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Helpmate

noun
1.
A helpful partner.  Synonym: helpmeet.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Helpmate" Quotes from Famous Books



... helpmate, come here! I am as ill as I can be; I must go to bed, and I beg of you to make all the servants go to bed too, in order that there may be no noise or disturbance, and then come ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... interposed Arroyo, quieting down; "and now, Senora," continued he, addressing himself to his helpmate, "before receiving Gaspacho, I have a commission ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... settled down to its accustomed quietude and uniformity with the immediate family, Jim and his wife alone remaining. Jim, like every recognized master in his own household, sat with his one leg across the other, enjoying his tobacco, while his less aristocratic helpmate took care that the kitchen affairs were given their due amount of attention. With abatement of the excitement and commotion the members of the family betook themselves upon various journeys, the father to look at his fire so as to give it, if needed, a few generous pokes; the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... deem me very romantic, but I have wrought out of our united poverty a very charming picture, I believe. I am sure I should make an excellent wife for the husband I loved. If you must leave France, as they tell me you must, I will follow you—I will be your brave and faithful helpmate. Pardon me, one word more, Monsieur de Camors. My proposition would be immodest if it concealed any afterthought. It conceals none. I am poor. I have but fifteen hundred francs' income. If you are richer than I, consider I have said nothing; for nothing in the world ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... he had frequently been a listener to torrents of abuse from her pretty lips and caustic tongue. Although he had been notorious as the rudest member of the Bar, he had generally come off second best in his frequent battles of words with his beautiful helpmate. Stolid and unimpressible as he was, he can hardly have been impervious to the effects of the verbal venom with which she had constantly stung him. But all this had been mere child's play in comparison with her fury on being ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville

... you and I, you to aid him in winning the fickle mob, and I to watch those secret burrowings more dangerous to thrones than open revolt. It is a sacred mission, my Joan! They who named you were wiser than they knew. You were christened a King's helpmate, while I, Felix Poluski, am fated to be the most amazing product of modern civilization,—an anarchist ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... faithful helpmate and my former wife, Thou hast been dear to me, dear art thou still, But truth is dearer, and to truth I cling, While on my quest of truth in former lives, And also now in this existence, thou With voluntary sacrifice hast aided ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus

... with fresh water to allay the burning thirst of purgatory, is prevalent throughout the south of Ireland. The writer can vouch for a case in which a respectable and wealthy farmer, on the borders of Tipperary, in tenderness to the corns of his departed helpmate, enclosed in her coffin two pair of brogues, a light and a heavy, the one for dry, the other for sloppy weather; seeking thus to mitigate the fatigues of her inevitable perambulations in procuring water, and administering it to the thirsty ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... himself not only in song but in orchestral music. His first effort was the beautiful B flat major Symphony, which, with the songs of that time seems to embody all the happiness he enjoyed in winning his Clara. She proved a most admirable helpmate, trying to shield him from interruptions and annoyance of every sort, so he should have his time undisturbed for his work. Thus many of his best compositions came into being in the early ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... taken to himself a helpmate, and as far as mere housekeeping was concerned, one would judge, on looking around the decent, tidy apartment in which he sat and of which he had the sole care, that he did not particularly need one. He washed, scoured, baked, brewed, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... breakfast. She knew Uncle Peter's ways and that it was useless to attempt to hurry him or force him to explain, until he was quite ready to do so. Aunt Hannah bided her time. Peter was a thoughtful man, and he was doubtless thinking. His wife was not only a clever helpmate but was noted for her consideration ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... due course, he was called as minister to the Brethren's congregation at Bedford. As soon, however, as he accepted the call, he was informed that he would have to marry; his wife was found for him by the Church; the marriage turned out a happy one; and thus, with her as an official helpmate, he commenced his ministerial career (1810). At Bedford he joined with other ministers—such as Legh Richmond and S. Hillyard—in founding Bible associations. At Fulneck—where he was stationed twelve years—he was so beloved by his congregation that one member actually said: ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... with her, to spend one night in the terai,[4] where she contracted jungle-fever, to which she succumbed ten days after her return to Calcutta. Her death was a real personal sorrow to all who had the privilege of knowing her; what must it have been to her husband, returning to England without the helpmate who had shared and lightened the burden of his anxieties, and gloried in the success which crowned his eventful career ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... profession of governess. Once thoroughly imbued with these 'social' ideas, and a return to the farm is almost impossible. The result is a continuous drain of women out of agriculture—of the very women best fitted in the beginning to be the helpmate of the farmer. In no other calling is the assistance of the wife so valuable; it is not too much to say that part at least of the decadence of agriculture is owing to the lack of women willing to devote themselves as their mothers did before them. It follows that by ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... his hatred of religious intolerance and tyranny—are blent together and concentrated in the glowing cantos of this wonderful romance. The hero, Laon, is himself idealized, the self which he imagined when he undertook his Irish campaign. The heroine, Cythna, is the helpmate he had always dreamed, the woman exquisitely feminine, yet capable of being fired with male enthusiasms, and of grappling the real problems of our nature with a man's firm grasp. In the first edition of the poem he made Laon and Cythna brother ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... Him into the starry heavens, Always with her face turned to him. Still she watched the lonely tepee, And her heart was touched with pity For the lonely man within it, So she made a lovely woman, Gave her constancy, and sent her On a moonbeam to his tepee, As his helpmate and companion. Man then multiplied, and flourished, Building villages and lording Over all ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... particular; but at intervals between the drowning showers, we were willing enough to come out and work, though the muddy soil and the swollen river made our labour still harder, and our profits less. The best service was done us by an honest Paisley weaver, who had left his helpmate and two children at San Francisco, in hopes of taking back, quite full, a strong chest, of some two hundredweight capacity, which he had brought with infinite pains to the diggings. He enlivened our wet leisure by repeating whole volumes of Burns and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... be call'd upon to pay. We ventured, however, over all these difficulties, and I took her to wife, September 1st, 1730. None of the inconveniences happened that we had apprehended, she proved a good and faithful helpmate, assisted me much by attending the shop; we throve together, and have ever mutually endeavored to make each other happy. Thus I corrected that great erratum as well as ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... his trout-rod and the devious banks of the Liffey, where, saturnine and alone, he filled his basket. It was his helpmate's rule, whenever she did not know to a certainty precisely what Irons was doing, to take it for granted that he was about some mischief. Her lodger, Captain Devereux, was her great resource on these occasions, and few things pleased ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... little fool—can't you even spell?) "Many a time, falling on his knees at my feet, he has rapturously exclaimed, his accents broken by manly emotion, 'Oh, that I were more worthy of such a pearl among women! With such a helpmate, I am indeed to be envied!'" That ought to do the trick. If I don't romp in after that!—(Observing that Mrs. M.-J.'s shoulders are convulsed.) What the dooce are you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... he married a farmer's girl from the plains, who had come up there to teach the Frost Creek school. She failed as a teacher. She was born for the kitchen and farm. Andrew Malden saw it. She would make him as good a helpmate as any, better than the Chinese women and half-breeds with whom some of his neighbors ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher

... chuckled to his eager helpmate. Then he tore open the other. The glad look vanished in an instant; the light of hope, relief, and satisfaction fled from his eyes and the color from his cheeks. "My God!" he muttered, as his hand ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... brighten the hearts of three old maids, and a young face will be a cheery sight in our quiet cottage home. She will have a thorough education, and we shall endeavour to bring her up so that she may be a fitting helpmate to her mother on her return home." Dr. Latimer showed the letter to his wife, who read it thankfully. "Your sister is a noble woman, John," she said brokenly; "let us accept her offer, and may God ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... to sew, to bake— She's quite a helpmate to her mother. On Saturday she loves to take The go-cart out ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... and took his young bride home.... They began their life together.... Dunyasha turned out to be a poor housewife, a poor helpmate to her husband. She took no interest in anything, was melancholy and depressed unless some officer sitting by the big samovar noticed her and paid her compliments; she was often absent, sometimes in the town shopping, sometimes ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... nomination will go to the Senate." Gen. Jackson, in his reply, remarks:—"I have no hesitation in saying you have made the best selection to fill the Department of State that could be made. Mr. Adams, in the hour of difficulty, will be an able helpmate, and I am convinced his appointment will afford general satisfaction." This prediction was well founded. The consummate ability exhibited by Mr. Adams in foreign negotiations had elevated him to a high position in the estimation of his countrymen. His selection for the State Department was ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... an incisive and liberal contribution to Bible criticism (Studie zur Bibelkritik, 1874), published in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft in Leipsic. From that time on, when the death of his beloved wife, Adelheid Zunz, a most faithful helpmate, friend, counsellor, and support, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... The young person on whom his affections were fixed, though in the condition of a domestic servant, had given promise, by her serious and modest deportment, and by her virtuous dispositions, that she was worthy to become the helpmate of a man entering upon a plan of life such as he had marked out for himself. By her frugality she had stored up a small sum of money, with which they began house-keeping. In 1735 or 1736, he entered upon his curacy; and, nineteen years afterwards, his situation is thus described, in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... autocracy would have been won by now. As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends. Liberty in the wild and freakish hands of fanatics has once more, as frequently in the past, proved the effective helpmate of autocracy and ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... in advance, and, moreover, never spent even the latter, or had his accounts examined, it is easy to conceive what a profitable situation he had created for himself. Mrs Skrimmage, also, was a useful helpmate: she lived on board, at little expense, and, by her attention to the dear little middies and their wearing apparel, who were sent on board to join some ship for the first time, added ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of Prince Kelyddon desired a wife as a helpmate, and the wife that he chose was Goleuddydd, the daughter of Prince Anlawdd. And after their union, the people put up prayers that they might have an heir. And they had a son through the prayers of the people. From the time of her pregnancy Goleuddydd ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... Margaret Balfour, had no less powerful an individuality; in beauty of person, in grace of manner, in the brilliance of a quick and flashing feminine intelligence—that was deep as well as bright—she was a fitting helpmate for her husband, and the very mother to sympathise with and encourage a son whose genius showed itself in quaint sayings, in dainty ways, and in chivalrous thoughts almost from ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... she stood arrayed Before the Hearth-Fire of her home, and prayed: "Mother, since I must vanish from the day, This last, last time I kneel to thee and pray; Be mother to my two children! Find some dear Helpmate for him, some gentle lord for her. And let not them, like me, before their hour Die; let them live in happiness, in our Old home, till life be full and age content." To every household altar then she went And made for each ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... sway, and they look out for a fitting wife, before they begin to think of a parsonage. Godfrey was like all the rest of his kind, and as no other girls except Mina and Lina had come in his way, and as Lina attended to his admonitions far more docilely than her sister, he determined to make her his helpmate. He was ignorant as to how such matters ought to be conducted, and felt a little shy and awkward. He had got no further in his wooing than pressing his lady-love's foot under the table, and whenever he had done so he was always ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... though he could not swallow attacked him. Had he been right to yield to his overmastering hunger of the night before, and break down the resistance which he had suffered now too long from this woman who was his lawful and solemnly constituted helpmate? ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... be true as long as this world endures, and which no amount of progress can alter. One of these is the truth that the primary duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the breadwinner for his wife and children, and that the primary duty of the woman is to be the helpmate, the housewife, and mother. The woman should have ample educational advantages; but save in exceptional cases the man must be, and she need not be, and generally ought not to be, trained for a lifelong career as the family breadwinner; and, therefore, after a certain point, the training of ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... "'twas an idle fancy, and I'll not yield to it. I shall become a burden, rather than a helpmate, if you cannot stir from home without me. Nay," adds she, when he would override this objection, "you must not tempt me to be weak, but rather aid me to do that ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... looking at her now, he was gazing ahead with his blue eyes filled with light, and she saw that there was something far beyond the physical magnetism which drew her to him, and a pride and joy filled her. She would indeed be his helpmate in all his undertakings and striving for noble ends. They talked for some time of these things and their plans to aid in their fulfilment, and then they gradually spoke of Verisschenzko and Amaryllis asked what was the latest news—he was in Russia, ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... farmer, a trader, a contractor for buildings and roads, as well as a tanner. When he reached the age of sixty, having secured a comfortable competence, he retired from active business. In his declining years he removed to Covington, Ky., near Cincinnati. Mrs. Grant was a true helpmate, a woman of refinement of nature, of controlling religious faith, being from her youth an active member of the Methodist Church, of strong wifely and maternal instincts. Her life was centred in her home and family. Both these parents lived to rejoice ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... no time was the American wife content to be merely ornamental. Throughout the political career of her husband she was his helpmate, and as an officer of the Primrose League, as an editor of the Anglo-Saxon Review, as, for many hot, weary months in Durban Harbor, the head of the hospital ship Maine, she has shown an acute mind ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... found with it, and something on the same order, though less perfect in detail, is highly prized and commended in America. But it does not embrace every avenue of delight. The Frenchman who seems never to go home, who seldom has a large family, whose wife is often his business partner and helpmate, and whose servants are friendly allies rather than automatic menials, enjoys life also, and with some degree of intelligence. He may be pardoned for resenting the attitude of English exiles, who, driven from their own country by the harshness of the climate, or the cruel ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... lot is taken from the life of Cezanne, for Manet—the only son of a judge—was almost wealthy. Moreover, Manet married very happily, and in no wise led the pitiful existence which in the novel is ascribed to Claude Lantier and his helpmate, Christine. The original of the latter was a poor woman who for many years shared the life of the engraver to whom I have alluded; and, in that connection, it as well to mention that what may be called the Bennecourt episode of the novel ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... through life, sage and sturdy, the Scyldings glad. Then, one after one, there woke to him, to the chieftain of clansmen, children four: Heorogar, then Hrothgar, then Halga brave; and I heard that — was — 's queen, the Heathoscylfing's helpmate dear. To Hrothgar was given such glory of war, such honor of combat, that all his kin obeyed him gladly till great grew his band of youthful comrades. It came in his mind to bid his henchmen a ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... if you would only listen to me. To-night I have heard such glorious thoughts that my whole being longed to share them with you. Thoughts that would make any man or woman live a nobler and better life. O, Mabel, be my helpmate. Do not turn from one who ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... for such continued ill-luck in his matrimonial projects. He had already been very unfortunate in his plans for obtaining a perfect wife,—having vainly provided for the education of two foundlings between whom he promised himself to select a paragon of a helpmate. To drop burning sealing-wax upon their necks, and to discharge a pistol close to their ears, were among his philosophical rules for training them to habits of submission and self-control; and the upshot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... when "woman smiled" upon it, in the form of a fair daughter of a neighboring magnate in the adjacent province, whose noble retirement, sharing the same patriotic principles with those of Constantine, yielded to the young philosopher a lovely helpmate for him. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... kindest heart; easily moved by any tale of oppression or injustice, and of wide-armed (albeit sometimes in judicious) generosity; more apt, in the affairs of everyday life, to be governed by his heart than by his head, and as simple as a child in many matters. His wife was an ideal helpmate to him, and their ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... dwell, and Spital is their name, A sober wight, of reputation high For tints that emulate the Tyrian dye, Wishing to take his afternoon's repose, In easy chair had just began to doze, When, in a voice that sleep's soft slumbers broke, His oily helpmate thus her wishes spoke: "Why, spouse, for shame! my stars, what's this about? You's ever sleeping; come, we'll all go out; At that there garden, pr'ythee, do not stare! We'll take a mouthful of the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... principal change-house in the borough. Her former husband having been a strict presbyterian, of such note that he usually went among his sect by the name of Gaius the publican, many of the more rigid were scandalized by the profession of the successor whom his relict had chosen for a second helpmate. As the browst (or brewing) of the Howff retained, nevertheless, its unrivalled reputation, most of the old customers continued to give it a preference. The character of the new landlord, indeed, was of that accommodating kind, which enabled him, by close attention to the helm, to keep his ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... needs refreshing," she interrupted. "If you will consult Robert Gwyn's will you will discover that he leaves half of his estate, et cetera, to 'my beloved and faithful companion and helpmate, Rachel, who, with me, has assumed the name of Gwyn for the rest of her life in view of certain circumstances which render the change in the spelling of my name advisable, notwithstanding the fact that in signing this, my last will and testament, I recognize ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... gentleman, and after that all hopes of money from that source were over. It might still be possible for him to talk over Miss Baker, but such triumph would be but barren. Miss Baker with a transferred allegiance—transferred from the old gentleman to him—would be but a very indifferent helpmate. He learnt, however, from Littlebath that she was still away, and would probably not return. Then he went back in fancied security, and found himself the centre of all those amatory ovations which Miss Todd and Miss ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... voted. The contest was between the WET and DRY mayors. Where women have the ballot, even in municipal affairs, no state has resubmitted or brought back the saloon. God said: "It is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helpmate, a partner, a companion, a guardian." When man elevates a woman he elevates himself. A degraded woman means many degraded men. Free men must be the sons of free women. This land cannot be the land of the free or home of the brave, until woman gets her freedom and men are brave and just to ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... boudoir,—I could fancy the very spot in which my father had heard the sentence that had changed the current of his life. And when I returned home, I looked with new tenderness on my father's placid brow, and blessed anew that tender helpmate who in her patient love had chased from it ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... shown him their room. Each word that he had spoken to them echoed loudly in his ear. He had told Fortune that God had sent him a companion, because He did not wish man to live alone; and he had told Rosalie that she must cleave to her husband, never leaving him, but always acting as his obedient helpmate. But he had said these things also for Albine and himself. Was she not his companion, his obedient helpmate, whom God had sent to him that his manhood might not wither up in solitude? Besides, they had been joined the one to the other. He felt surprised ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... Violet, was not, he told himself, exactly what he wanted. He had tried a period of double rule in which his sister was the power behind the throne, and it was infinitely worse than the present regime. No; if he took another helpmate, she must be a person of strong will, some one who could hold her own against all comers, some one who should have an inexhaustible fund of sympathy for his work, some one whose appreciation of the exalted position ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... it went on throughout the afternoon—in and out—up and down—never resting—never still—her thoughts always with the discontented invalid, who fell asleep towards evening, after a satisfactory meal, cooked and served by his patient helpmate, and eaten in a desultory manner, as if its speedier consumption would imply too much appreciation ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... 23rd, 1846, after having spoken at Keelby in Lincolnshire, he returned with his wife, who was in every respect a devoted helpmate for such a work, to the home of the gentleman and lady with whom they were stopping. While chatting on various subjects, Mrs Evans turned to her husband, who was comfortably seated in a large arm-chair, and said, "My dear, I have had such a strange presentiment—that we shall never see Norway ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... virtuous love he blessed his God; feeling thus supported he could guide and control himself according to the dictates of piety. He knew well the character of Mary; he felt assured that, if in after years he were permitted to make her his own, she would indeed become his helpmate in all things, more particularly in those which related to his God and to his holy duties among men. He thought on the sympathy that existed between them—he remembered the lighting up of that soft, dark eye, the flushing cheek, the ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... supposed that every young Dyak woman will eventually suit herself with a husband, and it is considered no disgrace to be on terms of intimacy with the youth of her fancy till she has the opportunity of selecting a suitable helpmate; and as the unmarried ladies attach much importance to bravery, they are always desirous of securing the affections of a renowned warrior. Lax, however, as this code may appear before marriage, it would seem to be sufficiently ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... rivalled in harshness the crashing music of her own bolts and bars, soon dispersed in every direction the little varlets who had thronged around her threshold, and she next addressed her amiable helpmate:— ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... will accept you," she said, with a sharp twinge. "You need have no apprehensions on that score. And, as you no longer consider beauty indispensable, I daresay she will be as satisfactory a helpmate as ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... once, its radiance was no longer unquenchable: "Destiny has turned against me," he said, "and in her I have lost my most valuable helpmate." ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... match was on his account, as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connexion for him. I felt that, as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that as to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse. But I could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to trust to there being no harm in her, to her having that sort of disposition, which, in good hands, like his, might be easily led aright and turn out very well. The advantage ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... was mine and I was his, and I belonged to him for ever. He was going out on a great errand in the service of humanity. Couldn't I go to be his partner and helpmate? And if there had been sin, if the law of God had been broken, wouldn't that, too, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... basked in the favour of royalty, and found the high position that had so long been denied him. It is usually claimed by Wagner's most rabid partisans that she was unable to hold her place in the new surroundings, and that his genius needed a helpmate more in sympathy with his high ideals. Admitting the truth of these assertions, the fair-minded critic must accept them as an explanation, at least, of his conjugal ingratitude, but Minna's faithful ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... wife, n. spouse, consort, helpmate, partner. Associated Words: uxoricide, uxorious, uxoriousness, coverture, dowry, polygamy, polygamist, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... then a distant sail appearing, her cradle hymn the ceaseless sound of the everlasting deep, there lived a little child whose name was Grace Darling. Her father was the keeper of the light-house; and here Grace lived and grew up to the age of twenty-two, her mother's constant helpmate in all domestic duties. She had a fair and healthy countenance, which wore a kind and cheerful smile, proceeding from a heart at peace with others, and happy in the consciousness of endeavoring to do ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... already designated him, "I'd like to see you settle down before you're twenty-one. But you want to make a good choice. There's Abby Wilson, now. She's got the muscle of a man, and ain't afraid of anything. And her father has a fine property—a growin' property. Abby'll make a man a good, vigorous helpmate, and she'll bring him money in time. You'd better shine ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... The general and colonel dressed richly; lived at the "Spottswood;" scowled on the common people; and talked magnificently. It was only when some young lady linked her destiny to his, that she found herself united to quite a surprising helpmate—discovered that the general or the colonel had issued from the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... 'Woman's sphere is the hearth and the home: to impair her delicacy is to take the bloom from the peach: she could not qualify for medicine without mastering anatomy and surgery—branches that must unsex her. Providence, intending her to be man's helpmate, not his rival, had given her a body unfit for war or hard labor, and a brain four ounces lighter than a man's, and unable to cope with long study and practical science. In short, she was too good, and too stupid, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... diverting myself with my hawks, hunting with my cheetahs, or greyhounds, to occupy my time, heaping up the jewels in my bank at Cairo, keeping the best of everything for my wife, the woman predicted in my horoscope, for there can be no real happiness without a perfect helpmate, and real happiness ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... paralysis, which crippled her for the rest of her life. No words can adequately express all that she had been to the reformer in his struggle with slavery. She was a providential woman raised up to be the wife and helpmate of her husband, the strenuous man of God. "As a wife for a period of more than twenty-six years," he wrote her on the completion of her fiftieth year, "you have left nothing undone to smooth the rugged pathway ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... private apartment and accommodation for the night. The landlady, grown considerably plumper than when we first made her acquaintance, just lifted up her eyes to the stranger's face, and summoning a short stout man (formerly the waiter, now the second helpmate of the comely hostess), desired him, in a tone which partook somewhat more of the authority indicative of their former relative situations than of the obedience which should have characterized their present, "to show the gentleman ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... "Remember that, after all, women are only dabblers in diplomacy. Their very physique prevents them from playing the final game. You have brains, of course, but there are other things—experience, courage, resource. You would be a wonderful helpmate, Miss Van Teyl, even if your individual and unaided efforts have not ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... bridesmaid, bridesman[obs3], best man; bride, bridegroom. married man, married woman, married couple; neogamist[obs3], Benedict, partner, spouse, mate, yokemate[obs3]; husband, man, consort, baron; old man, good man; wife of one's bosom; helpmate, rib, better half, gray mare, old woman, old lady, good wife, goodwife. feme[Fr], feme coverte[Fr]; squaw, lady; matron, matronage, matronhood[obs3]; man and wife; wedded pair, Darby and Joan; spiritual wife. monogamy, bigamy, digamy[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... fact was, that the unfortunate locksmith, blessing his stars to find his helpmate in such good humour, had been sitting with a beaming face, hearing this discourse with a joy past all expression. Wherefore this sudden attack quite took him ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... among the Semites and other nomadic peoples woman was regarded as the helpmate rather than the companion and equal of man. The birth of a son was hailed with joy; it was "miserable to have a daughter", as a Hindu sage reflected; in various countries it was the custom to expose female children after birth and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... morning they arose early and ate a morsel; and Clement gave freely to the Warden and his helpmate on behalf of the fellowship; and then they saddled their nags, and did on the loads and departed; and the way was evil otherwise, but it was down hill, and all ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... Job himself thought very differently, and amidst all the cares and vicissitudes that attended several years of his wedded life, he never passed a day without breathing a prayer of thankfulness to Heaven for having blessed him with so excellent a helpmate. But though rich in domestic comforts, all the rest of Job's affairs, for a long time, went on unprosperously. He certainly acquired sufficient practice in the course of a few years to occupy a great portion of his time, by night as well as by day, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... high-souled one of expansive eyes, Krishna, having lightened the burthen of the Earth and cast off his (human) body, has attained to his own high seat. By thee also, O foremost of men, with Bhima for thy helpmate and the twins, O mighty-armed hero, has the great work of the gods been accomplished. O foremost one of Kurus race, I regard thee and thy brothers as crowned with success, for ye have accomplished the great purpose of your lives. The time has come for your departure from the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... sea." And in The Heart of Mid-Lothian we have Effie Deans (that sweet, faded flower) and Jeanie, her more than sister, and old David Deans, the patriarch of St. Leonard's Crags, and Butler, and Dumbiedikes, eloquent in his silence, and Mr. Bartoline Saddle-tree and his prudent helpmate, and Porteous swinging in the wind, and Madge Wildfire, full of finery and madness, and her ghastly mother.—Again, there is Meg Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched on her bier with "her head to the east," and Dirk Hatterick (equal to Shakespear's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, the soul ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... have said, went the length of choosing a helpmate for themselves. One day a young man's friends would see him mending the washing tub of a maiden's mother. They kept the joke until Saturday night, and then he learned from them what he had been after. It dazed him for a time, but in a year ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... precedence of the man, the Semitic translation invariably reverses the order: the one has "female and male," the other "male and female." Elsewhere in the Semitic world, where the conceptions of Babylonian culture had not penetrated, the woman was subordinate to the man, his helpmate and not his equal. ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... and bold, And near upon thirty years old, He needs a wooing would go, To get him a helpmate, you know. So, gaining young Dolly's consent, Next to be married they went; And to make himself noble appear, He mounted the old padded mare; He chose her because she was blood, And the prime of his old daddy's stud. She was wind-galled, spavined, and blind, And had lost a near leg behind; ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... melancholy of early disappointment, whereas she now beheld a fresh, rosy-cheeked countenance, golden locks, and blue eyes in which no tears had been able to dim the dancing light of a lively and cheerful temperament. Other women there were also in the family,—Rebecca, Berthold's wife, and Susanna, the helpmate of Barnabas, with a little circle of ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... prevented their being married till October, 1776. Eva Koenig was every way worthy of him. Clever, womanly, discreet, with just enough coyness of the will to be charming when it is joined with sweetness and good sense, she was the true helpmate of such a man,—the serious companion of his mind and the playfellow of his affections. There is something infinitely refreshing to me in the love-letters of these two persons. Without wanting sentiment, there is such a bracing ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... friendships, those in which there s no admixture of the passion of love, except in the married state. A man's best female friend is a wife of good sense and good heart, whom he loves, and who loves him. If he have that, he need not seek elsewhere. But supposing the man to be without such a helpmate, female friendship he must have, or his intellect will be without a garden, and there will be many an unheeded gap even ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... with rare tact and tenderness, and spoke much of his loneliness and his need of a helpmate. Eddie resolved to ask her to marry him as soon as he could compose ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... "the land was then the lord's, and that which seemed, was. The child, young lady, was not then mortgaged in the cradle, and, mark ye, the bride, when she kneeled at the altar, gave not herself up, body and soul, to be the bondswoman of the Jew, but to be the helpmate of the spouse." "The Jew!" I exclaimed in surprise, for then I understood not the allusion. "Ay, young lady! the Jew," was the rejoinder. "'Tis plain ye know not who rules. 'Tis all hollow yonder! ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... Trianon, nor even at the Little Trianon, and maybe I wouldn't either. But since no such idea will enter His Majesty's mind, and I have no desire to leave the great forests, the Dove is a perfect wife for me. She is the true wilderness helpmate, accomplished in all the arts of the life I live and love, and with the eye and soul of a warrior. I repeat, young Monsieur Lennox, where could I find a ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... himself confronted with that sole absorbing interest—his career. Marriage, in his own case, seemed an imperative duty. He was an eldest son, the heir to an earldom and a vast estate; he wished to lead a distinguished, comfortable, and edifying existence. His wife would be a helpmate, not a snare; the mother of his children, not the light of his eyes. But what a difference in Robert's case—with his capacity for worship, for really intense and absorbing passion. All this was especially transparent to Reckage, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... every penny in the house. He religiously avoided debt, paying ready money for all he had, but when due claims were met he loved to pillage the household resources for the benefit of his sick poor. Whether he had any dinner mattered little, but delight seized hold upon him when his helpmate was discovered in the preparation of delicacies for his ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... and small in appearance, which seemed to give greater effect to her wonderful precocity of intellect. She must have been her mother's companion and helpmate in many a household and nursery experience, for Mr. Bronte was, of course, much engaged in his study; and besides, he was not naturally fond of children, and felt their frequent appearance on the scene as a drag both on his wife's strength, and as an interruption to the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... five children, the youngest but a few months old. With ample means, he could obtain plenty of household help, but money could not buy a mother for his children. A number of years went by, bringing to Henrik new and varied experiences. Then on one of his visits to the West he found another helpmate for himself and children—a kind-hearted, sweet-souled young woman, born of Danish parents, and reared among the Saints in the valleys of the mountains. Then the westward call became so strong that Henrik disposed of most of his interests in Norway and moved ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... named Epimetheus who never had either father or mother; and that he might not be lonely, another child, fatherless and motherless like himself, was sent from a far country to live with him and be his playfellow and helpmate. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... Emile may at length proceed to aesthetic culture, and find his chief delight in those writers whose genius has the closest kinship to nature. Finally, in Sophie, formed to be the amiable companion and helpmate of man, Emile should find a resting-place for his heart. Alas, if she ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... got this idea into her mind, we must cooperate with her. For if we can afford each other a helping hand, I too won't be single-handed and alone. And as far as every right principle, eternal principle, and honesty of purpose go, we shall with such a person as a helpmate, be able to save ourselves considerable anxiety, and Madame Wang's interests will, on the other hand, derive every advantage. But, as far as unfairness and bad faith go, I've run the show with too malicious a hand, and I must turn tail and draw back from my old ways. When I review what I've done, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... Dumfriesshire, his wife. In her bright existence she had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft invincibility, a clearness of discernment, and a noble loyalty of heart which are rare. For forty years she was the true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act and word unweariedly forwarded him as none else could in all of worthy that he did or attempted. She died at London, 21st April, 1866, suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... culture, and was the mother of my first two children, Mrs. Ridgely and Mrs. Hardie, who lived to womanhood, but both of whom have passed away. My second wife, Julia Fisher, was the sister of my first wife. No better or truer woman ever lived. She was a devoted helpmate to me during all the years that I have occupied high public office and needed the support and help of a woman. She did her full part and filled her place on every occasion with dignity and propriety. It seems that her death is the last great sorrow ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... counsel; it sounded well—nay, exceedingly discreet. He always thought her a gem of a woman, but he never imagined her half so able. What a pity a woman could not be trusted with a secret! Were it not for that, she would be a helpmate ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... know. We should hear of fewer divorces and a less number of failures of men in business, had their wives been trained before marriage to be good, thrifty, economical housekeepers and, still more important, good homemakers. To be a helpmate in every sense of the word is every woman's duty, I think, when her husband works early and late to procure the means to provide for her comforts and luxuries and a competency for old age. Write Mary to come at once, and under your teaching she may, in time, become as capable a housekeeper ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... rather well on the bread that Mary had given him, and there was this to say for Mills, he was very fond of his wife. She was not the love of his life, but she had been a helpmate for many years. He felt that he owed many things to her affection and strength. Like Dulcie, he shrank ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... as a characteristic of Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and slipping from the theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the thoughts deepest in him. And the thoughts!—were they not of generous origin? Where so true a helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind appealed? It could not be so with the Frenchwoman. Cecilia divined a generous nature by generosity, and set herself to believe that in honour he had not yet dared to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Twenty miles northward from Berlin, was this Louisa's place: she had trimmed it up into a little jewel of the Dutch type—pot-herb gardens, training-schools for girls, and the like—a favorite abode of hers when she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was busy and earnest; she was helpmate, not in name only, to an ever-busy man. They were married young, a marriage of love withal. Young Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship, wedding in Holland; the honest trustful walk and conversation of the two Sovereign Spouses, their journeyings together, their mutual hopes, fears, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... 23, 1908, in the beginning of his forty-seventh year, he died at the Westminster Hotel, New York, in the presence of the heroic woman who for almost a quarter of a century had been his devoted companion, counsellor, helpmate, and friend. After such simple services as would have pleased him, held at St. George's Episcopal Church, on January 25, his body was taken to Peterboro; and on the following day, a Sunday, he was buried in the sight ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... both boys, six or eight years of age, naked and not ashamed. Captain Guzman, who spoke Spanish as well as the American, explained that they desired food and lodging for the night. The husband told them they were welcome, while the slatternly helpmate said nothing, but did her part with commendable diligence. No fire was burning, nor was one started, though the cinders on the outside showed that food was sometimes cooked after the manner of civilized peoples. No table, chairs or furniture were seen, while the floor was of smooth, hard earth. ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... life seems to have been very happy. Philippa appears to have been to him a bold and faithful helpmate in his journey through this world; and we believe that, could we trace closely her household influence, we should find that she first began to work the golden thread of religion into his life; for, notwithstanding that great coarseness which unluckily makes the "Canterbury Tales" ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... lead easy lives. Each had his hut and his Maori wife, to whom he was sometimes legally married. Many had gardens, and families of half-caste children, whose strength and beauty were noted by all who saw them. The whaler's helpmate had to keep herself and children clean, and the home tidy. Cleanliness and neatness were insisted on by her master, partly through the seaman's instinct for tidiness and partly out of a pride and desire to show a contrast to the reeking ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... of a relative. Oh, how sad is that spectacle for me! Or perhaps the time is come for my own death, for I shall never be able to abandon cruelly one of my own as long as I myself am alive. Thou art my helpmate in all good deeds, self-denying and always affectionate unto me as a mother. The gods have given thee to me as a true friend and thou art ever my prime stay. Thou hast, by my parents, been made the participator ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... could not be changed. You have everything to be thankful for and little to regret. You have a faithful helpmate in your wife. Your father is a great consolation to you. He tells me of the lovely traits of your character. If I had my children around me as he has, if I could live in their love as he does, I would sacrifice ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... had instructed her, as well as they were able, in the ways of truth and saving knowledge.'[45] The idea of his seeking a rich wife is sufficiently droll; he must have been naturally a persuasive lover, to have gained so good a helpmate. They were not troubled with sending cards, cake, or gloves, nor with the ceremony of receiving the visits of their friends in state; for he says, that 'This woman and I came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household stuff ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... spoon and I saw her wipe it with her finger. So that, thought I, is their cleanliness! I lived with them for a year and went away. Perhaps I ought to have married a town girl"—he went on after a silence. "They say a wife is a helpmate to her husband. What do I want with a helpmate? I can look after myself. But you talk to me sensibly and soberly, without giggling all the while. He—he—he! What is life ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... the owner in a dull voice, his eyes almost as full of distress as those of his injured helpmate. 'An' Jimmy were the best donkey as ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... folded her kerchief round your eyes, not mine," retorted the old dame; and their war of words concerning the merits and demerits of their unconscious lodger continued, till old Pedro grumbled himself off, and his more light-hearted helpmate busied herself in preparing a tempting meal for her guest, which, to her great disappointment, shared the fate of many others, and left his ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... was the ministering spirit of the Lord, sent into the world to minister unto them who have the heritage of salvation; that he was called Victor, and especially deputed to the care of him, and he promised to be his helpmate and his assistant in doing all things. And although it is not needful that heavenly spirits should be called by human names, yet the angel, being beautifully clothed with an human form composed of the air, called himself Victor, for that he had received from Christ, the most victorious King, the ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... become acceptable to them only for their Folly. Wives are always allowed their humor, yet it is only in exchange for titillation and pleasure, which indeed are but other names for Folly; as none can deny, who consider how a man must dandle, and kittle, and play a hundred little tricks for his helpmate. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... nightshirt and dries it out well beyond its time into a nice bunch of wrinkles) "What is woman? Woman was created by God because Dear Friends God saw how lonely man was and how lonesome and so out of man's ribs God created woman to be man's company and helpmate...." ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... had domestic trouble which ended in the courts. My wife finally returned to Phoenix and, being free again, married a man named Murphy. After this experience I determined to take no further chances with matrimony. However, I needed a helpmate, so I solved the difficulty by marrying Paola Ortega by contract for five years. Contract marriages were universally recognized and indulged in in the West of the early days. My relations with Paola were eminently satisfactory until the expiration of the contract, ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... affectionately. He had married her for love when he was young, poor, and unknown, and together they had gone through years of hardship. She was not quite on his intellectual level and the difference did not diminish with advancing years, but Clerambault loved and respected his helpmate, and she strove, without much success, to keep step with her great man of whom she was so proud. He was extraordinarily indulgent to her. His was not a critical nature—which was a great help to him in life in spite of innumerable errors of judgment; but as these were always to the advantage ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... Sylvia returned contentedly to the helpmate whom she had accepted under compulsion, and who had made her a fair husband, as husbands go. It is duly recorded, indeed, on their shared tomb, that their forty years of married life were of continuous felicity, and set a pattern to all Norfolk. The more prosaic verbal tradition is that Lady Vernon ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... a great consumer, and be sartin; two such as us make dreadful inroads in the stock, sargeant. But ye're a sober, discrate man, Mister Hollister, and would be a helpmate indeed." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... voice of the bird, and thus addressed them: "Do thou, son of Aeson, pass on to the temple, where thou wilt find the maiden; and very kind will her greeting be to thee through the prompting of Cypris, who will be thy helpmate in the contest, even as Phineus, Agenor's son, foretold. But we two, Argus and I, will await thy return, apart in this very spot do thou all alone be a suppliant and win her over with ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... about those sentimental, romantic ideas which we habitually associate with the preliminary steps to matrimony. Even those authors who endeavour to idealise peasant life have rarely ventured to make their story turn on a sentimental love affair. Certainly in real life the wife is taken as a helpmate, or in plain language a worker, rather than as a companion, and the mother-in-law leaves her very little time to ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... make the gravest smile than just John Bunyan's sketch of By-ends' great-grandfather, the founder of the egoistical family of Fairspeech, who was, to begin with, but a waterman who always looked one way and rowed another? By-ends' wife also is a true helpmate to her husband. She was my Lady Feigning's favourite daughter, under whose nurture and example the young lady had early come to a quite extraordinary pitch of good breeding; and now that she was a married woman, she and her husband ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... shot lands in the middle of the lake, she should remark, "Perhaps you didn't hit it hard enough, dear." And when, on the eighteenth, his approach goes through the second-story window of the club-house, she should say, "Dear, I wonder if you didn't hit that too hard?" Such a wife is a true helpmate, and not merely a pretty ornament on which a silly husband can hang expensive clothes, and if he is the right sort of man, he will appreciate this, and refrain from striking her with a ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... day when the long-suffering wife revolted. Turner had come home extra drunk and in his most maudlin humor. Probably he attempted some drunken prank upon his over-taxed helpmate. Old Ike, the hired man, said that he thought Turner had rigged up some scare for her in the barn and that he had never heard anything so much like straight talking from his mistress, either before or since, and he was ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... is the most foolish of all errors respecting her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... his nature. Mr Milksan, being of a timorous disposition, truckled to the insolence of a termagant. Mr Sowerby, who was of a temper neither to be moved by fits, nor driven by menaces, had the fortune to be fitted with a helpmate, who assailed him with the weapons of irony and satire; sometimes sneering in the way of compliment; sometimes throwing out sarcastic comparisons, implying reproaches upon his want of taste, spirit, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... much delighted in she could see worthily carried out. She would not be the hindrance and stumbling-block to any good life, and least of all to his. But, until he met with a woman to be his wife and helpmate, she rejoiced to feel that she was first in his heart. When that event took place, as it ought to do before long, she would of course retire to a second and inferior position; but it was something to rest in with pleasure, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... time. Fortune, moreover, was against the Congregation from the first. A new instalment of one thousand pounds, secretly sent by Elizabeth, was cleverly seized by James, Earl of Bothwell, afterward the notorious helpmate of Mary Stuart. Their arms, also, met with no success. While a detachment of their troops was in pursuit of Bothwell, the enemy found their opportunity and made their way even into the streets ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... another thing she did not like Mrs. Hegner, the pretty English girl Manfred Hegner had married five years before; she thought her a very frivolous, silly little woman, not at all what the wife of a big commercial man should be. Anna's Louisa would have been a perfect helpmate for Manfred Hegner, and there had been a time, a certain three months, when Anna had thought the already prosperous widower was considering Louisa. His marriage to pretty Polly ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... his own gentleness of disposition and the many graces of his charming helpmate that secured so large a degree of peace and happiness. Jackson's religion played even a greater part. It was not of the kind which is more concerned with the terrors of hell than the glories of paradise. The world to him was no place of woe and lamentation, its beauties vanity, and its affections ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... latter history of David, and at what it might have been. One can conceive so noble a personage under such woman's influence as, thank God, is common now, going down into an honoured old age, and living together with a helpmate worthy of him in godly love and honesty to his life's end; seeing his children Christianly and virtuously brought up, to the praise ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... I stood, cast down t' inevitable endless woe. That shaft that seemed his life to burn like serpent venom, thus drawn out, I, taking up his fallen urn, t' his father's dwelling took my route. There miserable, blind, and old, of their sole helpmate thus forlorn, His parents did these eyes behold, like two sad birds with pinions shorn. Of him in fond discourse they sate, lone, thinking only of their son, For his return so long, so late, impatient, oh by me undone. My footsteps' sound he seemed to know, and thus the aged hermit ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... among women, Catherine of Russia and perhaps Elizabeth of England. She was therefore both physically and mentally the very antithesis of the gay, hilarious, open-minded and open-hearted Stevenson, and for that very reason perhaps the woman in all the world best fitted to be his life comrade and helpmate. At any rate we may well ask ourselves if anywhere else he would have found the kind of understanding and devotion which she gave him from the day of their first meeting at Grez until the day of his death in far-away Samoa; if anywhere else there was a woman ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... spirit of a wife might enable her to bear up cheerfully against misfortune, and by her endearments soothe the broken spirit of her husband; yet the lover who would wilfully, at the outset of wedded life, expose his devoted helpmate to the ordeal of poverty, would be deservedly scouted as selfish and unworthy. These, then, are among the circumstances which warrant a lengthened engagement, and it should be the endeavour of the lady's friends to approve such cautious delay, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... males "Loubras," and the males are designated "Coolies." There is not promiscuous cohabitation. When a Coolie reaches the age of twenty-one, he is allowed to choose his own "Loubra." Every male who then takes unto himself a helpmate, loses a front tooth, which is knocked out of him. The natives generally tattoo their arms and breasts, but not their faces; many carry a long white wooden pin, or a feather, pierced through the thin part of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... His presentation of myself was simply masterful; it would have moved one of his own trolley cars; I didn't wonder a bit that he objected to me as a son-in-law. In fact, I told him that had I known all these things I should have sought a fitting helpmate from the State Reformatory, but that I could not withdraw—my word ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... again to perfect health, Grew far more conscious of the store of wealth By him possessed in having such a wife To act as helpmate through the storms of life. And not long after, when their lovely boy Was very sick, he did his skill employ To soothe her sorrows by an artless lay Exhorting her to make God's love her stay; And holding up to view Heaven's perfect bliss, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... "Sandford and Merton," and creator of the immortal Mr. Barlow, Robert Maitland had conceived the hope that he might have a girl educated up to his own intellectual standard, and made, or "ready-made," a helpmate meet for him. He was, in a more or less formal way, the guardian of Margaret Shields, and the ward might be expected (by anyone who did not know human nature any better) to blossom ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... to go forth without coming directly under his recognition. The stern realities of military life through which he had passed, had in nowise interfered with those social qualities which so endeared our hero to the hearts of all. In Lady Douglas, Sir Howard found a faithful helpmate, a loving wife and deeply affectionate and pious mother. Lady Douglas never wearied in watching and caring for the welfare of her children. No mother could be more amply rewarded in seeing her family grow up loved and honoured; her sons true types of gentlemanly ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... wife, to whose nimbler wits he might have submitted the case, it is probable that he would not have sat for so long a time in his great chair brooding over the contents of the violet-tinted envelope from Boston. But unfortunately the good minister had been forced to lay his helpmate beneath the rough sods of the village churchyard some three years previous. Since this sad event, it is scarcely necessary to state, he had found it essential to his peace of mind to employ great discretion in his dealings with the female ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley

... the biographer, “I cannot allow myself full utterance about her whom I loved as perfect mother and ‘very woman of very woman’—‘such a wife’ and true helpmate she proved herself. It was she who became my father’s adviser in literary matters; ‘I am proud of her intellect,’ he wrote. With her he always discussed what he was working at; she transcribed his poems: to her and to no one else he referred for a final criticism before publishing. She, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... of my own rank in life," interrupted Lord Lydstone, sternly, "who will make me an honest, faithful helpmate, as I have every ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... in these parts?"—"Not yet is he chosen," answered the girl. "Come! The nets are drawn, the fishing ended for the day. I will ascend that rock; read the sutra of the Lady Kwannon. He who can first memorize it shall be my husband." Ready was the assent to such an attractive proposal—a beautiful helpmate in prospect, one endowed with surprising strength for her frail form, and who seemed to bring luck to the efforts of the village in the struggle for a livelihood. Even the Nipponese prejudice against strangers paled before such ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... discouraged, my son,' answered the sage; 'I will bequeath the task of perfecting you in your studies to my daughter, who will come hither on purpose. But remember, if you value the permanence of your family, look not upon her as aught else than a helpmate in your studies; for if you forget the instructress in the beauty of the maiden, you will be buried with your sword and your shield, as the last male of your house; and farther evil, believe me, will arise; for such alliances never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various

... Drona, king Duryodhana, filled with rage set his heart on battle. And thy son, Duryodhana, then said unto Karna, "Behold, the diadem-decked son of Pandu, with Krishna alone for helpmate, penetrated into the array formed by the preceptor, an array that the gods themselves could not pierce, and in the very sight of the illustrious Drona struggling in battle and of many other foremost of warriors, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... ill-natured man, nor one naturally savage by disposition. He was a man fond of sweetbread and little dinners, and one to whom hot brandy-and-water was too dear. Had the wife of his bosom been a good helpmate to him, he might have gone through the world, if not respectably, at any rate without open disgrace. But she was a woman who left a man no solace except that to be found in brandy-and-water. For eight years they had been man and wife; and sometimes—I ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... you, young man, who reads these lines, get a golden girl like I have described; a girl of pure gold and not glittering tinsel; a sweet, natural, sensible girl, that will do team work and be a helpmate to you and not a drawback ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... he was permitted to peel the vegetables; later on the mincing was assigned to him. At the end of six weeks, though still forbidden to touch the sauces, he watched over them with wooden spoon in hand. Rosalie had fairly made him her helpmate, and would sometimes burst out laughing as she saw him, with his red trousers and yellow collar, working busily before the fire with a dishcloth over ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... deemed themselves the objects of wanton and capricious treatment at his hands, and resented it according to their opportunities. Bridger, being a soldier and subordinate, had to take it out in soliloquy and swear-words, but his impetuous little helpmate—being a woman, a wife and mother, set both wits and tongue to work, and heaven help the man when woman has both to turn upon him! In refusing the room and windows that looked full-face into those of Mrs. Plume, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... strong as ever. The archer looked down upon her with some measure of despondency in his face, but by no means with despair. He and his bride must wait. That was all, and this he told to Lightfoot. That intelligent and reliable young helpmate of a few hours, who had looked upon what had occurred with an awed admiration, did not exhibit any depression. Her husband, fortunate Benedict, had produced a great effect upon her by his feat. She felt herself ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... moods, You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even, Threshing your own passions with no woman for the threshing-floor, Finishing your dreams for your own sake only, Playing your great game around the world, alone, Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to cherish, No one to comfort, and ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence

... London for Kate, that she had read it, by which she came to know that Kate and her darling son were trysted, and that this was not the first love-letter which had passed between them. Mr. Lorimore promptly declined her ladyship's proposal, as he was engaged to be married to his present worthy helpmate. Although her ladyship was so overcome with passion, she would not part with Kate, nor allow ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... and mocked at her wire-drawn degrees of faith, hope, and repentance. He also dared to doubt of the great standard doctrine of absolute predestination, which put the crown on the lady's Christian resentment. She declared her helpmate to be a limb of Antichrist, and one with whom no regenerated person could associate. She therefore bespoke a separate establishment, and, before the expiry of the first six months, the arrangements of the separation were amicably adjusted. The upper, or third, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... deign: I fear when I fall into strait and fare * Abroad, no comrade in thee to gain: I fear when lain on my couch and long * My sickness, thou prove thee nor fond nor fain: I fear me that time groweth scant my good * And my hand be strait thou shalt work me bane: A helpmate I want shall do what do I * And bear patient ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... go he must, and that speedily. Fully impressed with a belief in her supernatural power of compelling obedience, and perhaps dreading more than witchcraft itself the effects of the unlucky disclosure on the temper of his New England helpmate, he made a virtue of the necessity of the case, bade farewell to the latter amidst a perfect hurricane of reproaches, and mounted the white horse, with his old wife on the pillion ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... contend traverses the central and most fundamental facts of a woman's being. A woman will never find salvation in being told to take care of herself, and least of all for the purpose of keeping the man, for whom she was created to be a helpmate, at arm's length. Gospels of self-culture may take seeming root here and there in the exotic woman; but even in her, at some moment of swift passion or strong emotion, they will crumple up and fall off from her like a withered leaf. James Hinton knew a woman's nature but too well ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... the greatest joy of all will be to prove yourself my better; to make me your faithful follower; knowing no dread lest as the years advance you should decline in honour in your household, but rather trusting that, though your hair turn gray, yet, in proportion as you come to be a better helpmate to myself and to the children, a better guardian of our home, so will your honour increase throughout the household as mistress, wife, and mother, daily more dearly prized. Since," I added, "it is not through excellence of outward form, [37] but by reason of the lustre of virtues shed forth upon ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... think of nothing but flaunting and finery, but a sober, discreet, hard-working squaw; one that will share my lot without flinching, however hard it may be; that can take care of my lodge, and be a companion and a helpmate to me in the wilderness." Kowsoter promised to look round among the females of his tribe, and procure such a one as he desired. Two days were requisite for the search. At the expiration of these, Kowsoter, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... imagine how willingly would Crassus and Caesar have let their men go, had they dared. But Cicero was in the ascendant. Caesar, whom we can imagine to have understood that the hour had not yet come for putting an end to the effete Republic, and to have perceived also that Catiline was no fit helpmate for him in such a work, must bide his time, and for the moment obey. That he was inclined to favor the conspirators there is no doubt; but at present he could befriend them only in accordance with the law. The ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... his helpmate, who sat with folded hands and staring eyes opposite to her husband, all that had happened. When he had concluded, they discussed the subject together. Presently the little girl came bouncing into the room, with rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, a dirty face, and fair ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... bar; and then returned to Sandgate and opened an office. Alice, three years his junior, had been sent to a boarding-school for two years, where she devoted most of her time to music, then came home again as mother's helpmate. ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn



Words linked to "Helpmate" :   mate, married person, helpmeet, spouse, better half, partner



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