or woman. He said it was evident I was not married, for that if I had been I should have seen at once that she was not only a woman but a mother-in-law of the first magnitude, or, as he called it, "una suocera tremenda," and this without knowing that I wanted her to be a mother-in-law myself. Unfortunately she had no real drapery, so I could not settle the question as my friend Mr. H. F. Jones and I had been able to ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... divorce, but there were no grounds upon which to obtain it. She yearned for the right to select her own associates; to do what she liked; to have a good time, and to be responsible to nobody. There was a mother-in-law in the case, of course, and, although the brand has become tiresome, this particular lady was necessary in order to ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... in, and Miss Field was extremely busy, and Ward, helping her officially, was busy, too. She had indeed offered her place to Isabelle, but Isabelle, spurred by her mother-in-law's criticism, would not have disturbed her ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... me," she wrote, "I am indebted to you for the rise in life that I have always desired. You may refuse to see me—but you can't prevent my being the mother-in-law ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the faded plants of the garden a solitary Rindo-nadeshko.[85] When To-no-Chiujio had gone, Genji picked this flower, and sent it to his mother-in-law by the nurse of the infant child, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... his daughter: he chaffers with the representative of the bridegroom about the price to be paid. Likewise among several African tribes, the same as in the days of Jacob, the custom is that a man who courts a maid, enters in the service of his future mother-in-law. Even with us, marriage by purchase has not died out: it prevails in bourgeois society worse than ever. Marriage for money, almost everywhere customary among the ruling classes, is nothing other ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Pamela's mother-in-law, la Comtesse douairiere, wears a lovely, fluffy white thing over her own diminishing front hair, which I once heard her describe, when struggling to speak English, as her "combination." Pam and I laughed nearly to extinction, but I didn't laugh this ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... saints, what now?" cried the king, whose choler, though fierce and ruthless, was as short-lived as the passions of the indolent usually are, and whom the earnest interposition of his mother-in-law much surprised and diverted. "If, fair belle-mere, thou thinkest it so illustrious a deed to frighten us out of our mortal senses, and narrowly to 'scape sending us across the river like a bevy of balls ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you must quickly make the fire, skilfully removing the ashes, without sprinkling them upon the floor. Then quickly go to the stable, clean the stable, take food to the cattle, feed all the animals on the farm. For already the cow of your mother-in-law will be lowing for food; the horse of your father-in-law will be whinnying; the milch cow of your sister-in-law will be straining at her tether; the calf of your brother-in-law will be bleating; for all will be waiting for her whose duty it is to give them hay, whose ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... had to keep his "attention fixed" on this point for the next three-quarters of an hour. So as Miss Manners was at the other side of me, and Scroope, unhampered by the presence of any prospective mother-in-law, was at the other side of her, for all practical purposes Miss Holmes and ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... had raised a quarrel between himself and Salome, who was his mother-in-law, besides the anger he had conceived at Glaphyra's reproaches; for he perpetually upbraided his wife with the meanness of her family, and complained, that as he had married a woman of a low family, so had his brother Alexander ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... Aubrey, who knew her, says she was "a gent. (genteel?) person, (of) a peaceful and agreeable humour." Newton, Bishop of Bristol, who wrote in 1749, had heard that she was "a woman of a most violent spirit, and a hard mother-in-law to his children." It is certain that she regarded her husband with great veneration, and studied his comfort. Mary Fisher, a maidservant in the house, deposed that at the end of his life, when he was sick and infirm, his wife having provided something for dinner she thought ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... with a sick mother-in-law stopped in at the undertaker's on his way to call the doctor. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... particularly at special prices, were mainly accounted for by the curiosity of the hearers, who often came from long distances; whereas the number of genuine students of art, whose interest was chiefly in the music, was but small. But the Grand Duke insisted, as he wished to give his mother-in-law, Queen Augusta, whose arrival was expected within a few days, the pleasure of hearing my production. I should have found it dreadfully wearisome to have to spend the intervening time in the solitude of my Karlsruhe hotel, but I received ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... a fellow yesterday morning who must be a lunatic, to the effect that he had been reading my essays, thought I was just the man to spend a month with, and was coming down by the five o'clock train, attended by his seven children and his MOTHER-IN-LAW! ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... "I'm his mother-in-law," and the door was slowly opened, but only wide enough to admit Sydney, when it was closed ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... repaired to the seat which the Emperor Francis had occupied, at the left side of the Empress Ludovica. The smile was still on his face; he sat down on this chair, and, turning to the empress, his mother-in-law, asked her, almost humbly, if she would grant him the happiness of sitting ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... bride protests against accepting all that her mother-in-law wants to give her. There is but one thing that the old lady wishes to keep for herself; it is a little tin box with a withered flower, and it lies with her Bible and hymn-book, as sacred to the owner ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... her future mother-in-law, highly pleased, "you must keep an eye on the servants and use your hands, too, occasionally, if you want to get on in this world. You'll make a fine housekeeper. But come, now, we must go to meet your ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... the course of the following November, her banns were published in the church on the heath, and also in Copenhagen, where the bridegroom lived. She was taken to Copenhagen under the protection of her future mother-in-law, because the bridegroom could not spare time from his numerous occupations for a journey so far into Jutland. On the journey, Christina met her father at one of the villages through which they passed, and here he took leave of her. Very little ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... he is to the entire population of India the exponent of British Rule; he is the mother-in-law of liars, the high-priest of extortioners, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... it well. Personally, I am on bad terms with him, on account of the quarrels between Madame de Montbazon, my mother-in-law, and Madame de Longueville. But the Prince de Marsillac! Yes, indeed, that's the right thing. The Prince de Marsillac—my old friend—will recommend our young friend to Madame de Longueville, who will give him a letter to her brother, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... strange depression about the cottage to-night. The woman of the house is taken ill and has got into bed beside her mother-in-law, who is over ninety, and is wandering in her mind. The man of the house has gone away ten miles for medicine, and I am left with the two children, who are ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... son-in-law of Kiyomori, but who showed some signs of disapproval, was sent into exile. Several of the sons of Yoshitomo were put to death; but Yoritomo then a boy of thirteen was saved by the interference of the mother-in-law of Kiyomori, and was sent into exile in the province of Izu, and put into the safe-keeping of two faithful Taira men, one of whom Hojo Tokimasa will be ...
— Japan • David Murray
... told me. He was shocked to hear of the certificate, for he had implicitly believed his brother's denial of the marriage, and he said Miss Headworth was so childish and simple that she might easily have been taken in by a sham ceremony. He said that he now saw he had done very wrong in letting his mother-in-law take all the letters about "that unhappy business" off his hands without looking at them, but he was much engrossed by my mother's illness, and, as he said, it never occurred to him as a duty to trace out what became of the poor thing, and see that she was provided for safely. You know Mrs. Egremont ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be married soon after I return from New York. If her mother consents, well and good; if she refuses, we will bear up manfully under her displeasure and ignore it. I have often thought of your remark about Mrs. Bays as a mother-in-law." ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... is a shifting sand." Moreau said to Decaen, "I am too old to bend my back"; but the latter was of opinion that the real source of the mischief was that Moreau had married a young wife, and that she and his mother-in-law considered they were entitled to as much attention as Madame Bonaparte received. Pride, jealousy and vanity, he declared, were the real source of the quarrel. Decaen, indeed, has a story that when Madame Moreau once called upon Josephine ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... importance of those documents, had packed them up, had concealed them in her bedchamber, and was about to send them off to Warsaw, when a Prussian officer made his appearance. In the hope that no soldier would venture to outrage a lady, a queen, the daughter of an emperor, the mother-in-law of a dauphin, she placed herself before the trunk, and at length sat down on it. But all resistance was vain. The papers were carried to Frederic, who found in them, as he expected, abundant evidence of the designs ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of life had become a matter of course, just as lumbering about in her mother-in-law's landau had come to seem the only possible means of locomotion, and listening every Sunday to a fashionable Presbyterian divine the inevitable atonement for having thought oneself bored on the other six days of the week. Before she met Gannett her life had seemed merely dull: his ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... struck by his saying them parts, which seemed to indicate a habit of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the gospel-story. The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his cottage, Joe taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I could of Coombes by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared I had done ill in that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought the thin feeble little man would have got on ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... to London. Loewenstein, a young Brussels banker, is to take me over in his racing car, which is a useful institution these days. We take along his mother-in-law, Madame Misonne, and A.B. It means getting up at five to motor to Calais to catch the boat. There the car will be slung aboard, so that we can be whisked up to London without waiting ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... fly of fire as premonitory of the deaths—first, of her husband, who died in a sea-fight with the Dutch, May 28th, 1672, and second, of her mother-in-law, Lady Winchilsea. ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... lost mother-in-law, "you have behaved irreproachably. Eleanor will feel it for some time no doubt; but she is young and will soon get over it. I'll send her to the Drascombe-Prynnes in Paris. And as for yourself, your terrible ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... she cried, picking herself up, and beginning to wish she had never troubled herself with Theo's mother-in-law. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... orders, the General supervised the shopping for the two Custis children and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dandridge. Not only were clothes and materials ordered, fine ivory combs, stockings, etc., but toys. Here is a selection made by the Cary firm—a child's fiddle, a coach and six in a box, a stable with six horses, a toy whip, a filigree watch, a neat enameled ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... His name was Clematius of Alexandria, and his only crime was a refusal to gratify the desires of his mother-in-law; who solicited his death, because she had been disappointed of his love. Ammian. xiv. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... nay; but only division. (52)For from this time forth, five in one house will be divided, three against two, and two against three. (53)They will be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against the daughter, and daughter against the mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... false. Having hastily summoned Servius, after she had shown him her husband almost at his last gasp, holding his right hand, she entreated him not to suffer the death of his father-in-law to pass unavenged, nor to allow his mother-in-law to be an object of scorn to their enemies. "Servius," said she, "if you are a man, the kingdom belongs to you, not to those, who, by the hands of others, have perpetrated a most shameful deed. Rouse yourself, and follow the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all my friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives. It has occurred to me that I might open a new field in the family connection of my father-in-law and mother-in-law. We have been thinking of paying them a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of studying them and their relatives and visitors. I have long wanted a good chance for getting acquainted with the social ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... unconscious, and only feeling her misery dumbly. On the wall hung her blue cashmere dress, in which she was to have been married a day or two later. On the chest of drawers was a box containing the little wreath and veil her mother-in-law had presented her with. But she saw none of these things, with her mouth and eyes ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... "and how are you, and how is my mother-in-law that is to be—or is not to be, as your sister pleases; and how is SHE? have I frightened her away? There were two petticoats, and now ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... effected every preparation in his power, the King passed through London, accompanied by the Mayor and citizens (who attended him as far as Kingston); and having made an offering at St. Paul's, and taken leave of his mother-in-law the Queen, he proceeded on his way towards Southampton, where all his ships and contingents were directed to ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... a town in Libya, it is the custom for the bride the day after marriage to send to her mother-in-law's house for a pipkin, who does not lend her one, but says she has not got one, that from the first the daughter-in-law may know her mother-in-law's stepmotherly mind,[173] that if afterwards she should be ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Hatsuka blacken her teeth as a sign that she would not marry a second husband; they also carefully taught her that she must obey her husband, be dutiful to her father-in-law, and love her mother-in-law. ...
— The Mouse's Wedding • Unknown
... children; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a most gentle and amiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hand around where there's sickness," Robert commented to his mother-in-law. "I hope she won't hurry home ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... club, or an evening with his old friends, that had taken Barry Valentine so suddenly to San Francisco, but a letter from his wife—or, rather, from his wife's mother, for Hetty herself never wrote—which had stirred a vague distrust and discomfort in his mind. Mrs. Scott, his mother-in-law, was a worldly, shrewd little person, but good-hearted, and as easily moved or stirred as a child. This was one of her characteristic letters, disconnected, ill-spelled, and scrawled upon scented lavender paper. She wrote that she and Hetty were ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... colour, is most skilfully managed; but it has this present day's reality, and we only force ourselves to believe it Jephtha's Daughter. Exquisitely beautiful, too, is the affectionate, the very loving, Ruth. Orpah, too, is sweet, but the difference is well expressed—"Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clave unto her." There is an unaffected simplicity about these figures that is quite charming, a simplicity of manner well according with the simplicity of character; but has not the picture in colouring too much of this day's familiar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... was a mother-in-law, and consequently a pretty old fowl in ferreting out things of this sort. She determined to discover the why and wherefore of ANN'S departure. If she could confront the Hon. MICHAEL with proofs of ANN'S indiscretion, ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... mother-in-law, 'nee' Frances Twyden, had been a bitter opponent of the Princess of Wales, provoked the wrath of the Regent by espousing the cause of his wife. The Prince was determined to break off this friendship with his wife's champion, and sent a letter to her by the hand of Colonel Willis, announcing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... sacrifice on her part, Madeline and she drove up to the Percivals' for five-o'clock tea. Her future mother-in-law was in the accustomed seat, and Lena found a footstool near at hand, with a pretty air of affectionate proprietorship that brought ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... to William Adams, who has been previously alluded to. They never went to Canada, but took up their permanent abode in Elmira. The brief space of about three years only was allotted her in which to enjoy freedom, as death came and terminated her career. About the time of this sad occurrence, her mother-in-law died in this city. The impressions made by both mother and daughter can never be effaced. The chest in which Lear escaped has been preserved by the writer as a rare trophy, and her photograph taken, while in the chest, is ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... steam-tugs, dragging after them four or five barges each; they look like some fine young intellectual trying to run away while a plebeian wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and wife's grandmother hold on ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... no peace. But in the eight months during which she had been let out on bail, she had not only made it up with her husband, but come to love him, so that when her trial came they were heart and soul to one another. Although her husband, her father-in-law, but especially her mother-in-law, who had grown very fond of her, did all they could to get her acquitted, she was sentenced to hard labour in Siberia. The kind, merry, ever-smiling Theodosia had a place next Maslova's on the shelf bed, and had grown ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... as in "Balbus had borrowed a healthy dragon," against which he had written "Rashness in Speculation"—sometimes of encouragement, as in the words "Influence of Sympathy in United Action," which stood opposite to the anecdote "Balbus was assisting his mother-in-law to convince the dragon"—and sometimes it dwindled down to a single word, such as "Prudence," which was all he could extract from the touching record that "Balbus, having scorched the tail of the dragon, went away." His pupils liked the short morals best, as it left them ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... the influence of his mother-in-law and the bankers du Tillet and Nucingen, Monsieur Tiphaine was fortunate enough to do some service to the administration; he became one of its chief orators, was made judge in the civil courts, and obtained the appointment of his nephew Lesourd to his own vacant place as president of the court ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... your mother-in-law sent her daughter to a boarding school, do you believe that this was out of solicitude for her daughter? A girl of twelve or fifteen is a terrible Argus; and if your mother-in-law did not wish to have an Argus in her house I should ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Comstock & Co. between Lucius and Albert was terminated by a dispute between the two brothers in 1841, and Albert went his own way, taking up a career as a physician and living until 1876. Lucius next went into business with his mother-in-law, Anne Moore, from 1841 to 1846; after the dissolution of this firm, he formed a new partnership, also under the name of Comstock & Co., with his brother John (generally known as J. Carlton). This firm again employed as clerks George Wells Comstock and a nephew, William Henry, a son of Edwin. ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... mother had not come to Garranard for her daughter-in-law's confinement. Being a black Protestant, she wouldn't hear of the child being brought up a Catholic or even baptized in a Catholic Church. The child was now a week old and Rean was fairly distracted, for neither his own mother nor his mother-in-law would give way; each was trying to outdo the other. Mrs. Rean watched Mrs. Egan, and Mrs. Egan watched Mrs. Rean, and the poor mother lay all day with the baby at her breast, listening to the two of ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... to ask him what he has to marry on, and so far as I know he has only nerve and his mother's home. I would not like to spend eternity as a maiden lady, but I'd much rather so spend it than dwell under the vine and fig-tree of the person who would be a mother-in-law to Whythe's wife. My heart goes out to Elizabeth every time I think of the fate that will eventually be hers. Also it goes out to the House of Eppes. When opposing elements meet something usually happens. I'm betting on Elizabeth, but I ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... of the funeral-tent of Queen Isi em Kheb, contemporary of the wise Solomon, mother-in-law of the Shishak who besieged Jerusalem and "carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made." ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... apologise! I consider that when a dependent does her duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her; indeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the five daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. You'll like Ireland, I think: they're such ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the nations, he said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I have come to send a sword, I have come to put division between a son, and his father; the mother, and the daughter; the daughter-in-law, and her mother-in-law." "Think ye, (said he to his disciples) that I have come to put peace on earth, I tell you nay, but rather division." Again, "I have come to put fire on the earth." These are not the characteristics of the Messiah of the prophets ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Chester County in many ways, but there is a difference between authorities as to whether it was she that used to drive four superb black horses over the bad roads of the county, or whether it was her mother-in-law, the second lord's wife. Certainly it was the latter that was killed by a fall from a carriage, and certainly both had fine horses and magnificent coaches, and drove over bad roads,—for all roads ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... as appears from the marriage register, the news arrived of Cardinal Montalto's election to the Papacy, Vittoria lost no time in paying her respects to Camilla, sister of the new Pope, her former mother-in-law. The Duke visited Sixtus V. in state to compliment him on his elevation. But the reception which both received proved that Rome was no safe place for them to live in. They consequently made up ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... suggested nothing to them, and the agent could give them no satisfaction. He was locking up his office. There was not another train to stop till No. 5 should return toward evening. So, still bewildered, Mrs. Peters and her mother-in-law gave up their fruitless errand and drove away, taking with them a problem ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... married, she encouraged Germinie's hopes and illusions by her whole bearing, her airs of secret indulgence and of complicity, so far as her heart was concerned; by those meaning silences when she seemed to open to her a mother-in-law's arms. And displaying all her talents in the way of hypocrisy, drawing upon her hidden mines of sentiment, her good-natured shrewdness, and the consummate, intricate cunning that fat people possess, the corpulent matron succeeded in vanquishing Germinie's last ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... never before happened, in the space of two hundred and thirty years from the foundation of the city; and that one Thalaea, the wife of Pinarius, had a quarrel (the first instance of the kind) with her mother-in-law, Gegania, in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus; so successful was the legislator in securing order and good conduct in the marriage relation. Their respective regulations for marrying the young women are in accordance with those for their education. Lycurgus ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... then Helena returned. She had accomplished the purport of her journey, she had preserved the life of the king, and she had wedded her heart's dear lord, the count Rousillon; but she returned back a dejected lady to her noble mother-in-law, and as soon as she entered the house she received a letter from Bertram ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the swing still.] Say! if you think you are going to run me and the whole family, you're a Dodo bird! Remember that you're my daughter; you must wait a little if you want to be a mother-in-law. ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... old-settling families of Red Gap. Further, so inattentive to details had he been, he had neglected to secure an ante-nuptial settlement as our own men so wisely make it their rule to do, and was now suffering a painful embarrassment from this folly; for the mother-in-law, controlling the rather sizable family fortune, had harshly insisted that the pair reside in Red Gap, permitting no more than an occasional summer visit to his native Boston, whose inhabitants she affected not ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... detectives, and another (a very wealthy lady) who had been arrested in a department store for kleptomania; she had been present at a spiritualist seance where an old gentleman had died in a fit on seeing a materialization of his mother-in-law; she had escaped from two fires in her night-gown, and at the funeral of her first cousin the horses attached to the hearse had run away and smashed the coffin, precipitating her relative into an open man-hole before the eyes of his ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... been sitting on the other side of the room, rose abruptly and came towards them. There was something very like a smile on her face,—although it wasn't really a smile—as she bent over and kissed her mother-in-law on the cheek. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Mrs. Aalbom sat gossiping on the sofa; and Fanny, who in the course of the day had received more than one reproving look from her mother-in-law for flirting with Delphin, was now doing penance with the old ladies, to whom Pastor ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the last one to gin in dress gin to her by her uncle out to the Ohio. It wuz gin her to mourn for her mother-in-law in. ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... should like to have had others treat his mother. Of course it is only sentiment with him. If she had lived, he might have given her as much trouble as other boys give theirs. She must have been lovely. Mamma says she was. But I'd just as soon not have any mother-in-law to tell me to wrap up, and wear rubbers if it looked like rain. You know there isn't a bit of sentiment in me. I'm practical. My father says if I had been a boy he would have taken me into business at fifteen. Jack thinks I am all sentiment. He says nobody ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell |
