"Impecunious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forgetfulness! murderer of memory!" spoke the spirit, sternly. "In this, the last rough resting place of the impecunious dead, do you dare to discuss commonplace topics with one of the departed? Look at me, uncle, clove-befogged, and shrink appalled from the dread sight, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... faces, never! And yours I remember from the striking resemblance to my dear friend, the Maharajah of Bahanapur—you know him?—a very elegant young, handsome chap. A splendid Shikarri! I was often on the verge of asking if you were related; but being then but a second-class passenger, and under an impecunious cloud, did not dare to take the liberty. Now, being on the bed of clover owing to decease of wealthy uncle, I can address you without the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... admitted. "There are no hospitals for impecunious litigants; it is assumed that only persons of means have a right to go to law. Of course, if we knew the man and the circumstances we might be able to help him; but, for all we know to the contrary, he may be ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... dinner-parties to other rich nobodies, living amongst City men, retired trades-people; envied only by their fat, vulgarly dressed wives, courted by seedy Bohemians for the sake of my cook; with perhaps an opera singer or an impecunious nobleman or two out of Dad's City list for my show-guests. Is that the court, Paul, where you would have your ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Impecunious Draughtsman Abroad" was given by Mr. Myron H. Hunt, and Mr. George R. Dean has given a lantern-slide exhibition, illustrating ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol 1, No. 11, November, 1895 - The Country Houses of Normandy • Various
... mountains, to fix himself at last, with the hopeless fatuity of his race, upon an already impoverished settlement; to sink his scant capital in hopeless shafts and ledges, and finally to take over the decaying hostelry of Buena Vista, with its desultory custom and few, lingering, impecunious guests. Here, too, his old Virginian ideas of hospitality were against his financial success; he could not dun nor turn from his door those unfortunate prospectors whom the ebbing fortunes of Buena Vista had ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... reconciled to the new order of things, but for his daughter's sake he held his peace. Then, too, though he never forgave John Britton for having married his daughter, yet John Britton as a man whose wealth exceeded even his own was an altogether different person from the ambitious but impecunious lover of thirty years before. He had never forgiven Darrell for being John Britton's son, but mingled with his long-cherished animosity was a secret pride in the splendid physical and intellectual manhood of this sole representative ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... too, drawn to one another by a conservative instinct at sight of Cornudet, talked money in a certain tone of contempt for the impecunious. Count Hubert spoke of the damage inflicted on him by the Prussians, of the losses which would result to him from the seizing of cattle and from ruined crops, but with all the assurance of a great landed proprietor, ten times millionaire, whom these ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Pullman cars. Her enterprise, her daring, her freedom from conventionality, have been the theme of the novelists and the horror of the dowagers having marriageable daughters. Considered as "stock," the American Girl has been quoted high, and the alliances that she has formed with families impecunious but noble have given her eclat as belonging to a new and conquering race in the world. But the American Girl has not simply a slender figure and a fine eye and a ready tongue, she is not simply an engaging and companionable ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for days after my arrival at Sonning-on-Thames, was more difficult, well-nigh impossible, except at a price per diem which no staid old painter—they are all an impecunious lot—could afford. There were boys, of course, for the asking; sunburnt, freckle-faced, tousle-headed, barefooted little devils who, when my back was turned, would do handsprings over my cushions, landing on the mattress, or break the pole the first day ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... accomplished and he rich beyond his wildest dreams, he was precisely the same man in bearing, manner, and speech that he had been in his impecunious days in Bedford Place. He was rich then—in hopes, in plans, in the reality of his dreamland. He was no richer now. The check in his pocket ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... so bright, so well-nigh impossible of fulfillment, which as a young man fresh from college he had cherished. While young, he met and loved the girl he married. That she had visions he perfectly believed. That her visions were unworthy no power then could have made him believe. She came from an impecunious family whose lineage was older and greater than his. How she could have thought the high-browed, sensitive-faced young man the one who could fulfill her grasping desires is not to be fathomed. She had believed so, and he did bring to pass all her aspirations. That in doing ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... understand—absorbed into the elements, evaporated, drawn up into the clouds like moisture. One might write an interesting essay on the husbands of prima donnas and great actresses. What becomes of them? We know whence they come, for they are often impecunious gentlemen, but where do they go? There must be a limbo for them, somewhere, a place of departed husbands. Possibly they are all in lunatic asylums. The greater the singer, or the actress, the more certain it is ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... College Girls Play Lady Bountiful to Their Needy Classmates," she read. The words were arranged to form headlines, and below was written: "The latest whim of two wealthy students of Overton College has taken the form of Sweet Charity, and impecunious students of Overton whose finances will not permit of their making long railway journeys home for Christmas are to be the object of these young women's solicitude. Their less fortunate classmates will be their guests at a dinner ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the many impecunious young Englishmen of education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford without a degree in the company of two fellow-students, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... crab, and obstinate as the devil. His fixed idea was that none of his daughters should ever be carried off by a fortune-hunter. The two older girls apparently escaped this danger by making fairly wealthy matches. But Alice—come away! why should she take up with this impecunious painter? He was good-looking and had the gift of the gab, but what was that worth? If he would come into the sugar-business, where a place was waiting for him, and make good there, it would be all right. Otherwise, the ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... and often a bit of supper after. If a youth asked a girl to dance the cotillion, he was expected to send a bouquet, sure to cost between twenty and twenty-five dollars. What a blessed change for the impecunious swell when all this went out of fashion! New York is his paradise now; in other parts of the world something is still expected of him. In France it takes the form of a handsome bag of bon-bons on New Year's Day, if he has accepted ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Blake, or R. R. Blake as he signed his name, and "Railroad Blake" as the boys often called him, was Major Appleby's nephew, and the son of his only sister. She had married an impecunious young artist against her brother's wish, on which account he had declined ever to see her again. When she died, after two years of poverty-stricken widowhood, she left a loving, forgiving letter for her brother, and in it committed her darling boy ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... characters. They are too great to get into the public world.' They are people who are natural—natural in a sense that the holders of high office never can be. Dickens could only write of natural people, so he wrote of common men: 'You will find him adrift as an impecunious commercial traveller like Micawber; you will find him but one of a batch of silly clerks like Swiveller; you will find him as an unsuccessful actor like Crumples; you will find him as an unsuccessful doctor like Sawyer; you will always find the rich and reeking personality where ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... diamonds and self-satisfaction. But he was unmistakably one of our people. It was like coming across a human being in the jungle. Moreover, his very diamonds somehow told a tale of former want, of a time when he had landed, an impecunious immigrant like myself; and this made him a living ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... hundred of Tourgeneff's letters was published last winter in St. Petersburg by the "Society for Assisting Impecunious Authors and Scholars." It is to be followed by a second, and the proceeds are to be devoted to the foundation of a "Tourgeneff Memorial Fund." The whole collection will, we may hope, be translated into English. The following ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... venerable appearance, with white hair, worn long, and a patriarchal beard. He was a familiar figure in Washington, and well known among the public men of his day. A versatile and entertaining companion, by turns prosperous and impecunious, and an optimist always, Gardiner Hubbard became a really indispensable factor as the first advance ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... was with Petronella, and he had not concerned himself as yet with any thoughts as to her poverty and his own somewhat impecunious position as his father's heir, but with three sisters to be provided for out of the revenues of the impoverished estate. He was man of the world enough to know that this dowry would do much to smooth his path when the time should come for making known ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... into masters and men. His effort was to plant intact in Maryland a feudal order. He would be Palatine, the King his suzerain. In Maryland the great planters, in effect his barons, should live upon estates, manorial in size and with manorial rights. The laboring men—the impecunious adventurers whom these greater adventurers brought out—would form a tenantry, the Lord Proprietary's men's men. It is true that, according to charter, provision was made for an Assembly. Here were to sit "freemen of the province," that is to say, all white males who were not in ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... Strachey was to receive for his services in India. Thus Sutton Court was saved. Thanks to Clive there are still Stracheys at Sutton and I am here to tell the tale. In those days twelve thousand pounds was a very big sum of money indeed to an impecunious country gentleman, and a considerable sum even to a man as rich as Clive. The modern equivalent would be over 30,000. But Clive was not a man who hesitated to do things in a big way, and he was well repaid. Henry Strachey was not only devoted to him throughout his life, but ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... was expected to send a piece of silver. Some very rich houses in New York are stocked with silver with the elaborate inscription, "Silver Wedding." To the cards of to-day is appended, "No presents received," which is a relief to the impecunious. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... been expensive even before the advent of the Benedict with the studs and laces. In London, as in New York, there are spots where it is unsafe for a man of yielding disposition to stand still, and the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus is one of them. Scrubby, impecunious men drift to and fro there, waiting for the gods to provide something easy; and the prudent man, conscious of the possession of loose change, whizzes through the danger zone at his best speed, 'like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... that she contributes little or nothing to the common income in no way embarrasses an American wife; her pretensions are usually in an inverse proportion to her personal means. A man I knew some years ago deliberately chose his bride from an impecunious family (in the hope that her simple surroundings had inculcated homely taste), and announced to an incredulous circle of friends, at his last bachelor dinner, that he intended, in future, to pass his evenings at his fireside, between his book and his pretty spouse. Poor, innocent, confiding ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... scene of the 11th of July. The whole thing began simply enough. Mr. Brodrick, the son of an Irish landlord—a very light, though very serious young man—managed in the course of his speech to speak of the people from whom he springs as "impecunious and garrulous." At first nobody took any notice of what was probably a mere mauvaise plaisanterie; and the incident would have passed altogether had not Mr. Brodrick immediately afterwards made a more direct appeal to the Irish Members. This elicited from Mr. Sexton the retort that he need ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the true cause of all my tragic heritage; no pale-faced and partially poisoned mother whose suicidal instincts have cursed me with the temptations of the artistic temperament. I regret that there was nothing in the range of our family much more racy than a remote and mildly impecunious uncle; and that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I am. I am not clear about what that is; but I am pretty sure that most of it is my own fault. And I am compelled to confess that I look back to that landscape of my first days with a pleasure ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... together, was quite refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the still incessant accompaniment of rain on the glasshouses, that Camilla's mother took shape in my mind as the Lady Laura Belsize, an apparently impecunious widow reduced to "semi-detachment down the river" and suburban neighbours whose manners and customs my companion hit off with vivacious intolerance. She told me how she had shocked them by smoking cigarettes in the back garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... province at Vermland, where she herself was born on a farmstead in 1858. A love of starlight, violins, and dancing, a temperament easily provoked to a laughing abandon of life's tragedy characterizes the folk of Vermland and the impecunious gentry who live in its modest manor halls. It is a different folk to whom one is introduced in "Jerusalem," the people of Dalecarlia, the province of Miss Lagerloef's adopted home. They, too, have their dancing festivals at Midsummer Eve, and their ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... forever! Go to London or Paris or Vienna, and wear tiaras and coronets, and speak of disgraceful, boorish America in hushed whispers! The empty-headed fool! She forgets that the tarnished name she bears was dragged up out of the ruck of the impecunious by me when I received Jim Crowles into my house! And that I gave him what little gloss he was ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... contemporary, and the history, geography, and political constitution of the principal countries. The books of the latter division are known as "Respublicae Variae." It is impossible to resist the conclusion that this book form was chosen not more to supply cheap books which could be sold to impecunious scholars than to provide portable volumes for travelers. The Elzevir "Commonwealths" were the predecessors of our "satchel guides," and the literary publications in this form were evidently designed to be pocket ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... bitter that a chance threat uttered by the loser of the lawsuit, "It shall be a dear day's work for you," occasioned an accusation of witchcraft.[32] In another instance the debt of a penny seems to have been the beginning of a hatred between two impecunious creatures, and ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... turbid water. She gave up the attempt to understand the cynical modus vivendi at which her companions seemed to have arrived; she knew it was not final but it served them sufficiently for the time; and if it served them why should it not serve her, the dependent, impecunious, tolerated little sister, representative of the class whom it behoved above all to mind their own business? The time was coming round when they would all move up to town, and there, in the crowd, with the added movement, the strain would be less and ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... slave, but the property of a well-born, if slightly impoverished, gentleman who lived on the Eastern Shore, and whose chief source of income was the hiring out to his friends and acquaintances of just such likely young darkies as Todd—a custom common to the impecunious of those days. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... [become] tempest-tossed by the perfidy, the defalcation, the dishonesty, or neglect of any one of a hundred thousand subordinates utterly unknown to the President of the United States, not to say the eternal worriment by a vast host of impecunious friends and old military subordinates. Even as it is, I am tortured by the charitable appeals of poor distressed pensioners; but as President, these would be multiplied beyond human endurance. I remember well the experience of Generals Jackson, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... was one that I well remembered, and my spirit seemed to sink lower and lower as I neared the place; for it was terrible to think of those whom I had left, if not in affluence, at least in a comfortable position in life, brought down to so sad and impecunious a state, suffering real poverty, and with the home of so many years now in ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... a certain famous palace on the Loire. The walls are of panelled oak, with an eight-foot dado of Arras cloth imitated from unique Continental examples. The carpet, woven in one piece, is an antique specimen of the finest Turkish work, and it was obtained, a bargain, by Felix Babylon, from an impecunious Roumanian Prince. The silver candelabra, now fitted with electric light, came from the Rhine, and each had a separate history. The Royal chair—it is not etiquette to call it a throne, though it amounts to a throne—was looted by Napoleon ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... cause of it: but upon further reflection he came to the conclusion that it might be unwise to adopt so very drastic a step, for two very good and sufficient reasons, the first of which was that, being impecunious himself, he had fully made up his mind to marry Dona Isolda and thus acquire a substantial interest in the Montijo property and estates, and was therefore unwilling to do anything which might possibly jeopardise the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... ambitious project, entirely without means. His father had died, and left him nothing, and his 'Macbeth' had not won the L300 premium at the British Gallery. His aristocratic friends had temporarily deserted him, but the Hunts assisted him with the ready liberality of the impecunious. John lent him small sums of money, while Leigh offered him a plate at his table till Solomon was finished, and initiated him into the mysteries ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... her hand and followed it note by note. She was studying music, and her mother, who was the Archduchess, was watching her. But now and then, when her mother's eyes were glued to the stage, Hilda stole a glance at the upper balconies where impecunious young officers leaned over the rail and ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... openly denounced his heartlessness. It was not very gratifying to think of what might be in store for them if all memories were as short as Brewster's. Old Mrs. Ketchell changed her will, and two nephews were cut off entirely; a very modest and impecunious grandson of Joseph Garrity also was to sustain a severe change of fortune in the near future, if the cards spoke correctly. Judge Van Woort, who was not expected to live through the night, got better immediately after hearing some one in the sick-room whisper that Montgomery ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the question. In a few hours she must decide what her future life would be—the petted, pampered mistress of Willard Brockton, wealthy member of the New York Stock Exchange, or the wife of John Madison, an interesting but impecunious newspaper reporter. If she married this man, it meant that she must relinquish immediately everything she loved—her sumptuous apartment on Riverside Drive, her automobile, her beautiful gowns, and gay little midnight champagne suppers in good company. Her life henceforth ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... none of it to herself, she regarded it only as a brilliant expression of Verena's gift. Olive thought, afterwards, that if a collection could only be taken up on the spot, the good lady would be made easy for the rest of her days; then she remembered that most of her guests were as impecunious as herself. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... eyes bulged with solemn horror as he revealed to me, in agitated speech, his wife's more than suspicions, at the time, of that, Mrs—Mrs What's her name's perfidious conduct. She actually seemed to have—Mrs Fyne asserted— formed a plot already to marry eventually her charge to an impecunious relation of her own—a young man with furtive eyes and something impudent in his manner, whom that woman called her nephew, and whom she was always having down to stay ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... apprentices of the professions, working at wages to shame a laborer, who had learned how much more one got for his money at Louis's than at the white-tiled American places further down town. It stood for ten years, this Hotel Marseillaise, the hope of the impecunious. How many careers did it preserve, how many old failures from the wreckage of Kearney Street did ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... sister, and in neither case does the author seem to be conscious of anything out of the ordinary. Not that there is any air of naughtiness about the business. Peter, a rich cripple, loved Cherry, the youngest and prettiest of the three Strickland girls. But Martin, a casual impecunious stranger, stepped in and took her in one bite before Peter could quite realise she was no longer a child. So in default he married Alix, who was, incidentally, worth six of her. Meeting his Cherry, disillusioned about an unsatisfactory and unsuccessful Martin, he reaches out his hand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... new found protegee was such as would only have entered into the brain of a dreamy and impecunious poet. He saw in Lavinia Fenton the making of a fine actress—not in tragedy but in comedy—and of an enchanting singer. But to be proficient she must be taught not only music, but how to pronounce the English language properly. She had ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... trader's, so that many of the traders often have thousands of dollars' worth of silverwork and shell beads on hand at one time. The system seems to be a very fair one, and in time of stress is certainly a boon to the impecunious Navaho. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... risked and lost in a dozen countries, been almost within reach of fortune a dozen times, and always missed her until, finally, in London, by promoting a great rubber syndicate he becomes a multi-millionaire. He marries the most beautiful and one of the most impecunious peeresses in England and retires to his country estate. There, as a gentleman of leisure, he loses his motive in life, loses power for lack of opportunity, and grows less commanding even in the eyes of his wife, who misses the uncompromising, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... however, outlived his sense of the injurious appellation; had outlived much prejudice, the wear of poverty, his memory of many things, and, very early, his scorn of the plebeian processes that to the impecunious are a condition of living at all. He was certainly a man of courageous independence, inasmuch as from the hour of his setting foot in England—and that was at the outset of the century—he had controlled his own ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... working-out of that "simple and obvious system of natural liberty" that always engaged his best affections, has in great measure ceased to operate as a routine of natural liberty, in fact; particularly in so far as touches the fortunes of the common man, the impecunious mass of the people. De jure, of course, the competitive system and its inviolable rights of ownership are a citadel of Natural Liberty; but de facto the common man is now, and has for some time been, feeling the pinch of it. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... observed the Lady Yolande coldly, "that I hear our lords returning." And in the eloquent silence a score of fair young minds slowly assimilated the profound truth (as fresh to-day as eight hundred years ago) that Satan finds some mischief still for the impecunious demobilised. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... enough of a success to attract the attention of genuine music-lovers and an impecunious impresario—an irresponsible promoter celebrated for rushing headlong into things and being kicked headlong out ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... of her relative, but two years since had been repaid by a legacy. Ever since Miss Marden had been looking about for a suitable matrimonial partner. There were some difficulties in the way, for she was thin, long-nosed, and with a yellow complexion. Three impecunious bachelors, lured by her money, had paid her some attentions, but their courage failed at last, and they silently slunk away. At length, however, Ferdinand Morris met Miss Harden, and conceived the idea of marrying her for her money. When he had once got possession of her fortune, ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... to Fanny, flattering her and making her presents, and encouraging Jimmie to talk of his wonderful ideas. Moreover, he gave him plainly to understand that, once Virginia and he were married, the shipping clerk's impecunious days would be over and a comfortable berth would be awaiting him in his office at a salary commensurate ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... formed the 'Society' of Halifax, and to them were added the government officials, who were usually appointed from England. Some of the latter were men of honour and energy, but others were mere placemen in need of a job. When the famous Countess of Blessington wished to aid one of her impecunious Irish relations, she had only to give a smile and a few soft words to the Duke of Wellington, and her scape-grace brother found himself quartered for life upon the revenues of Nova Scotia. Charles Duller, in his pamphlet Mr Mother Country of the Colonial Office, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... lectures of the infidels he no longer attended. We were in accord about atheism, therefore, but in riotous discord about many other things, chief among which was the propriety, the necessity, of doing something to replenish his balance at the banker. For he was now impecunious, and withal importunate. Of a truth, what I had I was always ready to share with him; but for his own good I advised him to take up the peddling-box again. I reminded him of his saying once, 'Peddling is a healthy and profitable business.' 'Come out,' ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... insolvent debtor—to obtain liquidation from the Southern planter—was really the soulless and mercenary object of the craven Northerners. Let the common people of England look to this. Let the improvident literary hack, the starved impecunious Grub Street debtor, the newspaper frequenter of sponging- houses, remember this in their criticisms of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... When compared with you, how puny and feeble are the princes and titled lords, made by kings and courts, in lands where selfishness reigns supreme at the expense of millions of unfortunate subjects! An impecunious host of these fortune-hunting lords swarm in the society of our large cities. With faded titles of doubtful value, as their only stock in trade, they fittingly represent the decaying nobility of passing monarchies. They are looking for ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... very vividly now. It was in the summer time and about seven years ago. I was practising at the time down in the little town of Bradford. It was a small and primitive place, just the location for an impecunious medical ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... stone, or marble, as it is sometimes called, has a delicate gray vein, which is brought out by polish on the cornice and balustrade, as a relief to the unpolished surface elsewhere displayed. There is no inscription; but visitors are usually told about Mrs. Charlotte Hart, the apparently impecunious pew-opener at the church, who surprised her friends by dying worth close upon L3,000, and by leaving L600 to the restoration fund. A new pulpit happened to be wanted at the time, and the bequest was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... spent in luxury and amid the refinement and the pleasures which money only can provide. And when, our wedding day drawing near apace, I sent her my budget letter, bitterly revealing impecunious facts at which I had before but darkly hinted, and warning her of all the sacrifice which lay beyond, she replied with vehement repudiation of any fears, and in that ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... lands and forced them to occupy the foothills to the north of the "black belt" in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi which were ill adapted to the plantation slave system. Next came the thriftless and impecunious whites, variously known as the "pine-landers" and "crackers" in Georgia, the "sand-hillers" of South Carolina, or the "red-necks" of Mississippi. The lowest stratum was composed of slaves with a slight intermixture of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... step between aestheticism and asceticism was one which she had never taken, though she had taken many steps, some of them, unfortunately, false ones. She had been a well-born girl, the daughter of aristocratic but impecunious and extravagant parents. Her father, Everard Page, a son of Lord Cheam, had been very much at home in the Bankruptcy Court. Her mother, too, was reckless about money, saying, whenever it was mentioned, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... now, and favorably. A shy, silent youth, deft in work, and at other times conscious and embarrassed. But that, on the part of a stenographer, in the presence of the Wisest Man in Wall Street, was not unnatural. On occasions, Mr. Thorndike had put even royalty—frayed, impecunious royalty, on the lookout for a ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... I believe, by name McLeod, who knows enough to drive a sharp bargain—has taken it. Some one is to set up the business, I heard; an impecunious nephew, no doubt. No one but a fool would make a venture when the market is overstocked with goods. It is a shame that the estate had to lose such a valuable piece of property; but there was no income to pay taxes and interest, and, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... there for a purpose, spent their money freely, fought their battles victoriously, and would some day go back to France. But the Mexicans hated these foreigners, and the confidential offices held by impecunious Belgians and Austrians in the government and about the person of the chief executive added to the instinctive suspicion with which their permanent residence in the country ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... proclaimed immediately after the betrothal, and a month later Herr Weigand, in his capacity of son-in-law, could take possession of the same garret which he had inhabited as an impecunious guest. This arrangement, however, was not a permanent one. An inn was to be rented for the ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... Caught you at it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat like that! You'd no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl—" he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift from an impecunious friend. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... extent. They were afraid that something had happened, or was about to happen, in connection with the shoe corporation; and this deprived them of sleep, particularly the elder Miss Terwilliger, who had danced four times at a recent ball with an impecunious young earl, whom she suspected of having intentions. Ariadne was in a state of grave apprehension, because she knew that much as the earl might love her, it would be difficult for them to marry on his income, which was ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... said at last, "an impecunious prince who marries an American heiress, as so many of them do. The girl begins life in Austria on one million dollars, say two hundred thousand pounds, and a case of diamonds said to be worth another two hundred thousand at ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... fascinating Fulkeward herself continued to recline comfortably in her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones. He was the very impecunious colonel of one of the regiments then stationed in Cairo, and as he never wasted time on sentiment, he had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress who had twenty thousand pounds a year in ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... face unconsciously brightened as she remembered Sir Lyon Dilsford. He was an intelligent, impecunious, pleasant kind of man, still, like his host, on the sunny side of forty. Sir Lyon was "in the City," as are now so many men of his class and kind. He took his work seriously, and spent many hours of each day east of Temple Bar. By way of relaxation he helped to run an Oxford College East-End ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... ordinary signature a delicious dignity, a patient had been to him a prodigy, something precious for its rarity, even if it called him away from his dinner or ruthlessly rang him up in the middle of the night. But that was a long time ago, in the days of his impecunious youth; and now, in his prosperous middle-age, he would often have willingly bartered a good many patients ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... Augustine was not to be tentatively taken up but decisively seized. People had resented Sir Hugh's indifference to Charlock House, the fact that he had never lived there and had tried, just before his marriage, to sell it. But Augustine was yet blameless, and Augustine would one day be a wealthy not an impecunious squire, and Mrs. Grey had said that she would see to it that Augustine had his chance. "Apparently there's no one to bring him out, unless I do," she said. "His father, it seems, won't, and his mother can't. One doesn't know what to think, or, at all events, one keeps what ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... searching critic of international finance can allege against the proposal that we imagine to be put forward by the Republic of Barataria—if we admit that a loan to balance a deficit and pay for ships probably implies wastefulness, corruption, political rottenness, impecunious Chauvinism and all the rest of it, the question still arises whether it is the business of an issuing house to refuse the chance of doing good business for itself and for the London money-market, because it has reason to believe that the money lent will not be well spent. In ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... mistaken if he supposes the ugliness to be normal. A kind of dogged comradeship—I can find no better word for it—is what commonly unites the labouring man and his wife; they are partners and equals running their impecunious affairs by mutual help. I was lately able to observe a man and woman after a removal settling down into their new quarters. It was the most ordinary, matter-of-fact affair in the world. The man, uncouth and strong, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... The riddle is easily solved. Chopin was open-handed and not much of an economist: he spent a good deal on pretty trifles, assisted liberally his needy countrymen, made handsome presents to his friends, and is said to have had occasionally to pay bills of his likewise often impecunious lady-love. Moreover, his total income was not so large as may be supposed, for although he could have as many pupils as he wished, he never taught more than five hours a day, and lived every year for several months in the country. And then there is one ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... one nor the other, but continued to air his grievance; and among those who heard him was one Laporte, an impecunious visitor at the house of ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... the forerunner of modern musical comedy, where the grouchy millionaire papa is propitiated at the last moment (perhaps by the pleadings of the handsome widow), and similarly consents to his daughter's marriage with the handsome, if impecunious, ensign. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... like one of those flat stone jars in which Italian wine of the cheaper sort is stored. The narrow neck that leads off Leicester Square opens abruptly into a small court. Hotels occupy two sides of this; the third is at present given up to rooming houses for the impecunious. These are always just going to be pulled down in the name of progress to make room for another hotel, but they never do meet with that fate; and as they stand now so will they in all probability ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... students are more serious, less turbulent, and that the hardworking little grisette, quite content with her simple life and pleasure, has degenerated into the danseuse of the music-halls and barriere theatres. I don't think so. A certain class of young, impecunious students will always live in that quarter and will always amuse themselves, and they will also always find girls quite ready and happy to enjoy life a little while they are young enough to live in the present, and have no cares for the ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... her father's house by the side of the single-track railway-line. Gavin Balchrystie was a foreman plate-layer on the P.P.R., and with two men under him, had charge of a section of three miles. He lived just where that distinguished but impecunious line plunges into a moss-covered granite wilderness of moor and bog, where there is not more than a shepherd's hut to the half-dozen miles, and where the passage of a train is the occasion of commotion among scattered groups of black-faced ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... Alexandre Dumas pere, and an anecdote avowedly autobiographic (as, indeed, the whole book gives itself out to be, though receivable with divers pinches of salt) of that best-natured of men franking a bevy of impecunious students at a premiere of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a short hour's ride, "An impecunious old lady lived, two marriageable and impecunious daughters beside, "Whom Bluebeard had seen and at love's highest pitch "Sent to say he would marry, he didn't care which! "Sent to say he would marry, he ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the institution had an idea. In the great metropolis there was an impecunious and popular member of Uppertendom whose name had been appearing in the society journals with great frequency for years. He formerly had been prosperous, but now he was down financially; yet society still received and liked him, for he ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... be his. She condoned his faults; she saw nothing but that which was lovable in his weakness. Hers was now the strength to protect him, who, in the days of his best manhood had sheltered her from the cruel struggles of a life in the half-breed camp, for such, at the death of her impecunious father, must otherwise ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... strike me as a very long-headed proceeding," I remarked, with the impartial wisdom of the impecunious, and therefore untempted. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... corpses are placed until the carrion crows and the vultures pick the skeleton perfectly clean; the dry bones are then cast into a common receptacle in the tower. The guebre communities of Persia are too impecunious or too indifferent to keep up the ever-burning-fires nowadays; the fires of Zoroaster, which in olden and more prosperous times were fed with fuel night and day, are now extinguished forever, and the scattering survivors of this ancient form of worship ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... counsel. As the lad fully admitted, his friend was the same old chum of Freiburg days—the friend to whom his parents had so much objected. The fortunes of war had thrown them together, Willard as impecunious as ever, and the Damon and Pythias, the Orestes and Pylades, the two Ajaxes of the old days were in close and intimate touch once more, Damon, as of old, the banker for the twain. The troop-ships were ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... With her blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impassable cheek to their pleadings. Mrs. Minne would never remarry; and it was her large income that made water the mouth of the impecunious artistic tribe.... ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... ruled a little set of newcomers, he had friendships—or rather, habits of fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped, and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a month, I should ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... were inadequate to the high mission of Prague as a royal and imperial residence. The castle had been repaired fitfully by one king or another as we have seen, and had been provided with strong towers chiefly used as dungeons, and had been allowed to fall into disrepair by the impecunious and extravagant John. The cathedral was probably in not much better case. We have seen glimpses of that sacred fane with its memories of royal saints and martyrs, how St. Wenceslaus built the first church on the site of the present one, as ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... Rupert Louth, and he was the fourth son of an impecunious but delightful peer, Lord Blyston. He was close upon thirty, and had spent the greater part of his time, since his twentieth year, out of England. He had ranched in Canada, and had also done something vague of the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... where he built a house with a fine view of the river. This first house was burnt down, but he erected another, where he lived in some state and in great comfort, displaying his jewels and pictures to his admiring neighbours, and showing kindness to impecunious nephews. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Monaco harbour a long white boat with a stumpy mast, which delighted in the name of Jungle Queen. It was the property of an impecunious English nobleman who made a respectable income from ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... exclamation came from the bed, "he won't ask me, auntie," the girl went on, with a dash of angry impatience in her voice, "so you needn't worry. Seth has a sense of honor which I call quixotic, and one that might reasonably shame the impecunious fortune-hunters I've met since I have lived in England. No, I'm afraid if I were to marry Seth it wouldn't be ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... and having supplied a city church acceptably for some months during the absence of the pastor in Europe, he came back to our native village to rest on his laurels a few weeks, and to decide which of three rather impecunious calls he would accept. When just about to leave he took it into his head, for some reason, to "drop in" on old Doctor Hood. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and the doctor's partner was making morning calls, while the old gentleman sat in ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... until this unfortunate agent was recalled by Congress,—a broken-down man, who soon after died in England, poor and dishonored. Deane had also embarrassed Franklin, and still more the military authorities at home, by the indiscriminate letters of commendation he gave to impecunious and incapable German and French officers as being qualified to serve ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... of a dude with plenty of "stuff," as the vulgar phrase puts it, and Cad was playing the role of a fast young girl who was leading the exquisite fool to squander his roll. Well, it was a great chumming game well played—played before a lot of men who were as avaricious as impecunious gamblers always are. There were men there who bet and lost. There were men there who had no money to risk, and they all thought themselves possessed of brains, and here was a silly fool loaded with money, and here also was a silly girl reaping a rich harvest in greenbacks ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... Samuel de Champlain made in the wilderness three hundred years ago, has become one of the last refuges of the romantic dream and the courtly illusion, still haunted by the shades of impecunious young noblemen with velvet cloaks and feathered hats and rapiers at their hips; of delicate, high-spirited beauties braving the snowy wildwood in their silks and laces; of missionary monks, tonsured and rope-girdled, pressing with lean faces and eager eyes to plant the banner of the Church upon ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... must remember that he was deprived comparatively early in life of both his parents, and so ought rather to be pitied than blamed," agreed Mrs. Herbert, who would cheerfully have poured out all the vials of the Book of Revelation upon any impecunious doubter who had dared to add the mortal sin of poverty to the ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... When a very impecunious youth, who could barely afford to pay for his cab fares, lost a pound to him at whist, Lord Houghton said, as he pocketed the coin, "Ah, my dear boy, the great Lord Hertford, whom foolish people ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... are habitually employed at manual labour, whose subsistence is on a precarious footing, who possess little and ordinarily accumulate little; but it will appear in the course of the discussion that even in the case of these impecunious classes the predominance of the motive of physical want is not so decided as has sometimes been assumed. On the other hand, so far as regards those members and classes of the community who are chiefly concerned in the accumulation ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... I am an impecunious young man, and, the other day, on seeing this Advertisement in the Times, I was seized with a wild desire to "at once secure above reward." Said I to myself, "I have 'wealthy and influential friends.' There is my cousin's uncle, who has, I believe, thirty thousand a-year, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... cells in the basement, where the condemned felon in silence awaited his doom, or the airy wards above, where the impecunious debtor or the runaway sailor meditatively or riotously defied their traditional enemies the constable and policeman, now echo the Hebrew, Greek and Latin utterances of the Morrin College professors, and on meeting nights the disquisitions ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... 1911, one of the producing companies released a picture entitled "The Class Reunion." To get the plot of the photoplay story, simply substitute an impecunious professor for the old gentleman in the short-story. Instead of the Hindoo servant, have one of the pupils—if our memory serves—turn out to be the thief, and have him drop the jewel—which is a ruby, and not a diamond—into ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... benighted in a certain village, he asks the way to the "best house," and is directed by a facetious person to the house of the squire. The squire by good luck falls in with the joke; and then we have a very pretty comedy indeed—the impecunious schoolboy playing the part of a fine gentleman on the strength of his solitary guinea, ordering a bottle of wine after his supper, and inviting his landlord and his landlord's wife and daughter to join him in the supper-room. ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... been sent to some relations of hers in Ireland, and there brought up. He had been called to the Dublin bar, and married, young, a girl half Cornish and half Irish; presently, having cost old Heythorp in all a pretty penny, he had died impecunious, leaving his fair Rosamund at thirty with a girl of eight and a boy of five. She had not spent six months of widowhood before coming over from Dublin to claim the old man's guardianship. A remarkably pretty woman, like a full-blown rose, with greenish hazel eyes, she had turned ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... some of my impecunious Melton friends,—having heard a rumour that Archer, who was riding in the race, had made a bet on the result—came and begged me to find out from him what horse was going to win. I did not listen ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith |
