"Poverty-stricken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... settle over and bedim all earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple; ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the brightness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of those poverty-stricken wheedling fellows that one meets about the world every day," said the Squire to his cousin—"a fellow that rides horses that he can't pay for, and owes some poor devil of a tailor for the breeches that he sits in. They eat, and drink, and get ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... move comfortably to and fro, and pass each other as they did, within the confines of those four walls. An uncomfortable sense of having intruded upon some private gathering was, I think, my first emotion; though how the poverty-stricken country-side could have produced such an assemblage puzzled me beyond belief. And my second emotion—if there was any division at all in the wave of wonder that fairly drenched me—was feeling a sort of glory in the presence of such an atmosphere ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... from the outer world, the annual influx of visitors from July to September is a positive boon, moral as well as material. The women are especially confidential, inviting us into their homely yet not poverty-stricken kitchens, keeping us as long as they can whilst they chat about their own lives or ask us questions. The beauty, politeness, and clear direct speech of the children, are remarkable. Life here is laborious, but downright want I should say rare. As ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... however poverty-stricken, could be made to believe this. Every time after so saying he looked into their eyes, but in spite of the warning, expectation ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... possible to read this affecting story without finding in it a complete answer to the charge of demoralizing the lower classes? Does the Barrister really think, that this generous and grateful enthusiast is as likely to be unprovided and poverty-stricken in his old age, as he was prior to his conversion? Except indeed that at that time his old age was as improbable as his distresses were certain if he did live so long. This is singing 'Io Paean'! for the enemy ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the poverty-stricken street in which the Misses Seaward dwelt, Billy mounted the narrow staircase and knocked at the door. It was opened by Liffie Lee, who had remained on that day to ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... curiosity regarding the motives which were sending Miss Amy Vost into Szechwan, most deplorable, most poverty-stricken of provinces, was satisfied before the Hankow had put astern the great turbulent city after ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... soldiers of all kinds, and in order to hold their interest the hero of the day found it necessary to draw somewhat upon the possessions which the people were convinced he was without. Never an admirer of consistency, France admired this more than ever. It was a paradox that this poverty-stricken soldier should entertain so lavishly, and the people admired the nerve which prompted him to do it, supposing, many of them, that his creditors were men of a speculative nature, who saw in the man a good-paying ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... kimootisks, will you let this pair of malamutes go for seven mink and a cross fox. Are you men? Are you poverty-stricken? Are you blind? A breed dog and a male giant for seven mink and a cross fox? Non, I will buy them myself first, and kill them, and use their flesh for dog-feed, and their hides for ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... through (Why not?), though I have seen it, and we haven't got it in any of our libraries in Leeds. The reason for this is not the character of the book, but the fact that we never purchase our novels until they have become cheaper." Charming confession! A subscription ought to be opened for poverty-stricken Leeds, which must wait to buy an English book that is or will be translated into every European language, until it has become cheaper! A few weeks ago the country was laughing at little Beverley because its Fathers publicly decided to purchase no fiction ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... circumstance, and must be supposed to have done so conscientiously. But such persons as these composed but a very slender proportion of the Compact's entire membership. The rank and file were of a totally different complexion. The characteristics of the more poverty-stricken among them have already been hinted at; but, independently of these, there were many who were well-to-do, and who held their heads high in the air, who were nevertheless very ill qualified to win admiration for the caste to which they belonged. To state the simple truth, most ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the English Court. Of the fundamental aims of the nation, of the deep-seated traits of their character, he was profoundly ignorant. At once turbulent and mean-spirited, pharisaical and profligate; poverty-stricken and yet proud; bigoted in its beliefs, and yet careless of all the decencies of religion—such is the aspect which Scottish national character bore to Clarendon. To a superficial and distant observer there was not a little ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... there's a pleasure in finding out the small graces and beauties of the poverty-stricken subjects, that they wouldn't have in better ones, isn't there?" asked Kitty. "At any rate, if I were to write a story, I should want to take the slightest sort of plot, and lay the scene in the dullest kind of place, and then bring ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... we arrived at a mean village marked Airole on Terry's map. It was a poverty-stricken place, through which, in happier circumstances, we should have passed without a glance, but—there, by the roadside was a blacksmith's forge, more welcome to our eyes than a castle ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Gifts, of Church-furniture. The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their belfries, into the National meltingpot, to make cannon. Censers and all sacred vessels are beaten broad; of silver, they are fit for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets to shoot the 'enemies of du genre humain.' Dalmatics of plush make breeches for him who has none; linen stoles will clip into shirts for the Defenders of the Country: old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... before presenting it. Her air—the loose, indolent gait, like that of a leopard moving sleepily around its lair—convinced him that she had been nothing more than a common household slave, out of place in her cold, and almost poverty-stricken northern home. He drank the water she gave him, and handing back the glass, inquired if she did not feel lonely and chilled by the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... do. I mean those who are dependents, and those who aspire to be dependent. I can't see that it makes any essential difference whether they have inherited wealth and what we call culture, or whether they are poverty-stricken semi-imbeciles like Joe; the principle ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... deaconesses have classes and meet the boys in a friendly way; a men's lodging-house, where a comfortable bed and shelter can be had for eight cents a night. The latter is an enterprise which could be imitated with profit in all our large American cities, where it is very difficult for the homeless and poverty-stricken to obtain a decent lodging, or to find any place, in fact, where liquor is not sold. There are also evangelistic services in the mission here, Sunday-schools, Bible-classes, temperance meetings, a soup kitchen, and a coffee bar, where, ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... republicanism had not a few adherents among those who saw the greater progress and prosperity of the people to the south of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. These men were not ordinary immigrants, drawn from the ignorant, poverty-stricken classes of an Old World; they were men of a time which had produced Otis, Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Washington—men of remarkable energy and intellectual power. Not a few of these men formed in the Canadian colony little centres from ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... missionaries. England was especially a fruitful field for these missionaries. The great manufacturing towns were then at their worst, containing people desperately ignorant, superstitious, and so deeply poverty-stricken that the mere idea of owning land of their own seemed to them the height of affluence. Three years after the arrival of the missionaries the general conference reported 4019 converts in England ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... and the sanctuaries are once more abandoned to the possession of the priests, droning from the altars to the scattered kneelers on the floor,—the foul old women and the young girls of the poor, the old-fashioned old gentlemen and devout ladies of the better class, and that singular race of poverty-stricken old men proper to Italian churches, who, having dabbled themselves with holy water, wander forlornly and aimlessly about, and seem to consort with the foreigners looking at the objects of interest. Lounging ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... entered his rooms. He occupied two rooms at the top of a dreary building devoted to men of law. The rooms were well enough in themselves, but the furniture was in the last stage of dilapidation, there were holes in the carpet, and everything looked forlorn and poverty-stricken. I glanced at my companion. Certainly, his clothes were a little shabby, but quite good, and he was oblivious to the decayed atmosphere of his surroundings. He drew me at once to a large table, where lay the work he was engaged upon. Of its kind, it was marvelous both ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... read aloud the letters from prominent people and philanthropists who had responded to the call made by friends. They commended the interest shown by the younger generation and hoped the sympathetic work done for the sick and poverty-stricken little ones of the cities would win success. To this end a donation ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... love for you has made me a laughing-stock in the clubs of Vienna. I—the poverty-stricken, who have nothing but a noble name, nothing to offer you—have dared to show others what I think, have dared to place you in my heart above all ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a little republic, and now one of the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns: where the landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him! it was his weekly custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd of women and children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and rain outside his door, where they were gathered to ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... against them with all the powers of his learning and eloquence. When he arose in court, there stood with him, he believed, not only the cause of his client, but the honor of the whole State of Georgia. It was much easier to seduce a poverty-stricken people by offering them measures of relief than to drive them by the bayonet or to subject them to African domination. In the case of Hardeman against Downer, in June, 1868, he declared before the Supreme Court that these homestead laws put a premium on dishonesty ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... imagination." I had much trouble in licking the book into any meaning at all. Yet did the knave clear fifty or sixty pounds by subscription and selling the copyright. The book itself not a week's work! To-day's portion of my journalizing epistle has been very dull and poverty-stricken. I ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... is much safer to trust appearances in ships than in men, any one who summed up the CHANCE from her generally outworn and poverty-stricken looks would have been, as I was, "way off." Old she was, with an indefinite antiquity, carelessly rigged, and vilely unkempt as to her gear, while outside she did not seem to have had a coat of paint for a generation. She looked what she really was—the sole survivor of the once great whaling industry ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... jestingly that he had never left his overcoat anywhere. As a matter of fact he did not possess one, thus fulfilling literally our Lord's words: "He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none!" [*] His colleagues were often displeased at his poverty-stricken appearance and regarded his shabby clothes as a reflection upon their dignity. These faultfinders could easily have learned that the patched garments of the hero of brotherly love commanded the respect of all who knew Vianney's real character. Wherever he appeared ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... chair at the window would not have only the odor, but also the view of this loathsome matter circulating at his feet in the pool below. We entered the back cellar after knocking at the door a few minutes, and a man, poverty-stricken and wretched in appearance, of the laboring class, came with a candle to let us in. The room was in a filthy condition, ten by twenty-two and a half feet, with a ceiling of six feet three inches elevation from the floor. A woman, wretched and woe-begone as the man, rose suddenly ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... large number of Italians live in this country are favorable not only to the continuance of ignorance, but to the development of disease and crime. Naples is bad enough, no doubt. The people there are poverty-stricken and homeless. But in New York City they are worse than homeless. It is better far to sleep under the stars than in a stuffy room with ten or twelve other persons. Let the reader climb the stairs of some of the tenements in Elizabeth Street, or go through those in Union ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... Cuadrilleros, was styled the Alguacil. Hence the Tribunal served the double purpose of Town Hall and casual ward for wayfarers. There were all sorts of Tribunales, from the well-built stone and wood house to the poverty-stricken bamboo shanty where one had to pass the night on the floor or on ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... from the old to the new regime in Utah. Leadership was no longer a dangerous honor. Proscription no longer made the authorities of the Church strong by persecution—hardy chiefs of a poverty-stricken people—leaders as sensible of the obligations of power as their followers were faithful in their allegiance of duty. Political freedom and worldly prosperity made the office of President a luxurious sovereignty, ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... reason of our Jewish descent, find life, particularly in the higher sense of the word, to be a keener struggle for existence than our neighbors do. Yet it would not be half so wearing if our difficulties were consecrated by an inspiring cause or by a thrilling loyalty. Why need we be poverty-stricken in spirit, bereft of everything that makes struggle sweet and suffering endurable? We must put the very question, What is Judaism? in a new way and in a different spirit. We must have the definite purpose in mind, of so understanding it as to ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... bejewelled, softly clad in white feathers and opera cloaks; men hatless, immaculate as regards shirt-fronts and ties, well-groomed, the best of their race. Wonderful sight for Douglas, fresh from the farmhouse amongst the hills, the Scotch college, the poverty-stricken seminary. Back went his thoughts to that dreary past, and though the night was hot he shivered. She looked ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... appeared to him like a fairy scene, in which his every wish was gratified. And now, he had returned, dishonored, worn out, disgusted with the realities of life, still tasting the bitter dregs of the cup of shame, stigmatized, poverty-stricken, and friendless, with nothing to lose, and nothing ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... fond of studying human nature," the visitor at length volunteered, as if to explain his remarkable interest in the old man, "and I must say that this is one of the most interesting cases I have ever come across. Here we have an old, poverty-stricken man, somewhat weak-minded, who has the vision and the enthusiasm of youth, combined with a child's simplicity. And he really believes that people of capital will carry out his ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... They were the greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that neighbourhood at all. They were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their chimneys was poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silvery plumes that uncurled from the Sheridans' chimneys. Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a cobbler, and a man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages. Children ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... while nothing dispelled the darkness except the occasional gleam of a lamp struggling fitfully with the driving mist. Hazlet reached Saint Werner's wet and miserable; in returning he had lost his way, and wandered into the most disreputable and poverty-stricken streets, the very homes of thievery and dirt, where he seriously feared for his personal safety. By the time he got to the college gates he was drenched through and through, and while his body shivered ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... to a presidential or congressional election. In 1906 the gift of free railroad passes upon interstate railroads was prohibited by law. The presidential candidates in 1908 pledged themselves to publicity in the matter of contributions, while the complaints of poverty-stricken campaign managers in 1908 and 1912 indicated that the laws were generally obeyed. Still other problems raised large questions of scientific investigation ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... irresistibly of the steppes of the Ukraine, and apparently had recalled the same scene to Irene and Malinkoff. There was the same sweep of grass-land, the same riot of flowers; genista, cornflour and clover dabbled the green, and dwarf oaks and poverty-stricken birches stood ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... obligation, but having thus got possession of the whole of the gold, he kept it, and is now one of the richest and most influential men in this part of the country, while his more honest dupe is still a poverty-stricken peasant." ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... books in inextricable confusion on the shelves, and listened with gleaming eyes to the account given by the librarian for the day of the years of patient and uncomplaining struggles by which these poverty-stricken mountaineers had secured this meager result. He struck one hand into the other with a clap. "It's a chance in ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... of her rage against Violet and her poverty-stricken lover, Mrs. Mencke could not help admiring the latter's self-possessed exit, while she secretly confessed that "the fellow ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... shilling. And it would be less hardship for the poor housekeeper to find her penny-loaf 1-25th smaller, if she could discern the reduction, than to get only ten for her shilling, even if they were a fifth larger. Besides, we should feel it to be a poverty-stricken thought, that our internal commerce should be reduced to barter in half-farthings' worths, and that our merchants and bankers should have no denomination above the value of 10s. for the enormous sums which figure in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... of England?" exclaimed the count. "Ah, no, Olympia; trust me, le Dieu-donne looks higher than the poverty-stricken daughter of a headless king and a crownless queen. There is nought to fear from her. But, come, there is our cue," and, with a gay song upon their gossipy lips, Mars and Venus danced in upon the stage, while a terrible Fury circled ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... the level ground on the other side, and continued along the shore as far as Tyre, a town nowadays of poverty-stricken fishermen, with scarcely anything visible of the ancient city. "I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God"; thus spoke Ezekiel the Prophet concerning ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... still, toward the poorer class of shacks and dwellings, it might have been more interesting for him, for Jim's insatiable love of a change was being indulged to its full and he was busy making quite a good fellow of himself with all the orphans and poverty-stricken ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the bear itself embraces the man they supposed to be of noble birth, for the beast is no less a person than his own brother in the flesh who, on the death of the real bear, had donned its skin, thus enabling the poverty-stricken pair to continue to earn their livelihood in the only way left to them. This public disclosure of the bridegroom's lowly origin at once dissolves the marriage, and the young woman, declaring herself outwitted by man, offers her hand in compensation ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... had fallen over her eyes; she threw off roughly what formerly had been so well taken care of. Her Sunday dress was soiled, and a thin mesh of yellowish white hair strayed from beneath her cap, completing her pitiful, poverty-stricken disorder. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... throughout this vicinity a few days ago, over the landing of a flatboat, and the coming ashore of the unfortunates who were on it. They were in a most pitiful plight. I hope never to see a sadder sight than that poverty-stricken little family. But they were not suffering from any disease more contagious than want; they were only cold, wet, tired, hungry, and disheartened. The poor mother was sitting on the damp sand near the water's edge, with her little ones around her, when I found them. They were merely ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... poverty-stricken economy is based on agriculture, which accounts for half of GDP, 85% of exports, and 80% of total employment. The agricultural sector suffers from frequent drought and poor cultivation practices. Coffee ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... at college, Johnson left without taking a degree. Perhaps poverty had something to do with that. At any rate, with a great deal of strange, unordered learning and no degree, and with his fortune still to make, Samuel returned to his poverty-stricken home. There in a few months the father died, leaving to his son an inheritance ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... a widow and in straitened circumstances, and sometimes Jess was cramped for clothing as well as spending money. She lived at the "poverty-stricken" end of Whiffle Street, just as the Beldings lived at the ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... poverty-stricken as you think," laughed Toinette. "She won't suffer. And then I wanted to ask you if there wasn't some way of helping Helen in her art work. She wants so much to go abroad with Miss Preston, but has no more idea of ever being able to do so than she has of going to the ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... already begun, and so he lay down on the extremest point of the mountain edge, and did not take his eyes off the wild geese. While he lay and watched them, he thought of all the harm they had done him. Yes, it was their fault that he had been driven from Skane, and had been obliged to move to poverty-stricken Blekinge. He worked himself up to such a pitch, as he lay there, that he wished the wild geese were dead, even if he, himself, should not have the satisfaction ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... catalogue of noble qualities, and of a mother like a Madonna in the wilderness.[17] Yet all the evidence that there is goes to show that this romantic coloring is purely illusive. Rough, coarse, low, ignorant, and poverty-stricken surroundings were about the child; and though we may gladly avail ourselves of the possibility of believing his mother to have been superior to all the rest of it, yet she could by no means leaven the mass. The father[18] was by calling a carpenter, but not good ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... This poverty-stricken, ragged tinker was the son of a working mechanic at Elstow, near Bedford. So obscure was his origin that even the Christian name of his father is yet unknown:[2] he was born in 1628, a year memorable as that in which the Bill of Rights was passed. Then began the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The question of our support constituted a serious difficulty. Hitherto we had been able to meet our expenses out of the collections which we had made from our more respectable audiences. But it was impossible to suppose that we could do so among the poverty-stricken East-Enders—we were afraid even to ask for a collection in such ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... Dorothy, flushing. "I'll have to watch my step to merit that compliment. Now that you've heard the sad story of the poverty-stricken senior, I call for a change of subject. Did you know that Edith ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... to-day clear their three thousand dollars and four thousand dollars a year could not clear one hundred dollars a year. Commerce was absolutely stagnant. Canada was a federation, but a federation of what? Poverty-stricken, isolated provinces. Not in bravado, not in flamboyant self-confidence, rebuffed of all chance to trade with the United States, the new Dominion humbly set herself to build the foundations of a ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... luscious morsel snatched from my grasp, when I was just about to taste its sweets. The thought is madness! And, in the name of wonder, how came HE to know that she was here, and why does he interest himself in her at all? I dare not trifle with him! Were some poor, poverty-stricken devil to constitute himself her champion, I might crush him at once; but he is above my reach. No matter; she shall yet be mine—I swear it, by all the powers of hell! I care not whether by open violence, or secret abduction, or subtle stratagem; I ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... like fire from flint, sees there his Kinsman-Redeemer. 'I know that my Redeemer liveth.' Men may mock him, friends may turn against him, the wife of his bosom may tempt him, comforters may pour vitriol instead of oil into his wounds, yet he, sitting on his dunghill there, poverty-stricken and desolate, knows that God is of kin to him, and will do the kinsman's part by him. The very metaphor implies that the divine intervention which he expects is to take place after his death. It was a dead man whose blood ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... bride's-maid, were sitting within the choir; but when the clergyman was robed and ready, there entered five other couples, each attended by groomsman and bride's-maid. They all were of the lower orders; one or two respectably dressed, but most of them poverty-stricken,—the men in their ordinary loafer's or laborer's attire, the women with their poor, shabby shawls drawn closely about them; faded untimely, wrinkled with penury and care; nothing fresh, virgin-like, or hopeful about them; joining ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... about accepting the guidance of this strange fellow, who appeared to have a ready wit under his heavy-slouching exterior. The mixed contempt and humility in his speech every time he addressed me gave me an uncomfortable sensation; then his poverty-stricken appearance and his furtive glances filled me with suspicion. I looked at my host, who was standing near, thinking to take my cue from the expression of his face; but it was only a stolid Oriental face that revealed ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... any poverty-stricken debtor's house, and pointed him out to a bailiff, though in attendance upon a young child's death-bed, without the smallest concern, because it would have been a matter quite in the ordinary course of business, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... their imposing roofs of slate removed to make way for two or three wretched storeys of lath and plaster or had even been demolished altogether and replaced by shabby whitewashed houses, and now displayed only a series of irregular, poverty-stricken, squalid fronts, pierced with countless narrow, unevenly spaced windows enlivened with flowers in pots, birdcages, and rags hanging out to dry. These were occupied by a swarm of artisans, jewellers, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... gate remains; and that wonder will not exist long, if government do not do something more than send down a gentleman to ask the Welsh what they please to want? The temptation forced upon the eyes and minds of a poverty-stricken and greedy people, by this shocking spectacle of the mastery of anarchy over order, in the annihilation of an impost by armed mountain peasants, is in itself a great cruelty; for in all Agrarian risings the state has triumphed at last, inasmuch as wealth and its resources ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Foundling cots. Each little babe Has no baby sister or baby brother, And never shall know the anxious care And tender touch of a loving mother. But "Our Father," who gives their "daily bread" To all of His creatures, caused kindly men To build this home for famishing babes From many a poverty-stricken den: And here they are fed, and clothed, and taught, And lift their voices in prayer and praise; And here every Sunday the people flock To hear the ...
— London Town • Felix Leigh
... of the ancient chapel are less attractive. It stands, it may be, in some poverty-stricken corner or court of a town or city. Whatever picturesqueness it may have had once has long since vanished. Unlovely decay, an air of desolation, symptoms of neglect, present a mournful sight, and one wonders how much longer the poor relic will remain. ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... second contribution to Irish rural development was the creation of the Congested Districts Board in 1891. The "congested districts" embraced the most poverty-stricken areas in the western counties, and the business of the Board was to devise and apply, within those districts, schemes for the amelioration of the social and economic condition of the population comprised in them. For this ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... to whom reference is made, I recently met in London a famed traveler, who was in Iceland when the people were setting out for Canada, Mrs. Alec. Tweedie. She explains in her book how these people were absolutely poverty-stricken when they left Iceland. In fact, the sufferings endured the first year in Winnipeg were mild compared to their privations in Iceland before ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Afterwards, between the railing that protects the pictures and the line of busts, show-cases and marble tables supported by gilded lions, he came upon the easels of several copyists. They were boys from the School of Fine Arts, or poverty-stricken young ladies with run-down heels and dilapidated hats, who were copying Murillos. They were tracing on the canvas the blue of the Virgin's robe or the plump flesh of the curly-haired boys that played with ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... from that simple poverty-stricken figure that the Gospels present to us, to the man who claims to be His Vicegerent on earth. See him go, crowned three times over, on a throne borne on men's shoulders, with the silver trumpets shrilling before him and the ostrich fans coming on behind, and you will understand ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... and it happened that Ashe was a visitor in the North End in a region which the committee were making an especial field of labor. He was called into consultation with her, and sometimes they even went together to visit some of the poverty-stricken families which evidently existed chiefly to be subjects for philanthropic manipulation. Day by day Ashe felt her speak to him more easily and familiarly; and although their talk was strictly impersonal and unemotional, none the less did it ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... yellow fever. While sitting one day in the large, bare, comfortless public room at the miserable hotel at which he put up, he observed two strangers, whom he at once perceived to be English. One of the strangers was a tall, gaunt man, shrunken and hollow-looking, shabbily dressed, and apparently poverty-stricken. On making inquiry, he found it was Trevithick, the builder of the first railroad locomotive! He was returning home from the gold-mines of Peru penniless. He had left England in 1816, with powerful steam-engines, intended for the drainage and working ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... of overlordship had been a desolating disaster to the loyal vassal of the good Duke Charles of Savoy, who, when Francois I despoiled him of all but a remnant of his duchy, was sent into a poverty-stricken exile. A less firm resistance on the part of Count Jean against the encroaching powers of the confederated cities would have brought a like fate on Gruyere. In an epoch of transition, when the old feudal order was giving place to the increasingly triumphant democracy ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... all day and hold the baby. Goosie was always asking me to take him and I never had any time." This statement revealed the condition of many nursery mothers who are obliged to forego the joys and solaces which belong to even the most poverty-stricken. The long hours of factory labor necessary for earning the support of a child leave no time for the tender care and caressing which may enrich the life of the most ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the shadow of Mount Royal, when were gathered around its board Simon McTavish, Duncan McGillivray, Sir John Franklin and Joseph Frobisher. With them was frequently seen Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk, who formulated the scheme of populating the prairies of the North-West with poverty-stricken and down-trodden tenants from older lands, many of whom lie in the old grave-yard of the Kildonan settlement on the Red River of the North, a few miles from the City of Winnipeg. Their descendants with their Scotch ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... you are thinking," Swain burst in, "and I do not blame you. You are thinking that she is a young, beautiful and wealthy girl, while I am a poverty-stricken nonentity, without any profession, and able to earn just enough to live on—perhaps I couldn't do even that, if I had to buy my clothes! You are thinking that her father is right to separate us, and that she ought to be protected ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... own. Their grandeur was shown by the prevalence of their name. The barony in which they lived was the barony of Desmond. The river which gave water to their cattle was the river Desmond. The wretched, ragged, poverty-stricken village near their own dismantled gate was the town of Desmond. The earl was Earl of Desmond—not Earl Desmond, mark you; and the family name was Desmond. The grandfather of the present earl, who had repaired his fortune by selling himself at the time of the Union, had been Desmond Desmond, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... boxed-in, grass-hung mill-race half hidden by weeping willows, had given him sheer delight; but now he was meeting the people in the road and could see them close at hand in doorway and porches of the wretched little houses that he passed. How mean, meagre, narrow, and poverty-stricken must ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... pretty she was? She was so pretty that you immediately forgave her the indecency of her pitiful little gown. She was pretty in a daringly demure fashion, like a wicked little Puritan, or a poverty-stricken Cleo de Merode, with her smooth brown hair parted in the middle, drawn severely down over her ears, framing the lovely oval of her face and ending in a simple coil at the neck. Some serpent's wisdom had told Sophy to eschew puffs. But I think ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... environment. In the fifty years that have sped since he arrived here our knowledge of Nature has penetrated into joints and recesses which his vision never pierced. The causal elements and not the totals are what we are now most passionately concerned to understand; and naked and poverty-stricken enough do the stripped-out elements and forces occasionally appear to us to be. But the truth of things is after all their living fulness, and some day, from a more commanding point of view than was possible to any one in Agassiz's generation, our descendants, enriched with ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... same moment, of the face, and of the dreadful change in it—struck him speechless and helpless. The steady presence of mind in all emergencies which had become a habit of his life, failed him for the first time. The poverty-stricken street, the squalid mob round the door, swam before his eyes. He staggered back and caught at the iron railings ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... 'Costanzo of Pesaro, was a foul brigand, who robbed my father of his castle and lands of Biancomonte, leaving him to a needy and poverty-stricken old age. I am here to avenge upon your father's son my father's wrongs; I am here to redeem my castle and my lands. If so be that you are a true knight, you will take up the challenge that I fling you, and you will do battle with me, on horse or foot, and with whatsoever arms you shall decree, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... she said, upon entering their one poverty-stricken, but scrupulously neat, little room, "I'm going to deliver a package over on Lake Avenue for Mis' Gray, and will not be back for about an hour and a half, she told me to tell you; and she gave me ten cents, too. Ain't ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... homes and as a consequence the babies were not fed regularly and when fed were not fed mothers' milk. It demonstrated a truth that we are apt to lose sight of, that mothers' milk, even the milk from badly-nourished, poverty-stricken mothers is infinitely better than an abundant supply of artificial food combined with neglect. In view of the fact that there is a distinct tendency to evade this maternal duty these facts should be suggestive and important. It is the duty of the mother with any ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... fathered by the trading class and by a part of the landed interests. Admixed was a sincere aim to establish free political conditions. This, however, was not an aim for the benefit of all classes, but merely one for the better interests of the propertied class. The poverty-stricken soldiers who fought for their cause found after the war that the machinery of government was devised to shut out manhood suffrage and keep the power intact in the hands of the rich. Had it not been for radicals such as Jefferson, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... it. That prim, old-fashioned little woman, with her cramped ways, was his mother; his father had been a drunkard and had been killed at his work: that was his parentage; it was their fault that he led this poverty-stricken existence. ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... medicine received two thousand scudi a year, the professor of mathematics had only sixty; that is thirteen pounds a year, or seven and a half pence a day. So the son had been kept properly ignorant of such poverty-stricken subjects, and to study ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... One of Ivan's own sons turned Turk and fought against Montenegro. Finally, the last of the Trsnoievitch line, Ivan II, who had married a Venetian wife, decided that the leadership of a band of outlaws in the poverty-stricken mountains was not good enough. He retired to the fleshpots of Venice, trusting the defence of the district to a civil, hereditary leader and charging the Vladika [Bishop] with the duty of preventing ore of his flock going over to Islam, as the Serbs ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... so bare, so spiritually poverty-stricken, in these confessions and questions, that Halleck found nothing to say to them. He was troubled, moreover, as to what the truth was in his own mind. He answered, with a sort of mechanical adhesion to the teachings ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... extending their leveling process to every constituted authority, to all legal pre-eminence and to property. The only regime they long for is the democracy of a contentious rabble... The vilest instruments, professional agitators, brigands, fanatics, every sort of wretch, the hardened and armed poverty-stricken, who, in wild disorder" march to the attack of property and to "universal pillage" in short, barbarians of town and country "who form their ordinary army and never leave it inactive one single day."—Under their universal, concerted and growing usurpation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rheumatism—in a fever; when I first saw him he was lying there shivering and in great pain, with no fire; and his daughter, a girl of perhaps a dozen years old, was trying to light a fire with a few splinters of sticks that she had picked up. That was last winter, in cold weather. They were poverty-stricken, since the man had been some ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... suddenly found her opportunity in the murder of two German Roman Catholic priests in the province of Shantung, December 1897, and on the 14th of that month Admiral Diedrich landed marines at Kiao-chou Bay. At that time nothing but a few straggling, poverty-stricken Chinese villages were to be seen at the foot of the barren hills bordering the bay. But the keen eye of Germany had detected the possibilities of the place and early in the following year, under the forms of an enforced ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... young unmarried man can be without his sweetheart. Everybody according to her, must have a mark, or be in search of one. I told her with the brutality which delights her factual old mind, that if she herself had been a little less antique and poverty-stricken.... ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... a very soft spot for his godchild, and it is more than a passing fancy with him. You see, his family, while not actually poverty-stricken, are not as well off as they used to be, and Jimmy has practically supported Andree himself all the year, through countless little odd jobs. I have seen him on the coldest winter days, chopping wood or going from door to door asking to shovel snow, and his fingers were so red and ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... France blamed this expense as quite unnecessary. But the Queen said she had done it to show other nations that France was not so totally ruined and poverty-stricken by reason of her recent wars as was supposed; and that, since she was able to spend so much for frivolity, she would be able to do far more for affairs of consequence and importance; and that France was all the more to be esteemed and feared, whether through the sight of so much wealth and richness, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... loses its prestige, its dignity, when applied to a human being. It is not because of his color, but because of his condition, that the black man is in disfavor. Whenever a black face appears, it suggests a poverty-stricken, ignorant race. Change your conditions; exchange immorality for morality, ignorance for intelligence, poverty for prosperity, and the prejudice against our race will disappear like the morning dewdrop ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various
... little village there are two schools, and it is a curious sight to see a swarm of fair-haired children with slates under their arms and pencils in their hands disperse at certain hours among these poverty-stricken streets. ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... "there is, I freely acknowledge, a slight foundation. Some years ago in Jerusalem they arrested a poverty-stricken fanatic, the son of a Jewess. His father was said to have been an indigent and aged carpenter. This Joshua, or Ieshua, was driven out of Jerusalem, and he took refuge among a lot of poor fishermen on Lake Gennesareth. There he joined a sect called ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... have not even the kindness to say 'No' plain and flat; they listen to all you have to say, and as soon as your back is turned they forget your existence. The coin that passes around in this infernal town is indeed nothing but idle words, and that is all that poverty-stricken talent can expect." ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... town, howling and dancing, carrying flaring torches, burning the blue and red fire, and some of them singing silly or obscene songs; whilst the collectors ran about with the boxes begging for money from people who were in most cases nearly as poverty-stricken as the unemployed they were asked to assist. The money thus obtained was afterwards handed over to the Secretary of the Organized Benevolence Society, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... streets of Boston I saw an old woman selling newspapers; her hair was gray, her skin brown and wrinkled, her clothing shabby and only half sufficient for the chill of the hour; she was simply poverty-stricken, and her old, thin, piping voice trembled as she called her papers in an effort to compete with the crowds of newsboys around her. Many bought her papers, drawn to her through pity, and her evident need. I felt sorry that with her gray hair so near the grave life should ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... corruption of the degraded quarter is wafted in at the windows of the luxurious dwellings, and the idols of those dwellings are stricken down. So in the body politic. The wise and well-to-do enact laws, obedience to which is for the general good. The ignorant and poverty-stricken, because of their unenlightened condition, cannot see that obedience is for the good of all, and break those laws. Hence crimes, the effects of which the wise and well-to-do are made to feel, and for the punishment ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... mending, and the pair of trousers, almost bullet-proof with patches, out of which she drew her hand, roughened and reddened with hard labour, in spite of her patched and faded cotton gown, and the commonest and most poverty-stricken of peasant surroundings, which failed to hide that she ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the entrance to the outer court of the temple. They did not stand there, as do the ushers in the West, in order to keep the riff-raff, those humble, poverty-stricken children of God, from occupying the plush-covered seats in His House; but knowing the intimate connection between religion and the senses, and the limited space of the court of sacrifice and the temple itself, they stood there in order to keep a finger upon ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... her husband and for his memory prevented her apologising for it, and her children were not of the sort to apologise for their existence. A series of petty slights, small unkindnesses, imbittered the mind of the poverty-stricken widow against her unmarried sisters, and her feeling was strongly inherited by ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... traveler rides hour after hour through seemingly endless pine barrens, otherwise known as low pine-woods and flat-woods, till he wearies of the sight. It would be hard, he thinks, to imagine a region more unwholesome looking and uninteresting, more poverty-stricken and God-forsaken, in its entire aspect. Surely, men who would risk life in behalf of such a country deserved to win ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... already been accosted by three or four of these chaps, to each of whom we had given a trifle, moved by their poverty-stricken appearance and Maltese whine; when, on reaching the top of the steps, an old fellow, who from his venerable look seemed above that sort of thing, repeated a like request to his compeers lower down the stairs, holding out ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... out of it. The house did not look poverty-stricken within, but poverty must have struck to the very heart, Fleda thought, where there was no apparent cherishing of anything. There was no absolute distress visible, neither was there a sign of real comfort or of a happy home. She could not fancy it ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... concluded in these words: "I rely on the teaching of the Apostle Matthew, who says, 'Let him that hath two coats give one to the poor.' Meanwhile I trust you will listen to the voice which unceasingly appeals to you to remember your loving, hoping, poverty-stricken—and once ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 17, March 4, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... gravity as he said these things, turning first to one and then to the other. Mr. John Holt's eyes were keen and observant; and one swift glance took in the knowledge of the composer's hungry pallor, his threadbare dress, the bare and poverty-stricken aspect of ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... of the Iberian Peninsula, is hard to say definitely. A Spanish folk-tale narrating practically the same incident is to be found in C. Sellers, pp. 1 ff.: "The Ingenious Student." There the shrewd but poverty-stricken Juan Rivas steals a mule from the pack-train of a simple-minded muleteer; and while the companions escape with the animal and sell it, Juan puts on the saddle and bridle, and takes the place of the stolen beast. His explanation that he ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... turned into a wide and less poverty-stricken street, which I felt sure we could have reached by a less tortuous and malodorous path. A few yards down we came to a dark porte cochere. The dwarf halted, crossed, so as to read the number by the gas lamp, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... had about it nothing inviting to the general eye. No gas illuminations proclaimed its midnight grandeur. No huge folding doors, one set here and another there, gave ingress and egress to a wretched crowd of poverty-stricken midnight revellers. No reiterated assertions in gaudy letters, each a foot long, as to the peculiar merits of the old tom or Hodge's cream of the valley, seduced the thirsty traveller. The panelling over ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... trees no perfect form which can be fixed upon or reasoned out as ideal; but that is always an ideal oak which, however poverty-stricken, or hunger-pinched, or tempest-tortured, is yet seen to have done, under its appointed circumstances, all that could be ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... know anything about that, Tom? He wasn't near the house when the ring was lost. And besides, if he had taken the ring, he wouldn't be so poverty-stricken. He could pawn a four-hundred-dollar ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... 25th of January, the Hero arrived with the oats and bran he had sent back for. So poverty-stricken was the country that Eyre, in the circumstances, resolved to send back nearly the whole of his expedition by the vessel, and then, with only a small party, to push through to King George's Sound or perish ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... country gentleman as they are seldom performed in Ireland, and endearing himself to all classes, but particularly to the poor, by his gentle disposition, purity of mind, and benevolence of heart. In him the afflicted and the poverty-stricken ever found a sympathising friend, and if none of the rewards which the ruling faction were ready to shower on the Irishman of his position who looked to the Castle for inspiration, fell to his share, he enjoyed a recompense more precious in the prayers and the blessings of the poor. The steps ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the course of which he drew from Bob a description of the air castles which Bob had been building, and which had been so unceremoniously knocked down about his ears by his mother's letter; of the poverty-stricken condition of the Bay folk, which Bob in his big-hearted and youthful enthusiasm had hoped to relieve; and of many other things which he had planned to ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... established in Massachusetts, and before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth there was at least one public school for both sexes in Virginia. But for the most part the girls of early New England appear to have gone to the "dame's school," taught by some spinster or poverty-stricken widow. We may again turn to Sewall's Diary for bits of evidence concerning the schooling in the seventeenth century: "Tuesday, Oct. 16, 1688. Little Hanah going to School in the morn, being enter'd a little within the Schoolhouse Lane, is rid over by David Lopez, fell on ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... of those poverty-stricken natures which are never glad excepting for some special reason drawing them above themselves. She was naturally joyous and happy, unless under the pressure of an active sorrow that shaded her sky and quenched her sunshine. She lived in ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... charity in the way he should, and, consequently, to his wife it must be left to supply for his defects. She must take his place in the church, and amid the slums of the poor; she must for him and his lift her hands in prayer, and dispense his superfluous wealth in succouring the poverty-stricken. For the Archbishop will have none of the soothing doctrine which the millionaire preaches to the mob. He asserts that poverty is not a good thing; in itself it is an evil, and can be considered to lead ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett |
