"Destitution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he was disinherited, and his hands lay upon his knees, loosely weak and expressive of utter hopelessness. Very slowly he raised his face at last and turned his eyes upon the only friend that seemed left to him in his destitution. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... can't describe it even.... I can't find my words. I've made inquiries about his victim, and find he is quite a poor man. His name is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the army and was discharged. I can't tell you what. And now he has sunk into terrible destitution, with his family—an unhappy family of sick children, and, I believe, an insane wife. He has been living here a long time; he used to work as a copying clerk, but now he is getting nothing. I thought if you ... that is I thought ... I don't know. I am so confused. You see, I wanted to ask you, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us long ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... regretted," says M. de la Renaudiere, "that worn out with fatigue, scarcely able to drag himself along, in a state of positive destitution, Mollien was unable to cross the lofty mountains separating the basin of the Senegal from that of the Djoliba, and that he was compelled to rely upon native information respecting the most important objects of his expedition. It is on the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... into that region have had the effect of raising the Eskimos from the most abject destitution, lacking every appliance and accessory of civilized life, to a position of relative affluence, with the best material for their weapons, their harpoons and lances, the best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... demon of protection, and had been year after year sinking farther into the depths until at a moment when she was in her distress and saddest plight her manufacturing system broke down, "protection, having destroyed home trade by reducing," as Mr. Atkinson says, "the entire population to beggary, destitution, and want." Mr. Cobden and his friends providentially appeared, and after a hard struggle established a principle for all time and for all the world, and straightway England enjoyed the sum of human happiness. Hence all ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... and then proceeded to tell me in very broken English that "Mees Alice" was the pupil of her deceased sister, who had come from France some years before and had undertaken the vocal instruction of haut ton young ladies, in order to save their aged mother from a destitution which threatened her, owing to some heavy reverses which had befallen them ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... serve, is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of nobleness to volunteer the lowest service,—the greatest spirit only attaining to humility. Nay, God is God because he is the servant of all. Well, now here comes this conspiracy of slavery,—they call it an institution, I call it a destitution,—this stealing of men and setting them to work,—stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself; and for two or three ages it has lasted, and has yielded a certain quantity of rice, cotton, and sugar. And standing on this doleful experience, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... of his property—such as was left after paying the huge fine to Government. Tamiya Yoemon and Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei underwent degradation from the caste. There was no disposition to overlook the offence of usury. Beggary was to be the portion of Yoemon, the destitution of the outcast. For some years the senile old man, the virago of a woman once the wife of Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei, were stationed at the Nio[u]mon, to attract and amuse the worshippers passing up to the great temple of the Asakusa Kwannon. Not for long could the woman hold her tongue. Abuse passed ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... best—supplied, protected, instead of destitute and desolate—yet, the folly of the condition, held to involuntary labor, finds, always, allurement, in the spectacle of exemption from it, without consideration of the adjuncts of destitution and misery. The slave would have then, little excitement to discontent but for the free black.'—[Fifteenth ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... him, had received what he said with a good grace. The allusion to Lord Lambswool had not been pleasant to them, but it had not been worse than they had expected. But now they were displeased. They did not like being told that they were taking a bit of bread from him in their own political destitution. They did not like that he, an individual, should presume that he had prayer to offer to them as a nation. And yet, had they argued it out in their own minds, they would have seen that the Senator's metaphor ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... children on their shoulders; small black boys learned on their back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. How weak is imagination, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... patrimony and even his earlier savings swallowed up by one of those hazardous investments with which promoters impose on the credulity of the public. His small endowment as professor alone protected him from destitution. Men of science whom his reputation as a botanist and zoologist had attracted near him, wondered at the manner in which ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... here long. We only found them three weeks ago; they will look better by and by," Anna whispered, feeling that some apology was necessary for the destitution and ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... then with the ambassador himself. He said that he regretted he could do nothing for me, at least, officially. He looked at my clothes, and laughed a little, and said that of course, in cases of absolute destitution he sometimes felt compelled to come to the help of his fellow-countrymen. I told him that I knew the world, and was willing to undertake work of any sort. He answered that such cases were usually looked after at the consulate, and advised me to go there. But I didn't ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... lip where Sermaise had struck him with the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of portraits, that is all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution. A sinister dog, in all likelihood, but with a look in his eye, and the loose flexile mouth that goes with wit and an overweening sensual temperament. Certainly the sorriest figure on the rolls ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to arrange between a widow and a son who had succeeded his father; he was often harassed and perplexed by tales of hardship; and I find him writing, almost in despair, of their improvident habits and the destitution that awaited their families upon a death. "The house being completely furnished, they come into possession without necessaries, and they go out NAKED. The insurance seems to have failed, and what ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail exorbitant salaries, and to put down electioneering corruption. In 1809 Erskine introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1810 there were earnest, if somewhat futile, debates on spiritual destitution, the non-residence and poverty of the clergy, and the scarcity of places of worship. Moreover, early in 1811, a premonitory symptom of the repeal movement caused some anxiety in Ireland. It took the form of a scheme for a representative ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... "of about six hours standing. My friend Mr. Vereker found me upon the road and took pity on my destitution. It is to Peregrine we are indebted ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... feelings one must understand the condition of the poor of a place like Assisi. In an agricultural country poverty does not, as elsewhere, almost inevitably involve moral destitution, that degeneration of the entire human being which renders charity so difficult. Most of the poor persons whom Francis knew were in straits because of war, of bad harvests, or of illness. In such cases material ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... and nearly all my time was occupied in refusing passes outside of our lines. In a majority of instances, the applicants for the privilege of going into the Confederacy—many of them women—told the most sorrowful tales of destitution that could be relieved only by reaching their friends in the enemy's country; others urged, that a husband, a father, or a brother was enjoined by the physician to seek the country as the sole means of securing a return of health; in short, I was plied with every conceivable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... objections, checking them with the thought that Clive, on his first arrival at Boulogne, entirely ignorant of the practice of economy, might have imprudently engaged in expenses which had reduced him to this present destitution. (I did not know at the time that Mrs. Mackenzie had taken entire superintendence of the family treasury—and that this exemplary woman was putting away, as she had done previously, sundry little sums ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cottage, the two visitors, though they expected to see poverty, were greatly surprised at the look of extreme destitution visible everywhere. Old Parker Clare, now a cripple scarcely able to move, was crouched in a corner, on what appeared to be a log of wood, covered with rags; while his wife, pale and haggard in the extreme, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... through its repertoire for the benefit of a champagne party on the lawn. There was nothing melancholy about this party; and King couldn't help saying to Mrs. Farquhar that it hardly represented his idea of the destitution and depression resulting from the war; but she replied that they must do something to keep ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... rather a dull day. Fast as they were, the two girls shrank from rambling alone in streets thronged with figures that they associated with ruffianly destitution. Sunday had brought all to light, and the large handsome streets were beset with barefooted children, elf-locked women, and lounging, beetle-browed men, such as Lucy had only seen in the purlieus of Whittingtonia, in alleys looked into, but never entered by the civilized. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... record of advances in material prosperity, and scarce anything more. The only lumps of pure ore are the Idea which the Pilgrims were possessed with and its gradual incarnation in events and institutions. Beyond this all is barren. There is a fearful destitution of the picturesque elements. It is true that our local historians commonly avoid all romance as if it were of the Enemy; but if we compare their labors with "The Beauties of England and Wales," for example, the work certainly of uninspired men, we shall be convinced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... than usually earnest in pleading for her plan,—not merely on the strength of her own deep, prophetic conviction of her fitness for a dramatic career, but on the ground of an urgent and bitter necessity for exertion on her part, to ward off actual destitution and suffering,—he exclaimed, somewhat impatiently,—"Why, Zelma, it is an impossibility, almost an absurdity, you urge! You could never make an actress. You are too hopelessly natural, erratic, and impulsive. You would follow no teaching implicitly, but, when you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... privative word, denoting destitution; as, fatherless, faithless, pennyless."—Webster's Dict., w. Less. "Bay; red, or reddish, inclining to a chesnut color."—Same. "To mimick, to imitate or ape for sport; a mimic, one who imitates or mimics."—Ib. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a great happiness to have her little girl with her in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then! Make her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the Thenardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey! ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... recovered. He returned to England heartbroken, and in the following year (1599) he died in an inn at Westminster. According to Ben Jonson he died "for want of bread"; but whether that is a poetic way of saying that he had lost his property or that he actually died of destitution, will probably never be known. He was buried beside his master Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, the poets of that age thronging to his funeral and, according to Camden, "casting their elegies and the pens that had written them ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... divided into small enclosures by stone walls, and subdivided by rows of a tall stout reed (Arundo donax) resembling sugarcane. Although taxes and other burdens are heavy, and wages very low, yet to a mere visitor like myself there appeared none of those occasional signs of destitution which strike one in walking through a town at home, nor did ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... off from the world, or in a world become dominantly Christian. To give to all who ask, to lend indiscriminately without expecting any return, would in society as at present constituted not only speedily reduce ourselves to destitution; it would also pauperize and demoralize those into whose hands our squandered wealth should pass. To take no thought for the morrow, and to refuse to lay up treasure on earth, would under existing economic conditions simply mean that we should become useless burdens upon a thrifty and prudent ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... of His own fulness He saw that being without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... she despised so bitterly, she set forth her reasons. She had luxurious, extravagant tastes, unmethodical habits which nothing could overcome and which would infallibly lead her to poverty and destitution, and good Crenmitz too, who allowed herself to be ruined without a word. In three years, four years at most, it would be all over. And then would come debts and desperate expedients, the ragged gowns and old shoes of poor artists' households. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of these histories. A man was sitting in the darkest corner, with his head bare, and holding out his hat for the charity of those who passed. His threadbare coat had that look of neatness which marks that destitution has been met by a long struggle. He had carefully buttoned it up to hide the want of a shirt. His face was half hid under his gray hair, and his eyes were closed, as if he wished to escape the sight of his own humiliation, and he remained ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and drunken privates filled the houses with woe; snatched the bread from the children to feed their dogs; shocked the principles, scorned the scruples, and blasphemed the religion of their humble hosts; and when they had reduced them to destitution, sold the furniture, and burned down the roof-tree which was consecrated to the peasants by the name of Home. For all this attention each of these soldiers received from his unwilling landlord a certain sum of money per day—three shillings sterling, according to Naphtali. And frequently they were ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... figure would the universal ruin caused by an earthquake. She had no friends, no occupation, no interest of any kind in life; everything had slipped from her, and she shivered with a sense of nakedness, of moral destitution. Nothing was left to her, and yet she felt, she lived, she was conscious. Oh yes, horribly conscious. And that was the worst; and she asked herself why she could not pass out of sight, out of hearing and feeling of all the crying misery with which she was surrounded, and ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... unwanted babies; no orphanages, because there were no stray children; the absence of extreme wealth and dire poverty prevented destitution, and the Natives had little or no insanity; they had no cancer or syphilis, and no venereal diseases because ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... Gullettsville Academy afforded she relished and absorbed, so that her education was thorough as far as it went. Neither her conversation nor her manners would have attracted special attention in a company of fairly bright young girls, but she formed a refreshing contrast to the social destitution of ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... short winter. But this had been neglected, and famine was added to sickness, Capt. Smith had so won the confidence of the Indian chieftains, that notwithstanding the gross irregularities of his young men, they brought him supplies of corn and game, which they freely gave to the English in their destitution. ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... mud-covered box, with four bare walls and a narrow doorway facing toward the south. Herein lived and suffered a family of human beings—freedmen and women without the stigma of slavery, but with all the misery of destitution and often ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... gullies. The valleys between, where the autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the food of ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... continues to be possible for a man who genuinely desires to learn and labour truly to get his own living to starve in the midst of plenty: so long as multitudes are constrained to work under conditions which rob their labour of all interest, of all idealism, and of all hope: so long as sweating, and destitution, and such conditions of life as obtain in the more densely crowded areas of our great towns continue to exist: so long will it be the duty of every Christian to be a social reformer, and to have a conscience permanently troubled with regard to wealth and social advantage. [Footnote: Mr. George ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... health and faculties were unimpaired, of at least a thousand a year; and the thirty guineas a week at Covent Garden, and much larger remuneration during provincial tours, forever forbade the sense of destitution productive of the ecstasy with which, only a short time before I came out, I had found wedged into the bottom of my money drawer in my desk a sovereign that I had overlooked, and so had sorrowfully ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... There is much destitution felt by people whose pride prevents them from asking for supplies from the relief committees. I saw a sad little procession wending up the hill to the camp of the Americus Club. There was a father, an honest, simple ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... positively poorer; the destruction of the guilds of labor, the displacements in industry, had left great numbers not only of the peasantry and the artisans but also of the poorer nobles in practical destitution. The organization of society was giving strength to the strong and weakness to those of no might—thus exactly reversing Mary's prophecy of what her royal Son should bring; and those who were thus dispossessed and scattered felt, and had a ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... stolen by contractors or allowed to fall into the hands of the French. While the members of the Junta discussed the titles of honour which were to attach to them collectively and individually, and voted themselves salaries equal to those of Napoleon's generals, the armies fell into a state of destitution which scarcely any but Spanish troops would have been capable of enduring. The energy of the humbler classes alone prolonged the military existence of the insurrection; the Government organised nothing, comprehended ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... that they should be returned, and the ivory be taken from Shereef; but they would not restore stolen property, though they knew it to be stolen. Christians would have acted differently, even those of the lowest classes. I felt in my destitution as if I were the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves; but I could not hope for Priest, Levite, or good Samaritan to come by on either side, but one morning Syed bin Majid said to me, "Now this is the first time we ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... that city. He afterwards removed it to Philadelphia; and in 1834 made a tour through the South Western States and Texas, in which he encountered great dangers, and suffered extreme hardships from sickness and destitution. This journey was deemed by many an unprofitable and hazardous experiment, but it proved of great importance. He collected an immense amount of facts, developing beforehand the grand slave-holding conspiracy for revolutionizing Texas, and annexing it to the American Union, as a slave territory. ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... body which Time stores up for all humanity—such feel disaster when it does reach them with a bitterness unknown by those who have been in misery's school from youth. Poverty does not bite the poor as it bites him who has known riches and afterwards fights destitution; feeble physical circumstances do not crush the congenital invalid, but they often come near to break the heart of a man who, until their black advent, has known nothing but rude health; great reverses in the vital issues of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... in want during the twenty-five years after this, and die in droves. I estimate that in 1715 more than one-third of the population,[5102] six millions, perish with hunger and of destitution. This description is, in respect of the first quarter of the century preceding the Revolution, far from being too vivid, it is rather too weak; we shall see that it, during more than half a century, up to the death of Louis XV. is exact; so that instead of weakening ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... same population: notwithstanding this there are many mendicants in the street. All this arises from the advantage taken of an unwise philanthropy in the first place, many people preferring to live upon alms in preference to labour; and next from the state of destitution to which many of the emigrants are reduced after their arrival, and before they can obtain employment. Indeed, not only Philadelphia, but Baltimore and New York, are equally charged for the support of these people—the two first by legal enactment, the latter by voluntary ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... members of the brood were not involved in this graceless agitation. The complaints stopped with Guinivere. Harold, Rosemary and Rutherford were too young to realise the state of destitution into which the family had fallen. They were quite happy, contented and, so far, unaware of the gravity of a situation which was more or less apparent to their elders. Frederick, Marie Louise and Wilberforce ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mrs. Williams he was left in a state of destitution, with nobody but Frank, his black servant, to sooth his anxious moments. In November, 1783, he was swelled from head to foot with a dropsy. Dr. Brocklesby, with that benevolence with which he always assists his friends, paid his visits with assiduity. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... under our attention at the door of the police station, what we grasp in that moment of pure observation on which we pride ourselves, is not alien to the principle of classification, but deeper. We could, if we liked, make excellent comment upon the nature of provincial Spaniards, or of destitution (as misery is called by the philanthropists), or on homes for working girls. But such is not our intention. We aim at experience in the particular centres in which alone it is evil. We avoid classification. We do not deny ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... harboured by a friend near the Tower.' This separation, he insinuates, rose by an estrangement caused by Johnson's 'indifference in the discharge of the domestic virtues.' It is far more likely that it rose from destitution. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... everything was over in just twenty-four hours is an exact statement. Fyne was able to tell me all about it; and the phrase that would depict the nature of the change best is: an instant and complete destitution. I don't understand these matters very well, but from Fyne's narrative it seemed as if the creditors or the depositors, or the competent authorities, had got hold in the twinkling of an eye of everything de Barral possessed in the world, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed upon him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that friend was absent from London ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Silas, awe-struck. "I never see such a terrible time. I wish I'd told Bert to tell the burglar to go back the same way he came, and we wouldn't fire at him. I don't want to be too hard on the transgressor. Mebbe he's driven to his evil ways by destitution." ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... deliver it the same forenoon. If he had not been robbed of nearly the whole of his small capital, he would, first, have gone about the city, which was entirely new to him. But, with less than four dollars between himself and utter destitution, he felt that he had no time for sight-seeing. It was necessary that he should get to work as ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... many important respects, still retained, at the epoch treated of, its aboriginal type of organization. Here we see each community brought face to face with the impossible task of supplying, unaided, the deficiencies of nature. We see one petty district a prey to the most frightful destitution, even while profuse plenty reigns in the districts round about it. We find an almost complete absence of the commercial machinery which, by enabling the starving region to be fed out of the surplus of more favoured localities, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... brought the marquis to this pass? Famine, destitution, disease, and the Iroquois were making Canada their prey. The fur trade had been stopped for two years; and the people, bereft of their only means of subsistence, could contribute nothing to their own defence. Above Three Rivers, the whole population was imprisoned in stockade forts hastily built ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio: "No person shall be deemed destitute, suffering, or dependent upon the Government for support, within the meaning of this act, who, being able to find employment, could, by proper industry and exertion, avoid such destitution, suffering and dependence." ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... would not make a very appreciable difference to the total wages bill of the country. But perhaps it is thought by the Government that the state of employment is not sufficiently grave to warrant a greater expenditure at the present time. In spite of the insistence on forestalling destitution, there is still among local authorities much confusion of charity and relief work with anticipation of future needs calling for employment through the ordinary channels of trade. On the whole the Government has not met the domestic problems of the war with the unanimity and boldness which ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... "here is one who is returning to a home of destitution, of misery; where the light of the natural day is almost shut out, but in which brood the deeper shadows of despair." And yet, in many a splendid mansion you will find a more fearful destitution, a dearth of affections, killed by envy, jealousy, distrust; stifled by glittering formalities; ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... not fewer things, not the return to an age of poverty or dreary destitution; we need more power over things; to let the man, so long buried beneath the money and the lands and houses, come to the top; to set ourselves over our things; to make them serve us, minister to our lives and our purposes ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... contrary to oriental indifference and fatalism—and then because it would have been excessively difficult to make them out, in the confused ash heap which had taken their place. The number of families reduced to destitution must have been very considerable, but individual charity is very liberal amongst the Mussulmans, as indeed amongst all people possessed of religious faith. I got home, at one o'clock in the morning, worn out. Shortly afterwards the wind rose. If it had begun ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... contemptuous accents, "not to express any hypocritical sorrow for the occurrence which has just taken place, but to point out to you the obvious lesson which is to be learned from it—a lesson which I fear your dense ignorance, your utter destitution of discernment and common- sense, would prevent your ever discovering for yourselves. Within the last half-hour two men have come to their deaths. How? Why, by a sneaking, cowardly attempt to evade the punishment justly due to the lazy, skulking, lubberly way in which they ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... me, unless you wish to embitter my shame. I'm obliged to you for offering to share your destitution with me. I must try to run my face ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... a general look of ease and contentment. Of course, there are poor in Turin, as everywhere else,—except Japan, if we may credit travellers; but nowhere are my eyes saddened by the spectacle of that abject destitution which blunts, nay, destroys, the sense of self-respect. The operatives, especially,—what are here called the braccianti,—this salt of all cities, this nursery of the army and navy, this inexhaustible source ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... strongly in evidence. On the whole, there is far less suffering and destitution than ever before. Oppression and abominations meet with quick and powerful protest from all classes, when exposed, and at least temporary ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... destitution, and the misery they had suffered, had touched the kindly white residents of that far off place, and a subscription was raised for them, resulting in the collection of an amount sufficient to enable them to reach Rangoon in comparative ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... of their destitution, these men summon sweet souvenirs—"All that," Barque goes on, "isn't worth much, compared with the good times ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... content with efficiently discharging the more sacred duties of a parochial clergyman, he sought with devoted assiduity, the amelioration of the physical condition of his people. Relieving an immediate destitution in the parish, by a supply of Indian corn brought on his own adventure, he was led to devise means of preventing the recurrence of any similar period of depression. With this intention, he established two friendly societies in the place, and afterwards ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... minister's bride, Lilly Martin's stepmother, the new clerk at Drury's, Dr. Lay's wife's new hat and its probable cost, and the city boarders at the hotel, were all duly discussed, and then for a time there was again silence while Mrs. Johnson, president of the society, told of the extreme destitution in which she had that morning found a poor English family, who had moved into the village two ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... are most conflicting. One writer asserts that any man with honesty and determination can make his living at any time; another speaks of the numbers of skilled artisans who cannot get employment. But if some of these latter have the fastidious tastes above mentioned, it will be seen that the destitution is to a certain extent artificial. But reasoning on these subjects speedily merges in the ocean of Free Trade v. Protection, upon which I will not further touch. Sydney is the oldest town in the ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... study did not prove remunerative; having been seized for debt, he was confined in Cambridge Castle, and there finished his great work, The History of the Saracens. His martyrdom was lifelong, as he died in destitution, having always (to use his own words) given the possession of wisdom the preference to that of riches. Floyer Sydenham, who died in a debtors' prison in 1788, and incurred his hard fate through devoting his life to a translation of the Dialogues of Plato, was another martyr; ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... and eating the bread of others, until 1421; after which I returned to Florence, where I found myself plundered, and in debt, and totally destitute." The reader will be surprised at his remedy, and the modern Poor-law Commissioners, those "Indociles pauperiem pati," will deny the test of destitution, and feel a separating impulse; for he continues—"I took a wife, and went to Pisa, where I mended the roads about the gates, and staid four years." The tax returns afford curious documents. We have that of Massaccio:—"Declaration ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... doing so; now another day would be lost, and yet it was necessary to live. Those overwhelming sorrows, which deprive the poor of the faculty of labor, are doubly dreaded; they paralyze the strength, and, with that forced cessation from toil, want and destitution ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of his hatred was not the old patrician blood of Rome, but the new aristocracy, which had of late years been rapidly rising up and displacing it. That new nobility was utterly corrupt, and its corruption was encouraged by the venality of the masses, whose poverty and destitution tempted them to be the tools of unscrupulous ambition. Sallust strove to place that party in the unfavorable light which it deserved; but, notwithstanding the truthfulness of the picture which he draws, selfishness and not patriotism was the mainspring of his politics; he was not an honest champion ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... courageous enough. He said that these Eastern girls were not used to having any sort of attention; that there was only about a tenth or fifteenth of a fellow to every girl, and that it tickled one of them to death to have a whole man around. He was not meanly exultant at their destitution. He said he just wished one of these pretty Boston girls—nice, well dressed, cultured, and brought up to be snubbed and neglected by the tenths and fifteenths of men they had at home—could be let loose in the West, and have a regular round-up ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... not greatly improved until printing was invented. Luther had to do with people who were emerging from the sad conditions of that age, the effects of which were still visible centuries after. He writes: "The deplorable destitution which I recently observed, during a visitation of the churches, has impelled and constrained me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in such a small and simple form. Alas, what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... have beckoned, with grinning faces, to a vulgar mob, to come and insult over the nakedness of a parent; when it had become them, if one spark of filial patriotism had burnt within their breasts, to have marched with silent steps and averted faces to lay their robes upon his destitution! ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... latter noble lord moved another amendment, empowering the guardians to relieve in poor-houses "all destitute persons who are either incurably lame, or blind, or sick, or labouring under permanent bodily infirmity;" also all orphan children left in a state of destitution. Ministers, however, succeeded in carrying the original clause of the bill by a majority of one hundred and seven to forty-one. Subsequently some amendments were made in the minor details of the bill, and it was read a third time on the 9th of July, and carried by a majority of ninety-three ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Superior; he seemed to me to be more like a savage than a civilized being. His book is written without either taste or order; but he gives, even unconsciously, a lively picture of the prejudices, the passions, the vices, and, above all, of the destitution in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Portsmouth, Winchester, Chichester, Malmesbury, and Hereford, all of which he reduced in a short time, entitled him, in the estimation of his admirers, to the quaint appellation of William the Conqueror. While the forces under Essex were suffered to languish in a state of destitution,[1] an army of eight thousand men, well clothed and appointed, was prepared for Waller. But the event proved that his abilities had been overrated. In the course of a week he fought two battles, one near Bath, with Prince Maurice,[a] the other with Lord Wilmot, near Devizes[b]: ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... your intercession, I asked him for cash. What do you suppose the old skinflint answered? "I'll pay your debts," says he, "if you like. Up to twenty-five roubles inclusive!" Do you hear, inclusive! No, sir, this was a gift from God in my destitution. ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated bailiffs man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank, eccentric public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded perforated umbrella. Destitution: the inmate of Old Man's House (Royal Hospital) Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson's Hospital for reduced but respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want of sight. Nadir of misery: the aged impotent disfranchised ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of Judah," said the genius. "My bright-eyed Tamar," he added, "I have been thinking of a poem, and if I can but express my ideas, it will be the means of lifting up my family again from the destitution into which it has fallen. My subject is the restoration of Jerusalem in the latter days, and the lifting up of the daughters of Zion from the dust. The captives of Israel now are hewers of wood and carriers of water; but the time will come when the hands that now ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... what he reads. A specimen or two will amply suggest the rest. In one tale the hero is held up to the unqualified admiration of posterity for having starved to death his son, in an extreme case of family destitution, for the sake of providing food enough for his aged father. In another he unhesitatingly divorces his wife for having dared to poke fun, in the shape of bodkins, at some wooden effigies of his parents ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... Dauphin on one side of her and a great French Duke on the other. Louis amused himself with compliments and questions that sometimes nettled her, sometimes pleased her, giving her a sense that he might admire her beauty, but was playing on her simplicity, and trying to make her betray the destitution of her home and ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sobbed under their kisses and begged their pardon. However, when they gazed at each other with red eyes and dry lips, they measured the fall of the family; they saw for the first time how frightful were their destitution and distress; they felt the unbearable feeling of shame glide into their hearts like a sinister and unexpected guest who, at the first glance, makes one understand that he has come to be master of the lodging. This was the secret, the overwhelming secret, which the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... feeble and limited capacity and vision cannot discern their connection, nor the mighty chords that make the apparent discord perfect harmony. Evil is merely apparent, and all is in reality good and perfect. For pain and sorrow, persecution and hardships, affliction and destitution, sickness and death are but the means, by which alone the noblest virtues could be developed. Without them, and without sin and error, and wrong and outrage, as there can be no effect without an adequate cause, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... that the wounds inflicted by such extortions, or, as I should rather call them, confiscations, are incurable, and have often reduced provinces to extreme destitution. Indeed, such conduct, as will be related ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... their shoulders; small black boys carried on their backs little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalidness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. How weak is imagination, how cold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... by the misfortunes of others, and shewing at the same time how possible it is, under the present law regulating joint-stock partnerships, for an honest man, by the most inadvertent act, to entail misery upon himself, and destitution upon his offspring. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... hesitate to accept Lord Bryce's report on the German atrocities in Belgium, knowing as we do that it is based almost entirely on the hearsay evidence of refugees who would be anxious to distinguish themselves as witnesses from the general ruck of destitution; but it happens that the general charges of German aggressiveness and German brutality are fully corroborated by German literature.[66] Unfortunately these distinctions between brutal and chevaleresque methods ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... the unprotected innocence of the daughter of an old and faithful servant, whose very life-blood had been poured forth in his defence, should not have been a safeguard in his eyes, was indeed incredible and revolting. But it was this orphan helplessness, this afflicting destitution which marked her for ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... the garret of the swineherd's tower, 325 Which overlooks the sty, and made a long Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine, Of delicacy mercy, judgement, law, Morals, and precedents, and purity, Adultery, destitution, and divorce, 330 Piety, faith, and state necessity, And how I loved the Queen!—and then I wept With the pathos of my own eloquence, And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made 335 A slough of blood and brains upon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 7. The destitution of horns on the calf and of teeth in the suckling. All other parts are perfect at the very first; but were calves and sucklings to have teeth and horns, what sore annoyances would these appendages prove to their dams and dames. How ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... vicar's wife, "how is she to be told? It is heart-rending to look at her and to think,—nothing but luxury all her life, and now, in a moment, destitution. I am very glad to have her with me: she is a dear little thing, and so nice with the children. And if some good man would only ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... there ought to be an organized system of charity in our church; something different from the hap-hazard way of doing things that we have. Mr. Roberts says, that in New York, their church is perfectly organized to look after certain localities, and that no such thing as utter destitution can prevail in their section. Don't you think Dr. Dennis would be interested in ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... straight at him and raise his hand to his hat. They drew into the shade of a building (it was a bank), and the mate related how the boat with the crew got into Pangu Bay about six hours after the accident, and how they had lived for a fortnight in a state of destitution before they found an opportunity to get away from that beastly place. The inquiry had exonerated everybody from all blame. The loss of the ship was put down to an unusual set of the current. Indeed, it could not have been anything else: ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... he struggled against cold and hunger and destitution, while he contended with faction at home and lukewarmness in the administration of the war, even then, in the midst of these trials, he was devising a new system for the organization and permanence of his forces. Congress meddled with the matter of ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... not be afraid, Froeken! . . . I, Charles Dyceworthy, am not the man to trifle with your young affections! Let them rest where they have flown! I accept them! Yea! . . . in spite of wrath and error and moral destitution,—my spirit inclineth towards you,—in the language of carnal men, I love you! More than this, I am willing to take you as ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and the poverty of his family precluded all hope. He would listen to his mother, as she spoke in whispers to his grandfather, of her wish to send him to school; and he wept with disappointment, to find such a consummation impossible. The evidences of this destitution were constantly before him; his perception of the privations of those dear to him became every day keener; and when, after the fair, during which he had filled his little purse by executing trifling commissions, he carried ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... with its attendant anaemia, may be induced by bad habits, destitution, or constitutional depravity. Sickly forms, wrecks of health, address our senses on every side. All these subjects evidently once had a capital in life, sufficient, if properly and carefully husbanded, to comfortably afford them vital stamina and length of days. Alas! they have squandered ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... her death-agony. She went down bows first, her stern raised in the air. She then gave one quick dive and the ice closed over her for ever. It gave one a sickening sensation to see it, for, mastless and useless as she was, she seemed to be a link with the outer world. Without her our destitution seems more emphasized, our desolation more complete. The loss of the ship sent a slight wave of depression over the camp. No one said much, but we cannot be blamed for feeling it in a sentimental way. It seemed as if the moment of severance from many cherished associations, many happy ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme was appalled before such destitution. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... neck. But why do I try to give you this personal description of him? If you ever subscribed to a Ladies' Charity in London, you know Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well as I do. He was a barrister by profession; a ladies' man by temperament; and a good Samaritan by choice. Female benevolence and female destitution could do nothing without him. Maternal societies for confining poor women; Magdalen societies for rescuing poor women; strong-minded societies for putting poor women into poor men's places, and leaving the men to shift for themselves;—he ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... find properly but one epoch: we may say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor, barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... bad habits and the establishment of his better principles might qualify him for receiving it for his own distribution. It was difficult to believe that his subjection to opium could much longer resist the stings of his own conscience and the solicitations of his friends, as well as the pecuniary destitution to which his opium habits had reduced him. The proposed object was named to Mr. C., ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... midst of this population is a House of Refuge for the Destitute, established by charitable individuals for the relief of those who may be found in a state of absolute destitution of the necessaries of life. Here they are employed in menial services, lodged and fed until they can be sent to their friends, or employment found for them. We went over the building, a spacious structure, in the Canongate, of the plainest Puritan architecture, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... conditions. As the Countess of Aberdeen said: "In the past annual report by Sir Charles Cameron, the medical officer of health for Dublin, there are again some figures that tell a strange tale of poverty so widespread, of destitution so complete, of housing so unsanitary, of unemployment so little heeded, that one is amazed by the fact that no combined effort on the part of more fortunate citizens has been made toward bringing about a wholesome change, and this ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... at Thirlestane. Butts of the richest and rarest wine were carried into the fields, their ends were knocked out with hatchets, and the liquor was carried about in stoups. The burn of Thirlestane literally ran with wine." Sir Robert died soon afterwards, and left his family in utter destitution, his wife dying in absolute beggary. Thus was avenged the crime of this cruel and unprincipled woman, whose fatal jealousy caused the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... and lodging at least one night among the barrels on one of the wharves, I was indeed free—from slavery, but free from food and shelter as well. I kept my secret to myself as long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some one who would befriend me without taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such a person I found in a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from his humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk, near the Tombs ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... of reflections of this sort. The destitution of the Campagna of Rome demonstrates triumphantly what an aversion mankind has to arbitrary government, while the well-populated mountain of St Marino shows what a natural love they have for liberty. Whigs abroad were ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... very simply told," and, briefly, in the simplest possible style, he told her of his brother's death, and how his sister-in-law and her family had been left in destitution. "You see," he wound up, "it's just an ordinary sad little tale. Cases of that kind happen daily, all the world over. One must be thankful when they happen ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... duration of Sheridan's destitution at the time of his last illness and death have been the subject of controversy. The statements in Moore's Life (1825) moved George IV. to send for Croker and dictate a long and circumstantial harangue, to the effect that Sheridan and his wife ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... dearth, destitution, frugality, lack, scantiness, defect, economy, inadequacy, need, shortcoming, deficiency, failure, insufficiency, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... him that Gaston was now a rich man through his marriage with the Baronne de Macumer. The personal beauty, which was the mother's rich heritage to her sons, had saved them both—one in India, the other in Paris—from destitution. A touching story, is ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... transformed into many other things. It gives the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in those extremes ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... more than thirty thousand perished on the way in crossing the mountains; some in the battles which were fought in the passes, and a greater number still, probably, from exposure to fatigue and cold, and from falls among the rocks and glaciers, and diseases produced by destitution and misery. The remnant of the army which was left on reaching the plain were emaciated, sickly, ragged, and spiritless; far more inclined to lie down and die, than to go on and undertake the conquest of Italy ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Panama. He repaired to New Granada, there to make his studies and his charts. He made them so thoroughly that he died of yellow fever before having begun his work, having come to the end of his money and leaving his widow in the most cruel destitution. Countess Larinski said to her son: "We have nothing more to live on; but, then, is it so necessary to live?" She uttered these words with an angelic smile about her lips. Abel set out for California. He undertook the most menial services; he swept the streets, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... in your father's halls, and girt around with the friends and kinsmen of your race,—I might have pressed for more than you will now tell me; I might have indulged suspicion where I perceived mystery, and I might not have loved as I love you now! Now, Isora, in misfortune, in destitution, I place without reserve my whole heart—its trust, its zeal, its devotion—in your keeping; come evil or good, storm or sunshine, I am yours, wholly and forever. Reject me if you will, I will return to you again; and never, never—save from my own eyes or your own lips—will ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suddenly exclaimed, "will you not give me a loaf of bread for my wife and little ones?" The stranger regarded him not unkindly. "Far be it from me," he rejoined, "to take advantage of your destitution. Keep your wife and little ones; I do ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... this ministry of peace, which is for you the sanest form of patriotism; to accept with all your hearts the privations you have to endure; to simplify still further, if it is possible, your way of life. One of you who is reduced by robbery and pillage to a state bordering on total destitution, said to me lately: "I am living now as I ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Sramaneras all fled, but our young hero stood his ground, and said to the thieves, "If you must have the grain, take what you please. But, Sirs, it was your former neglect of charity which brought you to your present state of destitution; and now, again, you wish to rob others. I am afraid that in the coming ages you will have still greater poverty and distress;—I am sorry for you beforehand." With these words he followed his companions into the monastery, while the thieves left the grain and went away, all the ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... that strange mixture of state and splendor with discomfort and destitution, which prevailed very extensively in royal households in those early times. A part of the privation which Elizabeth seems, from this letter, to have endured, was doubtless owing to the rough manners of the day; but there is no doubt that she ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... lump; on the contrary, very few indeed could do so. But suppose, which is quite possible, that he were to purchase, with the first L12 he could save, a deferred annuity of L1 for his child, and so with the next L12, and so with the next, until he had placed her beyond the reach of actual destitution; and suppose, again, that his conscience was so much awakened to the duty of thus providing for her that amusement and pleasure would be postponed or curtailed until this duty was performed, just as amusement is not thought of until the rent and taxes and housekeeping are first defrayed: in that ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... we shall call the defender of La Goualeuse) listened with deep interest to her recital, made with touching frankness. Misery, destitution, ignorance of the world, had destroyed this wretched girl, cast alone and unprotected on the immensity of Paris. He involuntarily thought of a beloved child whom he had lost, who had died at six, and would have been, had she lived, like Fleur-de-Marie, sixteen and a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... expedition into the forests to the northward, which will form material for the history of these expeditions when it is written. He tells the story of an insurrection among the negro labourers, and complains of the spiritual destitution of his adopted land. He finally returns to Cuzco and gives an account of a very magnificent pageant and tilting match. But this story should have preceded the mournful narrative of the fate of Tupac Amaru; for the event took place at the ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... Valley man by reason of his residence at Lexington, south of Staunton, was their hero and idol. The women sent husbands, sons, lovers, to battle as cheerfully as to marriage feasts. No oppression, no destitution could abate their zeal. Upon a march I was accosted by two elderly sisters, who told me they had secreted a large quantity of bacon in a well on their estate, hard by. Federals had been in possession of the country, and, fearing the indiscretion of their slaves, they had done the work at ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... campaign in Spain, she continued to live in the same luxury that had surrounded her during her days of splendour; and as the Bourbon Government refused to help her, she was soon reduced to a state of destitution, and turned to her pen to pay off her creditors. She wrote several novels, which at this time are completely forgotten; but in 1831 she began to bring out her Memoirs, and these give a graphic account of the social life under the Empire, and have become a classic. These Memoirs were first published ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... to suffer. I was amazed by his reply. Terutak', it appeared, had still three or four in reserve against an accident; and his reluctance, and the dread painted at first on every face, was not in the least occasioned by the prospect of medical destitution, but by the immediate divinity of Chench. How much more did I respect the king's command, which had been able to extort in a moment and for nothing a sacrilegious favour that I had in vain solicited with millions! But now I had a difficult task in front of me; it was not in my view ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their lives are failures, not the sharp and tragic failure of the labourer who gets out of work and starves, but a slow, chronic process of consecutive small losses which may end if the individual is exceptionally fortunate in an impoverished death bed before actual bankruptcy or destitution supervenes. Their chances of ascendant means are less in their shops than in any lottery that was ever planned. The secular development of transit and communications has made the organisation of distributing businesses upon large and economical ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... had been burned. The colonel brought from his hip pocket the carefully folded sheet of foolscap which he had put away when duty called him to Barclay. He paused at the bottom of the stair, backed the paper on the wall, and wrote under the words setting forth the farmer's destitution, "Martin Culpepper—twenty-five dollars." He stood a moment in the stairway looking into the street; the day was fair and beautiful; the grasshoppers were gone, and with them went all the vegetation in the landscape; but the colonel in his nankeen trousers and his plaited white shirt ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... still feeling persuaded that I had acted under a delusion in going to her house. How was it possible to associate the charming object of my heart's worship with the miserable story of destitution which I had just heard? I stopped the boy on the first landing, and told him to announce me simply as a doctor, who had been informed of Mrs. Brand's illness, and who had called to ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... how to avail himself. He will soon be left homeless and helpless in the midst of civilization, upon the soil that once was his alone. The freedom of territorial and industrial expansion which is bringing imperial greatness to the nation, to the Indian brings wretchedness, destitution, beggary. Surely there is obligation found, in such considerations as these, to make good in some way to him the loss by which we so largely gain. Nor is this obligation one that can be discharged by lavish endowments, ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... Poverty.— N. poverty, indigence, penury, pauperism, destitution, want; need, neediness; lack, necessity, privation, distress, difficulties, wolf at the door. bad circumstances, poor circumstances, need circumstances, embarrassed circumstances, reduced circumstances, straightened circumstances; slender means, narrow means; straits; hand to mouth existence, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... place which the doctrine of the divine decrees holds in the system of revealed truth. They hesitated to proclaim a free salvation and a willing Saviour to all man kind, simply on the ground of their common destitution as sinners, and they sought to extricate themselves from the difficulties, arising out of the doctrine of election on the one hand, and the common offers of the gospel on the other, by the chilling hypothesis, that these offers were made in reality, whatever might be their form, to convinced, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... not only our actions but our stomachs. I know not whether it was piety or economy that swayed her soul, but I never met a person who was so rigid as this lady in the observance of the church calendar, especially whenever a day of abstinence allowed her to deprive us of our beef. Nothing but my destitution compelled me to ship in this craft; still, to say the truth, I had well-nigh given up all idea of returning to the United States, and determined to engage in any adventurous expedition that my profession offered. In ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... to say that I was indifferent to my good fortune, but I honestly believe I thought much more of the pleasure it would give the poor people who had charitably taken care of me in my destitution, than of the benefit I should myself derive ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... girl was lashed to a spar, and the last thing she remembered was, being washed overboard by a mountain wave. She was picked up by a merchant vessel bound for Havana. There she arrived in a state of utter destitution, and she who was once the companion of princesses, was obliged to sing in the street for a ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... "ragamuffin," which I have used above, does not accurately express the man, because there is a sort of shadow or delusion of respectability about him, and a sobriety too, and a kind of decency in his groggy and red-nosed destitution. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was lying in the roads, to take off the English merchants, who in consequence of the revolutionary movements going on, sought shelter under their own flag. Here Mr. Seton, reduced to the last stage of destitution and squalor, boldly applied to Captain Bentham, the commander of the squadron, who, finding him to be a gentleman, offered him every needful assistance, gave him a berth in his own cabin, and finally landed him safely on the Island of Jamaica, whence ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... friends who have been in Florida, and have seen the destitution of the colored people there, have put into our hands five thousand dollars for the establishment of anew school in one of the destitute regions of that State. The good friends who are interested so largely in this move desired ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... in its compass, indecisive in its enforcement, and niggardly in its pecuniary appointments. Many of our legislators have never thought of investigating the condition of the people, and are unaware of their deplorable destitution of all mental cultivation; and many have formed but a low and indistinct estimate of the kind and measure of cultivation desirable to be imparted. Very slowly does the conviction or the desire make its way among the favorites of fortune, that the portion ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... offences against the law is by no means a general characteristic of the girls. For the most part, destitution has been the simple ground on which they have obtained admission to ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... nothing without a large and well-ordered caravan, and therefore he had to return to Ujiji, whither fresh supplies ought to have arrived from the coast. And amidst a thousand dangers and lurking treachery he effected his return through the disturbed country. Half dead of fever and in great destitution he arrived at ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... condition. The treasury being exhausted, they were but poorly supplied with the necessaries of war, and the generals and contractors had contrived to appropriate to themselves most of the funds which had been furnished. The general wrote to the emperor, presenting a lamentable picture of the destitution of the army. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... undertook to write on Canada after spending a month here. He said the Canadians have no fruit but a very inferior raspberry, and that they actually sell bilberries in the shops. As a further proof of their destitution, he was told that haws and acorns are exposed for sale in the Montreal markets. Such a country, he said, is no place for a refined Englishman. I don't wonder my countrymen ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... a system of searches seizures, permits, and passes had been introduced by General Fremont. When General Halleck came, he found and continued the system, and added an order, applicable to some parts of the State, to levy and collect contributions from noted rebels to compensate losses and relieve destitution caused by the rebellion. The action of General Fremont and General Halleck, as stated, constituted a sort of system which General Curtis found in full operation when he took command of the department. That there was a necessity for something of the sort was clear; but that it could ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield |
