"Destitution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found the lodger writhing on a camp-bed in the convulsions of death. She extinguished the brazier; the door was open, the air rushed in, and the exile was saved. Then, when Lisbeth had put him to bed like a patient, and he was asleep, she could detect the motives of his suicide in the destitution of the rooms, where there was nothing whatever but a wretched table, the camp-bed, and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... places of pagan superstition. Amidst the splendour of its architectural decorations, as well as surrounded with proofs of its scientific and literary eminence, the apostle mourned over its religious destitution, and "his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... great number of these mothers, by the birth of their illegitimate children, even if allowance is made for the many instances when the children are legitimatized by their fathers! Suicide by women and infanticide are to a large extent traceable to the destitution and wretchedness in which the women are left when deserted. The trials for child murder cast a dark and instructive picture upon the canvas. To cite just one case, in the fall of 1894, a young girl, who, eight ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... troublesome, but he had never shown it before. She felt like crying at first; then she passed through an epoch of resentment, and then through a period of compassion for him. She ended by telling him with dignified severity that she wanted some money: they usually made some jokes about her destitution when she came upon that errand. He looked surprised and vexed, and "I have spent what you gave ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... would reveal itself as a small mud-covered box, with four bare walls and a narrow doorway facing toward the south. Herein lived and suffered a family of human beings—freedmen and women without the stigma of slavery, but with all the misery of destitution ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wish I had, now. She was a pretty little person, and she yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king's women- folk. The darlings haven't had any new clothes for nearly a month, and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,—solid silver railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I've tried to make ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... purse, he went home at night and emptied the whole contents into his mother's hand. His heart often sank as she received his earnings with smiles and tears. "Poor child," she would say, "your help comes just in time." Thus the bitter thought of poverty and the evidences of destitution were always near ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... from the poor creature she had seen lowered into her hastily dug grave as if the height of the heavens divided them. She had seen poverty and misfortune in her life; but in a community where poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Ally represented the nearest approach to destitution there was nothing to suggest the savage ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... in being creative rather than possessive in a world which is wholly built on competition, where the great majority would fall into utter destitution if they became careless as to the acquisition of material goods, where honor and power and respect are given to wealth rather than to wisdom, where the law embodies and consecrates the injustice of those who have toward those who have not. ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... prematurely artful, wicked and cruel[1]; woman, the victim of a wretched and debasing bigotry, has yet so little of the feminine adjuncts, that the fountains of our sympathies are almost closed; and man, tyrannizing over the sex he was bound to protect, in its helpless destitution and enfeebled decline, seems lost in prejudice and superstition and only strong in oppression. If we turn from the common herd to the luminaries of the age, to those whose works are the landmarks of literature and science, the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... been delighted to think that she could with joy accept that from her husband which nothing would induce her to accept from her lover. This thought had sufficed to comfort her, as the evil of absolute destitution was close upon her. Surely the day of her ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions—more especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts for a period of twenty-two months or longer—little adapted for agriculture or for permanent settlement at all; and they always were so, although two ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quick—quick—I tell you.' The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wanderings. For months—for years—his life hadn't been worth a day's purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearances indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... adrift in even worse condition than her daughter. Her purse, containing a miserable handful of dimes and nickels, was in her trunk, and her trunk was in the hands of the landlady. Minna had been allowed such reprieve as her thirty-five cents would purchase. The destitution of Mrs. Hooven and her little girl had begun from the very moment ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... become richer, and the poor, comparatively at any rate, poorer. Hence, when in the fourteenth and following centuries the national market expands into a world market, we find growing up side by side capitalism and destitution; and the reason why there are so many millionaires and so much destitution to-day, compared with earlier times, is that the world is now one market, and the range of operations is only ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... was the message of Vereeniging—a message which struck a chill in every heart. One after another we painted the destitution, the misery of our districts, and each picture was more gloomy than the last. At length the moment of decision came, and what course remained open to us? This only—to resign ourselves to our fate, intolerable though it appeared, to accept ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... into Portugal. He even, with a degree of humanity more honorable, as well as more rare, than military success, distributed clothes and money to several prisoners brought into Zamora in a state of utter destitution, and enabled them to return in safety to their ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... possession of the city; he had just come through the quarter that had been destroyed by the fire, and had seen above fifty sick deprived of all care and reduced to destitution. Here something could be done; here was a way of showing the angry populace that their advisers and leaders were not sitting with their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lost everything in the general impoverishment, and was driven by the enraged populace from the town. The once proud and rich lady had now to beg for her bread. She walked wearily from village to village, curses following her wherever she went. She died in utter destitution. ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... be allowed for India, we are face to face with the awful fact that the "submerged tenth" consists of no less than twenty-six millions of human beings, who are in a state of destitution bordering upon absolute starvation! No less an authority than Sir William Hunter has estimated their numbers at fifty millions, and practically ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... disproportioned to the many that perished. To identify a particular offender was impossible, nor was it of much importance, since the natives now were animated by one spirit. The amazing agility with which they moved; their magical powers of self concealment; their destitution of dress, the greasing of their skin, and the vigilance of their watch-dogs, rendered it nearly impossible to seize ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme was appalled before such destitution. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pythagoraean[133] equivalent for four months' vexation, though not a bean of them all should have lost in freshness and value! He could scarcely write, he said, for the chilblains on his hands, and was in utter destitution of shirts and sheets. Oh! I have very good hopes that for the future Wimpole ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... replied that she had no choice between these long walks and utter destitution for herself and her children; but she said, cheerfully, that it was only since the weather had become so warm that she had found the walk at all beyond her strength, and the hot weather would soon ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... from his wife.' He adds that, 'while he was in a lodging in Fleet Street, she was harboured by a friend near the Tower.' This separation, he insinuates, rose by an estrangement caused by Johnson's 'indifference in the discharge of the domestic virtues.' It is far more likely that it rose from destitution. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and there is no means of support for the bishop and the clergy. They ask that tithes shall be paid, or else that the prebends be replaced by a few curates, who shall care for the souls of the Spaniards and their Indian servants. The royal hospital and that for the Indians are both in great destitution, and should be aided by royal bounty. More religious instructors are needed; and, in order to support them, more tribute should be required from the Indians, and the encomenderos should be compelled to pay tithes. The city of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... of the good money thus obtained was spent extravagantly by a people used to Confederate rag money and for four years deprived of the luxuries of life. The poorer whites who had lost all were close to starvation. In the white counties which had sent so large a proportion of men to the army, the destitution was most acute. In many families the breadwinner had been killed in war. After 1862, relief systems had been organized in nearly all the Confederate States for the purpose of aiding the poor whites, but these organizations were disbanded in 1865. A Freedmen's Bureau official traveling ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... people in the pictures at the Art Museum became alive, and for a week the soldiers of the royal guard spent most of their time rescuing poor, bewildered fauns, satyrs, nymphs, Roman senators, and long dead celebrities and historical personages from the worst destitution. The King finally had to build a special castle ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... is written on in a court of law, and you have failed in all your efforts to get corroborative evidence. There is no use in inquiring about Violet Strachan; she is dead three years ago. I paid her, on Hogarth's account, a small weekly sum, that she used to come to my office for to keep her from destitution, but that payment is at an end. The other witness could only prove the irregular marriage, which there is no doubt about, as Henry Hogarth owns to it in his will. The only evidence that would be worth anything is that of your real mother, and there is no ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... preliminary rumble. Well, to say 'in a moment' is an exaggeration perhaps; but that everything was over in just twenty-four hours is an exact statement. Fyne was able to tell me all about it; and the phrase that would depict the nature of the change best is: an instant and complete destitution. I don't understand these matters very well, but from Fyne's narrative it seemed as if the creditors or the depositors, or the competent authorities, had got hold in the twinkling of an eye of everything de Barral possessed in the world, down to his watch and chain, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the fact. If her father would give her the chance she could make a place for herself among skilled workers within a year, and be able, if there were need, to provide for the entire family. Great and prolonged destitution rarely occurs, even in a crowded city, unless there is much sickness or some destructive vice. Wise economy, patient and well-directed effort, as a rule, secure comfort and independence, if not affluence; but continued illness, disaster, and especially sin, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... uttered these words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed upon him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... turned out of the house? ... into the streets?—and Laura had a lively vision of the guilty creature, in rags and tatters, slinking along walls and sleeping under bridges, eternally moved on by a ruthless London policeman (her only knowledge of extreme destitution being derived from the woeful tale of "Little Jo").—And to think that the beginning of it all had been the want of a trumpery tram-fare. How safe the other girls were! No wonder they could allow themselves to feel ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... herself had been calm and collected. No one else knew how crushing was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three years of labor and privation a useless struggle. Yet though no longer a pupil she could still teach; her master had found her a small patronage that saved her from destitution. That night she circled up quite cheerfully in her usual swallow flight to her nest under the eaves, and even twittered on the landing a little over the condolences of the concierge—who knew, mon Dieu! ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... front of her mistress's house, and being struck by her shabby dress and evidently uncared-for condition, accosted her and ascertained the principal facts of her little history. She was of just the class whom it was the mission of the society to save from the destitution and danger of a totally friendless position, by sending them to good homes in the West. Thither she went, liberated from an uncompensated bondage to the scrubbing-brush and washtub, and was ushered into a new and joyous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Brethren, the United Presbyterians, and the Methodists for many miles around. Now all these people, vary as they might in church creeds, were united in a hearty admiration for plucky little Mrs. O'Callaghan. They all knew, though the widow would not own it, that destitution was at her door. The women feared that in taking her boys to town she was taking them to their ruin, while the men thought her course the only one, since a destitute woman can hardly run a farm with only seven growing boys to help her. And for a day or two there had been busy ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... state of France in 1799: her clergy were rent by a formidable schism; the orthodox priests clung where possible to their parishioners, or lived in destitution abroad; the constitutional priests, though still frowned on by the Directory, were gaining ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose expiring efforts excited ridicule. In fine, a nation weary of religious experiments and groping about for some ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... spectacularly as our rich do— that is, by handfuls of millions, but then the whole community gives more, I think, than our community does, and when it does not give, the necessary succor is taxed out of its incomes and legacies. I do not mean that there is no destitution, but only that the better off seem to have the worse off more universally and perpetually in mind than with us. All this is believed to be very demoralizing to the poor, and doubtless the certainty of soup and flannel is bad for the soul of an old woman whose body is doubled up with ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... to the Greek Church in Nabloos for baptism. What a deplorable state of things! Since the date of this journey the Church Missionary Society's agents have in some degree ministered to the spiritual destitution of these poor people by supplying some at least with copies of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... discontented—dissatisfied, unhappy? and am I the cause?" Jemshid replied: "No, it is simply this; those who have feeling, and pity the sufferings of others, weep involuntarily. I pity the misfortunes of Jemshid, driven as he is by adversity from the splendor of a throne, and reduced to a state of destitution and ruin. But he must now be dead; devoured, perhaps, by the wolves and lions of the forest." The nurse and princess, however, were convinced, from the sweetness of his voice and discourse, that he could be no other than Jemshid himself, and taking him ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... in Adam's case of destitution,that's one thing!' was Dr. Arthur's comment, as his friend sprang past him into the cabin. Then however, like a wise man, postponing other things to business, Rollo only demanded calmly what the matter was? Hazel had not expected him, and there was a look of surprise and a minute's flush; ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... virtues. The expedient was resorted to of casting suspicion upon the correspondence which Her Highness kept up with the exterior of the prison, for the purpose of obtaining such necessaries as were required, in consequence of the utter destitution in which the Royal Family retired from the Tuileries. Two men, of the names of Devine and Priquet, were bribed to create a suspicion, by their informations against the Queen's female attendant. The first declared that on the 18th of August, while he was on duty near the cell of the King, he saw ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Junta discussed the titles of honour which were to attach to them collectively and individually, and voted themselves salaries equal to those of Napoleon's generals, the armies fell into a state of destitution which scarcely any but Spanish troops would have been capable of enduring. The energy of the humbler classes alone prolonged the military existence of the insurrection; the Government organised nothing, comprehended nothing. Its part in the national movement was confined to a ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Indeed, though on other grounds I should be all so proud of being known for your friend by everybody, yet there's no denying the deep delight of playing the Eastern Jew's part here in this London—they go about, you know by travel-books, with the tokens of extreme destitution and misery, and steal by blind ways and by-paths to some blank dreary house, one obscure door in it—which being well shut behind them, they grope on through a dark corridor or so, and then, a blaze follows ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the tranquillity of the province in a great measure depended upon silencing these troops—who were not only clamorous and menacing, but in a state of nakedness and destitution—which rendered it probable that they might help themselves at the expense of the inhabitants—I consented to the application of the Junta, placing at their disposal the monies taken in the Portuguese treasury, amounting in cash to Rs.62.560 $423 (60,560 dollars); that found in the custom-house, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... and become contented. Sometimes they win affection and are adopted, freed, and married to free women. Slaves and masters eat together the same food in the rural villages.[711] Among the land Dyaks slaves, by destitution and debt, "are just as happy as if perfectly free, enjoying all the liberty of their masters, who never think of ill-using them."[712] In old times one who set a house on fire was liable to become the slave of any one who was burned out.[713] ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... strike, was reproduced almost word for word, as well as that on the occasion when McGrath had been present, and therefrom the "Record" went on to deduce that not even Peter Rathbawne, with all his obstinacy, all his blindness to the welfare of his employees, was responsible for their present destitution in the same sense as was the Lieutenant-Governor, who might have avoided the strike by a conciliatory word, and who, instead, had advised Mr. Rathbawne to fight the working-people until the last cent of their ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... limited in its compass, indecisive in its enforcement, and niggardly in its pecuniary appointments. Many of our legislators have never thought of investigating the condition of the people, and are unaware of their deplorable destitution of all mental cultivation; and many have formed but a low and indistinct estimate of the kind and measure of cultivation desirable to be imparted. Very slowly does the conviction or the desire make its way among the favorites of fortune, that the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... sort of attention; that there was only about a tenth or fifteenth of a fellow to every girl, and that it tickled one of them to death to have a whole man around. He was not meanly exultant at their destitution. He said he just wished one of these pretty Boston girls—nice, well dressed, cultured, and brought up to be snubbed and neglected by the tenths and fifteenths of men they had at home—could be let loose in the West, and have a regular round-up of fellows. Or, no, he would like ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... since the girl had applied to Mr. Hobbs; all trace of her was lost; the incident might open wounds that time must have nearly healed, might give false hopes—or, what was worse, occasion a fresh and unfounded remorse at the idea of Alice's destitution; it would, in fact, do no good, and might occasion unnecessary pain. I therefore suppressed all mention ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... country, but led to a war, in the prosecution of which, much blood and much treasure were expended. Had a conference with Black Hawk been held, scarcely a doubt remains, considering his failure to secure the co-operation of other tribes, and his utter destitution of provisions, that he and his band would have returned, peaceably, to the west side of the Mississippi. The precipitate flight of the troops under Major Stillman, has no justification. Supposing the panic to have been such as to render ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... steadily darker and darker all the time. And then we naturally contrasted our circumstances with hers: this freedom and sunshine, with her darkness and chains; our comradeship, with her lonely estate; our alleviations of one sort and another, with her destitution in all. She was used to liberty, but now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature by nature and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an animal; she was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom where all objects about her were dim and spectral; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... knowledge of anatomy, and in 1543, when his work appeared, he was condemned to death by the Inquisition as a magician. He escaped this fate by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem only to be shipwrecked on the Island of Zante when he attempted to return, and there died in misery and destitution. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... whole outer world seemed laid under a tribute to the great industry. As a system it was far from perfect. It contained in itself all kinds of gross injustices, demands that were too great, wages that were too small; in spite of the splendour of the foreground, poverty and destitution hovered behind the scenes. But such as it was, the system worked: and it was the only one ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... view of inculcating caution by the misfortunes of others, and shewing at the same time how possible it is, under the present law regulating joint-stock partnerships, for an honest man, by the most inadvertent act, to entail misery upon himself, and destitution ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... little things dear to their hearts that it might be fattened. Surely, it was a greedy creature! But, unlike most greedy creatures, it gave them a great deal of comfort. It was a certain solid something, always in the background of their consciousness. It stood between them and the dread of destitution. Thus it had become a sacred thing, and they had tacitly ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... vicar's wife, "how is she to be told? It is heart-rending to look at her and to think,—nothing but luxury all her life, and now, in a moment, destitution. I am very glad to have her with me: she is a dear little thing, and so nice with the children. And if some good man would only ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... persecutions [in the form of pogroms] to the legal persecutions of the third of May? Maltreated, plundered, reduced to beggary, put to shame, slandered, and dispirited, the Jews have been cast out of the community of human beings. Their destitution, amounting to beggary, has been firmly established and definitely affixed to them. Gloomy darkness, without a ray of light, has descended upon that bewitched and narrow world in which this unhappy tribe has been languishing so long, gasping for breath ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... clear case of destitution and collapse. John Storm began to feed the old creature with the chicken and milk sent up ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... production. It has been shown that the age of machinery has been in a certain sense one of triumph, of the triumphant conquest of nature, but in another sense one of perplexing failure. The new forces controlled by mankind have been powerless as yet to remove want and destitution, hard work and social discontent. In the midst of accumulated wealth social justice seems as ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... charge of this office, and nearly all my time was occupied in refusing passes outside of our lines. In a majority of instances, the applicants for the privilege of going into the Confederacy—many of them women—told the most sorrowful tales of destitution that could be relieved only by reaching their friends in the enemy's country; others urged, that a husband, a father, or a brother was enjoined by the physician to seek the country as the sole means of securing a return of health; in short, I was plied with every conceivable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... restraint, and the habitual criminal plays the part of a damaged mouse at the mercy of the cat of our law. He has his little painful run, and back he comes again to a state more horrible even than destitution. There are no Alsatias left in the world. For my own part I can think of no crime, unless it is reckless begetting or the wilful transmission of contagious disease, for which the bleak terrors, the solitudes ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... no such motive; these most destitute of Destitution's children are simply fellow-countrymen and fellow-Christians. Sons of the same soil, and worshippers of the same God, they need no good works in the way of proselyzation to save them from eternal perdition; consequently they receive no help to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... the confidence of the Indian chieftains, that notwithstanding the gross irregularities of his young men, they brought him supplies of corn and game, which they freely gave to the English in their destitution. ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... Headquarters; she heard their stories, she entered into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early days of the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the most part investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution to suffer for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were resigned; some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the task of picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out of season," this very trip in the south of England produced another good work. She, with her husband and daughter, returned home by way of North Devon, Somerset, and Wiltshire. At Amesbury she tarried long enough to learn something of the mental destitution of the shepherds employed on Salisbury Plain, and set her fertile brain to contrive a scheme for the supply of the necessary books. She communicated her desires and intentions to the clergyman of the parish, and ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... off to Glasgow or Edinburgh, with no guardians, ignorant and ready—"admirably suited," is Owen's phrase—to swell the great mass of vice and misery in the towns. The people in New Lanark lived "almost without control, in habits of vice, idleness, poverty, debt, and destitution. Thieving was general." With such conditions existing in a model factory, under a master whose benevolence was celebrated everywhere, it can be very readily believed that conditions elsewhere must ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... and he was in danger of being turned out of it all. Clothed in rags like Fourchon, poor Courtecuisse, who lately wore the boots and gaiters of a huntsman, now thrust his feet into sabots and accused "the rich" of Les Aigues of having caused his destitution. These wearing anxieties had given to the fat little man and his once smiling and rosy face a gloomy and dazed expression, as though he were ill from the effects of poison or with some ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... took prisoner that more than thirty thousand perished on the way in crossing the mountains; some in the battles which were fought in the passes, and a greater number still, probably, from exposure to fatigue and cold, and from falls among the rocks and glaciers, and diseases produced by destitution and misery. The remnant of the army which was left on reaching the plain were emaciated, sickly, ragged, and spiritless; far more inclined to lie down and die, than to go on and undertake the conquest of Italy ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the word "homeless" has implications of aimless drifting, of destitution and misery, and of the indifference of a "homeless" man to "his" country. Certain advocates of cosmopolitanism in their agitation against patriotism often take advantage of the importance of home in the relation of a man to his country when they appeal to the "proletarians": ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... what he reads. A specimen or two will amply suggest the rest. In one tale the hero is held up to the unqualified admiration of posterity for having starved to death his son, in an extreme case of family destitution, for the sake of providing food enough for his aged father. In another he unhesitatingly divorces his wife for having dared to poke fun, in the shape of bodkins, at some wooden effigies of his parents which he had had set up in the house for daily devotional contemplation. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... removed from actual want, rather than stain their martial hands with manual labour. The leisured class thus became the starving class, and the King's annual subsidies alone kept these families from destitution. Many of them were also in receipt of the bounties granted to large families—an ineffective resource, inasmuch as hungry children but consumed the supply and renewed the demand. Disdaining work of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... work. Under the guidance of the second gentleman mentioned above, I proceeded to the St. George's and St. Giles's Refuge in Great Queen Street, where boys are admitted on their own application, the only qualification being destitution. Here they are housed, clothed, boarded, and taught such trades as they may be fitted for, and not lost sight of until they are provided with situations. A hundred and fifty-four was the number of this truly ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... chapel of the district will serve as a fitting introduction to these memoirs. According to Bell, it must have been simple even to destitution. No smoothly hewn stones, no carved windows, no decoration of any kind distinguished it from the houses of the people. It was a small, low building of rough stone, unplastered, even inside, and roofed by a heather thatch. There was a single ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... the mother and elder sister excused the poor creature who sobbed under their kisses and begged their pardon. However, when they gazed at each other with red eyes and dry lips, they measured the fall of the family; they saw for the first time how frightful were their destitution and distress; they felt the unbearable feeling of shame glide into their hearts like a sinister and unexpected guest who, at the first glance, makes one understand that he has come to be master of the lodging. This was the secret, the ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... employment, the whole Continent almost being in an unsettled state on account of Napoleon's career, it seemed to him the will of the Lord, that he should use his very considerable property to furnish these poor weavers with work, in order to save them from the greatest state of destitution, though in doing this there was not only no prospect of gain, but the certain prospect of immense loss. He therefore found employment for about six thousand weavers. But he was not content with this. Whilst he gave the bread ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... vented his spite in lies, slanders and defamations of the foulest kind. For years he made all the trouble he possibly could, but being a drinking man, he meanwhile drifted down hill, deviously but without a stop. When he had reached the bottom, in utter destitution, he came to Mr. Weed begging for aid—and he got it. More than that, after his death his children were supported until they could take care of themselves, and the costs, as we could not help knowing, were paid by our Beaver ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... of getting on for half a million inhabitants, the largest British city in Canada (in spite of the cheery Italian faces that pop up at you out of excavations in the street), liberally endowed with millionaires, not lacking its due share of destitution, misery, and slums. It is no mushroom city of the West, it has its history; but at the same time it has grown immensely of recent years. It is situated on the shores of a lovely lake; but you never see that, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... of original table-land, very marshy, and full of deep sloughs, intersected with small rills of water, pure and pellucid as crystal, and a profusion of wild parsley and celery. The prospect was one dreary scene of destitution, without a single ray of hope to relieve the misery of the desponding crew. After some days, the dead cow, hams, and cheese, were consumed; and from one end of the island to the other, not a morsel of food could be seen. Even the celery began to fail. A few bottles of wine, which, for ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... delayed had prevented her from doing so; now another day would be lost, and yet it was necessary to live. Those overwhelming sorrows, which deprive the poor of the faculty of labor, are doubly dreaded; they paralyze the strength, and, with that forced cessation from toil, want and destitution are ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a phrase in Oldport, "What New-Yorkers call poverty: to be reduced to a pony phaeton." In consequence of a November gale, I am reduced To a similar state of destitution, from a sail-boat to a wherry; and, like others of the deserving poor, I have found many compensations in my humbler condition. Which is the more enjoyable, rowing or sailing? If you sail before the wind, there is the glorious vigor of the breeze that ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... complete hoodwinking of all concerned at home, almost thanking Edward for the facilities his absence had given him. After this, he went abroad, taking Maria lest she should betray him on being cast off; and they lived in such style at German gambling places that destitution brought them back again to England, where he could better play the lecturer, and the artist in search of subscriptions. Edward could not help smiling over some of his good stories, rather as 'the lord' may have 'commended the wisdom ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only one or two days. This half-tamed creature was walking up Ratcliffe Highway one winter morning between two and three o'clock, and he met an old shipmate of his. They greeted each other with some warmth. Jimmie's friend related to him a tale of destitution. He had been on the spree, spent all his money, and two days before had been turned out of the boarding house, and had slept out for two nights. Jimmie, with sailor-like generosity, said, "I am glad to have met you. It gives me ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... were all bound in black. Chattel slavery, the most nonsensical as well as detestable of oppressions, was, to him, the most beneficent contrivance of human wisdom. He called it an institution: Mr. Emerson has more happily styled it a destitution. At last the chains of his iron logic were heard clanking on the whole Southern intellect. Reasoning the most masterly was employed to annihilate the first principles of reason; the understanding of man was insanely placed in direct antagonism to his moral instincts; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... them by the hand to the Sabbath-school teacher's humble seat, on the tract distributor's patient circuit, or on errands of mercy into the homes of sickness and destitution,—into the busy sewing-circle, or the little group gathered for social prayer. It is well too that they should have such a guide, for the offense of the Cross has not yet ceased, and the example of an accomplished ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... desires to escape notice. I spoke English well enough to seem a native of the country, and I knew how I must behave if I wished to be let alone. Although the landlady was a worthy woman, her house was not exactly suitable for me; my stay in England might be protracted, and if I came to destitution I should be wretched indeed; so I resolved to leave the house. I received no visitors, but I could not prevent the inquisitive from hovering round my door, and the more it became known that I saw no one, the more their curiosity increased. The house was not quiet enough. It was near the Exchange, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be "a deserving object"? No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of merit. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... had gone on in the hope of finding Indian hunters, or perhaps of reaching Fort Providence and sending relief. They had no food except a little tripe de roche, and Franklin had thus found himself, as he explained to Richardson, in the deserted fort with five companions, in a state of utter destitution. Food there was none. {105} From the refuse heaps of the winter before, now buried under the snow, they dug out pieces of bone and a few deer-skins; on this, with a little tripe de roche, they endeavoured to subsist. The log ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... best—supplied, protected, instead of destitute and desolate—yet, the folly of the condition, held to involuntary labor, finds, always, allurement, in the spectacle of exemption from it, without consideration of the adjuncts of destitution and misery. The slave would have then, little excitement to discontent but for the free ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... some great heart. Much now is being said of the destitution in the poorer districts of great cities. Dante saw a second hell deeper than hell itself. Each great modern city hath its inferno. Here dwell costermongers, rag-pickers and street-cleaners; here the sweater hath his haunts. Huge rookeries ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... November, 1861, in which I find this account: He received 368.50; traveling expenses, $72.55, leaving for his year's work, $295.95. That was the year of the "drouth," and he apprised the brethren where he preached of the destitution in Kansas. Dr. S. G. Moore and my uncle, Prof. N. Dunshee, of Pardee, had been appointed to receive contributions for destitute brethren; and they reported the receipt and distribution of ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... for book illustration gone, Jackson was in a difficult position. His novel chiaroscuro experiments had consumed valuable time and had lost him his standing as a steady worker for printers. Near destitution and scouting around for fresh applications of the woodcut, he decided to make prints for wallpaper on his new press. It was a logical step for Jackson, not only because he knew something of the process but also because he could make ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... and the rain ceased. Then Watson and his companion crawled cautiously from behind the boulder. They were two as dilapidated creatures as ever drew breath under a southern sky. With soaking shirts and trousers, and without coats, vests, or shoes, they looked the picture of destitution. And their feelings! They were hungry, dispirited, exhausted. All the pleasure seemed to have ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... not likely that he had reference to the kind of anguish that comes with destitution, that is so endlessly bitter and cruel, and yet so sordid and petty, so ugly, so humiliating—unredeemed by the slightest touch of dignity or even of pathos. It is a kind of anguish that poets have not commonly dealt with; its very words are not admitted into the vocabulary of poets—the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... united to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. It had been preceded by a well-designed but most indelicate satire, labelled Royal Nuptials, published by J. Johnstone on the 1st of April, in which the prince is seen landing on our shores in a state of destitution, with a pitiable lack of certain necessary articles of clothing, which are being handed to him by John Bull in the guise of a countryman. The dramatis personae are seven in number: Prince Leopold, John Bull, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... sick daughter, or for the family; and the poor woman confessed that she had nothing in the house to eat except half a loaf of bread, which was to be their dinner. Lest her visitor should think her destitution was caused by her own fault, she related the story of hardships she had undergone since her husband departed ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... written at a time, remember, when the invention of machinery, the rapid growth of industrialism, and the increasing mobility of the population of the world, had broken down the old order of things, had created large fortunes and reduced thousands to destitution; when men poured into cities and lived crowded and unhealthy in slums, when the opening phase of the grim battle between employer and employed was fought, when trade-unionism was wrested from an unwilling Government, when housing regulations, health ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the food of hate ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... New England friends who have been in Florida, and have seen the destitution of the colored people there, have put into our hands five thousand dollars for the establishment of anew school in one of the destitute regions of that State. The good friends who are interested so largely in this move desired ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... stomachs. I know not whether it was piety or economy that swayed her soul, but I never met a person who was so rigid as this lady in the observance of the church calendar, especially whenever a day of abstinence allowed her to deprive us of our beef. Nothing but my destitution compelled me to ship in this craft; still, to say the truth, I had well-nigh given up all idea of returning to the United States, and determined to engage in any adventurous expedition that my profession offered. In 1824, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... and deliver it the same forenoon. If he had not been robbed of nearly the whole of his small capital, he would, first, have gone about the city, which was entirely new to him. But, with less than four dollars between himself and utter destitution, he felt that he had no time for sight-seeing. It was necessary that he should get to ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... time, the poor wretch who had thus reduced his family to a state of painful destitution, after turning away from his door, walked slowly along the street with his head bowed down, as if engaged in, to him, altogether a new employment, that of self-communion. All at once a hand was laid familiarly upon his shoulders, and a well-known ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... consideration of the many questions which must be reopened and reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the Church of England were to cease to carry moral authority with it; another dealt with the more purely social subject of middle class destitution; another with the authenticity or rather the unauthenticity of the fourth gospel—another was headed "Irrational Rationalism," and there were two ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... eyes, and sadly contemplated the miserable little heap of forage which betokened with so much significance the destitution of his ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... than she did all her possessions put together—it was a plain gold band, bearing the inscription Capitola-Eugene, and which she had been enjoined by her old nurse never to part from but with life. She had, in her days of destitution suffered the extremes of cold and hunger; had been upon the very brink of death from starvation or freezing, but without ever dreaming of sacrificing her ring. And now for the first time it was missing. While she was still ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Yet almost in our own day France put God out of her institutions; set up and crowned a prostitute as the goddess of reason; and trailed the Bible through the streets of Paris, tied to the tail of an ass! What followed? Spiritual destitution. And in this country we have enthroned so-called physical science, and, as Comte predicted, are about to conduct God to the frontier and bow Him out with thanks for His provisional services. With what result? As our droll philosopher, Hubbard, has said, 'Once man was a spirit, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... country-side. The men will hardly look up from their burdens, the women will seldom stop to ask alms, but you will see a degradation of the human form that speaks not of the want of individuals, of one generation, or of an age, but of the destitution of centuries stamped physically into the race. There is, as always, a prosperous class, men well to do, the more fortunate and better-born; but the common people lead toilsome lives, and among them ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... payment, manufactories were forced to stop work, and paralysis fell on the whole industry of the nation. It was estimated that ten thousand persons were thrown out of employment. These soon used up their earnings, and destitution and suffering of course followed. Their condition grew worse as cold weather came on, and many actually died of starvation. At length they became goaded to desperation, and determined to help themselves to food. Gaunt men and women, clad ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... faith! if anything went wrong with the commissariat, helping myself with the best grace in the world from the next peasant! And now I began to feel at the same time the burthen of riches and the fear of destitution. There were ten thousand pounds in the despatch-box, but I reckoned in French money, and had two hundred and fifty thousand agonies; I kept it under my hand all day, I dreamed of it at night. In ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would buy!) my gloves and shoes, I now had an assured income, as long as my health and faculties were unimpaired, of at least a thousand a year; and the thirty guineas a week at Covent Garden, and much larger remuneration during provincial tours, forever forbade the sense of destitution productive of the ecstasy with which, only a short time before I came out, I had found wedged into the bottom of my money drawer in my desk a sovereign that I had overlooked, and so had sorrowfully ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... executed; and the majority were dismissed with pensions or secluded in monasteries. Edward and his nobles took good care to make a large profit out of the transaction. The resources of the Temple alone kept the king from destitution during the period between the death of Gaveston and his reconciliation with the earls. Many barons laid violent hands on estates belonging to the order, and long held on to them despite papal expostulation. The Hospitallers ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... me, not to any human being does Ishmael owe education or profession; but to God and to himself alone. Never was a boy born in this world under more adverse circumstances. His birth, in its utter destitution, reminds me (I speak it with the deepest reverence) of that other birth in the manger of Bethlehem. His infancy was a struggle for the very breath of life; his childhood for bread; his youth for education; and nobly, nobly has he sustained ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... that he was disinherited, and his hands lay upon his knees, loosely weak and expressive of utter hopelessness. Very slowly he raised his face at last and turned his eyes upon the only friend that seemed left to him in his destitution. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... all the circumstances of his bringing up, he was singularly unfortunate. His early destitution, the character and habits of his mother, the neglect of his noble relations, the venal praises of his parasites and dependents, all acted upon his character ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... and sought relief for my feelings in the wilds of Chili. I left nearly all to my wife, took but little with me, for my object was to bury myself from the world that had known me, and respected me. Destitution followed me; whither I went there seemed no rest, no peace of mind for me. The past floated uppermost in my mind. I was ever recurring to home, to those with whom I had associated, to an hundred things that had endeared me to my own country. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... herself with the supernatural gifts to which Dee advanced his claim, and consoled the adversity and destitution to which the old man, once so extensively honoured, was now reduced, a scene of a very different complexion was played in the northern part of the island. Trials for sorcery were numerous in the reign of Mary queen of Scots; the comparative darkness and ignorance of the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... equally plain-spoken to a sovereign with whom plain-speaking was a crime. In bold, almost scornful language, the Prince represented to Philip the sufferings and destitution of the little band of heroes, by whom that magnificent military enterprise, the conquest of Antwerp, had just been effected. "God will be weary of working miracles for us," he cried, "and nothing but miracles can save the troops from starving." There was no question of paying ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the ethical sphere, it is the "purifying fire," which purges the gold in us from its dross. All of which sounds very pretty in a lecture, and looks very pretty in a book; but is apt to excite disgust when a man is suffering from incurable cancer, or utter destitution in the midst of plenty; or when a mother stands over the corpse of her child, mangled in some terrible accident, or burnt to a cinder ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... men would know how to tie on that new pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather it. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust out two wings and go right up toward heaven, from whence she ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... stock had been burned. The colonel brought from his hip pocket the carefully folded sheet of foolscap which he had put away when duty called him to Barclay. He paused at the bottom of the stair, backed the paper on the wall, and wrote under the words setting forth the farmer's destitution, "Martin Culpepper—twenty-five dollars." He stood a moment in the stairway looking into the street; the day was fair and beautiful; the grasshoppers were gone, and with them went all the vegetation in the landscape; but the colonel in his nankeen trousers and ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... with the Royal Family. For the whole of them there are but three servants, of whom one, and one only, accompanied them from the Tuileries. In this state of destitution they demanded of Paris the restitution of what belongs to them in France; their property is under seizure, and has remained so notwithstanding their reclamations. For different reasons. One of the motives put forward by the Provisional Government is the debt of the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... forcing thousands of Jews to emigrate from that country. The United States, he claimed, had more than a philanthropic interest in this matter, for the enforced emigration of the Jews from Rumania in a condition of utter destitution was "the mere transplantation of an artificially produced diseased growth to a new place"; and, as the United States was practically their only place of refuge, we had a clearly established right of remonstrance. In the case of Russia information has repeatedly been sought through ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... passed away before its consummation. They will never see it. Another class will hail the prospect of emancipation, but will deprecate the length of time. They will feel that it gives too little to the now living slaves. But it really gives them much. It saves them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend immediate emancipation in localities where their numbers are very great, and it gives the inspiring assurance that their posterity shall be free forever. The plan leaves to each State choosing to act under it to abolish slavery now or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... that development in one direction may be at the cost of development in another. The struggle for any lower form of existence than that already attained, is inevitably at the cost of the higher. The degrading effects of destitution are proverbial. Craft, cruelty, selfishness, and all the vices needed for success in a gladiatorial contest are often the fruits of such competition. Also, commercial progress seems on the whole to be at the expense ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... these objections, checking them with the thought that Clive, on his first arrival at Boulogne, entirely ignorant of the practice of economy, might have imprudently engaged in expenses which had reduced him to this present destitution. (I did not know at the time that Mrs. Mackenzie had taken entire superintendence of the family treasury—and that this exemplary woman was putting away, as she had done previously, sundry little ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... island, stretches away for miles—flat, sad-coloured, and monotonous, fissured in every direction by channels of dark-tinted water, in which the very fish take the same sad colour. This tract is almost without trace of habitation, save where, at distant intervals, utter destitution has raised a mud-hovel, undistinguishable from the hillocks of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... with the necessaries of war, and the generals and contractors had contrived to appropriate to themselves most of the funds which had been furnished. The general wrote to the emperor, presenting a lamentable picture of the destitution ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... [it ran], what the dickens do you mean by it? I'm in an awful hole down here; I have to go on tick, and the parties on the spot don't cotton to the idea; they couldn't, because it is so plain I'm in a stait of Destitution. I've got no bedclothes, think of that, I must have coins, the hole thing's a Mockry, I wont stand it, nobody would. I would have come away before, only I have no money for the railway fare. Don't be a lunatic, Morris, you don't seem to understand my dredful situation. I have to get the stamp ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Her life had been hard, and there was plenty of rough work in it, but she had never been within seeing distance of destitution, and she had plenty of pity for those whose lives had been fuller of care than ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... came to eighty-six marks and thirty-five pfennigs! And Schott calmly added that he had not expected so good a result. So it was Wolf's friends, and especially Hugo Faisst, who not only saved him from misery by their unobtrusive and often secret generosity, but spared him the horror of destitution ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... which are well known in California as the "Mariposa tulips," has received great consideration at the hands of the Mormons, for to it hundreds of them owe their lives. During the famine years between 1853 and 1858, great destitution prevailed, especially in the southern settlements, on account of drouth and grasshoppers, and throughout one hungry winter in particular, thousands of the people subsisted chiefly on the bulbs of the tulips, called "sego" by the Indians, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... even chiefly, that she who, on the preceding morning, had awakened to the remembrance of her utter destitution, now felt that all those terrible troubles were over. It was not simply that her great care had been vanquished for her. It was this, that the man who had a second time come to her asking for her love, had now given her all-sufficient evidence that he did so for the sake of her love. He, who was ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... to manage their successions; he thought no pains too great to arrange between a widow and a son who had succeeded his father; he was often harassed and perplexed by tales of hardship; and I find him writing, almost in despair, of their improvident habits and the destitution that awaited their families upon a death. "The house being completely furnished, they come into possession without necessaries, and they go out NAKED. The insurance seems to have failed, and what next is to be tried?" While they lived he wrote behind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a great cry is raised for Forfeits!—and a desire that a lady should go out in a very great hurry, as it would appear, almost in a state of destitution; for every young lady and gentleman proffers to stand for some article of dress. Having settled what they will give, all sit round upon chairs, ready to hear the lady's demands:—spin goes the trencher, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Wodehouse when I left him was engaged in pacifying a lunatic, who had forced his way into the Embassy, and who insisted that he was the British Ambassador. I was surprised to learn that there are still at least 3000 of our countrymen and women in Paris. Most of them are in a state of absolute destitution, some because they have no means, others because they are unable to draw upon the funds in England. Mr. Herbert has established a species of soup kitchen, so they will not starve until we all do. Mr. Wallace, the heir of Lord Hertford, who had already ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... transport and unease now gather might and main, * And love-desire provoketh me to wake my wonted pain: The pang of parting takes for ever place within my breast, * And pining makes me desolate in destitution lain. Ecstasy sore maltreats my soul and yearning burns my sprite, * And tears betray love's secresy which I would lief contain: I weet no way, I know no case that can make light my load, * Or heal my wasting body or cast out from me this ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... society. The total destruction of the long-established labor system of the South—based as it had been on chattel-slavery—led inevitably to great confusion, indeed almost to social anarchy. The result was that many of the freedmen, removed from the protection of their old masters, were exposed to destitution and to many forms of suffering. But for the interposition of the National Government there was serious danger that thousands of them might be reduced to starvation. Having taken the responsibility of freeing them, first by Proclamation of the President and then by Amendment of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... was thirty years of age and quite bald; with the notch in his under lip where Sermaise had struck him with the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of portraits, this is all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution. A sinister dog, in all likelihood, but with a look in his eye, and the loose flexile mouth that goes with wit and an overweening sensual temperament. Certainly the sorriest figure on ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... extinction of the Carlovingian line, A.D. 887, and the division of the empire, the Church of Rome and the Christian world fell into a highly demoralized state, attributable to the destitution to which ecclesiastical bodies were reduced by the frequent predations of bands of robbers, the immorality of the priesthood, and the power of electing the popes falling into the hands of intriguing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... and then for seventeen long years to plod on unknown and unregarded, still hearing his Hudibras quoted, and still preparing more of it, or matter similar, with no result. He died, in almost absolute destitution, in 1680, and was buried at a friend's expense, in the church-yard of St. Paul's, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... early familiarity with all the miseries of destitution, aggravated by disease, had increased his natural roughness and irritability, on the other hand it had helped largely to bring out his sterling virtues,—his discriminating charity, his genuine benevolence, his well-timed generosity, his large-hearted sympathy ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... not observed the golden grain bending its head for the sickle until Rose led her feet in the right direction. Not many of the naturally poor were around them, yet some required even bodily ministrations—children, the sick and the aged. The destitution that most prevailed was of the mind; and this is the saddest form of poverty. Mental hunger! how it exhausts the soul and debases its heaven-born faculties, sinking it into a gross corporeal sphere, that ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... prospects of futurity. It is perhaps not in the power of a man whose attention has been divided by diversity of pursuits, and who has not been accustomed to derive from others much of his happiness, to image to himself such helpless destitution, such dismal inanity. Every object of pleasing contemplation is at once snatched away, and the soul finds every receptacle of ideas empty, or filled only with the memory of joys that can return no more. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... place fittingly explained the habits and manners of the inmates. What sinister fears must have haunted them! for how could this extreme destitution in one part of the establishment be reconciled with the luxury noticeable in the other, except by the fact that a desperate struggle to keep up appearances was constantly going on? And this constant anxiety made out-door noise, excitement, and gayety a necessity of their existence, and caused ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... an affluent lot, The three discussed their future. Should they travel? Or should they choose some rural site, and build? Paradise Found would furnish a good site! Now they could help how many! Not aloof From scenes of destitution had they kept: What joy to aid the worthy poor! To save This one from beggary! To give the means To that forsaken widow, overworked, With her persistent cough, to make a trip, She and her children, city-pinched and pale, To some good inland ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... battle-fields (named 'Bed of honour') with their bodies, in quarrels which are not theirs; their hand and toil is in every possession of man; but for themselves they have little or no possession. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed; to pine dully in thick obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction: this is the lot of the millions; peuple taillable et corveable a merci et misericorde. In Brittany they once rose in revolt at the first introduction of Pendulum Clocks; thinking it ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... for defenceless and friendless girls, of whom nearly six hundred were at one time living in Sydney in destitution, having been sent out from home with bounty orders, under the impression that employment was certain whenever they might ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... In this respect he realised his wishes; but not content with efficiently discharging the more sacred duties of a parochial clergyman, he sought with devoted assiduity, the amelioration of the physical condition of his people. Relieving an immediate destitution in the parish, by a supply of Indian corn brought on his own adventure, he was led to devise means of preventing the recurrence of any similar period of depression. With this intention, he established two friendly societies in the place, and afterwards a local bank for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... or the privileges of the elect, may advisably extend. For I cannot but feel for my own part as if the daily bread of moral instruction might at least be so widely broken among the multitude as to preserve them from utter destitution and pauperism in virtue; and that even the simplest and lowest of the rabble should not be so absolutely sons of perdition, but that each might say for himself,—"For my part—no offence to the General, or any man of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Leonard returned from his superintendence of the wood-cutting in the mountains. At the dinner-table be remarked: "I have heard to-day that the Lumley family are in great destitution, as usual. It is useless to help them, and yet one cannot sit down to a dinner like this in comfort while even the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... lamenting the gross selfishness of the young,—deciding, perhaps, upon the next loved painting or household treasure to be sold for buying rice. Tatsu, now as unreasonable and obstinate as Kano himself, still refused to admit unhappiness or threatened destitution. He and Ume-ko could go to the mountains, he said. "The mountains were, after all, their true home. Once there the Sennin and the deities of cloud would see that ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... lately witness'd through her Streets, Together, moving with unequal March, My Triumph and the Funeral of my Sons. Yet bear with me if in a few brief words, And no invidious Spirit, I compare With the full measure of the general Joy My private Destitution. When the Fleet Was all equipp'd, 'twas at the break of day That I weigh'd anchor from Brundusium; Before the day went down, with all my Ships I made Corcyra; thence, upon the fifth, To Delphi; where to the presiding God A lustratory ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... informed of my intention to buy a man out of the Turkish Army had pronounced it madness. I did not know the people of the land as they did. I should be pillaged, brought to destitution, perhaps murdered. They, who had lived in the country twenty, thirty years, were better qualified to judge than I was. For peace and quiet I pretended acquiescence, and my purpose thus acquired a taste of stealth. It was with the feelings of a kind of truant ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... sense that a man with less taste for organisation, and more leisure for pastoral intercourse with his flock, might have effected more. The vicar's chief concern indeed seemed to be with the prosperous and healthy members of his parish; if there was a case of destitution, of illness, of sorrow, it was certainly inquired into; some hard-featured lady, with a strong sense of rectitude and usefulness, would be commissioned to go and look into the matter. She generally returned saying cheerfully ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... their early selves. I can well believe that many a human being, if he could have a glimpse in innocent youth of what he will be twenty or thirty years after, would pray in anguish to be taken before coming to that! Mansie Wauch's glimpse of destitution was bad enough; but a million times worse is a glimpse of hardened and unabashed sin and shame. And it would be no comfort—it would be an aggravation in that view—to think that by the time you have reached that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... oppressor, and could not be brought to acknowledge wrongs he had never committed. Pardon, therefore, was denied him—not pardon merely, but all mitigation of suffering. My friend had been wealthy; but heavy fines and penalties had stripped him of his possessions, and brought him to destitution. Lord of an ancient hall, with woods and lands around it, wherein he could ride for hours without quitting his own domains, his territories were now narrowed to a few yards; while one dark, dreary chamber was alone accorded him. Finding he must necessarily ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... carry off the great prize of a "star" engagement at one or the other of the German royal opera houses. The experiences of some of these students are tragedies on a small scale, and in one or two instances have been known to end in death, destitution, or dishonour. The explanation is simple. Such students, filled with the high hopes inspired by artistic ambition and the artist's imagination, fail to ask themselves before going abroad if nature has endowed them with the qualities and powers requisite for ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... were sunk to the zero of misfortune and despair by this overwhelming calamity, for in many cases the ruin was total and apparently irremediable. Everywhere standing crops, implements of husbandry, and even dwellings, were swept away, and whole families found themselves suddenly in a state of utter destitution. The evil was too wide-spread to admit of the few who were fortunate enough to escape rendering effectual assistance to the many sufferers, for it was obvious that hundreds of pounds would not be sufficient to ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne |
