"Step-" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Henry's seneschal of Gascony, Rostand de Sollers, and even of Alfonse's father-in-law, the depressed Raymond of Toulouse. At Christmas Hugh openly showed his hand. He renounced his homage to Alfonse, declared his adhesion to his step-son, Richard of Cornwall, the titular count of Poitou, and ostentatiously withdrew from the court with his wife. The rest of the winter was taken up with preparations for ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... in a mantle of purple velvet, having a long train furred with ermine, was carried by one of her godmothers, the dowager-duchess of Norfolk. Anne Boleyn was this lady's step-grand-daughter: but in this alliance with royalty she had little cause to exult; still less in the closer one which was afterwards formed for her by the elevation of her own grand-daughter Catherine Howard. On discovery of the ill conduct of this queen, the aged duchess was overwhelmed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... second choice is generally a striking contrast to the first. My mother, I am told, was one of those gentle, dove-like, pensive beings, who nestled in her husband's heart, and knew no world beyond. My step-mother loved the world and its pleasures better than husband, children, and home. She had children of her own, who were more the objects of her pride than her love. Every day, they were dressed for exhibition, petted ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... your own mother, and that's a great deal better," returned Lulu. "Mamma Vi is very beautiful and sweet, and very kind to Max and Gracie and me, but a step-mother can't be ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... and those almost certainly a majority, are anxious to be told all they can, and since editors and publishers join in the request, I can scarce do otherwise than comply. The intended argument, then, so far as it was known at the time of the writer's death to his step-daughter and devoted amanuensis, Mrs. Strong, was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... articles instead of reading them hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted pictures instead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings picked up at another man's sale of effects. Mine were all the rights of social intercourse, craft by craft, that India, stony-hearted step-mother of collectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft carpets and breathing the incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studying the paintings in which the members of the club had caricatured themselves, their associates, and their aims. There ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... companions was a boy of about his own age, named Alfred Walton, who attended the same school with him. Alfred's father was dead; but he had a step-father, whom he called father, and with whom he lived. His home was to Oscar a very attractive one; for it was a public house, and had large stables and a stage-office attached, and was usually full of company. Alfred's step-father was the landlord of the hotel, and of course he ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... In 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert obtained a patent from Queen Elizabeth to colonize such parts of North-America as were not then occupied by any of her allies. Soon after, he, assisted and accompanied by his step-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, fitted out an expedition and sailed for America; but they were intercepted by a Spanish ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... upon a time a peasant-woman who had a daughter and a step-daughter. The daughter had her own way in everything, and whatever she did was right in her mother's eyes; but the poor step-daughter had a hard time. Let her do what she would, she was always blamed, and got small thanks for all the trouble she took; nothing was right, everything wrong; ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... the kitchen, to keep them warm. If a second serving is desired, the mistress rings. Suit yourself about having the serving silver placed on the table before the dish to be served is carried in. The latest wrinkle—and it is a time and step-saving one—dictates that the silver be brought in on a platter. The soup, to be served hot (it should always be served in soup plates at dinner and never in bouillon cups) must be brought in after the ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... child; and there's no use bothering a dying woman who's short of breath. You and Maurice have got to go to my sister, your Aunt Lydia, and ef you'll take a word of advice by and by, Cecile, from one as 'ull be in her grave, you'll not step-aunt her—she's short of temper, Aunt Lydia is. Yes," continued the sick woman, speaking fast, and gasping for breath a little, "you have got to go to my sister Lydia. I have sent her word, and she'll come to-morrow—but—never ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... she would need a friend, as never before, with only her step-mother, as she had told him, in the world to befriend her. A man's hand, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert—Cyril Scott could play him nicely—who was becoming a successful painter as fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member of the household was Barbara Ross, a step-niece. Man is born to trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up ...
— Options • O. Henry
... know that the deadly earnestness I felt was in my voice, for though I spoke in a low tone I thought my head would burst until the last word was spoken. We looked at each other—glared is not the word to define that white-hot yet frozen, "another-step-and-I-shoot" look which of all expressions of which the human face is capable is most intense and dangerous. I did not flinch. I did not know what he would do, but I saw my words impressing on his mind the absolute conviction that for once he was face to face with a resolution no power ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Serene Dowager lived, these twenty-eight years past; a Schwartzburg by birth, "the cleverest head among them all." Twenty-eight years in dilapidated Mirow: so long has that Tailoring Duke, her eldest STEP-SON (child of a prior wife) been Supreme Head of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; employed with his needle, or we know not how,—collapsed plainly into tailoring at this date. There was but one other Son; this clever Lady's, twenty years junior,—"Prince of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... which we are using the greater is the inductance. If we want to do a real job we can bring each of these taps to a little stud and arrange a sliding or rotating contact with them. Then we have an inductance the value of which we can vary "step-by-step" in a convenient manner. ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... punish! If anger, hatred, and enmity are buried with a man, as it is believed, begin then to return to yourself; begin to be ashamed to have acted against your ancient humanity; begin, then, to wish to appear a mother, and not a cold negligent step-dame. Yield your tears to your son; yield your maternal piety to him whom once you repulsed, and, living, cast away from you! At least think of possessing him dead, and restore your citizenship, your award, and your grace, to his memory. He was a son who held you in reverence, and though long an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... yegua (mare) El carnero (ram) La oveja (ewe) El fraile (friar) La soror (sister) El hombre (man) La muger (woman) El macho cabrio or cabron (he-goat) La cabra (she-goat) El marido (husband) La muger (the wife) El padre (father) La madre (mother) El padrastro (step-father) La madrastra (step-mother) El padrino (god-father) La madrina (god-mother) El toro (bull) La vaca (cow) El yerno (son-in-law) La ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... this threefold rhythm will become clear when we consider it against the background of what we observed in the metamorphosis of the leaf. Take the mallow leaf; its metamorphosis shows a step-wise progression from coarser to finer forms, whereby the characteristic plan of the leaf comes more and more into view, so that in the topmost leaf it reaches a certain stage of perfection. Now we observe that in the calyx this stage is not ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... it beautifully, mamma," said the younger one; whereupon mamma gave her head a toss, and made up her mind, as I thought, to take some little vengeance before long upon her step-daughter. I observed that Miss Greene always called her step-mother mamma on the first approach of any stranger, so that the nature of the connection between them might be understood. And I observed also that the elder lady always gave her head ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... of tales to which our story and the two variants belong has been traced briefly in Bolte-Polivka, 2 : 491-503. The earliest forms of the Maerchen are the Middle-English poems of the fifteenth century entitled "Jack and his Step-Dame" and "The Frere ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Maud Marsh, who is just twenty: that the chatelaine of the castle is Lady Caroline Byng, Lord Marshmoreton's sister, who married the very wealthy colliery owner, Clifford Byng, a few years before his death (which unkind people say she hastened): and that she has a step-son, Reginald. Give me time to mention these few facts and I am done. On the glorious past of the Marshmoretons ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... how little in our present state and circumstances is natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man. Art has become a second and stronger nature; she is a step-mother, whose crafty tenderness has taught us to despise the bountiful and wholesome ministrations of our true parent. It is only through the medium of the imagination that we can lessen those iron fetters, which we call truth ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great king, Shri Rama. What did he come to show? The ideal Kshattriya, in every relation of the Kshattriya life; as son—perfect as son alike to loving father and to jealous and for the time unkind step-mother. For you may remember that when the father's wife who was not His own mother bade him go forth to the forest on the very eve of His coronation as heir, His gentle answer was: "Mother, I go." Perfect as son. Perfect as husband; if He had not limited Himself by His own will to ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... answered Wildrake, "be somewhat more cordial with a comrade in distress. This is a different scene from the Brentford storming-party. The jade Fortune has been a very step-mother to me. I will sing you a song I made on ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... this man. But for your chance discovery and furious ride he would have been the first to warn me of this danger. Note his shrewdness: he does not mention Buckingham, but only the Tudor, his own step-son; and hence the greater will seem his loyalty. And by St. Paul! he bests me. I must accept his message at its seeming value; for he will now follow it by prompt action. Yet his motive is as plain as God's sun: he would hasten Buckingham to the block, and himself to his dead friend's offices. ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... is his belief in his own goodness. If you look at the appalling narrative of Lyndon's life in this country, you see, with a shudder, that the man regards his cruelty to his wife, his villainy towards his step-son, as the inevitable outcome of stern virtue; he tells you things that make you long to stamp on the inanimate pages; for he rouses such a passion of wild scorn and wrath as we feel against no ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... lies in Spain. Don Carlos, Crown-prince of Spain comes to the convent of St. Just, where his grand-father, the Emperor Charles the Fifth has just been buried. Carlos bewails his separation from his step-mother, Elizabeth of Valois, whom he loves with a sinful passion. His friend, the Marquis Posa reminds him of his duty and induces him to leave Spain for Flanders, where an unhappy nation sighs under the cruel rule of King Philip's governors.—Carlos has an interview with ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... who enables you to restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and strength to the same, also enable you to raise the dead to life? Now, having lately lost a wife, whom I most tenderly loved, my children a most excellent step-mother, and our acquaintances a most dear and valuable friend, you will lay us all under the highest obligations; and I earnestly entreat you, for God Almighty's sake, that you will put up your petitions to the Throne of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... united in the eleventh century by the marriage of one of the Guelf ladies to Albert Azzo the Second, Lord of Este and Marquis of Italy. His son Guelf obtained the Bavarian possessions of his wife's step-father, a Guelf of Bavaria. One of his descendants, called Henry the Lion, married Maud, daughter of Henry the Second of England, and became the founder of the family of Brunswick. War and imperial favor and imperial displeasure ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... sent. Old Quimby was on the platform at the Urbana station as Davies sprang from the train. "Nothing much," said he, in response to the young man's eager inquiry. "Some dam girl nonsense she and Bee have cooked up between them. When they ain't devilling the life out of their step-mother they're worrying somebody else. Oh, yes!—'course the doctor's been humbugging for a week,—too glad to get a chance of shovin' in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Jeffrey. "Step-sister to Esther's grandmother. She must be sixty-five where grandmother's a good ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... "moody man," let it be always remembered, was a good husband and father. His wife was devoted to him, his step-daughter carries now to an old age a profound reverence and affection for his memory. Grieved beyond all words was she—the Henrietta or "Hen" of all his books—at what is maintained to be the utterly fictitious narrative of Borrow's described deathbed that ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... customers with milk. Such was the humble beginning of his industrial career; and it was by his own strength that he rose from that position, and achieved the highest eminence as an artist. Not taking kindly to his step-father, the boy was sent to trade, and was first placed with a grocer in Sheffield. The business was very distasteful to him; but, passing a carver's shop window one day, his eye was attracted by the glittering articles it contained, and, charmed with the ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... son Edward, called "the Martyr," who ascended the throne at the age of fifteen years. His step-mother, Elfrida, opposed him, and favored her own son, Ethelred. Edward was assassinated in 978, at the instigation of his step-mother, and that's ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... overflow. "I don't know why you should. I could understand Orma Fry's doing it, because she's always wanted to get me out of here ever since the first day. I can't see why, when she's got her own home, and her father to work for her; nor Ida Targatt, neither, when she got a legacy from her step-brother on'y last year. But anyway we all live in the same place, and when it's a place like North Dormer it's enough to make people hate each other just to have to walk down the same street every day. But you don't ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the Elsinore, forming a single large apartment at least thirty- five feet from side to side and fifteen to eighteen feet in depth, curved, of course, to the lines of the ship's stern. This seemed a store- room. I noted wash-tubs, bolts of canvas, many lockers, hams and bacon hanging, a step-ladder that led up through a small hatch to the poop, and, in the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Of clay he says, "It is a cursed step-dame to almost all vegetation, as having few or no meatuses for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... already been announced, and Palla and Ilse Westgard were in the unfurnished drawing-room, the former on a step-ladder, the latter holding that collapsible machine with one hand and Palla's ankle with ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... possession of great riches are always the mark of envy. But if the heiress is married to a good Catholic and loyal subject of the king, who can cavil at rights sanctified by the laws of God and man? Think it over, my dear Adrian, think it over. Step-mother or wife—you can ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the brother of my house muchacha, [496] a boy about eight. He had a sort of protuberance on one side caused by broken ribs which had not been set. I questioned my muchacha. She said her step-father had kicked the child across the room some weeks before and broken his ribs. The next day, I took the child together with Senora Bayot, the wife of the Governor's secretary, before the local Justice of the Peace. Senora Bayot translated and the ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... great-grandson of Taira Kiyomori. The father of Chikazane had perished in the wars between the Taira and Minamoto families, and his mother had married as her second husband the chief man in the village of Tsuda in the province of Omi. The step-child was adopted by a Shinto priest of the village of Ota in the province of Echizen, and received the name of Ota Chikazane. When he grew up, he became a Shinto priest and married and became the father of a line of priests. One of this succession was Ota Nobuhide, who ...
— Japan • David Murray
... though weak and almost imbecile, had ever been kind to me in person, the craving affection for my brothers and my sisters, nay! something approaching to pity or regret for the mother who had proved herself but a step-mother towards me, all revived in increased ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... no, Posidon. Let her grave be the sea which bears her name. We are so sorry for her; that step-mother's ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... ceremonies of the wedding over but the step-mother began to show herself in her colors. She could not bear the good qualities of this pretty girl; and the less because they made her own daughters appear the more odious. She employed her in the meanest work of the house; she scoured the dishes and tables, and cleaned madam's ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... all, he had not treated them generously. Yet another baby was expected, she told Margaret, and they would have to give up the motor. Margaret sympathized, but in a formal fashion, and Dolly little imagined that the step-mother was urging Mr. Wilcox to make them a more liberal allowance. She sighed again, and at last the particular grievance was remembered. "Oh yes," she cried, "that is it: Miss Avery has ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... such a union was only to be found in irresponsible relations. In the case of his friend Fritz Jacobi, whose character and talents had all his admiration, he had a practical illustration of the creed; for Jacobi had a wife and also a friend (his step-aunt Johanna Fahlmer) in whom he found a more responsive recipient of his emotions. But it is rather in Goethe's own character and experience that we are to look for the origin of Stella; it is in truth an analytic presentment of what he ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... that Esther was suffering from the need of a confidant. Really worried as she felt about her step-mother's health, the burden of taking any determined action against the wishes of the patient herself was a serious one for a young girl. Yet in whom could she confide? Girl friends she had in plenty but not one whose judgment she could trust before her own. Had the minister been an older man ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... a deal o' talk lang before my aunt's time about it; and 'twas said the step-mother knew more than she was like to let out. And she managed her husband, the ald squire, wi' her white-heft and flatteries. And as the boy was never seen more, in course of time the thing ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... us, were mostly slovens; and I was glad to find that the good taste and the correct fashion were without a colour-line; there were some mulatto ladies present as stylish as their white sisters, or step-sisters. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... kept her place at the head of the household, and was hard on everybody, but more especially on her son's wife and her little girl. If there had been children, she might have been different; but she almost resented her son's warm affection for his little step-daughter. At any rate she was determined that little Emily should be brought up as children used to be brought up when she was young, and not spoiled by over-indulgence as her mother had been; and the process was not a pleasant one to any of them, and "good times" were few and far between ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... of treason. You will readily excuse my referring to the arts by which the son was rendered guilty in the eyes of the father. Be it enough to say, that the unfortunate young man fell a victim to the guilt of his step-mother, Fausta, and that he disdained to exculpate himself from a charge so gross and so erroneous. It is said, that the anger of the Emperor was kept up against his son by the sycophants who called upon Constantine ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... reflected Bill. "My mother married my step-father for the sake of me, and she's never been done ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... for himself or his brother Dick. If his mother did not have it and wanted it she would have to go to Mr. Langmore for it. That might cause a bitterness all around. Or again, he might have thought that if his step-father were dead his mother would inherit his money and so plotted one murder, which, when he was discovered, ended in a second. It will do no harm to have a ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... first establishment, to supply all its own wants, had not the extravagance of English luxury, the pride of a sumptuous table, the increasing growth of intemperance and ingratitude, added to the negligence of its patrons and prelates, reduced it from freedom to servility; and if the step-daughter, no less enviously than odiously, had not ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... the forest and made a house. "I have chosen the land to be my land, the people to be my people, to live and die with," said Stevenson in his speech to the Samoan chiefs. Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, his step-son, thus describes ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... step-brother, comes, it is said, with Medea, more guilty than he, to have himself absolved by Circe, queen and priestess of Aea, who ever after passed for a great magician. Circe absolves them with a sucking-pig ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... the kitchens and domestic offices. The building was only some four hundred yards from the road, so I turned in to get a light for my pipe. I noticed, as I was getting near, that a man was standing on a step-ladder, apparently doing some painting. He looked down on me from his ladder as I approached. Then I saw that instead of painting he was engaged in tarring the roof of the building. He was evidently an amateur tar-man. The bucket which held the tar was tied on to the ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Mean personified, Step-sister of Elissa (parsimony) and Perissa (extravagance). The three sisters could never agree on any subject.—Spenser, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... were perfectly serene. His interview with his step-son is universally known. "See," he said, "how a Christian can die." The piety of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The feeling which predominates in all his devotional writings, is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise and all-powerful friend who had watched ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... faithful child-love towards her. These sentiments made me happy, developed my nature, and strengthened me, because they were kindly received and reciprocated by her. But this happiness did not endure. Soon my step-mother rejoiced in the possession of a son of her own;[3] and then her love was not only withdrawn entirely from me and transferred to her own child, but I was treated with worse than indifference—by word and deed, I was made to ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... acknowledged her relationship. It is more than likely that the great philosopher believed her story, but if so he did not allow her the satisfaction of knowing his belief, declaring always that Madame Tencin could "not be nearer than a step-mother to him, since his mother was the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... laughed at it as much as the rest," Navarette exclaimed; "I laughed at it with that profound, cruel pitilessness which we all of us, who are well made and vigorous, feel for those whom their step-mother, Nature, has disfigured in some way or other, for those laughable, feeble creatures who are, however, more to be pitied than those poor deformed wretches from whom we turn ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... boy will have to beg his bread because he has got the bump of painting," said Madame Descoings; "but, for my part, I am not the least uneasy about the future of my step-son, little Bixiou, who has a passion for drawing. Men are born ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... been reading a few moments before had fallen on the ground, and his dark eyes were soft and dreamy. Violante had finished her hymn, and seated herself on the ground between the two, pillowing her head on her step-mother's lap, but with her hand resting on her father's knee, and her gaze fixed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... and hurried out and down the step-ladder, which took them outside, and, followed by the bandsmen, he made for the little tent where ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... have run so long a career in this matter, methinks, before I give my pen a full stop, it shall be but a little more lost time, to inquire, why England, (the mother of excellent minds,) should be grown so hard a step-mother to poets, who certainly in wit ought to pass all other: sith all only proceedeth from their wit, being indeed makers of themselves, not takers of others. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Abel was twenty-five or so, an' he'd just come here fresh ordained a minister. We found he wa'n't the kind to stop short on, Be good yourself an' then a crown. No, but he just went after the folks that was livin' along, moral an' step-pickin', an' he says to us, 'What you sittin' down here for, enjoyin' yourselves bein' moral? Get out an' help the rest o' the world,' he says. But everybody liked him in spite o' that, an' he was goin' to be installed ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... and carried before the first mate, whose duty it was to deal with such cases. When questioned as to his object of being stowed away, and who brought him on board, the boy, who had a beautiful sunny face, and eyes that looked like the very mirrors of truth, replied that his step-father did it, because he could not afford to keep him, nor pay his passage out to Halifax, where he had an aunt who was well off, and to whose house he was going. The mate did not believe the story, in spite ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... man, I did not need the step-ladder. In those low rooms I could quite easily stand on the floor and paper from the ceiling down. Certainly that was an advantage. I discovered, however, that a step-ladder is not all of a paper-hanger's gifts. When I matched that piece of paper at the ceiling and ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... this.—Ah, be dam! I see what you lif' him with. All same stove-lid." Talking and swearing to himself cheerfully, Bonny applied the end of a broken whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old hearthstone which marked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a step-dance on it and found it hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon the stone where some prying tool had taken hold and slipped, showed he was not the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... him with anger and menace, and he had no idea how he would be received now. Secondly, his mother's place was occupied by a second wife, and an involuntary but strong prejudice possessed him against his step-mother. He was most agreeably disappointed in both respects. His father "received him as a man, as a friend, all constraint was banished at our first interview, and we ever after continued on the same terms of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... against Washington himself. He was blackguarded and abused in every possible way. He was accused of having shown incapacity while General and of having embezzled public funds while President. He was nicknamed "the Step-Father of his country." The imputation on his honor stung so keenly that he declared "he would rather be in his grave than in the Presidency," and in private correspondence he complained that he had been assailed "in terms ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... of the leading abolitionists; but no one has described more vividly their grave intellectual and social defects. He laid down principles which, when applied, would inevitably lead to progress and reform; but he took little part in the imperfect step-by-step process of actual reforming. He probably would have been an ineffective worker in any field of reform; and, at any rate, strenuous labor on applications of his philosophy would have prevented him from maintaining the flow of his philosophic ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... political events of this period was the usurpation of power by the Empress Wu—at first, as nominal regent on behalf of a step-child, the son and heir of her late husband by his first wife, and afterwards, when she had set aside the step-child, on her own account. There had been one previous instance of a woman wielding the Imperial sceptre, namely, the Empress Lu of the Han dynasty, to whom the Chinese have accorded ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... attempted in his—excursions, the theory that he had expounded to Mr. Direck that it is only through our children that we are able to achieve disinterested love, real love. But that left unexplained that far more intimate emotional hold of Hugh than of his very jolly little step-brothers. That was a fact into which Mr. Britling rather sedulously ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... of the monks. Dunstan, with his usual moderation, gave his voice for the eldest son, and Eadward was chosen king and crowned. Not only had he a strong party opposed to him, but he had a dissatisfied step-mother in AElfthryth, the mother of AEthelred, whilst his own mother, who had probably been married to Eadgar without full marriage rites, had been long since dead. After reigning for four years Eadward was murdered near Corfe by some of the opposite party, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Romance. He made friends by his dedications. Such resources were indeed necessary, for he not only lived well, but had made his house an asylum for his two sisters, who there found refuge from an unfeeling step-mother. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... my girl—step-daughter, I should say," said Belding. "She's sure some whirlwind, as Laddy calls her. Come, let's go in and meet ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... suddenly turning to Conrad the apprentice; 'look yonder how your step-father is enjoying his bread and bacon. Only see, too, what a fat bottle of beer he has got standing by him! Step across to him and ask him to give you a share of his good things, and to lend us his bottle ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... of the country that had always been reckoned impassable. In short, instead of going a long way about, we determined to try and get straight through the woods, and see what kind of country it was. I believe I mentioned my party in a letter to Ogilvie (his step-father) before I left St. Anne's or Fredericton: it was an officer of the regiment, Tonny, and two woodsmen. The officer and I used to draw part of our baggage day about, and the other day steer (by compass), which we did so well, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... not in their place behind the curtain. Somebody had moved them to the top shelf. Catty brought the step-ladder. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... my daughter-in-law, takes after me more in a good many things than Tirzah Ann duz, who is my own step-daughter. Curious, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... were not related. The concurrent existence of both mothers is, of course, presumed here. The question remains to be asked, would the children of the one sister, were their mother dead, be as well loved and cared for by the surviving sister, were she called upon to exercise the functions of a step-mother; and would the children of the dead sister love the children of the living sister, were they not viewed upon the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... no good, her parents turned to a quack named Evans, who placed on the child's finger an iron ring supposed to have miraculous virtues, but it brought her no relief, and very suddenly little Martha Custis died. Washington himself felt the loss of his unfortunate step-daughter, but he was unflagging in trying to console the mother, heartbroken at the death of ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... demanded Lemuel, her youngest step-brother, from his trundle bed. 'You're loiterin'. Why ain't you down helping mar? Mar'll be awful cross with you. She always is wash days. Hi! you'll git it!' and he endeavoured to suspend himself from a ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... at their lowest ebb. Burdened with a wife and child, he had found it necessary to return, after a second futile attempt to gain a living by his calling in a country town, to Milan, his "stony-hearted step-mother." If he had reckoned on his mother's bounty he was doomed to disappointment, for Chiara was an irritable woman, and as her son's temper was none of the sweetest, it is almost certain that they must have ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... of the Boswells of this branch was, in 1798, raised to the bench under the title of Lord Balmuto. It was his sister who was Boswell's step-mother. Rogers's Boswelliana, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... glance round.] You know, Mr. Valma, I was always a self-willed, independent sort of a girl—a handful, they used to call me; and when father died I determined to have done with my step-mother, and to come to London at any price. ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... I told you, that to-morrow was the day fixed by Don Pedro and Clara's unnatural step-mother, for her to enter a convent, in order that her brat might possess her fortune: made desperate by this, I procured a key to the door, and bribed Clara's maid to leave it unbolted; at two this morning, I entered unperceived, and ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... extensive reading—he had been an omnivorous reader—there were numerous examples of youths left, like him, to the care of distant relatives, or step-parents, or utter strangers. Their experiences, generally speaking, had not been cheerful ones. Most of them had run away. He might run away; but somehow the idea of running away, with no money, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... we been married under an equitable law or had he emigrated to Minnesota, as he proposed, before I thought of going, there would have been no separation; but after fifteen years in his mother's house I must run away or die, and leave my child to a step-mother. So I ran away. He thought I would return; enlarged and improved the house, wrote and waited for us; could make no deed without my signature; I would sign none, and after three years he got a divorce for desertion. In '70 he married ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... that transitional state which is so full of peril to persons of certain temperaments, escaping into too sudden freedom and light from the walls of a narrow and gloomy belief; and I could not but smile, with mingled amusement and commiseration, at his singular step-by-step processes. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... came the next day to call on the relatives from Melcombe; she brought his step-daughters with her; and these young ladies when they returned home gave their step-brothers a succinct account of the impressions ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... had made the remark was different in manner, appearance and costume from the rest of the group, although not conspicuously so. Martha Greaves was an English girl who had crossed the ocean early in the summer with Tory Drew's father and step-mother to spend the summer in Westhaven. She was singularly tall with light brown ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... marched through us during the late southward projection of certain of your Northern military scorpions. After our father's felo-desease, ensuing remotely from an overstrain in attempting to lift a large mortgage, our mother gave us a step-father of Northern birth, who tried to amend our constitutions ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... an indolent pose of body. As the girl looked at him something of his unreckoning courage passed into her. Somehow she believed in him, felt that by some wild chance he might again conquer this truculent element now almost surrounding him. She spoke quickly to her step-father. "He won't go. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man named John tried to go with a girl but her step-pa, Willie, run him away from the house just like he mought be a dog, so John made it up in his mind to conjure Willie. He went to the spring and planted somethin' in the mouth of it, and when Willie went there the next day to get a drink he got the stuff in the water. A little while after he drunk ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... looking for the man who had fired. In a moment he found him: a small, lean man slipped almost silently over the edge of one of the step-levels and rolled quickly to cover beneath the next. He had got further than Rynason had realized; only three levels separated them now. He could see, from this distance in the near-dark, the cruel lines of the man's face. It was a harsh, dirty face, with wrinkles ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... brother married very much beneath him. He died when Eric was a year old, and his wife married again—a man in her own station, who is now keeping the 'Royal George'. I can't bear to think of Eric being brought up in such surroundings, but I have no power to take him away; his mother and step-father claim him. I had planned that when he is a little older I would try to persuade them to let me send him to a good preparatory school, but now"—her voice broke—"it is not a question of education, but whether he will grow up at all. I am writing for a specialist to come and see him next ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... magnificent retreat Philip V. retired with his imperious, ambitious wife. She was the step-mother of his son who had succeeded to the throne. For a long time, by the vigor of her mind, she had dominated over her husband, and had in reality been the sovereign of Spain. In the magnificent palace of St. Ildefonso, she was by no means inclined to relinquish her power. Gathering a brilliant ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... has no authority. They can't take the girl away from the man who is, at any rate, her step-father." ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... rapine. Here they wail aloud Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells, And Dionysius fell, who many a year Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow Whereon the hair so jetty clust'ring hangs, Is Azzolino; that with flaxen locks Obizzo' of Este, in the world destroy'd By his foul step-son." To the bard rever'd I turned me round, and thus he spake; "Let him Be to thee now first leader, me but next To him in rank." Then farther on a space The Centaur paus'd, near some, who at the throat Were extant from the wave; and showing us A spirit by itself apart retir'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... revelation came. Skag was looking to see which was the business-end of his tooth-brush that morning when Cadman broke his sheath knife. The accident was a calamity, because Skag's was already worn out cutting step-way to climb out of khuds, and this was all they had left to serve ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... began the world poor. He worked for a very short time in his step-father's business. He volunteered to the wars in the Low Countries. He came home again, and joined the players. Before the end of Elizabeth's reign he had written three or four plays, in which he showed a young and ardent zeal for setting the world to rights, together with that high sense ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... rest, and in the course of the afternoon even got down from his knee, and played about the room for a little while, but languidly, and was soon quite willing to be nursed again, "papa, grandpa, and Mamma Rose," as she lovingly called her young and fair step-grandmother, taking turns in trying to relieve ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... dismissed the subject, conveyed so vividly how much such a fancy was not Mrs. Beale's own that our young lady was led by the mere fact of contact to arrive at a dim apprehension of the unuttered and the unknown. The relation between her step-parents had then a mysterious residuum; this was the first time she really had reflected that except as regards herself it was not a relationship. To each other it was only what they might have happened to make it, and she gathered ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Christmas tree, and she and Harry hung sparkling balls, and golden stars, and silver fishes, and red and blue paper angels, and candy swans, and sugar pears, and glittering things of all sorts, shapes, and sizes upon the boughs. Harry had a step-ladder, and Dick Ford and five colored boys held it firmly while he stood on it and tied on the ornaments. Very soon the neighbors began to send in their contributions. Mrs. Loudon gave a stout woollen dress, which was draped over a lower branch; while Mr. Loudon, ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... Europe—excluding Turkey—the spaces left between these august people are filled with family portraits, framed samplers, picture postcards or a German print showing the seven ages of man over a sort of step-ladder. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... base the Dagoba rears its lofty summit. Two circular terraces, each of some twenty feet in height, rising one upon the other, with a width of fifty feet, and a diameter at the base of about two hundred and fifty, from the step-like platform upon which the Dagoba stands. These are ascended by broad flights of steps, each terrace forming a circular promenade around the Dagoba; the whole having the appearance of white marble, being covered ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... December 17th 1903, it is necessary, in considering the progress of design between that period and the present day, to go back to the earlier days of their experiments with 'gliders,' which show the alterations in design made by them in their step-bystep progress to a flying machine proper, and give a clear idea of the stage at which they had arrived in the art of aeroplane design at the time of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... sent them to a publisher, and favored all his friends with copies bound in blue velvet, with his monogram in silver on the covers. His pride in his son became so great that at Leo's request he undertook to renew the library, and the time that he had spent in bed was devoted to the step-ladder. It was in this way he discovered that their name had been incorrectly written. For his own part he did not care to make any change, but he insisted that Leo should use the portion omitted, which an old copy ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... donned her mantle and hood, She is bound for shrift at St. Mary's Rood:— "Oh! the taper shall burn, and the bell shall toll, And the mass shall be said for my step-son's soul, And the tablet fair shall be hung on high, Orate ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... you are!" she said. "Years and years younger than I feel. I can't realize you are married and have three step-children." ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... awa', come awa', I ken your heart is mine, lassie, And true love shall make up for a' For whilk ye might repine, lassie! Your father he has gi'en consent, Your step-dame looks na kind, lassie; O that our feet were on the bent, An' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon; but, oh, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager, Long withering out a young ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... reproach herself for having consented to the theatrical career of my eldest brother, and as my second brother showed no greater talents than those which were useful to him as a goldsmith, it was now her chief desire to see some progress made towards the fulfilment of the hopes and wishes of my step-father, 'who hoped to make something of me.' On the completion of my eighth year I was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, where it was hoped I would study! There I was placed at the bottom of the lowest class, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... pleasure-hunting nature. He soon grew weary of me. My very love made me unamiable to him. I became irritable, jealous, exacting. His daughter, who now came to live with us, was another subject of discord. I knew that he loved her better than me. I became a harsh step-mother; and Ludovico's reproaches, vehemently made, nursed all my angriest passions. But a son of this new marriage was born to myself. My pretty Luigi! how my heart became wrapt up in him! Nursing him, I forgot resentment against his father. Well, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... off her hoops, for her climbing; her soft, long black dress fell droopingly about her figure and rested in folds around and below her feet as she sat upon the step-ladder; one thick braid of her sunshiny hair had dropped from the fastening which had looped it up to her head, and hung, raveling into threads of light, down over her shoulder and into her lap; her cheeks were bright with exercise; her eyes, that trouble and thought ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney |
