"Destitution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... study did not prove remunerative; having been seized for debt, he was confined in Cambridge Castle, and there finished his great work, The History of the Saracens. His martyrdom was lifelong, as he died in destitution, having always (to use his own words) given the possession of wisdom the preference to that of riches. Floyer Sydenham, who died in a debtors' prison in 1788, and incurred his hard fate through devoting his ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... 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 and highly educated young female will not fail of its influence ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the prophets of antiquity, are subject to be scanted of due honor, or, at all events, of what is more essential than this as contributing to keep soul and body from parting company prematurely. The fact of her being in a state of destitution was notified not long ago to the magistrate of the Lambeth police-court, and that unappreciative functionary, while consenting to subscribe, with others, for her relief, openly expressed his conviction that she would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... difference between the service of love that had all their life long shielded them from trouble and annoyance, and Miss Lovejoy's abrupt and rather familiar ministrations. But Hannah was faithful and capable, indeed, "a treasure," in these days of destitution in the way of help; and if her service was such as money could well pay, she did not grudge it, while her wages were secure; and housekeeping and its responsibilities were not so disagreeable to Graeme as she had feared. Indeed, by the time the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives it a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice and wonders what it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look up the precious souls among the coco-nuts ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... surprise. What was to be done? Franchomme, his right hand, and his head too, in business and money matters—and now, of course, more than ever—was at his wits' end. He discussed the disquieting, threatening problem with some friends of Chopin, and through one of them the composer's destitution came to the knowledge of Miss Stirling. She cut the Gordian knot by sending her master 25,000 francs. [FOOTNOTE: M. Charles Gavard says 20,000 francs.] This noble gift, however; did not at once reach the hands of Chopin. When Franchomme, who knew what had been done, visited Chopin a few days afterwards, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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 their backs to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the majority of albums are comparatively valueless: they are written with so much negligence; many of the pieces are of so light and frivolous a character; there is so much childish and mawkish sentimentality in numbers of the effusions poured forth; and there is so great a destitution of solid, original, and striking thought, that, in my unpretending, yet honest estimation, the majority of albums are worth comparatively nothing. A good album should contain pieces of genuine talent; should be marked by no frivolity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... lived here long. We only found them three weeks ago; they will look better by and by," Anna whispered, feeling that some apology was necessary for the destitution and filth visible everywhere. ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... comprises a nation, his means for acquiring wealth are extended; the rich 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
... himself, who had attempted to make his escape by sea, was tossed about in a storm for some days, until at last he was driven on the coast in South Wales. He concealed himself for some days in the mountains. Here he was hunted about for a time, until he was reduced to despair by his destitution and his sufferings, when at length he came forth and delivered himself up ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to me to amount to the same thing,' Owen replied. 'In my opinion, we are all in a state of poverty even when we have employment—the condition we are reduced to when we're out of work is more properly described as destitution.' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... citizens of these States look for the co-operation and support of the National Government in relieving the pressing cases of destitution for food, clothing, and shelter, which are beyond the reach of local efforts. The authorities who have communicated with the Executive recognize that their first and most energetic duty is to provide as far as possible the means of caring for their own ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... made the destitution of beauty clear. I believe there is an absolute lack of every form or sight that might inspire or cause a soul to awake. There is nothing to lift these people from the earth and from labour. There should be a complete readjustment of ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Irene had 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 is only a little removed from the animal! To feed ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... the increase of productive power does not increase wages is because it does increase the value of land. It is the universal fact that where the value of the land is highest civilisation exhibits the greatest luxury side by side with the most piteous destitution. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... 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 a retreat across Sycamore ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... since they, with the formal witnesses of their marriage, filled a great part of the antechapel; and the blessings invoked on the queen's head as she left the cathedral by the prisoners whom she had released, and by the poor whose destitution she had relieved, made so great an impression on the spectators, that even the highest dignitaries of the court added their cheers and applause to those of the populace who escorted her coach to the gates on its ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... thousand emigrants left the single port of Liverpool for the United States, being four or five times as many as left the same port within the same period, for the British Colonies and all other parts of the world. Of these crowds of emigrants, many arrive in our cities in circumstances of great destitution, and the charities of the country, both public and private, are severely taxed to relieve their immediate wants. In time they mingle with the new community in which they find themselves, and seek means of living. Some find employment ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... not flinching from the foulest crimes, that in many instances they had driven the masters to close their factories rather than submit to their mandates; and in others had compelled the workmen themselves to discontinue their labors, thus spreading destitution among thousands whose earnings, if they had been allowed to consult their own wishes, would have been amply sufficient for the support of their families;[245] and the evil had grown to such a height, that in 1838 a committee was appointed by the House of Commons to investigate ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... we were alone he informed me that since my departure he had undergone great misery and destitution, having, during the whole period, been unable to find a master in need of his services, so that he was brought nearly to the verge of desperation; but that on the night immediately preceding my arrival ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... shelter than what is supplied by the trees and a few hollows of the embankment. Of these, the majority are young girls who have been seduced from the country by the soldiers and turned loose on the world in all the destitution of friendless penury, and all ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... some charitable acquaintances, or a glass of liquor at the bar. The word "ragamuffin," which I have used above, does not accurately express the man, because there is a sort of shadow or delusion of respectability about him, and a sobriety too, and a kind of decency in his groggy and red-nosed destitution. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all comers to the Pacific? Ledyard was mad with impatience. Days slipped into weeks, weeks into months, and no passport came. He was out of clothes, out of money, out of food. A draft on his English friends kept him from destitution. Just a year before, Billings, the astronomer of Cook's vessel, had gone across Siberia on the way to America for the Russian government. If Ledyard could only catch up to Billings's expedition, that might be a chance to cross the Pacific. As if to ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... little poetry in American history. It is a record of advances in material prosperity, and scarce anything more. The only lumps of pure ore are the Idea which the Pilgrims were possessed with and its gradual incarnation in events and institutions. Beyond this all is barren. There is a fearful destitution of the picturesque elements. It is true that our local historians commonly avoid all romance as if it were of the Enemy; but if we compare their labors with "The Beauties of England and Wales," for example, the work certainly of uninspired men, we shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... no interest in the soil, no personal rights to defend; and the facility with which they yielded to the Spanish invader—after every allowance for their comparative inferiority—argues a deplorable destitution of that patriotic feeling which holds life as little in comparison ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... 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 ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... clear case of destitution and collapse. John Storm began to feed the old creature with the chicken and milk sent up for his ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Gisippus' stead? And what but friendship had left no place for suspicion in the soul of Titus, and filled it with a most fervent desire to give his sister to Gisippus, albeit he saw him to be reduced to extreme penury and destitution? But so it is that men covet hosts of acquaintance, troops of kinsfolk, offspring in plenty; and the number of their dependants increases with their wealth; and they reflect not that there is none of these, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... under the command of the Alcayde de los Donceles and other chiefs, who deprived the rebels of the smallest communication with their friends of the mountains, and had thus reduced them to an utter state of destitution. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... yourself to me, unless you wish to embitter my shame. I'm obliged to you for offering to share your destitution with me. I must try to run my face with the landlord," ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... by stone walls, and subdivided by rows of a tall stout reed (Arundo donax) resembling sugarcane. Although taxes and other burdens are heavy, and wages very low, yet to a mere visitor like myself there appeared none of those occasional signs of destitution which strike one in walking through a town at home, nor did ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... 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 ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... have 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 ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... heathenism, and in 1814 we find the King of Congo, D. Garcia V., complaining to His Most Faithful Majesty that missioners were sadly wanted. Captain Tuckey's "Expedition" (A.D. 1816) well sets forth the spiritual destitution of the land. He tells us that three years before his arrival some missionaries had been murdered by the Sohnese; the only specimen he met was an ignorant half-caste with a diploma from the Capuchins of Loanda, and a wife plus five concubines. In ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... securing the assistance of a surgeon, by whom he was bled. The poor man was shortly removed to St. George's Hospital, where he died at about eight o'clock on Saturday evening. He left a wife and three infant children in a state of destitution, without even the means ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... an evil, an individual evil, a national calamity; but I believe that the evil falls more heavily on the master, than on the slave. In order to understand this subject correctly, we must contemplate the African in his native ignorance and destitution; his brutal barbarism and his savage ferocity. We need but contrast the African in his original state, with the well housed, well clothed, and well fed slave of the United States. I am well aware, that an objection ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... escaped better than I deserved," he said. "It will be a lesson to me. Please tell Mrs. Merton that her timely aid has saved my reputation and rescued my poor mother from sorrow and destitution." ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... the first by yielding herself to the Duke of Crete. Her lover slays her, and makes off with the first: the third sister and her lover are charged with the murder, are arrested and confess the crime. They escape death by bribing the guards, flee destitute to Rhodes, and there in destitution die. ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... where he found his aged housekeeper, the Senora Margarita, watching for him. Notwithstanding that one is well accustomed to the sight of poverty in Spain, it was impossible to help being struck by the utter of destitution which appeared in the house of the good priest; the more so, as every imaginable contrivance had been restored to, to hide the nakedness of the walls, and the shabbiness of the furniture. Margarita had prepared for her master's super a rather small dish of olla-podriga ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... was not, however,—and the disappointment considerably overclouded the commercial victory of the morning. Madam Birch herself did the honors of whatever sort, while Chip played a fantasia solo at the table d'hote. The good lady enlarged volubly on her destitution of help, and how, if she had any such as we get now-a-days, they were more plague than profit,—how Laura was getting ready to go with Frank to the cattle-show, and she herself was likely to be the only living mortal in the house for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... return. He arrived at Susa, destitute, squalid, and miserable. His language was foreign, his rank and his professional skill unknown, and all the marks which might indicate the refinement and delicacy of the modes of life to which he had been accustomed were wholly disguised by his present destitution and wretchedness. He was sent with the other captives to the prisons, where he was secured, like them, with fetters and chains, and ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... 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, the money in his trousers' ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the work done by local assessment?-No; the money was raised for relieving the destitution in Shetland by the Edinburgh Board, of which Mr Skene ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Max trimmed off the branches with his cutlass, and prepared them for use. Johnny and Eiulo dragged them to the site of the building, where Browne and I assisted Arthur in setting the posts into the ground, and putting together the frame of the house. Of course, our destitution of proper tools and implements rendered all this exceedingly laborious, and, but for Arthur's perseverance and ingenuity, we should more than once have given up in despair. Instead of spades, we were obliged to use sharp bivalve shells from the shore, in digging places ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... 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 ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... exorbitant salaries, and to put down electioneering corruption. In 1809 Erskine introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1810 there were earnest, if somewhat futile, debates on spiritual destitution, the non-residence and poverty of the clergy, and the scarcity of places of worship. Moreover, early in 1811, a premonitory symptom of the repeal movement caused some anxiety in Ireland. It took the form of a scheme for a representative assembly to sit ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... slaves in the mines and in the cultivation of uninhabited islands; three thousand six hundred of them were sent over to Ireland, where they swelled the number of beggars; numbers were lost at sea, and seven thousand of them returned in despair, in a state of utter destitution, to their native country. A small number of them, however, actually sailed for New York, where they were allotted portions of the primitive forests, which they cleared and cultivated; but they had no sooner raised flourishing villages in the midst ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... our fellow-citizens has been answered by much liberality. In this connection I submit an appeal which has been made by the Swiss Republic, whose Government and institutions are kindred to our own, in behalf of its inhabitants, who are suffering extreme destitution, produced ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... by spiritual persons as so worthless a thing, that it is not fit to be given to God—a notion which might seem to explain how a really pious and universally respected archbishop, living within a quarter of a mile of one of the worst infernos of destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy—can yet find it in his heart to save L120,000 out of church revenues, and leave it to his family; though it will not explain how Irish bishops can reconcile it to their consciences to leave behind them, one and all, large fortunes—for I suppose from fifty ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... "Scientific Destitution in New York" and "The Scientific Value of the Central Park," have called forth numerous letters from correspondents, and have been extensively noticed by the press. We now learn that the legislature of the State has taken the matter in hand, and there is some prospect, with ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... 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 that I had set out at length ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... perpetuity to them and their successors. And this refuge of divine mercy, which they served so devotedly, soon brought them consolation, even though at first their life there was one of want, and for a time of utter destitution. But the place proved itself a true Paraclete to them, making all those who dwelt round about feel pity and kindliness for the sisterhood. So that, methinks, they prospered more through gifts in a single year than I should have done if I had stayed there ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... gather'd some dry wood, and was making a fire—and as we went a little further we met the woman afoot. I could not see her face, in its great sun-bonnet, but somehow her figure and gait told misery, terror, destitution. She had the rag-bundled, half-starv'd infant still in her arms, and in her hands held two or three baskets, which she had evidently taken to the next house for sale. A little barefoot five-year old girl-child, with fine eyes, trotted behind her, clutching her gown. We stopp'd, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... 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 ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... know that sort; if they once take to it all's over. They get used to luxury. One does n't part with luxury, after tasting destitution. She tells me she does very nicely; the children are happy; she's able to pay well and see them sometimes. She was a girl of good family, too, who loved her husband, and gave up much for him. What would you have? Three quarters of your virtuous ladies placed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... travellers from England, who, because they were not allowed to insult and outrage as they pleased, with Parthian spirit, hurled back upon us their poisoned javelins and darts as they left us. There is indeed much destitution of moral influence and means of instruction in many, very many, neighborhoods of the West. But there is in all the principal towns a state of society, with which the most refined, I was going to say the most ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... earned but a precarious subsistence by his pen; although from the little we can glean of his history, the inference is, he was improvident, and easily led away by gay, dissipated companions. One of his biographers gives a melancholy account of the destitution of his latter days, and states, that he was reduced to the necessity of borrowing a shilling, to satisfy the cravings of hunger, from a gentleman, who, shocked at the distress of the author of "Venice Preserved," put a guinea into his hands; that Otway was choked with a piece ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... holding out her hand, and raising her eyes in supplication. Though the striking contrast of extreme misery, side by side with extreme luxury, is so common, that it no longer excites attention, Adrienne was deeply affected by it. She thought of Mother Bunch, now, perhaps, the victim of frightful destitution. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... live in the country the circle widens naturally and beautifully. If a neighbor is ill, one sends in delicacies to the invalid, another offers to take care of the children, and a third acts as watcher. When a drunkard reduces his family to destitution, one neighbor sends a breakfast to them, another flannel for the baby, another finds work for the oldest girl, and another pays the boys a trifle for bringing wood and water. The cases of actual destitution are so few that they can all be met in this way unless the sufferers are ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... the impotence and short-sightedness characteristic of the general naval policy of the French at this time. His arrival there was as unwelcome as his departure from India had been to Lally. The islands were then in a state of the most complete destitution. The naval division, increased by the arrival of three ships-of-the-line from home, so exhausted them that its immediate departure was requested of the commodore. Repairs were pushed ahead rapidly, and in November several of the ships sailed to ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... extreme destitution that drives women to crime. In an English paper-mill, where the girls worked at counting the sheets in a room by themselves, and made good wages, they were all well-behaved and respectable. In another department of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... reported to be a desperate miser, insomuch that she starved herself and her child for the sake of saving money. It was said that she was very ill at the time—thought to be dying— and seemed to be in a wretched state of destitution. Her name, Miss Love ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... carry their infants 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 ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship;—a good heart wants some object to be kind to—and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the misery of the land that sometimes parents destroyed their children, rather than let them grow up to a life of suffering. This vast system of organized oppression, like all tyranny, "was not so much an institution as a destitution," undermining and impoverishing the country. It lasted until time brought its revenge, and Rome, which had crushed so many nations of barbarians, was in her turn threatened with a like fate, by bands of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... mean 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
... fortune by cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. He repaired to New Granada, there to make his studies and his charts. He made them so thoroughly that he died of yellow fever before having begun his work, having come to the end of his money and leaving his widow in the most cruel destitution. Countess Larinski said to her son: "We have nothing more to live on; but, then, is it so necessary to live?" She uttered these words with an angelic smile about her lips. Abel set out for California. He undertook the most menial services; he swept the streets, acted as porter; ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... stepfather returned to Scotland, taking with him my half-brother, and leaving me with my grandfather. And all communication gradually ceased between us. Within this week, however, I have received letters from Edinburgh, informing me of the death of my stepfather, and the perfect destitution of my half-brother, now a lad of twelve years of age. He is at present staying with the clergyman who attended his father in his last illness, and who has written me the letters giving me the information that I now give you. Thus, you see, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance. Bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease: impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances: thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... had to live with them by turns. This was not all; for, at the instigation of their husbands, they put so many indignities and affronts upon him, that his life at length became an intolerable burden, and finally he was compelled to leave the realm altogether, and in his destitution and distress he went for refuge and protection to his rejected daughter Cordiella. She received her father with the greatest alacrity and affection. She raised an army to restore him to his rights, and went in person with him to England to assist him in recovering them. She was ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ivory be taken from Shereef; but they would not restore stolen property, though they knew it to be stolen. Christians would have acted differently, even those of the lowest classes. I felt in my destitution as if I were the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves; but I could not hope for Priest, Levite, or good Samaritan to come by on either side, but one morning Syed bin Majid said to me, "Now this is the first time ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... Sovereign. Indeed, but six weeks later the whole of the inhabitants of the Barkly West district who refused to be commandeered were, irrespective of nationality, removed from their homes by the Boers' Landrosts and thrust across the Orange river in a state of absolute destitution.[253] The number of recruits which had accrued to the enemy's commandos by these means was already, by the end of December, considerable; it was assessed at the time by the British authorities as high as ten thousand. But the danger for the moment was not so much the numerical strength of the actively ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... These conditions were not greatly improved until printing was invented. Luther had to do with people who were emerging from the sad conditions of that age, the effects of which were still visible centuries after. He writes: "The deplorable destitution which I recently observed, during a visitation of the churches, has impelled and constrained me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in such a small and simple form. Alas, what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, know nothing at all of Christian ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... your intercession, I asked him for cash. What do you suppose the old skinflint answered? "I'll pay your debts," says he, "if you like. Up to twenty-five roubles inclusive!" Do you hear, inclusive! No, sir, this was a gift from God in my destitution. ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... door-steps, or in the very middle of the road, awaiting us with lowering brows and sullen looks of suspicion, when with sinking hearts and placid faces we stopped to say a few words to one of our present enemies to whom we had formerly rendered some help in illness or destitution. The truth is, they generally looked somewhat ashamed on such occasions, and always answered politely, but without the frank and pleased looks of other days, when they were proud of our notice and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... 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 in tatters, gathered in the Park, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... not at hand or not employed, to light our whale-oil lamp by blowing a live coal held against the wick, often swelling our cheeks and reddening our faces until we were on the verge of apoplexy. I love to tell of our stage-coach experiences, of our sailing-packet voyages, of the semi-barbarous destitution of all modern comforts and conveniences through which we bravely lived and came out the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with funds were, in fact, so heavy, that only the bare means of subsistence were left to the mass of the agricultural population. In admiring the greatness and glory of the city, therefore, we must remember that there was a gloomy counterpart to its splendor in the very extended destitution and poverty to which the mass of the people were everywhere doomed. They lived in hamlets of wretched huts along the banks of the river, in order that the capital might be splendidly adorned with temples and palaces. They passed their lives in darkness and ignorance, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... the marquis to this pass? Famine, destitution, disease, and the Iroquois were making Canada their prey. The fur trade had been stopped for two years; and the people, bereft of their only means of subsistence, could contribute nothing to their own defence. Above ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... who lies under this stone. Nothing appears to be known for a certainty. ?The Rev. Mr. Morris, a Nonconformist, a sufferer for conscience' sake; a worthy man, who having been deprived of his benefice after the accession of William III, lived to an old age in extreme destitution, on the alms ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... now two o'clock. I stepped into the quarter; there was a strange and melancholy silence mingled with the destitution that was apparent in every part of the house. The only morsel I could see in the shape of food, was a piece of Indian flour bread, it might be half-a-pound in weight. This I placed in my pocket, and giving a last look at the aspect of the house, and at a few small children who were playing ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... of exposing himself to the operation of the penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point. They show how warm and deep were his human affections, and what a tender and loving heart he laid as a sacrifice ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... 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 ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... of residence in it, had dwindled to surprisingly small proportions. Of 9386 lodgers, 3622 were shown to have been here less than sixty days, and 968 more not a year. The old mistake, that there is always a given amount of absolutely homeless destitution in a city, and that it is to be measured by the number of those who apply for free lodging, had been reduced to a demonstration. The truth is that the opportunity furnished by the triple alliance of stale beer, free lunch, and free lodging ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... principally small shopkeepers, who are beggared by the rates. The district is in a complete state of insolvency and hopeless poverty, yet they multiply, and while the people look squalid and dejected, as if borne down by their wretchedness and destitution, the children thrive and are healthy. Government is ready to interpose with assistance, but what can Government do? We asked the man who came what could be done for them. He said 'employment,' ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... deal of misery. The other day I found her in tears, and what do you think was the reason?—she had been reading in some history about a poor fellow who was persecuted for his religion in Charles the First's time—some dissenter who got into the grip of Laud, was imprisoned, and then brought to destitution by being forbidden to exercise each calling that he took to in hope of earning bread. The end was, he went mad and died. Lilian was crying over the story; it made her wretched for ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... in all their discourses," wrote Hyde. The dispute between Montrose, on the side of honour, and that of Lanark, Lauderdale, and other Scottish envoys, ended as—given the character of Charles II. and his destitution—it must end. Charles (January 22, 1650) despatched Montrose to fight for him in Scotland, and sent him the Garter. Montrose knew his doom: he replied, "With the more alacrity shall I abandon still my life to search my death for the interests of your Majesty's honour and service." ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... want during the twenty-five years after this, and die in droves. I estimate that in 1715 more than one-third of the population,[5102] six millions, perish with hunger and of destitution. This description is, in respect of the first quarter of the century preceding the Revolution, far from being too vivid, it is rather too weak; we shall see that it, during more than half a century, up to the death ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... appreciable difference to the total wages bill of the country. But perhaps it is thought by the Government that the state of employment is not sufficiently grave to warrant a greater expenditure at the present time. In spite of the insistence on forestalling destitution, there is still among local authorities much confusion of charity and relief work with anticipation of future needs calling for employment through the ordinary channels of trade. On the whole the Government has not met the domestic problems of the war with the unanimity ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... me from my employers, requiring my presence at business. My money had long gone, my creditors pressed me on every hand, my friends one and all mocked at my destitution. I returned to —-, hiding before my employers the traces of my madness, and letting them wonder how grief had changed me. My home I could not go near—the sight of it and of the children would have driven me utterly mad. I lived in the town. For a week or so I tried ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... General Halleck came, he found and continued the system, and added an order, applicable to some parts of the State, to levy and collect contributions from noted rebels to compensate losses and relieve destitution caused by the rebellion. The action of General Fremont and General Halleck, as stated, constituted a sort of system which General Curtis found in full operation when he took command of the department. That there ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... very broken English that "Mees Alice" was the pupil of her deceased sister, who had come from France some years before and had undertaken the vocal instruction of haut ton young ladies, in order to save their aged mother from a destitution which threatened her, owing to some heavy reverses which had befallen ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... been reduced to utter destitution. Our only food was what rabbits and birds I could trap and catch with the help of our faithful old dog Turk, and the sod corn which we grated into flour. Father could be of no service to us. His presence, in fact, was merely a menace. So, with the help of Brown, ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... tariff and the currency—lead directly to a consideration of the conditions of labor, of the relations between producers and products, of mutual rights and respective interests of employers and employed. The existence of extreme destitution and consequent misery in the midst of general prosperity and plenty, of willing hands vainly seeking employment amid unsurpassed industrial activity and thrift, cannot have escaped attention. The disasters ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... claims, and to "render homage where homage is due." Many are the shifts, and crude the inventions in the bush, when emergencies call forth the application of the old proverb respecting the relationship that exists between destitution and genius; and when to be minus the support of the Virginian weed, is considered a greater misfortune than to be wanting of the necessaries of life. Hence, when requested by John Ferguson to go up to the hut, the draymen had not the remotest intention of disturbing themselves, at least ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... do I try to give you this personal description of him? If you ever subscribed to a Ladies' Charity in London, you know Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite as well as I do. He was a barrister by profession; a ladies' man by temperament; and a good Samaritan by choice. Female benevolence and female destitution could do nothing without him. Maternal societies for confining poor women; Magdalen societies for rescuing poor women; strong-minded societies for putting poor women into poor men's places, and leaving the men to shift for themselves;—he was vice-president, manager, referee to them all. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... retired to his straw. Sometimes he would pray for a long, long time. The first thing in the morning again I would hear his voice in prayer. I knew that he was destitute, but as he never complained, I knew not how great his destitution was, and did not dare to help him lest it would throw out inducements for others to profess Christianity. We are continually compelled to guard against this danger. Many of these poor people would profess Christianity ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... oldest civilization in its northeast corner, and the newest British civilization rapidly developing on its southern edge. It is the "dark continent," both in the color of its inhabitants and in its sad destitution and degradation. About a tenth of the world's population is here; with as many missionaries as in civilized India, but unable to reach the people as effectually as there because of the lack of national organization and the absence of ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... of the Bubble! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial! Situated as thou art in the very heart of stirring and living commerce, amid the fret and fever of speculation—with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House about thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... lying near her, wounded, and, for aught she knows, dying, she is thinking only of her lost child. Maternal love, thruout the history of the world, has had triumphs over all the other passions; triumphs over destitution and trials and tortures; over all the temptations incident to life; triumphs to which no other impulse of the human heart—not even the love of man for woman—has ever risen. One of the most brilliant men I had ever known once said in court; "Woman, alone, shares with the Creator the ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... danger of directing Lady Belamour's wrath on her father, and leading to his expulsion and destitution. She had been sent from home, and bestowed in marriage to prevent his ruin, and should she now ensure it? Her return to him or even her disappearance would no doubt lead to high words from him, and then he would be cast out to ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she can say, "Give" me "this day" my "daily bread". This woman represents at least two hundred persons in every way as destitute, who look to me for help. Another class of two hundred are in a similar state of destitution, with this exception, they are sheltered by a fellow-servant or distant relative, and sometimes furnished a bed, but nothing more, and none of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Goldmore to me, quite confidentially, 'how could he ask us? I really had no idea of this—this utter destitution.' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it, though their loss may have been felt by the churches they had forsaken. There were but few of what are called Gospel sermons, preached in the army anywhere within my reach during my soldier life. As a consequence of the inherently demoralizing effect of war, and this great destitution of conserving influences, vice reigned almost unrestrained in the army. The few good and devout men, and the infrequent prayer-meetings which were held, seemed powerless to restrain the downward tendency of morals. Profanity, the most revolting and dreadful, abounded, though contrary ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... sick. Could it be? Could this miserable creature be one of his own profession? Were these words the ramblings of one who had been used to officiate as a Church minister? And, if so, what could have brought him to such a state of utter destitution? The doctor seemed to read his thoughts, and shook his head sadly. Then, putting his mouth to his ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... does the strong educe nobler wealth; thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, that of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his "fever-paroxysms of Doubt;" his Inquiries concerning ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... money coming in, it was not long before her slender earnings were depleted. For a time she managed to keep the wolf from the door by selling some of her old finery, dainty creations in point lace and chiffons, which she would never wear again, but when these were gone, blank destitution stared her in the face. A brief engagement she was lucky enough to secure after unheard-of exertions, helped matters for a while, but the show came to grief, and then things were as bad as ever. Visits to the pawnshop became frequent and soon she was compelled to give up her rooms ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... 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
... 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 ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... 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 ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... would be so like dwelling under the oak of Mamre, in the tents of Abraham. From what he remembered of Partan Jeannie's reputation as a being only tolerated and assisted by his mother, on account of her extreme misery and destitution, he could believe that the ne'er-do-weel son, who must have forsaken her before he himself was born, might have really been raised in morality by association with the grave, faithful, and temperate followers of Mohammed, rather than the scum ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Massna. Soon after the arrival of this general, who was already accused of procuring a great deal of money during the Italian campaigns of the previous year, the army complained that it was in a state of destitution, without clothing and almost without bread, while the administration, drawing millions from the Papal states, lived in luxury and abundance. The army turned against him and sent a deputation of one hundred officers to demand from Massna an account for the expenditure of this money. Whether he ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... 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 ...
— 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
... off. But instead of a summer's they were now to encounter a winter's sea, and to meet it weakened and wasted by sickness and destitution. The first company had been out but a week when, on New Year's night, a furious storm burst upon the crowded ship. With hatches battened down over their heads they heard and felt the great buffetings of the tempest, and by and by one great ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... if the producer earns less, he will buy less. And this is the course that things actually take. The concentration of forces in the workshop and the intervention of capital in production, under the name of machinery, engender at the same time overproduction and destitution; and everybody has witnessed these two scourges, more to be feared than incendiarism and plague, develop in our day on the vastest scale and with devouring intensity. Nevertheless it is impossible for us to retreat: it is necessary ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... regular lessons for the boys; and one night, as he paced up and down the dismal schoolroom, his swollen heart almost bursting to think that his protection and countenance should have increased the misery of the wretched being whose peculiar destitution had awakened his pity, he paused mechanically in a dark corner where sat ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... There is much destitution felt by people whose pride prevents them from asking for supplies from the relief committees. I saw a sad little procession wending up the hill to the camp of the Americus Club. There was a father, an honest, simple German, who had been employed at the Cambria ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... London, in his day the prince of dandies; patronised by the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.; quarrelled with the prince; fled from his creditors to Calais, where, reduced to destitution, he lived some years in the same reckless fashion; settled at length in Caen, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... true of the lady whose hand has only figured her embroidery or swept her guitar, as of the cottage-girl, wringing from her laundry the foam of the mountain stream. If I must be cast, in sickness or destitution, on the care of a stranger, let it be in California; but let it be before avarice has hardened the heart and made a god ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... we became pick-pockets, and our detested name sank lower and lower in infamy. We formed a fellowship with the most noisome characters our province concealed, and, by an exchange of rascally services, once again managed to avoid destitution. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... yellow ribbons sticking straight upright, like a globe artichoke, upon it), and sometimes the 'son of Yermak' (because his father had, like that hero, been drowned in the Irtish). But in spite of those nicknames, in spite of his ridiculous garb, and his absolute destitution, every one was fond of him, and indeed it was impossible not to be fond of him; a sweeter, nobler nature, I imagine, has never existed upon earth. He was very good at ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... age of sixty. The administration of the workhouses has also greatly improved; and the poor-law infirmaries are becoming hospitals which are largely resorted to in time of sickness by many who might easily avoid them. On the whole, old-age destitution is, and must be, a grave question for philanthropists; but there has been great exaggeration about its magnitude and ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... for while in the car they had thrown out everything to lighten the balloon. The imaginary heroes of Daniel Defoe or of Wyss, as well as Selkirk and Raynal shipwrecked on Juan Fernandez and on the archipelago of the Aucklands, were never in such absolute destitution. Either they had abundant resources from their stranded vessels, in grain, cattle, tools, ammunition, or else some things were thrown up on the coast which supplied them with all the first necessities of life. But here, not any instrument ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... such as bananas, plantains, oranges, lemons, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, beef, goat's flesh, venison, and pork, besides filling his pockets with doubloons! Thus it came to pass, that from absolute destitution Will and his comrades suddenly leaped into ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... believes and no doubt resolves to rival 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. Finally another ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... benevolence of their countrymen on behalf of the Highlands. We are by no means prepared to join in this view. It is impossible to describe the consequences of a coming famine with mathematical precision. Besides, the destitution is not yet over. And it is at least clear, even as to the past, that except for the exertions of the proprietors, which might or might not have been so largely made, the destitution would have fully borne out the predictions which were uttered. It could not with certainty be assumed that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... others, deprived of their property, left the plains, and took to the mountains, living by the chase and by plunder. This portion were termed boshmen, or bushmen, and have still retained that appellation: living in extreme destitution, sleeping in caves, constantly in a state of starvation, they soon dwindled down to a very diminutive race, and have continued ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... nobleness to volunteer the lowest service,—the greatest spirit only attaining to humility. Nay, God is God because he is the servant of all. Well, now here comes this conspiracy of slavery,—they call it an institution, I call it a destitution,—this stealing of men and setting them to work,—stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself; and for two or three ages it has lasted, and has yielded a certain quantity of rice, cotton, and sugar. And standing on this doleful experience, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... God discovered it. From the bosom of His own fulness He saw that being without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she said ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... into prison Alessandro, Cartino, and Hermes, and finally, after transferring the wretched Ludovico from the fortress of Pierre-Eucise to Lys-Saint-George he relegated him for good and all to the castle of Loches, where he lived for ten years in solitude and utter destitution, and there died, cursing the day when the idea first came into his head of ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... events. Even the slightest of them, so far as they are known to me, show conscience and work. In 1852, for example, he wrote no less than twelve articles for the four leading quarterlies of that date. They were, with one exception, all on political or economical subjects. 'Highland Destitution,' and 'Irish Emigration,' 'Investments for the Working Classes,' 'The Modern Exodus;'—these were not themes to be dealt with by the facile journalist, standing on one foot. Mr. Greg always showed the highest conception of the functions and the obligations of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... exterior of the house, the narrow, muddy street in which it stood, the dingy windows covered with mud, and repaired with every variety of patch,—all seemed to cry out to the passers by: "This is the chosen abode of misery and destitution." ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... that the privations of the Protestant clergy were not only great, but dreadful and without precedent. It was not merely that their style of living was lowered or changed for the worse, but that they suffered distress of the severest description—want, destitution, and hunger, in their worst forms. First came inconvenience from a delay in the receipt of their incomes; then the necessity of asking for a longer term of credit; after this the melancholy certainty that tithes would not be ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... which she kept for some minutes, still standing at the counter, how many others must have succeeded them! What happy images of former comfort came knocking at her heart! what an agonizing sense of present destitution! what a contrast between the brightness of the one and the gloom of the other! and then the cries of hungry children ringing importunately in her ears! I noticed her all the time, and, child that I was, did so merely because she stood still and made no reply,—utterly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... beat his brains out with a club; and every successive failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he periodically turns a frigid eye upon their destitution." ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... on their shoulders; small black boys learned on their back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... head, opened her miserable eyes, and regained her consciousness of herself and what lay before her. There was no course open but submission. She knew that from the first. All three faced destitution; she was the one financial asset, she and her poor flesh. She had to face it, and with what dignity ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mend the matter, papa. There will be great destitution and suffering in the village with every mill closed; and they are all going to close, Bridget says. Thank Heaven that this did not ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of October last the accompanying communication was received from the governor of the temporary government of Oregon, giving information of the continuance of the Indian disturbances and of the destitution and defenseless condition of the inhabitants. Orders were immediately transmitted to the commander of our squadron in the Pacific to dispatch to their assistance a part of the naval forces on that station, to furnish them with arms and ammunition, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... merely on the strength of her own deep, prophetic conviction of her fitness for a dramatic career, but on the ground of an urgent and bitter necessity for exertion on her part, to ward off actual destitution and suffering,—he exclaimed, somewhat impatiently,—"Why, Zelma, it is an impossibility, almost an absurdity, you urge! You could never make an actress. You are too hopelessly natural, erratic, and impulsive. You would follow no teaching implicitly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... which enriches the sovereign at the expense of the subject, speedily ends in ruin. The superior classes of the inhabitants were either driven away, in consequence of the tyranny which they endured, or, reduced to a state of destitution, perished miserably upon the soil, until at length the traces of former magnificence became few and faint, the once flourishing city falling into one wide waste of desolation. The remains of a splendid aqueduct, which was at the first survey mistaken for ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... while the others had a hard struggle to avoid that catastrophe; and the public lost all confidence in banks and bankers. The worst part of the tale remains to be told; namely, that many widows and orphans, whose all was invested in bank shares, were utterly ruined and reduced to destitution by the ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... impossible to employ him in the situations in which he really was useful." In the "memoirs" this is more than supported: "The man who might have earned with ease and comfort from six to seven hundred a year, was reduced to such a dreadful state of destitution and filth . . . In fact, at one time, it was thought he might have ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... husbands, but against the property of murdered victims! Now, then, thou hast a notable occasion for displaying those illustrious qualities of thine, that wonderful endurance of hunger, of cold, of destitution, by which ere long thou shalt feel thyself undone, and ruined. This much, however, I did accomplish, when I defeated thee in the comitia, that thou shouldst strike at the republic as an exile, rather than ravage it as a consul; and that the warfare, so villanously evoked ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... United States. Full well I remember my feelings when returning to my native land. I had been laboring among a heathen people, and impressions by the eye are deep and affecting. I had seen degradation and vileness, destitution and woe. I had a vivid impression of the urgent claim of the destitute and the dying; and I had formed some conception of the greatness of the work, if we would put forth the instrumentality needed to elevate and save them. And during a long voyage, ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... day of misfortune had set Mrs. Hooven 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 ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... her own work, must have a hired servant to help her spend his limited earnings. Ten years afterward, you will find him struggling on under a double load of debts and children, wondering why the luck was always against him, while his friends regret his unhappy destitution of financial ability. Had they, from the first, been frank and honest, he need not have ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... safety of the public liberty, its depository should be subject to be changed with the greatest ease possible, and without suspending or disturbing for a moment the movements of the machine of government. You apprehend that a single executive, with, eminence of talent, and destitution of principle, equal to the object, might, by usurpation, render his powers hereditary. Yet I think history furnishes as many examples of a single usurper arising out of a government by a plurality, as of temporary trusts of power in a single hand rendered permanent by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the letter which you will take to father, I have told him our destitution; and that the money spent for your railway ticket has been obtained by the sacrifice of the diamonds and pearls, that were set around my mother's picture; that cameo, which he had cut in Rome and framed in Paris. Beryl so much depends on the impression you make upon him, that you must guard ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... which I was now bound. But for that circumstance I might not have learned of the retreat of Don Diego d'Alvarez in his last illness; I might never have renewed my love to Isora; and whatever had been her fate, destitution and poverty would have been a less misfortune than her union with me. But for my friendship for Bolingbroke, I might not have visited France, nor gained the favour of the Regent, nor the ill offices of Dubois, nor the protection and kindness of the Czar. I might never have been ambassador ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... centers, and an unwillingness of the farmer to do business with a currency so debased that its value is highly problematical. So we see the great city of Vienna,[26] once one of the gayest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, now reduced to destitution, and the cities not only of Russia but of Germany being forced to revert to the ancient system of barter in order to ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... showed the effects of deprivation." Deprivation refers to the act of depriving, taking away from; privation is the state of destitution, of not having. ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce |
