"Mother-in-law" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the islands by Captain Keeling, their first notable visitor was Captain John Clunis-Boss, who in 1814 touched in the ship Borneo on a voyage to India. Captain Boss returned two years later with his wife and family and his mother-in-law, Mrs. Dymoke, and eight sailor-artisans, to take possession of the islands, but found there already one Alexander Hare, who meanwhile had marked the little atoll as a sort of Eden for a seraglio ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... palace intrigue, and destitute as he was of any of the qualities of a great statesman or general, it is no wonder that his reign, which lasted for seventeen years, was continually disturbed by conspiracies and rebellions. In most of these rebellions his mother-in-law, Verina, widow of Leo, an ambitious and turbulent woman, played ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Imperial livery; he is to the entire population of India the exponent of British Rule; he is the mother-in-law of liars, the high-priest of extortioners, and the ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... and how much material for conversation I shall bring with me. The end of last week I spent in Dresden, where I called upon our friends, the Ritters. Sascha Ritter, our Weymar Court musician, has been blessed with a little daughter, whose god-father I shall have the honour to be. His mother-in-law has been staying here for some weeks, and Johanna Wagner is expected ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... perhaps my future mother-in-law and I aren't going to get along fine," he announced to the world in ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... answered and said unto her, "It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... mother-in-law told me the other day that you had been such a marvellous wife to him. That you had even made sacrifices. You have never had anything ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... was not that of a man who "imagines" with facility. He did, however, fish out of the chaos of surmises the notion that his prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at once. He could not conceive the nature of the event or the catastrophe which would induce Mademoiselle de Valmassigue, living in a house full of servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... fifteen years ago, and, barring certain "jubilations," Perrotte made good his prophecy. He brought up from the Ottawa his Irish wife, a clever woman with her tongue but a housekeeper that scandalised her thrifty, tidy, French-Canadian mother-in-law, and his two children, a boy and a girl. Under the supervision of his boss he made for his family a home and for himself an assured place in the Blackwater Mills. His children fell into the hands of ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... own wife is not at home,' said the widow woman; 'she is living like a reindeer in the wood; you have the witch's daughter for a wife now, and the witch herself for a mother-in-law.' ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... (it said), I am the victim of the most absurd and annoying mistake. I have been arrested for Schirmer, the betting man who murdered his mother-in-law and escaped from Paris yesterday. They will not let me communicate with any one till tomorrow morning and I have had great trouble in getting this line to you. For heaven's sake bring Schreiermeyer and anybody else you can find, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... had all returned to their homes, she grew very unhappy, and when her mother-in-law commanded her to cook she had to feel her way around, for she would not uncover her face. Finally she became so sad that she determined to run away. One night when all were asleep, she used magical power and changed herself into oil. [23] Then she slid ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... that Sir George had left off laughing for some time. He looked haggard—uneasy—miserably expectant. She liked him better than she liked Lady Monkton, and, though reserved with both, relaxed more to him than to her mother-in-law. For one thing, Sir George had been unmistakably appreciative of her beauty, and her soft voice and pretty manners. He liked them all. Lady Monkton had probably noticed them quite as keenly, but they had not pleased her. They were indeed ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... managed this matter so well (O, she is the most artful of women!) that my father's heart was gone before I ever suspected it was in danger. The discovery you may easily believe, madam, was not pleasing. The name of a mother-in-law sounded dreadful in my ears; nor could I bear the thought of parting again with a share in those dear affections, of which I had purchased the whole by the loss of a ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... wife who has committed bigamy; the luckless cure, Birotteau, is cheated out of his prospects and doomed to a broken heart by the successful villainy of a rival priest and his accomplices; the Comte de Manerville is ruined and transported by his wife and his detestable mother-in-law; Pere Goriot is left to starvation by his daughters; the Marquis d'Espard is all but condemned as a lunatic by the manoeuvres of his wife; the faithful servant Michu comes to the guillotine; the devoted notary Chesnel is beggared in the effort to save his scape-grace ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... and devout character, remind us of the affectionate fidelity to each other and to God, of Ruth the Moabitess, and her Hebrew mother-in-law Naomi, who lived in the time of ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... Tocqueville, 'when my mother-in-law first married. She spent in it a month and could never be induced to see ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... disapproving, for Miss Percy's descent was long, she liked the splendid vitality of the girl, and Hunsdon had riches of his own. But, far cleverer than Mrs. Nunn, she suspected depths which might have little in common with her son, and a will which might make a mother-in-law hate her. Lady Hunsdon loved peace, and wondered that anyone should question her rigid rules for enforcing it. But of Anne as a valuable coadjutor in the present instance there could be no doubt, and, to do ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... very like an attempt to express zigguratu, a tower, in an ideographic way. A very similar case is where a lady takes a girl to be wife to her son but stipulates that the wife shall treat her as mistress. If she shall say to her mother-in-law, "Thou art not my mistress," she shall be branded and sold. As long as the mother lives, they two together shall support her.(321) One may suspect that such maternal power, as is here shown over the children, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... practices. When, however, the woman was willing to renounce idolatry, and become an adherent of the Law, it was lawful to take her in marriage: as was the case with Ruth whom Booz married. Wherefore she said to her mother-in-law (Ruth 1:16): "Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." Accordingly it was not permitted to marry a captive woman unless she first shaved her hair, and pared her nails, and put off the raiment wherein ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... mother-in-law had always lived with him, and she was "difficult." Who knows how keenly the sick woman's mind ran on the possibilities of reef and quicksand for the alien two left alone without her guiding hand? So she set the warning of her love ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... pecuniary resources, and his Parliament was displaying but little inclination to replenish them. For Philip, who had merely to defend himself in his own dominions, any cessation of hostilities was almost a victory. A pious princess, Joan of Valois, sister of Philip and mother-in-law of Edward, issued from her convent at Fontenelle, for the purpose of urging the two kings to make peace, or at least to suspend hostilities. "The good dame," says Froissart, "saw there, on the two sides, all the flower and honor of the chivalry of the world; and many ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of France unintentionally aggravated this fatal disposition. She was observed to eclipse her mother-in-law by the superior magnificence of her costume: if Napoleon required more reserve, she resisted, and even wept, till the emperor, either through affection, fatigue, or absence of mind, was induced to give way. It is also asserted that notwithstanding ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... many constitute a "drove," and no official to whom I have spoken on this subject has felt himself competent to fix the exact number. I once put it to a German friend who was starting for the theatre with his wife, his mother-in-law, five children of his own, his sister and her fiance, and two nieces, if he did not think he was running a risk under this by-law. He did not take my suggestion as a joke. He cast an eye over ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... pieces of etiquette to be practised after marriage among both the Kowraregas and Gudangs, a man must carefully avoid speaking to or even mentioning the name of his mother-in-law, and his wife acts similarly with regard to her father-in-law. Thus the mother of a person called Nuki—which means water—is obliged to call water by another name; in like manner as the names of the dead are never mentioned without ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... her room Lillian Cowperwood turned and tossed in the face of this new calamity. For it had suddenly appeared from news from her father and Frank and Anna and her mother-in-law that Frank was about to fail, or would, or had—it was almost impossible to say just how it was. Frank was too busy to explain. The Chicago fire was to blame. There was no mention as yet of the city treasurership. Frank was caught in a trap, and ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... man, who had much of the Arab features, and found the statements confirmed. When a young man takes a liking for a girl of another village, and the parents have no objection to the match, he is obliged to come and live at their village. He has to perform certain services for the mother-in-law, such as keeping her well supplied with firewood; and when he comes into her presence he is obliged to sit with his knees in a bent position, as putting out his feet toward the old lady would give her great offense. If he becomes tired ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Cord (a fragment of whose history I have just sent to a magazine). She is the cook; was in slavery more than forty years; and the self- satisfied wench, the last of the group, is the little baby's American nurse-maid. In the middle distance my mother-in-law's coachman (up on errand) has taken a position unsolicited to help out the picture. No, that is not true. He was waiting there a minute or two before the photographer came. In the extreme background, under the archway, you ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... first time, a relative appeared on the list: "Mama." That was his mother-in-law, who had kept away discreetly, so as not to disturb their newly found happiness, but was glad to come now, when ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... my mother-in-law, my uncle, my two sisters, Maitre Marcel and his daughter Rose; a neighbour called Claude Perrin, who got drunk at the wedding feast; also Giraud, the poet, who composed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... You see, the trouble is that I can't ever seem to get real chummy with a girl but what her mother has to come and camp on my trail and scare me into fits. You haven't the least idea what a catch your son is, Joshua Barnes. Why, a mother-in-law looks to me like something in petticoats that comes creeping up with a catlike tread, carrying in one hand a net and in the other a bale-hook. I can't sit out two dances with a debutante before this nightmare is looking over my shoulder, ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Bailey and stopping before the small white house in which Mrs. Patterson managed by ingenuity to fit in a husband, a mother-in-law, an aged father, seven children of her own, the Conroy orphan, and a constantly changing number of cats. Nobody could have done it but Mrs. Patterson. The house resembled one of those puzzle boxes containing a number of curiously sawn pieces of wood, ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... was gloomy and discontented even when the honeymoon had scarce waned, what was the young man's condition in poverty, when they had no love along with a silent dinner of herbs; when his mother-in-law grudged each morsel which his poor old father ate—when a vulgar, coarse-minded woman—as Mrs. Mackenzie was—pursued with brutal sarcasm one of the tenderest and noblest gentlemen in the world; when an ailing wife, always under some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... stated the consequences to which each party was liable for repudiating the other. These by no means necessarily agree with the Code. Many conditions might be inserted: as that the wife should act as maidservant to her mother-in-law, or to a first wife. The married couple formed a unit as to external responsibility, especially for debt. The man was responsible for debts contracted by his wife, even before her marriage, as well as for his own; but he could use her as a mancipium. Hence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... like them Southern houses, but I don't know. It seems awful plain up the front of it. Cal's all right, though. I guess mebbe he built the house kind of bare that way to please his wife and his mother-in-law. I'll bet if he'd had his own way, there'd be some brackets and fret work on the front to liven it up some. But I'd a done just like him in his place, I would, by Gee! So would you if you seen his wife. Say! but never mind; you wait right here. She'll ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Apuleius who calls it a "fabella anilis." From this point of view it is of extreme interest to the student of the folk-tale as practically the same tale, with the Unseen Bridegroom, the Sight Taboo, the Jealous Mother-in-law, the Tasks, and the Visit to the Nether-World, occur in contemporary folk-tales scattered throughout Europe, from Norway (Dasent, "East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon") to Italy (Gonzenbach No. 15, Pitre No. 18 given in Crane No. 1, King ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... five sisters, and won her triumphantly in spite of the open and contemptuous opposition of one of the five sisters. For John himself was one of seven in his father's home, and whoever married John must go there to live, to be only a daughter in a mother-in-law's house, and take a daughter's share of the brunt of everything. "And nothing to be got except a living, and it was a poor living the McDonald farm gave beside the McIntosh," the McIntosh sisters said. And, moreover: "The saint did not live ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the highest ambition of Bunsen's life, a professorship in a German university, seemed now easy of attainment. We should have liked a few more pages describing the joyous life of the young couple in the heyday of their life; we could have wished that he had not declined the wish of his mother-in-law, to have his bust made by Thorwaldsen, at a time when he must have been a model of manly beauty. But if we know less than we could wish of what Bunsen then was in the eyes of the world, we are allowed an insight into that heavenly ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... something to help support herself and her mother-in-law, so she begged Naomi to let her go into the fields and glean after the reapers—that is, to gather up the barley that was left after they had made up the sheaves—and Naomi told her ...
— Wee Ones' Bible Stories • Anonymous
... the Crow dressed himself in the feathers he had stolen from the Peacock and went away and walked across the field admiring himself. But a Fox that had promised to bring a Peacock to his Mother-in-law saw Hoodie the Crow and stole up beside him and caught him in his mouth and carried him away. And that was the end of Hoodie who was such a clever crow. "This Peacock is very tough," said the Fox's Mother-in-law as she ate Hoodie. ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... so you see how beautiful our intimacy is.' But from Johnson's letter to Mrs Thrale we see looming ahead a crisis. 'He got two and forty guineas in fees while he was here. He has by his wife's persuasion and mine taken down a present for his mother-in-law,'—an error, doubtless, for 'stepmother.' He had entered himself this time at the Temple, and Johnson was his bond. He left to be in time for practice before the General Assembly, finding 'something low and coarse in such employment, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... guests, both for before and after meat, having been asked, old Mrs. Gashleigh, Rosa's mother—(and, by consequence, Fitzroy's DEAR mother-in-law, though I promise you that "dear" is particularly sarcastic)—Mrs. Gashleigh of course was sent for, and came with Miss Eliza Gashleigh, who plays on the guitar, and Emily, who limps a little, but plays sweetly on the concertina. They live ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Gilbert's fingers around the pistol butt when I heard a cry outside, jumped to the door, shut and bolted it just as my mother-in-law ran in across the lawns. I gathered that she'd been there earlier to get those three leaves out of the diary that you were so interested in, Boyne; had just read them and come back to have it out with old Tom. She hung around for five minutes, I should say, beating on the ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... utterly miscarried, and Mme. d'Albany have been condemned to a life of much worse agony, had not provision been made against the Pretender's certain efforts to get his wife back. Mme. d'Albany may have remembered how her mother-in-law Clementina Sobieska, although protected by the Pope, had been eventually got out of the convent whither she had escaped, and had been restored to her husband the Pretender James; she was probably aware, also, how Charles Edward had stormed at the French Government ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... their veracity to be above question; I had Doctor Day's dying words to the same effect. And he mentioned the existing betrothal as the very reason why Clara should remain here in the care of her future mother-in-law." ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... warmer than ever, went on to say: "By Jove! there's that Monsieur Salmon, formerly an expert at the Museum in Paris; he is down here on a visit to his mother-in-law. I'll go and see him this very evening with the Abbe Birotteau and ask him to look at those pictures and estimate their value. From there I'll take the abbe to ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... of a week or two Jenny and her mother went out to their old home, where every thing seemed just as they had left it the autumn before. The furniture was untouched, and in the front parlor stood Rose's piano and Jenny's guitar, which had been forwarded from Boston. Mr. Lincoln urged his mother-in-law to accompany them, but she shook her head, saying, "the old bees never left their hives," and she ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... believe what I told him of his niece, and assured me I might keep her with me as long as I wished, if the Countess, her mother-in-law, would consent. The first thing we did together was that I took her to see her children. The boy was at a farm not very far off; he was seven months old, and a fine healthy infant, though not as clean as I could have wished; but ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on an advantageous settlement (in Ireland) by the trustees—my life threatened last month (they put about a paper here to excite an attempt at my assassination, on account of politics, and a notion which the priests disseminated that I was in a league against the Germans,)—and, finally, my mother-in-law recovered last fortnight, and my play was damned last week! These are like 'the eight-and-twenty misfortunes of Harlequin.' But they must be borne. If I give in, it shall be after keeping up a spirit ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... two-o'clock dinner with Morgiana; she drove with her in the pony-carriage round the Park; but she never stopped later than six. Had she not to go to the play at seven? And, besides, the Captain might come home with some of his great friends, and he always swore and grumbled much if he found his mother-in-law on the premises. As for Morgiana, she was one of those women who encourage despotism in husbands. What the husband says must be right, because he says it; what he orders must be obeyed tremblingly. Mrs. Walker gave up her entire reason to her lord. Why was it? Before ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indescribable, the feeling he had for his little daughter Dorothy. (Violet, since they had to call the Baby something, had called it Dorothy.) Meanwhile, he hid his feeling. He maintained a perverse, a dubious, a critical silence while his mother and his mother-in-law and his Aunt Randall and the nurse overflowed in praise which, if the Baby had understood them, must ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... jumbled up together just anyhow, and how any man who lived in the middle could get home without climbing over half the other houses in the place I could not make out. They were the sort of villages where a man's mother-in-law, coming to pay him a visit, might wander around all day, hearing him, and even now and then seeing him, yet never being able to get at him in consequence of ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... which turns on a concealed and clandestine marriage, produced one of the happiest parodies in Agnes de Chaillot. In the parody, the cause of the mysterious obstinacy of Pierrot the son, in persisting to refuse the hand of the daughter of his mother-in-law, Madame la Baillive, is thus discovered by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments, disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,—which Lady Byron denies,—and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female dependant, who is the subject of the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... aspect) the boy has a pernicious turn for gaming: in one afternoon he lost, at billiards, such a sum as gives me horror to think of it." "Fifty sols in one afternoon," (cried the sister). "Fifty sols! (exclaimed the mother-in-law, with marks of astonishment) that's too much—that's too much!—he's to blame— he's to blame! but youth, you know, Mons. L—y—ah! vive la jeunesse!"—"et l'amour!" cried the father, wiping his eyes, squeezing her hand, and looking tenderly upon ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... two stable-men had a duel with revolvers, and each killed the other; several men were shot for being too attentive to young women residing in the same hotels; an Italian, whose wife had left him and gone to her mother, went to the house and killed her, her sister, her sister's husband, his mother-in-law, two children, and finally himself; the "Gopher Gang" started a riot at a "benefit" dance given to a widow and killed a man, after which they fled to the woods and fired from cover upon the police until eighteen were overpowered and arrested; a young girl and her fiance, sitting in the parlor, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... could ill have spared the humours of Carter's man Jackson (Mr. WILL WEST), whose wide experience in matrimony, resulting in an attitude alternately timorous and prehensile towards female society in the servants' hall, was the source of many poignant generalisations. Miss EDITH EVANS, as a mother-in-law manquee, showed a touch of real artistry; and Mr. GEORGE CARR had no difficulty in getting fun out of the part of a Japanese house-boy, almost the only novelty which we owed to the American ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... she confessed to some of her friends, quite terrified at the prospect, especially as concerned the elder Mr. Stevenson, whose portrait represented a serious Scotchman with a stern, almost forbidding face, firm mouth, and long upper lip. Her fear of her mother-in-law was less, for from her she had had many affectionate and reassuring letters. How utterly groundless her apprehensions were in this matter we ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... great difficulty in imagining the steps by which William Garrett, from being an assistant in a great library, attained to his present position of prospective owner of Bretfield Manor, now in the occupation of his mother-in-law, Mrs Mary Simpson. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... must always wear their jewellery, even when travelling. Arms, wrists, neck and ankles, bare of jewels, are a sign of widowhood or dire poverty. Out young heroine was accordingly adorned with jewels and she was also richly attired. Was she not the daughter of a wealthy man and going to visit her mother-in-law? So her mother had lovingly dressed her in an exquisite gold-embroidered Benares silk saree of finest texture and superb workmanship, and the jewellery, which adorned her graceful arms, neck and ankles, was in keeping with the richness ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... disposed to think eleven too generous a computation, and there are less weary moments in which the inexhaustible supply of situations still suggests fresh possibilities of laughter. Granted that the ever fertile mother-in-law jest and the one about the talkative barber were venerable in the days of Plutarch; there are others more securely and more deservedly rooted in public esteem which are, by comparison, new. Christianity, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... sisters. The same nourishing milk flowed from both their fruitful bosoms. And gleams of light penetrated their mourning: they began to laugh when they saw those little cherubs laugh, and nothing could have been gayer than the sight of that mother-in-law and that daughter-in-law side by side, almost mingling, having but one cradle between them, amid an unceasing ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... abroach.[4] Then she fell on her face, and to the ground She bow'd herself, and said, Why have I found Such favour in thine eyes; that thou, to me Who am a stranger, should so courteous be? And Boaz said, it hath been fully shewn To me, what to thy mother-in-law thou'st done, Since of thine husband thou hast been bereft: How thou thy father and thy mother left, And thine own native land; to come unto A land which thou before didst never know: The Lord, the God ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... taking her off her mother's shoulders and liberating her from a hopeless situation. Certainly she would not have grudged her happiness to one of her sisters; if it could be called happiness to be subject to a suspicious mother-in-law and the nurse of a valetudinarian. But she tried to think it happiness. And, after all, there was the widow's house, to which one could slip over to laugh or to weep one's fill, as the mood of the hour dictated. Either would have ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... the manner in which he would confound him. They went accordingly, and the younger De Jarnac, entering a room where the Dauphin, La Chataigneraie, and several courtiers were present, exclaimed aloud, "That whoever had asserted, that he maintained a criminal connexion with his mother-in-law, was a liar and a coward!" Every eye was turned to the Dauphin and La Chataigneraie, when the latter stood forward, and asserted, that De Jarnac had himself avowed that such was the fact, and he would extort from his lips another confession of it. A case like this could not be met or rebutted by ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... as for Mrs. Gilpin, she's a dear, although she's always on pleasure bent; at all events, she's not of a frugal mind; and she's so pretty and dresses so well—and what a foot!—and she's got such easy manners, too; she reminds me of dear Lady Archibald! that's a mother-in-law I shall get on with.... I wish she didn't make such a fuss about living over the shop; I call that being above one's business ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Slawson," she observed. "Martha Slawson. I go out by the day. Laundry-work, housecleaning, general chores. I got a husband an' four children, to say nothing of a mother-in-law who lives with us, an' keeps an eye on things while me an' Sammy (that's Mr. Slawson) is out workin', an' lucky if it's an eye itself, for it's not a hand, I can tell you that. What's your name, if I may make ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... would often have seen her sad and downcast. By not approaching the throne which, at a distance, appears like a magic seat, but, to use the Emperor's expression, is in fact only an armchair covered with velvet, Napoleon's mother-in-law was spared the sight of much misery, and she died, as she had lived, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... may despise me," she wrote, "I am indebted to you for the rise in life that I have always desired. You may refuse to see me—but you can't prevent my being the mother-in-law of a gentleman." ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... perceive the meaning of the rich upholsterer's speech. Braschon made a dozen useless attempts to get invitations for himself, his wife, daughter, mother-in-law, and aunt. He called the perfumer Monsieur le chevalier to the door-way, and ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... we unloaded. The men who had gone without their wives simply got off their horses and went into the tepee. The women rushed out to get the meat. Then the women took the horse with the meat on it to their father-in-law. Then the mother-in-law hurried to get the meal, taking the ribs of the buffalo, setting them up against the fire to roast. After the meat was cooked it was cut in slices and placed in a wooden bowl, and the mother-in-law took the meat over to ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... her arm, and so many glasses, besides two plates of cake, that it seemed as if she had seven hands. Every finger-joint appeared to be a hand; but she put everything so gently and noiselessly on the table, on which her mother-in-law had spread a white cloth, that everybody looked at her in wonder. Then, silently and without any signs of trepidation, she filled all the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Having hastily summoned Servius, after she had shown him her husband almost at his last gasp, holding his right hand, she entreated him not to suffer the death of his father-in-law to pass unavenged, nor to allow his mother-in-law to be an object of scorn to their enemies. "Servius," said she, "if you are a man, the kingdom belongs to you, not to those, who, by the hands of others, have perpetrated a most shameful deed. Rouse yourself, and follow the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... him Bertram's letter to his wife; it would have made him wish to kill the truant Count; but she went back to Rousillon and handed her mother-in-law the second letter. It was short and bitter. "I have run away," it said. "If the world be broad enough, I will be ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... as her long-missing daughter (invented). Both the young Lord and the young person, too much in love perhaps to be critical, accept the situation; but you haven't quite got Mrs. Badger if you think she's the sort of person one would precisely jump at for a mother-in-law. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... grace's tender heart to exalt her prostrate house once more and bring it into consideration again, and she would therefore gladly see her brother's daughter some day a reigning Princess. Besides, the future Electress would then owe her mother-in-law a lifelong debt of gratitude, and the Dowager Electress might exert great influence and share in the government of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... stalls, counting their beads, smoking their narghilahs, waiting indifferently for Allah's bounties. And the hawkers shuffle along crying their wares in beautiful poetic illusions,—the flower-seller singing, "Reconcile your mother-in-law! Perfume your spirit! Buy a jasmine for your soul!" the seller of loaves, his tray on his head, his arms swinging to a measured step, intoning in pious thankfulness, "O thou Eternal, O thou Bountiful!" The sakka of licorice-juice, clicking ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... her silks all the visible room in his own favorite settle corner, sat the one woman on earth it most behooved him to be civil to,—the future mother-in-law of his only child. That Moya was a willing, nay, a reckless hostage, did not lessen her ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... been cast on the honor of Constance as a wife and as a woman. The old historians, who have treated in a very unceremonious style the levities of her great-grandmother Matilda, her grandmother Bertha, her godmother Constance, and her mother-in-law Elinor, treat the name and memory of our Lady Constance ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... and up the stairs, so eagerly did her heart cry out for a glimpse of this little being who was flesh of her flesh. Grace, a little pale but more beautiful than ever, met them at the door. Her arms went about Emma's neck. Then she stood her handsome mother-in-law off and ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... But the next moment she smiled. "I can tell you a story," she said, "about a young bride whose husband was very fascinating to women. The young wife, with suspicions of his devotion to another lady, went in tears to her mother-in-law. But the old lady asked her, 'Is not Pietro an admirable husband? And is he not a most devoted and attentive lover as well?' And the bride sobbed, 'Oh, yes, that is the worst of it—it is almost impossible to believe in his faithlessness, he is so adorable.' And her mother-in-law answered: 'Then, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... and Therese was a happy one. She could neither read nor write, nor did she care to. Yet she had an idolatrous regard for her liege, and every evening he read aloud to her and to his mother-in-law what he had written during the day. At every pause in the reading, the old lady, without understanding a word of it, would interject, "This is very fine!" And Therese would skilfully transform a yawn into a sigh of delight, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... have come to send peace on the earth. I have not come to send peace, but a sword. [10:35]I have come to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a bride against her mother-in-law; [10:36]and a man's enemies shall be those of his own house. [10:37]He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; [10:38]and he that does ...
— The New Testament • Various
... wetted bow, wade across, drop a stone on the far side, and then drink. If he cuts his nails, he must throw the parings into a thicket. If he drink from a stream, and also cross it, he must eject a mouthful of water back into the stream. He must be particularly careful not to look his mother-in-law in the face. Hundreds of omens by the manner of their happening may modify actions, as, on what side of the road a woodpecker calls, or in which direction a hyena or jackal crosses the path, how the ground hornbill flies ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... saddler and always smelled of tan and leather. He did not like talking, was slow and immovable, and used to hum "U-lu-lu-lu," sitting on the bank or in the doorway of the mill. Sometimes his wife and mother-in-law used to come from Kurilovka to see him; they were both fair, languid, soft, and they used to bow to him humbly and call him Stiepan Petrovich. And he would not answer their greeting with a word or a sign, but would turn where he sat on the bank and hum quietly: "U-lu-lu-lu." ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... mission, such as a chapel, a missionary residence, an hospital, a fort, houses for the new converts, together with the habitations for the French. The D'Auteuil family had their country seat on the hill back of Pointe a Puiseaux; and the venerable Madame de Monceau, the mother-in-law of the Attorney-General Ruette D'Auteuil, was in the habit of residing there from time to time, in a house she ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... dearest wish of my poor father and of Anita's that the ancient friendship between the families should be cemented by a marriage between Anita and me. For me Senora Sepulvida would be a marvelous mother-in-law, because she's my kind of people and we understand each other. Really, I feel tremendously complimented because, even before the oil strike saved the family from financial ruin, Anita did not lack opportunities for many a more ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the funeral-tent of Queen Isi em Kheb, contemporary of the wise Solomon, mother-in-law of the Shishak who besieged Jerusalem and "carried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had made." ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... two," said the mother-in-law. "And not clear either. It's as much as I can do to ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... is a sad thing, to think that a man with what you call a fund of anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and pleasant. What right have I to tell my "Grouse in the gun-room" over and over in the presence of my wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters, old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and after talking of Mrs. Bradshaw as though she were already his mother-in-law, produced the money. His instructions as to economy lasted almost up to the moment when he stood with Bella outside the shop on the following evening and watched the couple ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of the creditors harassed me. I preferred having one creditor to deal with, who had no objection to grant me time. His debt has fallen due; and I have no money to pay it. Choose between paying it yourself, and the disgrace of letting your son's mother-in-law be publicly arrested in Frankfort ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... all together, my mother-in-law, at my entreaty, continuing in the house, for she was too kind a mother to be parted with; my husband likewise continued the same as at first, and I thought myself the happiest creature alive, when an odd and surprising event put an end to all that felicity in a moment, and rendered my condition ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... delightful letter—very affecting, indeed!" quoth Squeers. "It was affecting in one sense!" observed the Reader; "for Graymarsh's maternal aunt was strongly supposed by her more intimate friends to be his maternal parent!" Perhaps the epistle from Mobbs's mother-in-law was the best of all, however—the old lady who "took to her bed on hearing that he wouldn't eat fat;" and who "wishes to know by an early post where he expects to go to, if he quarrels with his vittles?" adding, "This was told ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Royalists were very badly armed. {190} There are several memorial tablets on the walls. In the floor of the south aisle, towards the east end, is the tombstone of Sarah Sellwood, wife of Henry Sellwood, Esq., and mother-in-law of Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate. She died Sept. 30th, 1816. The roof is of Spanish chestnut, which was formerly completely hidden by a flat plaster ceiling. On the north wall of the chancel, over the north-east door, is a tablet to the memory of Sir Ingram Hopton, who, after unhorsing Cromwell, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... broken the ice at last; from that moment he was cordiality itself, until—I will not say, until he had called her his own—a few little misunderstandings!—not with his countess. You see, a resident aunt is translated mother-in-law by husbands; though I spare them pretty frequently; I go to friends, they travel. Here in London she must have a duenna. The marriage at Madrid, at the Embassy:—well, perhaps it was a step for us, for commoners, though we rank with the independent. Has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not see, but two aged women dressed like poor peasants received us in the kitchen, a dingy, unswept, uninviting place, as are most farm-house kitchens in France. These old ladies were respectively mother-in-law and aunt of the farmer, whose wife, the real mistress of the house, soon came in. This tall, stout, florid, brawny-armed woman was evidently what French folks call une maitresse femme, a first-rate housewife and manager; a somewhat awe-inspiring person she looked as she stood before us, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Remember when What's-his-name, her husband, died? Did she go back to her home town? No, she didn't. She'd lived there all her life, and she knew better. She said to Naomi, her mother-in-law, 'Whither thou goest I will go.' And she went. And when they got to Bethlehem, Ruth looked around, knowingly, until she saw Boaz, the catch of the town. So she went to work in his fields, gleaning, and she gleaned away, trying to look just as girlish, and dreamy, and unconscious, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Then you must quickly make the fire, skilfully removing the ashes, without sprinkling them upon the floor. Then quickly go to the stable, clean the stable, take food to the cattle, feed all the animals on the farm. For already the cow of your mother-in-law will be lowing for food; the horse of your father-in-law will be whinnying; the milch cow of your sister-in-law will be straining at her tether; the calf of your brother-in-law will be bleating; for all will be waiting for her whose duty ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... bower and pelican-skin couch he shares, "not as husband, but as continent companion," for a year. If all goes well, he is then permanently received as "consort-guest," and his children are added to the clan of his mother-in-law.[99] With few exceptions, descent was formerly reckoned in Australia in the female line, and the usage survives in some regions. Howitt, in a letter to Professor Tylor, reports of the tribes near ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... fascinated by the splendor of aristocratic ideas, his intoxication, which began on the brig, increased after he reached Paris, and he finally determined to take the course and reach the high position which the selfish hopes of his would-be mother-in-law pointed out to him. His cousin counted for no more than a speck in this brilliant perspective; but he went to see Annette. True woman of the world, Annette advised her old friend to make the marriage, and promised him her support in all his ambitious projects. In her heart she was enchanted ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... this spasm of gayety when Stephen insisted that Margaret should go to a Valentine's ball at the Astor House, to be given to the ladies by a club of bachelors. He was going to take Dolly. Mrs. Bond would be there, and Dolly came up to coax her prospective mother-in-law. "Margaret had not gone into any society and was only a school-girl, altogether too young to have her head filled with such nonsense," with many more reasons and conjunctions. Dolly was so sweet and persuasive, and said the simplest white gown would do, young girls really didn't ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... wearing of ordinary colors. What is called complimentary mourning, put on at the death of a relative by marriage, consists of the wearing of black for a period of from six weeks to a year, depending on the closeness of the personal relationship. For instance, in the case of the death of a mother-in-law residing in a distant city, it would only be necessary for a woman to wear black for a few weeks following the funeral. If, on the other hand, she resides in the same place and is a great deal in the company of her husband's family, it would show more tact and affection on her part ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... had the pleasure of knowing my mother-in-law, Mrs. Maria Hester Monroe Gouverneur, as she died some years before my marriage, but I learned to revere her through her son, whose tender regard for her was one of the absorbing affections of his life and changed ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... unjust proceeding failed in the attainment of its object. As soon as Salcedo's death-doom was pronounced, his mother-in-law, accompanied by a number of relations and friends, repaired to the mine, flooded it with water, destroyed the works, and closed up the entrance so effectually that it was impossible to trace it out. They then dispersed; but some of them, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... less remarkable atrocities, when his power had gone beyond the bounds of moderate crimes, was conspicuous the horrible and sudden death of a certain noble citizen of Alexandria, named Clematius. His mother-in-law, having conceived a passion for him, could not prevail on him to gratify it; and in consequence, as was reported, she, having obtained an introduction by a secret door into the palace, won over the queen by the present of a costly necklace, and procured a fatal warrant to be sent to Honoratus, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... different pieces of skin are bright pink, deep golden yellow, pale primrose, bluish green, and pale blue. This patchwork served as the canopy or pall of an Egyptian queen about the year 960 B. C. She was the mother-in-law of Shishak, who besieged and captured Jerusalem shortly after the death of Solomon. On its upper border this interesting specimen has repeated scarabs, cartouches with inscriptions, discs, and serpents. The lower border has a central device of radiating lotus ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster |
