"Hard times" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better lot is in reserve for Phoebe Wilkins, and that she may yet "rule the roast," in the ancient empire of the Tibbetses! She is not fit to battle with hard hearts or hard times. She was, I am told, the pet of her poor mother, who was proud of the beauty of her child, and brought her up more tenderly than a village girl ought to be; and ever since she has been left an orphan, the good ladies at the Hall have completed the ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... twenty times betther: and, for my own part, if it wasn't that the clargy supports them in a manner, and the grant's a thing not easily done widout these hard times, I'd see if I couldn't get a sheltered spot nigh hand the chapel, and set up again on the good ould principle: and faix, I think our metropolitan 'ud stand to me, for I know that his Grace's motto was ever and always, that, "Ignorance ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... for a school scrape, Will had been sent to work in a cotton factory owned by a relative. And, unable to stand the hard conditions there, he had run away, and had had no end of hard times in a turpentine camp, until, on their trip to Florida, the outdoor girls had been instrumental in ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... landed, but it was the banyan meal of humble men, whose nets were never filled with aught but the scaly products of the sea. Our inspector was regaled with a scant fish-feast, and allowed to digest it over the genuine license. Rafael complained sadly of hard times and poverty;—in fact, the drama of humility was played to perfection, and, finally, the functionary signed our license, with a certificate of our loyalty, and pocketed a moderate ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... degradation. His chief attempts were, naturally, upon monopoly; they were slyly balked by his sly Attorney General, and their failure was called by the press, and was believed by the people, the cause of the hard times which were just beginning to be acute. What made him such an easy victim to his lieutenants was not their craft, but the fact that he had lost his sense of right and wrong. A man of affairs may not, indeed will not, always steer by that compass; but he must have ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... find the maintenance of a child in addition to your own somewhat burdensome in these hard times," observed the miller. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... Cruden, I am very sorry for you, and would gladly see you in a better position. But it is not a case where we can choose. This opening has offered itself. Of course, you are not bound to accept it, but my advice is, take what you can get in these hard times." ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... memorable campaign of that year. So far as ideas entered into my support of the Whig candidate, I simply regarded him as a poor man, whose home was a log cabin, and who would in some way help the people through their scuffle with poverty and the "hard times"; while I was fully persuaded that Van Buren was not only a graceless aristocrat and a dandy, but a cunning conspirator, seeking the overthrow of his country's liberties by uniting the sword and the purse in his own clutches, as he ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... be sure, but something! I should have liked a carrot or two, but in these hard times that would have been extravagant. And, after all, there is some credit in making good soup out of nothing at all. If one could run here and there in the market—'A pound of your best veal, monsieur'—'A bunch of those ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... of living. It's been a great strain and labour for me. I think I'd as lief be with God as with men. And you see, I were fond on him ever sin' he were a little lad, and told me what hard times he had at school, he did, just as if I were his brother! I loved him next to Molly Greaves. Dear! and I shall see her again, I reckon, come next Saturday week! They'll think well on me, up there, I'll be bound; though ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that the natives of the Upper country would frequently refuse to sell us any thing for our dirty colored piastres of Egypt, and the Pasha would allow nobody to steal but himself. "Steal" a fico for the phrase. The wise "convey it call," says ancient Pistol, an old soldier who had seen hard times ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... nor there. We were talking of Franks. If anything, he's improved, I should say. I can't imagine any one bearing success better—just the same bright, good-natured, sincere fellow. Of course, he enjoys his good fortune—he's been through hard times." ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... talk about the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We've been false to that theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why, Al, this work we've begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There mustn't be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all, we'll win, and save Lattimore—and spare the ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... employer, threatened with merciless competition. The large and continuous stream of foreign immigrants, whose standards of living were in the beginning lower than those which prevailed in this country, were, particularly in hard times, a constant menace not merely to his advancement, but to the stability of his economic situation; and he began to organize partly for the purpose of protecting himself against such competition. During the past thirty years the work of organization ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... new life and brightness into the great, far too silent house. The girl's poverty was no disadvantage; she and her brother had long found it difficult to know what to do with the vast wealth which, even in these hard times, was constantly increasing, and the Blomberg family was as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be, And knowing, probably, no more about hus than a coster's baby; But dull it 'as been, and no kid, and dreary, too, and disappinting; Is it this Sosherlistic rot Society is so disjinting, The Hinfluenza, or Hard Times, them Hirish, or wotever is it? I couldn't 'ave 'eld on at all, I'm sure, but for the HEMP'ROR's visit. Ya-a-a-w! 'Ang it, 'ow I've got the gapes! Bring us a quencher, you young Buttons! And mind it's cool, and with a 'ed! Hour family is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various
... hard times for little Madge—she worked like the brave little woman she was. Her childish thoughts were constantly with her parents—how best could she add to the weekly income. And this is what the same little ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... ha'porth ov it," proceeded the Irishman, taking no notice of the sarcastic allusion to his wardrobe. "To till the truth, I'd only jist what I stood up in, for I'd hard times ov it in the States, an' was glad enough to ship in the schooner to git out ov the way ov thim rowdy Yankees, bad cess to 'em! They trate dacint Irishmen no betther nor if they were dirthy black nayghurs, anyhow! How so be it, as soon as I got afloat ag'in, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... man, one of those who are rejected because they are lukewarm. I don't care to quote the Bible here literally." Immediately thereafter old Mr. von Borcke took the floor to drink to the health of Innstetten: "Ladies and Gentlemen: These are hard times in which we live; rebellion, defiance, lack of discipline, whithersoever we look. But * * * so long as we still have men like Baron von Innstetten, whom I am proud to call my friend, just so long we can endure it, and our old Prussia will hold out. Indeed, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... with his ridgment, and that I must find he by myself. And she wished me good-bye, and then the poor soul fell a-crying, for she said that there was no one left now to be kind to her. 'And there's hard times before 'ee, my tender,' she saith—I mind the words well—'but not yet. Good luck will be with 'ee first along. There's a man loves 'ee, and a man he is; make the most of mun. You shall cross the sea and come back ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... the man who led it, Daniel Shays. They were put down by the more or less doubtful appeal to veterans of the National Army, but their ebullition was not forgotten as a symptom of a very dangerous condition. In 1786 representatives from five States met in a convention at Annapolis to consider the hard times and the troubles in trade. Washington, Hamilton, and Madison were thought to be behind the convention, which accomplished little, but made it clear that a large general convention ought to meet and to discuss the way of securing a strong central government. This convention was ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... Captain John?" asked Bob. "No, little lad," said the old man. "She belongs to my daughter. My pet is almost as old as I am. She's a brave old friend. We have stuck by each other for over fifty years. We've seen hard times and good times together. And now we are growing old ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams
... her niece. She ain't much of a housekeeper, I guess," she went on, as she cut over Dr. Berry's old trousers into briefer ones for Tommy Berry. "She gives considerable stuff to her hens that she'd a sight better heat over and eat herself, in these hard times, when the missionary societies can't hardly keep the heathen fed and clothed and warmed—no, I don't mean warmed, for most o' the heathens live in hot climates, somehow or 'nother. My back door's jest opposite hers; it's across the river, to be sure, but it's the narrer ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... since hard times set in, the offices of Hamal and mussaul have got a little mixed, and a man will show you characters testifying that he has served in both capacities. Such a man is, properly speaking, simply a mussaul who has tried to do the Hamal's work. ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... owing, it is paid. If no balance accrues to the fisherman, his account is handed to him; and if he is a crofter, or a reliable man the curer advances to him 12 or 20, to pay his rent and tide him over the hard times in winter. Sometimes the curer assists his fishermen debtors by supplies of meal for their families in winter, the meal being procured by the curer's orders to millers or ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... and children. Still, they make a merry party flying about in the garden and field edges, where the composite flowers have left them food, whispering and giggling all day long—even singing merrily now and then. They often have hard times in winter, and when I am here at the Farm I always scatter canary seed ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Petroff, addressing me, but evidently speaking at Nicholas, "we unfortunate Bulgarians have hard times of it just now. The Turk has oppressed and robbed and tortured and murdered us in time past, and now the Russian who has come to deliver us is, it seems to me, completing our ruin. What between the two we poor wretches have come to ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... ambulances. Mme. Couyba, wife of the Minister of Labor, is arranging for the supply of free food to girls and women out of work. Marquise de Dion, Mme. Le Menuet and other ladies are opening temporary workshops where women can obtain employment at rates that will enable them to tide over the hard times ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... in more; and, anyway, Mr. Donald, it's hard for a woman to feel that she isn't just up to the mark. Gettin' married ain't all there is to it, you bet. It's only in books that they say people git married, and leave it like that, for that's when the real hard times begin—keepin' it up and makin' it turn out well. ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... said the wife, stroking her husband's arm, "you are getting rich now, and your hard times are over." ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... it's none of my business, of course, but, as long as you say you haven't been counterfeiting, I wish you would give me your receipt for making money. Anybody that can make five thousand in one lump these hard times is doing well." ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... objects in Tyre with considerable more anxiety than I had ever supposed it possible for me to entertain concerning any country town in Christendom. I was interested in the prosperity of Tyre. I sincerely hoped that the hard times had not entered its quiet and beautiful streets. The streets certainly were both quiet and beautiful, as I looked upon them in the clear moonlight of ten o'clock at night, an hour when honest people in the country are, for the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not know that fox-hunting is so safe a speculation for young ladies as any of the foregoing. There are many pros and cons in the matter of the chase. A man may think—especially in these hard times, with 'wheat below forty,' as Mr. Springwheat would say—that it will be as much as he can do to mount himself. Again, he may not think a lady looks any better for running down with perspiration, and being daubed with mud. Above ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... They have broken asunder from the higher classes, and seem to think their interests are separate. They have become too knowing, and begin to read newspapers, listen to alehouse politicians, and talk of reform. I think one mode to keep them in good humour in these hard times would be for the nobility and gentry to pass more time on their estates, mingle more among the country people, and set the merry old English ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... when we first made his acquaintance. True, his hair was thinner and whiter, and his whiskers straggled a little more carelessly than in other days, but he was as young and active as a youth of twenty. Hard times did not worry him, nor did domestic troubles. Mrs. Crow often admitted that she tried her best to worry him, but it was like "pouring water on a duck's back." He went blissfully on his way, earning encomiums for himself and honours for Tinkletown. There was ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... and is the safest, for the reason that the good of society is for all in common, and being, from the political point of view, in the main, a material good, comes home to their business and bosoms in the most direct and universal way, in their comfort or deprivation, in prosperity and hard times, in war and famine, and those wide-extended results of national policies which are the evidence and the facts. Politics is very largely, and one might almost say normally, a conflict of material interests; ideas dissociated from action are not ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... our business to pay rent for them," grumbled John. "Every one for himself, I say, these hard times. If they can't pay you'd ought to send 'em off; there's ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... along to the end of the circle on his left; and, beginning there, each man smoked and made a prayer, and the pipe passed from hand to hand. After this the guests talked and joked, and laughed, and stories were told, perhaps of war or adventure, perhaps of hard times when food was scarce and the cold bitter, perhaps of those mysterious persons who rule the world, and of the kindly or the terrible things that ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... said. "I wish you had told me about your mother. When I come again, some day we 'll drive up country, as you call it, to see her. Martha! I wish you would think of me sometimes after I go away. Won't you promise?" and the bright young face suddenly grew grave. "I have hard times myself; I don't always learn things that I ought to learn, I don't always put things straight. I wish you would n't forget me ever, and would just believe in me. I think it does ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... added Mr. Joyce. "He has just lost his father," he continued in a low tone, "and I suppose it's hard times at home." ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... "Hard times, father!" she said, temporizing. "But perhaps, sometime, they shall be changed. Perhaps I shall be rich, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... an experience you have had, nor how little of the pleasant has been mingled with it, in three months your general impression of that trip will be good. You will look back on the hard times with a certain ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... Do you still recollect the hard times poor Morcerf had when the first article from ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... a widow, and she had one son, called Jack. Jack and his mother owned just three cows. They lived well and happy for a long time; but at last hard times came down on them, and the crops failed, and poverty looked in at the door, and things got so sore against the poor widow that for want of money and for want of necessities she had to make up her mind to sell one of the cows. "Jack," she said one night, "go over in the morning to ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... dining car with an emphasis that kept the screen door swinging for a full half minute. He tipped the waiter who came to fill his water glass, and told him to wake up and show some speed. Any waiter will wake up for half a dollar, these hard times. This one stood looking down over Jack's shoulder while he wrote, so that he was back with the boullion before Jack had reached the bottom of the order blank—which is the reason why you have not read anything about a certain young man dying of starvation while seated at table number five ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... little collection, and sent it by my hands to comfort them for their disappointment. I gave it to the father; he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup together in the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, and hard times. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... illegal, and would not permit a solitary word to be uttered by a witness of mine. Under such circumstances the jury found a verdict of $2,000 against me, which, with the cost, will be a difficult sum for me to raise, these hard times. I shall ask for a new trial. If this application should share the fate of all others I have made, it is to be hoped he will not assume the power to prevent my taking an appeal ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... morrow, all the gay cousins would come for Floribel, and would find only a brown dog, it laid its head on the grandmother's feet, and whined so piteously that she began to weep, and said, "We are having hard times, Floribel! yes, very hard times!" and then the baby began to cry too, as if ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... from the door. I inquired how her dress came so wet half a yard deep. "I come up in a leaky skiff las' night wid six boys dat do oberseer whip de Yankee out, he say; an' da say da go to Yankees now any how, an' I begged 'em to let me come, for da knows I has sich hard times. But da say, 'Aunt Peggy, de skiff leak so bad.' But I tole 'em I's comin' wid a basin, an' I reckon I dip fas' enough to keep us 'bove water. An' da let me come, an' it tuck all night to come seven miles up de river. Dar was forty of us on dis plantation. Massa is a big man in Secesh army, an' sent ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... heart and full eyes, that my poor mother parted with me; perhaps she thought me an erring and a willful boy, and perhaps I was; but if I was, it had been a hardhearted world, and hard times that had made me so. I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time; all my young mounting dreams of glory had left me; and at that early age, I was as unambitious ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... price to-day, but we can't pay such prices any longer," the man had said over the counter as he paid her. "Hard times— work dull—we are cutting down all our work-folks; you'll have to take a third less ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... conditions up to 1861. Then came the storm of shot and shell, the rain of blood, the elemental rage of passion called the Civil War. There was a total upset of business. Such periods of hard times as had occurred prior to that time had been caused by the tinkering of untrained minds with the money system or by land speculation, and not by lack of access to the riches of nature. After four years our people awoke, as from a nightmare, to find the old life swept away forever. In the South, ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... the wedding off until it should rain. I ridiculed the idea, but they were both superstitious and stuck it out. And honest, boys, there wasn't enough rain fell in two years to wet your shirt. In my forty years on the Nueces, I've seen hard times, but that drouth was the toughest of them all. Game and birds left the country, and the cattle were too poor to eat. Whenever our provisions ran low, I sent Tiburcio to the coast with a load of hides, using six yoke of oxen to handle a cargo of about a ton. The ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... I lose eight times as much. Just think of it! Sixteen thousand pounds would give me a fair balance to go on wi' i' these hard times, an' your two thou' would make the skipper's job in my new ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Massachusetts, at home, at the tavern, in the field, on the road, in the street, as they rose up, and as they sat down, men talked of nothing but the hard times, the limited markets, and low prices for farm produce, the extortions and multiplying numbers of the lawyers and sheriffs, the oppressions of creditors, the enormous, grinding taxes, the last sheriff's sale, and who would be sold out next, the last batch of debtors taken ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... But in those happy, hungry, hard-working days, when dinner was not always a vested interest, Mr. du Maurier seemed already tinged with the daintier tastes that were destined to lead his pencil to the delineation of these same "bloated" classes; and even in those hard times he could always ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... first operators had done their part the dresses were handed over to the drapers. There were two drapers; they were getting around fifty dollars a week before the hard times. One of the drapers was as attractive a girl as I ever saw any place—bobbed hair, deep-set eyes, a Russian Jewess with features which made her look more like an Italian. She spoke English with hardly any accent. She dressed very ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... say, Sara, we didn't have our hard times with your boy. But we got results enough that we shouldn't complain. Maybe you're right. With a boy like Leo, a regular good business head who comes into the firm with us, it ain't been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us with a genius. But neither have they got the smart son, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... "I received your letter and note last night, and Auntie's parcel the night before. Thank you both very much for same. It is good of you to us both, but do not spend too much money. Hard times are coming on, I imagine. The kippers were grand. Six of us had a great tea on them in the wine cellar of a shattered farm-house where we are for four nights after four days in the trenches. Then we go back to the fighting line for another four days and nights. ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... papers said so," corrected Andrews. "Heart failure—what does that mean? As well say breath failure, or nerve failure. I'll tell you what kind of failure I think it was. It was money failure. Hard times and poor investments struck Phelps before he really knew how to handle his small fortune. It called him home and—pouf!—he is off—to leave to his family a cool half-million by his death. But did he do it himself or did some one else ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... much happiness in No. 5, notwithstanding that the spring and summer of 1851 were very hard times; and perhaps felt the more, because the sunny presence of Louis Fitzjocelyn did ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me to the door of an old, decayed tavern, where I resigned him to the charge of a lame hostler, and made my way into the house in search of the landlord. I found him at last—a poor, poverty-pinched man, who had been ruined by the railroad. He complained bitterly of the hard times. 'But,' said I, 'you must have some custom; the stage coaches——' 'Bless your soul,' replied he, 'there hasn't been a coach on this road for fifteen years.' 'What do you, mean?' said I; 'I met a coach and passengers two miles back, near the river.' The landlord turned pale. 'What ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... "farming" the public revenues; i.e. the state would let out to them, for a stipulated sum, the privilege of collecting all import and other duties. These, in turn (called in later times Publicans), would extort all they could from the tax-payers, thus enriching themselves unlawfully. So the hard times, the oppression of the tax-gatherer, and the unjust law about debt, made the ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... way, who live in a three-story house, originally of much pretension, but from whose front door hard times have removed almost all vestiges of paint, will tell you: "Yass, de 'ouse ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... none whose returns in the aggregate are less varying. Every other business in the country, whether prospering or struggling, pays tribute to it. It rests on a cash basis, and suffers probably less from hard times than any business of its magnitude. Both the merchant and the manufacturer run large risks in doing business largely on a credit basis. The farmer sows in the spring, harvests in the fall, and often cannot realize on ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... known hard times in New York—the bitterness of hard times in a city large enough for each man to mind his own business and leave his neighbors to mind theirs. Yet as the boat slowed down and neared the wharf, and—past the shipping—they descried the houses and spires ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... rough that day, and ye couldn't tell yer hand afore yer face, hardly, t'were that thick, and tide she'd drawed us furder inshore 'n I mistrusted. The wind he were middlin' high an' gusty, too. I don't mind many sich hard times a-makin' th' cove. We was sure glad enough ter ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... judge of his improvement, having, as yet, received nothing but the small pen-and-ink portrait of himself, which they do not think a very good likeness. She also emphatically discourages any idea of patronage from America, owing to the hard times brought on by the war, and the father tells his son that he will endeavor to send him one thousand dollars more, which must suffice for the additional year's study and the expenses of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... "calamity howlers" here than on Broadway during boom times, and you see no outward evidence of hard times, no acute poverty, no misery, no derelicts, for the war-time social organization seems as perfect as the military. In the last three months only one beggar has stopped me on the streets and tried to touch my heart and pocketbook—a record that seems remarkable ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with Colonel Bankhead, who gave an entertainment, which in these hard times must have cost a mint of money. About fourteen of the principal officers were invited; one of them was Captain Mason (cousin to the London commissioner), who had served under Stonewall Jackson in ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... knives and forks, for clink of goblet and jovial gurgle of wine-flask. On the contrary, to one of us, at least—to wit, Godfrey Bellingham—the occasion is one of uncommon festivity, and his boyish enjoyment of the simple feast makes pathetic suggestions of hard times, faced uncomplainingly, but keenly ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... crossing. While waiting, the Danish leader is said to have inquired the population of Dalarne, and on being told that it was about twenty thousand, to have asked how the province could support so many. The answer was that the people were not used to dainties, that their only drink was water, and in hard times their only food a bread made from the bark of trees. "Even the Devil," ejaculated the officer, "could not vanquish men who live on wood and water;" and with that he ordered a retreat. Before they got off, however, the Swedes fell upon them and drove them home ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... general is light and dry. He saves more picking up horseshoes when the snow melts than many persons do in all their lives. He works all the year round: he thrashes in midwinter with the thermometer below zero. The hard times affect him no more than a fly would a rhinoceros. This is perfectly exasperating to the poor spendthrift, good-for-nothing, lazy part of the community. The tramp hired man is particularly mad about it; he declares the old farmer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... certain eloquence. But as a man he has few qualities to attract and nothing of the heroic. He was mediocre in character and mind, and for such there is no admiration. It may be admitted that he lived in hard times, when it required great strength of character for a Jew born, as he was, in the aristocratic Romanizing section of the nation, to stand true to the Jewish people and devote his energies to their desperate cause. He may have honestly believed ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... but sit idly in his office, figuring his bank balance for the thousandth time or working over some of his old sketches, jumping nervously every time the door opened. (But the visitor always turned out to be some one who wanted to sigh and groan in company over the hard times.) Of evenings in the apartment, which grew dustier and lonelier every day, he would write his letter to Shirley, mail it and then get out his easel. Frowning with determination, he would put and keep his mind firmly on a new idea for a Norman ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... New year to all friends and subscribers, old and young! They are sending us such an amount of encouragement, notwithstanding the hard times, that, instead of growing older the coming year, we think we shall grow younger. So do not fear, little ones, that we shall talk too ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... a manifold guilt? They are those who borrow and buy knowing full well they will not pay, pile debt upon debt knowing full well they cannot pay. Others, who do not repudiate openly their obligations, put off paying indefinitely for futile reasons: hard times, that last forever; ships coming in, whose fate is yet unlearned; windfalls from rich relatives that are not yet born, etc.; and from delay to delay they become not only less able, but less willing, to settle their ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... you couldn't, poor little girl. You had the best of intentions to please us all, and that's the main thing. But it is a good thing that our hard times are over. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... I should like to know?" asked the Admiral, who had seen hard times. "Why, I gave seven men three dozen apiece for turning their noses up at salt horse, just because he whisked his tail in the copper. Lord bless my soul! what is the nation coming to, when a man can't ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... draw every year an income which is beyond reason, but we have agreed—my husband, my sister, and myself—to give a very large share of this income to the poor. You see, Monsieur le Cure, it is because we have known very hard times that you will always find us ready to help those who are, as we have been ourselves, involved in the difficulties and sorrows of life. And now, Monsieur Jean, will you forgive me this long discourse, and offer me a little of that cream, which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... off on the subject of strikes and wages and hard times. Being from the Tyne, and a man who had gained and lost in his own pocket by these fluctuations, he had much to say, and held strong opinions on the subject. He spoke sharply of the masters, and, when I led him on, of the men also. The masters had been selfish and obstructive, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be less difficult to provide for if, as was formerly the case here, we could entrust it to the merchants of Alexandria. But one great house after another is being ruined there, and all security is at an end. As to hiding or burying your possessions, as most Egyptians do in these hard times, it is impossible, for the same reason as prevents our depositing it on interest in the state land-register. You must be able to get it at the shortest notice; since you might at some time wish to quit Egypt in haste with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... times dese days, ain't no hard times now like it was atter Sherman went through Yorkville. My ma and pa give me ash cake and 'simmon beer to eat for days atter dat. White folks never had no mo', not till a new crop was grow'd. Dat year de seasons was good and gardens done well. Till den us nearly starved ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... *Oliver Twist, Pictures of Italy, and American Notes. *Nicholas Nickleby. Old Curiosity Shop, and Reprinted Pieces. Barnaby Rudge, and Hard Times. *Martin Chuzzlewit. Dombey and Son. *David Copperfield. Christmas Books, Uncommercial Traveller, and Additional Christmas Stories. Bleak House. Little Dorrit. Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Our Mutual Friend. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... of Jockey Dawes, and the man who sold him his horse? Should I not hear these, and scores of such anecdotes, that show the simple life of the district, and yet have more hearty merriment in them than much finer stories in much finer places? Hard times and hard measures may have, quenched some of the ancient hilarity of the English peasant, and struck a silence into lungs that were wont to "crow like chanticleer;" yet I will not believe but that, in many a sweet and picturesque district, on many a brown moor-land, in many a far-off ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... pulled down by warrant of two justices of the peace; all money collected from the spectators was to be appropriated to the poor of the parish; and all spectators of plays, for every offence, fined five shillings. Assuredly these were very hard times for players, playhouses, and playgoers. Still the theatre was hard to kill. In 1648, a provost-marshal was nominated to stimulate the vigilance and activity of the lord mayor, justices, and sheriffs, and among other duties, "to seize all ballad-singers and sellers of malignant ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the worst on earth. Think of it, cooped within those timbers that are never easy till they lie at anchor in the shelter of a harbour. I'd just hate it. Their life? What is it? It's not life at all. Hard work, hard food, hard times, and hard drinking—when they're ashore—most of them. I think I can understand. They surely need something to drown the memory of the threat they're always living under. No, they don't live. They exist. Here, let's stand clear. They're ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... few pounds, that might drag about some little wood or coal cart. There were poor men trying to sell a worn-out beast for two or three pounds, rather than have the greater loss of killing him. Some of them looked as if poverty and hard times had hardened them all over; but there were others that I would have willingly used the last of my strength in serving; poor and shabby, but kind and humane, with voices that I could trust. There was one tottering old ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... Government could prevent her taking it with her. It was this money alone that would ensure a welcome from the Warshauers. Willi and Minna could not be expected to want her unless she brought with her enough, not only to feed herself, but to give them a little help in these hard times. But soon she began to feel more cheerful. Mrs. Otway and the Dean would surely obtain permission for her to take her money back to Germany. It was a great deal of money—over three ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to see some hard times, Rufus. But everything has changed since I got acquainted with you and little Rose. I sometimes am tempted to regard you as ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... said he, "good girl; no fear for you: look out myself; warrant I'll find one. Not very easy, neither! hard times! men scarce; wars and tumults! stocks low! women chargeable!—but don't fear; do our ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... outside," said Leslie. "Learning, and behaving, and going, and doing, and seeing, and hearing, and having. 'It's all a muddle,' as the poor man says in 'Hard Times.'" ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and laughed. "Doctors have very hard times in the back blocks, Miss Plumstead. Those who are really ill cannot as a rule afford to pay for medical skill, and everyone is too busy to have time for imaginary complaints. I have no patients at the moment that I cannot leave, except the man who lives out in the direction of Pig Hill, and I ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... sank after getting by; the others were more or less damaged, but were repaired by the orders of Admiral Porter. Still the number was so limited, in proportion to the amount of transportation required, that the general decided to move the troops by land to Hard Times Landing, twenty-five miles below New Carthage by the course of the river. The ships of war and transports followed, the latter carrying as many ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... trade are all saved by faith. When business men, manufacturers or merchants lose faith in one another, or in their government, investments cease, machinery stops, panics occur, and hard times are complained of. As faith is the bond that binds men to God, so it is the bond that binds men one to another. When confidence is lost, all is lost. Even a solvent bank may be broken, from a sudden run upon it, caused by want of faith. Now, as faith is the ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... Dog" were not unequal; but the "Dog" did a larger trade than its rival, for it was the resort of the younger men, while the "Cow" was the meeting place of the elders. A man who had neither wife nor child to support could manage even in these hard times to pay for his quart or two of liquor of an evening; but a pint mug was the utmost that those who had other mouths than their own to fill ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... shoulders. The business concluded, the first speaker slightly relaxed. He nodded to the operator, and turned to the bar-room with a pleasing social impulse. When their glasses were set down empty, the first speaker, with a cheerful condemnation of the hard times and the weather, apparently dismissed all previous proceedings from his mind, and lounged out with his companion. At the corner of ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... life? For while in England the people only respect a parson according to the esteem he deserves as a man, in Ireland the priestly office invests the man with a character entirely different from his own, and covers everything. These poor folks felt the pinch of hard times, and the agitators, backed by their Church, saw their opportunity and commenced to use it. Hence the Kerry moonlighters, poor fellows, fighting in their rude and uncouth way for what they believed to be patriotism and freedom. They should be pitied rather than blamed, for they ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the rest of them; you come to see me and do nothing but talk of her. I'd have hidden her in the attic long ago, only she's by Sargent. She's too beautiful for hiding, and then no one can afford to hide her Sargent under a bushel in these hard times." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... them they had been very anxious to accomplish it; and yet, now that it was done, they felt dissatisfied and unhappy, as if they had suddenly experienced some irreparable misfortune. In that moment they remembered nothing of the darker side of their life together. The hard times and the privations were far off and seemed insignificant beside the fact that this stranger was for the future to share their home. To Ruth especially it seemed that the happiness of the past twelve months ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Clarke, who bought the papers, as stated above, in 1852, has ever since been their owner, manager, and controlling spirit, and, in spite of sharp rivalry at home and from abroad and the lack of opportunieies which such an undertaking must contend with in a small city, has kept the MIRROR, in hard times as in good times, steadily growing, enlarging its scope and influence, and gaining strength with which to make and maintain new advances; and at the same time has made it yield every year a handsome income. Only a man of pluck, push and perseverance, of courage, sagacity and industry, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... and made the fair land one bloody battlefield. In the autumn of 1470 Edward IV had been driven from his throne by the powerful Earl of Warwick, known as the Kingmaker, and Henry VI had been once more restored to power, though for how long a period none could venture to guess. They were hard times to live through, especially for those lesser gentry and yeomen who had not placed themselves definitely under the protection of any of the greater barons, and still strove to keep their estates in peace and ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... love knows the story—when he was sold away from his father and home, to be servant of strangers far off—maybe he thought it was hard times. But the Lord meant it for good, and the father and the child came together again, in a ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... He was to be the leader of the great party of the West which was forming for the overthrow of the old political and social order. Born in a cabin on the southern frontier in 1767 and reared in the midst of poverty during the "hard times" of the Revolution, Jackson had had little opportunity to acquire the education and polish which so distinguished the leaders of the old Jeffersonian party. After a season of teaching school and studying law in Salisbury, North Carolina, he ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... do in these hard times? Must they cease to hold court in opera-house and concert-room, because stocks fall, factories and banks stop, credit is paralyzed, and princely fortunes vanish away like bubbles on the swollen tide of speculation? Must Art, too, bear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... full of people who can't imagine why they don't prosper like their neighbors, when the real obstacle is not in the banks nor tariffs, in bad public policy nor hard times, but in their own extravagance and heedless ostentation. The young mechanic or clerk marries and takes a house, which he proceeds to furnish twice as expensively as he can afford; and then his wife, instead of taking hold to help him earn a livelihood by doing her own work, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... sir! Come in! Don't make yourself a stranger. Hard times these; but you will find plenty of crumbs on the table. Don't be bashful. You don't rob us. Try as you may, you can't eat us out of house and home. You have a great appetite, have you? Oh, well, eat away! No cat ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... broken asunder from the higher classes, and seem to think their interests are separate. They have become too knowing, and begin to read newspapers, listen to ale-house politicians, and talk of reform. I think one mode to keep them in good-humor in these hard times would be for the nobility and gentry to pass more time on their estates, mingle more among the country-people, and set the merry old English ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... gaunt, for this was a year of hard times for the Lynxes. A Rabbit plague the autumn before had swept away their main support; a winter of deep snow and sudden crusts had killed off nearly all the Partridges; a long wet spring had destroyed the few growing coveys and had kept the ponds ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a crowd would gather and cry, "Lord! what a generous fellow is this Mr. Bull!" Some, again, of better station would pluck his sleeve and take him aside into Broad Street Corner or Mansion House Court, and say, "Mr. Bull, a word in your ear. I have more paper about than I care for in these hard times, and I could pay you handsomely for a short loan." These always found Mr. Bull willing and ready, sure and silent, and, withal, cheaper at a discount than any other. For buying cloth all came to Bull; and for buying other wares his house was preferred to ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... other cases cited in this monograph. Our statement ran as follows: "This girl is very frank and talkative with us. With her strong, but refined features and cultivated voice she is a good deal of a personality. She is sanguine and independent. Very likely she does not exaggerate the hard times she has had in going from one home to another. One cannot but respect this unusual young woman for wanting to keep her early history secret. It would be fortunate if some one would care for the girl and get her ailments cured. With her very good ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... mistaken. That dandy Temple feller went there to call on her, an' I heard him tinklin' that music box, and its my opinion he needs a wallupin'! You better go after her! It's gettin' late and you'll have hard times finding her in the dark. Just you foller her path in the wheat, and then make fer them pines. I'd a gone after her myself only grandma'd make sech a fuss, and hev to know it all. You needn't be afraid o' ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... a lice in jail As big as a rail; When you lie down They'll tickle your tail— Hard times in jail, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... thrust aside and William J. Bryan became the party candidate, with the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 as its watchword. This appealed strongly to the distressed debtor class, very numerous in the West on account of the "hard times." The tone of the platform and of the speeches of the leaders was such as to attract the workingmen. The Republicans nominated McKinley, with the promise to reenact the former tariff legislation, to foster industries, and to protect the financial ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Washington's conduct in those hard times has provided the model for all Americans ever since—a model of moral stamina. He held to his course, as it had been charted in the Declaration of Independence. He and the brave men who served with him knew that no man's life or fortune was ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... appear among them, and that they had never been troubled with another since. This was said as a matter of sincere congratulation, but I thought to myself: "This concern will never stand the strain of competition; it is bound to fail when hard times come." The result proved the correctness of my belief. The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... were covered with colored pictures of animals. The most interesting of these cliff-dwellings had pathetic little ribbon-like strips of garden on narrow terraces, where irrigating-water could be carried to them—most romantic of sky-gardens, but eloquent of hard times. ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... spends money extravagantly before marriage, hard times will always be around during his ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... happens? You think there's no poltix at all in this reformatory business, but I can tell you the Republicans won't take such a view as that. They'll say that the party spent a hundred thousand dollars of the people's money in a hard times year, just to make a few more jobs f'r favorites. They'll throw that up at us from every stump in the State. And when our leaders explain that it was done for the maw'l good of the State, they'll give us the laugh—same as they did when ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... examination, he was admitted with the rest; for those who examined him thought it was possible that the reason why he did not answer questions better was because he was frightened. Now came hard times for poor George. In college there is not much mercy shown to bad scholars; and George had neglected his studies so long that he could not now keep up with his class, let him try ever ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... not bend him; what he is the others had it in them to be, and by their labour helped to make him. Because his spirit has never been so buffeted, let alone broken, by hard times, he is also the most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's alertness; ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... through the South, that reports were singularly in accord. Birmingham is too young to have any Civil War history. Her history is the history of the steel industry in the South, and one hears always of that: of the affluence of the city when the industry is thriving, and hard times when it is not. One is invariably told that Birmingham is not a southern city, but a northern city in the South, and the chief glories of the place, aside from steel, are (if one is to believe rumors current upon railroad trains and elsewhere), a twenty-seven story building, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... vicissitudes of life, ups and downs of life, broken fortunes; hard case, hard lines, hard life; sea of troubles; peck of troubles; hell upon earth; slough of despond. trouble, hardship, curse, blight, blast, load, pressure. pressure of the times, iron age, evil day, time out of joint; hard times, bad times, sad times; rainy day, cloud, dark cloud, gathering clouds, ill wind; visitation, infliction; affliction &c (painfulness) 830; bitter pill; care, trial; the sport of fortune. mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune; disaster, calamity, catastrophe; accident, casualty, cross, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Hard times were now over with me, and I had to battle with poverty no more. My little kinsman's death made a vast difference in my worldly prospects. I became next heir to a good estate. My uncle and his wife were not likely to have more children. "The woman is capable of committing any ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray |
