"Motherly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been a certain air of pathos which Mrs. Partington herself cast around him, which affected her the most, and I imagine her feeling to have been largely motherly. There was, however, another element very obviously visible, which, in anyone but Mrs. Partington, I should call reverence.... She told me that she could not imagine why he was traveling with the Major and Gertie, so she at least understood something ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... word and honor! And once she gets hold of me, I have to stay and tell her all the news I get from the grocer and the butcher's boy, and who goes by and what they has on. Not that I don't admire bein' sociable, and I can't help havin' a motherly feelin' for one old enough to be my mother; but I don't get no chance to redd up nowhere except the dinin'-room and his study. And then you know, I ain't no general housework girl, anyways, I've always ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... would go with him on the search for the lost horse (subject, of course, to the consent of his mother), and the German youth looked pleadingly toward the good woman, who, it is hardly necessary to say, yielded consent, giving with it a large amount of motherly counsel, to which the boys listened respectfully, though candor compels me to say that the thoughts of both were far away among the green woods, beside the sparkling streams, and in the shadows of the chasms, ravines, and gloomy mountains, whither, as they well knew, the curious search ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... entered the town of Artenay, on the main road from Paris to Orleans, coming down upon it from the north side. Here they entered a quiet inn. The landlord was a jovial, pleasant-faced man of some sixty years of age; and his wife a kind, motherly-looking woman. As usual, the travellers signed the names they had agreed upon in the book kept for the purpose, Patsey retaining her own name, and ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... dilapidated old age, only kept together by the clothes he wore, which was altogether unintelligible to the Peabody family, seeing that Mr. Carrack was in the very prime of youth, till Mrs. Carrack remarked, with an affectionate smile of motherly pride: ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... the tone reminded Anne that her friend had long been motherless, and she slipped her arm affectionately around Laura's waist as she answered, "She is the most motherly woman I ever met. She seems to have room in her big, warm heart for every girl that wants mothering, no matter who or what she is." They were back at the camp now, and she added, "But we must ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... more she became satisfied that they were the prettiest couple in the dance. They were certainly well matched; her son's partner was the handsomest girl of the tribe; of this she was convinced, and she felt proud of it. Motherly pride caused her heart to flutter, and the instinct of woman made her eager to know who the maiden was who appeared such a fitting partner for her own good-looking son. Say Koitza determined to improve the first opportunity that might present itself for ascertaining who the girl was ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... lamentations that scandalised the priests and even Lucas, who broke in with "Fie, maid, thou mournest as one who hath no hope." But Dr. Colet still signed to them to have patience, and Perronel somehow contrived to draw the girl's head on her breast and give her a motherly kiss, such as the poor child had never felt since she, when almost a babe, had been lifted from her dying mother's side in the dark stifling hold of the vessel in the Bay of Biscay. And in sheer surprise and sense of being soothed she ceased her cries, listened to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was kind and motherly, and Mary felt that it was so: but although there were no actual faults of spelling, it was evidently not the production of a cultured woman, and she thought with some dread of her future mother-in-law. It ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... then affirmed to her, and she promised to alter conditions. We insisted on attention to Emma's eyes and general physical conditions, on removal from neighborhood association with these old companions, on the necessity for motherly confidences, on watchfulness to break up sex habits, and on the development of better mental interests. Through relatives in the home town it seemed there was some chance to get these ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... very pretty motherly tricks she has played you! Not that in the first instance it was so much your fault, who were but a boy, as that of your old fool of a grandfather. It is now high time however that you should become ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Phillida's natural reserve were melted away by her friend's effusive sympathy, and the weary heart lightened its burdens, as many another had done before, by confessing them to the all-motherly Mrs. Frankland. Phillida told the story of her lover, of his dislike to the notoriety of her faith-cures. She told of her own struggles and of the grave questions she might soon have to settle. Should she yield, if ever so little, to the demands of one who was to be her husband? ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... by old residents of Rosedale, that John Koen's mother, who was washing the breakfast dishes when the firing began, hearing the first heavy reverberations from the cannon some thirty miles away, dropped the dish she was wiping, and in her motherly anxiety for the safety of her boy, cried ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... feeling in her heart for that motherly woman who had sought to protect her, and felt a longing to let her know how safely she had been kept through the long journey and how good the Lord had been to her through the years. Also they both desired to reward these kind people for their hospitality in the time of need. So, ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... I forget to speak of Mrs. Poor. The big, raw-boned woman's hard-favored countenance was lit up with motherly solicitude, as she lifted, rather than assisted, Zadkiel, down ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... rattled on, she had been fussing around the room getting out Patty's clothes to wear that day, and acting in such a generally motherly manner that Patty felt sure she must be missing Nan, and she couldn't help feeling very sorry for her, and told ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... separates it from Butcher Lane and the regions of Newgate. Over this little territory, thus bounded and designated, the great dome of St. Paul's, swelling above the intervening houses of Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, and Ave-Maria Lane, looks down with an air of motherly protection. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... what the lightning gave him to see, and not darkly: If he discovered himself to the Countess, he must expose his history from the night the rovers carried him away. True, the tale might be given generally, leaving its romance to thrill the motherly heart, and exalt him the more; for to whom are heroes always the greatest heroes? Unhappily steps in confession are like links in a chain, one leads to another.... Could he, a Christian born, tell her he was an apostate? Or if he told her, would it not be one more ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... your mother began to show to me the tenderness of an own mother. I loved her dearly—she loved me, and loved what I loved. In the prospect of a return which has few charms for me the thought of finding Lady Hope good, kind, gracious, motherly, as she always was for me, was one of the few thoughts on which I dwelt, and to which I returned with real pleasure, and now it is all gone; and you would think it exaggerated if I said how deeply it depresses me to feel ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... for motherly love! Dang it, what's her heart made of?" said a voice. I turned round; it was old Ben, who had been an unobserved ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... washed, and starched, that our party dresses were equal to those which Mrs. C. and Mrs. D. provided for their girls, and that our bonnets were fashionable enough for Fourth Street? Could she find time for anything more? Yes,—on our bodily ailments she always found time to bestow motherly care, watchfulness, and sympathy; of our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... under-sized, earnest, dark-haired and dark-eyed young man of three-and-twenty Abigail Mitchenor at once felt a motherly interest. Having received him as a temporary member of the family, she considered him entitled to the same watchful care as if he were in reality an invalid son. The ice over an hereditary Quaker nature is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a fluttering sheet of paper in her hand. She was a voluminous woman in a stiffly starched house dress, everything about her as clean as a new pin, and a pair of silver-bowed spectacles pushed up to her fast graying hair. She was a wholesome, hearty, motherly looking woman, and Nan Sherwood was attracted to her ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... later, Bess Thornton, seated at the breakfast table in the Ellison home, was eating the best meal she had had in many a day. A motherly-looking woman, setting out a few extra dainties for her, wiped her eyes now and again with ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the jolly children danced round with joy when they heard the wonderful story of our deliverance. Every one, from the charming and dignified head of police who heard our story and examined our passports, to the humblest village child, rejoiced at our escape. The good motherly folk at the lighthouse fairly bubbled over with joy as they chattered and poured out sympathy and busied themselves with attending to ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... of her home and the weariness of her life. Carried away by Marietta's sympathy and flattering friendship, the young girl had complained to the stranger of her mother; in the desire to make herself appear an interesting sacrifice to motherly tyranny, she accused that mother relentlessly; she told Madame Taliazuchi that she was always treated as a child because her mother still wished to appear young; that she was never allowed to be seen in the saloon in the evening, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... our sex such queer characters. She had a profound faith in him as an aid to conversation, and if there were silent men in the company would give him to them to talk about, precisely as she divided a cake among children. And then, with a motherly smile, she would leave them to gorge on him. But in the idolising of Gladstone she recognised, nevertheless, a certain inevitability, and would no more have tried to contend with it than to sweep a shadow off the floor. Gladstone was, and there was an end of it in her practical philosophy. ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... yet," she allowed, "but wait a while. I intend to tame Texas, and then I shall have him to perch on my wrist like a falcon. And, just now, I don't know that I care to be hampered by any sort of a baby," laughing mischievously, for Faith looked quite motherly, with the kitten wrapped in a fold ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... buy Black Hill," said Mrs. Jardine, and turned to the fire. The tutor joined her there. He had for her liking and admiration, and she for him almost a motherly affection. Now she smiled as ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst—Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... unusual, all the inherited belief in the sanctity of fixed opinions, all the passionate distrust of ideas that have not stood the test of centuries—these things which make for the safety and the permanence of the racial life, were in the look of motherly indulgence with which she regarded him. She had just risen from a rocking-chair on the long porch, where honest Tom sat relating ponderous war anecdotes to an attentive group of boarders; and beyond her in the dimly lighted hall he could see ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... even in company with his redoutable brother-in-law. When he and Jim had gone Mrs. Knight addressed Lorelei with motherly candor. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... of the spring sky, and before us lies the deep forest, brooding in wise silence. Now and then the wind whispers gently and stirs the fragrant shadows of the forest, and again does the soothing silence caress us with a motherly caress. White clouds are sailing slowly across the azure heavens. Viewed from the earth, heated by the sun, the sky appears cold, and it is strange to see the clouds melt away in the blue. And all around me—little people, dear little people, destined ...
— The Shield • Various
... sit up?" said Adela at dinner, suddenly prodding me in the back. Adela is old enough to take a motherly interest in my figure, and young enough to look extremely ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... takes place; why not enjoy ourselves then, as only it is possible? So why not allow certain lower faculties of our nature to delight in what are called the grosser flowers? Why not cultivate their acquaintance, as we would that of motherly, kind, portly, and phlegmatic old ladies, rustling in their silks and satins, with a comfortable complacency, satisfied with their own share of fortune's goods, and benevolently disposed toward ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... They made my bed, what there was of it, they tended the fire with unflagging zeal, they brought water in very limited quantity for the purposes of ablution, they dried my boots and clothes with almost motherly care and tenderness when I came in out of the pouring rain. In fact, nobody could have been kinder or more attentive, and when Major Coghill was laid up by his accident their sympathy was almost overwhelming. Yet I believe that we annoyed ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the ladies appear, as trim and unconcerned as if they had never put their foot in a kitchen all their lives, and the circle round the fire widens to admit them. The elder of these ladies is a careworn but pleasant, motherly-looking body, who calls the elder gentleman "sir" when she speaks to him, and invariably addresses one of the two young men—the one with the black eyes—as Mister Johnny. As for the younger lady, whose likeness to Mister Johnny is very apparent, she is all sunshine and smiles, and one ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Eveline, kissing her comely cheek, "how shall I ever be able to repay thy motherly kindness? O, wherever I may be, and whatever my lot, I will ever think of thee as ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... the scene of action. It may be added that her own feelings also led her to go with them into the back parlor, where all that was said by Nichol and her daughter could be heard. Her solicitude for Helen was not less than theirs for their son; and she felt the girl might need both motherly care and counsel. She was opposed even more strenuously than her husband to any committal on the daughter's part to her old lover unless he should become beyond all doubt his former self. At best, it would be a heavy cross to give ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... my father right in the eye, raising a black and blue spot as large as a hen's egg." The painful recollection of this part of the dream so overpowered the witness, that she burst into tears, but was soon quieted by the motherly attentions of Mrs. Crull. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... or when away was still occupied in her affairs. Catherine was evidently on intimate and affectionate terms with the rest of the Maconi family also; but it is not strange if Monna Giovanna developed a little motherly jealousy, as she saw her brilliant son not only absorbed by this new friendship, but borne away to distant lands. Catherine's letter is as applicable to-day as then, to all parents whose misguided tenderness would seek to hinder their children in a ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... lived in the country, quite a retired life, and appeared to be more the motherly woman, and the domestic wife, than the ambitious Court lady, or royal sycophant. She was easy of access, and elegantly plain ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... along the stretch of old road which divided his farm from the Weatherbys', and, without entering the porch, called for Jim from the little walk before the flat whitewashed steps. In response to his voice, Mrs. Weatherby, a large, motherly looking woman, appeared upon the threshold, and after chatting a moment, directed him to the log tobacco barn, where the recently cut crop was ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... since they could handle a rod. They are supposed to empty the free water by Little Deeping Village every spring. So I limit them to three fish a day," said Mrs. Dangerfield; and there was a ring of motherly pride in ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... a stout, motherly woman. She was dressed up as if it were Sunday. Mr. Davis rose, too. You could never tell because of his beard whether he had on a ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... on her back or pulled at her tail. They made a lovely picture as they played, and the wrestling group in the middle seemed the focus of it all at first; but a keener, later look would have rested on the mother, quiet, watchful, not without anxiety, but, above all, with a face full of motherly tenderness. Oh, she was so proud and happy, and she would sit there and watch them and silently love them till it was time to go home, or until some sign of distant danger showed. Then, with a low growl, she gave the signal, and ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... cultivation of the mind interferes with a woman's moral, sentimental, or motherly qualities is ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Indian seemed likely to form no accession to the quiet household, but he soon became its brightest ornament and pride. Everything was in his favor at the pleasant home of Mrs. Trevor. He was treated with motherly kindness and tenderness, yet firmly checked when he went wrong. From the first he had a well-spring of strength, against temptation, in the long letters which every mail brought from his parents; and ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... then, as the coach began to move, there was a cry: "Alison! Alison! It is not right!" The older woman leaned forward, and for the first time he remarked a gentle, motherly face, much lined and worn. "Sure, sir, you will ride with us," she said, and he liked the voice. "We ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... that you are unhappy and uneasy. You want more beauty, or more assurance, or more sympathy, or more antiquity. Have you never noticed how all converts personify their new Church in feminine terms? She becomes a Madonna, something at once motherly and young. It is the passion with which the child turns away from what is male and rough, to the mother, the nurse, the elder sister. The convert isn't really in search of dogmas and doctrines: he is in love with a presence, a shape, something which can clasp and embrace ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... even feel by a kind of clockwork, which seems to go better than the heart itself. Those pretty sentiments, those delicate gallantries, of Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, how amiable they are; but, somehow or other, I can never fancy them the least motherly. What an ending for a maternal epistle is that elegant compliment—'Songez que de tons les coeurs ou vous regnez, il n'y en a aucun ou votre empire soit si bien etabli que dans le mien.'* I can scarcely fancy Lord Saxingham writing so to ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with his curved and derisive finger into Lisa's eyes. And in truth the tears were there. Lisa was in heart and person that which is comprehensively called motherly. She saw perhaps some pathos in the sight of this rugged man—worn by travel, bent with hardship and many wounds, past his work—shouldering his haversack and trudging off to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... they no longer thought of withdrawing themselves from the licentious looks of the spectators who were crowding at the entrance to the booth. Their eyes brooded with motherly terror upon the two veiled children, while the matron, bound to the post, her eyes glittering and her teeth set in impotent fury, raised her chained arms to heaven as if to call down the punishments of the ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... Him. Opposite this terrible convulsive Magdalen, sobbing, tearing her hair and rolling on the ground, is the other heart-broken woman, the mother; but how different! She remains maternal through her grief, with motherly thoughtfulness for others; for to the real mother (how different in this to the lover!) there will always remain in the world some one to think of. She bridles her sorrow; when John at last hesitatingly suggests that they must not stay all night on Calvary, she turns ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... capacity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Twenty-five members specially designated were to form the king's privy council. [Histoire des Etats generaux, by M. Picot, t. ii. p. 73.] And in the privacy of her motherly correspondence Catherine wrote to the Queen of Spain, her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II., "Madame, my dear daughter, all I shall tell you is, not to be the least anxious, and to rest assured that I shall spare no pains to so conduct ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... figure of an old woman who is said to have put by all her savings from the grocery business that she might appear properly in the Campo Santo, and who is shown there short and stout and common, in her ill-fitting best dress, but motherly and kind and of ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... said fervently. I beckoned to Mrs. Mullins, a fine motherly woman, who sat right across the aisle. She ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... little head against my shoulder as I gave her some soup; but her eyelids were heavy, and it seemed almost cruel to keep her awake, even for the food she so badly needed. The father had shuffled about uneasily during my motherly attentions, and seemed relieved when ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... and a Biddy to help her," he said quickly. Then recollecting the tastes of his comrades, he added, half apologetically, half cautiously, "Ef she could, now and then, throw herself into a lemming pie or a pot of doughnuts, jest in a motherly kind o' way, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... him into excessive good humour. The conversation now became general, and Clare thought he had never met with such an agreeable companion as the great 'Elia.' Till late at night, the drinking and talking continued, until at last Charles Lamb's sister, the motherly Bridget, came into the room, delivering an eloquent lecture upon the value of sobriety. When Clare looked serious: 'Do ... do ... don't be offended, my boy,' quoth Charles, 'we all know the virtue of rustic swine-I me ... me ... mean of a rustic swain!' ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... the slate-pencil from his pocket without reply. Mrs. Salter, who had been watching him with motherly eyes, pushed a small stool towards him, and he began to draw a scene such as he had been studying daily for months past,—pigs at the water-side. He had made dozens of such sketches. But the delight of the farmer knew ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... easy when Amy returned, and the more because she brought with the midwife a good motherly sort of woman, who was to be her assistant, and would be very helpful on occasion; and bespoke a man midwife at Paris too, if there should be any necessity for his help. Having thus made provision for everything, the Count, for so we ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... hard to tell you what Hannah is. You just have to know her. She is the mainspring of my household. Not only does she cook, clean, mend, and market for me; she does a score of things besides. Why, I couldn't live without her. She is one of those motherly souls whose wisdom is of the sages. She has been in our family since I was a baby. Most of my bringing up, in fact, was due to her and," he added whimsically, "behold the work ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... coffee with a motherly tenderness that was perfectly touching. She looked at me with the eyes of Solicitude, and spoke with the lips of culminating Respect; and once, in a burst of confidence, she told me that she had six orphan ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was Violet Farrington, a daughter of Richard Farrington, a well-known lawyer of North Bend, and Grace Farrington, a sweet, motherly woman. ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... rate, Aubrey woke that Saturday morning, about the time Titania began to dust the pavement-boxes, in no very world-conquering humour. As it was a half-holiday, he felt no compunction in staying away from the office. The landlady, a motherly soul, sent him up some coffee and scrambled eggs, and insisted on having a doctor in to look at his damage. Several stitches were taken, after which he had a nap. He woke up at noon, feeling better, though his head still ached ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the setting of the two pairs of eyes—un-Saxon. They sat very close together, a grave little couple. Presently the girl threw her arm round the boy's neck, the boy laid his head on her shoulder. In this position those who watched could have traced motherly lines round this little girl's firm mouth. She was a creature to defend and protect. The evening fell and the court grew dark, but the boy had found shelter on her breast, and the dog, coming close, laid his ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... at Lime was for two or three months overrun with visitors and vivacity. Fathers and mothers made fatherly and motherly stays, with the hottest of air-tights put up for their benefit in the front room; sisters and sisters-in-law brought the fashions and got up tableaux; cousins came on the jump; Miss Jones, Pauline Dallas, and I were invited in turn, and the children had the mumps ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... old Jane "mixing" with those Harpeth Valley farmer folk was one of the things I have put aside to remember for always. They all knew me, of course, and I was a bit teary at their greetings. Big motherly women took me in their arms and younger ones laid their babies in my arms and laughed and cried over me, while every few minutes some rugged old farmer would call out for Colonel Shelby's "little gal" and look searchingly in my face for the ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... then, as when our words seem all too rude We cease from speech, to take our thought and brood Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, So sank the strings to heartwise throbbing, Of long chords change-marked with sobbing— Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... nurse and temporary house-keeper, and, at the urgent request of the widower, remained for a time after the funeral. Weeks passed, and her house was still tenantless. Mildred had become so much attached to the motherly widow and her son, that she would not allow the servants to do anything for her. So, without any definite agreement, their relations continued. By-and-by the village gossips began to query and surmise. At the sewing- society the matter was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and calves voiced insistent demands from their quarters. The Harris farm, like fifty thousand others, rose from its brief hush of rest and quiet to the sounds ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... that her mother was being rebuked for want of motherly tenderness, and, as she doubted not, towards Anegay. This mysterious person, then, must have been a sister of whom she had never heard,—probably much older ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... it back into its cradle, and was about to leave the room when the nurse, a respectable widow woman with a motherly air, asked me straight out what were my wishes about the child and by what name it was to be baptised, seeing that when I was in jail she might not be able to ascertain them. The good woman's question made me wince, but, recognising that in view of ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... immediately after death, they are taken into heaven and confided to angel women who in the life of the body tenderly loved little children and at the same time loved God. Because these during their life in the world loved all children with a kind of motherly tenderness, they receive them as their own; while the children, from an implanted instinct, love them as their own mothers. There are as many children in each one's care as she desires from a spiritual parental affection. This heaven appears ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... partial, motherly judge. Lookers-on see most of the game," said Uncle Richard good-humouredly. "I was looking on from the landing for some time, and from what I saw, I have no hesitation in saying that Master Tom got ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... letter to his grandfather, written him down a despicable, underhanded sneak, here was that same Mrs. Fosdick—but not at all the same. For this lady was smiling and gracious, welcoming him to her home, addressing him by his Christian name, treating him kindly, with almost motherly tenderness. Madeline's letters and Mrs. Fosdick's own letters received during his convalescence abroad had prepared him, or so he had thought, for some such change. Now he realized that he had not ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... looking, pipe in mouth, at the mail boat and the sailing vessels lying in the stream. There were four in all—the steamer, an American whaling barque, a small brig of about two hundred tons flying the Hawaiian Island colours, and a big, sprawling, motherly-looking full-rigged ship, whose huge bow ports denoted ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... the Lord will certainly deliver you in the time of trouble. We trust no distance of place, no length of time, no pressure of affiction, yea, nor smiling of prosperity, shall delete out of our thankfull memories the humble acknowledgement of your so motherly care: in drawing out your breasts, yea, your souls to satisfie the hungrie: although we have been beaten with the sword, bitten with famine, our own wickednes correcting us, our back-slidings reproving us, yet we have not so farre forgotten the Lords ancient love, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... hard at her half-averted face and was suddenly confronted by the realization that this grey, motherly woman must have been young once, like Alix, and pretty. As it is with the young, he could not think of her except as old. He had always thought of his mother as old; it was impossible to think of her as having once been young and gay like the girls he knew. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... the principal physician in Peterborough. Clare had also an excellent and warm-hearted friend in Mrs. Marsh, wife of the Bishop of Peterborough, who corresponded with him frequently, in a familiar and almost motherly manner, from 1821 to 1837. When Clare complained of indisposition, a messenger would be dispatched from "The Palace," with medicines or plaisters, camphor lozenges, or "a pound of our own tea," with ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... a state of intense excitement—having rushed through the parlour, leaving a fragment of her gown between the yawning brass of the never-mended Brummagem work-table—tore across the hall, whirled out of the door, scattering the chickens to the right and left, and clutched hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. "La, how you do shake my nerves," she cried, after giving him a most hasty and uncomfortable kiss. "And you are hungry too, and nothing in the house but cold mutton! Jenny, Jenny, I say, Jenny! ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... player! These phenomena were simply and totally inconceivable! And yet Jock was in presence of them, assisting at them, positively acting in them! And in spite of her enormities, Mrs Clowes still struck him as a most agreeable, decent, kindly, motherly woman—quite apart from her handsomeness. And her offspring, each hidden to the eyes behind a mug, were a very well-behaved ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... trembled for it, for him because of it. If Mrs. Mansfield could have known how solicitous, how tender, how motherly, the girl felt at that moment under her mask of shining, radiant hardness! But Mrs. Mansfield was glancing about the house with grave and even ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... roam ... and the best sort of therapy for a pot-holed mind like mine, with as many gray ruts and curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that can't remember one single thing before this last year in the dressing room and that can't ever push its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, except to stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until the fear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at the audience gets too strong ... and I remember what happened the two times I did ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... croup by attending to the damp shoes and socks before going to bed. Boo lay with his round face turned up to hers, stroking her cheek while the sleepy blue eyes blinked lovingly at her as she sang her lullaby with a motherly patience sweet to see. They made a pretty little picture, and Mr. Bemis looked at it with pleasure, having a leisure moment in which to discover, as all parents do sooner or later, that ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... "And is he coming here?" she asked in an accent the most pleased and motherly. A flush came over her cheeks and her eyes grew and danced. It was as if some rare new thought had come to her, a sentiment of poetry, the sound of a forgotten strain of ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... she has left the Mission to go back to Java with him? Yes—Then, knowing what you do of her, can't you see that this is only another example of the splendid loyalty that actuates her? My good fellow—" Mrs. Goring's tone became almost motherly, and Barry worshipped her for it—"poor Natalie is to experience a sad disillusionment very soon; she will suffer; but from the suffering she will emerge as clean as before in mind and body, and when her loyalty is enlisted in the proper place, the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the kitchen, when Mrs. Creddle caught her up and put a motherly arm about her. "Good-bye, my lass. You think nobody's felt like you before about a young man, ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... friendship with which so many girls are constantly being consumed, which burn brilliantly for a short season and them go out of their own accord; it usually took a long time to kindle a friendship with her. Sahwah herself could not understand her sudden, fierce, almost motherly love for Veronica. It had not been of gradual growth like her other friendships; it had been born all in an instant that first night of her arrival at Carver House, when Veronica had played and through Sahwah's heart there had gone a strange thrill of ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... precision on Ina's nastiest moments, but she always rose, unabashed, and went, motherly and dutiful, to hear devotions, as if that function and the process of living ran their two ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... we know him is not, like other men and things, a being of gradual growth, of slow evolution: from Adam to the middle of the last century the world saw nothing even in the least resembling him. No son of Paian he, but a fatherless, full-grown birth from the incessant matrix of Modern Time, so motherly of monstrous litters of "Gorgon and Hydra and Chimaeras dire"; you will understand what I mean when you consider the quite recent date of, say, the introduction of anaesthetics or antiseptics, the discovery of the knee-jerk, bacteriology, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... the Umbrella being thus recognised, it must be confessed that it has hitherto been treated in a most ungrateful and step-motherly fashion. We fly to the Umbrella when the sky is overcast—it affords us shelter in the hour of need—and the service is forgotten as soon as the necessity is relieved. We make abominable jokes upon the Umbrella; ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... all I could endure. After supper the landlady came in to talk to me about America. She had a son in California, and a daughter in Wisconsin, and showed me their daguerreotypes and some bits of gold with great pride. She was a stout, kindly, motherly body, and paid especial attention to our wants on finding where we came from. Indeed we were treated in the most friendly manner by these good people, and had no reason to complain of our reckoning on leaving. This experience ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... was a large motherly woman. She had light hair and blue eyes and had not talked long before Bob discovered that she had a deep interest in her husband's business, for the questions she asked were such that he knew the banker ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... his throat. "Coughed, did I?" he said anxiously. He had had a cold last winter, and his wife with her poultices and fright had convinced him that he was a confirmed invalid. The coming of her baby had given to the woman a motherly feeling toward all of the world, even to ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Mr Raydon, beginning to walk up and down the room, while I felt in such a whirl of excitement, as I saw Mrs John's beautiful, motherly eyes fixed lovingly on mine, and felt Mr John snatch my hand and press it, and then give vent to his delight at the clearing up by slapping me heavily on the shoulder, that I could not see Mr Raydon's puckered brow. ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Ulysses reproacheth Thersites, he objecteth not to him his lameness nor his baldness nor his hunched back, but the vicious quality of indiscreet babbling. On the other side, when Juno means to express a dalliance or motherly fondness to her son Vulcan, she courts him with an epithet ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Mrs. Worthington: excellent, motherly woman, the Mrs. Brinkley of the slate quarries. Her first question about you and William won my heart: she seemed so to have seen into you with that penetration of the heart, which is full as quick as that of the head, if there be any difference. She furnished us each with a pair of Devonshire ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... woman's eyes when she saw this unexpected provision for her wants, and witnessed the kindly interest of the young people of The Grange: she thanked them with few words, but with overflowing eyes and heart. She was an interesting woman, kind and motherly, and looked as if she had seen better days: her little black-eyed children also were well trained, with manners much superior to their station. One little girl of about twelve attracted Mrs. Wyndham's particular notice; she appeared to have installed ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... of obstacles had attended his intrusion into the castle. A brief interview with a motherly old lady, whom even Albert seemed to treat with respect, and who, it appeared was Mrs. Digby, the house-keeper; followed by an even briefer encounter with Keggs (fussy and irritable with responsibility, and, even while talking to George carrying on ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... who led me to this choice point of observation is her father. The plump and motherly matron on the high seat, whose face alone is a remedy for care and worry, is her mother. They will invite me home with them when meeting is over. Already I see the tree-embowered farmhouse, with its low, wide veranda, and old- fashioned roses climbing the lattice-work. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... went around to the rooms and told the girls how the rooms were to be kept, and she was such a motherly, warm-hearted body that very often if she found a homesick girl in her room she would know just how to cheer and comfort her, and help her to ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... arms and hurried to the Widow Schmidt's modest little cottage with the green blinds and the neatly scrubbed doorstep. George and Bob, feeling very sick, trailed sadly along after him; they hated to think of the look that would come into the Widow Schmidt's motherly face. Joe was all she ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... he thought I could be so hard," said Susan in a low voice, and colouring up. Then Mrs. Leigh was alarmed, and, in her motherly anxiety, she began to fear lest she had injured Will ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Goose remembered quite well the year that Jackanapes began to walk, for it was the year that the speckled hen for the first time in all her motherly life got out of patience when she was sitting. She had been rather proud of the eggs—they are unusually large—but she never felt quite comfortable on them; and whether it was because she used to get cramp, and got off the nest, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... years. The fire had burned itself out, except here and there where glowing coals showed themselves. Only two blackened timbers remained standing. And in this picture of devastation, looking the most lonesome and pathetic figure in the world, wandered the tiniest, most old-fashioned and motherly looking woman the lads ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... said to the kind Sister of Mercy, whose sweet, patient and motherly face was bending over a soldier to speak her words of comfort, "are there any Massachusetts ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... boy toward whom I felt so—motherly," Mrs. Cavendish said, with some irrelevance. "I don't like wild young men any better than you do, but—he isn't a thief, ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... motherly bringeth Flowers to the bee; Sweeter than autumn, which bounteously, lovingly flingeth Fruits on the tree, Shall be winter, when homeward returning, thy swift vessel wingeth Over ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... she would unloose him from her motherly embrace, and when she did the skeleton grasped him by the hand and said, in the most ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... her forehead in her agitation. Men of Lord Dreever's type appeal to the motherly instinct of women. As a man, his lordship was a negligible quantity. He did not count. But as a willful child, to be kept out of trouble, he had a claim ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... spoke openly of her "loss"; declared that the old families were dying out; and impressed the wives of a few new arrivals at Red Dog with the belief that her own family was contemporary with the Alvarados, and that her husband's health was far from perfect. She extended a motherly sympathy to the orphaned Don Caesar. Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition, he was still more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from the shyness of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... moment the kind-hearted woman was on her knees beside the heartbroken girl, whom she gathered into her motherly arms, murmuring words of comfort all the while. Gradually the dreadful sobbing subsided, and after a time the girl was once more standing before that door she guarded so jealously. Seeing that she was her own calm self again, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... said Hamilton. "Now, just behave yourself, Bones, and stop frightening the lady. I'm perfectly sure she's fond of you—in a motherly kind of way," he added, as he saw Bones's face light up. "And, really, she is such an excellent typist that it would be a sin and a shame to frighten her ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... principle. Knowing that I was an orphan he sometimes took me aside and gave me sound fatherly advice which I have since remembered, and am now beginning to appreciate. His wife, too, was a kindly motherly woman who, because being practically homeless I was often compelled to spend my holidays at school, seemed better disposed towards me than to the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... now by the grace of heaven ripe for marriage and his brother for the garb of manhood. She begged them to suffer her at length to solace her lonely existence and to relieve her ill health: they need have no fears as to her final choice or as to her motherly affection; she would still be as a wife what she had been as a widow. I will order a copy of this letter to her son to be read aloud. (The letter ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... such a motherly person at the hospital! With a dainty white dotted Swiss apron tied in sprightly bows about her waist, "in sweet perfection cast," she sat near the window sewing or embroidering some bit of finery that must ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... sending refugees to Egypt, I was sent on the 3rd March 1884 to Assouan and Korosko to receive those whom he sent down. As an instance of your brother's thoughtfulness, I may mention that he requested that, if possible, some motherly European woman might also be sent, as many of the refugees whom he had to send had never been out of the Soudan before, and might feel strange on reaching Egypt. A German, Giegler Pasha, who had been in Khartoum with your brother before, and who had a German wife, was accordingly ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... struck with; smitten, bitten; attached to, wedded to; enamored; charmed &c v.; in love; love-sick; over head and ears in love, head over heels in love. affectionate, tender, sweet upon, sympathetic, loving; amorous, amatory; fond, erotic, uxorious, ardent, passionate, rapturous, devoted, motherly. loved &c v.. beloved well beloved, dearly beloved; dear, precious, darling, pet, little; favorite, popular. congenial; after one's mind, after one's taste, after one's fancy, after one's own heart, to one's mind, to one's taste, to one's fancy, to one's own heart. in one's good graces &c (friendly) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ill in bed, he had sent his wife to offer her services. Mrs. Harvey had watched over poor Zillah in her grief, and had soothed her too. Mathilde would have been but a poor nurse for one in such a situation, and Mrs. Harvey's motherly care and sweet words of consolation had something, at least, to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the doorway. Never had Monsieur Perron seen them before, as he saw them now. Like turtle-doves, with smiling eyes, and affectionate caress, they had lived in happy harmony during the seven months of their married life, and motherly dames, when they gave their daughters away, bade them prosper and be pleasant in their union, as they had been joyous in their love, pleasant and joyous, as ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... I cannot forbear amusing my self with finding out a General, an Admiral, or an Alderman of London, a Divine, a Physician, or a Lawyer, among my little People who are now perhaps in Petticoats; and when I see the Motherly Airs of my little Daughters when they are playing with their Puppets, I cannot but flatter my self that their Husbands and Children will be happy in the Possession of such Wives ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... wouldn't let ennythin' in shape ev a human creetur go perishin' past aour fire sech weather's this," replied the woman, as she took the baby, which recognized the motherly hand at its first touch, and ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... afterwards called Epiphanes. He began his speech, "Ye men of Macedonia," as this mixed body of Greeks and Jews was always called. He wiped his eyes in well-feigned grief, and showed them the new king, who had been trusted, he said, by his father, to the motherly care of Agathoclea and to their loyalty. He then accused Tlepolemus of aiming at the throne, and brought forward a creature of his own to prove the truth of the charge. But his voice was soon drowned ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... indeed, an artificial place; it is so by our choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal imposed upon them from the cradle, and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and self-importance; their managing arts—the arts of a civilised slave among good-natured barbarians—are all painful ingredients and all help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing artificial scene ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it should be a cold fall, with nobody to look after 'em; but maybe I can take 'em home to my shed an' lend Mr. Kimball another hen." (Amanda's tone was motherly.) "I never like to break up a hen's nest, somehow; it seems as if they must have feelin's ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... what tremors must have been hers now in the still watches of the night, following the ghostly manifestations which had so dramatically interrupted Nayland Smith's story, I dared not imagine. She had been allotted an apartment somewhere upon the ground floor, and Mrs. Oram, whose motherly interest in the girl had touched me deeply, had gone with her to her room, where no doubt her presence had done much to restore the ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... decayed citizen, proficient only in the lore of vice and scorned by the whole populace, had gained his end; above all, how it came about that these two never wearied of their infatuation. Had he struck some latent and hideously defective chord in her motherly breast, that began to throb in response to his amorous complexities—was ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... young court at Woodstock was made happy by the birth of the heir to the crown—a babe of such promise and beauty that even grave chroniclers pause to record his noble aspect, and the motherly fondness of the youthful Philippa, then only seventeen. Again Queen Isabel was obliged to trust her son out of the hands of herself and her minions. Her last brother, King Charles IV., was dead, leaving only daughters; and ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... everybody had to watch the doll open and shut its eyes, and to try to unbutton and button its coat and dress; and then the railroad track had to be set up and the train started off on its rounds. Ellen Robinson really looked almost motherly while she watched her happy children; and Julia Cloud relaxed, and let the smile come around her lips ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... where Louise is not mine! Perhaps the young universe may contain a panacea for my anguish! Solitude shall pour its balm in my wound; once away from this civilization which stifles me, nature will cradle me in her motherly arms; the elements will resume their empire over me; ocean, sky, flowers, foliage will draw off the feverish electricity that excites my nerves; I will become absorbed in the grand whole, I will no longer live; I will vegetate and succeed in attaining the content of the plant that opens its ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... obeyed orders, Nan; for a certain dear old lady had a motherly presentiment that you had got into a domestic whirlpool, and sent me as a sort of life-preserver. So I took the basket of consolation, and came to fold my feet upon the carpet of contentment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
