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Stepfather   Listen
noun
Stepfather  n.  The husband of one's mother by a subsequent marriage.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stepfather" Quotes from Famous Books



... boy was sent to a private school, and later made his own way to Westminster School, where the submaster, Camden, struck by the boy's ability, taught and largely supported him. For a short time he may have studied at the university in Cambridge; but his stepfather soon set him to learning the bricklayer's trade. He ran away from this, and went with the English army to fight Spaniards in the Low Countries. His best known exploit there was to fight a duel between the lines with one of the enemy's soldiers, while ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... mighty good-looking head, anyhow," remarked Miss Collis thoughtfully. She herself was not rich, but her stepfather, a Chicago merchant, was enormously wealthy, and she was wondering whether, to give her a chance of possible queenhood, David Collis might not open ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... government weakly negotiated for the prolongation of the truce, and for the pope's intervention, Louis concluded treaties with the Poitevin barons, and made ready an army to conquer his inheritance. Foremost among his local partisans appeared Henry's stepfather. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... but my plain duty. When my mother died there was my stepfather to nurse, but I was young and strong; I didn't mind; and he wasn't a burden long, poor father. Then, after four years came the shock of David's reckless marriage. When he asked if he might bring that girl here until her time of trial was over, it seemed to me I could never endure it! But ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of a pension to the widow of the former pastor and the salary to an assistant. With such a drain on his income and with a large family to support, Kingo's economic circumstances must have been strained. But he was happy with his wife and proved himself a kind and conscientious stepfather to her children who, even after their maturity, maintained a close relationship ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... for the opportunity of justifying herself. But still he holds out. And then her unfailing resource suggests that Hortense and Eugene, whom he loves so well, shall be brought as the medium of compassion to their distracted mother. They come, and the bolts are drawn. Their stepfather admits them to his presence. They kneel at his feet and appeal to him to continue to be the good, kind father he has ever been, and to receive their mother back to ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... aloud to the child. When the new doll came, at Christmas time, Mary-'Gusta wished that she might christen it Rose also. But there was another and much beloved Rose already in the family. So Mary-'Gusta reflected and observed, and she observed that a big roll of tobacco such as her stepfather smoked was a cigar; while a little one, as smoked by Eben Keeler, the grocer's delivery clerk, was a cigarette. Therefore, the big doll being already Rose, the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... better; wait another wire.' About an hour afterwards came a letter with a cheque enclosed for my fare, urging me to come home at once, 'for mother, we fear, is dying.' My mother recovered; but upon going home a short time after, I saw my mother just as she then was at that time, and my stepfather used the words just as I received them—'Mother is dying.' They live in Liverpool, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... amusement in her voice, "they did nothing of the sort. Besides, you can't very well cast a small person of six adrift, as you call it, to earn her own living. On the contrary, my stepfather was as kind to me as if I had been his own child, and I could not have loved him more if he had been my own father whom I scarcely remember. We were so happy together, we three. My stepfather just adored my mother, she worshipped him, and they both spoiled and petted me. My stepfather ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... recalls with a sight the touching fate of a Dympna who was the martyred victim of a father's impiety; of a Stanislaus pursued by brothers who thirsted for his blood; of a Damian who nearly starved under his stepfather's cruelty; of martyrs led to the criminal stone for ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... was between sixteen and seventeen years old he was taken into employment in the countinghouse of Mr. Roger Hartright, the well-known West India merchant, and Barnaby's own stepfather. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... also felt that, for the furtherance of the cause I had taken to heart, it was a good thing that Sara had again refused to marry me. I had a sixth sense which informed me that a staid old family friend might succeed with Betty where a stepfather would have signally failed. Betty's loyalty to her father's memory was passionate, and vehement; she would view his supplanter with resentment and distrust; but his old familiar comrade was a person to be taken ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and her stepfather had vanished from the smooth open page of the Texas Panhandle—and Brick Willock rejoiced, with a joy new to him, that these escaped prisoners had not been pursued. It was himself that the band meant to subject to their savage vengeance, and himself alone. The ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... Mlle. Fould painted a portrait of her stepfather, and for a time devoted herself to portraits rather than to the subjects she had before studied with such success. In 1893 she painted a portrait of Rosa Bonheur, in her studio, while the latter paused from her work on a large picture of lions. This portrait presents the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... fact, just formed a great resolution. Whatever became of her, she would never go back to Judson Flack, her stepfather. This had not been clearly in her mind when she had gone down his steps and walked away, but the occasion presented itself now as one to be seized. In seizing it, however, the alternatives were difficult. She was without a cent, a shelter, a job, a friend, or the prospect of a meal. It was probable ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... he hasn't GOT any stockings half the time," said big Stashie scornfully. "I guess his stepfather drinks ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... dismay possessed him wholly. Miss Doran was not for him, and in the meantime he had offended Madeline beyond forgiveness. With what countenance could he now turn to her again? Her mother would welcome his surrender—and it was drawing on towards the day when submission even to his stepfather could no longer be postponed—but he suspected that Madeline's resolve to have done with him was strengthened by resentment of her mother's importunities. To be sure, it was some sort of consolation to know that if indeed he went his way for good, bitterness and regrets would be ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... his stepfather during his first term at the Academy, several months previous, the man at that time being concerned in the robbery of a bank near the Academy, but escaping capture and suddenly disappearing, Jack ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh

... had a stepfather in Maine, who didn't like me, and my mother died five years after her second marriage. I'm a Texan, Ned, same as if I were born on this soil, and my best friends are around me. I'll live ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... ballast him and keep him steady. If he had consulted me, I would have advised him to marry that dawdling, whimpering Susie Lefroy, the widowed daughter of the Vicar, with her unprovided-for orphans. Jarvie might have stepped into a young family at once, and he would have been a kind stepfather—he might have righted himself then. To go and marry a clever, active, handsome, well-born woman like Die Baring. Oh! dear, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... when I was sent to my first school, he gave me his own name, so that till the age of fourteen I was known to my Dresden schoolfellows as Richard Geyer; and it was not until some years after my stepfather's death, and on my family's return to Leipzig, the home of my own kith and kin, that I resumed the name ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... engagement was broken off, and she went abroad, leaving him behind her. She married lord Cairnedge in Venice, and returned to England when John was nearly four, and seemed to have lost all memory of her. His stepfather was good to him, but died when he was about eight. His mother was very severe. Her object plainly was to plant her authority so in his very nature, that he should never ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... Saint Desert. Her parents-in-law had remained in town, and she enjoyed being alone with her husband, exploring and appraising the treasures of the great half abandoned house, and watching her boy scamper over the June meadows or trot about the gardens on the poney his stepfather had given him. Paul, after Mrs. Heeny's departure, had grown fretful and restive, and Undine had found it more and more difficult to fit his small exacting personality into her cramped rooms and crowded life. He irritated her by pining for his Aunt Laura, his Marvell ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... substitution of an easy for a rugged temper), analogue, John Dryden. The fact of these two typical Englishmen being of half or whole Scotch descent will not surprise any one who does not still ignore the proper limits of England. Nobody doubts that his father (or rather stepfather, for he was a posthumous child, born 1573, and his mother married again) was a bricklayer, or that he went to Westminster School; it seems much more dubious whether he had any claim to anything but an honorary degree from either university, though he received that from both. Probably he worked ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... herself to her lot. It cost her an effort to remain under the same roof as her mother; she would rather have left home. But this would have reflected on her stepfather, and her sense of justice rebelled against this. Then too the thought of her little brothers and sisters kept her back; what would become ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... Henry (Murray's stepfather), Palgrave, Sir Francis, Murray's Guide to Northern Italy, on Murray's friendship, Palmer, Miss Alicia T., Parish, H., Paul, Emperor, proposal to assist Napoleon in turning English out of India, Paxton, Dr. G.A., Peel, Sir Robert, on Byron, publishes ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... forcing upon her daughters an accomplishment for which they have no taste: a father compelling his son to study law or physic, while the bent of his genius leads to machinery or farming: or a widow with a little property placing her children under the doubtful protection of a young stepfather. Vanitia is intelligent and well read, and appears to advantage in general society; but her love of admiration, her wish to be thought superior, is so inordinate, that she cannot bear to appear ignorant ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... I do not remember, as he died when I was very young, but I most vividly remember my stepfather, the only ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... night, especially Foy's coarse, uneducated sarcasm, had ruffled his temper, and when Adrian's temper was ruffled he generally found it necessary to sleep himself into good humour. As the bookkeeper of the establishment, for his stepfather had never been able to induce him to take an active part in its work, which in his heart he considered beneath him, Adrian should have been in the office by nine o'clock. Not having risen before ten, however, nor eaten his breakfast until after ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... school in the Kanawha Valley brought to me one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced. I had been working in a salt furnace for several months, and my stepfather had discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work. This decision seemed to cloud my every ambition. The disappointment was made all the more severe by reason of the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... Mr. Steel say so; but the interment there does not seem to have taken place immediately after the arrival from France, for the London journals, which announce the Duke of Buccleugh's landing at Dover on the 1st of November, mention his presence at the Guildhall with his stepfather, Mr. Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the 10th, Lord Mayor's Day; and the Duke, who is stated by Dr. Macleod to have brought his brother's remains north, could not have been to Scotland and back in that interval. Smith was accordingly not required to proceed to Scotland on that sad ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... you why Daddy Bunker called Grandpa Ford "Father." You see Daddy Bunker's real father had died many years before, and this was his stepfather. Mr. Bunker's mother had married ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope

... ask Aunt Ginevra to implore my stepfather not to send any more. We don't want them, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... Anthony Woolf by name, whose mother, in a district in distant Germany, had yielded to the blandishments of a second husband, thus rendering her son liable to conscription, as he was no longer her sole protector. Young Anthony knew his stepfather grudged him the broad acres of his patrimony, and guessed whose influence had sent the press-gang one night, and hurried him off, without even a good-bye to his mother, to the nearest seaport town, and there embarked ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... him well in hand, that he was intimate with the chief robbers, and that they found help in his weak compliances and wilful blindness. He put his stepson, Le Verrier, in command at Michillimackinac, where, by fraud and the connivance of his stepfather, the young man made a fortune.[561] When the Colonial Minister berated the Intendant for maladministration, Vaudreuil became his advocate, and wrote thus in his defence: "I cannot conceal from you, Monseigneur, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... Pinckney. As the army was not called to the field, he remained at Mount Vernon, awaiting orders. Meanwhile, Washington endeavored to keep him engaged in his studies, but with little success, as appears by the following extract from a letter to Doctor Stuart, young Custis's stepfather, written on the twenty-second of January, 1799, soon after ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... festivals, whereby the sexual impulse may be stimulated; to unhappy marriage; and, above all, to the effects of alcohol. Occupation and position have also to be considered, for, in the case of many males, an authoritative position (that of schoolmaster, priest, doctor, employer, stepfather, tutor) gives extraordinary facilities for committing sexual offences ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... William Lynne, Esq., who had the honor and felicity to be the first husband of Elizabeth, Mother through the Grace of God to Oliver Cromwell." At the bottom of the inscription a would-be wag wrote, "Had he lived long enough he would have been the stepfather of Oliver." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... declined her suit, explaining that "four eyes" stood between him and acceptance. He referred to his parents, whose consent he could not obtain. But the Princess understood him to refer to the four eyes of her two children—to his unwillingness, in fact, to become a stepfather. So she suffocated the infant obstacles, and wrote to her lover that the way was clear. He was stricken with horror at the cruel deed, and died cursing her bloodthirsty rashness. The Princess, in her turn, became overwhelmed with remorse. After lingering a day or two in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... lived with his mother, Mrs. Button, his stepfather, Mr. Button, and six little Buttons, his half brothers and sisters. His was not an ideal home; it consisted in a bedroom, a kitchen and a scullery in a grimy little house in a grimy street made up of rows of exactly similar ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... Circumstances led to her removal to Malden, in West Virginia, and which is also in the suburbs of Charleston. Still being quite a young lad, Booker Washington accompanied his mother, as did also his brother John, the object being to join their mother's husband—the man being only their stepfather—who was then employed ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike

... liked or popular a colored man be in any community, his son does not share that popularity unless he enters a field of endeavor distinctly lower in the scale than that occupied by his parent. My experience goes both ways on this subject. My stepfather was a dearly beloved colored man of the old school, but when he sent me off to Oberlin College I returned to find that the community in which I had been beloved as a boy in attendance at the rude country school looked at me askance. It took twenty years to overcome the handicap ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... of course. Susie was a strong, healthy child who slept all through the night in her little crib by her stepfather's corded bed, and in the daytime went everywhere he did. Wherever he "worked out" he used to give her her nap wrapped in a horse blanket on the hay in the barn; and he carried her in a sling of his own contrivance up to his sheep-pasture. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... triumphant! Why, no prince or paladin in Ariosto was ever so handsome and triumphant as the head boy seemed to me walking before me in the sun. You say the Dickens villains are too black. Why, there was no ink in the Devil's inkstand black enough for my own stepfather when I had to live in the same house ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... sentimental view of the change. He acknowledged his Empress in his former plaything, subsided from a sort of stepfather into a courtier, and so rose to honour and wealth, while V. is satisfied to remain an ex-professor and un ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... determined not to part with her illusion. "Do you think it right to have a boy of Geoff's age here in your room?" he said. "Oh, Theo, my own boy!—what harm can it do?" she had said, so foolishly, forgetting that Geoff's crime in the eyes of his young stepfather was exactly this, that ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... a resident of Rowley, Massachusetts, as early as the year 1649. By his wife Hannah Grant he had four sons and seven daughters. The youngest son Richard, born August 6, 1669, inherited the large estate of his stepfather, George Browne, of Haverhill. This Richard Hazen was grandfather of James Simonds as well as of William Hazen; he married Mary Peabody and had a family of five sons and six daughters (one of the latter was the mother of James Simonds.) The third son, Moses Hazen was the ancestor of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... remorseless and insisted she had betrayed him, worse—made him ridiculous! Look at the "work" he had undertaken at South Kensington—how could he go on with that now? How could he find the heart? When his own typewriter sacrificed him to her stepfather's trickery? "Trickery!" ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... want to deny you anything, and, of course, if you'd like a stepfather (looking down modestly) ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... relatives. There was Grandma Bell, who was Mrs. Bunker's mother, and there was Grandpa Ford, who was Daddy Bunker's stepfather. He was kind and good, and had loved Daddy Bunker when Daddy Bunker was a little boy, and now loved the six little Bunkers as well. Grandma Bell lived in Maine, near Lake Sagatook, and Grandpa Ford lived at Tarrington, New York, his place ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope

... Bates, 17 years old | |and formerly of Villisca, has brought suit in Polk | |county for the annulment of his marriage to the | |widow Patrick, 40 years old and the mother of four | |children, two of whom are older than their | |stepfather. | | | |Bates is still in school, and became acquainted with| |the widow when he went to her home to call on one of| |her daughters. According to the petition, young | |Bates made such a hit with the mother of his best ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... III King Lewis, stepfather of my duke's son; Who, when his host at Santalbino fled, Left in his clutch by whom that field was won, Was nigh remaining shorter by the head. Nor long before the great Corvinus run A yet more fearful peril, worse ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... and Theophano, great-great-grandson of Basil I., was born about 958 and crowned on the 22nd of April 960. After their father's death (963) he and his younger brother Constantine were nominal emperors during the actual reigns of Nicephorus Phocas, their stepfather, and John Tzimisces. On the death of the latter (10th of January 976) they assumed the sovereignty without a colleague, but throughout their joint reign Constantine exercised no power and devoted himself chiefly to pleasure. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... though, that she loved best of all; for they were friendly old poplar-trees on which the bark formed itself into all sorts of curious eyes. One was a wicked old stepfather eye with a heavy lid; she remembered how she used to tiptoe past it and pretend to be afraid. Beyond, by the arbor, were two smaller trees, where a coquettish eye on one looked up to an adoring eye on the other. She had often built a romance about them as ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... said. "I feel that, anyhow, I don't like to leave the unfortunate little fellow to neglect. Just think of his life in a Lambeth pothouse, and all its evil influences, with a parent who doesn't want him, and has, indeed, hardly seen him, and a stepfather who doesn't know him. 'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived!' That's what the boy—MY boy, perhaps, will find ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... refused to see him. My stepfather met him outside the door. I never spoke to him in ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... he is a stepfather I love him just the same!" she exclaimed, wishing he was there that she might ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... Jim's stepfather, whom the boy called Uncle Denny, took a pride and interest in the boy that sometimes brought the tears to his mother's eyes. It seemed to her that the warm-hearted Irishman gave to Jim all the love that the ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... me! I will bear it no more!" and hid her face in her hands, I clasped her in my arms, and to soothe her spoke in praise of her stepfather, Master Pernhart, and his high spirit and good heart; then she sobbed aloud and said: "Oh, for that matter! If that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... they were on their way to their work accompanied by a dog which chased a rabbit into a pile of rocks. The boy began to remove the rocks in order to find the rabbit, and in doing so uncovered part of a human skeleton. He beckoned to his stepfather, who was rather deaf, to come and look at what he had found. The man came, took up ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... so!" put in Dick, and then he wondered if Dora would be pleased with her stepfather. "So that ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield

... where I shall be from the 9th to the 19th, or perhaps longer. If thou wilt meet me there, this hand shall be thine for ever. If thou hast sufficient love and courage, say to Mr. and Mrs. Tyler* (* Her mother and stepfather.) that I require nothing more with thee than a sufficient stock of clothes and a small sum to answer the increased expenses that will necessarily and immediately come upon me; as well for living on board ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... is a wilful and wayward girl, as are many others of Feuillet's heroines. Her mother is widowed early, but consoles herself; and Julia—as such a girl pretty certainly would do—resents the proceeding, and refuses to live at home or to see her stepfather. He, however, is a friend of his wife's own cousin, and this cousin, conceiving a passion for Julia, offers to marry her. Her consent, in an English girl, would require some handling, but offers no ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... am going to," said the boy, as he picked the herring bones out of his teeth with a piece of a match that he sharpened with his knife. "But I don't believe in borrowing trouble about a stepfather so long before hand. I don't think Ma could get a man to step into Pa's shoes, as long as I lived, not if she was inlaid with diamonds, and owned a brewery. There are brave men, I know, that are ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... often heard about you, and I'm glad to see you now." He told me how he had given up his job on Eighth Avenue around 125th Street the day before. He had had a "run in," as he called it, at home, and had determined to get out. His mother had married a second time, and his stepfather and he could not agree on a single thing. He loved his mother, but could not stand the stepfather. He had drawn his pay at the jewelry store where he was working and had spent the night before at a hotel uptown, intending to look for a job the ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney

... co-operative affairs, who would offer on behalf of the State to do for us what we should, and could, do far better ourselves. We can build up a rural civilization in Ireland, shaping it to our hearts' desires, warming it with life, but our rulers and officials can never be warmer than a stepfather, and have no "large, divine, and comfortable words" for us; they tinker at the body when it is the soul which requires to be healed and made whole. The soul of Ireland has to be kindled, and it can be kindled only ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... a State Supreme Court sentenced Thomas Baker, little more than a child, to fifteen years in jail for—what? If your mother was blind and helpless, and your stepfather came in and abused her and beat her, in your presence,—a big brute with whom you could not hope to contend physically,—what would be your feelings, and what would you be prompted to do? Thomas Baker, trembling and sobbing with rage and anguish, ran out of ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... "If your stepfather had any money," said the captain, "you can bet that hunchback tried to bamboozle him into some land deal, and probably did. And if he did, he'll remember him and his name, and where he left the canal or the Lakes, and maybe where ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... joke, laughed immoderately the whole time this scene lasted. The water was wiped off; and all were soon reconciled, glass in hand. Eugene, when he had perpetrated a joke of this sort, never failed to relate it to his mother, and sometimes to his stepfather, who were much ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... It's from my stepfather. Read it out, Elsa. I want Mr. Rossiter to hear it. He may be able to tell me where Mervo is. Did you ever ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... present too ill and distracted by her son's danger to think of anything else. If the boy dies I shall not need to trouble her. If he gets well, I may find it my duty to become his stepfather." ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... want any slaves because he wanted to train his children to work. Willard, my mother's master, should have been a Berth because he was old man Berth's son, but he called himself Blue. It might have been that old man Berth was his stepfather. Anyway he went by the name of Willard ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... voice of a stepfather beneath this Stone is to rest one, shamefully robbed In life by his wife's son, and Esq Tom ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various

... classic, modern or romantic type, end in death or deaths. Obviously there is no other solution in most cases. Perhaps in real life Hamlet would have remained letting I dare not wait upon I would until his mother and stepfather died in the ordinary course of nature; without any amazing interposition of Providence, Romeo and Juliet might have healed the quarrel between their hostile houses and established a large family of little Montague-Capulets, and so on; ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... the necessary preparations, he set out, in company with the messenger and with a grand retinue of his own attendants, to go to the place appointed. On his way he was met or overtaken by Menglik, who had come to warn him of his danger. As soon as Temujin had heard what his stepfather had to say, he made some excuse for postponing the journey, and, sending a civil answer to Vang Khan by the embassador, he ordered him to go forward, and went back himself to his ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... asked me to go. Mr Judge is very kind. He is my—er— stepfather!" Claire shrugged again at the strangeness of that word. "He gave me the warmest of invitations, but I refused. I preferred ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... stepfathers—we will none of this. My heart warms to the melancholy Jacques, who dedicated his book to his mother-in-law, "my best friend, who always came when she was needed and never left so long as there was work to do." Richard Wagner's stepfather was his patient, loving ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... Nicholas B. and his brother—my maternal grand father—had lost their father early, while they were quite children. Their mother, young still and left very well off, married again a man of great charm and of an amiable disposition, but without a penny. He turned out an affectionate and careful stepfather; it was unfortunate, though, that while directing the boys' education and forming their character by wise counsel, he did his best to get hold of the fortune by buying and selling land in his own name and investing capital in such a manner as to cover up the traces of the real ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... Number 7. In a household where there are so many children and so few servants, the latchkey was in constant use, and thus it happened that she could bring her guest unnoticed into the house and escort him to her stepfather's sanctum, which was sure to be unoccupied at this hour of the afternoon. She drew forward an armchair, poked the fire into a blaze, and laid Mr Farrell's hat and stick on the table, while he lay wearily against the cushions. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... were cut off from education. The way my stepfather got his learning was a cullud blacksmith would teach school at night, and us chillen taught our mother. She didn't know how to spell or read or nothin'. She didn't know B from bull's foot. Some of them were allowed to have church and some didn't. Mighty few read the Bible 'cause they ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... There the pastor, deacons, and other leading members of the church found congenial society. She early began the exercise of her gifts as a teacher. At that time, fifteen years ago, she had among her pupils Thompson Walker, her stepfather, William Thornton, and William Davis, all now able and eloquent exhorters. She was afterward of great service to others, who are now efficient exhorters and members of the church. Up to the time of the burning of Hampton, she was engaged in instructing ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood

... the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father of the young earl, who was brought to his stepfather's bed to see "how a Christian could die". He was amongst the wildest of the nobility of that day; and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks of the gay lord. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... differences are often seen between the two sides; and one of the strangest and most inharmonious in this world of human relations is that coinage which a mother sometimes finds herself offering to a daughter, and which reads on one side, Bridegroom, and on the other, Stepfather. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... or sister may be the same; for a stepfather or stepmother the same; for grandparents the same; but the duration may be shorter. In England this sort of respectful ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too, for he is only five years and two months ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... she reached the spot where her stepfather had been cutting the wood the girl was in a very bad temper indeed, and when she caught sight of the axe, there were the three little doves, with drooping heads and soiled, bedraggled ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... nothing of the kind!" declared Huldah. "He said you was stiff-necked, and that he presumed you would act more like a stepfather than the real thing. Well, as I was saying, he asked their names, and he liked them fine. Said ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... was not told. My stepfather did not dare to go so far as to kill you. It was he who caused the fire, but he had you removed to a small hotel in another part of the city some hours earlier, secretly, of course, but in charge of a trusted maid. My mother was responsible for this. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... of the Upper Adige by asserting that Italy's true northern boundary, in the words of Eugene de Beauharnais, written, when Viceroy of Italy, to his stepfather, Napoleon, "is that traced by Nature on the summits of the mountains, where the waters that flow into the Black Sea are divided from those that flow into the Adriatic." Viewed from a purely geographical standpoint, Italy's contention that the great semi-circular barrier of the Alps forms a natural ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... interest. He ascended Snowdon arm-in-arm with Henrietta, singing "at the stretch of my voice a celebrated Welsh stanza," the boy-guide following wonderingly behind. In spite of the fatigues of the climb, "the gallant girl" reached the summit and heard her stepfather declaim two stanzas of poetry in Welsh, to the grinning astonishment of a small group of English tourists and the great interest of a Welshman, who asked Borrow if ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... me, my stepfather seems the man, for there is none among us more cunning in speech than he. Send ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... spread a mighty feast of mead and ale and coarse but hearty food, such as the old Norse heroes drew their strength and muscle from. At the door-way stands the Queen Aasta with her maidens, while before the entrance, with thirty "well-clothed men," waits young Olafs stepfather, wise Sigurd Syr, gorgeous in a jewelled suit, a scarlet cloak, and a glittering golden helmet. The watchers on the housetops hear a distant shout, now another and nearer one, and soon, down the highway, they catch the gleam of steel and the waving ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... broad humor in Sam Weller's jokes; they chuckle over the sly exposure of Mr. Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit; they weep in Dombey and Son over poor Paul crammed with grown-up learning when he wanted to be just a child; they rejoice over David Copperfield's escape from his stepfather into the loving arms of whimsical, clever Aunt Betsey Trotwood; they shiver with horror in Our Mutual Friend during the search for floating corpses on the dark river; and they feel more kindly toward the whole world ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... a man, his appetite for animal diet, indulged in childhood, had grown so strong that a human being's ordinary allowance would not suffice for him. The old grandfather had died in the meantime, so that he was dependent on the food supplied by his stepfather and uncles, and they had to expostulate with him on what they called his shark-like voracity. This gave rise to the common native nickname of a manohae (ravenous shark) for a very gluttonous man, especially in the matter ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... the insulting offer that was made, raised her eyes for a moment to glance at the speaker, then shuddered, and, after a pleading look at her stepfather, lowered ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... said the best speech Mr. Toombs ever made was in a case in which he represented a poor girl who was suing her stepfather for cruel treatment. The defendant was a preacher, and the jury brought in a verdict for $4000, the maximum sum allowed, and petitioned the Judge to allow them to find damages in a ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... of the unjust law, and to keep off the greedy Norman nobles, who were already prowling around the fair manor, on one condition: the lady of Aescendune must marry a Norman knight, recommended by himself; in which case, the right of succession after the death of his stepfather should rest with Wilfred, who by that time would doubtless have become Norman in all but lineage—so ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... was the stepfather of my brother John and myself, did not belong to the same owners as did my mother. In fact, he seldom came to our plantation. I remember seeing his there perhaps once a year, that being about Christmas time. In some way, during the war, by running away and following the Federal soldiers, it seems, ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

... marrying again was to get back my child, but after our marriage his stepfather was not willing he should have a home with me. A plot was consummated for keeping us apart. The family to whose care he was committed very soon removed to what was then ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy

... fixed on poor Undy. 'Well, Mr. Scott,' he said at last, very softly, 'is it convenient for you to answer me? Did that note refer to a certain number of bridge shares, which you required Mr. Tudor to hand over to the stepfather of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... interrupted." His pale blue eyes became serious again. "Do you think Nancy didn't understand why she was packed off to school—and kept there? Of course she did. She knew she wasn't wanted. She knew she was in the way. She must not be permitted to intrude on this stepfather, or her mother's new life. It was all a bit heartless, and if I know anything of the child, she understands it that way. I felt that when she came to see her mother, and went to her funeral. Now then, Nancy's coming to see me to-day. Remember she's sixteen. She's got to learn from me ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... Nathan's stepfather, Willis Jones, was a very strong man, a very good worker, and knew just enough to be resentful of his master's cruel treatment, decided to run away, living in the woods for days. His master sent out searchers for him, who always came in without him. The day of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... nex' mornin', whin he come downstairs, they tol' him th' rile fam'ly was late risers, but, if he wanted a good time, he cud go down an' look at th' cimitry! An' he done it. He went out an' wept over th' grave iv th' Father iv his Counthry. Ye'er man, George Washington, Hinnissy, was on'y th' stepfather. ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... jointure is well enough, and she has the Abbey House and gardens for her life, but Violet will be sole mistress of the estate when she comes of age. As Violet's husband, your position would be infinitely better than it could be as her stepfather. Unhappily, the cantankerous minx has taken it into her head to ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... she longed to do so many useful, needful things for them; and marriage with Captain Baster was the way of doing them. She told herself that he would make an excellent stepfather and husband; that under his unfortunate manner were a good heart and sterling qualities. She assured herself that she had the power to draw them out; once he was her husband, she would change him. But still she was ill at ease. Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... birth Alcmene was living at Thebes with her husband Amphitryon, and thus the infant Heracles was born in the palace of his stepfather. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... Greenland Eskimo take care of their old parents. "The Ossetines [of the Caucasus] have the greatest love and respect for their parents, for old age in general, and for their ancestors. The authority of the head of the family, the grandfather, father, stepfather, uncle, or older brother is unconditionally recognized. The younger men will never sit down in the presence of elders, will not speak loudly, and will never contradict them."[999] "A young Kalmuck never dares show himself before his father or mother when he is not sober. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... Grandmother, "is what I have just heard through a side wind true—namely, that this fool of a stepfather of yours is going to marry that silly whirligig of a Frenchwoman—that actress, or something worse? Tell me, is ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Redington is son of Captain John Redington, formerly of Saratoga county, New York, who, when nineteen years of age, ran away from his stepfather, who abused him, and volunteered into the Revolutionary army, where he served seven years, and was taken prisoner by the British, and incarcerated in the Sugar House, New York. There the privation ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... I met 'em on Judgement Bench!" exclaimed Pitt Packard hotly. "My stepfather's second wife married Mis' Maddox's first husband after he got divorced from her, 'n' that's all there is to it; they ain't no bloody-kin o' mine, 'n' I don't call ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... young man, against whom no word has ever been said, and who was in fact an orderly, peaceable boy, had been watched with the severest scrutiny by members of the mob who believed he knew something of the whereabouts of Smith. He declared from the very first that he did not know where his stepfather was, which statement was well proven to be a fact after the discovery of Smith in Arkansas, whence he had fled through swamps and woods and unfrequented places. Yet Butler was apprehended, placed under arrest, and on the night of February 6, taken out on ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... adventure of his birth, and, having with much difficulty concluded the recital, fell dead on the tomb of her husband. Ywonec, almost frantic with grief and horror, instantly sacrificed his hoary stepfather to the manes of his parents, and having caused his mother to be interred with suitable honours, accepted from his subjects the crown they had reserved for the representative of a long line ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... contented himself with hating him profoundly. In this sentiment Mr. Billings participated cordially; and, quite unlike Mr. Hayes, who never dared to show his dislike, used on every occasion when they met, by actions, looks, words, sneers, and curses, to let his stepfather know the opinion which he had of him. Why did not Hayes discard the boy altogether? Because, if he did so, he was really afraid of his life, and because he trembled before Mrs. Hayes, his lady, as the leaf trembles before the tempest in October. His breath was not his own, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his sister—she whose likeness in Adeline's face had first arrested his attention—had been brought up by a cruel stepfather, who had treated them so brutally that Otto was at length forced to flee to the castle of an uncle, who received him kindly and gave him an education befitting his knightly station. A few years later he had returned home, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... cold morning air, thin, awkward, only a boy but with a spirit glowing in his blue eyes that Judith never before had seen there. The girls of Lost Chief were sophisticated almost from the cradle. Judith could interpret the lines in her stepfather's face. But she did not know what the strange light in Douglas' eyes might mean. Suddenly she sprang to Swift's back and ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... were from Ireland—He who gave him the crownpiece being a gentleman of the name of Comerford, a merchant—he who gave him his blessing, a Mr. Dawson, a player of Dublin, who was an acting assistant, and a kind of purveyor for the manager of the theatre in that city, and stepfather to the celebrated William Lewis. The Mr. Wilder alluded to was many years an actor and singer in Dublin and the original Linco and colonel Oldboy of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... to speak, commonplace, since the relationship or connection if you will have it, is, though perfectly to be distinguished, not always, as it were, entirely clear, through his great-grandfather who, as I hope you are aware, was a Dutch-Oven, having run away with a cousin of my mother's uncle's stepfather, who was three times married, numbers one, two and three all having children but none of 'em resembling one another in the slightest, which, as you may have perceived, is only the beginning of the story, but if you will now come in, not ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels



Words linked to "Stepfather" :   father figure, father surrogate



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