"Pittance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into voting for or against measures which they would not were they more familiar with the tricks of the machine men. A new grist of legislators is what the organization is always looking for. They want a certain number of old "stand-bys" who will do their dirty work for a mere pittance or some paltry reward, real or anticipated, and with these men to influence and control the younger members their purpose ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... those articles of foreign growth and manufacture which are indispensable to civilized life. They have, however, at last a staple export, which is rapidly increasing, and promises in a few years to suffice for all their wants, and to render them quite independent of the miserable pittance which is thus afforded them by the expenditure of the government: I mean the fleeces of their flocks, the best of which are found to combine all the qualities that constitute the excellence of the Saxon and Spanish wools. The sheep-holders in ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... her illusory robes, but any day—such are the whims of fashion—she might be wandering again, sick at heart, about the great city, knocking at the side doors of variety shows for any engagement that would give her a pittance of a few dollars a week. How long had Carmen waited on the social outskirts; and now she had come into her kingdom, was she anything but a tinsel queen? Even Henderson, the great Henderson, did the friends ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... state of the drama; and the drama was the department of polite literature in which a poet had the best chance of obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so small that a man of the greatest name could hardly expect more than a pittance for the copyright of the best performance. There cannot be a stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last production, the Fables. That volume was published when he was universally admitted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to give up school and go to work so as to take some of the load from the old pater's shoulders. So they were glad, actually glad, when the war came along and gave them a chance not only to serve their country and earn some money—even if it was only a miserable pittance—so that they could send some home to their dad and feel that they had stopped being a drag upon him. He used to tell me," Frank went on, for the spell of those old thrilling times was strong upon him again, "with tears in his eyes—and I'll tell you there was no braver man in all the American army ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... fee of a shilling to the warden on each occasion, sixpence to each fellow and chaplain, and likewise to the schoolmaster, twopence to each lay clerk, sixpence to the sacrist for wax candles, and a mark or thirteen and fourpence to be spent in a "pittance" extra course in the college hall. The indenture by which Colpoys hoped to secure perpetual masses in remembrance of his relations and himself is in perfect preservation, with seals attached, in the muniment chamber ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... himself up latterly to this fatal comparison. The hour when gold was entrusted to his charge found him feverish and irritable. He asked himself whether he was a mere machine to transfer money from spot to spot, and he spurned at the pittance bestowed upon honesty in this life. Where could Boyne's Bank discover again such an honest man as he? And because he was honest he was poor! The consideration that we alone are capable of doing the unparalleled thing may sometimes inspire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... uncertain futurity? Shall we suppose some revelation from above in favour of one of the faithful? Perhaps an angel from heaven appeared to this mirror of modern virtue, and informed her, that if she eat more than one piece of bread a day, her small pittance would not last her till the time she was to make her escape. Her mother, we know, is a very enthusiastical woman—a consulter of conjurors, a dreamer of dreams; perhaps the daughter dreamed also what ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... even an account of the state of her brother's affairs. Her letters for three years past had remained unanswered, and she would have been exposed to the horrors of the most abject want, but for a pittance quarterly doled out to her by ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... the spot whence he had driven it. But there was more in that last gallop along the smooth lawn than might be realized by any one present save Alec himself. It was his farewell to the game. From that day he would cease to be dependent on a begrudged pittance for the upkeep of his stable, and that meant the end of his polo playing. But he was not made of the stuff that yields before the twelfth hour. His mallet whirled in the air, there was a crack like a pistol shot, and the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... with neither trade nor money, and how both she and he had to struggle for a mere subsistence, she at keeping boarders, and he as apprentice to a mean man, who gave him only the smallest weekly pittance. He says that we shall never go out into the world as destitute of resources as his mother was, and so we all have what may really be called trades. My brother is in the counting-house, keeping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... barred from the life his whole soul craved, yearning for books and study with all his heart, but forced to give the last atom of his poor strength in digging in the soil for the bare necessities of life, denied even a pittance to spend for the volumes he loved; Grace Conner marred in spirit and mind, as was Denny in body, by the cruel, unjust treatment of those to whom she had a right to look first for sympathy and help; and the nurse, who was ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... vigour of their youth is exhausted by labour, and what are the hopes and consolations of their age? Sickness may deprive them of the opportunity of providing the least supply for the declining years of life, and the gloomy confinement of a work-house, or the scanty pittance of parochial help, are their only resources. By their condition may be estimated the real prosperity of a country; the real opulence, strength, and security of the public are proportionate to the comfort which ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... could clean up thirty thousand dollars net in two years if I had more cash to work on. As it is, I have to go slow, or I'd go broke. I'm holding two limits by the skin of my teeth. But I've got one good one practically for an annual pittance. If I make delivery on my contract according to schedule it's plain sailing. That about sizes ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... His temperament invited a few people to a close friendship with him, and gently warned many to keep a respectful distance. Aggressive and cutting he was, and he often said that death was the best friend of a man who is compelled to write for a living. He wrote a subscription book for a mere pittance, and one of the agents that sold it now lives in a mansion. He regarded present success as nothing to compare with an immortal name in the ages to come. He was born in the country, and his refined nature revolted at his rude surroundings, and ever afterward he held the country in contempt. ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... occurred to me that you might be willing to come and read to him. His eyes seem to be on the wane, some way, and he's rather sleepless. He'd give you a bed, and sometimes you'd have to read to him in the night; you'd take your meals where you like. How does it strike you, supposing the 'harnsome pittance' can be arranged?" ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... village peep-show. And the things which had kept their stimulating power—distant journeys, the enjoyment of art, the contact with new scenes and strange societies—were becoming less and less attainable. Lansing had never had more than a pittance; he had spent rather too much of it in his first plunge into life, and the best he could look forward to was a middle-age of poorly-paid hack-work, mitigated by brief and frugal holidays. He knew that he was more ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... and that her relations being determined that she should do something for her living, had advanced some money on condition that she set up an establishment. Having no experience in hotel-keeping, she soon dissipated the little capital and lived afterwards on a pittance in ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that he would have her, come what might and be the price what it would. Rather than the fortune for which his father had toiled and sacrificed, Donald preferred Nan's love; rather than a life of ease and freedom from worry, he looked forward with a fierce joy to laboring with his hands for a pittance, provided he might have the privilege of sharing it with her. And The Dreamerie, the house his father had built with such great, passionate human hopes and tender yearnings, the young laird of Port Agnew could abandon without a pang ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Daisy's name not mentioned in the will. Brothers sorry—pretend to be. Give my Daisy a pittance for her life—nothing to the child. Charlotte," he suddenly stopped in front of his niece, "don't you think you are a ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... other church, but leaving the remaining one-fourth (or half of future sales) at the discretionary disposal of the Executive for religious purposes. This part of the Imperial Act has proved inoperative to this day; and should any religious persuasion receive any portion of this comparative pittance of the clergy land funds, it would do so not as a matter of right (as do the Churches of England and Scotland in receiving their lion's share), but at and during the pleasure of any party in power—a position in which no religious community should be placed to ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... forenoon: the poor fellow came for sympathy and conversation. It is difficult to imagine a situation more forlorn and isolated than that of this man,—a Greek at Seville, with scarcely a single acquaintance, and depending for subsistence on the miserable pittance to be derived from selling a few books, for the most part hawked about from door to door. "What could have first induced you to commence bookselling in Seville?" said I to him, as he arrived one sultry day, heated and fatigued, with ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to himself, "Those two expect the worst. And if the worst comes, if Percival is mistaken and Horace is cut off with just a pittance, we shall see what Hunting Harry's temper really is. We may have an unpleasant quarter of an hour, but it will give us a vivid idea of the end of the millennium, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Adam's Ale. A very ancient colloquialism for water. In Scotland 'Adam's wine' and frequently merely 'Adam'. Prynne in his Sovereign Power of Parliament (1648), speaks of prisoners 'allowed only a poor pittance of Adam's ale.' cf. Peter Pindar (John Wolcot), The Lousiad, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... was earnestly entreated and encouraged to recruit her crops, her growing infirmities, and, above all, the tortures, of a stubborn hip gout, which she found would yield to no remedy, determined her to break up her business, and retire with a decent pittance into the country, where I promised myself, nothing so sure, as my going down to live with her, as soon as I had seen a little more of life, and improved my small matters into a competency that would create in me an independence on the world: for ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... better, a more honourable, or a more justifiable project could have been thought of. They were then reduced to slavery and beggary by the English rebels, many thousands of them murdered, the rest deprived of their estates, and driven to live on a small pittance in the wilds of Connaught; at a time when either the Rump or Cromwell absolutely governed the three kingdoms. And the question will turn upon this, Whether the Catholics, deprived of all their possessions, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... pittance that was giv'n, By cringing, sordid wealth; But, with firm confidence in Heav'n, And thankful for ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... means to the masses of the students who go to Tuskegee the general public can have no idea. It is a great thing for a boy who never earned more than the merest pittance a day to go to a school where he can secure an education by working for it, and at the same time be fitted to earn wages, as many of them do, three and even five times as high as before going there. This accounts, in a large measure I am ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... taught in schools, And idly drawn from antiquated rules? What is her use? Point out one wholesome end. Will she hurt foes, or can she make a friend? 30 When from long fasts fierce appetites arise, Can this same Virtue stifle Nature's cries? Can she the pittance of a meal afford, Or bid thee welcome to one great man's board? When northern winds the rough December arm With frost and snow, can Virtue keep thee warm? Canst thou dismiss the hard unfeeling dun Barely by saying, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... charcoal brazier and warmed her transparent, needle-pricked fingers, thinking meanwhile of the strange events of the day. She had been up town to carry the great, black bundle of pants and vests to the factory and receive her small pittance, and on the way home stopped in at the Jesuit Church to say her little prayer at the altar of the calm, white Virgin. There had been a wondrous burst of music from the great organ as she knelt there, an over-powering perfume of many flowers, the glittering ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... Young brothers and sisters, probably, all crying aloud for the pittance she was able to earn by giving lessons at so ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... Road is a dark road— No bird by the wayside sings, No sun shines into the canons deep, No children's laughter rings. They are slaves who delve in the stubborn rocks For the pittance their labor brings. Their bread is bitter who toil for their own, But they starve who toil ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... of the hut was a trickle of water, threading the dying stalks of dock and ragwort, and hurrying down to add its dirty pittance to the small yellow torrent rushing along the greasy strip of clay that in happier ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... bread. They were amused with games and festivals. From the stately baths they might be seen to issue without shoes and without a mantle. They loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable pittance. They spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of crime and misery. As many as four hundred thousand sometimes assembled to witness the chariot races. The vast theatres were crowded to see male and female dancers. The amphitheatres were still ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... all my heart. Well, then, Jack, I have been considering that I am so strong and hearty, I may continue to plague you a long time. Now, Jack, I am sensible that the income of your commission, and what I have hitherto allowed you, is but a small pittance for a lad ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... somewhat unimportant brains. But Constance, in the truest spirit of melodrama, and having long sought him in vain under the guidance of a quarta persona, of whom more presently, realises almost the whole of her fortune, except a small pittance, dashes it down before him in the nick of time, and saves him ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... church was sold. The remodeling and addition cost $1,100. This property proved to be very valuable, as they decided after many years to make it one of its most fashionable thoroughfares. Bought for almost a pittance, this property had advanced in value to such an extent that the business interests offered a high price for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... destined to be fleeting. The fortune of its master was melted away by the mismanagement of others, leaving him but a slender pittance. He bore his loss like a man, sorrowing, but not repining. The estate was given up, and a new home found with his mother, in Edinburgh. This was in 1815. Four years later, fortune had smiled on his cheerful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... granted by Louis XIV. to the best opera singer. The first female dancer received thirty-six pounds! We are quite sure, that the waiting maid of an Elssler or a Taglioni, would turn up her nose at such a pittance. Louis XIV. was gathered to his fathers, and soon after his death matters improved a little. Still the pay was poor enough. But what of that? Those were the palmy days of the heroes and heroines of the foot lamps. For the disciples of Thespis, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... limbs, his legs so long and lean 60 That for my single self I looked at them, Forgetful of the body they sustained.— Too weak to labour in the harvest field, The Man was using his best skill to gain A pittance from the dead unfeeling lake 65 That knew not of his wants. I will not say What thoughts immediately were ours, nor how The happy idleness of that sweet morn, With all its lovely images, was changed To serious musing and to self-reproach. 70 Nor did we fail to see within ourselves ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... 6, 1775. Kit Smart, once a Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, ended his life in the King's Bench Prison; 'where he had owed to a small subscription, of which Dr. Burney was at the head, a miserable pittance beyond the prison allowance. In his latest letter to Dr. Burney, he passionately pleaded for a fellow-sufferer, "whom I myself," he impressively adds, "have already assisted according to my willing poverty." In another letter to the same friend he said:—"I bless God ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... and ruined my father. I swore I would be an honest woman, and I sought employment to earn a living for my babe and myself, but every avenue was closed to me. I washed and scrubbed while I was able to teach music splendidly, but I could get no pupils. I made shirts for a pittance and daily refused, to me, fortunes for dishonor. I have gone hungry and almost naked to pay for my baby's board, but I was hunted down ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... miserable thatched cottage, forsaken of inhabitants, and out of all manner of repair. Thus accommodated, he passed forty days, exposed to the injuries of the air, lying on the cold hard ground, rigidly disciplining his body, fasting all the day, and sustaining nature only with a little pittance of bread, which he begged about the neighbourhood; but tasting all the while the sweets of paradise, in contemplating the eternal truths of faith. As his cabin did not unfitly represent to him the stable of Bethlehem, so he proposed to himself frequently the extreme poverty ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... added a few much-needed articles of furniture to her rooms, making them more modern and comfortable; and through Mrs. Hoffstott she finally succeeded in finding a trusty little girl, who was glad to come during the hours of Sara's absence to tend baby and do the left-over bits of work for the pittance she could afford to pay. Even this left a perilously small amount for the house expenses, and the clothing of the four; but the latter necessity was made easier by Madame Grandet and Miss Prue, both of whom found they ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... performance of all its services, it became my duty to urge attention to the subject, and this was apparently complied with, the 27th of November being appointed for the payment of the men. On that day three months' pay only was offered to them, notwithstanding all they had achieved. This paltry pittance ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... an interval I obtained a temporary engagement; the occasion which required my services passed, and I with it. After another, and a longer interval, I again found temporary employment, the pay for which was but a pittance. When that was over I could find nothing. That was nine months ago, and since then I had not earned a penny. It is so easy to grow shabby, when you are on the everlasting tramp, and are living on your stock of clothes. I had trudged all over London ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... who cannot be happy out of a great town. After the Civil War he was deprived, and his successor had not the decency (the late Dr. Grosart, constant to his own party, made a very unsuccessful attempt to defend the delinquent) to pay him the shabby pittance which the intruders were supposed to furnish to the rightful owners of benefices. At the Restoration he too was restored, and survived it fifteen years, dying in 1674; but his whole literary fame rests on ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... we are gravely told, but ten per cent. that she asks, and who could or should object to payment of such a pittance? Not many, perhaps, if unaccompanied by monopoly privleges that would multiply the ten by ten and make it an hundred! Alone, the cost to our readers might not now exceed an annual million. Let Congress then pass an act appropriating ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... you would have come to some decision. If you can save the property of course you ought to do so. If you can live on what pittance is left to you—" ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... for several years. He would find interests at last, which might help him to forget his darkened youth. Hilda and her mother would live as they could, and when the mother died Sigmundskron must go to the hammer. At all events it was not encumbered with debts, and its sale would leave the child a pittance to save her from starvation; possibly she would have more than before, but Frau von Sigmundskron could not judge of that. Possibly, too, Hilda's sixty-four quarterings would help her to gain admittance as a lady-canoness in one of those semi-religious ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... light his thoughts turned slowly backward, travelling over the tragic yet uneventful history of his life. He remembered his childhood on a little Western farm, the commonplace poverty of his people, and his own burning, agonised ambition, which had sent him through college on a pittance, swept the highest honours from his graduation year, and wrecked at last what had been at his starting out a fairly promising physical constitution. He recalled, too, the sleepless enthusiasm of his last term at Harvard, the terrible exhaustion which had made his final triumph barren, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... the grounds on which geologists and palaeontologists of the highest rank assert that the theory of evolution has not the slightest scientific basis; and they support their assertion with an amount of evidence of which the above items are a miserable pittance. ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... blest indeed, and crown'd of fate As kings are crowned, as bards in their estate Are rapture-fraught, re-risen above the dust. Then were I torture-proof, and on the crust Of one kind word, though as a pittance thrown, I'd live for weeks! My tears I would disown And pray, contented with my discontent, As hermits pray when ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... found them. I hope they were not a just sample of their whole nation; for these gentry would exercise every imposition, and even insinuate the thing that was not, the more easily to plunder us of our hard earned pittance of small change. Had they shown any generosity, like the British tar, I should have passed over their conduct in silence; but after they had stripped our men of every farthing, they would say to them—"Monsieur, you have won all our money, now lend us a little change to ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... chillun' with a respectful but eager 'Merry Christmas,' and are sure to get in return a new coat or pair of boots, a gingham dress, or ear-rings more showy than expensive. They have saved up, too, a pittance from their wages, to expend in a souvenir for 'Dinah' or 'Pompey,' the never-to-be-forgotten belle ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... everything is favorable, I find myself without sympathy or help from any who are associated with me, whose interest, one would think, would impel them at least to inquire if they could render some assistance. For two years past I have devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying myself all pleasures and even necessary food, that I might have a sum to put my Telegraph into such a position before Congress as to insure ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... thither to celebrate the praises of her son. She had loved her son, as warmly as other mothers love their children; but she had loved him as a hard-working labourer, earning for herself and for him their daily pittance; not as a mighty General, courted and complimented by the rich and great of the land. She had begged him not to go out into the town on the morning when he had been so instrumental in saving his townsmen from the ignominy of being pressed into the service of the Republic; and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the fear of dying in want of necessaries. The two great dictators of literature, Ben Jonson in the earlier and Dryden in the later part of the century, only kept their heads above water by help of the laureate's pittance, though reckless imprudence, encouraged by the precarious life, was the cause of much of their sufferings. Patronage gave but a fitful resource, and the author could hope at most but an occasional crust, flung to him from ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... themselves. It is true, the farmer allows fodder to his oxen and pasture to his sheep; but it is for his own service, not theirs, In the same manner the ploughman, the shepherd, the weaver, the builder, and the soldier, work not for themselves but others; they are contented with a poor pittance (the labourer's hire), and permit us, the GREAT, to enjoy the fruits of their labours. Aristotle, as my master told us, hath plainly proved, in the first book of his politics, that the low, mean, useful part of mankind, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... an only son. His mother lived in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Deal. She was a widow, her husband, Captain Hargate, having died a year before. She had only her pension as an officer's widow, a pittance that scarce sufficed even for the modest wants of herself, Frank, and her little daughter Lucy, now six ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... temper. Neither had Claude any money beyond the fifteen hundred dollars a year he earned in his father's office. He was in the habit of saying to himself, and in confidence to his friends, that it was "damned hard luck" that he should be compelled to live on a pittance like that, when Thor, within a few months, would come into a good thirty thousand ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... when Englishmen were in the habit of translating every work, interesting or important, published out of England, and of thus giving a continental and cosmopolitan flavour to their literature. We cannot at this period expect much from a 'man of letters' who must produce a monthly volume for a pittance of L20: of him we need not speak. But the translator at his best, works, when reproducing the matter and the manner of his original, upon two distinct lines. His prime and primary object is to please his reader, edifying him and gratifying his taste; the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... do separately; perhaps we can make a pittance together," she said. "We'll do good simple things; our voices blend well, and if we practice enough there's no reason why ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they needed nothing. It was touching, however, to see several persons—themselves beggars for aught I know—assisting to hold up the little blind boy's tremulous hand, so that he, at all events, might not lack the pittance which we had to give. Our dole was but a poor one, after all, consisting of what Roman coppers we had brought into Tuscany with us; and as we drove off, some of the boys ran shouting and whining after us in the hot sunshine, nor stopped till ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hackneyed home unlackeyed; who, in haste Alighting, turns the key in her own door, And, at the watchman's lantern borrowing light, Finds a cold bed her only comfort left. Wives beggar husbands, husbands starve their wives, On Fortune's velvet altar offering up Their last poor pittance—Fortune, most severe Of goddesses yet known, and costlier far Than all that held their routs in Juno's heaven.— So fare we in this prison-house the world. And 'tis a fearful spectacle to see So many maniacs dancing in their chains. They gaze upon the links that hold them fast With eyes of ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... to a brave-hearted sister—who, by faith alone, and not by money, had gathered some sick and poor about her, and lived only by prayer—and a note of apology and half-contempt that it was such a miserable pittance. She received, in reply, the following little ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... allegiance to our own duty. A zealot might allow his neighbours to be damned in peace, did not a certain heretical odour emitted by them infect the sanctuary and disturb his own dogmatic calm. In the same way practical people might leave the artist alone in his oasis, and even grant him a pittance on which to live, as they feed the animals in a zoological garden, did he not intrude into their inmost conclave and vitiate the abstract cogency of their designs. It is not so much art in its own field that men of science look askance upon, as the love of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that some of the investments poor father made would turn out badly, and that our income would be reduced to a mere pittance? For I tell you, Miss Belding," added the invalid less vehemently, "that we have almost nothing, divided by three, to live on. That is, an income for one must support us three. Aunt Jinny is one of ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... body, heart, and understanding, are equally stunted, for parents are often only in quest of the cheapest school, and the master could not live, if he did not take a much greater number than he could manage himself; nor will the scanty pittance, allowed for each child, permit him to hire ushers sufficient to assist in the discharge of the mechanical part of the business. Besides, whatever appearance the house and garden may make, the children do not enjoy the comforts of either, for they are continually ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... they suffered severely for want of provisions. The commissioners pretended to allow a half a pound of bread, and four ounces of pork per day; but of this pittance they were much cut short. What was given them for three days was not enough for one day and, in some instances, they went for three days without a single mouthful of food of any kind. They were pinched to such an extent that some on ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... him from some of the great insurance companies. But these resources did not survive him; he only rented the house he had occupied; and the young Comte de Camors found himself suddenly reduced to the provision of his mother's dowry—a bare pittance to a man ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... death, which community is only valid through his consent. In the Jura and the Nivernais, he may pursue fugitive serfs, and demand, at their death, not only the property left by them on his domain, but, again, the pittance acquired by them elsewhere. At Saint-Claude he acquires this right over any person that passes a year and a day in a house belonging to the seigniory. As to ownership of the soil we see still more clearly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... water, fenced in and adorned with a tiny fernery, over which is an inscription, setting forth that "This is the well in which the head was washed; you must not wash your hands or your feet here." A little further on is a stall, at which a poor old man earns a pittance by selling books, pictures, and medals, commemorating the loyalty of the Forty-seven; and higher up yet, shaded by a grove of stately trees, is a neat inclosure, kept up, as a signboard announces, by voluntary ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... hurricane was over. The sun shone out, the snow extended in the distance like a sheet of dazzling white damask. The horses were already at the door, harnessed. I paid our host, who asked so small a pittance that even Saveliitch did not, as usual, haggle over the price. His suspicions of the evening before had entirely disappeared. I called the guide to thank him for the service he had done us, and told Saveliitch to give him ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... himself found out. I knew him well enough to be certain that, had he intended the pension awarded madame de Valentinois to come from his own privy purse, he would scarcely have consented to bestowing on her more than a shabby pittance of a thousand livres per annum. It is scarcely possible to conceive an idea of the excessive economy of this prince. I remember, that upon some great occasion, when it was requisite to support the public treasury, which was ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... cautious habits of his earlier years, he had risked well nigh all he possessed. He did not live to learn that it had completely failed, and that his wife and child were left with what would have seemed to him the merest pittance for their support. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... things undoubtedly was, it was nevertheless one of the inevitables of pressing. You could not take forcibly one hundred husbands and fathers out of a community of five hundred souls, and pay that hundred husbands and fathers the barest pittance instead of a living wage, without condemning one hundred wives and mothers to hard labour on behalf of the three hundred children who hungered. Out of this hundred wives and mothers a certain percentage, again, lacked the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... forty in one of the most uncomfortable positions in which a man can find himself, with the external appearance of large estates and an established and important position, but in reality with scarcely any income at all, just enough to satisfy the mortgagees, and leave himself a pittance not much more than the wages of a gamekeeper. If his aunt, Lady Randolph, had not been so good to him it was uncertain whether he could have existed at all, and when the heiress, whom an eccentric will had consigned to her charge, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... he managed to dispose of all but a mere pittance of her fortune, and humiliated her in a thousand ways besides. His only decent act was to die and leave her undisturbed for the remainder of her life. Your uncle assisted in her support and saved ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... aisle on Sunday and plays poker all Saturday night till Sunday morning down at the Last Chance, in a room in front of the one in which poor Pat Burns, who carries a hod for his money, loses his all. Mary Burns sews all day and half the night to feed him and the children, but she puts her pittance into Billy's plate every Sunday, and I know that she gets the strength to go on from day to day from the words that come from the same pulpit he sets the plate behind. That is, we call the table out at your Country Club a pulpit, until we get our own in the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... quarter to eight. Then I emptied my trousers pockets of whatever money they held, and when all was heaped up before me, I could count but twelve dollars, which, together with my studs and a seal ring which I wore, seemed a paltry pittance with which to barter for the liberty of which I had been robbed. But it was all I had with me, and I was willing to part with it at once if only some one would unlock the door and let me go. But how to make known my wishes even if there was any one to listen to them? ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... Banquet of Famine. A chosen number of the senators of the great city were to vindicate their daring by dying the revellers that they had lived; by resigning in contempt all prospect of starving, like the common herd, on a lessening daily pittance of loathsome food; by making their triumphant exit from a fettered and ungrateful life, drowned in floods of wine, and lighted by the fires of the wealthiest ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... was that Mrs. Hume committed herself to this not too flattering judgment of her younger son. For as Hume reached the mature age of four and thirty, before he obtained any employment of sufficient importance to convert the meagre pittance of a middling laird's younger brother into a decent maintenance, it is not improbable that a shrewd Scots wife may have thought his devotion to philosophy and poverty to be due to mere infirmity of purpose. But she lived till 1749, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... trust that pride does not lead me astray," she said. "But if I can read my own soul aright, there is no thought of myself in the grief which now tears my heart. What is power to me? What do I desire? A little room, leisure for my devotions, a pittance to save me from want—what more can I ask for? Why, then, should I covet power? If I am sore at heart, it is not for any poor loss which I have sustained. I think no more of it than of the snapping of one of the threads on yonder tapestry ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gratification of taste is not to be thought of in their case. There is nothing left after the bare necessaries are secured. It is a struggle to bring up their children, a struggle to educate them, a struggle to live. And what is worse than all, the pittance, which is rightly theirs, comes to them often in a way which, to say the least, is suggestive of charity given and received. No, really, I cannot look on the life of a minister as a very ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... poverty all his life oppressed him. For, though his nominal salary as Astronomer Royal was large enough, yet the treasury was so exhausted that it was impossible for him ever to obtain more than a pittance. What a sad tragedy do these words, in a letter to Mstlin, reveal:—"I stand whole days in the antechamber, and am nought for study." And then he adds the sublime compensation: "I keep up my spirits, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... pioneer. Almost at a blow the old Indian territory passed away, populous cities came into being and it was not long before gushing oil wells made a new era of sudden wealth. The farm lands of the Middle West taken as free homesteads or bought for a mere pittance, have risen so in value that the original owners have in an increasing degree either sold them in order to reinvest in the newer cheap lands of the West, or have moved into the town and have left the tillage to tenant farmers. The growth of absentee ownership of the soil is producing ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... not less ardent and glowing than in those of their wealthier sisters. Many of these, though they would have preferred to perform their labors without fee or reward, were compelled, from the necessities of those at home, to accept the wholly inadequate pittance (twelve dollars a month and their food) which was offered them by the Government, but they served in their several stations with a fidelity, intelligence, and patient devotion which no money could purchase. The testimony received from all quarters ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... short, I am worn out. And they see that, those beasts of editors. The Evening Dally Bulletin has given me my conge. I have lost the last of my hack-work. It was miserable work, wholly beneath a man of my capacity; still it brought me in a pittance. Now it is gone. Practically I am a pauper, and I ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... grandly. "I'll find you a college fellow who'll be glad to come during the vacation for his board and a mere pittance, only you'll have to set up more filling board ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... divisions in the Church of God, and the 600,000,000 who have never heard the name of salvation by the blood of Jesus declare. Let the Agents of our Societies declare, who travel from one end of the land to the other, to gather a scanty pittance from half-reluctant Christians—nay, who are often led to sharpen their goads at the Philistines' grind-stones, to the dishonour of the cause of God. What then is the ground of evasion? Why, that those were apostolic times and apostolic ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... scales Are held by some just woman, who maintains By spinning wool her household,—carefully She poises both the wool and weights, to make The balance even, that she may provide A pittance for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... starving men, of millions of women forced into the factories and shops, there to compete with men and lower wages and lose their finest feminine attributes in the sordid and heartless drudging for a pittance. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... thou seem'dst to chide, To give me all thy pittance tried."—Mitford's Blanch, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the door, and headed in the direction of the store where he gave his valuable services daily from seven in the morning until late in the evening, for a miserable pittance. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... The responsibility for the neglected stepdaughter had similarly been flung upon his shoulders. And, satisfied with this manner of disposing of his worldly concerns, Standing intended to fare forth, shorn of any possession but a bare pittance for his daily needs, to lose himself, and all the shadows of a haunted mind, in the dim, remote interior of the unexplored forests of Northern Quebec. The whole ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... had to borrow; and engaging that Italian firm for the job was the best thing I could manage. What English firms wanted was out of all reason. I don't wonder at Lloyds selling wrecks for anything they will fetch. A pittance in cash is better than getting into the hands of these sharks" (sharks was heavily underscored). "And what guarantee have I that the firm will pocket even that pittance? How do I know that I shall see even the money outpaid again, let ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... him to remember how much greater his advantages, and his opportunities of making a living, were than ours, and besought him to do his best to keep and increase for us the pittance she had toiled so hard to earn, and to take nothing from it unless a time should come when he was as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... paper and read it carefully. The bulk of the $1,000,000 Cavendish estate was willed to charitable organisations, and a small allowance, a mere pittance, was provided for John Cavendish. After a few inquiries the attorney said sharply: "You want this ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... distributions of corn were converted into daily allowance for bread. The people were amused with games and festivals, fed like slaves, and of course lost at last even the semblance of manliness and independence. They loitered in the public streets, and dissipated in gaming their miserable pittance; they spent the hours of the night in the lowest resorts of crime and misery; they expired in wretched apartments without attracting the attention of government; pestilence, famine, and squalid misery thinned their ranks, and they would have been annihilated but for constant accession to their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... money had been bestowed on him so liberally that he was one of the richest subjects in Europe. Albemarle had as yet not even a regiment; he had not been sworn of the Council; and the wealth which he owed to the royal bounty was a pittance when compared with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland thought himself aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person near him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his fits of resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention of retiring from the Court. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... meant no offence, and I will take none, at your hands at least. I will confess I care not, in love and soforth, a single bean for the girl; she was the mere channel through which her father's wealth, if such a pittance deserves the name, was to have flowed into my possession—'twas in respect of your family finances the most economical provision for myself which I could devise—a matter in which you, not I, are interested. As for women, they are all pretty much alike to me. I am too old myself ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... continued effort, but a petition signed by even 30,000 men would have been considered worthy of attention. The vast majority of women have no money of their own and those who work for wages, as a rule, receive but a pittance, and yet there were raised in California for this amendment campaign almost $19,000, and the amount contributed by men was so small as not to be worth mentioning. The financial success was due very largely to the State treasurer, Mrs. Austin Sperry. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... disinclination to give music-lessons touched his father on a tender point. 'And so,' Leopold writes, with more bitterness than he has ever shown before in his letters—'and so you will throw away chances of earning money, whilst your old father has to run from house to house for a wretched pittance in order to support himself and his daughter, and to send the little that remains to you, instead of paying his debts!' He begs Wolfgang to reflect whether he was not treating him as hardly as the Archbishop ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... briefly that Mrs. Hoffman, by the death of her husband two years previous, had been reduced to poverty, which compelled her to move into a tenement house and live as best she could on the earnings of her oldest son, Paul, supplemented by the pittance she obtained for sewing. Paul, a smart, enterprising boy, after trying most of the street occupations, had become a young street merchant. By a lucky chance he had obtained capital enough to buy out a necktie stand below the Astor House, where his tact and energy had enabled him to ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... brief as possible," said the lady. "Your father, Henri, was of noble birth and possessed of fortune. My own share of the world's goods was small, and yet it was on this pittance alone that we were sustained, till the exertions of a generous friend procured you, under the name of De Grandville, (my maiden name,) a commission in ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... preserved in William of Newbridge, Adrian IV. would seem to have pushed integrity in money matters to a harsh extreme; and so to have proved himself the antipodes of those popes who afterwards practised nepotism. For it is related of him, that rather than award a pittance towards the relief of his aged and destitute mother out of those ample revenues, which as pope he had at his disposal, but which he did not feel himself justified in diverting to private uses, he allowed her to subsist as best she could ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... Jane; appoint the happy day?" 'Why seek her sweet ingenuous reply, 'Then grasp her hand and proffer—poverty? 'Why, if I love her and adore her name, 'Why act like time and sickness on her frame? 'Why should my scanty pittance nip her prime, 'And chace away the Rose before its time? 'I'm young, 'tis true; the world beholds me free; 'Labour ne'er show'd a frightful face ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... Continental Times is, I regret to say, largely written by renegade Englishmen in Berlin employed by the German Government, notably Aubrey Stanhope, who for well-known reasons was unable to enter England at the outbreak of war, and so remains and must remain in Germany, where, for a very humble pittance, he conducts this campaign against his ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... actuated in all his dealings by the same frugality, if we may dignify it by that name. He was a large dealer in ready-made under-clothing, for the making of which he paid starvation prices; but, unfortunately, the poor sewing-girls, whom he employed for a pittance, were not so well able to defend themselves against imposition as the smart little boot-black, who "knew his ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... hundred yards from the road, and here I must pass my first day out. The day was an unhappy one; my hiding-place was extremely precarious. I had to sit in a squatting position the whole day, without the least chance to rest. But, besides this, my scanty pittance did not afford me that nourishment which my hard night's travel needed. Night came again to my relief, and I sallied forth to pursue my journey. By this time, not a crumb of my crust remained, and I was hungry and began to ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... pupils lessons which they themselves imperfectly understand. The total number of teachers engaged in primary education exceeds 100,000, but their salaries barely average Rs.8 (10s. 8d.) a month. So miserable a pittance abundantly explains their inefficiency. But there it is, and a new army of teachers—nearly half a million altogether—would have to be trained before primary education, whether free and compulsory, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... willing to toil at six cents per day in occupations that have been transmitted for centuries in the same families, are either driven to the culture of the fields or compelled to spin and weave for a pittance the jute ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various |
