"Step-" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disappearance. If the chandelier had been an honest piece of metal they might have perched on it until the act ran out. Or perhaps the candles could be extinguished when their legs were still climbing visibly. At last the manager has contrived that a plank be laid across the tops of two step-ladders, behind a drop so that the audience cannot see. No reasonable pirate could refuse to squat upon the plank ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... resurrected and longed for a quiet life. Little, ordinary, no-account bears had personated him and got themselves killed under false pretenses from one end of the Sierra to the other, and some of them had been impudent enough to carry their imposture to the extent of placing step-ladders against his sign-board trees and recording their alleged height a yard or two above his mark. That made him tired. Moreover the gout in his bad foot troubled him more and more, and he ceased to get much satisfaction from rolling around on a "flat wheel" and scaring people with ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... was killed off, as we read in a verse or two before. Did not the Church pray for him? Surely they did. Why was their prayer not answered, then? God has not any step-children. James was as dear to God as Peter was. One prayer was answered; was the other left unanswered? It was the divine purpose that Peter, being prayed for, should be delivered; and we may reverently say that, if there had not been the many in Mary's house praying, there would have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... got up. Young Bill Eads, a son of the Captain, was one of the pilots on the boat. He was off watch and at the bar drunk when we got on board. His father had married a young wife that day, and was taking his wedding trip on that boat. Young Bill was mad because his father had secured a young step-mother for him, and was just raising "Ned" ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... entertain you, madam, with anything so common as the cruel usage of a step-mother; nor of what affected me much more, the unkind behaviour of a father under such an influence. It shall suffice only to tell you that I had the mortification to perceive the gradual and daily decrease of my father's affection. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... named Ino, daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes. She married Athamas, king of Orchomenus, who, incensed at her unnatural conduct to her step-children,[43] pursued her and her son to the sea-shore, when, seeing no hope of escape, she flung herself with her child into the deep. They were kindly received by the Nereides, and became sea-divinities under the name of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... let it be always remembered, was a good husband and father. His wife was devoted to him, his step-daughter carries now to an old age a profound reverence and affection for his memory. Grieved beyond all words was she—the Henrietta or "Hen" of all his books—at what is maintained to be the utterly fictitious narrative of Borrow's ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... the great canyon, meaning the Grand Canyon, with its gigantic cliffs, presents grander scenes, they have less variety and beauty of detail than this. They were here able to see over an area of some fifty miles diameter, where, hemmed in by lines of lofty step-like mesas, a great basin lay before them as on a map. There was no vegetation, "nothing but bare and barren rocks of rich and varied colours shimmering in the sunlight. Scattered over the plain were thousands of the fantastically formed buttes to ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... great tales how you are used at home, I suppose. I am sick of it!" said Miss Fortune, setting up the hand-irons and throwing the tongs and shovel into the corner in a way that made the iron ring again. "One might as good be a step-mother at once, and done with it! Come, mother, it's time for ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Ibrahim Pasha, the step-son of Mehemet Ali, was placed at the head of the Egyptian army. Of a short, thick-set figure, he possesses that gigantic strength which Homer so loved in his heroes, and which inspires such respect among barbarous nations. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... said Vizard—"all but Zoe. Tom and George, get the things out." The grooms had already jumped out of the dog-cart, and two were at the horses' heads. The step-ladder was placed for Zoe, and Vizard asked her to go in and see the rooms were all right, while he took Miss Gale to the stables. He did so, and showed her a spirited Galloway and a steady old horse, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... natural object of such a person,) Mr. Hastings deposes the Nabob's own mother, turns her out of the employment, and puts at the head of the seraglio this prostitute, who at the best, in relation to him, could only be a step-mother. If you heard no more, do your Lordships want anything further to convince you that this must be a violent, atrocious, and corrupt act,—suppose it had gone no further than the seraglio? But when I call this woman a dancing-girl, I state something ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space. And the same would happen to ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... existence, the place for which either my temper or my understanding has prepared me! To what purpose serve the restless aspirations of my soul, but to make me, like a frighted bird, beat myself in vain against the enclosure of my cage? Nature, barbarous nature! to me thou hast proved indeed the worst of step-mothers; endowed me with wishes insatiate, and ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... reminiscence prompted the lady to sing, "Come to me, sweet Marie," with incidental attempts at a step-dance. The finale brought us to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... sons, the youngest, was too timid to join the rest; but on the next morning the seven others went to the bridal apartment, and killed their step-mother when their father was away. But he came back before she was quite dead, and he took the Crucifix from the wall by the bed and cursed his children. And the curse was fulfilled ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Provinces and Berar in 1911. They belong to the western tract of the Satpuras adjoining Khandesh. The name is supposed to be a corruption of Ramvansi, meaning 'The descendants of Rama.' They say [584] that when Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, was driven from his kingdom by his step-mother Kaikeyi, he went to the forest land south of the Nerbudda. His brother Bharat, who had been raised to the throne, could not bear to part with Rama, so he followed him to the forest, began to do penance, and made friends with ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... December 17th 1903, it is necessary, in considering the progress of design between that period and the present day, to go back to the earlier days of their experiments with 'gliders,' which show the alterations in design made by them in their step-bystep progress to a flying machine proper, and give a clear idea of the stage at which they had arrived in the art of aeroplane design at the time of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... handsome, but there was an air of simple frankness in her manner that won us all. For my own part, I thought I had got a second Jeanie Deans; for she recounted to me histories of her early youth, wherein her plain good sense and strong mind had enabled her to win her way through a host of cruel step-mothers, faithless lovers, and cheating brothers. Among other things, she told me, with the appearance of much emotion, that she had found, since she came to town, a cure for all her sorrows, "Thanks and ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... nature, Lance was no dandy; but Roy had not failed to note that he was apt to be scrupulously well turned out on certain occasions. And, at sight of him, he promptly 'remembered he had forgotten' the very particular nature of to-day's occasion: the marriage of Miss Gladys Elton—step-sister of Rose—to a rising civilian some eighteen years older than his bride. It was an open secret, in the station, that the wedding was Mrs Elton's private and personal triumph, that she, not her unassuming daughter, was the acknowledged heroine ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... walked up the lane to the mission-house, Nietfong stood watching for me at the gate. "Take me home with you; oh, I am so glad you are come back!" So I took her home, and Nietfong told me that her father had married again, and that her step-mother was unkind to her, and beat her when she said the prayers I had taught her night and morning; "but," said the child, "I always prayed, nevertheless." She lived with us till she was about thirteen, perhaps not so much; then her father ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... of her step-son, Lovelace Ellsworth, getting home at last from Europe! Either you or I must capture him, Ela!" added Olive, eagerly, her black eyes sparkling with the hope of ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... lay the grim great walls of the city, with the heads of its temples, and its palaces, and its pyramids showing beyond. The step-sides of the royal pyramid held my eye. Phorenice had expended some of her new-found store of gold in overlaying their former whiteness with sheets of shining yellow metal. But it was not that change that moved me. I was remembering ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... ticker had shifted from the London quotations to the opening sales on the Exchange, a sallow-faced clerk mounted a low step-ladder and swept a scurry of chalk marks over the huge blackboard, its margin lettered with the initials of the principal stocks. The appearance of this nimble-fingered young man with his piece of chalk always impressed Jack as a sort of vaudeville performance. On ordinary days, with the market ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hovels are more underground than above the surface, and often, when the village occupies sloping ground, the upper edge of the roof is practically but a continuation of the solid ground, or at the most there is but a single step-up between them. The goats are of course permitted to wander whithersoever they will, and equally, of course, they abuse their privileges by preferring the roofs to the ground and wandering incessantly about among the sleepers. Where ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... form into the air and lifted up his pole to an incredible height. He checked the trout before it got under the boat, but dared not come down an inch, and then began his amusing further elongation in reaching for his reel with one hand while he carried it ten feet into the air with the other. A step-ladder would perhaps have been more welcome to him just then than at any other moment during his life. But the trout was saved, though my ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... intended noble victim. She and her step-son, Hector Munro, were tried, in 1590, for witchcraft, incantation, sorcery, and poisoning. The charges against the lady were the diabolical acts of making two images of clay, the one representing the young lady of Balnagowan, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the garden of Charon, whence "neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned in autumn, can warrior or maiden escape," is likewise pre-Christian. In Provencal and Danish folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother awaken ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... our Step-Mother, we have no natural Affection for her, we are Foreigners to her Blood, and when we have sucked her dry, we make no Returns of Gratitude in her Necessities, but turn her loose to shift for her self; I think this the Case, if you consider the Condition of a rising Project, which ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... presented a full account of them in two volumes (1888). Of his other writings on marine zoology, most are contained in the bulletins and memoirs of the museum of comparative zoology; but he published in 1865 (with Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, his step-mother) Seaside Studies in Natural History, a work at once exact and stimulating, and in 1871 Marine Animals ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... whether they liked it or not, in January, 1907, the marriage took place—at the Registrar's—and Beryl came to live for a short time at Ware, bringing ducksome Margery and adorable Podge. In less than a month Beryl had won over all her step-children, except Francis, who held out till Easter, but was reduced to allegiance by the hampers she sent to him at Rugby—; in three months they had all moved to a much sweller house on the Chelsea Embankment. Father—Beryl voted "Dad" ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... "Urge the beast, can't ye, Jeff'son? I ain't used to bein' out in such bleak weather. Seems if I couldn't git my breath. I'm all pinched up and wigglin' with shivers now. 'T ain't no use lettin' the hoss go step-a-ty-step, this fashion." ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... tombs, one, the above-mentioned, near Abydos, the other at Sakkara, in the Memphite pyramid-field. This is the famous Step-Pyramid. Since Sa-nekht seems really to have been buried at Bet Khal-laf, probably Tjeser was, too, and the Step-Pyramid may have been his secondary or sham tomb, erected in the necropolis of Memphis as a compliment to Seker, the Northern ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... called forth no response, and Patty peered down from the top of the step-ladder at her room-mate, who was sitting on the floor dragging sofa-pillows and curtains from a ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Deity is of the vaguest kind, but he has a religion of generosity and love which in the end nothing can repress—which survives the effects of a temper soured by systematic coldness and opposition on the part of a rebellious son and step-daughter. While in his relations with his womenkind—the tractable section of them—there is nothing of that quaint American delicacy and reserve noted by Howells, there is in its stead an absorbing tenderness which ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... "be somewhat more cordial with a comrade in distress. This is a different scene from the Brentford storming-party. The jade Fortune has been a very step-mother to me. I will sing you a song I made on ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... docile, with every advantage of a modern education, speaking French like a native, and above and beyond all else, requiring no pay? It would be flying in the face of Providence to ignore such a chance. Wherefore Cecilia continued to lead her step-sisters and brother in the paths of learning, and life became a thing of utter weariness. For Mrs. Rainham, though shrewd enough to get what she wanted, in the main was not a far-sighted woman; and in her unreasoning dislike and jealousy of Cecilia she failed to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... one time, and it is what she did, she made a great yew-tree by enchantment beside the river Maigh in Luimnech, and she put a little man in it, playing sweet music on a harp. And Oilioll's son was passing the river with his step-brother, and they saw the tree and heard the sweet music from it. And first they quarrelled as to which of them would have the little harper, and then they quarrelled about the tree, and they asked a judgment from Oilioll, and he gave it ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... father on the gravel walks about the house in the spring and summer of 1840 is one vividly impressed on my recollection. His manner to children was not unpleasant, and I well remember his pausing, an amused listener to a childish and vehement political discussion between his step-daughter, Miss Lister, and myself—a discussion which he from time to time stirred up to increased ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... loyally, smiling gratefully as she thought of the liberal number of packages old Santa had left hanging to her door during the night. But at length the meal was ended, Marie had carried the dishes away, Jud appeared with a step-ladder and hammer, and the younger trio were banished upstairs to amuse themselves until the last of the party decorations were put in place. This was not a hard thing to do, fortunately, and for once not one of them raised any objection to ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... consented to the theatrical career of my eldest brother, and as my second brother showed no greater talents than those which were useful to him as a goldsmith, it was now her chief desire to see some progress made towards the fulfilment of the hopes and wishes of my step-father, 'who hoped to make something of me.' On the completion of my eighth year I was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, where it was hoped I would study! There I was placed at the bottom of the lowest class, and started my education ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... their quarrels and puts terror into the evil-doer. Who was it that put the fear into Bill Plunkett when he blackened his wife's eyes, and who was it that brought in the two children from the Settlement, that were abused by their step-father, and took the old ruffian's guns away from him and marched him in too! That's a job for a second-rate doctor, isn't it? I hear the people talking about you, and I have to turn my back for fear they hear my ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... before, put it all together." Then, crossing his arms upon the table, his manner sobering down, he added: "I have got just five hundred dollars; if it were only seven hundred and fifty, I would go directly and purchase a quarter section of land, and settle it upon my old step-mother." ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... said because he crooked his hinges to say it! It did not occur to George that the infrangible laws of Nature she had herself from the very first so agonizingly broken to the poor dwarf, she had been to him such a cruel step-mother, that he was in evil case indeed if he could find no father to give him fair play and a chance of the endurable. Was he so much to blame if he felt the annihilation offered by such theorists as George, not altogether a satisfactory counterpoise either to its existence or its loss? If, even, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... him who daily for the last two months has been trying to convince me that I cannot reach the summum bonum of human happiness until I have invested four dollars in Perkins' patent automatic garden rake and step-ladder combination. The gentleman who has the smoke-consumer, the gentleman who deals in shrubbery, the gentleman who advocates lightning rods, and the other gentlemen who represent the tantamount interests of lawn statuary, fancy poultry, patent paving, etc., etc., etc.—I ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... more cruel doubt shall never spring up in that capacious heart, divorcing his affections and convictions from the system to which his life is irrevocably wedded. No, keep still, Padre Lluc I think ever as you think now, lest the faith that seems a fortress should prove a prison, the mother a step-dame,—lest the high, chivalrous spirit, incapable of a safe desertion, should immolate truth or itself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... her chair, thankful that behind her fan she could give way to her terrible anxieties about her little son, who might be crossing to France, and her husband, suffering from fearful nose-bleeding, and wellnigh alone among traitors and deserters, the step-daughter, on the other side of the great hearth, chattered away ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the step-ladder, Julia," said our now thoroughly exasperated parent, "and we shall see what these foolish boys have done to ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... tried to play with her little step-sister; but Philippina had chased her from the room. Once she turned against the enraged daughter of Jason Philip Schimmelweis, and said: "I'll ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... in the properly manipulated rap and knock. And the spirits who so maliciously disturbed the peace of good old Dr. Phelps in Stratford, Connecticut, a half century and more ago, unquestionably owed their being to the nimble wit and abnormal fancy of his two step-children, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Esther, "I'm sorry for that. So you are one of the step-children. Sit down, won't you. Oh, do take ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... which directed and stimulated him in his ambitions was that coming first from his mother, then from his step-mother. It should never be forgotten that these two women, both of them of unusual earnestness and sweetness of spirit, were one or the other of them at the boy's side throughout this period. The ideal they held before him was the simple ideal of the early American, that if a boy is upright and ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... Borrow his manuscripts passed into the possession of his step-daughter, Mrs. MacOubrey, from whom the greater part were purchased by Mr. Webber, a bookseller of Ipswich, who resold them to Dr. William Knapp. These Manuscripts are now in the hands of the Hispanic Society, of New York, and will doubtless remain for ever the property of the American ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... good child, "I thought you had long since ceased visiting us, and we hoped never again to be annoyed by your ministrations. Your conduct in combining with my step-sister here, in conjunction with the late postmaster of S——, to prevent Paul from holding correspondence, has disgusted, not only me, but even father, beyond the limits of reconciliation; and whatever I may think of your ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-mother, always reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face as compared with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheecked, jaunty young author of the year 1830 has long faded ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... very much beneath him. He died when Eric was a year old, and his wife married again—a man in her own station, who is now keeping the 'Royal George'. I can't bear to think of Eric being brought up in such surroundings, but I have no power to take him away; his mother and step-father claim him. I had planned that when he is a little older I would try to persuade them to let me send him to a good preparatory school, but now"—her voice broke—"it is not a question of education, but whether ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... up, surprised. "Not exactly. So far she has treated me like a cross between a yellow dog and a step-child; but I shall be devoted enough if I ever ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... Championship four times in succession, could be directly traced. In fact, at the age of forty-two, Mortimer Sturgis was in just the frame of mind to take some nice girl aside and ask her to become a step-mother to his eleven drivers, his baffy, his twenty-eight putters, and the rest of the ninety-four clubs which he had accumulated in the course of his golfing career. The sole stipulation, of course, which he made when dreaming his daydreams was that ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... altar until death comes to the release of the lonely survivor also. Re-marriage is regarded by such people as a posthumous bigamy. There is certainly a very strong and logical case to be made out for a marriage bond that is indissoluble even by death. It banishes step-parents from the world. It confers a dignity of tragic inevitability upon the association of husband and wife, and makes a love approach the gravest, most momentous thing in life. It banishes for ever any dream of escape from the presence and service of either ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... it, her fair face grew pale, for in a dream had it been revealed unto her that Eva, her step-mother, should that day do a dark deed among those of her own household. Therefore was Finola sore afraid, but only her large eyes and pale cheeks spake her woe, as she and her brothers drove along with Eva and ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... ignorance of the new material in shape of a master was but transient. Nor was my mistress long in making known her animus. She was not a "Miss Lucretia," traces of whom I yet remembered, and the more especially, as I saw them shining in the face of little Amanda, her daughter, now living under a step-mother's government. I had not forgotten the soft hand, guided by a tender heart, that bound up with healing balsam the gash made in my head by Ike, the son of Abel. Thomas and Rowena, I found to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the houses were built, they became the kitchens and domestic offices. The building was only some four hundred yards from the road, so I turned in to get a light for my pipe. I noticed, as I was getting near, that a man was standing on a step-ladder, apparently doing some painting. He looked down on me from his ladder as I approached. Then I saw that instead of painting he was engaged in tarring the roof of the building. He was evidently ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... metif, step-son of Mauce. Says he was born and brought up in the Indian country, and has subsisted by hunting. Is unacquainted with the laws, but will follow the directions given him. I took pains to impress upon his mind, through the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the other supports these civil determinations with his military forces. Even with the army in Germany, Napoleon's brother-in-law, Murat, is as a pillar of the Bonaparte dynasty, and to prevent the intrigues and plots of other generals from an Imperial diadem; while, in Italy, his step-son, Eugene de Beauharnais, as a viceroy, commands even the commander-in-chief, Massena. It must be granted that the Emperor has so ably taken his precautions that it is almost certain that, at first, his orders will be obeyed, even after his death; and the will deposited by him in the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... the maidens entered the room. When Wolfdieterich was about to undress, he had to ask the ladies who pressed around him to leave him alone for a short time, as he was ashamed they should see him naked. When Amphons of Spain, bewitched by his step-mother into a were-wolf, was at last restored, and stood suddenly naked before her, he was greatly ashamed. The maiden who healed Iwein was tender of his modesty. In his love-madness, the hero wanders for a time naked through the wood; three women find him asleep, and send ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... no "uncle" of Kublai's, but a cousin in a junior generation. For Kublai was the grandson of Chinghiz, and Nayan was the great-great-grandson of Chinghiz's brother Uchegin, called in the Chinese annals Pilgutai. [Belgutai was Chinghiz's step-brother. (Palladius.)—H. C.] On this brother, the great-uncle of Kublai, and the commander of the latter's forces against Arikbuga in the beginning of the reign, both Chinghiz and Kublai had bestowed large territories ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Lee, who says that this doctrine was "justified by all the people," gives full particulars of another instance. Among the Danish converts in Utah was Rosmos Anderson, whose wife had been a widow with a grown daughter. Anderson desired to marry his step-daughter also, and she was quite willing; but a member of the Bishop's council wanted the girl for his wife, and he was influential enough to prevent Anderson from getting the necessary consent from the head of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... repentance of Constantine was manifested only in acts of blood and revenge; and that he atoned for the murder of an innocent son, by the execution, perhaps, of a guilty wife. They ascribe the misfortunes of Crispus to the arts of his step-mother Fausta, whose implacable hatred, or whose disappointed love, renewed in the palace of Constantine the ancient tragedy of Hippolitus and of Phaedra. [22] Like the daughter of Minos, the daughter of Maximian accused her son-in-law of an incestuous attempt ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Breton, a step-son to the poet Gascoigne, and the elder of our fascinating trio, is conspicuous for an unswerving, whole-hearted attachment to nature and rural scenes. It is in the pastoral lyric where, with tenderest devotion, he pursues, untrammelled, a light and free-born fancy. His fertile, ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... of Friedrich's," says my Note, "is of feller humor than the Serenity of Wurtemberg, Karl Eugen, Reigning Duke of that unfortunate Country; for whom, in past days, Friedrich had been so fatherly, and really took such pains. 'Fatherly? STEP-fatherly, you mean; and for his own vile uses!' growled the Serenity of Wurtemberg:—always an ominous streak of gloom in that poor man; streak which is spread now to whole skies of boiling darkness, owing to deliriums there have been! Enough, Karl Eugen, after divorcing his poor Wife, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the scene were very diverse. Mrs. Heron, a languid-looking, fair-haired woman, lay at full length on one of the divans. Her step-daughter, Kitty, sat at the tea-table, and Kitty's elder brother, Percival, a tall, broad-shouldered young man of eight-and-twenty, was leaning against the mantelpiece. A girl, who looked about twenty-one years ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... R. Lamborne, West Liberty; photograph-album, Viola J. Angie, Spencer; step-ladder, Mrs. Mary J. Gartrell, Des Moines; baking-powder can with measure combined, Mrs. Lillie Raymond, Osceola; egg-stand, Mrs. M. E. Tisdale, Cedar Rapids; egg-beater, and self-feeding griddle-greaser, Mrs. Eugenia Kilborn, Cedar ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... make them had not the courage to insist upon their execution. Laws that threaten and are not enforced become like King Log, whose croaking subjects first feared, then despised him. Be a father to virtue and a step-father to vice. Be not always severe, nor always mild; but choose the happy mean between them, which is the true point of discretion. Visit the prisons, the shambles, and the markets; for there the presence of the governor is ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... taxi-cab, just exactly like any other taxi-cab, the White Linen Nurse drove home alone to the Senior Surgeon's great, gloomy house to find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... but still in a remote age, a great strip of this lava-bed, a mile wide and ten or twelve miles long, north and south, had broken away and subsided from the general level, forming what the geologists call, I believe, a "fault," thus causing the "step-up" to the Second Mesa. The Second Mesa, because the lava had been hotter perhaps, was distinguished from the lower level by the presence of a number of little hills—"bubbles," they were called, locally, and solidified bubbles of hot lava perhaps they were. They were all sorts ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... the picture in her mind's eye of the bare lodge of Snettishane, put all doubts at rest. Yet she capped her conviction by a brief word with one of her step-sons. "White daddy good?" was what she asked, and the boy answered that his father was the best man he had ever known. That night the raven croaked again. On the night following the croaking was more persistent. It awoke the Factor, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... water-courses. To the north extends a salt desert for upwards of one hundred miles, with a width of two hundred miles. It is crossed by the River Salado, which, rising in the Cordilleras, falls into the Plata, to the south of which rises a number of step-like terraces, sterile during the heats of summer, but covered with verdure after the rains of spring. Huge boulders, brown grass growing in tufts, and low spine-covered bushes, diversify the surface. In this inhospitable region transitions from ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... ways Tobias resembled his old grandsire. About 1710 that gentleman wrote a Memoir of his own life. Hence we learn that he, in childhood, like Roderick Random, was regarded as "a clog and burden," and was neglected by his father, ill-used by his step-mother. Thus Tobias had not only his own early poverty to resent, but had a hereditary grudge against fortune, and "the base indifference of mankind." The old gentleman was lodged "with very hard and penurious ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... unfit and useless in a certain line, do excellent work in another. There is no normally constructed being who fails to meet the highest demands in one line or another, the moment he finds himself in the right place. By what right does any claim precedence over another? If any one has been treated so step-motherly by Nature that with the best will he can not do what others can, Society has no right to punish him for the shortcomings of Nature. If, on the contrary, a person has received from Nature gifts that raise him above others, Society ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... has been imported into the "History of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome," the European form of the Book of Sindibad, where the prince discovers to his father the paramour of his step-mother, the empress, in the person of a young man disguised as one of her maid-servants, and its presence in the work is quite inconsistent with the lady's violent lust after the young prince. There is a similar tale in the Hebrew version, "Mishle Sandabar," but the disguised ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that of those Brothers who condemned these methods without being any the less saints. Born far away from Umbria, in countries where nature seems to be a step-mother, where adoration, far from being the instinctive act of a happy soul soaring upward to bless the heavenly Father, is, on the contrary, the despairing cry of an atom lost in immensity, they desired above all things a religious reformation, rational and profound. They dreamed ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... home in Adelaide, on my father's sheep-farm, and he was still alive, and with no thought but how to make every thing bright and gladsome for me; and hundreds of times I saw the woman who was afterward to be my step-mother, stealing up to the door and trying to get in to him and me. Sometimes I caught myself sobbing aloud, and then Tardif's voice, whispering at the door to ask how mam'zelle was, brought me back to consciousness. Now and then I looked ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... Longueville, the young Duke through her intrigues became a favourite chief of the Importants. Amongst the earliest to swell the ranks of that faction were two other personages who had played a very conspicuous part during the reign of Louis XIII. The first of these, Madame de Montbazon's step-daughter, was the witty, beautiful, and errant Duchess de Chevreuse, whom Louis had judged so dangerous that he had expressly forbidden by his will, when on the point of death, that she should ever be recalled from exile to Court. By the same prohibition was affected the former Keeper ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... it over. You understand, I was dissipating in this great treasure-house of books. About the middle of the afternoon I found myself in one of the most unfrequented of the library alcoves. There, on a shelf so high that I could just see over its edge as I stood on one of the library step-ladders, I found a strange little book, purporting to have been written in 1594. It had fallen down behind the other books. It had a leather back, well-worn; I saw that it was a 1728 Leipsic publication; and ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... Alexander dwells, And Dionysius fell, who many a year Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow Whereon the hair so jetty clust'ring hangs, Is Azzolino; that with flaxen locks Obizzo' of Este, in the world destroy'd By his foul step-son." To the bard rever'd I turned me round, and thus he spake; "Let him Be to thee now first leader, me but next To him in rank." Then farther on a space The Centaur paus'd, near some, who at the throat Were extant from the wave; and showing us A spirit by itself apart retir'd, Exclaim'd: ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... * *[331] Cicero, in the third book of his treatise On a Commonwealth, says that nature has treated man less like a mother than a step-dame, for she has cast him into mortal life with a body naked, fragile, and infirm, and with a mind agitated by troubles, depressed by fears, broken by labors, and exposed to passions. In this mind, however, there lies ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... against a capital charge of treason. You will readily excuse my referring to the arts by which the son was rendered guilty in the eyes of the father. Be it enough to say, that the unfortunate young man fell a victim to the guilt of his step-mother, Fausta, and that he disdained to exculpate himself from a charge so gross and so erroneous. It is said, that the anger of the Emperor was kept up against his son by the sycophants who called upon ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... I were dead," said Elinor, "but, mother, everything that Tage has said is true, and it never can be right that at our age you should give us a step-father." ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... at the instigation of and under the influence of a step-father, who wished the man removed for ends of his own, and forced the child (he was nothing else) to take the job off his hands, and the law of Indian Territory, which was the scene of the affair, condemned ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... statesman subtle wiles ensure, The cit and polecat stink and are secure; Toads with their venom, doctors with their drug, The priest and hedgehog in their robes are snug. Oh, Nature! cruel step-mother and hard To thy poor naked, fenceless child, the bard! No horns but those by luckless Hymen worn, And those, alas! not Amalthaea's horn! With naked feelings, and with aching pride, He bears the unbroken blast on every side; ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... secluded abode of happiness there were no cross old women, no cruel step-dames, no withered spinsters, no lovesick maidens, no sour old bachelors, no inattentive husbands, no melancholy young men, no blubbering youngsters, and no squalling brats. All was mirth, fun and high good humour. Blue devils, hypochondria, and doleful ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... each region meet one another on Evolution day, in the regionic capital; once in four years they all visit the national capital. There is no danger of the decay of patriotism among us; our country is our mother, and we love her as it is impossible to love the step-mother that a competitive or monopolistic nation must be to ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... in George Barrington, excitedly, taking up the tale in his weak, rather silly voice, "my step-father refused to believe me, and gave me L20 in notes to go away. I suppose he didn't notice they were some of the stolen ones. I changed one of them at the bank this morning, but I had no idea how important they were until I knocked into ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... froncle, "the hot and hard bumpe, or swelling, tearmed, a fellon" (Cotgrave). Another Latin name for it was tagax, "a felon on a man's finger" (Cooper), lit. thievish. One of its Spanish names is padrastro, lit. step-father. I am told that an "agnail" was formerly called a "step-mother" in Yorkshire. This is a good example of the semantic method in etymology ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... sweeping social change than that he expected. Moderate social reform to him was but temporizing; indeed, it was evil, inasmuch as it helped to postpone the inevitable, but in the end, beneficent catastrophe of the social revolution. A step-by-step movement toward socialism, state socialism,[19] even of a pretty sweeping character, was, to the old-time Marxians, not really socialism at all. A valid reason for this attitude was found in the extremely ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... course, presumed here. The question remains to be asked, would the children of the one sister, were their mother dead, be as well loved and cared for by the surviving sister, were she called upon to exercise the functions of a step-mother; and would the children of the dead sister love the children of the living sister, were they not viewed upon the same footing ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... breath, as of gratitude for vital refreshment. He had his thoughts upon the training of our English to be something besides the machinery of capitalists, and upon the country as a blessed mother instead of the most capricious of maudlin step-dames. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... voice, and it floated down to the boy at the gate of Paradise, from the top of a step-ladder. Halfway up the ladder Jock Filmer stood with his hands full of greens and his eyes full ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... is a girl and was called Ho Sian Gu. She was a peasant's daughter, and though her step-mother treated her harshly she remained respectful and industrious. She loved to give alms, though her step-mother tried to prevent her. Yet she was never angry, even when her step-mother beat her. She had sworn not to marry, and at last her step-mother did not ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... only treasure, his drunken step-mother had deliberately pulled to pieces, scattering the feathers ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... months after the marriage the son had come to an understanding with his step-mother, and shortly after this the elderly husband made the discovery. One day he played the spy and saw his son and his wife leave an assignation house in Santa Margarita Street. Perhaps the man intended to take harsh steps, to speak a few unvarnished ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... spirits? Or, did he become miserable and hipped having entirely lost his spirits? Did his wife never make sarcastic reference to the "stars" with whom he had formerly been acquainted? And how about her boy, his step-son? Did they have any family? Whence came ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... opened the conversation this time. To her disappointment she received no different answer to her inquiries than had Phil. "Moll was gone." The woman did not know where she had gone and she didn't care. But she wasn't coming back. Further, Mollie's step-mother did not see what business Phil and Madge had in ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... placed the matrimonial ring upon the finger of the love-sick maid of honor. Indeed Charles Etienne de la Tour, commandant of the little fort at Cape Sable, had scarcely lost a father, before he had gained a step-mother. ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... in the china closet a small piece of furniture, very convenient about a house, called a step-ladder. It consisted of two wooden steps, and was made and kept there to stand upon, in order to reach the high shelves. Rollo brought out the step-ladder, and placed it in the door-way, and then ascended it. From the top ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... corner of the room, he drew open what seemed to be the door of a cupboard; but it was too dark to show that in place of staircase there was a broad step-ladder. ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... said he, composedly. "I am here, and my visit concerns yourself. To begin with, do you like living with your mother's step-sister? That is her relationship to your mother and to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Circassian coast, nailed to a beech-tree in the war-God's wood; and that it was the fleece of the wondrous ram who bore Phrixus and Helle across the Euxine sea. For Phrixus and Helle were the children of the cloud-nymph, and of Athamas the Minuan king. And when a famine came upon the land, their cruel step-mother Ino wished to kill them, that her own children might reign, and said that they must be sacrificed on an altar, to turn away the anger of the Gods. So the poor children were brought to the altar, and the priest stood ready with his knife, when out of the clouds came the Golden Ram, and took ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... are a dear, good man. I think mother is very lucky. Thank you so much for being my step-papa!" cried Claire, her grey eyes softening with a charming friendliness as they dwelt on the man's honest face, and he took her hand in his, and squeezed ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... for a requital she demands of her husband: that he shall let her children be lords in their own house, and not set over them the cruel guardianship of a step-mother. ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Yes, Madame Rechid Bey is a most explosive protegee for a girl to have, on her way to Egypt. I'm not sure even I am not innocuous by comparison; though I do wish you hadn't reminded me of my poor little step-daughter Esme, in her convent-school. If any one should get the idea that Monny—but I won't put it in words! Besides me, and the brand-new bride of Rechid Bey ('Wretched Bey' is our name for him), there's one more protegee, a Miss Rachel Guest from Salem, Massachusetts, a ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... without money, as our author well knows, therefore he at once provided a liberal supply. Louis is a fine young fellow with good principles and honor, so he can be trusted to spend his million wisely. But he does not have entirely smooth sailing. In the first place he has a rascally step-father whom he had to subjugate, a dear mother to protect and care for, and the missing million to find before he could commence his delightful travels. They are all accomplished at last, and there was plenty ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... understand were not at all impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it, and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots. It had a large room, which was approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined to construct the intended staircase, without a present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed unaccountably bashful ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes |
