"Poorhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we'd dress 'em here—I think the grandma ladies'd like that. But their mas says no, pinned in papers'd take the starch out an' their hair'd get all over their heads. An' some o' the mothers says indignant: 'Old ladies from the poorhouse end o' the home—well, I should think not! Children is very easy to take things. If you'd hed young o' your own, you'd think more, Calliope,' they ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... poker kitty have bigger appetites than any healthy critter has a right to have; and after you've fed a tapeworm, there's mighty little left for you. Following the horses may be pleasant exercise at the start, but they're apt to lead you to the door of the poorhouse or ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... unmistakable accent of sincerity. He hobbled off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings, and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "Good mornin', an' 'tis a foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe would be as welkim as the flowers of May, an' 'tis England is the grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that Englishmen is tin per cint. betther than Irishmen, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... poorest person in the town. He was the only boy there who really had no home and nobody to care for him. Three or four years before this March morning, Joe had been left an orphan, and being utterly destitute, he should have been sent to the poorhouse, or "bound out" to some person as a sort of servant. But Joe Lambert had refused to go to the poorhouse or to become a bound boy. He had declared his ability to take care of himself, and by working ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... honorable pauperism. It is no disgrace to be poor or to be in a poorhouse if there is a good reason for it. One may be manly in poverty. But the Jukes were never manly or honorable paupers, ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... men who marry us. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership—husband and wife as partners. But if the man knew as little about his part of the job as the woman generally does about hers when she gets married, most married couples would be in the poorhouse in a year." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... nobody noticed the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time regime, dispatched the exotic meal ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... old Sarah Cooper was to be taken to the poorhouse. She was broken-hearted. One man took the poor, bed-ridden, fretful old creature into his home, paid for medical attendance, and waited on her himself, when his housekeeper couldn't endure her tantrums and temper. Sarah ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fact be stated, that old folks who are sent over the hill to the poorhouse have invited their fate. And conversely, elderly people who are treated with courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect are those who, in manhood's morning, have sown the seeds of love and kindness. Water rises to the height of its ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... grow up, and I believe it. I was afraid when I went away she had some scheme in her mind. She's always getting up fool ideas. I remember that time when Mrs. Marsh died she wanted to adopt the twins and bring them up. The idea! When there was a county poorhouse and no reason why they shouldn't go to it! But she'll have to come down off her independence and be sensible. Herbert says we can't have any of her foolishness. It's us that would have to suffer if she got into trouble and lost what little she's got, and I suppose I've got to have it out with her ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... recognized the head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take away the whiskey, and give me a little money," he gasped. "I was a King once. I'll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. I've urgent private affairs—in ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... he had been," said Paul, wringing his hands. "He's taken all my money—I shall die in the poorhouse." ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... her husband's house she left her only means of living. She could hardly support herself, for few avenues of industry were open to women. She was literally a pauper, and when there is nowhere else to lay his head, even the most miserable pauper thinks twice before he runs away from the poorhouse. Besides, the woman who left her husband had to give up her children. They ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... several communities are interested is to be constructed, the county government can best raise the money and manage the work. So, too, in caring for the poor, the county may aid the local governments, or it may take entire charge of the paupers, and maintain a poorhouse. ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... that," Walter observed. "We're liable to go to the poorhouse the way it is. Well, what's the matter our walkin' to this ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... years ago there lived in New Ross, in the county of Wexford, two old men. The one, a slater named Furlong, a person of very intemperate habits, died an inmate of the poorhouse in his 101st year: he was able to take long walks up to a very short period before his death; and I have heard that he, his son, and grandson, have been all together on a roof slating at the same time. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... and his father couldn't spare him. "But didn't your father go to sea?" "Oh, yes; both my fathers went to sea." That was a puzzle; but presently it came out that his two fathers were his father and his grandfather. He looked troubled for a moment when I inquired the whereabouts of the poorhouse, in the direction of which we happened to be going. He entertained a very decided opinion that he shouldn't like to live there; a wholesome aversion, I am bound to maintain, dear Uncle ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... you have for dinner? This is the third day, Dexie, that you have given us no meat. You may like a vegetable diet, but I am sure no one else in the house does. We might as well dine at the poorhouse." ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... next view will be the poorhouse if we don't hustle our stumps. We got to get out of here and find the cheapest place they is in town to live or go back home on ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... of Mademoiselle Deschamps, the cushion of whose chaise-percee, was trimmed with point-lace of very considerable value, and the harness of whose carriage was studded with paste, in imitation of diamonds. This woman, however, lived to repent of her folly; and if she did not literally die in a poorhouse, she at least ended her ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... bring in a bill for services," he announced. "If he's on the town, he'll have to go right into the Poorhouse ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... occasionally she was indignant that she should always have to petition him for the money with which to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief that, since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse had once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue to be his daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run down the street after him because she had forgotten to ask him ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... wasn't attendin' to it himself, just the same as when my father was alive and was toll-gate keeper, and I was helpin' him. But I've got to go now, and where I'm goin' to is more'n I know. But I'd rather go to the county poorhouse than stay here, or anywhere else, with Maria Port. She's a regular boa-constrictor, that woman is! She's twisted herself around people before this and squeezed the senses out of them; and that's exactly what ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... of gossip of a neighbour who had come in to see Miss Bennett, and was telling her about a family who had lately moved into the place and were in serious trouble. "And they do say she'll have to go to the poorhouse," ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... ropes. But my observation of so many heavier troubles left me very little tenderness for their finger-ends. In time I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never was quite possible to leave a countryman with no shelter save an English poorhouse, when, as he invariably averred, he had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my ultimate conclusion, however, that American ingenuity may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way or another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to turn ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... last twenty years, and also a little legacy from Mr. Hardie's father. She now went about the house of her master and debtor, declaring she was sure he would not rob her, and, if he did, she would never go into the poorhouse. "I'll go out on the common and die there. Nobody will ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... can see my finish. My wife will have so much charity work for me to do that there will be no time for anything else, and, in a little while, she will have given away all the money we both have. Then when we're sitting together in the sun on the front steps of the poorhouse, we can fittingly lament the end of ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... developed into girlhood, her aunt grew more and more covetous of her. Following a secret plan, she adopted a boy from the poorhouse, and brought him up with every advantage that money could buy. My mother, on her visits, was thrown a great deal into this boy's society, but she liked him less than the poodle. This grieved her aunt, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... slight collection, are looked upon as men who would commit a crime. Why, gentlemen, our profession is more respectable than that of the man who is appointed administrator of the estate of his dead friend, and who blows in the money and lets the widow and orphan go to the poorhouse, or the officer of a savings bank who borrows the money of the poor and when they hear that he is flying high demand their money, and he closes the bank, and eventually pays seven cents on the dollar, and is looked upon as a great financier. It ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... breath until then, though," said Larry. "The way things are breaking for us lately, we'll be more likely to be inviting our friends to come and visit us in the poorhouse." ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... money to loan you two that ups an leaves me in the lurch, without no notice," Scraggs flared at them. "If you two stiffs ain't able to support yourselves you'd ought to apply for admission to the poorhouse or the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... ere long, addressing me, she said—"You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse." ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... too late. Alas! alas for that young man! he became a drunkard; he spent the farm left by his father; his wife died; his children were scattered among friends; and years after, when I returned to my native town, I was told that he was a pauper at the poorhouse. ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... He don't belong in Pleasantville. Oh, dear!" she concluded, with a sigh of deep depression, "I wish Lem would get back on the road in a steady job, instead of scheming at this thing and that. He'll land us all in the poorhouse yet, for he spends all he gets down at ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... away off yonder somewhere, that she'd let me live here if I deserved it. I am a pauper, Peggy, and I'm afraid I'll—I may have to get down to drudgery again. Will she turn me out? You know I must have somewhere to live. Shall it be the poorhouse? Do you remember saying one day that I'd ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... husband's child and he always represented you as a saint upon earth. I expect you to take him home and provide for him. He doesn't mean very much to me—just enough so that I don't relish his going to the poorhouse, that's all.' ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... quite right. She doesn't look like it, but she wrong here," continued Campbell, tapping his forehead. "Why, she fancies herself immensely rich, Mrs. Bradshaw, when, as a matter of fact, she's a penniless cousin of mine, who would have gone to the poorhouse ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... experience, which would land you in the poorhouse. Have you no desire for the things other women ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... left without a dollar or a friend to face life and care for herself and babies. The case came into the hands of the Mission and she was cared for by them until the time of her confinement, when, with her children, she was taken to Dunning Poorhouse where she was kindly cared for. A baby boy was born to G. Great pressure was brought to bear upon this little Italian mother who spoke no word of English, to induce her to give up her children. Frightened and weeping, she refused to do this, declaring she would make a living for ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... was clear that he couldn't do nuthin', we ast him if the' wa'n't nobody could put up fer him, an' he said you was his brother, an' well off, an' hadn't ought to let him go t' the poorhouse.' ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... worse, though," answered the hut-keeper; "poverty out here can scarcely be said to pinch. I often ask myself what might it have been, or what certainly would it have been, had I remained in London till my last shilling was gone. To rot in a poorhouse or to sweep a crossing would have been my lot, or there might have been a worse alternative. I had enough left to pay my passage out here. It was a wise move—the only wise thing I ever did in my life. ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... Captain of his salvation, he might endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ, without entanglement in the affairs of this life. Aside from this, his stay at the capital had not been unprofitable, for he had preached five times a week in the poorhouse and conversed on the Lord's days with ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Well, there was six children, and the oldest boy's skipped, nobody knows where, and the oldest girl has just got married, and this boy is the oldest of the four that's left. They took the three little ones to the poorhouse, and Mis' Ruggles she took this boy in, and she wanted to keep him, but her own boy is big enough to do all the chores, and she didn't feel as if she could afford to. She says he's a real nice little fellow, and his mother ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... "Is grandpa rich?" she asked. "He says sometimes that the greenhouses cost so much money that they will send him to the poorhouse. I do not think grandpa can be rich. But if he were rich," she cried out indignantly, "that makes no difference: he has nothing but me—nothing to care about. There was poor grandmamma: she died—oh so long ago!—and my uncles died when they were little boys not so old as I. And ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... of our national life, and if it does not make justice more even-handed for all, and the people of this country as prosperous as any on earth, then the fault must be in the plan itself, and not in the resources which we possess, for of those we have enough to empty every poorhouse in the land, and eighty-five per cent. of ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... to the store," said Mr. Kinney briskly; yet he lingered. "I suppose we'll all have to club in and keep old Fanny out of the poorhouse if he does blow up. From all I hear it's usually only a question of time. They say she hasn't got anything else to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... one of the silent streets of west Chester, S.C., that prolongs itself into a road leading to the Potter's Field and on to the County Poorhouse, sets a whitewashed frame cottage. It has two rooms, the chimney in the center providing each with a fireplace. A porch, supported by red cedar posts, fronts the road side. In this abode lives Jesse Williams with his daughter, Edna, and her six children. Edna pays the rent, and is a grenadier in ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... to end in the poorhouse, it wouldn't be so hard after this. He was a totally different man from what he had been, and he would be respected and honoured in a very ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... American history. If we find that many people are living without the comforts they need and in conditions inimical to health and morality, we can at least take comfort in the fact that fewer go to the "poorhouse" than used to be found there when all sorts of dependents were sent to that one institution. With the state's new discrimination and graded assorting of young and old and sick and well and sane and insane and normal and subnormal, the state ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... going to send me to the poorhouse, when Mr. Maxwell took me in. I have often and often wanted to see the room where we lived in, and where mother died, but she wouldn't let me go up. One day I begged and cried for her to let me go up—I wanted to, so bad; but she called me a dirty ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... heard to speak of his children and we all supposed there was a mother, too. And when they came there was nobody but old Aunt Martha, as they call her. She's a cousin of Mr. Meredith's mother, I believe, and he took her in to save her from the poorhouse. She is seventy-five years old, half blind, and very ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... boarding-houses,—just so long as his money lasted, not one instant more. Then he was bundled brutally into the street, no matter what his condition might be. Penniless, without friends, sick, he drifted naturally to the county poorhouse. There he was patched up quickly and sent out half-cured. The authorities were not so much to blame. With the slender appropriations at their disposal, they found difficulty in taking care of those who came legitimately under their jurisdiction. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... tell or he either. He hails from a poorhouse. He was 'bound out' to a woman truck farmer. He's been 'taken up' by Mrs. Cecil Somerset-Calvert, of Baltimore, and lots of other places. A lady that's so rich she has homes in ever so many different parts of the country. But better than that he's a 'trump,' a life-saver, a scholar, and—a ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... against him. He had begun by being a reckless gamester; and in that way he lost fifteen hundred thousand crowns, about six millions (of francs) of our day. "I don't know," said he, "whether I shall die on the scaffold or not; but I will never come to the poorhouse." He added, "When peace is concluded, the king's love-affairs, the scarcity of his largesses, and the discontent of many will lead to plenty of splits, more than are necessary to embroil the most peaceful kingdoms in the world. And, should that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Besides, Nathaniel, the poorhouse lad, turning round at sound of his master's voice, presented so fair a mark, with his gaping mouth, that, half involuntarily, the snow-ball left Mr. Coffin's hand, and the next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... by constantly hearing new stories of the man's grasping avarice. The Traders' had been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had thought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confronting the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away. All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were trying to promise twenty ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... August Engler, steward of the county poorhouse in one of the eastern counties of Pennsylvania during the sixties, that spoke these words, and the circumstance that called forth the language was the appearance and request of Mrs. Fischer, a well-dressed young widow. ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... deputy sheriff had visited the premises, and carefully considered all the facts, without affording the miserable man a particle of consolation. He groaned from morning till night, forlorn and desolate, declaring that he should come to want, and die in the poorhouse. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... house that I was born in, Hurried forth, O me unhappy, Wandered on, O me unhappy, Wretched on the shores to wander, Toiling on, for ever wretched, Always to the doors of strangers, Always to the gates of strangers, On the beach, with poorest children, Sufferers of the village poorhouse. 830 ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... shild, now she's no chance of pay, any more?" asked Mary relentlessly, and poor Maggie's eyes grew dark with fright as the conversation abruptly pointed her way. She sometimes waked up in misery in Mrs. Kilpatrick's warm bed, crying for fear that she was going to be sent back to the poorhouse. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... live with her, even such a cat and dog life as must in such case have been hers. Her money rights were all that she could demand;—and she found it to be impossible to get anybody to tell her what were her money rights. To be kept out of the poorhouse seemed to be all that she could claim. But the old tailor was true to her,—swearing that she should even yet become ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... DOOR. I tried a Sunday-school book once; but I made the good boy end in the poorhouse, and the bad boy go to Congress; and the publisher said it wouldn't do, the public wouldn't stand that sort of thing. Nobody but the good ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... went to a garden-party given by the Princess Louise at Kensington Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the nipping and eager air, with which, as I have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... water or devastated by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful breast to feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived of the breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their all to their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the poorhouse in the end—ah, if one did not smile, one would die of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ashamed of his petulance with her. After all, she was the prettiest girl of them all; and, so far as he knew, the richest. She was "thoroughbred;" her family one of the oldest in its native State; and though the poorhouse boy had no family pride of his own he was loyal to old Maryland and his earliest friend. What had not Dolly been to him? His first teacher, his loving companion, and the means of all that was good coming ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... in the family. My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him Locked up for years back there at the old farm. I've been away once—yes, I've been away. The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; You know the old idea—the only asylum Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, Rather than send their folks to such a place, Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. But it's not so: the place is the asylum. There they have every means proper to do with, And you aren't darkening ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... to-day almost the only followers of a primeval calling, tainted little by the dirt of profit-seeking. They risk their lives daily in the hazards of the ocean, the victims of cold-blooded insurance gamblers and of niggardly owners, and rewarded with only a seat in the poorhouse or a niche in Davy Jones's Locker. I was once of their trade, and I longed to know the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... merchandise. There was no law and there were no officers; there was only confusion, helpless despair on every side. Before sunrise there was a terrific explosion which shook the whole city; the magazine back of the poorhouse was blown up.... At six o'clock in the morning the evacuation was complete, and the railroad ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the other side safe I 'm all right, but if it drowned there 'll be another bill. It ain't no use your tryin' to cheer me up, Mrs. Lathrop, because I ain't to be cheered. I know I 'm goin' to the poorhouse, 'n' I don't thank you nor no other man for tellin' me to my face as what I know ain't so. Gran'ma Mullins 'n' me is two very sad hearts these days, 'n' Heaven help us both. To hear her talk you 'd think the Siamese twins was the sun and moon apart compared ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... break of day, having gained many miles, he succeeded in ridding himself of his seaman's clothing, having found some mouldy old rags on the banks of a stagnant pond, nigh a rickety building, which looked like a poorhouse—clothing not improbably, as he surmised, left there on the bank by some pauper suicide. Marvel not that he should with avidity seize these rags; what the suicides abandon, the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... were ruined. Many of them died of a broken heart. Many became insane; not a few ended a miserable existence by taking their own lives; or died in almshouses, and under other dependent conditions. Of all classes of men, I do not know any who have such an abhorrence for the poorhouse as the sailor class. They will suffer the greatest privations in order to avoid it. It was a hard, cruel fate to have the earnings of a lifetime, and the means of livelihood, taken from them by ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... to play the part, and I shall be glad enough to do it with him again. I have a great deal of compassionate admiration for poor Knowles, who, with his undeniable dramatic genius, his bright fancy, and poetical imagination, will, I fear, end his days either in a madhouse or a poorhouse. The characters beside Sir Thomas Clifford and Modus (which you know are taken by Henry Greville and ——) are filled by a pack of young Guardsmen, with whom I dined, in order to make acquaintance, at Lady Francis's t'other day. Two of them, Captain Seymour and a son of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... It would even be injuring society for him to do so. And so we see this man, the harsh slave-driver of thousands of men, building almshouses with little gardens two yards square for the workmen broken down in toiling for him, and a bank, and a poorhouse, and a hospital—fully persuaded that he has amply expiated in this way for all the human lives morally and physically ruined by him—and calmly going on with his business, taking ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... You hate women same as the boy at the poorhouse hated ice cream—'cause there ain't none around. Why, I wouldn't trust you as fur as I ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... born in the bulrushes, Emmy dear," corrected Rebecca laughingly. "Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as romantic a scene—Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day; and sitting down at your ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... neighbors came to our home, they began telling my aunt what they would do with me if they were in her place. At the time I was in the back-yard watching the chicks. Some one said that she should send me to the poorhouse, others said that she had done so much for me, it was time that some of my other people should take me and share in the burden, while others said that I should be driven away and go wherever I could ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... Tom Abbott was a lawyer, like his father before him, and his grandfather in the fifties. It was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she recalled his frequent and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting up nights these days if a man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... 4a3b4c3b4d3e4f3e, 6: Jack and Tom prevail upon their rich and aged father to send away their brother Fred as a "black sheep." Later, just as these two Pharisees are about to send the old man to the poorhouse, Fred reappears and ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... "I guess I am the oldest man in the poorhouse, but I feel just about your age. Suppose you and I get out ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... concentration upon action. Between the two lie the collections of short stories On this Side (1907) and Neighbors (1908). From the second is taken the story here translated, In the Old Sun, which as an idyll of the Poorhouse has something of the qualities of Gottfried Keller, while the mystic setting is quite the property ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... he recovered, but, alas! his poor mind was hopelessly affected, and the doctor said that, though he might be much better, he would never be quite right again. Everybody thought they ought to send him to the poorhouse, as he had no home to be sent to, but Captain Maxwell refused to do this. So he stayed on, and, gradually, as he grew stronger, he took up some simple duties again. However, he had forgotten ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... palace; bar, bar room; barrel house [U.S.], cabaret, chophouse; club, clubhouse; cookshop^, dive [U.S.], exchange [Euph.]; grill room, saloon [U.S.], shebeen^; coffee house, eating house; canteen, restaurant, buffet, cafe, estaminet^, posada^; almshouse^, poorhouse, townhouse [U.S.]. garden, park, pleasure ground, plaisance^, demesne. [quarters for animals] cage, terrarium, doghouse; pen, aviary; barn, stall; zoo. V. take up one's abode &c (locate oneself) 184; inhabit &c (be present) 186. Adj. urban, metropolitan; suburban; provincial, rural, rustic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... began the old man, flicking off his ash with an admirable effect of calm, "to save a small nest-egg from the wreck, to keep me from the poorhouse in my old age. I did not wish to tell you this because, with your lack of acquaintance with business methods, the details would only confuse, and possibly mislead, you. I had, too, another reason for wishing to keep it a surprise. You have forced me, against my preferences, to tell you. As to this ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... for evening prayers. The inmates of the poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the principal service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages to the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... didn't want one. Then the old man told him how he and his poor old wife were suffering, and he asked him if he couldn't help him in some way; and what do you think Netherly said?—Why, he said that he had to pay taxes to help support a poorhouse, and told Uncle Israel that he'd find help there, if he'd only apply to the selectmen! Now what d'ye ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... this life, where men make, execute, and obey laws, own and manage property, buy and sell, plant, sail, build, marry and beget children and maintain households, pay taxes, keep out of debt, if they are wise, and go to the poorhouse, or beg, or do worse, if they are unwise or unfortunate. Here such trivialities as starched collars, blacked boots, and coats according to the mode compel attention. Society has its fixed rules, by which it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... are you going to give away more stuff?" demanded his sister. "Why, you'll be in the poorhouse first thing ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... not simply studious neglect, but a strong prohibition against their entrance into institutions sustained by the county and State for white persons not more fortunate than they. At one time a good Quaker was superintendent of the county poorhouse. His heart was touched with kindest sympathy for the uncared-for Colored paupers in Cincinnati. He acted the part of a true Samaritan, and gave them separate quarters in the institution of which he was the official head. This fact came to the public ear, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... "Give him room! Give him an opportunity! Give him a full stomach to pump blood to his muscles and life to his brain! Wait and see! If he fails then, let him drop to the bottom of the social pit without stop of poorhouse or help!" ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... him standing beside the dinner-table. He ate more heartily than before, for his forenoon's labor made even poorhouse ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... he's spent on the kid since I kin remember, an' he's allus talkin' poverty an' says how he'll die in the poorhouse if prices keep goin' up, as they hev durin' the furrin war that's now hummin' acrost the water. If he's that poor, an' on a sudden springs a ten-dollar bill on me for fixin's fer his kid, there's ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... to the widow. The youngest was only three years old, and Bobby, the oldest, was nine, when his father died. Squire Lee, who had always been a good friend of John Bright, told the widow that she had better go to the poorhouse, and not attempt to struggle along with such fearful odds against her. But the widow nobly refused to become a pauper, and to make paupers of her children, whom she loved quite as much as though she and they had been born in a ducal ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... old stone cross that stands by the stocks has not been replaced by a modern one, and adds greatly to the interest of the central portion of the village. On the road that leads towards Ellerburne there stand some old cottages generally known as the Poorhouse. They are built on sloping ground, and on the lower side there is a small round-topped tunnel leading into a little cell dug out of the ground beneath the cottages. This little village prison was known as the "Black Hole," and was ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... there is no stopping. The bank at the Corners failed, and I lost my savings. The turkeys wandered away, the cow died, and now there's the mortgage. It's due to-morrow, and then—the man that holds it will wait no longer. So it is the poorhouse, which I have ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... unfairly enjoyed by them elsewhere. The taille, which was a personal tax in other parts of the kingdom, was in Languedoc an equitable land tax, assessed according to a valuation periodically revised. There was not a poorhouse in the whole province, and such was its prosperity and excellent administration that it enjoyed better credit in the market than the Central Government, and the king used sometimes, in order to get more favourable terms, to borrow on the security of the States of Languedoc ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... later I was beatin' out into the bay in my dory. All around was the fog, thin as poorhouse gruel so fur, but thickenin' every minute. I was worried; not for myself, you understand, but for that cowboy shover. I was afraid he wouldn't fetch t'other side of the Cut-through. There wan't much ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... 'most forgot. If Sam Ross comes—Sam's an idiot who lives at the poorhouse—if he comes, he'll expect a dinner—my, my, I'm afraid he'll cry when he finds we're not here! But you can send him to the hotel to me. Don't let Aunt Cindy speak rough to him. Aunt Cindy's awfully good to me, but she can't bear Sam. She ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... have food enough to eat, and only want sleep to digest it. But I know these things by bitter knowledge—by experience. Don't talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living lives of moral anaemia and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... long since passed on the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark Twain ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... was the curt explanation that monsieur offered. "Jules is dead, and so is his son and all the family,—died in America. This is his son's son, Jules, the last of the name. If I choose to take him from a foreign poorhouse and give him shelter, it's nobody's business, Louis ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... later on that they paid the land-lord, or nearly paid him, by letting lodgings. They lived in one room with the use of the parlour and the kitchen when the lodgers weren't using them, and the son shared a room with a lodger. The back windows looked out on the dead wall of a poorhouse of some kind, the front on rows of similar windows opposite—rows of the same sort of windows that run for miles and miles in London. In one a man sat smoking in his shirtsleeves, from another a slavey leaned out watching a fourwheeler that ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... the Emperor was overawed. More than once the order was prepared for the obstinate prelate's exile, but for one reason or another it was never issued. Valens went forward on his journey, leaving behind a princely gift for Basil's poorhouse. He reached Antioch in April, and settled there for the rest of his reign, never again leaving Syria till the disasters of the Gothic war ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... see, he has the abeelity that comes from character," said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has no cleverness, but just gangs tramping ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... be a good gal, an' dew jest as we calc'lated on. Yew jine the Old Ladies'; yew've got friends over thar, yew'll git erlong splendid. An' I'll git erlong tew. Yer know"—throwing his shoulders back, he assumed the light, bantering tone so familiar to his wife—"the poorhouse doors is always open. I'd jest admire ter go thar. Thar's a rocking-chair in every room, and they say the grub is A No. 1." He winked at her, smiling his broadest smile ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... a fine view of the squire's new tomb and the poorhouse, with a wing of the jail behind the trees. And I've stuck my second-best hat in that broken pane of glass, and there's a chest of drawers to set against the door; so you'll be warm and free from intrusion. I wish you ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... melodiously or melted to a mellow music that woke a sympathetic thrill in those who listened. Rose glowed with pride as she accompanied her friend, for Phebe was in her own world now a lovely world where no depressing memory of poorhouse or kitchen, ignorance or loneliness, came to trouble her, a happy world where she could be herself and rule others by the magic of ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... some fading signs about him of decent birth, decent education and upbringing, but such signs were blurred and almost obliterated by the habits which had degraded him. He would have been dead or in prison or the poorhouse years ago if Carmen had not chosen to rescue him, more through a whim than from genuine charity. Her mother's people had been English, and somehow she had not cared to see an Englishman thrown to the dogs in this country which was not hers nor his. In days when her word ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... generously presenting her with the things that she desired, still quite as effectually by crippling the energy of her desires, until they were content to sun themselves quietly in a row, like aged, enfeebled paupers along the south wall of the poorhouse. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... this prospect. She was a little, faded woman, with a brown face and red-rimmed, weak eyes, washed by many years of sorrow to the palest nondescript colour. She crept through the world with no ambition but to die out of the poorhouse, no prayer but a petition that the parish might not bury her at the end, no joy save in her son. Life at best was a dreary business for her, and an occasional trip to Okehampton represented about the only brightness that ever crept into it. Now she bustled off full of excitement to get the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... go." The little fellow concluded by saying that our house was so much bigger than theirs that he thought we would have more roomfor beds. The old woman herself said absolutely nothing, but looking on with that gripping fear of the poorhouse in her eyes, she was a living embodiment of that dread which is so heartbreaking that the occupants of the County Infirmary themselves seem scarcely less wretched than those who are making ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... they're behind us! I tell you we'll dodge them now. Why in blazes did I ever bother to take that other brat from the poorhouse where its mother died? It was your plan to substitute one child for the other, Bessie. I wanted to steal Merriwell's kid in the first place. Furies take him! I swore years ago to strike at his heart when the time came. He was responsible for the death of my brother. They were ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... performed. Then, at length, Philip realized that he had lost his best earthly friend, and that he was henceforth alone in the world. He did not as yet know that Squire Pope had considerately provided him with a home in the village poorhouse. ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... John Popple, dated the 12th of March, 1830, L4 yearly is to be paid unto the vicar, churchwardens, and overseers of the poor of the parish of Burnham, Buckinghamshire, to provide for the poor people who should be residing in the poorhouse, a dinner, with a proper quantity of good ale and likewise with tobacco and snuff ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... do not vary in proportion to land values. Poor lands, if inhabited, must always pay heavy taxes; whereas, large areas of good land carry lighter taxes compared with their earning capacity. You must provide your regular expenses for county officers, county courthouse, jail, and poorhouse, about the same as we do. Your roads and bridges cost as much as ours; and the schools in the South must cost more than ours, for a complete double system of ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... his act has had its effect, and the factor of expense has not been forgotten. Some of the States still permit county commissioners to commit the care of the poor to the lowest bidder. On the other hand the poorhouse has been transformed into a "Home for the Aged and Infirm" in some States, and inspections of public institutions by the grand jury are becoming more than merely cursory. State boards of charities are being established, and men have even attacked members of their own political parties ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... have to do is to crawl to the poorhouse gate. Or to go dig a pit in the graveyard, as it is short till we'll be stretched there with the want ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... you're not going to be so severe as that, are you?" pleaded Bartley. "A few dollars, more or less, are not going to keep us out of the poorhouse. I just want to stay here three days: that will leave us a clean hundred, and we can start fair." He was half joking, but she was ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... she was in the poorhouse afore that. I don't know whether 'twas her poetryin' that got her in there, but I know darned well it didn't ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the recently-erected poorhouse and infirmary, a building designed with a curious spacious generosity, as were the buildings in Dublin and elsewhere which Irishmen erected during the short day of their national independence. In Donegall ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... it is better for money—if you will have that ground motive—that you should educate the black man, and, by education, make him a citizen. They who refuse education to the black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, incessantly vibrating between poverty and indolence. From this pulpit of broken stone we speak forth our earnest greeting to all our land. We offer to the President of these ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... perhaps, when there's nothing else left but the poorhouse. It's pretty tough if I have to marry ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... know, grandmother," answered Ethel cheerfully. "As soon as he's well enough to be moved, they're going to take him to the county hospital. I guess that's the poorhouse. But Rob says he's so old they're afraid the bone won't knit; he suffers like everything. Poor old man, I'm awful sorry for him. Rob has to do ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... chain attached to a big stationary engine at the summit. But it was the herald of the doom of the old-world England. Highways and coaching roads, canals and rivers, were abandoned and deserted. The old coachmen, once lords of the road, ended their days in the poorhouse, and ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... affectionate, considerate, and obedient. His mother had no idea that he would ever be able, or indeed willing, to make a living; but there was a forest of young timber growing up, a small hay farm to depend upon, and a little hoard that would keep him out of the poorhouse when she died and left him to his own devices. It never occurred to her that he was in any way remarkable. If he were difficult to understand, it reflected more upon his eccentricity than upon her density. What was a woman to do with a boy of twelve ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Fell in Love with His Wife," I merely saw a paragraph in a paper to the effect that a middle-age widower, having found it next to impossible to carry on his farm with hired help, had gone to the county poorhouse and said "If there's a decent woman here, I'll marry her." For years the homely item remained an ungerminating seed in my mind, then started to grow, and the story was ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... liberty and rights of Habeas Corpus. You let his father and mother, or any one who will save you the trouble of looking after him, mould him in his years of tenderness as they please. If they happen to leave him a walking invalid, you take him into the poorhouse; if they bring him up a thief, you whip him and keep him at high cost at Millbank or Dartmoor; if his passions, never controlled, break out into murder and rape, you may hang him, unless his crime has been so atrocious as to attract ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... has ever seemed for any great joy to get into such a life as this has been, that began, or at least has its earliest memory and association, in the old poorhouse ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the Wegg establishment, and it was doubtful if they had ever received any wages. It was certain that Hucks had not a dollar in the world at the present time, and if turned out of their old home the ancient couple must either starve or go to the poorhouse. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... waken the echoes of all the lower regions, down came a red-headed, drunken shoemaker. I can not say that he was drunk at that moment, but I knew the man the moment I saw his carroty poll, and it was drink which had sent him to the poorhouse. ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... the Irish worker's fight is, the able person is loath to give up and accept charity. But whether she wants to or not, if she can't find work she must go to the poorhouse. Before the war it was estimated that over one-half the inmates of the Irish workhouses were employable. During the war, when there were more jobs than usual to be had, there was a great exodus from the hated poorhouse; ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... the plaza and listened to the band playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes, mostly rockaways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at the unveiling of the new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove, and lifted their high silk hats to their friends. The common people walked around in barefooted bunches, puffing stogies that a Pittsburg millionaire wouldn't ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... manias. His salamanders and the three crescents of Diane de Poitiers still decorate its walls, and accordingly it is a historical shrine of the first rank, though descended in these later days to use as a poorhouse. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield |
