"Stepmother" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand in her pocket and fingered a silver coin, but poverty is a grim, tyrannous stepmother to tender ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... remembered, is the curse which Stepmother Nature placed upon The Dog, when he elected to turn his back on his own kind, and to become the only one of the world's four-footed folk to serve Man of his own accord. To punish the Dog for this abnormality, Nature decreed that his life ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... whether, though Christmas lived to enjoy a long and laborious age, would all the work he performed compensate for the strains and aches and bruises suffered. Circumstances prevented the completion of the yard in exact accordance with plans, for experience, that harsh stepmother, proved that the enclosure was unnecessary. The yard exists as a monument to profane misunderstanding of Christmas's character. Had I realised his high-mindedness, his amiability, his considerateness and shrewdness, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... things myself. That was all done up for me that night I had the moon in me blood. Ah! my father was a proper hard man. 'Twas bad enough before I had my baby; but after, when I couldn't get the father to marry me, an' he cut an' run, proper life they led me, him and stepmother. Cry! Didn' I cry—I was a soft-hearted thing—never went to sleep with me eyes dry—never. 'Tis a cruel thing to make ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... of ours in ten, probably not one in a hundred, has any direct rights or interest in his native soil; and the Motherland has too often (at any rate in the past) turned out a stepmother who disowned him later when ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... months afterwards came by that son's death to sole power as emperor. The worst character is given to Zeno by the national historians. His conduct was so vile, and his government so discredited by irruptions of the Huns on the Danube, and of Saracens in Mesopotamia, that his wife's stepmother Verina, the widow of Leo I., conspired against him, and was able to set her brother Basiliscus on the throne. Zeno took flight; Basiliscus was proclaimed emperor. He declared himself openly against the Catholic faith in ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... was no sooner over than the stepmother began to display her bad temper. She could not endure the excellent qualities of this young girl, for they made her own daughters appear more hateful than ever. She thrust upon her all the meanest tasks about the house. It was she ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... but he read them over and over again, and the impressions they made on him were so much the deeper. In this way Lincoln acquired the rudiments of education. When Abraham was scarcely nine years old, his excellent mother died. His father married again, and fortunately for young Lincoln, his stepmother was a lady of refinement, who took the greatest interest in her rugged but talented step-son. She sent him to a private school for a while, and Abraham learned many useful things and easily kept at the head of his class. His stepmother also procured more books for him, for Abraham ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... "Your stepmother is very ill, my dear—very ill indeed. I stopped with her to write a letter which she wants me to post. Yes, she is very ill, but she is awake now; you may go upstairs; you ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... twenty-two years of age. He had refused to go to college and had never even finished high school. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him to the care of a stepmother who had little affection for him. At the age of twenty-one the boy came into control of his immense fortune. So it was not remarkable that Charlie Meyers, who had almost no education, no home influence and a vast sum of money ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... once had served to stir a national hatred of France for England. Beaumarchais, in a later day, had given it back its true poetry by adapting it for the French theatre and putting it into the mouth of a page, who pours out his heart to his stepmother. Just now it was simply the air that rose and fell. There were no words; the plaintive voice of the singer touched and thrilled ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... have his father bring him a stepmother—a woman whose face had been destroyed by fire—and place her at the head of his table, veiled or not, as Ralph chose. Terribly burned, hopelessly disfigured, she must live with them always—because she had saved him from the same thing, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... in New York City and he was a very wealthy guy. She was 'is only child and 'er mother was dead. The old man, whose name was Portman,—Albert Portman, the banker,—was considering a second venture into matrimony at the time. Mary was eighteen and she didn't want a stepmother. She raised such a row that he sent 'er off to school so as he could do 'is courting in peace and plenty. She was a wayward gal,—leastwise she says so 'erself—and very impetuous-like. One day a circus ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... my maid to wait on you my dear,' said Freda's stepmother, 'because I find your's does not return to you. But we can replace her. Dinner will be ready whenever you are; can I do ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... vigorously sought specimens of uncouth, out-of-the-way beast, bird and insect. He studied mathematics and classics, played pranks upon one tutor, and did loving reverence to another. He planted flowers upon his own mother's grave, and filled the vases of his stepmother with her own favorite lilacs and roses. He made houses, carriages, swings, sets of furniture, and all sorts of constructions for his half-sister Della, who was his junior by ten ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... singer of merit, a player on the harp, and a person of education. She certainly had no seraglio notions of wanting to be petted and pampered and taken care of, or she would not have assumed the office of stepmother to that big family and married a poor man. Bach never had time to make money. Very soon after their marriage Bach began to dictate music to his wife. A great many pieces can be seen in Leipzig and Berlin copied out in her fine, painstaking hand, with an occasional ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... and then he turned into it. During his college days he had spent a considerable amount of time at the Dean's house, and now, in the first year of his Instructorship, he was there more than ever. His own home in Ephesus, New York, being at the present time occupied by a stepmother for whom he had no particular affection and a father whose interests were in the drygoods rather than the scholastic line, he scarcely thought of himself as having a home other than that made for him by the Dean's wife. It was true that there was an older sister whose husband was ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... was her own. He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same time he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read to him that ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... do covet a place where I can witness the grand tourney at Whitehall. It may suit your mood, Mary, to live always on this hilltop, with naught to see and naught to do; with no company but a cross-grained stepmother, and the cows and sheep. I am sick of it. Even a run down to the village is a change. Yes, I am going; one hour, and I ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... aware of this change of feeling, despised himself for it, struggled with it nay, internally yielded to it and cherished it, long before he suffered the slightest expression of it, by word, action, or look, to escape him. He watched Alice's docile obedient ways to her stepmother; the love which she had inspired in the rough Norah (roughened by the wear and tear of sorrow and years); but above all, he saw the wild, deep, passionate affection existing between her and her child. They spoke little ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... Following Nan, Patty's pretty stepmother, the three girls, arm in arm, danced along to the dining-room, quite hungry enough to do justice to the tempting luncheon ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... congenial to the young girl as it might have been, for a stepmother reigned supreme there, and all of her love was lavished upon her own daughter Claire, a crippled, quiet girl of about Faynie's own age, and Faynie was left to do about as she pleased. Her father almost lived in his library among ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... heifer began to graze, but the girl sat down and began to weep. And the heifer said to her, "Tell me, dear little maiden, wherefore dost thou weep?"—"Alas! why should I not weep? My stepmother has given me this flax and bidden me unravel it, and reel it, and bleach it, and bring it back as cloth in the evening."—"Grieve not, maiden!" said the heifer, "it will all turn out well. Lie down to sleep!"—So she lay down to ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... two was sent to the child of eighteen, and Jean glows with gratitude and tells you how good it was of her at-one-time stepmother to think of her! That is how she seems to take life: no suspecting of motives: looking for, therefore perhaps finding, kindness on every side. It is rather absurd in this wicked world, but I shouldn't wonder ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... argument from the condition of mankind? Nature herself, in bestowing on man that which she seems to have granted him preeminently, and by which she appears to have distinguished us from all other animals, would have acted, not as a parent, but as a stepmother, if she had designed the faculty of speech to be the promoter of crime, the oppressor of innocence, and the enemy of truth; for it would have been better for us to have been born dumb, and to have been left destitute of reasoning powers, than to have received ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... during which the library was open were from nine to eleven o'clock a.m., and from one to four o'clock p.m. Suspended on the wall was a large board inscribed with the names both of the books and the donors "lest oblivion, the stepmother of memory, should pluck from our breasts the remembrance of our benefactors." To the same intent thrice every quarter a solemn mass of the Holy Ghost, and once every quarter a requiem mass, were said at the altar of St. Katherine in the Church of the Blessed Virgin. Every ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... had a stepmother," and his face involuntarily became harder as he recalled that long stretch of loveless years—the father had never quite understood the shy and sensitive child—during which he had been neglected, suppressed, lonely, with no one to care that he did well at school and college, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... of stepmother is always open to suspicion; and for some time it has been rumored in Louviers that I am the person who throws obstacles in ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... Martius continued, after a pause. "The real cause of my stepmother's illness was Virgilia's declaration that she, too, has adopted the Christian faith. Where she heard about it, further than the things I taught her, I do not know. Thou seest, that the ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You'll be my model; I shall try to imitate you though I'm afraid it will be very feeble. I'm very glad for papa—he needed something more than me. Without you I don't see how he could have got it. You'll be my stepmother, but we mustn't use that word. They're always said to be cruel; but I don't think you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... had been called as a Jewess, Hannah, had spent her girlhood under the rule of a stepmother. Peter was a young man earning a fair salary as a clerk at the Town Hall. He was a frequent visitor at Bendet's wine-shop. And Peter was an expert judge of the comeliness of Jewish maidens in general and of Anna's beauty in particular. ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... into the other and dispensing with passages altogether. The dining-room, a big sparsely furnished room, had doors both front and back, and looked on the yard behind as well as on the garden. The table was laid for a substantial tea. Mrs. Warner, Bessie's stepmother, a good-looking woman of thirty, was at the head of the table with the tea-pot in her hand, but the children had left their places and clustered round her; two other girls of sixteen and eighteen were clinging ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... over, when the stepmother's bad temper began to show itself. She could not bear the goodness of this young girl, because it made her own daughters appear the more odious. The stepmother gave her the meanest work in the house to do; she had to scour the dishes, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... offered a share in a good business in a city twelve miles away. He left Beulah because he hated it. He left because he could not endure his father's gentle remonstrances or the bewilderment in his stepmother's eyes. She was a newcomer in the household and her glance seemed to say: "Why on earth do you behave so badly to your father when you're such a delightful chap?" He left because Deacon Todd had prayed for him publicly ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the timber which was yearly cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and had only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of his stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in his sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though for the last few months Stephen ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... necessity for another dowry, and a third mother into the student's home. The poor fellow himself was married too, and one could not resist the conjecture that his marriage was another sacrifice for the family, and that his marriage had saved his father from bringing home yet another stepmother. The redeeming feature of the story—the strength of Indian family ties—let us not ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... seriousness of thought respecting the duties or the consequences of marriage, she has not a trace. If children come, they find but a stepmother's cold welcome from her; and if her husband thinks that he has married anything that is to belong to him—a tacens et placens uxor pledged to make him happy—the sooner he wakes from his hallucination and understands that he has simply married some one who will condescend ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... cuff dad if he didn't let go of her. I told her she better not get dad mad if she knew what was good for her, for he was a regular Bluebeard, and wouldn't take no slack from no Chicago female, 'cause he had buried nine wives already. So she held his hand, and I guess she thinks she will be my stepmother, but I ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... His stepmother said of him: "He read everything he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards, if he had no paper, and keep it before him until he could get paper. Then he would ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... expected; we find in them only the rude moral of virtue rewarded and vice punished. But children will soon discover for themselves that in real life all beautiful people are not good, nor all ugly ones wicked; that every elder sister is not ungenerous, nor every stepmother cruel. And the tender baby-heart is often reached quite as soon by the fancy as by the reason. Nevertheless, without any direct appeal to conscience or morality, the Editor of this collection has been especially careful that there should be nothing in it which ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... porpoise by the time he reached the top of the stairs. The only time he had ever been out of Panama was whilst he made a short visit to Lima, the wonders of which he used to chant unceasingly. But the continual cause of my annoyance—I fear I must write disgust—was the stepmother of mine host, a large fat dirty old woman. She had a pouch under her chin like a pelican, while her complexion, from the quantity of oil and foul feeding in which she delighted, was a greasy mahogany. She despised the unnatural luxuries ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... kind stepmother to Abraham who became strongly attached to her. In the rough and nondescript community of Pigeon Creek, a world of weedy farms, of miserable mud roads, of log farm-houses, the family life that was at least tolerable. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... bride of Sir Gawaine, while under the influence of the spell of her wicked stepmother, was more decrepit probably, and what is commonly called more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity which an excited imagination communicated to features, marked and expressive in their own peculiar character, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... stepmother quickly became very fond of Abraham, and encouraged him in every way in her power to study and improve himself. The chances for this were few enough. Mr. Lincoln has left us a vivid picture of the situation. "It ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... the young girls, who on the stairs were watching her retrograde movements. The hum of voices increased, until at last there was a great deal more talking than working. The Unitarian minister's bride, Lilly Martin's stepmother, the new clerk at Drury's, Dr. Lay's wife's new hat and its probable cost, and the city boarders at the hotel, were all duly discussed, and then for a time there was again silence while Mrs. Johnson, president of the society, told of the extreme destitution ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... and non-belief are dangerous. Hippolitus died because his stepmother was believed. Troy fell because Cassandra was not believed. Therefore the truth should be investigated long before foolish opinion can properly judge." (Prove ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... great pine logs up on the side of the mountain. With them, and with two or three others who were engaged at the saw-mills, he remained till the night was dark. Then he came down and told something of his intentions to his stepmother. He was going to Colmar on the morrow with a horse and small cart, and would take with him what clothes he had ready. He did not speak to Marie that night, but he said something to his father about the timber ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... would remonstrate with your papa, Frank," said his stepmother, who was not a great deal older than the Curate. "After his attack he ought to be more careful. But he never takes the least trouble about himself, no more than if he were five-and-twenty. After getting such a knock on the forehead too; ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... set as severe tasks as the wicked stepmother in the fairy tales," said Mr. Cross. "She decrees that you are each to be given a small box of peas and beans and buttons mixed together, and that you are to sort them before you start to run the race. Will you please ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... Lightfoot well enough. This astounding stepmother had been her humble but faithful friend. Lightfoot was a ruling woman spirit wherever she was, and she knew it, though she bowed at all times to the rule of strength as the only law. Nevertheless she knew how to ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... methods people ask a government for something, it is because they think it good and disposed to grant a blessing, and such action, instead of irritating it, should flatter it —to the mother one appeals, never to the stepmother. The government, in my humble opinion, is not an omniscient being that can see and anticipate everything, and even if it could, it ought not to feel offended, for here you have the church itself ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... to quote the words of his lordship's stepmother, "Lord Lyttelton in bed, though not ill; and on his rallying him for it, Lord Lyttelton said: 'Well, cousin, if you will wait in the next room a little while, I will get up and go out with you.' He did so, and the two young men walked out into the streets. In the course ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... mother has gone, and my uncle died six months ago and left me quite a little property, and I've given up my school, and I've come for Agnes. I guess she'll be glad to go with me, though I suppose her stepmother is a good woman, and has ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... excess by the tongue of his stepmother, too active- minded not to indulge in freakish sports and experiments in life very astounding to commonplace minds, sometimes when in dire distress even helping himself to his unpaid allowance from his father's mails, and always with buoyant high spirits and unfailing drollery ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it might perhaps be all right with Hilde. For she is scarcely more than a child. And I believe that at bottom she worships Ellida. But, you see, it's different with me—a stepmother who isn't so very ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... it, you angel stepmother, and so, I'm going to decide, right now,—with much quickness. Heigho! Which shall it be? Patty Van Reypen,—or stay an old ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... day, with a twinkle in his eye, "I find myself growing a little deaf. Your stepmother is fond of saying that Providence sends blessings in disguise, and for once she seems to have ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... and Esther" (they all called their young stepmother by her Christian name) "are having roast fowl, three vegetables, and four kinds of pudding," he said angrily; "it ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... I go out to spend a happy evening, meaning no harm to any one, and I come back all blue with the blood of the aristocracy. We now come to a serious point. Do you think my lady stepmother has read ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... his father was acting quite rightly by him; but a few weeks after, he wrote to beg her to intercede that his "two valets," Gilbert de Clare and Perot de Gaveston, "might be restored to him, as they would alleviate much of his anguish." He addressed a letter with the like petition to his stepmother, Queen Margaret, and continued to evince his submission by refusing his sister Mary's invitations to visit her at her convent at Ambresbuiy. At the meeting of parliament, Edward met his father again, and received ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... ear—"So you see," he said, "when that youngster was born, Lady F. was Mrs. M.—wasn't she? and for the matter of that, Lady F. is Mrs. M. to this very hour. That's the real chat; ain't it, Sir Thomas? My stepmother, you know. The governor could take her away with him to-morrow if he chose, according to the law of the land—couldn't ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... general information. He knew nothing at all specific but evinced a candid willingness to overcome this by acquiring facts from Kenny. Nobody he knew had run away from an uncle. Why was Kenny seeking uncles? . . . Hum . . . Joel Ashley's boy had run away but the uncle there had been a stepmother. Was the runaway boy anybody's long lost heir? A pity! One read such things in the papers. Years back there had been a scandal about a girl who ran ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... in the wind like raven's wings. A sudden jealousy gripped him; Mr. Tiralla had spoken of a nice young fellow. And Mikolai was also a young fellow. Two young fellows, and with her day and night under the same roof. Stepmother? Pooh! She was ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... Robert proposed to take his friend to Audley Court, but had a letter from his cousin Alicia, saying that her stepmother had taken into her head that she was too ill to entertain, though in reality there was nothing the matter ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... herself that she would leave her father's home for ever and always; but it might be that an absence of some months might relieve the absolute misery of their present mode of living. The effect on her father was so sad that she was almost driven to regret that he should have taken her own part. Her stepmother was not a bad woman; nor did Mary even now think her to be had. She was a hardworking, painstaking wife, with a good general idea of justice. In the division of puddings and pies and other material comforts of the household she would deal evenly between her own children and her step-daughter. ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... of a small innkeeper at Grodno, but after his father's decease, which occurred when he was a child, his mother had married a Russian trader, who, when she died, carried the boy to Moscow. There Wenzel bade fair to be brought up a Russian; but when a stepmother came home, which took place while he was still a youth, he had returned to his native country, built himself a hut in the woods of Lithuania, and lived a lonely hunter till the time of my story, when he was still a robust, though gray-haired man. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... long-haired youth brought me a letter from an imaginary sister in which she asked me to take under my protection this brother of hers who was suffering from the tyranny of a stepmother as imaginary as herself. The brother was not imaginary, that was evident enough. But his sister's letter was as unnecessary for me as expert marksmanship to bring down a bird which ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... patriotism, triumphed over all the arts that power could control, and those allurements usually so potent where youth is endowed with great wealth. The young patriot promptly, cheerfully, sacrificed all, for his country—turned his back upon the unnatural stepmother, and came back, to share the good or evil fortunes of his ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... essayist, be it never so stricken, roves and ranges!—I remember pausing before a wide doorstep and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford Street, the 'stony-hearted stepmother' of them both, and came back bearing that 'glass of port wine and spices' but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. Was this the very doorstep that the old De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I pondered ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... quite able to keep help in the home, but did not do so. The mother made a slave of herself, in a few years broke in health, and left a large family of small children to struggle alone in the world. The stepmother, who soon came into the home, could afford one servant girl and part of the time two. This is a common experience in ill-managed homes. Or this question arises, Which is of greater importance, to make more ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... at seventeen, and married the reckless son of a rich man. She had a stepmother of the traditional type, and had never known a happy home life. She was of a loving and trusting and at the same time a coquettish nature, and she attracted young Walton's eye while out for a walk with a "Miss Brown" ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... capacity for enjoyment, that the degree of self- denial involved in labor seems exorbitant, and one feels that these children, so loved of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt with by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be truth in the silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to credit it, if I could. I am glad that they at least work in old-world, awkward, picturesque ways, and ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the bride furnishes all that is wanted in the kitchen, and all the store of house-linen. If my mother had lived, it would have been laid by for me, as she could have afforded to buy it, but my stepmother will have hard enough work to provide for her own four little girls. However," she continued, brightening up, "I can help her, for now I shall never marry; and my master here is just and liberal, and pays me sixty florins a year, which is high wages." (Sixty florins are about five ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... confident that, though no absolute promise had been made from her to him, or from him to her, there had then been no reason for him to doubt. In spite of that, she might have married now, or been promised in marriage. He knew that she must have been poor and left in want when her stepmother had died. She had told him of the intentions for her life, and he had answered that perhaps in the course of events something better might come up for her. Then he had been called a pauper, and had gone away to remedy that evil if it might be possible. He had heard while working among the ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Stepmother were back, albeit we are soe comfortable without her! Mary, taking the Maids at unawares last Night, found a strange Man in the Kitchen. Words ensued; he slunk off like a Culprit, which lookt not well, while Betty Fisher, brazening it out, woulde have at firste that he was her ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... There is here an elliptical construction never found in later French. Harsh stepmother nature (whom I ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... seek consolation and encouragement under the sunny sky—to find comfort for her sore heart in the radiant summer beauty of flowers and grass, in the sweet breathing of the air, in the happy heavenward soaring of the birds. No! Mother Nature is stepmother to the sick at heart. Soon, too soon, she could hardly see where she went. Again and again she resolutely cleared her eyes, under the shelter of her veil, when passing strangers noticed her; and again and again ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... they were gone, and I was looking longingly after them. God knows my father's house had never been more than a stepmother's home to me, but at that moment I yearned to return to it and felt like a child who was being ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... came to live at Ealing. The new wife gave her children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not why. So he was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing. The unjust stepmother gave him plenty to eat before he went away, and did not beat him once, but told the children to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl; and the other was a ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... arranged the children for the night, and now the stepmother had come up to kiss them and be kind. She was a conscientious young woman, full of a desire to do right, and she had determined not to ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... wealthy, and we lived in a sumptuous house in the upper part of the city. This was when I was about ten years old. My father was twice married; I was the child of the first wife, who died when I was very young; my stepmother came five years later. She was the elder of two sisters, both beautiful women. The sister often came to visit us. I remember I liked her better than I liked my stepmother; in fact, I regarded her with that sort ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... He ignored his stepmother completely, but tormented his sister Maud in a thousand impish ways. He disarranged her neatly combed hair. He threw mud on her dress and put carriage grease on her white stockings on picnic day. He called her ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... is idleness (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, and a sole cause of this and many other maladies, the devil's cushion, as [1540]Gualter calls it, his pillow and chief reposal. "For the mind can never rest, but still meditates on one thing or other, except ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... knew that Larry and the girls would accompany her. But of course Mr, Morton would think that she had preferred the company of her recognised admirer. It was pretty well known in Dillsborough that Larry was her lover. Her stepmother had spoken of it very freely; and Larry himself was a man who did not keep his lights hidden under a bushel. "I hope I've not been in the way, Mary," said Mr. Twentyman, as soon as Morton ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... tongue was harder than her heart. Father and mother alike thought the wide world of their boy, though the child was brought up under an iron rod. Joan, too, loved her half-brother, Tom, very dearly, and took a pride only second to her stepmother's in the lad's progress and achievements. More than once, though only Joan and he knew it, she had saved his skin from punishment, and she worshiped him with a frank admiration which was bound to win Mrs. Tregenza's regard. Joan quite ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... He kept up his studies on Sunday, and carried his books with him to work, so that he might read when he rested from labor." "I induced my husband to permit Abe to read and study at home as well as at school," writes his stepmother. "At first he was not easily reconciled to it, but finally he too seemed willing to encourage him to a certain extent. Abe was a dutiful son to me always, and we took particular care when he was reading not to disturb him,—would let him read on ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... the most absolute control, being not by any means an ill-natured person, but only strong-willed, serene, and stupid. Then her brother, to whom she was devoted, and who was her absolute confidant, went away to Canada, declaring he would not stand a stepmother, and that as soon as his sister grew old enough to put away domestic control he would send for her; and he soon got married and became a prominent member of the Dominion Legislature, and in none of his not over frequent letters ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... a doddering old fool," he said, "but, by gad, Tony, the most sensible thing I ever did in my life was to marry Bridie Ma-lone! If you're wise you'll take on your stepmother as housekeeper here and general manager after I'm gone. Not that I'm thinking of going. I'm seventy-two. You know that, Tony. But living as I do now, without a single thing to bother me, I'm good for another twenty years—or thirty. In fact, I don't ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... whether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other—I think it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,—my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... stepmother had laid aside the title and glory of a bride, he had, by his deadly honesty, made her understand that even a child of five requires what she could not give him—namely, logic. Had she been clever enough to reason logically she might have ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... books for another purpose. But there ye shall read—in Asser and the Saxon Chronicles—how that the old Queens of Saxondom, when that they were humble or were wives coming after the first, sat not upon the throne to be crowned and sacred, but—so it was with Judith that was stepmother to King Alfred, and with some others whose names in this hurry I may not discover nor remember in my mind—they were, upon some holidays, shewn to the people as being the ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... Licinius, his nephew, a boy of hardly eleven years. But the worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, who had incurred suspicion of political conspiracy, and of adulterous and incestuous purposes toward his stepmother Fausta, but is generally regarded as innocent. This domestic and political tragedy emerged from a vortex of mutual suspicion and rivalry, and calls to mind the conduct of Philip II. toward Don Carlos, of Peter the Great toward his son Alexis, and of Soliman the Great toward his son Mustapha. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that Cadmus founded Thebes. One of his daughters was named Ino. She married a son of King AEolus, who had been married before, and had two children, Phryxus and Helle. Ino was a cruel stepmother, and deceived her husband into thinking that the oracle at Delphi required him to sacrifice his son to Jupiter; but as the poor boy stood before the altar, down from the skies came a ram with a golden fleece, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... big dining-room, where his "stepmother-in-law," a diminutive woman, sat at the foot of the oblong table dressed in faded black, even to the poke sunbonnet which, worn indoors and out, completely hid her wrinkled face. Mrs. Henley, as he seated himself on the side of the board opposite ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... birth of a prince, followed by the death of the queen, it might have been thought would have a chastening effect upon Mary, as somewhat altering her prospects; but after acting as chief mourner to her friendly stepmother, she spent a pleasant Christmas at Richmond, where she remained till February. Her losses at cards during the Christmas festivities were very considerable, for she was fond of gambling. And she appears ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... daughters of the Alim learn—those who desire it. His wife died two years ago, and six months ago he married again a wife of twelve years old! (Sheykh Yussuf is thirty he tells me; he looks twenty-two or twenty-three.) What a stepmother and what a wife! He can repeat the whole Koran without a book, it takes twelve hours to do it. Has read the Towrat (old Testament) and the el-Aangeel (Gospels), of course, every Alim reads them. 'The words of Seyyidna Eesa are the true faith, but Christians have altered and corrupted their meaning. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... scandal of his father, who tolerated no one's vices save his own, as well as to the scandal of the university authorities of Alcala, he has been scouring the streets at the head of the most profligate students, insulting women, even ladies of rank, and amenable only to his lovely young stepmother, Elizabeth of Valois, Isabel de la Paz, as the Spaniards call her, the daughter of Catherine de Medicis, and sister of the King of France. Don Carlos should have married her, had not his worthy father found it more advantageous for the crown of Spain, as well as more pleasant ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... I write Louis XI reigned over France, Edward IV ruled in England, and his sister, the beautiful Margaret of York, was the unhappy wife of this Charles the Rash, and stepmother to his gentle daughter Mary. Charles, though only a duke in name, reigned as a most potent and despotic king over the fair rich land of Burgundy. Frederick of Styria was head of the great house of Hapsburg, and Count Maximilian, my young friend ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... been too much engaged, I suppose; and it's rather like him to have said nothing about it. How would you like a stepmother, Milly?' ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... made President by the people. It is natural to resent the accident that gave the Vice-President the place. They regard the Vice-President as children do a stepmother. He is looked upon as temporary—a device to save the election—a something to stop a gap—a lighter—a political raft. He holds the horse until another rider is found. People do not wish death to suggest nominees for the presidency. I do not believe it will be possible ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... any man out of Downing Street. He had been unable to resist the temptation of connecting his life with that of an individual of birth and rank; and in a weak moment, perhaps his only one, he had given his son a stepmother in a still good-looking and very ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the world! How can I object to a stepmother who is playing Blind Man's Buff at the present moment with the Norwegian nobility? I am not so overstrained as all that. But really I cannot allow my old friend HIALMAR, with his great, confiding, childlike ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... was the happy-faced little pansy that under various fanciful folk-names has ever been loved. Like Montgomery's daisy, it "blossomed everywhere." Its Italian name means "idle thoughts"; the German, "little stepmother." Spenser called it "pawnce." Shakespeare said maidens called it "love-in-idleness," and Drayton named it "heartsease." Dr. Prior gives these names—"Herb Trinity, Three Faces under a Hood, Fancy Flamy, Kiss Me, Pull Me, Cuddle Me unto You, Tickle ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... time worn imperial crowns, and one monarch resigned his sceptre. First died Napoleon III., on the 9th of January. Then, on the 25th, at Lisbon, died the dowager-empress Amelia, daughter of Prince Eugene, wife of Pedro I. of Brazil, and stepmother of the present emperor, Pedro II. On February 8 the empress Caroline Augusta, widow of Francis I. of Austria, and grandmother of the reigning emperor, died at Vienna. In Spain the abdication of Amadeo is an incident to be mentioned in a year opening so ominously ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... window of thy daughter." And the prince inquired of the messenger, saying, "The son of which of the princes is it?" And he replied to him, "It is the son of an officer, who has come as a fugitive from the land of Egypt, fleeing from before his stepmother when she had children." Then the chief of Naharaina was exceeding angry; and he said, "Shall I indeed give my daughter to the Egyptian fugitive? Let him go back whence he came." And one came to tell the youth, "Go back to the ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Ross. It would make a difference to the Redfields. Traitorous as it seemed, it was a great relief—a joy—to know that her own mother, her real mother, had been "nice." "She must have been nice or Lize would not have said so," she reasoned, recalling that her stepmother had admitted ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... looked at her curiously. "I mean your stepmother," he said gravely. "I never had the pleasure of meeting ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... saying, I was bred up here in the village—father and mother died very young, and I was left a poor orphan—well, bless us! if Thomas haven't kissed her!—to the care of Mrs. Score, my aunt, who has been a mother to me—a stepmother, you know;—and I've been to Stratford fair, and to Warwick many a time; and there's two people who have offered to marry me, and ever so many who want to, and I won't have none—only a gentleman, as I've always said; not a poor clodpole, like Tom there with ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... de Vandalia. I call her peerless because she has no peer, whether it be in bodily stature or in the supremacy of rank and beauty. This same Casildea, then, that I speak of, requited my honourable passion and gentle aspirations by compelling me, as his stepmother did Hercules, to engage in many perils of various sorts, at the end of each promising me that, with the end of the next, the object of my hopes should be attained; but my labours have gone on increasing link by link until they ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... towels, or trim the bonnet, or make a pudding for dinner. It's wash day, and I know what that means in our house. I won't go—it's better out in the rain; the towels and the drab bonnet may go au diable, and my blessed stepmother with them, if it comes ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... stopped her, which she mounted as though it had been a steed to carry her onward, and sat a moment looking at the beauty of the morning, her eyes taking on that far-away look that annoyed her stepmother when she wanted her to hurry with the dishes, or finish a long seam before it ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... a solar plexus blow to American womanhood. The heroine marries a German prince, merely because he is a Prince, discarding her honest and true lover in a scoundrelly fashion, while her beautiful stepmother comes within an ace of surrendering her person to her son- in-law, and is prevented only by the inopportune arrival of her idiotic husband. It is all very "elevating," and a good thing to take your wife and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... an ill-natured, blind man. He has a cruel stepmother and a selfish, petulant younger brother. This boy, the pet of his parents, treated Shun with insolence; and the father and mother joined in persecuting the elder son. Shun, without showing resentment, cried aloud to Heaven and obtained [Page 74] patience ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... of one of her father's best English gold picture frames. She was a clever, capable girl, with a great love for music, and was beginning to play the violin rather well. She got on quite tolerably with her stepmother, and was fond of the little half-brothers and sisters, though the warmest corner of her heart was reserved for Madox, who was the baby of the ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... insure; The cit and polecat stink, and are secure; Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug, The priest and hedgehog in their robes are snug; Ev'n silly woman has her warlike arts, Her tongue and eyes, her dreaded spear and darts;— But, oh! thou bitter stepmother and hard, To thy poor fenceless, naked child—the Bard! A thing unteachable in world's skill, And half an idiot too, more helpless still; No heels to bear him from the op'ning dun; No claws to dig, his hated sight to shun; No horns, but those ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... horse; but I assure you that I never partook of his sweetmeats or his smiles, and at this hour I thank him for it. The education which he gave me hardened the affections, and it is the best service which a father can render his son. Life is a hard stepmother, my dear Gilbert; how many smiles have you seen pass over her brazen lips! Besides, I have particular reasons for not treating Stephane with too much tenderness. He seems to you to be unhappy, he will be so forever if I do not strive to discipline his inclinations and to break ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... is no secret. Her father was a wealthy colonist, and he died when she was fifteen, leaving her in the charge of her step-mother, Richard Foster's aunt. The match was one of the stepmother's making, for Olivia was little better than a child. Richard was glad enough to get her fortune, or rather the income from it, for of course she did not come into full possession of it till she was of age. One-third of it was settled upon her absolutely; the other two-thirds came to her ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... hardly knew how to be grateful enough to him. It is true, she would have preferred his remaining in the first or second stages of behaviour; for his violent love puzzled and frightened her. Her uncle neither helped nor hindered the love affair, though it was going on under his own eyes. Frank's stepmother had such a variable temper, that there was no knowing whether what she liked one day she would like the next, or not. At length she went to such extremes of crossness that Alice was only too glad to shut her eyes and rush blindly at the chance of escape from domestic tyranny offered ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... equally proud and disagreeable as herself, while the husband had one daughter, of the sweetest temper and most angelic disposition, who was the complete counterpart of her late mother. No sooner was the wedding over, than the stepmother began to show her bad temper. She could not bear her stepdaughter's good qualities, that only showed up her daughters' unamiable ones still more obviously, and she accordingly compelled the poor girl to do all the drudgery of the ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... Academy when the spring came, for I felt no longer a schoolgirl. But for Helen, I could not have remained as I did. She stayed for pastime now, she confessed, it was so dull at home; her father was wrapped in his studies, and she had a stepmother. I resolved again that I would study more, and was translating, in view of this resolve, "Corinne," with Miss Prior, and singing sedulously with Mrs. Lane, and had begun a course of reading with ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... its immediate result had been the emigration of several thousand professors and students of German nationality to Leipzig, where a new university arose which was inclined to consider its Alma Mater, Prague, a stepmother. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... intimacy is.' But from Johnson's letter to Mrs Thrale we see looming ahead a crisis. 'He got two and forty guineas in fees while he was here. He has by his wife's persuasion and mine taken down a present for his mother-in-law,'—an error, doubtless, for 'stepmother.' He had entered himself this time at the Temple, and Johnson was his bond. He left to be in time for practice before the General Assembly, finding 'something low and coarse in such employment, but guineas ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... made that way. My stepmother, the only mother I've known, was like that," Lavendar went on, dropping suddenly again into personal talk, as they had done before. He and she, it seemed, could not keep barriers between them very long; every hour they ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... before him. The girl, young Althea, rather resembling her mother,—her own mother,—was beginning to think less of large hair-bows and more of longer dresses. Her father was quite wrapped up in her and her stepmother seemed ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... popularity, the prestige, and the power which came to her from being the daughter of Augustus and the wife of Agrippa. Little by little she became possessed by the mania of being in Rome the antithesis of Livia, of conducting herself in every case in a manner contrary to that followed by her stepmother. If the latter, like Augustus, wore garments of wool woven at home, Julia affected silks purchased at great price from the oriental merchants. These the ladies of the older type considered a ruinous luxury because of the expense, and an indecency because of ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... surprise of her husband, became the mistress of his captor and jailer, to whom she bore several children. What deepens the horror of this odious domestic tragedy is the fact that the wife of O'Neil, the daughter of O'Donnell, thus supplanted by her shameless stepmother, under her own roof, died soon afterwards of "horror, loathing, grief, and deep anguish," at the spectacle afforded by the private life of O'Neil, and the severities inflicted upon her wretched father. All the patriotic designs, and all the shining abilities of John the Proud, cannot abate ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... little figure in the mingled twilight and firelight, but it was toward her beautiful stepmother that everybody looked as Rachael Breckenridge seated herself on the arm of old Mrs. Torrence's chair and sent a ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... had finished, another man took his place and told the story of Deirdre and Naisi, and another told the fate of the four children of Lir that were turned into four beautiful swans by their cruel stepmother. ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... by the travellers in person, and the second brought up the luggage, under the supervision of Mrs. Snewson, Mrs. Swancourt's maid—and for the last fortnight Elfride's also; for although the younger lady had never been accustomed to any such attendant at robing times, her stepmother forced her into a semblance of familiarity with one when ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... habit seems to run in the family—a very passion of secrecy has possessed me. If I had told Helen, I should have had to dread that even in her sweet sleep she might whisper something to put that ferret, her stepmother, on the scent. Oh, Helen, trust ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... women mentioned by the Princess was her stepmother, Azze-bint-Zef, who seems to have completely ruled the Sultan, and to have settled all questions of home and foreign policy; while her great-aunt, the Princess Asche, was regent of the empire during the Sultan's minority, and was ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... days would have been wretched enough, if his elastic spirits had allowed him to give way to misery. His father was a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the death of his first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at another's chicks, would not, as a stepmother, leave the little Paul in peace. She was continually putting her own children forward, and ill-treating the late 'anointed' son. The father gave in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be set free from his unhappy home. There may be some excuse in this for the licentious living ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... not to commit yourself, I see. Well, you are quite right. She is a harmless little person, I believe, and may turn out very well if withdrawn from the influence of her stepmother." ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... always happening. My stepmother gets more unbearable every day. I sometimes think I will go and work for my living, but my father won't hear of it. And what can I do? I haven't qualified for anything. The only thing open to me is to ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... to the distaste of the Marchioness de Bouille, the marshal's daughter, who found herself separated from her stepmother, and married to a man who, it was said, gave her great cause for complaint, the greatest being his threescore ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the Fairy. "I was about to say that Prince Chrysopras was greatly delighted by his Royal Stepmother's gift, and at once leapt on the back ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a stepmother,—as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered; every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... I did not rest. My fever, or my lassitude, or probably some presentiment of the troubled career into which I was to be plunged, made "tired nature's sweet restorer" a stepmother to me. I can never endure hearing the dreams of others, and thus I cannot suffer myself to inflict them on my hearers; but on that night, Queen Mab, like Jehu, drove her horses furiously. Every possible kind of disappointment, vexation, and difficulty; every conceivable shape of things, past ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... departure were days of mingled gloom, desperation, and the attempt to recover hope. He visited his old stepmother and made a pilgrimage to his father's grave. His thoughts fondly renewed the details of his past life, lingered upon this and that, as if fearful that it was all slipping away from him forever. And then he roused himself as if in sudden revolt against the Fates. The day before he left ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson |
