"Mother-in-law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at last had a few minutes alone with his mother-in-law. The relief to him was great. As he sat with her on a sofa in the second of the two small drawing-rooms under a replica of the Winged Victory, and a tiny full-length portrait of Charmian as a child ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... misfortune. Their lodgers left, and no one succeeded to them. After some months they had to remove to a smaller house; and Alice's tender conscience was torn by the idea that she ought not to be a burden to her mother-in-law, but ought to go out and seek her own maintenance. And leave her child! The thought came like the sweeping boom of a ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... Russian of great wealth and political sway, but when the time came for his co-operation to be active, he played her a wicked trick. He attracted her elder daughter to him and married her. Not liking to have a mother-in-law in his mansion, he pensioned her off, with the proviso that her presence should never clash immediately with his own in any country. It is regrettable to add that Wanda, Madame Godaloff, agreed to this arrangement, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... his table-napkin down, and rushed upstairs, while his wife, who thought it was some trick of her mother-in-law's, followed more slowly, shrugging her shoulders, as if to express her doubt. When they got upstairs, however, they found the old woman lying at full length in the middle of the room; and when they turned her over, they saw that she was insensible and motionless, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... coursed through her mind as with head still proudly erect she crossed the room on the colonel's arm, to a seat beside her future mother-in-law, who had noticed nothing, and to whom not a syllable of the affair would have been mentioned, all such matters being invariably concealed ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tricks, the farcical misunderstandings, the machine-made pathos, the dull mechanic round of repartee, the innocent infant who intervenes in a divorce suit (like the Queen's Proctor), the misprised mother-in-law, the bearded spinster sighing like a furnace, the ingenuous and slangy young person of fifteen with the well-known cheek, and the even more stereotyped personages preserved in Mr. Jerome's "Stage-land." They all come, if not from Sheffield, from a perpetual tour in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... 'that when you are of age you will follow in my steps, and endow our common country with some of these priceless——' 'Common,' interrupted Mrs. Jannaway. 'Common country, do I hear aright, George Crayshaw?' (I don't love that old lady much.) 'George,' I said, for I pitied him for having a mother-in-law, 'when I get my money I shall pay a man to paint another old picture for you, as a companion to that. There shall be three mackerel in it, very dead indeed; they shall lie on a willow-pattern plate, while two cock-roaches that have climbed up it squint over the edge at them. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here at dead of night and stop our press to acquaint the world with the circumstance? Or did the "distressing accident" consist in the destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times? Or did it consist in the death of that person herself three years ago (albeit it does not appear that she died by accident)? In a word, what did that "distressing accident" consist in? What did that drivelling ass of a Schuyler ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... mother, and we have a Mrs General. And I tell you again, darling, that Mrs General, if I may reverse a common proverb and adapt it to her, is a cat in gloves who WILL catch mice. That woman, I am quite sure and confident, will be our mother-in-law.' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... distance from the ships, and had an intricate navigation to go through, we were in haste to set out from Mooa. When I took leave of Poulaho, he pressed me much to stay till the next day, to be present at a funeral ceremony. The wife of Mareewagee, who was mother-in-law to the king, had lately died, and her corpse had, on account of the Natche, been carried on board a canoe that lay in the lagoon. Poulaho told me, that, as soon as he had paid the last offices to her, he would attend me to Eooa, but, if I did ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... alligators. But he took it so much to heart about losing his pets, that I sold them back to him and took his note. It is now older than the daguerrotype man's; and when I hand in my checks, I will leave the notes with my dear old mother-in-law for collection. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... 'thou wilt reign over a race of kings.' And how good he was to me when I wept at leaving my home and friends! How he framed his tongue to speak my own Castillian to me; how he comforted me, when the Queen, my mother-in-law, required more dignity of me than I yet knew how to assume; and how he chid my boy bridegroom for showing scant regard for his girl bride!" said Eleanor, smiling at the recollection, as the beloved wife of eleven years could well afford to do. "I mind me well that he found me weeping, because ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... possible, worse; but there is little doubt that the future Queen of Scots learnt the first lessons of life at a horrible school. If in subsequent years she was a prodigy of innocence and virtue, it was not the fault of her whilom mother-in-law, of her uncles of the house of Guise, or of the examples presented to her either at the windows of the castle of Amboise or in its more private recesses. It was difficult to believe in these dark deeds, however, as we looked through ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... amiability with the ladies. But the priest is not so unconscious of Don Manuel as that gentleman supposes. Soon he singles the officer out from the group of males, and bids him follow the bride, and his future mother-in-law, into an adjacent chamber. But little is required of the bridegroom besides his signature to a paper, which he does not read; and when the holy man has addressed something or other to him in the Latin language, he is politely ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... his men rushed in upon us and thou not present, what would have been our case with them? But now to Allah be laud and gratitude!" The Caliph hearing these words laughed, and taking seat beside his bride, who rejoiced in him, asked his mother-in-law, "Say me, didst ever see a Robber who bore him on this wise with the Wali and his men?" and answered she, "Never, by the life of thee, but may Allah Almighty reprehend the Caliph for that he did by ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... I am the victim of the most absurd and annoying mistake. I have been arrested for Schirmer, the betting man who murdered his mother-in-law and escaped from Paris yesterday. They will not let me communicate with any one till tomorrow morning and I have had great trouble in getting this line to you. For heaven's sake bring Schreiermeyer and anybody else you can find, to identify me, as soon as possible. I am locked ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... principle you abhor a choice that is made wickedly on the falling of a coin, let an irrelevant circumstance direct your destination! I once walked outside of London, making my start at Dorking for no other reason except that Sam Weller's mother-in-law had once lived there. You will recall how the elder Mr. Weller in the hour of his affliction discoursed on widows in the taproom of the Marquis of Granby when the funeral was done, and how later, being pestered with the Reverend Mr. Stiggins, he immersed him in the horse-trough ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... family alliance between them, he married Antony's step-daughter Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia by Publius Claudius, although at that time she was scarcely marriageable; and upon a difference arising with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her untouched, and a pure virgin. Soon afterwards he took to wife Scribonia, who had before been twice married to men of consular rank [199], and was a mother by one of them. With her likewise he parted [200], being quite tired out, as he himself writes, with the perverseness ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... should have a husband to-night and should have sons, would you wait for them until they were grown up? Would you remain single for them? No, my daughters! I am sorry for you, for Jehovah has afflicted me." Then they again wept aloud, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth stayed ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... roused, at length saw the necessity of releasing his prisoner; and, as the queen had incurred general odium as the chief instigator of his persecution, he affected to do this in consequence of her interposition. As Carlos with his mother-in-law traversed the country on their way to Barcelona, he was everywhere greeted, by the inhabitants of the villages thronging out to meet him, with the most touching enthusiasm. The queen, however, having been ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... visiting the sick, as I entered her premises, I found her sitting weeping, with a portion of the Word of God in her hand. I said, 'My child what is the cause of your sorrow? Is the baby still unwell?' 'No,' she replied, 'my baby is well,' 'Your mother-in-law?' I inquired. 'No, no,' she said, 'it is my own dear mother, who bore me.' Here she again gave vent to her grief, and, holding out the Gospel of Luke, in a hand wet with tears, she said, 'My mother will never see this word; she will never hear this good news! Oh, my mother ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... words of Miss Day and her friends, although I hold their veracity to be above question; I had Doctor Day's dying words to the same effect. And he mentioned the existing betrothal as the very reason why Clara should remain here in the care of her future mother-in-law." ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... had once seen him asleep, and fallen in love, as is her way with handsome sleepers. The sensible Rutilianus lost no time, but sent for the maiden at once, celebrated the nuptials, a sexagenarian bridegroom, and lived with her, propitiating his divine mother-in-law with whole hecatombs, and reckoning himself now one of ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... then very deliberately unfolded to her the offers of the old Earl, expatiated on the many benefits arising from an elevated title, painted in glowing colours the surprise and vexation of Temple when he should see her figuring as a Countess and his mother-in-law, and begged her to consider well before she ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... knew that many secrets had been inhumed by the earthquake and fire of San Francisco and wondered if his wife's had been one of them. After all, she had been born in this city of odd and whispered pasts, and there were moments when his silent mother-in-law suggested a ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... this difficult to effect in a country where the ends of justice are not satisfied unless a life is given for a life, where magistrates are venal, and the laws of evidence lax. Occasionally a young wife is driven to commit suicide by the harshness of her mother-in-law, but this is of rare occurrence, as the consequences are terrible to the family of the guilty woman. The blood relatives of the deceased repair to the chamber of death, and in the injured victim's hand they place a broom. They then support the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Italian powders might be sprinkled in my food or wine, in consequence. But I wonder when I think of you—a simple duke's daughter—being raised to the throne; and not only that, but of your ruling so absolutely over the three kings, your sons. Mother-in-law to one of the greatest kings of France, and to the most renowned of beautiful, suffering queens, what more do you want ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... to the play, and saw that good old thing, an English tragedy, well got up. It was Venice Preserved. Mrs. H. Siddons played Belvidera with much truth, feeling, and tenderness, though short of her mother-in-law's uncommon majesty, which is a thing never to be forgotten. Mr. Young played Pierre very well, and a good Jaffier was supplied by a Mr. Vandenhoff. And so the day glided by; only three pages written, which, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Do not mix me up in the affair; Madame would never forgive me all her life, and as a mother-in-law, I ought to desire to live on good terms with ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Gilpin, she's a dear, although she's always on pleasure bent; at all events, she's not of a frugal mind; and she's so pretty and dresses so well—and what a foot!—and she's got such easy manners, too; she reminds me of dear Lady Archibald! that's a mother-in-law I shall get on with.... I wish she didn't make such a fuss about living over the shop; I call that being above one's business in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... brothers and five sisters, and won her triumphantly in spite of the open and contemptuous opposition of one of the five sisters. For John himself was one of seven in his father's home, and whoever married John must go there to live, to be only a daughter in a mother-in-law's house, and take a daughter's share of the brunt of everything. "And nothing to be got except a living, and it was a poor living the McDonald farm gave beside the McIntosh," the McIntosh sisters said. And, moreover: "The saint did not live that could ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... fondest and fairest visions. But, young and high-spirited, she struggled against the isolation of soul to which she was condemned; and probably resented with more bitterness the coercion to which she was subjected by the iron rule of her royal mother-in-law than even the coldness of the husband to whom she had been prepared to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the dragon, to be a guest on high"—in other words died, on the 25th of February, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and thirtieth of his reign. His death is said to have been caused by the fatigue he underwent at the funeral ceremonies of the late Empress-Dowager, his mother-in-law. The nomination of a successor in China rests always with the Emperor, and before his death Tau-Kwang decreed that his fourth and only surviving son should succeed him. He ascended the throne the day of the Emperor's death, and is to reign ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... belle sued her faithless sweetheart, and claimed damages laid at one hundred dollars. The defendant pleaded that after an intimate acquaintance with the family, he found it was impossible to live comfortably with his intended mother-in-law, who was to take up residence with her daughter after the marriage, and he refused to fulfil his promise. "Would you rather live with your mother-in-law, or pay two hundred dollars?" inquired the judge. "Pay two hundred ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Denis-les-Rebais, on the 7th of September, a Uhlan obliged Mme. X. to undress, threatening her with his rifle; then he threw her on a mattress and raped her while her mother-in-law, powerless to intervene, endeavored to keep her grandson, 8 years ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... in his ear, as he returned with Madame de Rochefide, "are you to have that for a mother-in-law, and the little one for ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... —— Railroad, who was eleven years older than I. He drank some and was a very frail-looking man, but I was very ignorant of the world and did not think of anything but making a home for myself and husband. After eleven months I had a little girl born to me. I did not want more children, but my mother-in-law told me it was a terrible sin to do anything to keep from having children and that the Lord only sent just what I could take care of and if I heard of anything to do I was told it was injurious, so I did ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... saying them parts, which seemed to indicate a habit of pondering on the places as well as circumstances of the gospel-story. The sexton joined us at the door, and we all walked to his cottage, Joe taking care of his mother-in-law and I taking what care I could of Coombes by carrying his tools for him. But as we went I feared I had done ill in that, for the wind blew so fiercely that I thought the thin feeble little man would have got on better if he had been more heavily weighted ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... mystery, and which he declared to the last were never disclosed to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments, disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,—which Lady Byron denies,—and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female dependant, who is the subject of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... effort Olga Brenner lifted her head so that her face, swollen beyond recognition, was turned toward her mother-in-law. Her almost sightless eyes fastened themselves on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... presence of royalty, as before those from whom they have nothing to hope or fear; the result being, that most minds quail before them. There were two Gitanas at Madrid, one Pepita by name, and the other La Chicharona; the first was a spare, shrewd, witch- like female, about fifty, and was the mother-in-law of La Chicharona, who was remarkable for her stoutness. These women subsisted entirely by fortune-telling and swindling. It chanced that the son of Pepita, and husband of Chicharona, having spirited away a horse, was sent to the presidio of Malaga for ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... things. He could not keep quiet. Her blushed, permitted him to sit closer, and then told L. he was the dearest, sweetest, finest, biggest, noblest, bravest lovey in the wide, wide world. Later L. secured an embarrassing interview and visited a jewelry store. Diet: Poor. Ambition: A mother-in-law. Address: Her home. Clubs: None. Epitaph: For Men May Come and ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... have come to send peace on the earth. I have not come to send peace, but a sword. [10:35]I have come to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a bride against her mother-in-law; [10:36]and a man's enemies shall be those of his own house. [10:37]He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; [10:38]and he that does not ...
— The New Testament • Various
... her hopes should prove false. Having hastily summoned Servius, after she had shown him her husband almost at his last gasp, holding his right hand, she entreated him not to suffer the death of his father-in-law to pass unavenged, nor to allow his mother-in-law to be an object of scorn to their enemies. "Servius," said she, "if you are a man, the kingdom belongs to you, not to those, who, by the hands of others, have perpetrated a most shameful deed. Rouse yourself, and follow the guidance of the gods, who portended ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... absolutism, the Sicilians rose with becoming firmness. The Duke of Orleans had long foreseen the approaching hurricane, the gathering wrath of an injured people; but finding his remonstrances vain, his principles of government almost directly contrary to those of his august mother-in-law, he retired from a court where there was no room for a virtuous counsellor, and, with his wife and her infant prince, lived in retirement a ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... entered his house, which was still tenanted by his son, and his mother-in-law, and set fire to the bed curtains with a box of matches. Now, the people of Kuala Trengganu dread fire more than anything in the world; for, their houses, which are made of very inflammable material, jostle one another on every foot of available ground. When a Trengganu ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... the house and inquired of her mother-in-law and the other members of the family if they had taken it. "No," they said, ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... and Latin, and devoted to music and painting; it seems strange that Frederick should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own princess both in mind and person. But so it was, for in those days every man liked his neighbour's wife better than his own. Imitating the forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess tolerated such of her husband's mistresses as did not interfere in politics: Lady Middlesex was the 'my good Mrs. Howard,' of Leicester House. She was made Mistress of the Robes: her favour soon 'grew,' as the shrewd Horace ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... tent, and assumes an authority over the others, which is not in every case quietly submitted to. It may be remarked, that whilst an Indian resides with his wife's family, it is extremely improper for his mother-in-law to speak, or even look at him; and when she has a communication to make, it is the etiquette that she should turn her back upon him, and address him only through the medium of a third person. This ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... that. You may think it strange, but my sister-in-law and I are not so intimate as that. No; I spoke to my husband and my mother-in-law; I said I was sure we could do what we ...
— The American • Henry James
... what light our efforts are regarded by those who, as much as we do, desire that the 'gospel may be preached to all nations,'" Then follows a copy of a letter which had been addressed to him before they set out by Mrs. Moffat, his mother-in-law, remonstrating in the strongest terms against his plan of taking his wife with him; reminding him of the death of the child, and other sad occurrences of last year; and in the name of everything that was just, kind, and even decent, beseeching ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... towards the queen-mother with that soft and gentle smile which constituted her principal charm, and as she did not approach sufficiently close, Anne of Austria signed to her to come nearer. Madame then entered the room, and with a perfectly calm air took her seat beside her mother-in-law, and continued the work which Maria Theresa had begun. When La Valliere, instead of the direction which she expected to receive immediately on entering the room, perceived these preparations, she looked with curiosity, if not with uneasiness, at the two princesses. ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... say always—the trying member of the family is trying only because we make her so by our attitude toward her, let her be grandmother, mother, or maiden aunt. Even the proverbial mother-in-law grows less difficult as our attitude toward her is relieved of the strain of detesting everything she does, and expecting to detest everything that she is going to do. With every trying friend we have, if we yield to him in all minor matters we find the settling of essential ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... the turnpike gate was opened, and had cried a lusty 'good night!' to the toll-keeper; but then he awoke out of a dream about picking a lock in the stomach of the Great Mogul, and even when he did wake, mixed up the turnpike man with his mother-in-law who had been dead twenty years. It is not surprising, therefore, that he soon relapsed, and jogged heavily along, quite insensible to ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... hearts have softened even towards the wife's relatives, for the word "parent" is not only broad enough to cover the father, mother, grandparents or stepfather and mother of the man, but "of the spouse" also. Thus passeth the curse of the mother-in-law. ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... presently. I can't remember his name at this moment—something like BUDKIN, but it wasn't that, somewhere near Bond Street, he is, or a street off there; a Scotchman, but that doesn't matter! (Here she breaks off to hum the Chorus of "Good Ole Mother-in-Law!" which is being sung on the stage.) Well, let me see—what was I telling you? Wait a minute, excuse me, oh, yes,—well, there was this picture,—mind you, it's a lovely painting, but the frame simply nothing, not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... "Your mother-in-law's in bed," he began, hoping at once to enlist her sympathy. "I've got the carriage here. Now, be a good girl, and put on your hat and come with me for a drive. It'll ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and English armies lay in this situation, and a general action was every day expected, Jane, countess dowager of Hainault, interposed with her good offices, and endeavored to conciliate peace between the contending monarchs, and to prevent any further effusion of blood. This princess was mother-in-law to Edward, and sister to Philip; and though she had taken the vows in a convent, and had renounced the world, she left her retreat on this occasion, and employed all her pious efforts to allay those ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... time before Winkle, Tupman and Snodgrass learned of their leader's imprisonment and came to see him. Sam also had visitors in the person of his mother-in-law (who, of course, did not know he had brought about his own arrest) and the hypocritical, red-nosed preacher who came with her to lecture ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... necessity of hypocrisy on story hearers and tellers. It is a sad thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant. What right have I to tell my "Grouse in the gun-room" over and over in the presence of my wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... directly than the duke from the countess of the seventeenth century. From 1813, the time of her husband's death, the head of the younger Grandlieu house whose device was "Grands faits, grand lieu." Mother of Camille and of Juste de Grandlieu, and the mother-in-law of Ernest de Restaud. Returned to France with Louis XVIII. At first she lived on royal bounty, but afterwards regained a considerable portion of her property through the efforts of Maitre Derville, about the beginning of the Restoration. She was very grateful to the lawyer, who also took her ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... cried Mrs. Leyburn hastily. 'But if a nice man wants you to marry him, Catherine? Your father would have liked him—oh, I know your father would have liked him! And his manners to me are so pretty, I shouldn't mind being his mother-in-law. And the girls have no brother, you know, dear. Your father was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... released from the necessity of marrying any brother-in-law: 1. The illegitimate daughter of the brother. 2. Her daughter. 3. The daughter of his illegitimate son. 4. His wife's daughter. 5. Her son's daughter. 6. Her daughter's daughter. 7. His mother-in-law. 8. The mother of his mother-in-law. 9. The mother of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Absalom avoided the chill night air, and crouched over the smouldering fire. Peter's wife sedulously held aloof from the ostracized Quimbey woman. But her mother-in-law had fallen into the habit of sitting upon the porch these moonlit nights. The sparse, newly-leafed hop and gourd vines clambering to its roof were all delicately imaged on the floor, and the old woman's clumsy figure, her grotesque sun-bonnet, ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... fell like a stone upon Clym. That same morning, when Eustacia had arranged to go and see her grandfather, Clym had expressed a wish that she would drive down to Blooms-End and inquire for her mother-in-law, or adopt any other means she might think fit to bring about a reconciliation. She had set out gaily; and he had ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... her father-in-law, "Go home and look for your mother-in-law; if she is asleep, then go into the taboo temple; if you see a gourd plaited with straw and feathers mounted on the edge of the cover, that is the gourd. Do not be afraid of the great birds that stand on either side of the gourd, they ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... opposition, was accepted. The Duchess wrote to Philip, explaining and apologizing for the transaction. The King received the substitution with as good a grace as could have been expected, and sent fifteen hundred troopers from Spain to his Medicean mother-in-law, drawing upon the Duchess of Parma for the money to pay their expenses. Thus was the industry of the Netherlands taxed that the French might be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... worn a pair of goloshes on his short walk in the street. He noiselessly entered the studio, inside which some gleams of the same mellow light had managed to creep, and where he guessed he should find his prospective wife and mother-in-law awaiting him with tea. But only Avice was there, seated beside the teapot of brown delf, which, as artists, they affected, her back being toward him. She was holding her handkerchief to her eyes, and he saw that ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... you know why I have treated you so badly? Do you know why I have taught your wife to regard me as a rival? Why I have blackmailed you to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds? Do you know why I have done all this and more? I will tell you. Because I am your Mother-in-law! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... Belisarius, mother-in-law of Ildiger, IV. viii. 24; sets sail with Belisarius for Africa, III. xii. 2; preserves drinking water for Belisarius and his attendants, III. xiii. 23, 24; with the army at Decimum, ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... London. Loewenstein, a young Brussels banker, is to take me over in his racing car, which is a useful institution these days. We take along his mother-in-law, Madame Misonne, and A.B. It means getting up at five to motor to Calais to catch the boat. There the car will be slung aboard, so that we can be whisked up to London without waiting ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... invent a medicine against the female sex.... They try to cure every sort of disease, and it never occurs to them that more people die of women than of disease.... Sly, stingy, cruel, brainless.... The mother-in-law torments the bride and the bride makes things square by swindling the husband... and there's ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... illustrates this by an example whose pertinence is not lessened by a dash of humor. A physician, who numbered among his patients his own father and his wife's mother, was asked why his treatment in the former case had been more successful than in the latter. His reply was that his mother-in-law had not as much confidence in him as his father had, and therefore had failed to receive as much benefit. Similarly, if a verbal charm is to cure a physical ailment, the patient must first form a mental conception of the cure, and believe in the charm's efficacy. But faith in healing-spells ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... sacrifice on her part, Madeline and she drove up to the Percivals' for five-o'clock tea. Her future mother-in-law was in the accustomed seat, and Lena found a footstool near at hand, with a pretty air of affectionate proprietorship that brought a glow to ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... to drink, same as usual. But when it comes to sleepin', well, you got to make floors an' chairs an' tables do. You see this here little shower has filled me all up. The Lew Yates place up the river got itself pretty well washed out; Lew's young wife an' ol' mother-in-law," and Poke's voice was properly modified, "got scared clean to pieces. Not bein' used to our ways out here," he added brightly. "Any way they've got the spare bed room. An' my room an' Ma's ... well, ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... not at their worst. Marion Daintree was a soft-hearted, gentle-mannered little woman. It cannot be said that she regarded the permanent instalment of her mother-in-law in her home with pleasurable feelings; she would have been more than human had she done so. But then she was unfeignedly fond of her husband, and desired so earnestly to make his home happy that, not ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... a half," Katy said, feeling a lump rising in her throat, for she guessed that her mother-in-law was not quite pleased ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... two," said the mother-in-law. "And not clear either. It's as much as I can do to ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... sixteen on Stanley's motion about Irish Registration.[2] O'Connell made a most blackguard speech, alluding with wretched ribaldry to the deathbed of Stanley's mother-in-law, from which he had come to urge his motion, out of deference to those whom he had brought up for it. One of the worst of those disgraceful and stupid brutalities, which will obliterate (if possible) ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Gate of Hanover, "his carriage overset;" broke his poor old Mother-in-law's leg (who had been rejoicing doubtless to get home into her own Country), and was the end of her—poor old soul;—and the beginning of misfortunes continual and too tedious to mention. Spleen, envy, malice and calumny, from the Hanover ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with the service of a doctor, we lost our father and mother-in-law, which so reduced our expenses that we were able to pay for the parlor floor ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... a great fault in neglecting at this juncture to conciliate her mother-in-law, who might have protected her again those who sought her ruin and effected it nine years later; for the divorce in 1809 was brought about by the joint efforts of all the members of the Bonaparte family, aided by some ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... before he hath his immortal soul, hath a soul of sense, and a soul of vegetation before that: this immortal soul did not forbid other souls to be in us before, but when this soul departs, it carries all with it; no more vegetation, no more sense. Such a mother-in-law is the earth, in respect of our natural mother; in her womb we grew, and when she was delivered of us, we were planted in some place, in some calling in the world; in the womb of the earth we diminish, and when she is delivered ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... such thing as pay you," said Madam Black-and-White in a surprisingly clear, resolute, authoritative voice. "If you haven't any shame for yourself, Robert Chapman, you've got a mother-in-law who can be ashamed for you. No strangers shall be charged for food or lodging in any house where Mrs. Matilda Pitman lives. Remember that I've come down in the world, but I haven't forgot all decency for all that. I knew you ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the appearance of the children, a few Spanish women have followed suit; but it requires a good deal of courage to break away from old traditions and set one's face against the sacred superstitions of ages—and the mother-in-law! ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... passed him, and so long as he occasionally met her at Mrs. Worthington's rooms, or saw her riding in the Richards' carriage, so long was he content to stay. But there came a time when he must go, and then he asked for Adah, and in the presence of her mother-in-law invited her to go with him to her husband's grave. She went, taking Willie with her, and there, with that fresh mound between them, Irving Stanley told her what he had hitherto withheld, told what the dying soldier had said, and asked if ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... Thuringia, and superintendent in Goettingen till 1549, when he was compelled to leave because of his opposition to the Augsburg Interim. Recommended by Elizabeth Duchess of Braunschweig-Lueneburg, the mother-in-law of Duke Albrecht, he was appointed preacher at the Dome of Koenigsberg in 1550. Clearly understanding that solid comfort in life and death is possible only as long as our faith rests solely on the aliena iustitia, on ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the imprudent speeches of the general were depriving him of the esteem of the First Consul, his mother-in-law, by a dangerous obstinacy, was encouraging him in his opposition, persuaded, she said, that the future would do justice to the present. She did not realize that she spoke so truly; and the general rushed headlong into the abyss which opened before him. How ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... go upon a "honeymoon," the month succeeding the wedding, and this is long or brief, according to the wealth of the parties. When they return they usually live by themselves, the bride resenting any advice or espionage from her husband's mother, who is the mother-in-law, a relation as much joked about in America as revered ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... them exactly as we did if they had come without any message from John; so I do not know why we should lay any stress on that, or even speak of it. The simple fact is that we have opened our house to two strangers in distress. Your husband," continued Mr. Hale's mother-in-law, "does not require to know more. As to the letter and package, we will keep that for further consideration. It cannot be of much importance, or they would have spoken of it before; it is probably some trifling present as a return for your hospitality. I should use ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... Carvilius divorced his wife, being a case that never before happened, in the space of two hundred and thirty years from the foundation of the city; and that one Thalaea, the wife of Pinarius, had a quarrel (the first instance of the kind) with her mother-in-law, Gegania, in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus; so successful was the legislator in securing order and good conduct in the marriage relation. Their respective regulations for marrying the young women are in accordance with those for their education. Lycurgus made them brides ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... who helps here by the name of Baquet; his wife has just taken three orphan children, the oldest six years old, to look after, in addition to her own four, her mother and her mother-in-law. There are no men left to do the work on the farm, and poor Baquet did not know how they could get along. I gave him one hundred francs and told him it was from my friends in Canada. He did not want to take it at first, saying it was sent for the wounded, but I explained ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... to his own orders, the General supervised the shopping for the two Custis children and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dandridge. Not only were clothes and materials ordered, fine ivory combs, stockings, etc., but toys. Here is a selection made by the Cary firm—a child's fiddle, a coach and six in a box, a stable with six horses, a toy whip, a filigree watch, a neat enameled watch box, a corner cupboard ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... certainly they had not died a year or two earlier, and left poor Clara and Charles to come together. You should have married some woman in the serious way; my daughter Walham could have found you one. Frank, I am told, and his wife go on very sweetly together; her mother-in-law governs the whole family. They have turned the theatre back into a chapel again: they have six little ploughboys dressed in surplices to sing the service; and Frank and the Vicar of Kewbury play at cricket with them on holidays. Stay, why should ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... professorship in a German university, seemed now easy of attainment. We should have liked a few more pages describing the joyous life of the young couple in the heyday of their life; we could have wished that he had not declined the wish of his mother-in-law, to have his bust made by Thorwaldsen, at a time when he must have been a model of manly beauty. But if we know less than we could wish of what Bunsen then was in the eyes of the world, we are allowed an insight ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... attempted, but failed, with mutual accusations of perfidy, and while Constance continued a prisoner, a most desolating war raged in the unfortunate duchy. The dislike and distrust that existed between Constance and her mother-in-law, Queen Eleanor, seem to have been the root of many of these troubles; Eleanor was all-powerful with her son, and contrived to inspire him with distrust of Constance—a suspicion naturally augmented by her refusal ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... him Bertram's letter to his wife; it would have made him wish to kill the truant Count; but she went back to Rousillon and handed her mother-in-law the second letter. It was short and bitter. "I have run away," it said. "If the world be broad enough, I will be ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... her mother-in-law's choice—indeed, the late Mrs. Harrington had done a good deal more in the business than she had any right to, and only Phyllis' own sweetness and common sense and the fact that Allan and Phyllis fell in love after their marriage had justified what old Mrs. Harrington did in the case. ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... mother or mother-in-law for an hour or so, as soon as the crowd thins a little, the debutante or bride ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the islands by Captain Keeling, their first notable visitor was Captain John Clunis-Boss, who in 1814 touched in the ship Borneo on a voyage to India. Captain Boss returned two years later with his wife and family and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dymoke, and eight sailor-artisans, to take possession of the islands, but found there already one Alexander Hare, who meanwhile had marked the little atoll as a sort of Eden for a seraglio of Malay women ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... indeed, with an indescribable thrill that I heard him add the details, one by one—the mortgage on his place, now rapidly being paid off, the brother who was a plumber, the mother-in-law who was not a mother-in-law of the comic papers. And finally he showed us the picture of the wife and baby that he had in the cover of his watch; a fat baby with its head ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... faded plants of the garden a solitary Rindo-nadeshko.[85] When To-no-Chiujio had gone, Genji picked this flower, and sent it to his mother-in-law by the nurse of the infant ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... rather not to have him in sight; and was living idle at Hanover; very eager to be wedded to Wilhelmina, as one grand and at present grandest resource of his existence. It is now May, 1728; and Frederick Duke of Edinburgh is twenty-one. He writes to his Aunt and intended Mother-in-law, Queen Sophie (date not ascertainable to a day, Note burnt as soon as read): "That he can endure this tantalizing suspense no longer; such endless higgling about a supreme blessedness, virtually agreed upon, may be sport to others, but is death to him. That ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... themselves honoured by the tie that there was between them. Three months these Infantes abode with the Cid in Valencia, in great pleasure. And then they dispeeded themselves of the Cid and of their mother-in-law Dona Ximena, and took each his wife and returned into their own lands with great riches and honour. And the Cid gave them great treasures, even as he had promised, and gave them certain of those strange beasts which the Soldan had sent. And he rode out with ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... mother-in-law? Was it she? She was such a well-bred, quiet woman. Are you sure you are not mistaken? One or two notes, ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... put up her hand timidly and touched the cold cheek. "Mother," was all she said. It was all the woman needed to cover her shame in a cloak of warm tears. The two wept together, and then Prosper knelt to his mother-in-law's hand. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... you can judge whether I am happy or not, with my heart saturated, as it is, with our ideas. I was not ignorant what my lot would be: I live with the ex-president, my husband's uncle, and with my mother-in-law, who has preserved nothing of the ancient parliamentary society of Aix but its pride and its severity of manners. I am seldom alone, I never go out unless accompanied by my mother-in-law or my husband. We receive the heavy people of the city in the evening. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... of considerable uncertainty as to whether this chance of meeting his mother-in-law to be (he hoped!) alone, and in these peculiar circumstances, would be an advantage or otherwise. She might be annoyed by a sudden interruption in "admiring the scenery." There would be the awkwardness of having to introduce himself, and she might be fatigued after all her "chumpin'" ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... him of my awakening, of Mrs. Inglethorp's dying words, of her husband's absence, of the quarrel the day before, of the scrap of conversation between Mary and her mother-in-law that I had overheard, of the former quarrel between Mrs. Inglethorp and Evelyn Howard, and ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... that he thought the usurper of his rights worthy of a glance at all: and certainly I am anticipating my story. John dined with the old lady; drank her currant wine in preference to her port, ate her seed biscuits, and when Mr Mogg, in pursuance of a message from his mother-in-law, called to renew in his own person the offer to show his relation's distinguished friend, (Mrs Hodgett had hinted her suspicions that John Brown was a nobleman,) he was ready, though rather sleepy, to commence his lionizing. Mr Mogg was exceedingly civil, showed him every thing worth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... bright and merry and chatty: all save Maud Krill who smiled and fanned herself in a statuesque way. Hay paid her great attention, and Paul knew very well that he intended to marry the silent woman for her money. It would be hardly earned he thought, with such a firm-looking mother-in-law as Mrs. Krill would ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a most gentle and amiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... placed her arm about her future mother-in-law. Then the talk veered to Polly and her future education. John and his fiancee had a hard task in convincing Mrs. Brewster that it was best for Polly to accompany the Stewarts to New York, to school; but finally, when all three returned to the house, a resigned ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... tea; she had a customer who was shadowed by detectives, and another (a very wealthy lady) who had been arrested in a department store for kleptomania; she had been present at a spiritualist seance where an old gentleman had died in a fit on seeing a materialization of his mother-in-law; she had escaped from two fires in her night-gown, and at the funeral of her first cousin the horses attached to the hearse had run away and smashed the coffin, precipitating her relative into an open man-hole before the eyes of his ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... could be more irreproachable than the demeanor of the two brothers. Dr. Alphege was known to be a man of great skill, a graduate of the medical schools of Paris and always interested in the practice of his profession. He devoted himself to his mother-in-law now with unfailing assiduity, and when her disease—which he pronounced to be a dangerous gastric affection—baffled his utmost efforts, he sent for advice and assistance even to New Orleans; which, thirty years ago ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... vengeance of Balder is more clearly given by the Dane, and with a comic force that recalls the Aristophanic fun of Loka-senna. It appears that the story had a sequel which only Saxo gives. Woden had the giantess Angrbode, who stole Freya, punished. Frey, whose mother-in-law she was, took up her quarrel, and accusing Woden of sorcery and dressing up like a woman to betray Wrind, got him banished. While in exile Wuldor takes Woden's place and name, and Woden lives on earth, part of the time at least, with Scathe Thiasse's ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and body; she had been educated in the Court of France, and had imbibed all the politeness of it; she was by nature so well formed to shine in everything that was polite, that notwithstanding her youth, none surpassed her in the most refined accomplishments. The Queen, her mother-in-law, and the King's sister, were also extreme lovers of music, plays and poetry; for the taste which Francis the First had for the Belles Lettres was not yet extinguished in France; and as his son was addicted to exercises, no kind of pleasure was wanting ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... Now if only they had worn my costumes, such a damp and uncomfortable mode of going about the country would have been unnecessary; besides, it was absurd in any case. If you were walking with your mother-in-law you wouldn't walk as far apart as that; you wouldn't be able to hear a ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... to mention the name of your mother-in-law entails the most unpleasant consequences on that intimate relation. Nobody can say that to name the lady is a thing wicked in itself; yet the man who, knowing the penalties which will ensue, allows himself, even in a fit of passion against that relative, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... matured this resolution in his mind an elderly woman came hobbling with uncertain gait through the orchard. He recognized her as a member of the farm household, the mother or possibly the mother-in-law of Mrs. Spurfield, his present landlady, and hastily formulated some pleasant remark to make to her. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki |
