"Penniless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... mother grabbed him by the arm, and the three hurried away from me in the direction from which I had come. The man looked back and made a face at me, shaking his fist. I was left penniless in the road. A milestone told me that I was ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... consider me in the very least. If I married this Lesley Brooke, Lady Alice and all the Courtleroys would no doubt get into an awful rage with her and you and me and everybody; and what would be the upshot? Why, they would cut her off with a shilling and we should be next door to penniless. Then Brooke—well, he may be fairly prosperous, but he has only what he makes, you know; and I doubt if he could settle very much upon his daughter, even if he wanted to. And he does not like me. I doubt ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Morton, that she is a sweetly pretty, good girl," he answered; "and as, instead of being an heiress and a marchioness, she is likely to be penniless, I've made up my mind to splice her, if she will have me, as I couldn't otherwise look after her properly when her old father slips his cable, which he ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... penniless, if the gospel story were not true, how could it have had preachers? They ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... much more than a girl; but you—though you and she are of the same age—you are a woman. You know your world, upstairs and downstairs, boudoir and kitchen. Yet you own you have encouraged her in this, made her clandestine meetings with this penniless beggar possible. You—! you deserve to be ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... Suzanne?" he said, astonished. "Why surely you must understand that the question is, do you still intend to marry me? When I begged you to take me some months ago I had much to offer; to-day if things be as I am sure they are, I am but a penniless Scottish gentleman, while you are one of the richest and most noble ladies in ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... many months before it can take the field successfully. We were all anxious to reach California; our "all" was embarked in the expedition, and by the providence of God it has been swept away, and we are now penniless and destitute. We claim that our tour of duty in California has been performed, by every military principle, we have suffered more in the last three weeks than we could, ordinarily, during a five-year tour in California. "We have marched off parade," sought our destination, and been ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... in his way a young girl, charming, penniless, and alone in the world. He married her. This was in 1855, and the following year brought to Dr. Reynaud a great sorrow and a great joy—the death of his old mother and the birth of his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dolls and talking dolls and dolls who could suck real milk out of real bottles into tin-lined stomachs. Some exquisitely gowned porcelain Parisiennes, with eyelashes and long hair cut from the heads of penniless children, were almost as big and as aristocratic as their potential millionaire mistresses. Humbler sisters of middle class combined prettiness with cheapness, and had the satisfaction of showing their ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... I could find words strong enough to express my horror of your plot—a plot every way disgusting. You plainly know something to Mark Wylder's discredit; and you mean, Stanley, to coerce him by fear into a marriage with your penniless sister, who hates him. Sir, do you pretend ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... charged at enormous prices, 8403. -(recalled, p. 210). Truck is a great cause of pauperism, as it makes the poor careless and the rich fearless. If man dies, the goods he leaves will be taken by his creditor, and his widow and family left penniless, 8637. -(recalled, p. 376). Corrects his previous evidence, and gives evidence as to prices of meal and flour, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... heard all that before, Gregory. Don't talk it any more. How can you blame me if I did not wish to marry a penniless man absolutely without prospects?" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... man has brought up the child, whom he took to be his son, and then sets up a home, and after he has acquired children, decides to disinherit the foster child, that son shall not go his way [penniless]; the father that brought him up shall give him one-third of a son's share in his goods and he shall depart. He shall not give him ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... had been honored for so many years. The good Dr. Leslie must be fast growing old, and, though he would miss his adopted child, it was reasonable that he should be glad to see her happily anchored in a home of her own, before he died. If Nan were friendless and penniless it would make no difference; but nevertheless, for her sake, it was good to remember that some one had said that Dr. Leslie, unlike most physicians, was a man of fortune. And nothing remained but to win an affection which should match his own, and this impatient ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... gave him up, before many years had passed. M. de Lomenie, in his interesting sketch of Beaumarchais, has tried hard to show the justice of his demands on the United States, but without much success. He does not attempt to explain how Beaumarchais, notoriously penniless in 1775, should have had in 1777 a good claim for three millions' worth of goods furnished. The American public looked upon Paine as a victim to state policy, and his position with his friends did not suffer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... find it here. Remember that you are nearly thirty years old, and that you are nothing but an obscure Bohemian—a penniless correspondent of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... ungrateful—hundreds of pounds had he given Ned Strong—been his friend for life and kept him out of jail, by Jove—and now Ned was taking her ladyship's side against him and abetting her in her infernal, unkind treatment of him. "They've entered into a conspiracy to keep me penniless, Altamont," the baronet said: "they don't give me as much pocket-money as Frank ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Fairclough, who was considered a blue-stocking, instead of with her younger sister Nell, whom Mrs. Hammersley had chosen for him. Why Mrs. Hammersley desired her wealthy stepson to marry one of Dr. Fairclough's penniless daughters was a secret. How the secret became known, and nearly wrecked the happiness of Kathy and Ronald, is told in the story. But all ends well, and to the sound ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... present attraction were propitious. What could he say to this girl, so adorably strong-minded, to convince her of his claim to be again treated as a man and a brother? Letters? He had offered them to her last night, and she had replied that any one could write letters. Should he show that he was not penniless? She might tell him in the same tone that it was wealth ill-gotten. It was no doubt her very ignorance of the world that, when suspicion had once occurred, made her reject as unimportant these evidences of his respectability, but he had no power ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... miracle of love requited; and he had too much humility and naivete of soul to presume that such a thing could ever come to pass. And even if it should, there remained the insuperable barrier of her fortune, in the face of which the pretensions of a penniless adventurer could ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... simple—as simple as his wardrobe had grown. All his clothes were on his back. In a week or two he would be on the streets; for a poor widow could not be expected to lodge, partially board (with use of the piano, gas), an absolutely penniless young gentleman, though he combined the blood of twenty county families with the genius of a ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Lord Byron remarks, in a note, "and will do so, till they obtain a loan. They have not a rap, nor credit (in the islands) to raise one. A medical man may succeed better than others; but all these penniless officers had better have stayed at home. Much money may not be required, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... had dreaded, her grandfather stole away, and did not come back until the night was far spent. Worn out as she was, she sat up alone until he returned—penniless, broken spirited, and wretched, but still hotly bent ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... taverns or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget that occasion of his going to London to be examined by a committee of the House of Commons, when he suddenly disappeared with all his money in his pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a waggon containing 372 copies of rare editions of the Bible? All were fish that came to his net. At one time you might find him securing a minnow for sixpence at a stall—and presently afterwards he outbids some princely collector, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the principal port through which the emigrants leave Ireland. Young and old, when the "emigration fever" is rife, the tides of people may be seen flowing oceanwards. Sometimes they have a little money, and are going to better themselves; but most usually they are going out penniless to relatives abroad, or "just trusting in God." Not an unfrequent sight is to see bare-footed peasant children waiting for their turn to cross the gangway which leads to the New World. Perhaps they have nothing with them but "a pot of shamrock," or a ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... the struggle to pay her foreign loans and indemnities, China was also virtually penniless. The impossibility of arranging large borrowings on foreign markets without the open support of foreign governments—a support which was hedged round with conditions—made necessary a system of petty expedients under which ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... bout of fever I felt terribly weak. I was kindly looked after for a few weeks by some friends, but it was imperatively necessary that I should, at the earliest possible date, once more begin to earn a livelihood. I was now absolutely penniless. Manual labor was, for the time, quite out of the question. The least physical exertion, more especially if it involved bending down, caused a sickening sense of dizziness and loss of vision. For some little time I resembled one of those ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... said this, the king put into Audun's hand a leather bag, full of silver, saying, "Take this, and even if your ship goes down, you will not be entirely penniless." ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... ship letter. Guthrie Carey was in port. He had been there long enough to hear the news that Deborah Pennycuick was penniless, and that Claud Dalzell had deserted her. So he had written to her at length—the longest letter of ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... in session far into the night of March 3d. Sectional feeling ran high. Two fist-fights occurred in the House and at least one in the Senate.[290] It seemed as though Congress would adjourn, leaving our civil and diplomatic service penniless. Douglas frankly announced that for his part he would rather leave our office-holders without salaries, than our citizens without the protection of law.[291] Inauguration Day was dawning when the dead-lock was broken. The Senate voted the appropriations bill without the rider, but ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the sovereigns Jim made off with: he missed The money more than the son—small blame to him: Though why grudge travelling-expenses to good-riddance? And still, 'twas shabby to pinch the lot: a case Of pot and kettle, but I'd have scorned to bag The lot, and leave the old folk penniless. 'Twas hundreds Peter blabbed of—said our share Wouldn't be missed—or I'd have never set foot In Krindlesyke; to think I walked into this trap For fifty-pound, that wasn't even here! I might have kenned—Peter ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... PENNILESS BENCH. Archdeacon Nares, in his Glossary, says of this phrase: "A cant term for a state of poverty. There was a public seat so called in Oxford; but I fancy it was rather named from the common saying, than ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... been instituted, to which everyone had been compelled to submit, no clue to the thief had been found. Dr. Talmage was profoundly impressed by the misfortune of these two men, who after months of exposure and fatigue were now obliged to walk ashore penniless. A number of these four hundred passengers had brought back an aggregate of about $4,000,000 from the Klondike; but many among them had brought back only disappointment, and their haggard faces were ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... pay my servants 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... suitable to the special season or landscapes in which I found myself, choosing this or that terrace or garden for a catastrophe, as if for a statuary group. Thus squires should be swindled in long rooms panelled with oak; while Jews, on the other hand, should rather find themselves unexpectedly penniless among the lights and screens of the Cafe Riche. Thus, in England, if I wished to relieve a dean of his riches (which is not so easy as you might suppose), I wished to frame him, if I make myself clear, in the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... who, young, thoughtless, and enamoured as herself, easily succeeded in persuading her to elope with him to Scotland. There, at the altar of Vulcan, the beautiful daughter of the Earl of Courtland gave her hand to her handsome but penniless lover; and there vowed to immolate every ambitious desire, every sentiment of vanity and high-born pride. Yet a sigh arose as she looked on the filthy hut, sooty priest, and ragged witnesses; and thought of the special license, splendid saloon, and bridal pomp that would have attended her ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of Piacenza, 'following them like lacqueys waiting on their lords.' The same thing happened at Parma and Modena, while the Duke of Ferrara kept supplying the foreigners with food and money. Clement meanwhile was penniless in Rome. Rich as the city was, he had so utterly lost credit that he dared not ask for loans, and was so feeble that he could not rob. The Colonnesi, moreover, who had recently plundered the Vatican, kept him in a state of terror. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... of the single-minded sincerity of the man, who gave up everything to become an officer of the Salvation Army, but, exhibiting a sad want of that capacity for unhesitating and blind obedience on which Mr. Booth lays so much stress, was thrown aside, penniless—no, I am wrong, with 2s. 4d. for his last week's salary—to shift, with his equally devoted wife, as he best might. I wish I could induce intending contributors to Mr. Booth's army chest to read Mr. Redstone's story. I would particularly ask them ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... SENSE.—A coat that has the mark of use upon it, is a recommendation to the people of sense, and a hat with too much nap, and too high lustre, a derogatory circumstance. The best coats in our streets are worn on the backs of penniless fops, broken down merchants, clerks with pitiful salaries, and men that do not pay up. The heaviest gold chains dangle from the fobs of gamblers and gentlemen of very limited means; costly ornaments on ladies, indicate to the eyes that are ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Denville, in common with the reader, suspects her own father of being guilty, while the father is convinced that the real criminal is his eldest son. Stuart Denville himself, the Master of the Ceremonies, is most powerfully drawn. He is a penniless, padded dandy who, by a careful study of the 'grand style' in deportment, has succeeded in making himself the Brummel of the promenade and the autocrat of the Assembly Rooms. A light comedian by profession, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... with the spoils of the indolent southerners. The southern people are growing poorer every day, in the midst of their slaves and their vast landed estates: whilst every day sees the arrival amongst them of some penniless Yankee, who presently turns the very ground he stands upon into wealth, and departs a lord of riches at the end of a few years, leaving the sleepy population, among whom he has amassed them, floated still farther down the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... in Dresden and sought refuge with her widowed mother. Her father, a Court-Councillor, dismissed because of the relations between the Duke and his daughter, died of grief and mortification, almost penniless. And the Ducal widow is as poor as the mother—and three children to bring up! Children of the royal blood of Saxony, children sanctioned by the Church of which they prate so much, for there is no doubt that the pair married ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... that did sound rather selfish," he hastened to confess, "but the truth is that I do not yet realize that I am actually a king. That I, a few hours ago a penniless artist, should be plunging into a national movement as its leader, its king, seems nothing short of a dream. But tell me, Duchess, from whom we ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... be omitted, that, in their censures on this occasion, none ever mentioned the sum contained in the paper which Allworthy gave Jones, which was no less than five hundred pounds; but all agreed that he was sent away penniless, and some said naked, from the house of his ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... tottered back to her lodgings, and threw herself on the bed in wild despair. What was to be done for food even for her boy? Her husband had not only his pocket-book with him containing his larger money, but had taken her purse! She was alone and penniless in a strange city! The hungry wailings of her witless child towards evening at length aroused her from the stupor of despair into which she had fallen. The miserable resource of pawning occurred to her: she ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... were thus the Earl married again,—the penniless daughter of a noble house,—a woman not young, for she was forty when he married her, but more than twenty years his junior. It sufficed for him that she was noble, and as he believed good. Good to him she was,—with a duty that was almost excessive. Religious she was, and self-denying; ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... Naples man is a swindler, as already remarked, he behaves unlike one. A swindler would have tried to entrap a woman of property into a marriage—he might have seduced, but would not have married, the penniless Teresa Corona, giving what money he had to her father. When arrested, the man had not in money more than 160 pounds. His maintenance, while in prison, was paid for by the Viceroy. No detaining charges, from other victims, appear to have been lodged against him. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... bind Henry of Bolingbroke. But when the Earl of Cambridge returned to Elsinore, he was rewarded for his labours, not with money nor lands, but by a grant of the only thing for which he cared—the gift of Anne Mortimer. He was penniless, and so was she. But though poverty was an habitual resident within the doors, love did not fly ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... as she called her sons, would be soon home. The poor farmer made a virtue of necessity, told his story, and surrendered his gold to Jean's custody. She made him put a few shillings in his pocket, observing it would excite— suspicion should he be found travelling altogether penniless. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... an enemy in the world, even then some tramp could come along and clean out the camp. Humph! Two tramps, if they wanted to work for a little while, could carry away all the food there is here. What a lot of poor, penniless muckers ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... Roman firmness, was absolutely determined that her son should not marry "a penniless girl whose education had been so flagrantly neglected, who was vain and flighty, with a mocking humour and a conspicuous lack of principle." At this point the story becomes exceedingly interesting. A Balzac would strip it of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Mr. Yorke, that for a mere penniless adventurer to aspire to a rich woman's hand ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... herself, but accepted the offer of a home for her son. She knew that it would be a home where, in charge of his aunt Millicent, her boy would receive every advantage of care, education and culture. So she kissed him good-by and left him there, and she herself, ill, penniless and wretched, went back to live with her father on the little farm at Cobb's Corners, five miles away. But all that was ten years before, and Pen was now fourteen. That he had been well cared for was manifest in his clothing, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... Well! well! we'll see about that. Be good, girl, and love your old uncle, and I daresay he won't leave you penniless. But, pommy word! look here, child, we must ask him here to stay a few days. He won't be bringing old Owens Garthowen here, I hope; couldn't ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... the penniless orphans could claim two thousand instead of two hundred bales, and thought it possible they would find three thousand bales and upward. On the strength of his permit without special limit, he had purchased, or otherwise procured, all the cotton he could find in the immediate ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... father? Betrayed by artful declamation, they rush into conspiracies against the existing government, are detected, ruined, and perhaps finally lose their lives! Who gains by rebellion, but a few penniless wretches, that embrace these vaunted principles from the urgency of their necessities? They acquire plunder, under the mask of extraordinary disinterestedness; and hazarding nothing of themselves but their worthless ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... schisms among the Turks, such misbelief among infidels as is now among scholars." The same author wrote a dialogue, Euphues and Atheos, to convince skeptics, while from the pulpit the Puritan Henry Smith shot "God's Arrow against atheists." According to Thomas Nash [Sidenote: 1592] (Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil) atheists are now triumphing and rejoicing, scorning the Bible, proving that there were men before Adam and even maintaining "that there are no divells." Marlowe and some of his associates were suspected of atheism. In 1595 John Baldwin, examined before ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... carriage drove away, the consul hurried back a little viciously to his fair countrywoman. "There!" he said, "I have done it! If I have managed to convey either the idea that you are a penniless orphan, or that I have official information that you are suspected of a dynamite conspiracy, don't blame me! And now," he said, "as I have excused myself on the ground that I must devote myself ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... you?" sharply. "But I will tell you where and how. Two winters ago a poor, bloated, penniless wretch took up his lodging in a cheap hotel in New York. He left it only to visit the gambling-houses near. An old friend of mine recognized Hugh, and warned me of his whereabouts. I went up to the city at once, but when I reached it he had disappeared. He had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... story of the unfolding of a woman's heart through marriage, as it is unfolded in the recent book of a novelist whom both the million-headed crowd and shoals of reviewers, of very uneven critical equipment, place 'well forward among America's novelists.' A penniless young woman brought up amid the standards of very common people marries for money, and comes to face the collapse of her dreams. She realises that she is tied to a man for whom she cares nothing. Also he is a brute, a typical bad egg of a husband ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... mighty gentlemen for six or seven hundred years, more or less. That is your point of view, and you know it. But if I say that my father worked hard to get what he got and deserved it, and was an honest man, and that this great personage of San Miniato is a penniless gambler, who does not know to-day where he will find pocket money for to-morrow, and has got by a trick the fortune my father got by hard work—then you will not like it. Then you will throw up your hands and cry 'Beatrice!' Then you will tell me that he loves me to distraction, and you will ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... literally penniless, he borrowed fifty francs from his employer. He first bought his wedding ring; it cost twelve francs out of the shop, but his brother-in-law purchased it for him for nine at the factory. He then ordered an overcoat, pantaloons and vest from a tailor ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Putnam Hall he had been a great bully, and had tried more than once to get the best of our heroes. But he had been foiled, and then he had drifted to the West and South, and there the Rovers had found him, away from home and practically penniless. They had set him on his feet, and he had gotten a position as a traveling salesman, and now he counted the Rovers his best friends, and was willing ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... children were neglected in the least particular. Making a virtue of necessity, she had come to be regarded in Wiltstoken as a model wife and mother. At last, when a drag ran over Mr. Goff and killed him, she was left almost penniless, with two daughters on her hands. In this extremity she took refuge in grief, and did nothing. Her daughters settled their father's affairs as best they could, moved her into a cheap house, and procured a strange tenant ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... house in the Quarter of the Fort, with an allowance of two hundred francs monthly; and he died in the belief their future was secured. But relatives fought the will with large means and shrewd lawyers, and won!... Yzore, the mother, found herself homeless and penniless, with three children to care for. But she was brave;—she abandoned the costume of the upper class forever, put on the douillette and the foulard,— the attire that is a confession of race,—and went to work. She is still comely, and so white that she seems only to be masquerading in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... money is missing; 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 ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... It was very dark outside, and a cold wind was blowing up. He stood, for a few minutes, on the corner, shivering, and wondering which way to go. He felt very wretched indeed; not so much because he was penniless and lost, as because he had been deceived, abused, and mocked. He saw through the whole scheme now, and wondered how he had fallen ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... precious things—life and time and money and "smartness" and the early freshness of purpose; and he had addressed himself to the pursuits of peace with passionate zest and energy. He was of course as penniless when he plucked off his shoulder-straps as when he put them on, and the only capital at his disposal was his dogged resolution and his lively perception of ends and means. Exertion and action were as natural to him as respiration; a more completely healthy mortal had never trod the ...
— The American • Henry James
... anxious to do so. He was a handsome young knight, much in favour with his sovereign, in whose court he had a mistress, whom he loved with infinite tenderness, and who was the daughter of Monsieur de Montmorency, a lord whose domains bordered upon those of the house of l'Ile Adam. To this penniless cadet the king had given certain missions to the duchy of Milan, of which he had acquitted himself so well that he was sent to Rome to advance the negotiations concerning which historians have written so much in their books. Now if he had nothing of his own, poor ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... undertaken for me at your age, and with your infirmities, daily and arduous toil, are you not indeed a sister of whom I may well be proud? Your nobility has a higher origin than mine. Reduced by political changes, which have left me homeless and penniless, I owe everything to you; and so tenderly do you minister to me, that even in this garret I could still almost fancy myself the noble Abbess ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... rara avis, a modest young man. That this American girl, penniless and pedigreeless, was beneath him, he never thought—of his own rank and wealth, as motives to influence her, he never once dreamed. Nothing base or mercenary could find a place in so fair a creature; so noble and beautiful a face must surely be emblematic of a still ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... actually pay toll to the keepers, and some penniless ones were brought before the magistrates and fined for trespass, "because they could not afford it," as Caroline said, and to the Colonel's great disgust she sent two sovereigns by Allen to pay their ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rage I could have throttled him then and there without a qualm; fear of the law alone held me back. I tried to dissuade him, but it was useless. I then bribed the servant sent to bring the attorney to report that he was out of town, and when that proved of no avail, I sent for Richard Hobson, a penniless shyster, whose lack of means and lack of principle I believed would render him an easy tool in my hands. He came; I was waiting to receive him, and we entered into compact, I little dreaming I was setting ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... provocation, bombarded him in his 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 ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... desolation into a silver dollar, then listened to his story—one that I had heard a hundred times within the year. Thrown out of employment by the business depression, he had tramped in search of work until he found himself penniless, starving in the streets of a strange city. He handed me a letter, dated St. Louis, written by his wife. Some of the words were misspelled and the bad chirography was blotted as if by falling tears, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and stood up when necessary, and, in short, went through the ordeal set him to do, without a murmur, he should be allowed to leave the circus that evening. It mattered nothing at all to little Orion that he did not know where he was to go, that he was a penniless and very small, very ignorant boy. The one object on which all his hopes were centered was the desire to get away from Uncle Ben and the terrible horses which ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... to see Rome; but how different the figures of the two men there! Erasmus goes with servants and horses, the polished, successful man of the world. Martin Luther trudges penniless and barefoot across the Alps, helped to a meal and a night's rest at the monasteries along the road, or begging, if the convents fail him, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... transform him from a small boy, living the simplest life in a quiet street, into an English nobleman, the heir to an earldom and magnificent wealth. It had taken only a few minutes, apparently, to change him from an English nobleman into a penniless little impostor, with no right to any of the splendors he had been enjoying. And, surprising as it may appear, it did not take nearly so long a time as one might have expected, to alter the face of everything again and to give back ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had fallen across it, and he no longer talked to her in the tone of half-affectionate familiarity he had grown to use with her, he was more reserved. She chafed at it, but she was not greatly downcast; she only wished that the kidnappers had had the grace to leave her in her part of the penniless governess, a few weeks longer. She felt that, then, all the millions in the world would not have barred Sir Tancred's way. Indeed, she had no reason to be greatly downcast. This sudden setting of her out of his reach had inevitably increased her attraction for Sir Tancred; it had deepened ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... said; "I had more faith in Mabel Harrington's pride. She glories in her son, you say—yet is willing to marry him to a penniless foundling." ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Penitent! Penniless! Where can she go? Her poor heart is aching With many a woe. Repentant—though sinning: Remorseful and sad, She weeps in the moonlight While others are glad. Shrink not away from her, Stained though she be: She once, as the purest, Was sinless and free: And ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... what she had to live on, she exchanged her somewhat comfortable room, where she could have a fire, for a cold, cheerless attic closet in the same house. "As I learn the business, they will give more," she thought, and the idea of going home penniless, to be laughed at by Mrs. Glibe, Miss Klip, and others was almost as bitter a prospect to her proud spirit as being a burden to her impoverished family, and she resolved to submit to every hardship rather than do it. By taking the attic room ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... Frank and that, although the gentleman wore fine attire, he was the manliest person he knew. Yet he was evidently wealthy, since he could afford to give away, or advance—to penniless Towsley this seemed the same thing—a five-dollar suit of clothing. So he hurried himself and brushed his hair, as far as he could reach around; and he tried to use all the accessories of his toilet which Miss Lucy had provided and he could understand. In ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... hazel eyes wearing an anxious expression. She was trying to discover where seams were to be placed and how gathers were to be hung; or if there were to be gathers at all; or if one had to be bereft of every seam in a style so unrelenting as to forbid the possibility of the honest and semi-penniless struggling with the problem of remodelling last season's skirt at all. "As it is only quite an ordinary brown," she had murmured to herself, "I might be able to buy a yard or so to match it, and I might be able to join the gore near the ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... objection," Mrs. Parton replied, "In point of family she was just as good as he, perhaps a little better. The colonel and I met a lady at Cape May who knew them well. This girl was left an orphan early, and through the rascality of her guardian found herself penniless at seventeen. She had inherited the artistic gift of her family, only in her it took the dramatic turn, and necessity and her surroundings all combined to lead her in that direction. Then just as she was making a success she gave it up to marry—" Another interruption, ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... imagine, the woman who brings to a penniless husband, not only herself but a fortune as well, is looked down upon in many countries? Why is the woman of the streets, who spends her sex earnings upon her lover, scorned universally? Is it not because both are unconsciously violating the code, or the trade "understandings," in giving ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... a long sigh. He could not blind himself to Tatsu's savagery. This was not the sort of husband that Ume had a right to expect from her father's choice,—a youth not only penniless, and without family name, but in himself unusual, strange, with look, voice, gesture, coloring each a clear contrast to the men that Ume-ko had seen. He could not bear the thought of her unhappiness, and yet, ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... enough of life, and are determined to die. Sooner or later, alone or together, we meant to seek out death and beard him where he lies ready. Since we have met you, and your case is more pressing, let it be to-night—and at once—and, if you will, all three together. Such a penniless trio," he cried, "should go arm-in-arm into the halls of Pluto, and give each other ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and had been civil and decorous in her language. And once more she was out of prison. The door closed behind her with a ponderous clang, and in her desolation she felt as if shut out of home—from the only shelter she could meet with, houseless and penniless as she ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... older civilization than that which had given Barney Ryan's daughter her frankness and her force, and it did not cross his mind that the heiress of millions might cast tender eyes upon the penniless sons of New England farmers. He said to himself with impatient recklessness that he ought not to and would not fall in love with her. There was too great a distance between them. It would be King Cophetua and the beggar-maid reversed. Clerks at one hundred and fifty ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... welcome; but as time went on his brother not unnaturally grew cool towards him, and he began to find himself one too many at the 'George Hotel.' 'I don't think brothers care much for you,' he said, as a general reflection upon life. Hurt at this change, nearly penniless, and too proud to ask for more, he set off on foot and walked eighty miles to Weymouth, living on the journey as he could. He would have enlisted, but he was too small for the army and too old for the navy; and thought himself fortunate at last to find a berth on board a trading dandy. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years is eloquent. Wherever there was a man, who had either a grain of faith in rubber or a little charity for a frail and penniless monomaniac, thither Goodyear made his way. The goal might be an attic room or shed to live in rent free, or a few dollars for a barrel of flour for the family and a barrel of rubber for himself, or permission to use a factory's ovens after hours ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... tall, 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
... as she had dreaded, her grandfather stole away, and did not come back until the night was far spent. Worn out as she was, and fatigued in mind and body, she sat up alone, counting the minutes, until he returned—penniless, broken-spirited, and wretched, but still hotly bent ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... father—a half-pay naval man. It was a case of love at first sight on both sides, and my darling and I made a match of it. My father is a rich man, but no sooner did he hear that I was married to a penniless girl than he wrote a furious letter telling me that he would never again hold any communication with me, and that ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... into your head that a jealous brother murdered the seducer. The young man died in the most commonplace way of a pleurisy caught as he came out of the theatre. A head-clerk and penniless, the man entrapped the daughter in order to marry into the business—A judgment from ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... conversation lay rather in studied epigrams than in impromptu repartees. But in his old electioneering contests he used sometimes to make very happy hits. When he came forward, a young, penniless, unknown coxcomb, to contest High Wycombe against the dominating Whiggery of the Greys and the Carringtons, some one in the crowd shouted, "We know all about Colonel Grey; but pray what do you stand on?" "I stand on my head," was the prompt reply, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... unexpectedly into her arms. This was something far beyond the magic touch of her lamp, and all the sweeter because it came to her as a personal gift, independent of her fortune. At least she felt so. It is permissible to doubt if Archie Davis would have been sufficiently stirred by a penniless girl to have spent his recent remittance in chasing her to Italy, but such fine discriminations about young love are cruel. Sufficient for them both, in these gray and golden hours of the June afternoon in Venice, that they had come together. In time Adelle ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... him to earth in Amsterdam. He was in handsome lodgings, but penniless. It was the first time I had conversed with him; and he, I believe, had never seen my face. I found him affable, specious, sanguine, but hollow as a drum. For her sake I took up and renewed the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... 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 ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... authorities gave the word. One would have thought, to hear the star's indignant lamentations, that he and his party were in a position to depart when they pleased. It would have been difficult to imagine that he was not actually rolling in money instead of being absolutely penniless. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... glimpse of his character was the cold brutality with which he treated Lady Ruth when she went to see him. Then we went down to his country place in Cornwall. There was a small child there, whose father had been the organist of the village, and who had died penniless. There was no one to look after her, no one to save her from the charity schools and domestic service afterwards. The church was on Wingrave's estate, it should have been his duty to augment the ridiculous ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... penniless woman two years his senior and handicapped by her disreputable belongings, was not the wife Gertrude Morrison would have chosen for him: still it might have been worse, for Laura was well-born and personally irreproachable, while Clowes, hot-blooded and casual, was as likely ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... favourably inclined towards your unfortunate son, and that you are too deeply imbued with serpentine wisdom to be at all bamfoozled by the ad captandum charms of feminine cajoleries. Indeed, I am a poor penniless chap, if not almost completely dead for want of funds, and if I had only been able to call my revered and fatherly benefactor, Hon'ble Sir CUMMERBUND, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... saw that if she sold her farm, which was only partly paid for, the money she received would be swallowed up in paying debts, and in the cost of the removal of her family. But this would leave her and her children homeless and penniless, and she decided to ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... what 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
... sure," Cyril replied. "I have not really woke up to it all yet. It will be some time before I realise that I am not a penniless young baronet, and that I can spend a pound without looking at it a dozen times. I shall have to get accustomed to the thought before I can make any plans. I suppose that one of the first things to do will be to go down to Oxford to see Prince Rupert—who, I suppose, is with the Court, though ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... when he 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 ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... almost, if not quite, the best in the language. The tragedy of a whole life is concentrated in that sonnet, and the heart-pang in it is unmistakable. But Drayton had stood as witness to the will of Anne's father, by which L1500 was set down for her marriage portion. She was an heiress, he a penniless poet, and what ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... It is well known that such citizens resort to foreign countries in great numbers. Though most of them are able to bear the expenses incident to locomotion, there are some who, through accident or otherwise, become penniless, and have no friends at home able to succor them. Persons in this situation must either perish, cast themselves upon the charity of foreigners, or be relieved at the private charge of our own officers, who usually, even with the most ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... it happened, disapproval was changed to commendation. She was the daughter of a French patriot. Her father and mother had both perished on the scaffold in the sacred cause of liberty; she was thrown helpless, friendless and penniless upon the cold charity of the world; Providence cast her in the way of our sensitive and enthusiastic young traveler; he pitied her; he loved her, and was casting about in his own mind how he could help without compromising ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... accept as a sufficient contribution to that desirable public object, the re-seating himself for the Tillietudlem borough, and as Alaric on reflection thought that it would be uncomfortable to be left penniless himself, and as it was just as likely that Uncle Bat would lend him L700 as L500, he determined to ask for a loan of the entire sum. He accordingly did so, and the letter, as we have seen, reached the captain while Harry and Charley were ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... crown by his tyranny, and who had failed to regain it by his courage. In the next place, for his devotion to that cause, he was a banished and an outlawed man, with his life at the mercy of any one who chose to take it. In the next he was well nigh penniless, with the life of another, dear, most dear to his heart, depending entirely ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... at once spik ingles!" She was in pearl gray, no powder, no mustache, slim as a reed. Her gentle name is Maria de Guadalupe Rosalia Merced Castello, but they call her "Lupe" ("Loopie," Sally, not Loop!) She is a penniless orphan, just visiting her kin at present, but lives with an uncle in Guanajuato (where delves my C.E. at his mine) and she is in disgrace because of an undesirable love affair, so the senora told Cousin Ada. They are taking us to ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the pretense of resisting brigand invasion, large militia forces have been raised; violent penniless partizans have been put on pay in preference to respectable and loyal men; and these forces have not been placed on the frontier where invasion might have been expected, but have been scattered in parties over many parts of the interior, in order to ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... for travel, and truly I am sick of my own country. When the Spirit of which you speak,' he went on, bitterly, 'shall descend, I may return; till then England is no place for the penniless.' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... come into a certain amount of property, for his Irish pay as a captain was, he says, so poor that but for honour he 'would disdain it as much as to keep sheep.' This fact disposes of the notion that Raleigh arrived at the Court of Elizabeth in the guise of a handsome penniless adventurer. Perhaps he had by this time inherited his share of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the same time a stately dignity, 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 spoken of, and which fetched a good price, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... how delicate!" she murmured. "He knew that I was nearly penniless—that I had almost nothing with which to tide over the next few days, during his absence. He is a prince—he is a ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... fall of Oxford in 1714 ended Anne's chief opportunity of serving her King. The historian therefore turns to her sister Eleanor, who had been with her in the Fanny Shaftoe affair, but remained in France. Penniless as she was, Eleanor's beauty won the heart of the Marquis de Mezieres, a great noble, a man over fifty, ugly, brave, misshapen. Theirs, none the less, was a love match, as the French Court admiringly proclaimed. 'The frog-faced' Marquis, the vainest of men, was one of the most ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang |
