"Destitution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... existence and the survival of the fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy. The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine of evolution, contain a powerful massing of evidence in favor of laissez ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to play the solid part of an English country gentleman of the good old- fashioned kind. It was pitiful to think of a man of his stamp forced by the vile exigencies of a narrow purse to scheme and fight against the advancing tide of destitution. And Ida, too,—Ida, who was equipped with every attribute that can make wealth and power what they should be—a frame to show off her worth and state. Well, it was the way of the world, and he could not mend it; but ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... said Silas, awe-struck. "I never see such a terrible time. I wish I'd told Bert to tell the burglar to go back the same way he came, and we wouldn't fire at him. I don't want to be too hard on the transgressor. Mebbe he's driven to his evil ways by destitution." ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... wages. Defoe, in his Giving Alms no Charity, pointed out the obvious objections to the workhouse considered as an institution capable of competing with the ordinary industries. Workhouses, in fact, soon ceased to be profitable. Their value, however, in supplying a test for destitution was recognised; and by an act of 1722, parishes were allowed to set up workhouses, separately or in combination, and to strike off the lists of the poor those who refused to enter them. This was the germ of the later 'workhouse test.'[82] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... people, when informed of my intention to buy a man out of the Turkish Army had pronounced it madness. I did not know the people of the land as they did. I should be pillaged, brought to destitution, perhaps murdered. They, who had lived in the country twenty, thirty years, were better qualified to judge than I was. For peace and quiet I pretended acquiescence, and my purpose thus acquired a taste of stealth. It was with the feelings of a kind of truant ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... calamities that we have undertaken this work, in which it is proven conclusively that the "Reds," unless quickly thwarted, will overwhelm us with unspeakable horrors of crime, rebellion, anarchy and destitution. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... the brood were not involved in this graceless agitation. The complaints stopped with Guinivere. Harold, Rosemary and Rutherford were too young to realise the state of destitution into which the family had fallen. They were quite happy, contented and, so far, unaware of the gravity of a situation which was more or less apparent to their elders. Frederick, Marie Louise and Wilberforce formed the higher group of malcontents, and their mutterings reached ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... poor, but grandmother was foolishly, inconsistently proud, and though compelled to sew for our daily bread, she dressed me in a style incompatible with our poverty, and contrived to send me to school. Finally her eyes failed, and with destitution staring open-jawed upon us, she reluctantly consented to do the washing and mending for three college boys. She was well educated, and inordinately vain of her blood, and how this galling necessity humiliated her! We of course could employ no servant, and once when she was confined to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... time you first noticed me, when you were a sweet child of seven summers and I a boy of twelve—yes, winters—for while all your years had been summers, dear—summers of love, shelter, comfort, luxury—all my years had been winters of loss, want, orphanage, and destitution—you were my help, support, inspiration. I longed to be worthy of your friendship, your interest, your sympathy. And for all these things I toiled, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... his unnatural daughters; the old Lear, who out of a foolish tenderness has given away every thing, is driven out to the world a wandering beggar; the childish imbecility to which he was fast advancing changes into the wildest insanity, and when he is rescued from the disgraceful destitution to which he was abandoned, it is too late: the kind consolations of filial care and attention and of true friendship are now lost on him; his bodily and mental powers are destroyed beyond all hope of recovery, and all ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... stolen by contractors or allowed to fall into the hands of the French. While the members of the Junta discussed the titles of honour which were to attach to them collectively and individually, and voted themselves salaries equal to those of Napoleon's generals, the armies fell into a state of destitution which scarcely any but Spanish troops would have been capable of enduring. The energy of the humbler classes alone prolonged the military existence of the insurrection; the Government organised nothing, comprehended nothing. Its part in the national movement was confined to a system of begging ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... it happened that the poor boy who, without any fault of his mother, had come into the world with a stigma on his birth, now, without any neglect of his father, was left in a state of complete destitution as well ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship;—a good heart wants some object to be kind to—and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits, suffer most under the destitution. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... salaries, and to put down electioneering corruption. In 1809 Erskine introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1810 there were earnest, if somewhat futile, debates on spiritual destitution, the non-residence and poverty of the clergy, and the scarcity of places of worship. Moreover, early in 1811, a premonitory symptom of the repeal movement caused some anxiety in Ireland. It took the form of a scheme for a representative assembly ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... and Ahmad Shah the Durrani, [26] pillaged our home. Having sustained such various misfortunes, I abandoned that city, which was my native land, and the place of my birth. Such a vessel, whose pilot was such a king, was wrecked; and I began to sink in the sea of destitution! a drowning person catches at a straw, and I sustained life for some years in the city of 'Azim-abad, [27] experiencing both good and bad fortune there. At length I left it also—the times were not ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... majority were dismissed with pensions or secluded in monasteries. Edward and his nobles took good care to make a large profit out of the transaction. The resources of the Temple alone kept the king from destitution during the period between the death of Gaveston and his reconciliation with the earls. Many barons laid violent hands on estates belonging to the order, and long held on to them despite papal expostulation. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... because nobody counted them—that would have been quite contrary to oriental indifference and fatalism—and then because it would have been excessively difficult to make them out, in the confused ash heap which had taken their place. The number of families reduced to destitution must have been very considerable, but individual charity is very liberal amongst the Mussulmans, as indeed amongst all people possessed of religious faith. I got home, at one o'clock in the morning, worn out. Shortly afterwards ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... his outcries and sulky resistance Trina had induced her husband to consent to such a move, bewildering him with a torrent of phrases and marvellous columns of figures by which she proved conclusively that they were in a condition but one remove from downright destitution. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... fort, on their return towards the States, they met a Mexican and a little boy, who were in great destitution and grief. They had been left with a band of six, among whom were the boy's father and mother, to watch their animals grazing in a fertile meadow. They were suddenly attacked by a party of thirty Indians, who either captured or killed all of the party ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... it be wise to dwell upon such horrors only? Would a humorous anecdote of the happy gratitude of a child for a cast-off toy be good to produce emphasis? Which would make the most emphatic ending—the absolute destitution, the amount to be supplied, the relief afforded, or the happiness to donors for sharing in such a worthy charity? You can see how a mere mental planning, or a shuffling of notes, or a temporary numbering of topics will help ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... amount of his property—such as was left after paying the huge fine to Government. Tamiya Yoemon and Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei underwent degradation from the caste. There was no disposition to overlook the offence of usury. Beggary was to be the portion of Yoemon, the destitution of the outcast. For some years the senile old man, the virago of a woman once the wife of Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei, were stationed at the Nio[u]mon, to attract and amuse the worshippers passing up to ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... futurity. It is perhaps not in the power of a man whose attention has been divided by diversity of pursuits, and who has not been accustomed to derive from others much of his happiness, to image to himself such helpless destitution, such dismal inanity. Every object of pleasing contemplation is at once snatched away, and the soul finds every receptacle of ideas empty, or filled only with the memory of joys that can return no more. All is gloomy privation, or impotent desire; the faculties ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... contents of his pockets. A handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme was appalled before such destitution. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... children on their shoulders; small black boys learned on their back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its plumage. How weak is imagination, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the rise of sanitary science began to drive back the invasions of the grosser and more destructive infectious diseases which had hitherto kept the population down. The result was that new forms of disease, distress, and destitution arose; the old stability was lost, and the new prosperity produced unrest in place of well-being. The social consciousness was still too immature to deal collectively with the difficulties and frictions which the ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... another form of spectacle at Rome, in its way as significant of cruelty and ruthlessness, the Triumph, each occasion of which signified some nation conquered or army defeated, and thousands slain or plunged into misery and destitution. The victorious general to whom the senate granted the honor of a triumph was not allowed to enter the city in advance, and Lucullus, on his return from victory in Asia, waited outside Rome for three years, until the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... there to make his studies and his charts. He made them so thoroughly that he died of yellow fever before having begun his work, having come to the end of his money and leaving his widow in the most cruel destitution. Countess Larinski said to her son: "We have nothing more to live on; but, then, is it so necessary to live?" She uttered these words with an angelic smile about her lips. Abel set out for California. He undertook the most menial services; ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... The entire destitution of religious privileges which Mills had witnessed in the West and South, and the great desire of the people for the word of God, with their inability to supply themselves, made him eager for the formation of a National ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... the whole outer world seemed laid under a tribute to the great industry. As a system it was far from perfect. It contained in itself all kinds of gross injustices, demands that were too great, wages that were too small; in spite of the splendour of the foreground, poverty and destitution hovered behind the scenes. But such as it was, the system worked: and it was the only one ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably flavoured wines.' The grapes are such mean and pitiful grapes as you would look at with contempt in Covent-Garden Market; and the very value of the soil contributes to its appearance of destitution—a rudely-carved stake marking the division of properties where a hedge or ditch would take up too much of the precious ground. The vineyards extend to the roadside, without any protection; and yet every living creature, whether man or animal, eats grapes habitually, morning, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what 'we' (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable-looking woman is called into the boardroom, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. 'Where do you live?' inquires one of the overseers. 'I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William's-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... labour; on the sea is terrour: in a foreign land, he that has money must live in fear, he that wants it must pine in distress: are you married? you are troubled with suspicions; are you single? you languish in solitude; children occasion toil, and a childless life is a state of destitution: the time of youth is a time of folly, and gray hairs are loaded with infirmity. This choice only, therefore, can be made, either never to receive being, or immediately ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... that is, by handfuls of millions, but then the whole community gives more, I think, than our community does, and when it does not give, the necessary succor is taxed out of its incomes and legacies. I do not mean that there is no destitution, but only that the better off seem to have the worse off more universally and perpetually in mind than with us. All this is believed to be very demoralizing to the poor, and doubtless the certainty of soup and flannel is bad ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... in being creative rather than possessive in a world which is wholly built on competition, where the great majority would fall into utter destitution if they became careless as to the acquisition of material goods, where honor and power and respect are given to wealth rather than to wisdom, where the law embodies and consecrates the injustice of those who have toward those who have not. In such an environment even ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... two visitors, though they expected to see poverty, were greatly surprised at the look of extreme destitution visible everywhere. Old Parker Clare, now a cripple scarcely able to move, was crouched in a corner, on what appeared to be a log of wood, covered with rags; while his wife, pale and haggard in the ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... with her, and after a short period, having married her, became himself an actor. They continued six or seven years in the theaters of the principal cities, and finally died, within a few weeks of each other, in Richmond, leaving three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie, in utter destitution. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... disposing all things"? Meantime "Philosophy" itself had assumed much of what we conceive to be the religious character. It had even cultivated the habit, the power, of "spiritual direction"; the troubled soul making recourse in its hour of destitution, or amid the distractions of the world, to this or that director—philosopho suo—who ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... carried with them, were going to, or returning from, St. Hubert, after having been bitten by a mad dog. The polissons paid two ecus to the Coesre, but they earned a considerable amount, especially in winter; for benevolent people, touched with their destitution and half-nakedness, gave them sometimes a doublet, sometimes a shirt, or some other article of clothing, which of course they immediately sold. The francs mitoux, who were never taxed above five sous, were sickly members of the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... office, and nearly all my time was occupied in refusing passes outside of our lines. In a majority of instances, the applicants for the privilege of going into the Confederacy—many of them women—told the most sorrowful tales of destitution that could be relieved only by reaching their friends in the enemy's country; others urged, that a husband, a father, or a brother was enjoined by the physician to seek the country as the sole means of securing a return of health; in short, I was plied with every conceivable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Destitution in the Parks Where the Homeless Were Gathered—Rich and Poor Share Food and Bed Alike—All Distinctions of Wealth and Social Position Wiped Out by the Great ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Again. A well-known peer of the realm once sent his footman here with L100, asking me to take the footman's son. No. The footman could support his child. Gold and silver will never open my doors unless there is real destitution. It is for the homeless, the actually destitute, that we open our doors day and night, without money and without price. It is a dark night outside, but if you will look up on this building, the words, 'No destitute boy or girl ever refused admission, are large enough to be read ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... by General Fremont. When General Halleck came, he found and continued the system, and added an order, applicable to some parts of the State, to levy and collect contributions from noted rebels to compensate losses and relieve destitution caused by the rebellion. The action of General Fremont and General Halleck, as stated, constituted a sort of system which General Curtis found in full operation when he took command of the department. That there was a necessity for something ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... as many kinds of the inward as they would, and might practise those kinds with whatever consistency, intensity and brilliancy. Of our father's perfect gift for practising his kind I shall have more to say; but I meanwhile glance yet again at those felicities of destitution which kept us, collectively, so genially interested in almost nothing but each other and which come over me now as one of the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... was lost in securing the assistance of a surgeon, by whom he was bled. The poor man was shortly removed to St. George's Hospital, where he died at about eight o'clock on Saturday evening. He left a wife and three infant children in a state of destitution, without even the means ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... Portuguese?" asked Miss Elizabeth, smiling on the busy group. Miss Elizabeth was not a book-agent, but, moved by the religious destitution of the Portuguese, she had devised the plan of buying at some city book-store Bibles or Testaments in Portuguese, and then going into the surrounding country and hunting for Portuguese who could read. To such, on account of their poverty, Miss Elizabeth often sold for ten ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... vigorous. Modern priestesses, however, not unlike the prophets of antiquity, are subject to be scanted of due honor, or, at all events, of what is more essential than this as contributing to keep soul and body from parting company prematurely. The fact of her being in a state of destitution was notified not long ago to the magistrate of the Lambeth police-court, and that unappreciative functionary, while consenting to subscribe, with others, for her relief, openly expressed his conviction that she would be best off in the workhouse. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... many thriving establishments to be broken up, and even the ruin of some few individuals, who, although their capital was but small, yet having thrown it all into the common stock, when the community failed, found themselves in a state of complete destitution. These persons, then, forgetting the "doctrine of circumstances," and everything but the result, and the promises of Mr. Owen, censured him in no measured language, and cannot be convinced of the purity of his intentions in that affair. Indeed, they have always at hand such ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... letter reached me from my employers, requiring my presence at business. My money had long gone, my creditors pressed me on every hand, my friends one and all mocked at my destitution. I returned to —-, hiding before my employers the traces of my madness, and letting them wonder how grief had changed me. My home I could not go near—the sight of it and of the children would have driven me utterly ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... aside all obstacles due to his early habit and gave himself up lovingly and devotedly to Bengali literature. Though the meekest of men, he was full of fire which flamed its fiercest in his patriotism, as though to burn to ashes the shortcomings and destitution of his country. The memory of this smile-sweetened fervour-illumined lifelong-youthful saint is one that is worth cherishing by ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... surveying party for another railroad project, passing through this forest from St. Paul, whence they had started a month before with an ample wagon train. The Indians had murdered the drivers and captured the wagons with their entire property; and in their destitution they sought this only shelter. We took them forward with us into St. Paul, and were greatly indebted for their intelligent ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... something of the workings of those banks; and to everlasting infamy must be consigned the names of many of those conducting them, — men who robbed every one of these depositories of negro savings, and left the poor, child-like freedman in a physical state of destitution, and in a perfect bewilderment of mind as to who ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... stretches away for miles—flat, sad-coloured, and monotonous, fissured in every direction by channels of dark-tinted water, in which the very fish take the same sad colour. This tract is almost without trace of habitation, save where, at distant intervals, utter destitution has raised a mud-hovel, undistinguishable from the hillocks of turf ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... comfortable and that they had plenty to eat. Arthur Young, a famous English traveler who has left us an admirable account of his journeys in France during the years 1787-1789, found much prosperity and contentment, although he gives, too, some forlorn pictures of destitution. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... Winchester, Chichester, Malmesbury, and Hereford, all of which he reduced in a short time, entitled him, in the estimation of his admirers, to the quaint appellation of William the Conqueror. While the forces under Essex were suffered to languish in a state of destitution,[1] an army of eight thousand men, well clothed and appointed, was prepared for Waller. But the event proved that his abilities had been overrated. In the course of a week he fought two battles, one near Bath, with Prince Maurice,[a] the other with Lord Wilmot, near Devizes[b]: the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... describe the degree of destitution to which the peasant has been reduced, for without this destitution this criminal character would not have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... all our gold as well as of the necessities of life, using the fair name of trade, but in fact oppressing us as thoroughly as they possibly can. And there has been set over us as ruler a huckster who has made our destitution a kind of business by virtue of the authority of his office. The cause of our revolt, therefore, being of this sort, has justice on its side; but the advantage which you yourselves will gain if you receive the request of the Lazi we shall ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... about. This gift Agapita [and Basilius] now seek to annul. Provinus is exhorted at once to throw up a possession which cannot possibly bring him any credit, and the loss of which has brought the poor woman to destitution. Alienation of property should be the act of a person having 'solidum judicium,' which this poor creature evidently had not, or she would not have ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... was already courageous enough. He said that these Eastern girls were not used to having any sort of attention; that there was only about a tenth or fifteenth of a fellow to every girl, and that it tickled one of them to death to have a whole man around. He was not meanly exultant at their destitution. He said he just wished one of these pretty Boston girls—nice, well dressed, cultured, and brought up to be snubbed and neglected by the tenths and fifteenths of men they had at home—could be let loose in the West, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... for my inseparable friend Anna, a noble-hearted English girl, who landed on our shores in destitution and sorrow, and clave to me as Ruth to Naomi, I had never lived through all the trials which this uncertainty and want of domestic service imposed on both: you may imagine, therefore, how glad I was when, our seminary property ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... asylum did not become generally known till many months after the event had taken place. In the meanwhile, however, the few persons who still took an interest in the 'Northamptonshire Peasant' heard vague rumours that he was living at home in a state of extreme destitution, productive at times of mental derangement, and on the initiative of the most energetic of these old friends another appeal was made to the public for pecuniary aid. Allan Cunningham was the first to call upon the admirers of Clare to help him in his distress, and the editors of various ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... is with the Royal Family. For the whole of them there are but three servants, of whom one, and one only, accompanied them from the Tuileries. In this state of destitution they demanded of Paris the restitution of what belongs to them in France; their property is under seizure, and has remained so notwithstanding their reclamations. For different reasons. One of the motives put forward by the Provisional Government is ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the Jews actually gained by the change from the illegal persecutions [in the form of pogroms] to the legal persecutions of the third of May? Maltreated, plundered, reduced to beggary, put to shame, slandered, and dispirited, the Jews have been cast out of the community of human beings. Their destitution, amounting to beggary, has been firmly established and definitely affixed to them. Gloomy darkness, without a ray of light, has descended upon that bewitched and narrow world in which this unhappy tribe has been languishing so long, gasping for breath ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... The common misery of destitution would have made a bitter mockery of a marked insistence on social differences. Gaspar Ruiz understood this in his simplicity. From his captivity amongst the Royalists he could give them news of people they knew. He described their appearance; ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... conflagration his youngest child, an infant, perished, he himself with his wife and remaining children escaping with difficulty. He joined the President, Sir T. Norris, who sent him with despatches to London, where he suddenly d. on January 16, 1599, as was long believed in extreme destitution. This, however, happily appears to be at least doubtful. He was buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer, and a monument was erected to his memory in 1620 by the Countess ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... depleted. For a time she managed to keep the wolf from the door by selling some of her old finery, dainty creations in point lace and chiffons, which she would never wear again, but when these were gone, blank destitution stared her in the face. A brief engagement she was lucky enough to secure after unheard-of exertions, helped matters for a while, but the show came to grief, and then things were as bad as ever. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... originally over-stated by the individuals who came forward to rouse the benevolence of their countrymen on behalf of the Highlands. We are by no means prepared to join in this view. It is impossible to describe the consequences of a coming famine with mathematical precision. Besides, the destitution is not yet over. And it is at least clear, even as to the past, that except for the exertions of the proprietors, which might or might not have been so largely made, the destitution would have fully borne out the predictions which were uttered. It could not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... critical. The hour vanished in a slow mist of abject misery and shame. But had he not learned to rejoice over all dead hopes, and write Te Deums on their coffin lids? And now he stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess and ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in his very soul. He had tried to pray his own prayer while the deacon prayed his; but there had come to him no reviving—no message for this handful of dull souls—there were nine of them in all —and ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... rarest wine were carried into the fields, their ends were knocked out with hatchets, and the liquor was carried about in stoups. The burn of Thirlestane literally ran with wine." Sir Robert died soon afterwards, and left his family in utter destitution, his wife dying in absolute beggary. Thus was avenged the crime of this cruel and unprincipled woman, whose fatal jealousy caused the ruin of ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Laura had a lively vision of the guilty creature, in rags and tatters, slinking along walls and sleeping under bridges, eternally moved on by a ruthless London policeman (her only knowledge of extreme destitution being derived from the woeful tale of "Little Jo").—And to think that the beginning of it all had been the want of a trumpery tram-fare. How safe the other girls were! No wonder they could allow themselves to feel shocked and outraged; none of THEM knew what ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Moses, with deep commiseration, and seemingly oblivious of the fact that he was himself pretty much in similar destitution at that moment. ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... gravely,—"makes a futile attempt semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he periodically turns a frigid eye upon their destitution." ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... actual need as far as money was concerned, and a destitution of interest more to be pitied, Oliver passed in obscurity through the University. The Rev. Charles Goldsmith, dying in 1747, made the position of his son even more precarious and pathetic, and a career of mishap and misunderstanding still harder to endure. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... Tappertit, being removed from a hospital to prison, and thence to his place of trial, was discharged by proclamation, on two wooden legs. Shorn of his graceful limbs, and brought down from his high estate to circumstances of utter destitution, and the deepest misery, he made shift to stump back to his old master, and beg for some relief. By the locksmith's advice and aid, he was established in business as a shoeblack, and opened shop under an archway near the Horse Guards. This being a central ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... measures of relief. After Shiloh, that Golgotha of our brave boys, the Governor organized a large corps of surgeons and nurses, and went himself to Pittsburg Landing to find such suffering and such destitution as ought never to exist on the soil of our bounteous land, under any possible conjuncture of circumstances, however untoward and unprecedented. Without surgeons or surgical appliances, without hospital supplies, and, above all, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... coincided eagerly. "Why couldn't he come along? There will be plenty of room if I operate the car. It is a case of destitution of which Uncle Percival has just learned—a widow and three children actually suffering. Surely it can do no harm for Captain West to ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... been year after year sinking farther into the depths until at a moment when she was in her distress and saddest plight her manufacturing system broke down, "protection, having destroyed home trade by reducing," as Mr. Atkinson says, "the entire population to beggary, destitution, and want." Mr. Cobden and his friends providentially appeared, and after a hard struggle established a principle for all time and for all the world, and straightway England enjoyed the sum of human happiness. Hence all good nations should ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... when that message reached him, a vivid sense that he was a condemned and disgraced man suddenly flooded in on him; a passionate gratitude seized him to the young aristocrat who had thought of him in his destitution and condemnation, who had even thought of his dog; and Rake the philosophic and undauntable, could have found it in his heart to kneel down in the dust and kiss the stirrup-leather when he held ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... warfare with sharp counter-measures. If Great Britain in her fight against Germany summons hunger as an ally, for the purpose of imposing upon a civilized people of 70,000,000 the choice between destitution and starvation or submission to Great Britain's commercial will, then Germany today is determined to take up the gauntlet and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... party actuated by like anxieties and precautions, departed with its charges, leaving pitiable destitution behind; leaving mournful conditions in camp,—conditions attributable as much to the work of time and atmospheric agencies as to the deplorable expedients to which the starving were ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... terminated the proceedings by knocking down the host. The disgrace was too much for the poor lad. He forthwith sold his books and belongings, and ran away, vaguely bound for America. But after considerable privations, including the achievement of a destitution so complete that a handful of grey peas, given him by a girl at a wake, seemed a banquet, he turned his steps homeward, and, a reconciliation having been patched up with his tutor, he was received once more ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... answered Anthony, "of about six hours standing. My friend Mr. Vereker found me upon the road and took pity on my destitution. It is to Peregrine we are indebted for the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... There is much destitution felt by people whose pride prevents them from asking for supplies from the relief committees. I saw a sad little procession wending up the hill to the camp of the Americus Club. There was a father, an honest, simple German, who had been employed at the Cambria works ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Trinity Fair on the little crowded market-place at Palma. The prediction had caught the popular fancy. Tomaso's poverty, it must be remembered, was a proverb all over the island. "As poor as Tomaso of the Mill," the people said; it being understood that a church mouse failed to suggest such destitution. Moreover, the gipsy foretold that Tomaso should make his own fortune with his own two hands, which added to the joke, for no one in Majorca is guilty of such manual energy as will lead ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... we have already seen, was on that day united to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. It had been preceded by a well-designed but most indelicate satire, labelled Royal Nuptials, published by J. Johnstone on the 1st of April, in which the prince is seen landing on our shores in a state of destitution, with a pitiable lack of certain necessary articles of clothing, which are being handed to him by John Bull in the guise of a countryman. The dramatis personae are seven in number: Prince Leopold, John Bull, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... of the Countess of Drogheda on the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells, and by secretly marrying her incurred the King's displeasure. He was finally reduced to great distress, but James II., recognising his talent, gave him a pension, and saved him from destitution in his ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... But his blood was red and all a-tingle with the joy of life, and he was very loath to die. His heart yearned for the girl who loved him. His desire for her was a stabbing agony. The thought of his mother's destitution, deprived of him in her old age, was grievous. But his anguish was over the girl—anguish for himself; yet more for her. The drizzle of the fog on his cheeks brought again a poignant memory of the mist that had enwrapped them on the stark rocks of the mountain. A savage revolt welled in ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the cross in Gisippus' stead? And what but friendship had left no place for suspicion in the soul of Titus, and filled it with a most fervent desire to give his sister to Gisippus, albeit he saw him to be reduced to extreme penury and destitution? But so it is that men covet hosts of acquaintance, troops of kinsfolk, offspring in plenty; and the number of their dependants increases with their wealth; and they reflect not that there is none of these, be ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... must have a hired servant to help her spend his limited earnings. Ten years afterward, you will find him struggling on under a double load of debts and children, wondering why the luck was always against him, while his friends regret his unhappy destitution of financial ability. Had they, from the first, been frank and honest, he need not have ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... and terrible corn famine fell upon our island. The fisheries had failed that season, and the crops had been blighted two years running. Miserably poor at all times, ill-clad, ill-housed, ill-fed at the best, the people were in danger of sheer destitution. In that day of their bitter trouble the poorest of the poor trooped off to Bishop's court. The Bishop threw open his house to them all, good and bad, improvident and thrifty, lazy and industrious, drunken and sober; he made no distinctions in ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... the vicar's wife, "how is she to be told? It is heart-rending to look at her and to think,—nothing but luxury all her life, and now, in a moment, destitution. I am very glad to have her with me: she is a dear little thing, and so nice with the children. And if some good ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... mother and elder sister excused the poor creature who sobbed under their kisses and begged their pardon. However, when they gazed at each other with red eyes and dry lips, they measured the fall of the family; they saw for the first time how frightful were their destitution and distress; they felt the unbearable feeling of shame glide into their hearts like a sinister and unexpected guest who, at the first glance, makes one understand that he has come to be master of the lodging. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dogs at the castle. She had none of Strap's veneration for the epithet of gentleman. Eliza owned to a "sneaking kindness for people of quality." But Mary cared only for a man's intrinsic merit. His rank could not cover his faults. Therefore, with the misery and destitution of so many men and women staring her in the face, the amusements and occupations of the few within Lady Kingsborough's household continually grated upon her ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... four-and-twenty popular bodies, each at liberty to decide for itself, and none bound to respect the decisions of others; and each at liberty, too, to give a new constitution on every new election of its own members? Would any thing, with such a principle in it, or rather with such a destitution of all principle be fit to be called a government? No, sir. It should not be denominated a constitution. It should be called, rather, a collection of topics for everlasting controversy; heads of debate for a disputatious people. It would not be a government. It would not be adequate to any practical ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... in possession of the city; he had just come through the quarter that had been destroyed by the fire, and had seen above fifty sick deprived of all care and reduced to destitution. Here something could be done; here was a way of showing the angry populace that their advisers and leaders were not sitting with their hands ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not owing to the rich, but mainly to themselves; that there was ordinarily remunerative labor enough for them; and that, but in exceptional cases of sickness and especial misfortune, those who fell into utter destitution and beggary came to that pass through their idleness, their recklessness, or their vices. That was always my opinion. They besieged our door from morning till night, and I was obliged to help them, to look ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the case, so it became necessary to economize in every way; but, why should wives concentrate all their economy on the waist of a dress? When chest protectors are so cheap as they now are. I hate to see people suffer, and there is more real suffering, more privation and more destitution, pervading the Washington scapula and clavicle this winter than ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... trees. There was no german that morning, and the hotel band was going through its repertoire for the benefit of a champagne party on the lawn. There was nothing melancholy about this party; and King couldn't help saying to Mrs. Farquhar that it hardly represented his idea of the destitution and depression resulting from the war; but she replied that they must do something ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... proportion to, that superiority, how is culture or progress to be propagated so as to benefit the species as a whole, and how are those gradually amended organizations from which we hope so much to be secured? If, indeed, it were ignorance, stupidity, and destitution, instead of mental and moral development, that were the sterilizing influences, then the improvement of the race would go on swimmingly, and in an ever-accelerating ratio. But since the conditions are exactly reversed, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... discredit of the English government, no army was ever so ill provided with the means of prosecuting such an enterprise. The engineer officers were exceedingly zealous; and many of them were well versed in the theory of their business. But the ablest trembled when reflecting on their utter destitution of all that belonged to real service. Without a corps of sappers and miners, without a single private who knew how to carry on an approach under fire, they were compelled to attack fortresses defended by the most warlike, practised, and scientific ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... terrible among all the horrors of destitution is that it gives ground for calumny and ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... frequently saw and tried to console him. On the other hand the cripple, though forty years old, and in a state of health which it is impossible to describe, fell positively in love with the young girl, who alone of all the ladies who visited him combined wit with perfect modesty. He pitied her destitution. There was mutual pity, and we all know what passion that ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... esteemed it, was below him in station; and, in his pride, he refused to acknowledge her, and, having squandered the property that should have been applied to her support, absconded from the country. In after years, however, conscience drove him back, but only to find her dying of destitution and a broken heart, and to learn from her last words that the offspring of their connection, a male infant, had been thrown unacknowledged on the charity of the public. Aroused by a new sense of duty, he diligently sought for the child—followed it from its first lodgment ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... being reconciled and ameliorated with profusion of oil, the entire comestible making glad the heart of the godly and causing his face to shine. But the person of spiritual unworth is successfully tempted to the Adversary to eat of lettuce with destitution of oil, mustard, egg, salt and garlic, and with a rascal bath of vinegar polluted with sugar. Wherefore the person of spiritual unworth suffers an intestinal pang of strange complexity and ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... It is such extreme destitution that drives women to crime. In an English paper-mill, where the girls worked at counting the sheets in a room by themselves, and made good wages, they were all well-behaved and respectable. In another department of the same mill, where the work was dirty and the wages only a shilling a day, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... New York, only about one-fourth attend any place of worship. These facts and figures are startling, but they are, nevertheless, true. These precious souls, for whom Christ died, must be made the object of our affection. Our knowledge of the spiritual destitution of the down-town masses is strictly based upon our experience and observation. And hence we say that a house to house visitation, systematically arranged, constitutes one of the essential characteristics of Christ-like work. He labored not only in ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... Poor-Law led to investigations which revealed the true conditions of the peasant's life—its destitution, recklessness, and dependence. We tried to mend matters by inducing families to emigrate, but this renewed the distrust which had at first beheld in the schools an attempt to enslave the children. Even accounts, sent home by the exceptionally enterprising who did ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cringing, crafty look, thus sueing for a sovereign. For he had the air of a ruined gentleman, not of an ordinary beggar, and the signs of refinement in his face and bearing made his state of abasement and destitution more apparent. But Oliver was not touched by any such sentimental considerations. He looked at first as if he were about to refuse his brother's request; but policy dictated another course. He must not drive to desperation the man in whose hands lay his character and perhaps ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... globe artichoke, upon it), and sometimes the 'son of Yermak' (because his father had, like that hero, been drowned in the Irtish). But in spite of those nicknames, in spite of his ridiculous garb, and his absolute destitution, every one was fond of him, and indeed it was impossible not to be fond of him; a sweeter, nobler nature, I imagine, has never existed upon earth. He was very good ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the citizens of these States look for the co-operation and support of the National Government in relieving the pressing cases of destitution for food, clothing, and shelter, which are beyond the reach of local efforts. The authorities who have communicated with the Executive recognize that their first and most energetic duty is to provide ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... doesn't count. I shall get a sludgy paragraph in the papers for the Grosser Carl, headed 'Gallant Rescue,' with all the facts put upside down, and twelve months later there'll be another paragraph about a 'case of pitiful destitution.'" ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... unrelaxing attendance on the sick the malady that now poisoned her own life owed its origin; that to one wretched relative she had been a support and succour in the depths of self-earned degradation, and that it was still her hand which kept him from utter destitution. Miss Helstone stayed the whole evening, omitting to pay her other intended visit; and when she left Miss Mann it was with the determination to try in future to excuse her faults; never again to make light of her peculiarities or to laugh at her plainness; and, above all things, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... consequences of exposing himself to the operation of the penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point. They show how warm and deep were his human affections, and what a tender and loving heart ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... which mendicancy indicates. A little thought, however, will soon bring the matter home to us. It has been remarked of some great town, that there are as many people living there in courts and cellars, or at least in the state of destitution which that mode of life would represent, as the whole adult male population of London, above the rank of labourers, artisans, and tradesmen. Probably we should form the most inadequate estimate of this court and cellar population, even after a long sojourn ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... not an ace of their damned Covenant in all their discourses," wrote Hyde. The dispute between Montrose, on the side of honour, and that of Lanark, Lauderdale, and other Scottish envoys, ended as—given the character of Charles II. and his destitution—it must end. Charles (January 22, 1650) despatched Montrose to fight for him in Scotland, and sent him the Garter. Montrose knew his doom: he replied, "With the more alacrity shall I abandon still my life to search my death for the interests of your Majesty's honour and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... that she had no choice between these long walks and utter destitution for herself and her children; but she said, cheerfully, that it was only since the weather had become so warm that she had found the walk at all beyond her strength, and the hot weather would soon be ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command. Here comes to me Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading and inwrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. Tis a great destitution to both that this should not be entertained with large leisures, but, contrariwise, should be ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... had been reading in some history about a poor fellow who was persecuted for his religion in Charles the First's time—some dissenter who got into the grip of Laud, was imprisoned, and then brought to destitution by being forbidden to exercise each calling that he took to in hope of earning bread. The end was, he went mad and died. Lilian was crying over the story; it made her wretched for ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... she sat and brooded, and brooded, and thought, and thought, how to be beforehand with destitution. Ay, though she had still five gold pieces left, she saw ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... weeks he began to distinguish in the squalor of the faces that surrounded him the separate causes of their malady—to know drink from disease, dissipation from destitution, the drug-habit from hunger. Complexion and facial expression stood more than dress as an indication of trade, habit, and environment; from physiognomy he began to learn history, and from Monday's streets a commentary on the linked sweetness long ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... hope that you may be able to send some comforts for these suffering men. Some two or three thousand have been sent to an island in the East River, most of them South Carolinians, and all in great destitution. Your hearts would ache as mine does if you knew all I hear and know is true of the sufferings ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... became a Government Inspector of Land Improvements and Drainage Works, and in that capacity went to Bantry, where I saw the appalling destitution caused by the famine, with which I shall ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... nature of the missing link is discovered. It is found in the Endymion (a circular walled plain) in company with a small kind of reindeer, the elk, the moose, and the horned bear, and is described as the biped beaver. It 'resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect than in its destitution of a tail, and its invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in its arms like a human being, and moves with an easy gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... his head too, in business and money matters—and now, of course, more than ever—was at his wits' end. He discussed the disquieting, threatening problem with some friends of Chopin, and through one of them the composer's destitution came to the knowledge of Miss Stirling. She cut the Gordian knot by sending her master 25,000 francs. [FOOTNOTE: M. Charles Gavard says 20,000 francs.] This noble gift, however; did not at once reach the hands of Chopin. When Franchomme, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the destitution that prevails in a Koom-Posh, THAT is impossible with us, unless an An has, by some extraordinary process, got rid of all his means, cannot or will not emigrate, and has either tired out the affectionate aid ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... merely on the strength of her own deep, prophetic conviction of her fitness for a dramatic career, but on the ground of an urgent and bitter necessity for exertion on her part, to ward off actual destitution and suffering,—he exclaimed, somewhat impatiently,—"Why, Zelma, it is an impossibility, almost an absurdity, you urge! You could never make an actress. You are too hopelessly natural, erratic, and impulsive. You would follow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... marquis to this pass? Famine, destitution, disease, and the Iroquois were making Canada their prey. The fur trade had been stopped for two years; and the people, bereft of their only means of subsistence, could contribute nothing to their own defence. Above Three Rivers, the whole population was imprisoned ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... indignation that he, who was the cause of all their miseries, was the only person exempt from the punishment; adopting and settling his kingdom upon a bastard and foreign son, he took no thought, they said, of their destitution and loss, not of bastards, but lawful children. These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... word "homeless" has implications of aimless drifting, of destitution and misery, and of the indifference of a "homeless" man to "his" country. Certain advocates of cosmopolitanism in their agitation against patriotism often take advantage of the importance of home in the relation of a man to his country when they appeal to the "proletarians": "Do you own anything? ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... suspended specie payment, manufactories were forced to stop work, and paralysis fell on the whole industry of the nation. It was estimated that ten thousand persons were thrown out of employment. These soon used up their earnings, and destitution and suffering of course followed. Their condition grew worse as cold weather came on, and many actually died of starvation. At length they became goaded to desperation, and determined to help themselves to food. Gaunt men and women, clad in tatters, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley |
