"Broken-down" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poor broken-down soldier," says the Colonel, "and I've seen better days, though I am forced now to turn my hand to writing. We can't ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... is being resented, not by the lower classes for they read in our papers how the King shook hands with Jack Johnson; not by the nouveaux riches, for they are perfectly satisfied with the notoriety they get at the hands of your broken-down aristocracy who spend their money,—no not by these classes, but by our ladies ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... silent benedictions on that band of immigrants, some on foot, some on horseback, women and children, seventy-five in number, with the company's baggage, in ox-carts and wagons drawn by the fat, the broken-down, and the indifferent "hacks" of wondering, scowling Missouri, scattered all along the prairie road from Kansas City to Lawrence, the Mecca of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Sent off a long letter to Robert, begging and entreating him not to be so down-hearted, and not to leave America without making another effort. I told him I could bear any trial except the wretchedness of seeing him come back a helpless, broken-down man, trying uselessly to begin life again when too old ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... I want you in the character of a broken-down actor now, and you wouldn't look the part with a new and shiny tile. Put a couple of dents in it, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... the war," he began again. "I stole my girl's mother from her grandfather, an old, broken-down Confederate colonel that would have shot me if he ever laid eyes on me. I brought her up here into the hills and she died when the baby was ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Esplanade des Invalides, through the serried lines of trees, stark and formal against the January sky, to the rue Fabert. Here, in the rue Fabert, lay that note of contrast that is bound into the very atmosphere of Paris—the note that touches the imagination to so acute an interest. Here shabby, broken-down shops rubbed shoulders with fine old entries, entries that savored of other times in the hint of roomy court-yard and green garden to be caught behind their gateways; here were creameries that conjured the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... I survived this awful seizure; and when I rose, a weak, broken-down man, and surveyed my ghastly features in a glass, I thought of my mother, and asked myself how I had obeyed the instructions I had received from her lips, and to what advantage I had turned the lessons she had taught me. I remembered her prayers and tears, thought of what I had been ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... the spokes. Hence it was, that, after luncheon I took my rifle, and started out across the bottom, where, within a few rods of the river, and about a half a mile off the road which turned close along the bluff, I came upon an old broken-down wagon, almost hidden in the grass. Taking the measure of the spokes, I found to my great joy, that they were just the right size and length. Looking around, I saw the train moving on, at a good pace, almost ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... the flashing colours of a kaleidoscope; like the phantoms of a dream! Red River settlement is dry again, or drying; but ah! what a scene of wreck and ruin! It looks as if the settlement had been devastated by fire and sword as well as water. Broken-down houses, uprooted fences and trees, piles of debris, beds and boxes, billets of wood and blankets, habiliments and hay, carioles and cordage and carcasses of cattle, all mixed up more or less, and cemented ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... were exposed to the fire from the left bastion of the town, which completely out-flanked them, and from which the matchlock-men kept pouring in a cool and most destructive fire upon this dense mass with the utmost impunity; while a wide, broken-down doorway in the centre exposed them to a fire from another bastion in their front, if ever they shewed their nose for an instant to see how matters were going on, or to return their fire. Poor fellows! you may guess their situation was anything but pleasant. The consequences soon ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... hardly knew whether to expect death at the hands of raiding Piegans or from starvation. On New Year's Day of 1811, {107} when the thermometer dropped to 24 deg. below zero, with a biting wind, Thompson was packing four broken-down horses and two dogs over the pass to the west side of the Great Divide. The mountains rose precipitously on each side; but when the trail began dropping down westward, the weather moderated, though the snow grew deeper; and in the third week of January Thompson came on the ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... big brown horse, ridden at a steady canter by a slender girl in a brown habit (worn by her mother in her youth, and borrowed from her wardrobe without permission for the occasion). The horse was a broken-down racer with some spirit left, which Beth had hired, as she had procured the provisions, on a promise to pay. In passing, she waved a white handkerchief carelessly, as if she were flicking flies from the horse, but without relenting her speed. This was the signal agreed upon. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... were gloomy enough, as we drove along facing each other in Ballyfuchsia's one 'inside-car'—a strange and fearsome vehicle, partaking of the nature of a broken-down omnibus, a hearse, and an overgrown black beetle. It holds four, or at a squeeze six, the seats being placed from stem to stern lengthwise, and the balance being so delicate that the passengers, when ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in my father's time: I had to take down the 'L,' a while back," Frome continued, checking with a twitch of the left rein the bay's evident intention of turning in through the broken-down gate. ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... kind people; for here was Goodman Brewster, whose small estate had been wellnigh taken from him in fines, and whose wife was a weak, ailing woman, who was at this time kindly lodging and nursing a poor, broken-down soldier, by no means likely to repay him, in any sort. As for the sick man, he had been hardly treated in the matter of his wages, while in the war, and fined, moreover, on the ground that he did profane the holy Sabhath; and though he had sent a petition ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with clean straw, a discovery that made its present occupant suddenly cautious in handling his matches. He had no wish to be burned alive in this underground trap. The place was apparently used as a sort of store-room. There was an old trunk in it, and some broken-down pieces of furniture. The second match ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... sad cases, and I'm sorry for you," spoke Joe, softly. He thought of John Dutton, the broken-down pitcher whose rescue, from a life of ruin, had been due largely to our hero's efforts, as told in the volume immediately ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... broken-down rustler whose activity had ceased and who spent his time hanging on at the places frequented by younger and better men of his kind. As he was a parasite, he was often thrown ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... The firm did all sorts of work, provided only that it paid; the highest class under their style, and the other sorts—the money-lending and "speculative business"—through their own "jackals," that is to say seedy and broken-down solicitors who had made a failure of their own business, but had managed to keep on the Rolls and were not above doing "commission ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... following morning examining the ancient ruins, for the conveyance did not start until four o'clock in the afternoon. When that hour came he made one of the travellers, all country folks, who were packed close as pigeons in a crate in the ramshackle, noisy, broken-down vehicle, which lumbered on its way behind its lean and suffering horses, through woods and hills and along mountain passes of a grandeur and a beauty on which the eyes ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... will do good in a few, a very few, cases. But, on the whole, it will do, I may say, incalculable harm. How was it distributed? In little paper bags, like those used by the banks. It sent half the poor fellows crazy! Just imagine—a broken-down wretch who'd lived on the verge of starvation for, maybe, years, suddenly has a bag of sovereigns put into his ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... origin of the numberless mistakes and miserable inconsistencies into which our statesmen fall; which cling to their progress for ever after, preventing their performances, and baffling them in all their hopes to secure the confidence of the people. They are broken-down political hacks in the prime of life, and just at the time when they should be first entering upon the duties of the public man. Seduced, like the rest, as well by my own vanity as the suggestions ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... strange grace of slow movement which must have come to her from some Russian ancestor. Her last words lingered in his mind. He was to talk to her about art! A fleeting vision of the youth in the yellow oilskins mocked him. He remembered his morning's tramp and the broken-down motor-car under the trees. The significance of these things was beginning to take shape in his mind. He resumed his seat, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would they all tell him that there were men in that crowd from which he had been chosen who had stood there a month—yes, many months—and not been chosen yet. "Yes," he would say, "but what sort of men? Broken-down tramps and good-for-nothings, fellows who have spent all their money drinking, and want to get more for it. Do you want me to believe that with these arms"—and he would clench his fists and hold them up in the air, so that you might see the rolling muscles—"that with these arms ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... infinitum. Such is the state of affairs with which our unfortunate Resident has to contend. Invested with large imaginary powers, he has in reality nothing but his personal influence and his own wits to help him. He has no white man to assist him, but living alone in a broken-down tent and some mud huts built by his son's hands (for the Government have never kept their promise to put him up a house), in the midst of thousands of restless and scheming savages, amidst plots against the peace and against his authority, he has to do the ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Lord, how she revelled in Chandos and Bertie Cecil and those dashing Life Guardsmen! And she used to toss that little head of hers and say I was a finer figure of a man than any of 'em—thirty years ago, good Lord! And I was then, but I ain't now. I'm only a broken-down, cantankerous old fool," declared the Colonel, blowing his nose violently, "and that's why I'm quarrelling with the dearest, foolishest daughter man ever had. Ah, my dear, don't mind me—run your menagerie as you ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... to him, he at once suggested that we take the only thing left, some poor, broken-down horses which would be able to carry us the sixty miles to Muren Kure, where we could secure camels to return to Uliassutai. However, even these were being kept some distance from the town so that we should ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... the Pisani palace: one of those which are attractive on account of their containing good works of art. The Pisani are an illustrious family: and the representative still lives in this fine old mansion, or at least occasionally occupies it; but he is a broken-down old man, who has survived wife, children, and other relatives, and his death must speedily close the many-centuried history of his name. It was with melancholy feelings that we stepped into the hall or vestibule, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... he was very friendly with some families in the town; the doctor's, the rector's, his own agent's (a broken-down brother officer and bosom friend, who had ceased to love him since he received his pay); and he used to take Mr. Lintot and me to parties there; and he was the life of ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... with her husband, on his departure (presumably en route to the Bermudas), she requires the vigorous assistance' of a large detachment of Her Majesty's Guards to support her in her bereavement. Of the actors, Mr. CHARLES GLENNEY, as a broken-down gentleman, is certainly the hero of the three hours and a half. In Act III., on the night of the first performance, he brought down the house, and received two calls before the footlights after the Curtain had descended. He has many worthy colleagues, for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... was still ringing, and its sinister notes penetrated likewise into the large guard-house, and spoke to the prisoners confined there. One of these prisoners was a gloomy, broken-down old man, General Kinkel; the other was a youth, mortally wounded and violently delirious. It was Colonel Dittfurt. The bullet of the Tyrolese had not killed him; he still lived, a prisoner of the peasants, and, amidst his delirium and his ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... trying to harness to his back was evil to the core. Had not that been the very meaning of those painful steps that had struggled away from it along this very road—the meaning of the lonely grave amongst the broken-down poor of Whitmansworth Union? ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... snuff-coloured coat, black tights, white neckcloth, and a beef-eater's hat, the whole sheltered beneath a green carriage umbrella, rode His Excellency the Governor of the district. Behind him walked his secretary, the Syndic of Subiaco, four gendarmes, and three broken-down, old livery-clad beadles, who carried the umbrellas of these high dignitaries. In truth, had it not been for the unutterable shabbiness of the whole affair, I could have fancied I saw the market scene in "Martha," and "The Last Rose ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... enough left to sit on for private soliloquy, or social debate, and to give a picturesque charm to the landscape; yet, it was a fact which I found worthy of notice, that, in going from one place to another, no true Wallencamper ever walked over a broken-down part of the fence, or went through a gap in the fence; he always selected an upright part of the fence to climb over, even going a little out of the way, if necessary, to ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... educated people, more than the nation wanted and more than was tolerable for the sufferers themselves. Hence the class Bismarck called the abiturienten-proletariat, all the so-called hunger candidates, especially the Mr. Journalists, who are often broken-down scholars and a danger to us. This surplus, far too large as it is, is like an irrigation field that cannot soak up any more water, and it ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... freezing in the snow; Napoleon's horse has let him tumble. Fortunately, the animal has simply foundered; "His Majesty's health was never better";[12139] nothing has happened to the rider; he gets up on his legs, and what concerns him at this moment is not the sufferings of his broken-down steed, but his own mishap; his reputation as a horseman is compromised; the effect on the public, the hooting of the audience, is what troubles him, the comedy of a perilous leap, announced with such a flourish of trumpets and ending in such a disgraceful fall. On reaching Warsaw[12140] he says ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... men journeyed some part of the way together, and before they separated Henry discovered something of the real character of his companion by his familiarity with certain broken-down Cavaliers, who, having lost all right to the title of gentlemen in their own country, eked out a living by brigandage in France. After they had separated, Henry lost his way, and arriving at night, drenched through with the rain, at a certain chateau, begged its ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... distributing all Sunday. Then in the evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying the people where he is might be 'advantageously employed on relief-work,' and suggesting that he put 'em to work on some broken-down old reservoir he's discovered, so as to have a good water-supply when the Rains break. 'Thinks he can cauk the dam in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches—aren't they clear and good? I knew he was pukka, but I didn't know he was ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Haward would. Moreover, when the house was reached, and Darden's one slave came running from a broken-down stable to take the horses, he made no motion toward returning to the bridge which led across the creek to his own plantation, but instead dismounted, flung his reins to Juba, and asked if he might ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... from his western lands was even more stormy and threatening than his first had been, but the little Nina remained stanch as ever. Besides frightful weather to try his soul, Columbus was taking home two hundred broken-down, disheartened colonists who could no longer endure the hardships of the New World. Even the prospect of going home did not improve their tempers. When the food ran low, colonists and crew threatened to kill and eat the captive natives in the hold. Columbus managed to pacify them all, ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... the house was, to appearance, a broken-down gentleman; he had been ordered to Marseilles by his physician for an affection of the lungs; yet he strongly recommended the climate of Avignon. For my own part, I think the situation is too low and windy ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... such surroundings; spending her days in a dirty, bare studio, with only rough, dissipated men for her companions—though to do them justice they treated her with respect and kindness. Somehow she picked up a desultory education among them. One broken-down old scene-painter taught her to read and write, and another, a French artist, taught her the rudiments of French, and also to play on the violin. 'They all treated me as a plaything,' she once said to me, 'and poor as they were, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for ships bound from the Cape either to New Holland or India, has been so long known to all navigators of these seas, its true longitude should have been till now unascertained. The western side presented the appearance of a broken-down crater, nor indeed can there be any reason to doubt its volcanic origin. Light brown was the pervading colour upon the sides of the island, and appeared to be caused by stunted bushes and grass. The southern island, St. Paul's, affords a good anchorage in 21 fathoms, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... or chopping wood, I was boring into the questions of the recitation room. I would occasionally take a little turn with the boys on the playground at noon, but not often. I was fond of it, but felt that I could not spare the time. This was a sad mistake, confirmed by a life of broken-down health. But, like many others, it was not discovered till the mischief was done. A determined effort to crowd four years' work into two, under discouraging circumstances, resulted in impaired health; ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... deal about the Crambrys, for he passed their so-called habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was only a month before that he had found them all sitting outside their broken-down fence, surrounded by decrepit chairs, sofas, tables, bedsteads, bits ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... milking, he took the pails of milk up to the house for Mrs. Jenkins to strain and put in the cans, and he came back and harnessed his horse to the cart. His horse was called Toby, and a poor, miserable, broken-down creature he was. He was weak in the knees, and weak in the back, and weak all over, and Jenkins had to beat him all the time, to make him go. He had been a cab horse, and his mouth had been jerked, and twisted, and sawed at, till one would ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... away) When my father, John Verity, died, and left his girl alone in the world, you helped me out of debt and difficulty; but all the skill on earth can never squeeze more than bread and butter out of this dear broken-down old place. (she rises) So go away where there's a world for you, a world to work in and a world to live in. (she holds out her hand to him) Thank you for ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... You know what riding the bruse means. At a country wedding the young men have a race to the bridegroom's home, and he who wins, brings out a bottle and glass and drinks the young wife's health. I wish Burns had described a bruse; all sorts of steeds, wild, unkempt lads as well as colts, old broken-down thorough-breds that did wonders when soopled, huge, grave cart horses devouring the road with their shaggy hoofs, wilful ponies, etc. You can imagine the wild hurry-skurry and fun, the comic situations and upsets over a rough road, up and down places one would ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... his trembling dry tongue and begin to peel off the bills, like you peel the layers off an onion, but he got off enough to pay for the dinner, gave the waiter half a dollar, and smiled a sickly smile at the head waiter, and I led him out of the dining-room a broken-down old man. As we got to the lobby, where the horse show of dress-suit chappies was beginning the evening procession, I said to dad: "Next time we will dine out, I guess," and at that he rallied and seemed to be able to take a joke, for he said: ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... the impudence without the pluck of the Regulators. You demand what you are afraid to enforce. Come, Parks, you know she has all the rights on her side. Look at it squarely. She proposes to open a store and sell liquor and cigars, which she serves herself, in the broken-down tienda which was regularly given to her people by the Spanish grantee of the land we're squatting on. It's not her fault but ours if we've adopted a line of rules, which don't agree with hers, to govern the settlers on HER land, nor should she be compelled to follow ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... presently found himself in a queue, behind Donovan, of officers who were passing a small window like a ticket office. Arriving, he handed in papers, and was given them back with a brief "All right." Beyond, Donovan had secured a broken-down-looking one-horse cab. "You'll be coming to the club, padre?" he asked. "Chuck in your stuff. This chap'll take it down and Bevan with it. Let's ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Andrew continued, "your stepmother will have sold you to some broken-down hanger-on of hers. Haven't you any ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... often an ambition that regards irrelevant and factitious honors rather than those to which it may legitimately and laudably aspire. A mechanic should find in the excellence of his mechanism a greater reward and satisfaction than in the wearing of a badge of office which any fifth-rate lawyer or broken-down man-of-business with influential "friends" may obtain, and whose petty duties they may discharge quite as well as the first-rate mechanic. The mechanic who is master of his calling need yield to none. We would not have him like the ironmongers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... allegory; the moralist is more than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal lampoon, especially of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears unworthily to have used his influence at court against the broken-down old poet. And now disease claimed Jonson, and he was bedridden for months. He had succeeded Middleton in 1628 as Chronologer to the City of London, but lost the post for not fulfilling its duties. King Charles ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... many girls of respectable parentage, belonging to the middle class, are not much better. The men, of course, are much worse than the women, and even in Paris one sees fewer physical signs of excessive debauchery. Here, the number of broken-down young men, and blear-eyed, hoary sinners, is astonishing. I have never been in any place where licentiousness was so open and avowed—and yet, where the slang of a sham morality was so prevalent. There are no houses of prostitution in Stockholm, and the city would ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... ornaments; the "porta ferrea" in its stern plainness, strangely crowned with its small campanile of later days perched on its top. Within the walls, besides the splendid buildings which still remain, besides the broken-down walls and chambers which formed the immediate dwelling-place of the founder, the main streets were lined with massive arcades, large parts ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... He sat wondering, vaguely, what new labor his hands must turn to, now that he had proved himself a fool in the profession he loved. His education might, possibly, be found of some account. There were such things as army coaches, he believed:—poor, broken-down creatures, living upon broken possibilities and the sale of their commissions. Then there recurred the memory of his old tutor, Ludmillo. He had not always been unhappy. His life had been dull enough, certainly; but there was nothing of this ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... if they had fed upon starchless food. For this is the creed of the new teaching. All starch foods are chiefly digested in the intestines instead of in the main stomach, and hence are unnatural and morbiferous, and the chief cause of the nervous prostration and broken-down health that abound on all sides. (Herr Nordau gives quite a different explanation of the general breakdown, but no matter.) "The 'Natural Food Society,'" says its official organ, "is founded in the belief that the food of primeval man consisted of fruit and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... be, that one, she wondered, since he dared not even show it? And, meantime, through the vast room, a sheet of burning sunlight, falling straight from the window panes, unchecked by any blind, spread with the flow of molten gold over all the broken-down furniture, whose devil-may-care shabbiness it ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... hut in the forest of the Landes two children sat very close together; Cecile had bought a candle that day in the village, and this candle, now well sheltered from any possible breeze, was placed, lighted, in the broken-down door of the little hut. It was Cecile's own idea, for she said to Joe that Maurice might come back in the cool night-time, and this light would be sure to guide him. Joe had lit the candle for the little girl, and secured it against ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... irregular round knob, of wood, perhaps, resting on the rail. It did not move in the least; but as another broken-down buzz like a still fainter echo of the first dismal sound proceeded from it I concluded it must be the head of the ship-keeper. The stalwart constable jeered ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... in—there was grit in that man. He borrowed a broken-down dray-horse in return for its keep, coupled it with his own old riding hack, and started to finish ploughing. The team wasn't a success. Whenever the draught horse's knees gave way and he stumbled forward, he jerked the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... power and glory. It was the name of one of her beloved heroes. She had written his youthful romance; she had described the picturesque fervour of his wooing, the pomp of his wedding; of all those heroes he had been the best beloved, the most splendid. And she met him,—a broken-down old drunkard, in the dusty gloom of an old maniac's wooden "palace," in the fashionable quarter of a city which ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... amulets for war or for the chase; ridiculous powder-horns, and also musical instruments; guitars covered with snake-skin, pipes and tambourines. To keep the rubbish which they are selling in countenance, no doubt, the dealers are mostly all broken-down, worn-out, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... did not prepare one for the desolation of the place itself. Imagine a gigantic ash heap, a place where dust and rubbish have been cast for years outside some dry, derelict, God-forsaken up-country township. Imagine some broken-down creek bed in the driest of our dry central Australian districts, abandoned for a generation to the goats, in which the hens have been scratching as long as men can remember. Then take away the hens and the goats and all traces of any living or moving thing. You must not ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... the left of the middle of the forehead. He was only stunned, and twenty-four hours later his intellect was undisturbed. There was no operation; free suppuration with discharges of fragments of skull and broken-down substance ensued for four weeks, when the wounds closed ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... period; and all that portion of British Columbia which lies in their basin may be looked upon as similar to the bench of gravel which is assaulted by the hydraulic miner. And just as the miner makes the broken-down gold-bearing stuff run through his constructed sluices, Nature sends all her gold in a torrent into the natural sluice which is known as ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... under her bitter sternness. Never—never—oh, hard word! This hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... flowers and birds and beautiful ladies and grand gentlemen painted all over it, and everywhere it was brilliant with gold and bright colors. It was a very old stove, for sixty years before, Karl's grandfather had dug it up out of some broken-down buildings where he was working, and, finding it strong and whole, had taken it home; and ever since then it had stood in the big room, warming the children, who tumbled like little flowers around its shining feet. The grandfather did not know it, but it was a wonderful stove, for it had been made ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... get-away I've got a job with a Chicago buyer, who used to live in New York. This guy has a big ratty barn. He deals mostly in broken-down skates that he sells to pedlers 'n' cabmen. Once in a while he takes a flier in high-grade stuff, 'n' one day he buys a team of French coach hosses from a breedin' farm owned by ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... room into which they gazed, a room the chief furniture of which seemed to be babies. Two little ones sprawled on the floor. A third tiny tot lay in a broken-down carriage beside the door. A pale, ill-looking woman was running the machine. On the cot bed was crumpled a fragile little fellow of about five, and a small pair of crutches lay across the ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... fortress, which once belonged to the Odescalchi family, but is now the property of the Roman government, looks like the very spot for a tragedy, as it stands there rotting in the pestilential air, and garrisoned by a few stray old soldiers, whose dreary, broken-down appearance is quite in keeping with the place. Palo itself is the site of the city of Alsium, founded by the Pelasgi, in the dim gloom of antiquity, long before the Etruscans landed on this shore. It was subsequently occupied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... man in desperation—a fresh hand who had come on duty to relieve Atkins at six bells. "The steam steering gear has broken-down, sir, and I can't ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... river-bank—here a miniature sand cliff capped with gravel, from eight to ten feet high—which leads to the warren and the ferry. For she would take ship, with foxy-faced William Jennifer as captain and as crew, cross to the broken-down wooden jetty and, landing there, climb the crown of the Bar and look south-east, over the Channel highway, towards far distant countries of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... wandering along the railroad tracks outside of the village of Crumville. Nobody knew who he was or where he came from, and consequently he was put in the local poorhouse, there to remain until he was nine years old. Then a broken-down college professor named Caspar Potts, who was doing farming for his health, took the lad ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... seen diggers on the track under varying fortunes, cursing dreadfully by broken-down teams, urging on their dull bullocks—slow, but very sure—singing exuberantly as they paced by, carrying heavy swags with light hearts, shouting as they went, under the impulse of a common hope that begot friendliness in all; and yet each man was armed now—there was a revolver ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... primarily known as a freighter, carrying out blue-stone and salt fish, and on her return cruise picking up miscellaneous cargoes of fruit. So her passenger list, which included, outside of Frank and Durkin, only a consumptive Welsh school-teacher and a broken-down clergyman from Birmingham, who kept always to his cabin, was in danger of no over-close scrutiny, either from the Neapolitan Guardie Municipali on the one hand, or from any private agents of Keenan and Penfield on ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... them. But they are responsible for my having for a long time thought very highly of you, Miss Riis. If you will excuse my saying so, I had never before seen fashionable young ladies trying to do anything useful—never. I am only a little broken-down tradesman travelling for a firm—a worthless sort of chap in many ways, and one that very likely deserves what he has got—but anyway I wanted you to be spared. Indeed thought it was my duty—absolutely my duty. But now when I see you ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... "The flags were flying half-mast high." A crowd of people were there. Cart-horses with harness on, and a lot of tired-looking saddle-hacks, covered with dry sweat, were fastened to cart-wheels, and to every available post and place. Heaps of old iron, broken-down drays and buggies and wheel-barrows, pumps and pieces of machinery, which Dad reckoned were worth a lot of money, were scattered about. Dad yearned to gather them all up and cart them home. Rows of unshaven men were seated high on ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... Cat," and so resolved to take his dinner in the gorgeous cafe of The Lorne. While he was waiting for the proper moment to descend thither, he could not get the shoe question out of his mind. Surely, the boot-boy could not have been so idiotic as to have left that ancient, broken-down pair at Littimer's threshold! And yet it was possible. Crombie felt another flush of humility upon his cheeks. Then he wandered off into reverie upon the multifarious errands of all the pairs of boots and shoes that had gone forth from ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... and grunts trudging across to the other, and finding things no better with that. In fact, towards evening I was so exhausted that on reaching the posting-station I decided to spend the night at the inn. I was given a room with a broken-down wooden sofa, a sloping floor, and torn paper on the walls; there was a smell in it of kvas, bast-mats, onions, and even turpentine, and swarms of flies were on everything; but at any rate I could find shelter ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... country, and contains more of the flotsam and jetsam of English derelicts than any other country in all Europe. Every Italian town has its own coterie of broken-down Englishmen and Englishwomen, the first-mentioned mostly sharks, and the latter mostly drunkards. Truly the shifty existence led by these exiles presents a strange phrase of life, so essentially cosmopolitan ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... a rather old and broken-down platform, just as Roland proved to be a rather old and broken-down place, and the girls stood on it ruefully as they watched the train ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... educated at the same time. Modern education tends to develop man in special directions to the neglect of others. Either the overstrained mental faculties revenge themselves by giving us the nervous, broken-down, mental type so common; or else we have the crude physical type wherein ordinary labor has exercised but a few muscles ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of rain had fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and mortar, again the stench from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken men, the Finnish pedlars and half-broken-down cabs. The sun shone straight in his eyes, so that it hurt him to look out of them, and he felt his head going round—as a man in a fever is apt to feel when he comes out into the street on ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and there were crowds almost everywhere playing the omnipresent slot-machines. The whir of the machines and the low undertones and whispers of the bettors combined in the air to make what Malone considered the single most depressing sound he had ever heard. It sounded like a factory, old, broken-down and unwanted, that was geared only to the production of cigarette butts and old cellophane, ready-crumpled for throwing away. Malone pushed through the crowds as fast as possible, but nearly an hour had gone by when he had all his papers and hailed another ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... had been nursing his wrath all night long while being bumped over a rough road in an old broken-down stagecoach, required but the sight of his nephew to cause an explosion. He had not closed his eyes during the entire night, and like his sister, Mrs. Forest, was in a state of collapse. His usually florid complexion had turned ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the way along the broken-down entrances of the underground excavations, now occupied by bats, toads and vermin, but where once miserable wrecks of manhood had found a terrible punishment ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... through the tangled vine-ropes of a jungle, all at the same time and all without the slightest reference to the plunges, and the odd and exceedingly jerky behavior, of his wild, half-broken horse—for on such a ranch most of the horses are apt to come in the categories of half-broken or else of broken-down. One dusky tatterdemalion wore a pair of boots from which he had removed the soles, his bare, spur-clad feet projecting from beneath the uppers. He was on a little devil of a stallion, which he rode blindfold for a couple of miles, and there was a ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... detached to guard them. Whittlesey's brigade, at Adamsville, received at two o'clock the order to march. Sending the wagons with the Sixty-eighth Ohio as guard to Crump's Landing, the remaining three regiments pushed through the mud, the field officers dismounting to let broken-down men ride, and overtook the other brigades as they were beginning to cross Snake Creek. The Twenty-fourth Indiana in advance, crossing the bridge just after sunset, deployed skirmishers in front, marched along the road along the east bank ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... small ground-floor room that was only lighted from the staircase. The furniture could not have been simpler—a rickety chair, a poor bed, and a broken-down table. At the end of the room there was a fireplace with a lighted fire; but the fire was painted, and by the fire was a painted saucepan that was boiling cheerfully and sending out a cloud of smoke that looked exactly like ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... was soon made on the iron and timbers of a broken-down bridge, over which foot soldiers could pass in single file. As the structure was liable to get out of order, each officer, from division to company commander, was required to stand at its end and see that the soldiers of his command marched on ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... hold loosened. Like a flash she was off. She ran. It seemed to her that her feet did not touch the earth. Over brush, through bushes, crashing against trees, on and on. She heard him following her, but the broken-down engine that was his heart refused to do the work. She ran on, though her fear was as great as before. Fear of what might have happened—to her, Tessie Golden, that nobody could even talk fresh to. She gave a sob of fury and fatigue. She was stumbling now. It ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... with whom I walked out, a pretty girl who drank like a fish, as her mother also did. There were other lodgers coming and going. I would lie down all day and keep myself saturated with beer. I commenced to get fat and bloated, with the ways of a brothel bully. A broken-down, drunken old woman who visited the house and had been a beautiful lady in her youth told me I should end my days on the gallows trap. The same woman when drunk would lift up her dress, sardonically, exposing herself. Other old women would congregate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to where he sat, apparently a broken-down, sorrowful man, stricken with grief. The mighty Caesar now was far more powerful than he had been a while ago when he raged and stormed and threatened, for he had appealed to the strongest feeling within her—he had appealed to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... by stamping their feet. Sometimes men or women came on to the platform and sang. The occupants of the body of the hall were mostly sailors, but among whom were a considerable number of men, who seemed by their garb to be broken-down soldiers and adventurers. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... with the man. He was fifty-four and a broken-down docker. He could only find odd work when there was a large demand for labour, for the younger and stronger men were preferred when times were slack. He had spent a week, now, on the benches of the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... our way shamefacedly through the mud. Our ponies, with their quick, peculiar gait, soon caught up the heavily-laden waggons, and we supplied ourselves with mealies, flour, fowls, etc., that had been thrown overboard or left behind on a broken-down waggon. Such is the fortune of war, and the things were better in our hands than in those of ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... to be recognised: crippled in his limbs—his fine countenance disfigured by deep and unsightly scars—his complexion pale—his hair turned grey with suffering. He had already stepped on twenty years in as many weeks, and he was already, to the eye, a worn and broken-down officer of veterans. He could not stir a pace without crutches; and his hip had been so shattered and distorted that it was painful to see him move. It was well that Beatrice was in her grave. No doubt she would have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... us to withdraw. I fear it had not proved a happy valley for the Lincolns and Greys, who were at Nitral's Nek, some eight miles to westward of us, and had been attacked and suffered badly in the morning. (The explanation of the heavy firing already alluded to.) Near the town we came on a broken-down ambulance waggon in a donga, out of which the wounded were being assisted as well as the circumstances permitted. Close by, on the ground, was something under a blanket, which we nearly rode over. A man close by, lighting his pipe, revealed it to us. It was one poor fellow who ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... with us," Frank said. "No one would venture to try a tent with a pretty strong party; but with only your son and yourself there might have been a temptation to some broken-down gambler to carry it off. Besides, we have Turk as a guard, and I don't fancy any one would venture to try any tricks with our tent ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... they are receiving such of the outcast population as can offer the price of a bed. To any one interested in the misery of the city, the array presented on such an occasion is very striking. One sees every variety of character, runaway boys, truant apprentices, drunken mechanics, and broken-down mankind generally. Among these are men who have seen better days. They are decayed gentlemen who appear regularly in Wall street, and eke out the day by such petty business as they may get hold of; and are lucky if they can make enough to carry them through the night. In all lodging-houses ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of the country as Jack the Killer, and by other dreadful nicknames, both English and Spanish. Now he was lying there alone, friendless, penniless, ill, on a rough bed the stableman had given him in his room. My brother came home full of the subject, sad at poor old Jack's broken-down condition and rejoicing that he had by chance found him there and had been able to ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... reveals, and would fain mend; and we all need to be reminded that it is cruel kindness to conceal unpleasant truths, and that the Gospel is no more to be blamed for the destruction which it declares than is the signalman with his red flag responsible for the broken-down viaduct to which the train is rushing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... hawk, breaking its wing. That was the first in the collection. He was a lovely pet. When you gave him a piece of meat he said 'Cree,' and clawed chunks out of you, but most of the time he sat in the corner with his chin on his chest, like a broken-down lawyer. We didn't get the affection we needed out of him. Well, then Wind-River found a bull-snake asleep and lugged him home, hanging over his shoulder. We sewed a flannel collar on the snake and picketed him out until he got used to the place. And around and around and around squirmed that snake ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... man conducted each, a naked-footed child or two trotted beside them, and an elder boy led along three goats. The travelling homes were encumbered with osier-and cane-work, and following them came a little broken-down, open vehicle. This was drawn by two donkeys, harnessed tandem-fashion, and the chariot had been painted bright blue. A woman drove the concern, and in it appeared a knife-grinding machine and a basket of cackling poultry, while some tent-poles ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... grandmother Fromm were not knitting stockings on this occasion; it seemed they were prepared for this appearance. They too received my parents very quietly and solemnly: as if everyone were convinced that the first word addressed by anyone to this broken-down, propped up figure would immediately reduce it to ashes, as the story goes about some figures they have found in old tombs. And yet she had come on this long, long journey. She had not waited for the weather to grow warmer. She ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... encourage me and fool me so sincerely, so guilelessly. My poor squire, true guardian of my dulled sword, your knight is a poor, broken-down man. He cannot hold a weapon in his feeble hand. What do I see? Our son's toys. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... all their ribbons.' We call that kind of bonnet 'coal-scuttle' now, but Maclise's portrait of Lady Morgan trying hers on before a glass justifies Hunt's epithet. The lecturer was the lean, wiry type of Scot, within an inch of six feet. In face, he was not the bearded, broken-down Carlyle of the Fry photograph, but the younger Carlyle of the Emerson portrait. Clean-shaven, as was then the fashion, the determination of the lower jaw lying bare, the thick black hair brushed carelessly and coming down on the bony, jutting forehead, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... they will not give any of their workers all the work they can do; they dole out the work to them, trying to make them think it is very scarce. If they ask for higher pay, they are met at once with a threat of discharge. Do you ask why they do not hunt for something better? What can a poor, half-broken-down mother, with three little babies, do hunting work? Who will pay the rent, furnish them food, and care for the children while she makes her search? There are thousands of laboring people, both men and women, in all our great cities, who are in the same condition that a majority of the Israelites ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... merely in order to divide the light behind some human figure. Lakes! No, nothing of the kind,—only blue bays of sea put in to fill up the background when the painter could not think of anything else. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part very complete and well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all, but to give place or explanation to some circumstance of human conduct." And then he would look up again to the modern pictures, observing, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... heart upon it; go he would; and he begged and prayed so long that the King was forced to let him go. Now, you must know the King had no other horse to give Boots but an old broken-down jade, for his six other sons and their train had carried off all his horses; but Boots did not care a pin for that, he sprang up on his sorry ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... processions and "floats" and brass bands. Marcus Schouler was in his element during the whole time of the celebration. He was one of the marshals of the parade, and was to be seen at every hour of the day, wearing a borrowed high hat and cotton gloves, and galloping a broken-down cab-horse over the cobbles. He carried a baton covered with yellow and white calico, with which he made furious passes and gestures. His voice was soon reduced to a whisper by continued shouting, and he raged and fretted over trifles till ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... her a while to get it out of me, and then her blue eyes flashed. "I told you!" she cried. "From another dimension!" In her broken-down green wedgies she clattered toward the door. I heard her fighting it. She couldn't get it open. Then she tried a window. It opened, but she couldn't stick her hand out. She flung ...
— Sorry: Wrong Dimension • Ross Rocklynne
... wretch looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... cannot expect that you will consider me or your family in your matrimonial engagements, but at the same time I think it is my duty to point out to you what it is that you are doing. You are refusing one of the finest matches in England in order to marry a broken-down, middle-aged, half-pay colonel, a man who can hardly support you, whose part in life is played, or who is apparently too ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... that wasted regiment of weary and broken-down men, there was probably no one but Stedman who looked backward with longing as they sailed down the lovely Surinam. True, he bore all his precious collections with him,—parrots and butterflies, drawings on the backs of old letters, and journals kept on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... shop-window at night without taking his clothes off. He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long but scanty black locks covered by a smoking-cap, and a luxuriant black moustache. He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the air of a broken-down operatic villain. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... am sure of it; I can read Dietrich's writing fast enough," answered Blasi, and he added to himself, "The women-folk are queer creatures. No fellow can understand them. A moment ago she looked all broken-down, and as if she could be blown out with a puff of wind, and now she looks bright and strong ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri
... had set his heart upon it; go he would; and he begged and prayed so long that the king was forced to let him go. Now, you must know the king had no other horse to give Boots but an old broken-down jade, for his six other sons and their train had carried off all his horses; but Boots did not care a pin for that, he sprang up on ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... waters—"'dough' put out at usance," as Joseph Jefferson used to phrase it—shall return after many days has been I dare say discovered by most persons who have perpetrated acts of kindness, conscious or unconscious. There was a poor, broken-down English actor with a passion for Chaucer, whom I was wont to encounter in the Library of Congress. His voice was quite gone. Now and again I had him join me in a square meal. Once in a while I paid his room rent. I was ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... opened a door in one side of the house. Next he took up a water-pail from an inverted soap-box, and, emptying the contents, he went to the well in the adjoining yard, a fenced enclosure which contained a conglomerate mass of old junk, broken-down wagons, buggies, agricultural implements, and other odds and ends which the merchant had bought very low or taken in some sort of exchange for new wares whereby they had cost him practically nothing. Returning with the water, he had just seated himself ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... His clerk, a consumptive and broken-down relative, was at that moment lying nerveless on a rude bunk within the ranch, bemoaning the fate that had impelled him to seek Arizona in search of health. He was indeed of little "'count," as the paymaster well knew. After a moment's painful thought the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... that he will. His excellency has too great an esteem for these gentlemen to allow them to languish in prison when no stronger proof than the story which a broken-down gambler can invent is urged as ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... editor's" invariable prescription, no matter whether the patient be a moss-grown town, a broken-down political roue—the victim of early indiscretions—or a Cheap-John merchant suffering the first paroxysms of financial dissolution. Although he knows how his medicine is made,—knows that it is a nauseous ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... descending the mass of carcasses, we at last succeeded in reaching a few acres of clear ground. It was elevated a few feet above the water of the torrent, which ran through the ravine, and offered to our broken-down horses a magnificent pasture of sweet blue grass. But the poor things were too terrified and exhausted, and they stretched themselves down upon the ground, a painful spectacle ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... But, yer see, when I got him he was a broken-down cow hoss what hed been ridden ter death an' fed on sand an' alkali water so long thet ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... had arrived at a large pond—or lake, rather—surrounded by reeds, with a few trees scattered here and there in the neighbourhood. They had driven before them a small herd of horses and mules, many of which appeared to be broken-down animals, such as I should not have supposed were to be found on the llanos. As we approached the pond, we saw several heads, resembling those of large serpents, just lifted above the surface; and now and then I caught sight ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... dragoons taking position in the center. Colonel Gadsden was appointed quartermaster general for Florida, and acting inspector general. When nine miles from Fort Drane information reached the army that some volunteers left in charge of a broken-down team had been attacked by the Indians and one man killed. On March 28th the column reached the Ouithlacoochee and encamped near Fort Izard. The river bank was occupied by sharpshooters and two pieces of artillery to protect the crossing. ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... disadvantage to the seaboard States. It was supposed that the frontier would attract a population of such character as could easily be spared in more settled communities. But it became apparent that the new country did not appeal simply to broken-down farmers, bankrupts, and ne'er-do-wells. Robust and industrious men, with growing families, were drawn off in great numbers; and public protest was raised against the "plots to drain the East of its best blood." Anti-emigration pamphlets were scattered broadcast, and, after the manner of ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... queer fish, Duchess," he remarked. "He calls himself Bishop of Bim-Bam-Bum, and resembles a broken-down matrimonial agent. So lean! So yellow! His face all furrowed! He has lived very viciously, that man. Perhaps he is mad. In every case, look to your purse, Mr. Denis. He'll be ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas |
