"Wifely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... PLAPPER!—or rather of Mrs. PLAPPER, as her husband is out. She has taken me in! Charming rooms—not actually facing the sea, but with capital view of it round corner from bow-window. PLAPPER is an optician—wonder whether it is weak eyes, or wifely duty, that makes Mrs. P. wear blue spectacles? Everything arranged—terms most reasonable—now to recover luggage. Stop; better ask address—or I might never be able to find my optician again—like Mrs. Barrett Browning and her lost Bower! "You've only ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... putting it in the mouth of the God of Love himself, it is, to be sure, difficult to recognise any very deeply penitent spirit. He mildly wards off the reproach, sheltering himself behind his defender, the "lady in green," who afterwards proves to be herself that type of womanly and wifely fidelity unto death, the true and brave Alcestis. And even in the body of the poem one is struck by a certain perfunctoriness, not to say flippancy, in the way in which its moral is reproduced. The wrathful invective ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... neither prevented her being shrewd, nor knowing her James, after all, to be human. Remembrance of Theresa, heading the Deadham procession during the inspection of Harchester Cathedral, sandwiched in between him and the Dean, still rankled in her wifely bosom. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... at night without a word. The old man smiled almost amiably to see him go; and the old woman, who had been in a state of nervous trepidation all day, glanced at her husband with a look in which wifely devotion and admiration were almost ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... attributed to some goddess that we can only suppose that she rose to eminence through local conditions unknown to us. The most interesting point about her is that she came to be the representative of the respectable Greek matron, jealous of her wifely rights, holding herself aloof from love affairs, a home person, entitled to respect for the decency of her life, but without great ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... with it all the contented young women in their late twenties and early thirties, who may not have been feeling rebellious at all. And the wives of forty-five also, to compete all over again for their own husbands. For "poaching" on the wifely preserves has become the favorite ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... "Oh, do your wifely duty, whatever it is," he said.... "It was a mistake, the whole thing. You've done more than your duty, child, but—oh, you'd ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... old Peter shuffled off to water the stock, Miss Prescott fell to continuing her fancy work which the good lady had brought with her from the Fast. An odd picture she made, sitting there in that dreary grove in the desert, with her New England suggestion of primness and house-wifely qualities showing in striking contrast to the strange setting of the ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... she had done no wrong! To have allowed Arthur to go on binding his life ever more and more closely to hers, would have been a crime. What could she give him, that such a nature most deeply needed? Home, wifely love, and children—it was to these dear enwrapping powers she had committed him in what she had done. She had feared for herself indeed. But is it a sin to fear sin?—the declension of one's own best will, the staining of one's ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Ministers and ex-M.P.'s, A Knight, a Baronet, a Brigadier? Is it not wonderful to be with these, To watch, and after in the wifely ear Whisper, "This morning I exchanged some words With old Sir Somebody, who thought of Tanks; I saw the Chairman of the Board of Birds; I said, 'How are you?' and he ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... the fragrant flowers, the music sweet as lover's sighs and the sapphire sea, the sunset sky and Zephyrus' musky wing are dreams; the blistered lips and poor bruised bosom, the womanly pride humbled in the dust and wifely honor wounded unto death—these alone are real! With an involuntary cry of rage and shame, a cry that is half a prayer and half a curse—a cry that rings and reverberates through the great sleepy house like a maniac's shriek heard at ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ran, for she had no power just then to speak in a wifely manner. It was not easy to respect a man in a ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her; if you had been alone and moderately circumstanced, she would have continued being so lovable that after ten years your face flushes with painful memory as you speak of it. I've always thought her abandoned as to wifely and motherly instinct. What you say proves she was a lovable girl, ruined by society, through the medium of her mother ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... previous opinions so far as to range himself completely on the Contessina's side, but the certificates of two doctors whom she had recently seen had enabled him to conclude that her own declarations were accurate. And gliding over the question of wifely obedience, on which he had previously laid stress, he had skilfully set forth the reasons which made a dissolution of the marriage desirable. No hope of reconciliation could be entertained, so it was certain that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that in a state of society like the one mentioned, women should long to show themselves possessed of poetic gifts as well as men. It must not be supposed that the wife of a great baron occupied an easy position, however, and had many leisure hours, as her wifely duties took no little time and energy, and it was her place to hold in check the rude speech and manners of the warlike nobles who thronged the castle halls, as well as to put some limit to the bold words ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... you doing here so early?" demanded Nora, from the porch swing. "You can't have your dinner yet. It's only four o'clock. When you're invited to six o'clock dinner you mustn't arrive two hours beforehand. Didn't you know that?" This wifely counsel was accompanied by a teasing smile that belied ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... lover circumspect and eager, or at least thought he was, those around the pair were soon well informed; that is, with the exception of the most interested—O'Iwa and Kwaiba. The marked neglect which now ensued O'Iwa took in wifely fashion; and attributing it to some passing attraction of Shinjuku Nakacho[u], she did not take it to heart as she would have done if a concubine had been at issue. As for Kwaiba, the usually astute and prying ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... dead king, from the golden urn on the very summit of the altar, holding his court with the same pomp and parade as during his life. A more affecting ceremony is the coming at noon and eve of the crowds of beautiful women, not yet absolved from their wifely vows, to converse with their loved and lamented lord, and the depositing of letters and petitions in the great golden basket at the foot of the mausoleum, with the confident expectation that these loving missives will reach the deceased and be answered by him. These royal catafalques are costly and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... said, had no conception of wifely duties and affection. He had a great deal to say on the subject of wifely duty. It was part of her duty as a wife to be entirely satisfied with his society, and to be completely happy in the pleasure it afforded ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her woe Until her husband and her foe Have left the lodge and gone from sight. Then with a tearless eye and bright, She gazes madly round the place Where every comfort bears the trace Of wifely labor wrought with pain, Of woman's love that lives in vain. Here moccasins lie with bead-work gay; Here on the wall the breezes sway The music-breathing flute, Whose lips are dry and mute, While she who once inspired its ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... of her; he had also seen her flushed cheeks at the theatre, and Emmy had grown in his eyes suddenly younger. He could not have imagined her so cordial, so youthful, so interested in everything that met her gaze. Finally, he found her quieter, more amenable, more truly wifely than her sister. It was an important point in Alf's eyes. You had to take into account—if you were a man of common sense—relative circumstances. Devil was all very well in courtship; but mischief in a girl became contrariness ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... skill and wifely care He soon recovered quite; Now there's no soldier anywhere Like Sir John ...
— The Animals' Rebellion • Clifton Bingham
... than ever, and appeared to be in imminent peril of extending his torn mouth into the region of his ear. Diane listened to the horrible suggestion without misgiving, merely remarking in true wifely fashion— ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... I was you. You ain't well. Ef you can't make no mo' headway'n that on yo' favorite pie in fo' hours, you're shorely goin' to be took sick." She took her handkerchief and wiped his forehead. And then she added, with a sweet, wifely tenderness: "To prove to you thet you ain't well, honey, yo' glasses are on yo' nose right now. ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... generous, simple and astute at the same time; her gayety was gentle, her wit without malice. Though well-informed, she made no parade of her acquirements, fearing to be accused of pedantry. Her wifely devotion had won the Emperor's affection, and her unfailing gentleness had attracted all his friends. In this estimate I am confirmed by my recollections, and I am not inspired by any partiality, by what has happened, or by any present interest. It would be a mistake to suppose that her ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... affairs, only my intuition guided me at that moment. It was not until much later that I found out that Mrs. Morton never disputed her husband's will, even in trifles; that he ordered the plan of her life as well as his own; that her passionate love for her children was restrained in order that her wifely and social duties should be carried out; that she was so perfectly obedient to him, not from fear, but from an excess of womanly devotion, that she seldom even contested an opinion. My fate was very nearly sealed at that ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... returned Mrs. Bradley, indifferently, and with more than even conventionally polite wifely deprecation; "I wish he ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... her foolish lord, and deck a house of mourning with flowers, and make a parade of happiness in a countenance wan with secret torture. And with this sense of responsibility for the honor of both, with the magnificent immolation of self, the young Marquise unconsciously acquired a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which became her safeguard ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... at an unnatural pitch, all day long she exerted herself, as she had not done for weeks and months, to entertain and keep her husband at her side, and all day long her pretty wifely triumph was bright and unbroken. The very servants took a delight in ministering to it, and Madame was not missed in a single item of the household routine. But about midnight there was a great and sudden change. Bells were frantically rung, lights flew about the house, and there was saddling ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... fact. She thought him sympathetic—the first expressively sympathetic person she had ever met. She was so innocent that she could not understand the fury of the German woman. For, as you may imagine, the wifely penetration was not to be deceived for any great length of time—the more so that the wife was older than the husband. The man with the peculiar cowardice of respectability never said a word in Flora's defence. He stood by and heard her reviled in the most abusive terms, only nodding ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... weaker and more faint, as her niece pointed out the line for her to pursue: the path of wifely duty. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... the urge of economic necessity, or through the religious ideal of wifely submission and fidelity to their "Lord and Master" have been compelled to develop a craftiness and an artificial "modesty" which, in most cases, passes for femininity, and deceives, as it is intended to ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... up with genial smiles, A heart to love through trials great, With winning ways, with pleasant wiles, To cheer me in life's troublous state. I pictured her both fair and neat, With voice so soft, with wifely skill, To make my home a snug retreat From many kinds of mortal ill. Such hast thou been, My own heart's queen, As good a wife ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... one face from out the thousands, (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely, Were she but the Aethiopian bondslave,) He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty water Meant to save his own life in the desert; Ready in the desert to deliver (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) Hoard and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... seemed to begin by bracing herself to stand against him, now seemed to have braced herself to stand with him—perhaps a more commendable wifely attitude. I mean that the discipline incident to a life of success which was not without its rigors had become to her almost a second nature. The order of the day was cooeperation, team-work; in the grand advance she was no straggler, no malingerer. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Florestan, is closer than that of the Orphic myth, for though the alloy only serves to heighten the sheen of Eurydice's virtue, there is yet a grossness in the story of Aristaeus's unlicensed passion which led to her death, that strongly differentiates it from the modern tale of wifely love and devotion. Beethoven was no ascetic, but he was as sincere and severe a moralist in life as he was in art. In that most melancholy of human documents, written at Heiligenstadt in October, 1802, commonly known as his ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... eligible and ineligible, was busy angling for her darling, she had left his matrimonial future largely to his father. Frequently her conscience smote her for her neglect of old Hector, but she smoothed it by promising herself to devote more time to him, more study to his masculine needs for wifely devotion, as soon as Elizabeth ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... with wifely and submissive tact made the best of things; and that evening she began to decorate the hall, dining-room, and drawing-room with holly and mistletoe. Before the pair retired to rest, the true Christmas feeling, slightly tinged with a tender melancholy, permeated the house, and the servants ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... him. His father! till then he had been so proud of that relationship! Mrs. Haughton had not been happy with her captain; his confirmed habits of wild dissipation had embittered her union, and at last worn away her wifely affections. But she had tended and nursed him in his last illness as the lover of her youth; and though occasionally she hinted at his faults, she ever spoke of him as the ornament of all society,—poor, it is true, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... meal; But ope to him all honorable paths Where he may win distinction; give to him Fair, pressed-down measures of life's sweetest joys. Pass her, O maiden, with a pure, proud face, If she puts out a poor, polluted palm; But lay thy hand in his on bridal day, And swear to cling to him with wifely love And tender reverence. Trust him who led A sister woman ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... a wifely ideal, And find that my tastes are so far from concise That, to marry completely, no fewer ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... judge of strong Jacobite leanings, was known by his Lady to be concerned in a plot, along with Lovat, Mar, and others, to bring back the Pretender. This was in the year 1730. Stung in her wifely pride by her husband's ill-treatment and licentiousness, she openly threatened to expose his treason. To prevent such exposure, Grange caused his wife to be kidnapped and clandestinely conveyed first to a small island off North Uist, and subsequently to St. Kilda. In the latter island, no ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... monuments above fifty feet high in England are to the honor of men who have defeated other men "with great slaughter." The only exceptions to this rule are the Albert Memorial—which is a tribute of wifely affection rather than a public testimonial, so therefore need not be considered here—and a monument to a worthy brewer who died and left three hundred thousand pounds to charity. I mentioned this fact to my friend, but he unhorsed me by declaring ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... down even as heavily as they listed. There were times when I loathed myself. What had I to do? Nought but to endure terror and scorn and bring forth daughters into the world. My daughters! God forgive me if I have had no mother's heart towards them. My wifely duties were as serfdom to me; how then could I love my daughters? Oh, how different with my son! He was the child of my very soul. He was the one thing that brought to mind the time when I was a woman and nought but a woman—and ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... away: his sword could no longer protect him. How his lips thirsted for the wine-cup, for one mad night, and then . . . oblivion! An outcast! What would be his end? O the long years! For him there should be no wifely lips to kiss away the penciled lines of care; the happy voices of children would never make music in his ears. He was ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Testament. They are all summed up in the eloquent tribute to motherhood in the words of King Lemuel in the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It must be remembered, however, that such ideals did not belong to the Jews alone, that Plutarch shows many pictures of maternal fidelity and wifely devotion, that Greek and Roman history have their ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... said that every man fell in love with her, and she, on her part, did not restrain her passion. There was no one to advise, no one to check, no one to help her to keep in the path of wifely fidelity. Reports of liaisons were made to the Duke by his Chamberlain from time to time, but these were couched in words which concealed his own part therein. He and the Duchess were accustomed to be much alone together. He was a musician and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... not too old to feel charmed and touched by the compliment. And he was not a thoughtless or churlish husband; he knew how to repay such a wifely compliment, and it was a pleasant sight to see the aged companions standing hand in hand before the handsome suits which Dolores had spread out for ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... of the Menagier's book is concerned, however, not with the theoretical niceties of wifely submission, but with his creature comforts. His instructions as to how to make a husband comfortable positively palpitate with life; and at the same time there is something indescribably homely and touching about them; ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... were reminded of the way in which, in our frequent absence from home and children, wifely letters have cheered and interested us, depicting with motherly tenderness the gifts the children had brought her on her birthday, or other occasion, with a fulness of detail that showed alike the pleasure of the writer and her consciousness ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... Rymer was 'in the City'; Mrs. Rymer, who had two little girls, lived only for domestic peace—she had been in better circumstances, but did not repine, and forgot all worldly ambition in the happy discharge of her wifely and maternal duties. 'A charming family!' was Miss Shepperson's mental comment when, at their invitation, she had called one Sunday afternoon soon after they were settled in the house; and, on the way home to her lodgings, she sighed ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... aback, gained time for a reply by pouring Sansome another drink, "He's more sense left than I thought," he said to himself; and aloud: "All you want is to get her out to Jake's. She'll go simply as a matter of wifely duty, and all that. Don't worry. Once she's there, it's your affair; and unless I mistake my man, I believe you'll know how to manage the situation"—he winked slyly—"she's really mad about you, but, like most women, she's hemmed in by convention. Boldly ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... help she had enjoyed, she might have been driven to a like means of getting money if her child had been in want. Another thing that urged her against Perigal was that she constantly noticed how negligently many of the married women of her acquaintance interpreted their wifely duties, and, in most cases, to husbands who had dowered their mates with affection and worldly goods. She reflected that, by all the laws of justice, Perigal should have appreciated to the full the treasure of love and passion ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... their hopes and joys on her, and, making her supply the place at once of son and daughter, they bred her up in all the refinements and accomplishments in which the free citizens of Germany took the lead in the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century. To aid her aunt in all house-wifely arts, to prepare dainty food and varied liquors, and to spin, weave, and broider, was only a part of Christina's training; her uncle likewise set great store by her sweet Italian voice, and caused her to be carefully taught to sing and play ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she should feel a little wifely jealousy at having his sister forced in, even to their closest confidence; her face was overclouded for an instant, but she subdued the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... un-Quaker strain in her pedigree. On her marriage she had with alacrity transferred her allegiance from no-ceremony Quakerism to liturgical Episcopalianism, the religion of her husband. She gave herself credit for having in this made some sacrifice to wifely duty, though her husband would have been willing to join the orthodox Friends with her, for the simplicity and stillness of the Quakers consorted well with his constitution. Mrs. Frankland did not relinquish certain notions derived from the Friends concerning the liberty ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... contact was the secret of the match. Had Mrs. Branning been living in her own poorly-furnished house, Mr. Kinloch would hardly have thought of going to seek her. But as mistress of his establishment she had an opportunity to display her house-wifely qualities, as well as to practise those nameless arts by which almost any clever woman knows how ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... wifely triumph he inspired, Allayed no husband's fear; Intruder bare, whom none desired, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... one of my wifely duties: not to keep my husband waiting." They went out, and Pottinger, standing by the horses, touched his hat and grew red with joy at ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... go, Paranis, bear to him My morning and my wifely greeting; say I rested well this night; that thou hast left Me overjoyed and happy that the day Is fair. Now haste thee, boy, for soon The Gaelic barons through the gates shall ride Coming to pay their homage to King ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... bounty I'm fairest in the county (For so I've heard it said, Though I don't vouch for this), Her promised pounds may move Some honest man to see My virtues and my beauties; Perhaps the rising grazier, Or temperance publican, May claim my wifely duties. Meanwhile I wait their leisure And grace-bestowing pleasure, I wait the happy man; But if I hold my head And pitch my expectations Just higher than their level, They must fall back on patience: I may not mean to wed, Yet ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Clark and buying out his line of drays, turning in his claim toward the payment—a transaction which made Flaxen laugh for joy, for she had not felt certain before that he would remain in St. Peter. She was getting about the house now, looking very wifely in her long, warm wraps, her slow motions contrasting strongly with the old restless, springing steps Anson remembered ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... It is the penetrating spirit of our century, which has been aptly called the Woman's Century. We do not find it in the great literatures of the past. The Greek poets give us types of tragic passions, of heroic virtues, of motherly and wifely devotion, but woman is not recognized as a profound spiritual force. This masculine literature, so perfect in form and plastic beauty, so vigorous, so statuesque, so calm, and withal so cold, shines across the centuries side by side with the feminine Christian ideal—twin ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... with a proper touch of wifely irritation at his levity. "I've had a bit o' company an' it's chirked me up summat. That little lass o' th' owd Parson has been ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dear,' she said, with wifely admiration, as soon as he had finished. 'Just like a real leader exactly; only, do you know, there aren't any anecdotes in it. I think a social leader of that sort ought always to have a lot of anecdotes. Couldn't you manage to bring in something about Fox and Sheridan, or about ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... east no less than ten vessels had attempted the Franklin sea search in 1851, comprising two Admiralty expeditions, one private English one, an American combined government and private party, together with a ship put in commission by the wifely devotion of Lady Franklin. These all attempted the search of Lancaster Sound, where Franklin had last been seen, and they only succeeded in finding three graves of men who had died at an early stage, and had been buried on ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... about the home. Its purity, its innocence, its virtue, are there, untainted by sin, unclouded by guile. There woman shines, scarcely dimmed by the fall, reflecting the loveliness of Eden's first wife and mother; the grace, the beauty, the sweetness of the wifely relation, the tenderness of maternal affection, the graciousness of manner which once charmed angel guests, still glorify ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... fairly good order. Still, Sir Harry being a bachelor, and extremely untidy, his den, as he called it, was in a state of pleasing muddle, which oftentimes drew forth rebukes from Lucy. She was resolved to train her Harry into better ways when she had the wifely right to correct him, but, as she frequently remarked, it would be the thirteenth labour of Hercules to cleanse this modern ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... phylactery. She herself could give no grounds for her conviction beyond his wife's anxiety for his health and well-being. I myself never observed it in a woman, and if I had, should have set it down to ordinary wifely concern. But Kirstie assures me, first, that it was not ordinary, and, secondly, that it was not at all wifely—that Mrs. Johnstone's care of her husband had less of the ministering unselfishness of a woman in love than of the eager concern of ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be your first wifely undertaking to cure me?" he said, laughing.—"It takes time to put thoughts into action," said Faith, blushing.—"Not ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... was the unhesitating response. Not made with interest or feeling; but promptly, as the dictate of wifely duty. ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... disgusting. It is so disgraceful for a women to be anything more than just simply a wife to this sort of Adolphe, that a certain Caroline had long ago insisted upon the suppression of the modern thee and thou and all other insignia of the wifely dignity. Society had been for five or six years accustomed to this sort of thing, and supposed Madame and Monsieur completely separated, and all the more so as it had noticed the accession of ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... of a poet's wife is to inspire him. When she ceases to do that—but that is a consideration which need not occupy us in this unsophisticated story. We have already seen that Angelica in this respect early began her wifely duties towards Henry; and that little song he read in chapter twenty-five was but one of many he had written to her in his capacity of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... had your consent to be near Schlegel, she would certainly not refuse to return to her wifely duties as soon as he was dead. It is possible that at first she might not be able to hide her grief from you; then it would be your task to help her win ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... his eye, marked with approval these tokens of wifely submission. From a small aperture in the kitchen shoji, however (a peephole commanding a full view of the house), dour mutterings might have been heard, and a whispered lament that "she should have lived to see her young mistress ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... knew if they were Christian or heathen, savage or civilized. And there is the affectation of the maternal passion with women who are never by any chance seen with their children, but who speak of them as if they were never out of their sight; the affectation of wifely adoration with women who are to be met about the world with every man of their acquaintance rather than with their lawful husbands; the affectation of asceticism in women who lead a thoroughly self-enjoying life from end to end; and the affectation ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Who, when I thought all light was out, became A lamp of hope that put my fears to shame; Who faced for love's sole sake the life austere That waits upon the man of letters here; Who, unawares, her deep affection showed By many a touching little wifely mode; Whose spirit, self-denying, dear, divine, Its sorrows hid, so it might lessen mine— To her, my bright, best friend, I dedicate This book of songs—'t will help to compensate For much neglect. The act, if not the rhyme, Will touch her ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... imputation of ambition, which Mr. Jefferson acknowledged amounted to "a canine thirst for fame," as he himself wrote General Washington. Though Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Morris differed so widely respecting the Marquis's genius, Mr. Morris still clung to his opinion, so that Madame de Lafayette, with wifely jealousy and feminine intuition, perceiving something of his mental attitude toward her husband, received him but coldly when he called with Calvert to pay his respects at the hotel on the Quai du Louvre. So marked was the disapproval ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... ten minutes to think of horrors before she saw him rushing across the park toward her, and she had the idea of saying to him those words which he himself had selected as typically wifely, "Not that I mind at all, but I was afraid I must have misunderstood you." But she did not get very far in her mild little joke, for it was evident at once ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... defensive armour on in a twinkling. "Of course, you two men will be against me. When did two men ever disagree upon the subject of wifely duties? However, I shall read in spite of you. Do you know, Mr. North, that when I married I made a special agreement with Captain Frere that I was not to be asked to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... political convictions alone which had turned Crystal away from him: he felt that he could have won her love through her submission once she was his wife, now he found that he would have to win her love first and her wifely submission ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... power. He did not wait for an answer; he left Camusot and fled like a deer towards du Croisier's house. Camusot, meanwhile, bidden to reveal the notary's confidences, was at once assailed with, "Was I not right, dear?"—a wifely formula used on all occasions, but rather more vehemently when the fair speaker is in the wrong. By the time they reached home, Camusot had admitted the superiority of his partner in life, and appreciated his good fortune in belonging to her; which confession, doubtless, was ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... herself to fix them up. She knows that the stay is indefinite, that it may be for six months, or possibly six years, but that matters not. It is her army home—Brass Button's home—and however discouraging its condition may be, for his sake she pluckily, and with wifely pride, performs miracles, always making ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... vain. Among samurai women—taught to consider their husbands as their lords, in the feudal meaning of the term—it was held a moral obligation to perform jigai, by way of protest, against disgraceful behaviour upon the part of a husband who would not listen to advice or reproof. The ideal of wifely duty which impelled such sacrifice still survives; and more than one recent example might be cited of a generous life thus laid down in rebuke of some moral wrong. Perhaps the most touching instance occurred in 1892, at the time of the district elections ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... Yet he was a man about whom there would have been but one opinion: that when deprived of a rather superior and high-minded wife and the steadying influence of home and children, he would go completely "to the dogs," whither he seemed to be hurrying when Susanna's wifely courage failed. That he had done precisely the opposite and the unexpected thing, shows us perhaps that men are not on the whole as capable of estimating the forces of their fellow men as is God the maker of ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and being in the confidence of our patients, know of many strange and incomprehensible families. The one at Richmond Road was a case in point. I had gradually seen how young Mrs. Courtenay had tired of her wifely duties, until, by slow degrees, she had cast off the shackles altogether—until she now thought more of her new frocks, smart suppers at the Carlton, first-nights and "shows" in Mayfair than she did of the poor suffering old ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... night, sleeping on his mat, when his wife, who sat watching beside him, was terribly alarmed by the sight of two small fires gleaming in the doorway, and by the sound of a plaintive and mysterious voice. Her blood curdling with fear, she awoke her husband, with wifely reproaches on his folly in having burned his god, who was now come to be avenged ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... continued Tom, producing a thin package, wrapped in oilskin. "There's the only two letters I ever got from her, an', just cos her hand writ 'em, I've had 'em just where I took 'em from for four years. I got 'em at Albany, 'fore I got on that cussed tare, an' they was both so sweet an' wifely, that I've never dared to read 'em since, fur fear that thinkin' on what I'd lost would make me even wuss than I am. But I ain't afeard now," said Tom, eagerly tearing off the oilskin, and ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... if he stayed out too late, and then the later the warmer. His relationship to his wife was prosaic, respectful. In his heart of hearts he occasionally thought of her as exceedingly unattractive. In a word Mrs. Tutt performed her wifely functions in a purely matter-of-fact way. Anything else would have seemed to her unseemly. She dressed in a manner that would have been regarded as conservative even on Beacon Hill. She had no intention of making an old ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... with herself as a wife, and she knew that her husband was pleased with her. Moreover, she had not the slightest intention of permitting anything to interfere with her wifely ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... service of the proudest-souled of women, wifely rendered, how superlatively charming! (36) and by contrast, how little welcome is such ministration where the wife is but a slave—when present, barely noticed; or if lacking, what fell pains and ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... Heine, an Englishman loves liberty as a good husband loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home-coming Briton, especially if he ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... eager to gratify my lightest wish, she left no wifely duty unfulfilled. Always near me, if I breathed her name, but vanishing when I grew silent, as if her task were done. Always smiling a cheerful farewell when I went, a quiet welcome when I came. I missed the April face that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her about all his schemes, and value her keen understanding. She wondered why he did not now. Did he distrust even her, as he did everybody else? Tonight she asked no questions. She was unruffled by his short responses to her conversational attempts; by her subtle, wifely manner she simply put herself on his side, whatever the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... young wife with her experience, and to be welcome—not to interfere every minute, and tease her; she loves her daughter-in-law almost as much as she does her son, and she is happy because he bids fair to be an immortal painter, and, above all, a gentleman; and she, a wifely wife, a motherly mother, ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... wifely but not right in Catherine to repeat this strict confidence in strictest confidence to her neighbor, Mrs. Bainbridge, over the fence next morning before breakfast. At breakfast Mrs. Bainbridge spoke of artillery ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold [281] At Crime all money-bold, Fair Lady? Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet — Blind to lips kiss-wise set — Fair Lady? Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, [291] Make love a cheapening art, Fair Lady? Shall woman scorch for a single sin That ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... things in a "Fair" for a good cause and come in contact with a crowd of strangers in the process among people who would consider "keeping a shop," unless from dire necessity, a very questionable proceeding. It is thought most virtuous and wifely for a woman married to a minister of the church to give her time and strength gratuitously in multitudinous religious helps to the organization which usually counts on getting the service of two first-class people for a second-or third-class salary for one. But for the wife of such a minister, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... down his allowance, or the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Brougham, who had argued that those tiresome old gentlemen, the Royal Dukes, should have the right to walk and sit next to his wife on State occasions; but Victoria confesses that she long felt "most indignant." She was hurt not only in her wifely love, but in her ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium—to sit at ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his mind; but the furthest one was the thought ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... was wont to court Ruth's counsel concerning her wifely part in Arthur's work, thus often getting Leonard's as well. Sometimes she impeached his masculine view of things, in her old skirmishing way. Then she would turn rose-color once more and mirthfully sigh, while Ruth laughed and wished for Godfrey, ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... to having been somewhat put about. "My dear Belviso," I said, "Virginia is liable to impulse, it may be admitted; but she is never likely to forget what wifely duty involves. I was not a cruel husband to her, and left her through no fault of my own. I will answer for her that she ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... accustomed only hitherto to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough to throw the every-day substances of life into shadow, but never as yet brought into direct contact with their own correspondent realities. She evinces no womanly life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no pleased terror at the thought of his past dangers, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... idea of wifely duty was elevated almost to a religion. To father or to husband she would have given a boundless devotion, in sickness most of all devoted. To leave husband or father in a plague-stricken city would have seemed to her a crime as abominable as Tullia's, a treachery ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... tentative letter to her brother John had not called forth an invitation: Mrs. Emma was in delicate health at present, and had no mind for visitors. So he committed Polly to the care of Hempel and Long Jim, both of whom were her faithful henchmen. She herself, in proper wifely fashion, proposed to give her little house a good red-up in its ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... honest and temperate and, to some extent, not bad looking—in the evening, anyway. Your idea of keeping household accounts is atrocious, but, on the other hand, you look rather nice in a hammock on a hot summer day. But that is all I can say for you. You have not given me the wifely devotion I expected. Only last week, when I came home feeling miserable, you sat at the piano playing extracts from some beastly revue, when a true wife would have been singing "Parted" or even "Roses of Picardy." Again, you invariably put our child in front of me in all things, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... love one face from out the thousands, 100 (Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely, Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave), He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty water Meant to save his own life in the desert; Ready in the desert to deliver (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... marrying Polyeuctes. Such are the relations of the different persons of the drama. It will be seen that there is ample room for the play of elevated and tragic passions. Paulina, in fact, is the lofty, the impossible, ideal of wifely and daughterly truth and devotion. Pagan though she is, she is pathetically constant, both to the husband that was forced upon her, and to the father that did the forcing; while still she loves, and cannot but love, the man whom, in spite of her love for him, she, with an act like prolonged suicide, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... never owned such opulence of womanly character or such splendor of womanly manners or multitudinous instances of wifely, motherly, daughterly, sisterly devotion, as it owns to-day. I have not words to express my admiration for good womanhood. Woman is not only man's equal, but in affectional and religious nature, which is the best part of us, she is seventy-five per cent his superior. Yea, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... its construction faulty. Only one ethical idea is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is peculiarly dear to the German heart—the saving power of woman's love. "Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of German singers for a century. In that time not many more than a dozen have achieved high distinction ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Jeunesse than it would have done on those of his predecessor. There was considerable intimacy among all the Jacobite exiles in and about Paris; and Winifred, Countess of Nithsdale, though living a very quiet and secluded life, was held in high estimation among all who recollected the act of wifely heroism by which she had rescued ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with Hester Santlow leaping into the affections of the actor, and finally marrying him according to the law of the land. She loved the great man tenderly, ministered to his wants with a wifely devotion which would hardly suit the "New Woman," and when he was wont to eat too much (for he had given up the flowing bowl[A] and must cultivate some other species of gluttony), the ex-dancer would ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... surprised to see that he made severe personal remarks in his journal, for in the three months that I knew him I never heard an unkind word; he was always courteous, gentle, and retiring. Mrs. Hawthorne said she took a wifely pride in his having no small vices. Mr. Hawthorne said to Miss S., 'I have yet to find the first ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... and made futile efforts to free himself. But Andrea was resolved on no delay, and without more ado bore off the struggling bird, just as Pepita fluttered into the aperture, with an apology for being late, and ready to assume her wifely duties. ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... her?" he urged. "Take her away from this storm-haunted land, and set her on the golden throne you'd set up for her, where there's warmth and beauty. Where there's no other care for her than to yield you the wifely companionship you're yearning for. I guess she's the one gal can hand you those things. If you don't do it, and do it quick, you'll find the fruit in the pouch of another. Say, the harvest comes along in its season, and it's got to be reaped. If the right feller don't get busy—well, I guess some ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... seemed the only dignified thing to do. I never thought of course that he would rush off to Africa like this, and although I feel I was perfectly right and should act in the very same way again—still—well, there is no use talking about it, dearest Mamma—and please don't write me a sermon on wifely duty and submission—because it ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... no affair of mine or yours. It was made up of wifely and womanly jealousy; knowledge of old age and sunken cheeks; deep mistrust born of the text that says even little babies' hearts are as bad as they make them; rancorous hatred of Mrs. Larkyn, and the tenets of the creed of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the work in making a fair copy for the printer. Borrow's subsequent remark that the manuscript "was written by a country amanuensis and probably contains many ridiculous errata," was scarcely gracious to the wife, who seems to have comprehended so well the first principle of wifely duty to an illustrious and, it must ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... when young; it is in some respects even more enjoyable—perhaps less intense, but much more prolonged. I have no reaction from indulgence. But I never press it; it always presses me. For overaccumulation, with headache or muddleheadedness, the wifely hand is more efficacious than the vulva. Even the most vivid dream of coitus fails to compass the orgasm now. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... marriages by friends' are dangerous. 'I had as lief another should take measure by his back of my apparel as appoint what wife I shall have by his mind.' He prefers in a wife 'beauty before riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to the radical English doctrine of wifely submission; there is no swerving from the position that the man is the woman's 'earthly master,'[2] but in taming a wife no violence is to be employed. Wives are to be subdued with kindness. 'If their husbands with great threatenings, with jars, with brawls, seek ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... him off to the Bower of Bliss, a place where she detains her captives, feeding them on sweets until their manly courage is gone. On learning her husband had fallen into the power of this enchantress, the lady had sought the Bower of Bliss and by dint of wifely devotion had rescued her spouse. But, even as they left, the witch bestowed upon them a magic cup, in which little suspecting its evil powers, the wife offered water to her husband. No sooner had he drunk than blood gushed ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Mr. Gladstone had got to the Bill, he had exhausted a good deal of his stock of voice, and yet he seemed to be less dependent than usual on the mysterious compound which Mrs. Gladstone mixes with her own wifely hand for those solemn occasions. It appeared that both she and her husband had somewhat dreaded the ordeal. The bottle which Mr. Gladstone usually brings with him is about the size of those small, stunted little jars in which, in the days of our youth, the young buck kept his bear's grease, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... married life. But if John nurses hurt feelings whenever Mary punctures his vanity by suggesting that he presents to the world a less than perfect front, Mary may soon lose courage and relinquish her wifely job of husband improvement. Or ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Philomela possesses strong traits of feminine virtue and wifely fidelity. Philippo has little distinctiveness except in his extreme susceptibility to jealousy—a fault which was exaggerated by the author to set off the opposite qualities of Philomela. The story has no little merit in regard to the construction and sequence of the narrative, and ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... signs of royal rank impressed; None, till my kingly brother gain His old hereditary reign, Till o'er his limbs and noble head The consecrating drops be shed. How blest is Janak's daughter, true To every wifely duty, who Cleaves faithful to her husband's side Whose realm is girt by Ocean's tide! This mountain too above the rest E'en as the King of Hills is blest,— Whose shades Kakutstha's scion hold As Nandan charms the Lord of Gold. Yea, happy is this tangled ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... truth of that as she herself. And it will be so to the end of the chapter. You can't shut her up in a beautiful casket, and keep her from all pain. If you could she would no longer be the Erica you love. As for the rest, I may be wrong. She may have room for wifely love even now. I have only told you what I think. And whether she ever be your wife or not and from my heart I hope she may be your love will in no case be wasted. Pure love can't ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... seated at a table, mending, the image of tranquillity and soft resignation. A pile of children's garments lay by her side, but the article in her busy hands appeared to be an under-shirt of his own. None but she ever reinforced the buttons on his linen. Such was her wifely rule, and he considered that there was no sense in it. She was working by the light of a single lamp on the table, the splendid chandelier being out of action. Her economy in the use of electricity was incurable, and he considered that there was no ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the bedroom for you to change your clothes by," she said, as he entered; then evading the caress which this wifely attention provoked, by bending still more primly over her book, she added, "Go at once. You're making everything quite ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... continued, "will not remember that she had consented to marry me after a reasonable time should have elapsed since the death of her husband. Part of her dementia was that she had never cared for me, when the truth of the matter was nothing but her wifely loyalty kept her from running away with me, even before Stephen ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... fair-haired banker's son, also of Chicago, who had long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away. It was not wifely modesty at all. By so ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... as you may deem said camp to be, Wolfville itse'f offers plenty proof on this head. Thar's Dave Tutt: Whatever is Dave, I'd like for to inquire, prior to Tucson Jennie runnin' her wifely brand on to him an' redoocin' him to domesticity? No, thar's nothin' so evil about Dave neither, an' yet he has his little ways. For one thing, Dave's about as extemporaneous a prop'sition as ever sets in a saddle, an' thar's times when you give Dave licker an' convince ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... history the matron was celebrated for her virtues—fidelity to her husband, love for her children, and queenly guardianship of the sacred precincts of the home. The name of the Roman matron became a synonym of all that is noble, wifely, and motherly in the home. Without doubt the character had sadly deteriorated at the period of which we write, but there still remained with many the lofty ideals which had been fostered ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... But her manner suggested to me that her life had certainly not brought content to Cynthia; and I gathered from her brother Ernest that the radiant brightness of nature which had characterised her youth had not survived her assumption of wifely and maternal cares. Others might regard this change as part of a natural and inevitable process. In my eyes also it was inevitable and natural, but not as the result of the passage of time. For me it was the inevitable outcome of a marriage of convenience, which was not, for Cynthia, a natural ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Helen," said he, "methinks thine is the harder part this day. God strengthen thy wifely heart, for God, methinks, shall yet bring him to thine embrace!" So saying, Sir Benedict mounted and rode to the head of his lances, where flew his banner. "Unbar the gates!" he cried. And presently the great gates of Belsaye town swung wide, the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... good faith of brothers to one another he shows in Agamemnon and Menelaus, of friends in Achilles and Patroclus, prudence and wifely love in Penelope, the longing of a man for ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... partisanship of polygamy was so unquestioning and eloquent. She was one of the strangest psychological problems I ever met. Indeed, I am half inclined to think that she embraced Mormonism earlier than her husband, and, by taking the initiative, secured for herself the only true wifely place in the harem,—the marital after-thoughts of Brother Heber being her servants rather than her sisters. She was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... was to make them both everlastingly famous and superlatively rich. They talked about it for hours and had even got to designing the labels and bottles when I stepped in and told Henry not to be a silly ass, that he was making a fool of himself, and a few other sensible wifely things like that which finally brought him to reason. William, however, having no one to bring him to reason, goes on day by day becoming more of a lunatic. I could never understand why there is such a close bond between ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... beautiful for me," she whispered; "I do not deserve it." But even as Elizabeth said this, her woman's heart registered its first wifely vow. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... must be understood, in her own case, as prompted by her unconquerable wifely love. It is ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... flight preserved the involuntary criminal. But during the remainder of that reign he must lurk and be hid by friends in remote parts of the isle; Nakaeia hunted him without remission, although still in vain; and the palms, accessories to the fact, were ruthlessly cut down. Such was the ideal of wifely purity in an isle where nubile virgins went naked as in paradise. And yet scandal found its way into Nakaeia's well-guarded harem. He was at that time the owner of a schooner, which he used for a pleasure-house, lodging on board as she lay anchored; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heathen faithfulness even to death; and where the teaching of Christianity had not forbidden the taking away of life by one's own hand, perhaps wifely love could not go higher. Yet Christian women have endured a yet more fearful ordeal to their tender affection, watching, supporting, and finding unfailing fortitude to uphold the sufferer in agonies that ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the kitchen was done, Mrs. Sanford came in and sat awhile by the fire with the children, looking very wifely in her dark dress and white apron, her round, smiling face glowing with love and pride-the gloating look of a mother seeing her children in the arms ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... time of his marriage Mr. Longfellow's eyes failed him on account of overstraining them, and one of Mrs. Longfellow's first wifely duties was to furnish eyes for her husband. She read to him and wrote for him a great deal for several years, and the close companionship which this required was very pleasant to both. He was a very busy man in those days; for, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... course he won't until he's had enough of your beauty. That's all he wants, your beauty—and you'll be fool enough to let him have it FOR NOTHING. I'm sure I wish you joy with the selfish wretch and with your new- fangled ideas of wifely devotion. This will kill Peter. You'll have his death on your conscience. Think that over, now that you're so fond of thinking. Ten thousand dollars right now would save his life. Think that over, too, when your own father is dead ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... of her slaves, in language in which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. The two immediate grandmothers were, in the best sense, superior women. The maternal one (Amy Williams before marriage) was a Friend, or Quakeress, of sweet, sensible character, house-wifely proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other (Hannah Brush,) was an equally noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a natural lady, was in early life a school-mistress, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to interfere with her," he replied, with a sneer. "You have given her such perfect lessons of disobedience and obstinacy that it will take me all my time in the future to drill her into proper wifely shape. But to-night I am not going to interfere with her. She has told me plainly that she means to do just as she likes and that you have given her leave to defy me. Public opinion, it seems, is all in her favour too. So I have just brought your dutiful daughter back ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... horror, the dead body gently raised itself, with a deep sigh, as though the soul of Richmodis regarded this symbol of wifely duty as sacred, and would resist the efforts of the thieves to take it ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... being a model of wifely jealousy, kept Fred to herself, and Barrie was my companion. This was delightful. No such good thing had come to me since making her acquaintance. On the way up the quaint, steep street, there came a shower of rain, and I had to shelter ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... birth had been deferred until the beginning of the week, or humility had shown more prominently among her mother's virtues, the kirk would have been saved a painful scandal, and Sandy Whamond might have retained his eldership. Yet it was a foolish but wifely pride in her husband's official position that turned Bell Dundas' head—a wild ambition to beat ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... nothing in Gerald's demeanour towards Sally to arouse a hint of jealousy; at least there would not have been had Althea been his wife. But she was not yet his wife, and he treated her—this was the fact that the week was driving home—as though she were, and as though with wifely tolerance she perfectly understood his admiring pretty young women who looked like muses and played the violin. She was not yet his wife; this was the fact, she repeated it over her hidden misery, that Gerald did not enough realise. She was not his wife, and she did not like to ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... him with no reservation or affectation of feminine delicacy. She despised such false sentiments. The consequence is, that her letters contain the unreserved expression of her feelings. Those written before she had cause to doubt her lover are full of wifely devotion and tenderness; those written from the time she was forced to question his sincerity, through the gradual realization of his faithlessness, until the bitter end, are the most pathetic and heart-rending that ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell |
