"Penniless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rich, so that the trial which ensued, with its heavy damages, completely crippled him. The partner of his crime was absolutely penniless. They went to Vienna, and Ralph entered the Austrian Cuirassiers, where he had some interest to push him. He had lingered some time within reach of England, to give Mannering an opportunity of demanding satisfaction. But the injured husband knew his man too well to trust himself within fifteen ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... situation was now painful in the extreme. Her mother, who had been the guardian angel of her life, was sleeping in the grave. Her father was advancing with the most rapid strides in the road to ruin. Jane was in danger of soon being left an orphan and utterly penniless. Her father was daily becoming more neglectful and unkind to his daughter, as he became more dissatisfied with himself and with the world. Under these circumstances, Jane, by the advice of friends, had resort to a legal process, by which there was secured to her, from the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... living in the ballet at the theater. She was thrown from a carriage which had been furnished her by him, to carry her home from some rendezvous—of course the driver took care of himself and his horses. The poor girl was picked up and carried to the hospital. She was without friends and almost penniless. She sent to him—for him; he returned no answer. She begged for help, for enough to enable her to obtain what was needed in her illness. Message after message was sent, and finally a reply came, brought by a messenger who had been bidden to insist ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... not know whether she had inherited a large fortune, or was practically a penniless orphan living on the charity of her friend Mrs. Rushmore; and several months might pass before this vital question was solved. Mrs. Rushmore believed that Margaret would get the money, or a large part of it; Margaret did ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... this Gabe Werner's father took hold of some wells that were being sunk by the Davenport crowd. But in the end he and the Martells and the Browns lost a great deal of their money, so that they were left almost penniless. ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... that she would eventually be worth more than a million did not affect his love to its injury. He said frankly to himself that she was none the worse for that, but it must be asserted to his credit that he thought of her prospective money very little. He stood ready to take her penniless, on the instant. Unfortunately, he could not take her on any conditions. Mr. Grampus and Mrs. Grampus stood like mountains ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... driven to, you see. And anyone but you, who know me, would set me down as a selfish, calculating beast. Can't help it. I had rather have her penniless.—Will you come in here with me? I want to ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... and down that rugged land, he should think highly of the hard-handed men and patient women who willingly offer a night's shelter and a share of their dried apples, salt pork, and grindstone bread to the penniless wanderer. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... They rob their employers to keep up a pretty household for their wives, as if they were fine ladies; and then at last the thing's discovered, there comes a smash, they run away to America, and you have your daughters and their children thrown back again penniless upon your hands." That's what I said to her, Mrs. Oswald. And how's YOUR daughter, by the way—Jemima I think you call her; ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... realise," the young man said, "that we are absolutely penniless—destitute. Everything is sunk in this Winhalla Railway scheme, up to the last penny. It seemed a gorgeous chance at the time. It ought to have brought in thousands. It would have done, too, if it had been properly supported. But it's no good talking about ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and twenty I found myself an exile, and penniless. One friend alone remained to me, and this was a young man of Orrain called Pierrebon, whom I have mentioned before. Through good and ill he adhered to me with ancient fidelity, and he lives still, honoured and trusted by all who ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... appeared that evening at "Marse Perkins's" with a ring of portentous size squeezed on the little finger of his left hand. It had something of the color of gold, and that is the best that can be said of it; but it had left its purchaser penniless. This fact sat lightly on Jeff's mind, however, as he remembered the box at the foot of the persimmon-tree; and he stalked into the detached kitchen, where a dusky assemblage were to indulge in a shuffle, with the air ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... persons and means made use of by d'Ache in his new theatre of operations: a poor hunchbacked girl was his council, and his army was composed of David the Intrepid. He was, moreover, penniless. At the beginning of the autumn Mme. de Combray sent him eight louis by Lanoe, a keeper who had been in her service, and who now occupied a small farm at Glatigny, near to Bretteville-sur-Dives. Lanoe belonged to that rapacious type of peasant whom even a small sum of money ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... him; another might have touched his hair or hand; another kissed his cheek. But not even because he was like her departed husband, like the man who five and fifty years before had courted a certain cold and proud, handsome and penniless Miss Augusta Gallup, would Mrs. de Tracy do these things. She had had her sensation, such as it was, her secret moment of emotion, and was satisfied. She left the room as she had come, the candle casting exaggerated shadows of herself upon the walls where Carnaby's bats and fishing rods ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... money we had with us, and telegraphed home for more. Soon, she had sold out every one of our securities. Then she won, and went half mad with the joy and excitement, but the joy didn't last long. She lost all, again—literally, our all. We were penniless. There was nothing left to pay the hotel bill. I went out, and found a Mont de Piete, just beyond the limits of the Principality; they aren't allowed inside. I pawned all our jewellery, and as we had a great many valuable things, I got ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... occurred some few weeks since at a Broadway hotel, from which she was expelled at a very short notice by the proprietors in presence of a number of the guests. It is presumed that at present she is almost penniless, though no one can safely predicate at what place or in what guise she may appear hereafter. For an adventurer, like a cat, has ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... of the emigrant-runner, the luxuries of the steerage and Castle Garden, or for photographs of the well-fed post-trader and Indian agent, agricultural products from Captain Jack's lava-bed reservation and jars of semi-putrescent treaty-beef. He will alight, next door to the penniless immigrant, the red man and the omnibus-horse, on Class 348, religious organizations and systems, embracing everything that grows out of man's sense of responsibility to his Maker. It will perhaps occur to the observer that, though the juxtaposition is well enough, religion ought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... old wine. It was three years all but a day since he had parted from Charlie Osborne on Charing Cross Station, and set out with eighteenpence in his pocket to seek his fortune. In that brief time he had rapidly risen to wealth and distinction. Three years ago he was a penniless mechanic, forsaken by Fortune and discontented with his life; to-day he was a rich man, smiled on and courted by Fortune and envied by all her minions, and still he was discontented with ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... oppressed people grew more and more bitter, till in 1566 they flared into open revolt. "The beggars," they were contemptuously called by the Spaniards, and they adopted the name as a badge of honor. Penniless, helpless they might be, yet ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... against that; but, says Jack, "You didn't hinder him when he took the same strips from the backs of my two brothers, and sent them home in that state, and penniless, to their ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... pounds per annum and some impalpable expectations, at the feet of Muriel, the clearance effected by Sir Thomas had been that of Lieutenant Aubrey Hamilton. "Is it marry one of my daughters to that penniless pup!" he had said to Lady Purcell, whose sympathies had, as usual, been on the side of the detrimental. "Upon my honour, Lucy, you're a bigger fool than I thought you—and that's saying ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... scarcely younger and more helpless than herself, had no relation nearer than Dowie, and had sent forth to the good woman a frantic wail for help in her desolation. The two children were, of course, on the point of being added to by an almost immediately impending third, and the mother, being penniless and prostrated, had remembered the comfortable creature with her solid bank account of savings and her good sense and good manners and knowledge of a world larger than the one into which she had ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... place he visited was Patterson's saloon. Here he met a few congenial spirits, took several drinks with them, and then, being "flush,"—a very unusual thing for him—he proceeded to "buck the tiger." Like too many others, he bucked too long, and soon found himself penniless. Not to be outdone, however, he rushed out and borrowed one hundred dollars from a friend, promising to return it the first thing in the morning. With this money he returned to the unequal contest, but before ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain's commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the South. Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood, fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and attempt to retrieve my fallen fortunes ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stout, misshapen wife with a large fortune. Miss Clara, the young lady of the house, brought in a tall and slender stalk, with little soil adhering to it; so by-and-by, as some one said, she would marry a tall, straight, penniless bridegroom. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of his son's affairs, he found that Tallman Taylor's extravagance and folly had left his widow and child worse than penniless, for he had died heavily in debt. Returning one afternoon from Wall-Street, Mr. Taylor talked over this matter with his wife. Of all Tallman Taylor's surviving friends, his mother was the one who most deeply felt his death; she was heart-stricken, and shed bitter ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... effect of these reports, following each other like successive claps of thunder from a cloudless sky. Satan was watching the effect, ready to exult over the first expression of repining and rebellion. But how sublime the resignation of the loyal heart of the childless, homeless, and penniless sufferer! After the eastern custom in time of affliction, he cut off his hair, rent his robe, fell upon the ground, and worshipped. The lips, tremulous with sorrow, uttered the often-quoted and beautiful words: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... tell how the father swore that he would send no more money and receive no Jew; nor how Charlotte declared that Ethelbert could not be left penniless in Jerusalem; and how 'La Signora Neroni' resolved to have Sidonia at her feet. The money was sent, and the Jew did come. The Jew did come, but he was not at all to the taste of 'la Signora'. He was a dirty little old man, and though he had provided ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... one stream." Yet, when the first trader, in 1786, drifted with his flatboat from Ohio down to New Orleans, thus entering the confines of Spanish territory, he was seized and imprisoned, his goods were taken from him, and at last he was turned loose, penniless, to plod on foot the long way back to his home, telling the story of his hardships as he went along. The name of that man was Thomas Amis, and after his case became known in the great valley, it ceased to be a matter of ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... row, and that I would 'come down.' It is a system of blackmailing, like any other. An account is opened to some young rascal; and, when the amount is reasonably large, they take it to the family, saying, 'Money, or I make row.' Do you think it is to you, who are penniless, that they give credit? It's on my pocket that they were drawing,—on my pocket, because they believed me rich. They sold you at exorbitant prices every thing they wished; and they relied on me to pay for trousers at ninety francs, shirts ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... he had intrusted the few francs he possessed, to dole out to him as he needed, fell in love with him, and finding he could not, or would not, respond to her advances, confiscated the whole deposit, and left him penniless. The preface goes on to tell us how, not feeling himself in harmony with these forms of Romanticism, he takes to the study of the Infinite, and Michael Angelo; how he learned to paint the Heroic Nude; how he mixed up for imitation the manners of Rubens, Ribera, Mantegna, and Correggio; how he struggled ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... as good as his word. He sailed in the next packet, and arrived in Paris almost as penniless as ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... do with his remorse; most people do not perceive the hideousness of sin until they begin to reap its consequences. Instead of the beautiful Northern life he had dreamed of, he found himself stranded, penniless, in a strange land, among people whose sympathy he had forfeited, with no one to lean upon, and no refuge from the storms of life. His outlook was very dark, and there sprang up within him a wild longing to get back to North Carolina,—back ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... was sick, lame and penniless. His mother had died the year before. He was living with his brothers and sisters, who were poor, and felt that he was more or less of a burden to them and to the world: the tide was at ebb. And about this time it was that Richard ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... A penniless prisoner in the Tombs is not an object of much consideration, as Tulitz discovered to his profound disgust. For two days he paced his cell with the restless, incessant tread of a caged hyena. He disdainfully rejected the beef soup, the hunk of bread and the black coffee served to him ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... and disinherit the man aforesaid, and who, to crown his virtues, pretends to be a miser in order to teach the young woman, also aforesaid, how bad it is to be mercenary, and to induce her to marry the unrecognized and seemingly penniless son; their marriage accordingly, with ultimate result that the bridegroom turns out to be no poor clerk, but the original heir, who, of course, is not dead, and is the inheritor of thousands; subsidiary groups of characters, of course, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... said, in his old friendly manner, 'or you would not be so romantic as to wish Audrey were penniless. You will find a few thousands very serviceable by and by, when, in the course of time, a house falls vacant. I am speaking of the future, mind—for I do not mean you to have Audrey for at least a couple ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... here the other day—a tall stalwart Holsteiner, I should think a man of fifty, who has been four years up in the Soudan and Sennaar, and being penniless, had walked all through Nubia begging his way. He was not the least 'down upon his luck' and spoke with enthusiasm of the hospitality and kindness of Sir Samuel Baker's 'tigers.' Ja, das sind die rechten Kerls, dass ist das gluckliche Leben. His account is that if you go with an armed ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... himself with this handsome profit, but in vain. As Dr. Johnson put it, "he dreamed of dignity and splendour, and could not bear to obstruct his own fortune."[2] He who a few months ago had been practically penniless, could not now bring himself to be satisfied with an income of about a thousand a year. Realising that it was impossible entirely to overcome his obduracy, his friends then begged him at least to sell so much as would produce even a hundred a year in the Funds, "which," ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... able to be resumed one finds that Wenamon has set sail from the city, and has travelled along the coast to the proud city of Tyre, where he arrived one afternoon penniless and letterless, having now nothing left but the little Amon-of-the-Road and his own audacity. The charms of Tyre, then one of the great ports of the civilised world, were of no consequence to the destitute ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... leave, but I do not desire it. I am alone, I am friendless, penniless. Doctor Brudenell, I ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... you are saying?' stammered the mother. 'You will learn no trade, and have only the five gold pieces left you by your father, and can you really expect that the sultan would give his daughter to a penniless bald-pate ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... years, but every year she would grow a little weaker and a little less capable of toil. As long as she lived the little farm belonged to her, but whenever she died it would pass to a distant cousin. Whenever Aunt Raby died, Priscilla and her three sisters would be penniless. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... prolonged haggling, Hamar and Curtis agreed to take fifty dollars; and, considering their penniless condition, they were by no means dissatisfied ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... obtuse," I said. "You see no trace of yourself in that passage—no trace of meanness in the man who cast off the penniless orphan, with her whole heart full of love for him, yet pleads so warmly with the rich heiress, when he knows she is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... quarters, rough, it is true, but compatible with the means he was now reduced to. What little money still remained to him he calculated might, with care, last him a week, and, if he did not find work, at the end of that time he would be absolutely penniless. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... I have been to Bath, to Cheltenham, to Harrogate, to Brighton, and everywhere else where people meet, and people are met with, who would not meet or be met with elsewhere. I have seen many nice girls; but the nice girls were, like myself, almost penniless; and I have seen many ill-favoured, who had money: the first I could only afford to look at— the latter I have had some dealings with. I have been refused by one or two, and I might have married seven or eight; but, somehow or other, when it came near the point, the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... dear life, I thought it a kind of pity and not much good to discourage me. Now all's changed. God only knows how much courage and suffering is buried in that MS. The second part was written in a circle of hell unknown to Dante—that of the penniless and dying author. For dying I was, although now saved. Another week, the doctor said, and I should have been past salvation. I think I shall always think of it as my best work. There is one page in Part II., about having got to shore, and sich, which must have cost ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the straining point. Nothing but abject poverty, cruel, gaunt want stares me in the face. Can I see my loved ones hungry without a roof to shelter them? I am penniless. The tradesmen will give no further credit. The landlord wants his rent and I have not a friend in the world that I can think of to help me. I have humiliated myself in the dust in my efforts to borrow a little money. I have asked it as a loan or charity, if they chose to ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... direct thee! I've millionaires now to protect me; No need to beg, no need to borrow, Nor fear a penniless tomorrow, Nor walk with face of blackest omen To thrill the hearts of stupid foemen, Who fain my pride to earth would bring, Because, ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so well? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in which alone he prospers, I can show you a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by day, and at night taking from the lips of their children the helpful message their State sends ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the least. He lay there thinking fiercely, only troubled by the idea of what he would do as soon as he had made his plunge penniless into that dense black ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... precipitous river gorge at Cartland, we meet everywhere the lasting traces of that inventive and ingenious brain. And yet, what lad could ever have started in the world under apparently more hopeless circumstances than widow Janet Telford's penniless orphan shepherd-boy Tam, in the bleakest and most remote of all the lonely border valleys ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... have but done our duty today, and knighthood is far too great a reward for our poor merits. Sure it has been honour and glory enough to fight by your side, and win this gallant day. We are but poor youths, without home or friends. How could we receive a reward which we could not worthily wear? A penniless knight without servant or esquire would cut but a sorry figure. Nay then, sweet Prince, let it be enough for us this day to have won these gracious words at your lips. It may be when fair fortune has smiled upon us, and we are no longer poor and nameless, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... exactly what wages I think necessary to make them comfortable. The sum is not determined at all by competition; but sometimes by my notions of their comfort and deserving, and sometimes by theirs. If I were to become penniless to-morrow, several of them would certainly still serve ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... for me somewhere, but, oh, I wish it had come in father's life-time. We were so poor then; but," she added, as a bright smile broke over her face, "I am glad for you, Grey, that I shall not be a penniless bride." ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... exceedingly foolish to adopt such airs. No doubt you are disappointed in not being the sole heiresses of our aunt, but you ought not to have expected it for a moment. She had for a long time regretted making that rash will, which was drawn up when her heart was full of pity for your penniless condition. Only, being in such robust health, she always put off doing it until this last sad illness of hers. Where do you ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... horse much wealth?" The fellow looked at me as if I were hardly in my right mind to put the question, and retorted, "How can a horse have wealth?" Thereat I dared to lift my eyes from earth, on learning that after all it is permitted a poor penniless horse to be a noble animal, if nature only have endowed him with good spirit. If, therefore, it is permitted even to me to be a good man, please recount to me your works from first to last, I promise, I will listen, ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... canst not gain the end that thou dost seek. For even if I have the foolish will (And I assure thee that I have it not) To bring thee back to all the luxury, The silken clothes, the soft and perfumed beds, The shining jewels of thy girlhood days, I could not. I am almost penniless. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... gather interest, and went away to Woodbury. It was the day before Christmas when I reached the little Jersey town, and it was also by good luck Sunday. I was hungry and quite penniless. I wandered about until church had begun, because I was sure then to find Aunt Rachel and Peninnah out at the service, and I desired to explore a little. The house was closed, and even the one servant absent. I got in ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... hour hence I'll be going through a mad march of the incidents of the day, turned topsy-turvy according to the way of dreams. But wae's me! wae's me! If it had all been true—if I had been really homeless and friendless and penniless, instead of having three 'goolden' pounds in my purse, and Providence in the person of Mrs. Jupe, to fall back upon! When I grow to be a wonderful woman and have brought the eyes of all the earth upon me, I am going to be good to poor girls who have no anchorage in London. John Storm was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... by time and trials. He began to think the accounts he had occasionally heard, of his old flame, must have been incorrect; it was scarcely possible she should look so calm, and even cheerful, if her father, the Presbyterian minister, had actually left her not only penniless, but burdened with the support of a bed-ridden step-mother, and a house full of younger brothers and sisters. We leave him to satisfy his curiosity as ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... practice, he declares, has well-nigh ruined him financially, and totally wrecked his temper. He can curse a man and cry over a baby; and he would go as far and work as hard for the illiterate and penniless backwoodsman in his cabin home as for the president of the Bank of Corinth or even ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... money on sound security at reasonable interest. Just so! Note of hand of any respectable person sufficient. That's all right. Advance at a few hours' notice. Excellent! Let me see, the address is Fitz-Guelph Mansions, W. That sounds respectable enough. A penniless shark would hardly live there. By Jove, I'll write, and make an appointment at his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Unpopular, pure, and penniless, if the gospel story were not true, how could it have had preachers? They at least ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... changed. He had loved her without hope. Now a faint grey began to show in the blackness of his mental horizon. It might be a false dawn, but what a lightening of the heavy heart—what a leap of the stagnant blood—answered to it! He was no longer penniless. He had never loved money or thirsted for estate, but the thought of that sum of seven thousand pounds solidly invested, and the house that stood in its walled garden on the cliffs at Herion, looking out on the wild, tumbling ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... ever. Would this woman steal her pocketbook? How could she ever get away from the place if penniless? ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... should have been attending to the mill, he had picked up enough to show him that the strange gentleman had no mind to have his proceedings as to the little Jan generally known. This and some sort of traditional idea that "sharp," though penniless men had at times wrung a great deal of money from rich people, by threatening to betray their secrets, was the sole foundation of George's hopes in connection with the letter. It was his very ignorance which hindered him from seeing the innumerable chances against his getting to know any thing ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Austria almost as severely as the Great Napoleon had done. The Dobronowskas were let alone in the imperial city on the Seine; but, unfortunately, the important state functionaries soon became as tired of the countess's plaints as their brothers on the Neva. Reduced to the shifts of the penniless aristocrats, the two lived like the shabby genteel. They made a desperate attempt to entrap their Grand-duke again. But the victim had warning and the pair were stopped at Warsaw. Here a beam of the sun, long withheld, glanced through the clouds and transiently warmed "the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... into the cities their lands and farms have been laid waste, their houses burned, their cattle stolen. They will be turned out of the cities penniless and homeless, and exchange the certainty of dying of hunger in the crowded city for the equal certainty of dying of hunger in the desolate ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... old, he left his father's house, and went out into the world to gain for himself an education, to choose his religion and his life-work. He found a home for a time with kinsmen, but was soon driven from them as an apostate, and alone and penniless he had to make his own way among strangers. He went from place to place, studying diligently, and maintaining himself by teaching Hebrew. Through the influence of a Catholic instructor, he was led to accept the Romish faith, and formed the purpose of becoming a missionary to his ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... been joined by others on the route, and the Major informally reviewed his men. Never, surely, was there such a regiment! never, surely, did any regiment go on such an errand! Ragged many of them; ignorant all, fanatical, penniless, they determined, in spite of all arguments, to proceed. He pointed out that if they could be so easily scattered when they were thousands strong, every one of them would be cut down or captured before they were twenty miles on the road. He was answered as before with contempt and ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... beautiful things began to arrive Betty told Ma that she had taken her in when she was poor and homeless and absolutely penniless, and now all these things were her reward, and Betty couldn't do enough ever to thank her for what she had done for her. They had offered a five-thousand-dollar reward for news of her, and Ma had done more than ten thousand and thousands of thousands of dollars' worth of holding ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... some of it was dropped; this man is always penniless; he has not drawn his wages, and yet he is half tipsy and treating his companions. I hope I am not suspecting him wrongfully, but it looks bad, Lindon, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... which greatly raised the old gentleman in my estimation, took an early opportunity to acquaint me with the fact that, though some of Italy's best blood flowed through his niece's veins, she was absolutely penniless. That, however, made no difference whatever to me, excepting that it perhaps rather stimulated my ardour than otherwise. I loved your mother for herself; even then I was doing good work, or, at all events, work which was well ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... arranged between these amiable parents and their intended son- in-law, that the bride elect was informed of the fortune in store for her. But all the time that the lawyers had been preparing the marriage settlements, a young penniless gentleman named Philip Brian had been finding out for himself the way to Julia's heart, and these two had pledged their faith to each other only a few days before Sir Julian and Lady Lorrington ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... was only a shade less white than his thick, white hair was that he, T. Victor Sprudell, president of the Bartlesville Tool Works, of Bartlesville, Indiana, was going to starve! To freeze! To die in the pitiless hills like any penniless prospector! His check-book was as useless as a bent weapon in his hand, and his importance in the world counted for no more than that of the Chinaman, by his side. Mr. Sprudell lay down again, weak from ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... she acquainted him with her love for Kuno, whom, she declared, she had fully resolved to marry. At this avowal her father worked himself into a furious passion, and assured her that she should never be the bride of such a penniless adventurer. After further insulting the absent Kuno, and alluding in a most offensive manner to his daughter's lack of discernment and good taste, he quitted her bower, assuring her as he went that she should become the bride of Kurt on ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... themselves. In 1869, the "protectors of women" enacted a law which exempted a homestead from being sold for the payment of debts so long as the man who held it might live, while it allowed his widow and children to be turned out penniless and homeless. It was not until 1875 that this law was so amended that the exemption extended to the widow ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... four months before this story opens, leaving his affairs in a condition of such hopeless disorder that the family lawyer had only just succeeded in disentangling them, with the result that the widow had found herself left almost penniless, with no apparent resource but to allow her daughter Lucy to go out into a cold, unsympathetic world to earn her own living and face the many perils that lurk in the path of a young, lovely, innocent, and unprotected girl. ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the marriage articles of her parents; and twenty years of careful husbandry, during which every shilling had been scrupulously devoted to accumulation, had quite doubled the original amount. So far from being penniless, therefore, Maud's fortune was often alluded to by the captain, in a jocular way, as if purposely to remind her that she had the means of independence, and duties connected with it. It is true, Maud, herself, had no suspicion that she had been educated altogether ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... dropping the substance for the shadow. He would have gone back to look for them, but he'd spent most of his little capital in that wild-goose chase, and the miserable remnant oozed away like water in a place where the barest necessaries of life cost fabulous prices. Soon he became stranded, practically penniless. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Dick's single oath, which could not now be tested by cross-examination, amounted to nothing. He had been a drunkard and a pauper,—had descended to the lowest occupation which the country afforded, and had more than once nearly died from delirium tremens. He had then come home penniless, and had—produced his story. If such evidence could avail to rescue a prisoner from his sentence, and to upset a verdict, what verdict or what sentence could stand? Poor Dick's sworn testimony, in Judge Bramber's mind, told rather ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... that, he has made you accept him for your husband. Yes, he has conquered you, as a cat conquers a bird, fascinating the poor wretch with its hateful green eyes. You are quite young enough and pretty enough to win a good man's regard, if you were a penniless unprotected widow, needing a husband to shelter you and provide for you. But you are the natural victim of such ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... it. Poor fellow! Young, generous, disdaining obligation, never knowing the want of money, how must he have felt on being left quite destitute, penniless, running in arrear for absolute necessaries; in debt to a good woman who lived by letting lodgings, and who dunned him, after so long a delay, in so indirect and delicate a manner!—What must he have suffered, accustomed to regard you as a father, and knowing you had no personal calls for your ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... be proud, boy; though I like thee none the less for thy pride and thine independence of spirit. But thou must not be penniless as thou goest about this city; and if one uncle gave thee gold, why not another? So no more words about it. Take it, and begone to thy chamber; for we are simple folks that keep early hours, and I am generally abed an hour ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... stern caution and proud reluctance with which he had been received. 'Colonel Mannering might have had more politeness,' he said to himself. 'It is not every man that can bring a good chance of 400 Pounds a year to a penniless girl. Singleside must be up to 400 Pounds a year now; there's Reilageganbeg, Gillifidget, Loverless, Liealone, and the Spinster's Knowe—good 400 Pounds a year. Some people might have made their own of it in my place; and yet, to own the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... theatre at Vienna, for which he wrote several of his best pieces, and when he made Haydn's acquaintance his reputation was high throughout the whole of Europe. Naturally, he did not live so near the clouds as Haydn—his rooms were on the third story—but he heard somehow of the friendless, penniless youth in the attic, and immediately resolved to do what he could to further his interests. This, as events proved, was by ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... sleep, eat, nor amuse himself, he is brooding over his million, it makes him run about all over Europe; he worries himself, goes to the devil in every way that man has invented. Then comes a liquidation, such as I have seen myself, which very often leaves him penniless and without a reputation or a friend. The spendthrift, on the other hand, takes life as a serious game and sees his horses run. He loses his capital, perhaps, but he stands a chance of being nominated Receiver-General, of making a wealthy marriage, or of an appointment of attache ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... the implication at the time; to do him justice, had Silvia been penniless she would still have attracted him as no other woman ever had. It was partly her personal charm, partly her music. It may be true that the world of art is still the world, but it is a very different ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... this century, being old meant being poor. When President Roosevelt created Social Security, thousands wrote to thank him for eliminating what one woman called "the stark terror of penniless, helpless old age." Even today, without Social Security, half our nation's elderly would ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... one of the most delightful stories Mr. Chambers has ever written. It is the romance of a bewilderingly pretty girl and a young New York society man. Just as they come to know each other, Fate steps in and renders them both penniless by wrecking the great firm in which their fortunes are invested. How the idle young man, without occupation or profession, is moved to swing about and take up the business of life in dead earnest is told with ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the solitary traveller was quite as cheerless as the scene without. Friendless and penniless; incensed to the last degree; deeply wounded in his pride and self-love; full of independent schemes, and perfectly destitute of any means of realizing them; his most vindictive enemy might have been satisfied with the extent of his troubles. To add to his other miseries, he was by this ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... was a penniless tramp, who had wandered from Chicago on a predatory trip, to take any property he could lay his hands on. The chance that presented itself here was tempting to a ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... as Mademoiselle Hortense does not find a husband nowadays if she is penniless," Crevel remarked, resuming his starchiest manner. "Your daughter is one of those beauties who rather alarm intending husbands; like a thoroughbred horse, which is too expensive to keep up to find a ready purchaser. If you go out walking with such a ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... trust. If there had been any necessity for giving a power of attorney when she went to Europe she would have drawn it in his favor without hesitation, so completely had she forgotten her earlier incitements to precaution....If she had, no doubt she would have returned to find herself penniless. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... And yet, when he looked back, and thought how free from debt he might have been, nothing but reproach, however vaguely directed, reproach of the past generally, seemed to fill his heart. To turn out in the world, a free man, though penniless, would have been widely different from turning out, plunged over head and ears ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... exactly why she had nerved herself for the venture into the single women's quarters. Leaving him out altogether, it seemed to her that there was something rather fine in the way that the sergeant and the petty officer who was going out almost penniless to Canada, had saddled themselves with the task of looking after those helpless lads. It was wholly unpaid labor, for which the men who preferred to remain within the safe limits of the saloon deck would presumably get the credit. After all, she decided, there were, ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... resting on her bosom, Carolina carried some twenty-eight dollars earned as a laundress to Kay and her mother; while in the pocket of Pablo's new corduroy breeches reposed the two hundred-dollar bills; given him by the altogether inexplicable Senor Parker. Knowing Brother Anthony to be absolutely penniless (for he had taken the vow of poverty) Pablo suffered keenly in the realization that Panchito, the pride of El Palomar, was to run in the greatest horse race known to man, with not a centavo of Brother Anthony's money bet on the result. Pablo knew better ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... castle at Rimini, and afterwards allowed him to escape, a Venetian commissioner brought him back, stained as he was with fratricide and every other abomination. Thirty years later the Malatesta were penniless exiles. In the year 1527, as in the time of Cesare Borgia, a sort of epidemic fell on the petty tyrants; few of them outlived this date, and none to t heir own good. At Mirandola, which was governed by insignificant princes of the house of Pico, lived ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... cheerful outlook with which to begin three years of penniless matrimony. Royal, suavely smiling, and smoking on the terrace, wondered suddenly if old Madame Carter, who had always been ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... his manner so almost fierce. He begged her to take time; he implored her to reconsider; and he went away at last like a man utterly desperate. At the last he forgot himself and charged her with caring for an adventurer; a penniless fortune-hunter who might forsake her at any moment; and then he recounted word for word the things said in that conservatory episode; the things that were imparted to ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... which had managed to sustain her spirits so far, dropped to zero at this bad news. There she was, penniless, in a strange town; and how could she get through all the long, weary hours until the evening? Gulping down a lump in her throat, she asked the sailor if the cargo vessel were already in the harbour, and if it were possible that she might go on board ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... is, as he even now told us, utterly alone in the world, and penniless too, I fancy. When poor Lacroix came out with the regiment, and brought her with him, it was in the hope that he might ultimately obtain a grant of land here in New France and settle down upon it, for what little property he had was thrown away upon a worthless son, ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... wish to do. I should be above the influence of dross. And for myself I am. Would that I might suffer alone! And this is not all. The man who has effected my ruin owes every thing to me. I found him penniless, and raised him to a condition that should have inspired him with regard and gratitude. I would have trusted that man with confidence unbounded. I did entrust him with my all, and he has beggared and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of this scheme which drives penniless women to the street or to suicide is John M. Gibbs, principal owner ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thing more. The money your father left with me—the savings of his life—six hundred pounds—it is all gone. He intrusted it to me, and made his will, appointing me your guardian; such confidence he had in me. I have made both him and you penniless." ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... realising the whole import of the news. A railroad would mean immeasurable good fortune to the trio of settlers who, like young prairie-chickens that fear to leave the side of their mother, had chosen quarter-sections near the guarding fort. And to him, penniless, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the miseries of uncertainty to encounter; his coat grows bare in the cuffs, greasy in the neck, and brown between the shouthers; his jawbones get long and lank, his een sunk, and his head grey wi' vexation, and what the wise Solomon calls 'hope deferred'; so at long and last, friendless and penniless, he takes the incurable complaint of a broken heart, and is buried out of the gate, in some bit strange ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... would have caught at a straw; how much more consent to be picked up by the vessel of an enemy! All objection, all scruple, vanished at once. And the "barbaric gold" "of Ormus and of Ind" glittered before the greedy eyes of the penniless adventurer! Not a day was now to be lost. How fortunate that a written proposition, from which it was impossible to recede, had been made to him before the failure of his matrimonial projects had become known! Too happy to quit Paris, he would set off on the morrow, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Prelude, "the dark and vaulted gateway," is not unworthy of Hawthorne, who, I suspect, had studied Mrs. Radcliffe. The theme is more like a theme of this world than usual. The parents of a young noble might well try to prevent him from marrying an unknown and penniless girl. The Marchese Vivaldi only adopts the ordinary paternal measures; the Marchesa, and her confessor the dark-souled Schedoni, go farther—as far as assassination. The casuistry by which Schedoni brings the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... not only a great surprise to me, but grieves me very much. I am very sorry to hear it—more sorry than I can tell you. As you remind me, if I leave Homeville I shall not go almost penniless as I came, but I shall leave with great regret, and, indeed—Ah, well—" he broke off with a ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the unfortunate man was found dead, with his brains scattered over the carpet. Thus in one fatal night were my only brother and myself made orphans—nor was this our only misfortune, for the notary who had the charge of our joint patrimony, absconded, and left us penniless. Why need I dwell on the painful details of our poverty and its attendant miseries? Suffice it to say that I resisted a hundred offers from men of rank and wealth, who would have maintained me ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... which passed under the approving eye of the old war horse himself and is full of his characteristic pecksniffery.[49] His beginnings, it appears, were very modest. When he arrived in New York from the Connecticut hinterland, he was a penniless and uneducated clod-hopper, just out of the Union army, and his first job was that of a porter in a wholesale dry-goods house. But he had in him several qualities of the traditional Yankee which almost always insure ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... poverty, his mother insisted that nothing more should be granted him than an annual allowance of fifteen hundred francs (less than 300 dollars), and that he should meet all his needs out of this sum. Honore would have accepted a bare and penniless liberty ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... with subdued agitation told Madame Blanch that this time she was come not to purchase but to ask a favour. Misfortune was heavy on her; and, though not penniless, she was so reduced by her husband's illness and the loss of L. 14,000 by shipwreck, that she must employ what little talents she ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and watched the effect of her words. After a pause she resumed by alluding to Laura's offer to remain with her always, without marrying; and while poor Laura listened with a feeling as if the very earth was sinking beneath her feet, Mrs. Jaynes reminded her that she was a penniless orphan, who had been maintained for years by the bounty of one upon whom she had no claim, except that she was the sister of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... shabby, penniless little Peri, stood at the gilded gates disconsolate. I didn't like it. The mystery of the unknown beatitude within the Wonder Houses oppressed me to faintness. It was unimaginable. Through the leaves of a tree I could see the pale Queen Galeswinthe; but through those gay enchanting walls ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Elle etait ravissaure!' ... We were cousins, much thrown together; 'both were so young, and one so beautiful!' ... I was but a penniless cornet in those days—hardly more than a boy. Happily an unsuspecting Frenchman of good family was there who had loved her long, and she married him. 'Il etait ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive—but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals—cats—when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something more in these ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... only two dollars to begin life in New York on! The Marquess was very nice about it, and said he didn't want any of Dyckman's dirty money. But Kedzie thought of life in England with alarm, especially as she had the American comic-opera idea that all foreign peers are penniless. She dreaded to think what might happen in that three months' interregnum between husband II and husband III. Enough was happening in the rest of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... found himself one day without aught and the world was straitened upon him and his patience failed; so he lay down to sleep and gave not over sleeping till the sun burnt him and the foam came out upon his mouth, whereupon he arose, and he was penniless and had not so much as one dirhem. Presently, he came to the shop of a cook, who had set up therein his pans[FN9] [over the fire] and wiped his scales and washed his saucers and swept his shop and sprinkled it; and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... bodily, but his brain was functioning clearly; and, it might be added, swiftly—as the brain always acts when confronted by a perplexing riddle. No matter how swiftly he pursued this riddle, he could not bring it to a halt. Why had Ruth married him? A penniless outcast, for she must have known he was that. Why had she married him, off-hand, like that? She did not love him, or he knew nothing of love signs. Had she too been flying from something and had accepted this method of escape? But what frying-pan could ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... but not by any means penniless, king of Roman beggars, with a European reputation, unequalled, in his own profession—there sat the most scientific beggar that the world has ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... took place in the years before the five-cent theaters had become a feature of every crowded city thoroughfare and before their popularity had induced the attendance of two and a quarter million people in the United States every twenty-four hours. The eagerness of the penniless children to get into these magic spaces is responsible for an entire crop of petty crimes made more easy because two children are admitted for one nickel at the last performance when the hour is late and the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Amsterdam when Dolph Heyliger got himself born there,—a graceless scamp, though a brave, good-natured one, and being left penniless on his father's death he was fain to take service with a doctor, while his mother kept a shop. This doctor had bought a farm on the island of Manhattoes—away out of town, where Twenty-third Street now runs, most likely—and, because of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... invalid; has been an invalid for years—that's why so little is known about him. He's dying of consumption. The doctors hold out no hope for him, and now, with the fear preying upon him of leaving his wife and children penniless, he is wearing away so fast that any hour may see his end. And I have to meet his eyes—such pitiful eyes—and the look in them is killing me. Yet, I was not to blame. I could not help—Oh, Miss Strange," she suddenly broke in with the ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... liked in the community; but it must be owned that, as the Mayor and man of money, engrossed with affairs and ambitions, he had lost in the eyes of the poorer inhabitants something of that wondrous charm which he had had for them as a light-hearted penniless young man, who sang ditties as readily as the birds in the trees. Hence the anxiety to keep him from annoyance showed not quite the ardour that would have animated it in ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... discomposes me. 'Nothing is extraordinary,' as that good creature Dr. Sampson says. He must have thought it would answer, in one way or another, to have a gentlewoman at the head of his table; and I was not penniless, bien entendu. Failing in this, he found a plain little Thing, with a gloomy temper, and no accomplishments nor graces; but her father could settle twenty thousand pounds. He married her directly: and that is a trait. He sold his father's and grandfather's house and place of business, in spite ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of the same day two footsore, despondent, and penniless men stood facing the ruins of the home of a comrade who had sent a message to his mother. 'Tell mother I am coming.' The ruins yet smoked. A relative of the lady whose home was in ashes, and whose son said, 'I am coming,' stood by the 'survivors.' 'Well, then,' he said, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... poetic. London-pride is the commonest of all the saxifrages; but the one of which I speak is as different from London-pride as a Plantagenet upon his throne from that last Plantagenet who died obscure and penniless some years ago. It is a great majestic flower, which plumes the granite rocks of Monte Rosa in the spring. At other times of the year you see a little tuft of fleshy leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges and dark ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... on the back of his head. Her boy—who had gone so bravely to work when the father was killed at his machine, leaving them penniless; her boy—who had laughed and sung and whistled and diffused hope and courage and made her feel that the burden was not a burden but a joy for ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... social existence that he had usurped. This was the Secret, and it was mine! A word from me, and house, lands, baronetcy, were gone from him for ever—a word from me, and he was driven out into the world, a nameless, penniless, friendless outcast! The man's whole future hung on my lips—and he knew it by this time ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... keep two of these for yourself, and if I should ever be penniless, and you have gold, I know you will aid me in a pinch. The wine nature of your soul needs ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce |
