"Hard times" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got time ter sorrow 'bout'n no gold mine," she said loftily. "I used ter believe ye set a heap o' store by yer mother, an' war willin' ter trust her—ye an' me hevin' been through mighty hard times together. But ye don't—I reckon ye never did. I hev los' ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... there's a vacancy. At the barracks I made friends with a sculptor who comes here for his meals, too, and we both live in a garret. I laugh at such things, for I am convinced that some day I'm going to be wealthy, and when I am, I'll recall these hard times with pleasure." ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... time, to put his house in order it was supposed. Then all at once, in the most cold-blooded fashion, he told those who asked him that "Robinson's" was a good business, which he did not see himself justified in throwing up in these hard times. He was not such a conceited ass as to believe he must necessarily succeed in the crowded ranks of the professions, for none of which had he any particular bent, while he had, he added, with a certain ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... verse by request, his modesty would not allow him to charge more than a sixpence or thereabouts for any article, and the consequence was that he understood to the fullest extent the meaning of the term hard times. Now it is a well-known fact that families, especially where there are wives and babies, do not take kindly to poverty and its concomitants, but emphatically insist upon having something ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... broad social experience, and of many exceptional gifts, who thoroughly knows what she is writing about, whether she has yet discovered the best way to set it forth or not. She is one of the most gifted and resourceful hostesses I have known, but has now fallen upon hard times. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... with it. You are a fool. It is all nonsense. There is nothing in anything. The drunken haole, Howard, can prove the missionaries wrong. Square-face gin proves Howard wrong. The doctors say he won't last six months. Even square-face gin lies. Life is a liar, too. And here are hard times upon us, and a slump in sugar. Glanders has got into my brood mares. I wish I could lie down and sleep for a hundred years, and wake up to find sugar up a ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... to them ye see to meeting, did a smart thing in the time of the embargo. Folks got tired of it, and it was dreadful hard times; ships rotting at the wharves, and Deephaven never was quite the same afterward, though the old place held out for a good while before she let go as ye see her now. You'd 'a' had a hard grip on't when I was a young ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was, Harry Baggs surmised, speaking his native language, obscurely complaining, accusing. They tried a second song: "Hard times, hard times, come again no more." There was not an accent ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... who literally own the commodity called Money and who literally own the machinery by which money is made and used. Let them keep their system if they like it. But the people are finding out that it is a poor system for what we call "hard times" because it ties up the line and stops traffic. If there are special protections for the interests, there ought also to be special protections for the plain people. Diversity of outlet, of use, and of financial ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... Nevertheless, there were hard times before them. The Colonel was too old-fashioned; too slow for the new movement of life, and just enough behind the times to be always expecting to succeed and ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... hard an experience you have had, nor how little of the pleasant has been mingled with it, in three months your general impression of that trip will be good. You will look back on the hard times with ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... do the best we can in these hard times,' said Mr. Ormsby, with an air of mock resignation. 'With your Dukes of Bellamont and all these grandees on the stage, we little men shall be scarcely able to hold up ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... does the English king know of hard times and carrying two or three barrels of water to a tired elephant in order that he may get into the afternoon performance without money. When he gets tired of being prince, all he has to do is just to be king all day at good wages, and then at night take ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... send some of his paintings home, as they wish to judge of his improvement, having, as yet, received nothing but the small pen-and-ink portrait of himself, which they do not think a very good likeness. She also emphatically discourages any idea of patronage from America, owing to the hard times brought on by the war, and the father tells his son that he will endeavor to send him one thousand dollars more, which must suffice for the additional year's study and the expenses of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... fellah!" says Lord John, staring at me in surprise. "We could do with a joke in these hard times. What ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... happiness in No. 5, notwithstanding that the spring and summer of 1851 were very hard times; and perhaps felt the more, because the sunny presence of Louis Fitzjocelyn did not shine there ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hard times and bitter had some of the fathers of the Ghetto, but they ate their dry bread with the salt of humor, loved their wives, and praised God for His mercies. Unwitting of the genealogies that would be found for them by their prosperous ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is paid. If no balance accrues to the fisherman, his account is handed to him; and if he is a crofter, or a reliable man the curer advances to him 12 or 20, to pay his rent and tide him over the hard times in winter. Sometimes the curer assists his fishermen debtors by supplies of meal for their families in winter, the meal being procured by the curer's orders to ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... which was being denounced by the Radicals—though with a difference. Cobbett could join the reformers in so far as, like them, he thought that the rotten boroughs were a vital part of the system. He meets a miserable labourer complaining of the 'hard times.' The harvest had been good, but its blessings were not for the labourer. That 'accursed hill,' says Cobbett, pointing to old Sarum, 'is what has robbed you of your supper.'[187] The labourer represented the class whose blood ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... ample means to pay only wants to harass and worry his creditor, who has resorted to legal process and obtained a judgment, by keeping him out of his money, as it is often expressed, as long as he can; or where he wishes to take advantage of hard times to make more than legal interest, or with concealed means unknown to the execution plaintiff, claims the exemption: these are cases which counsel ought to hold up in their proper light to those whom they advise, and wash their hands of the responsibility of ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... his shoulders and laughed. "Doctors have very hard times in the back blocks, Miss Plumstead. Those who are really ill cannot as a rule afford to pay for medical skill, and everyone is too busy to have time for imaginary complaints. I have no patients at the moment that I cannot leave, except the man who ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... magnate began apologizing for his repudiation of the prophet. He was in a position, just now with these hard times, where the Wall Street crowd could ruin him if he got in bad with them. And then he told me a curious story. Last night, after the meeting, young Everett, his secretary, had come to him and asked if he could have a couple of months' leave of absence without pay. He was so much ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... Farley Manufacturing Company's stock go up a good many points, and word came presently that the largest stockholder and one or two other men had sold out. Then the stock ceased to rise, and winter came on apace, and the hard times which the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... The hard Times oblige me to go very near in my Dealing. —To be sure, of late Years I have been a great Sufferer by the Parliament. —Three thousand Pounds would hardly make me amends. —The Act for destroying the Mint, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... powerful,—he was not made to be a landlord, being too tender-hearted. How often did it happen that, instead of insisting on getting his rent from a poor operative, he left some of his own money in the hand of wife or child?—frequently enough in hard times, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... was right when he said that men would draw to the place if we prospered, and it was not so long before the name that had been a jest at first was so no longer. Truly we had hard times at first, for our one ship's boat was all unfitted for the fishing; but the Humber teemed with fish, and there were stake nets to be set that need no boat. None seemed to care for taking the fish but ourselves, for the English ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... you know all I can tell you about yourself. I have had hard times now and then, but I have done my duty to you; and I say again, Michael, you have always been a good and dutiful boy, and not a fault have I had ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... rooms at 355 West Thirty-first Street. But Bott, having the soul of a true musician, cared but little for money and was happy enough so long as he could smoke his old meerschaum pipe and draw the bow across the cherished violin held lovingly to his cheek. Then hard times came a-knocking at the door. The meagre account in the savings-bank grew smaller and smaller. The landlord, the doctor and the grocer had to be paid. One night Bott laid down his pipe and, taking his wife's wrinkled hand in his, ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... French soldiers. The French commander-in-chief, the Count de Rochambeau, had given to Madam Faith Trumbull, the governor's wife, a beautiful scarlet cloak, and one Sabbath day she appeared in the governor's pew in the Lebanon meeting-house wearing the French general's handsome gift. Now, in those hard times contributions for the army were often collected after service on Sundays, and the people not only gave money, but whatever else they could spare, Indian corn, flax, wood, shoes and stockings, hats and coats. Quietly the governor's wife rose in her seat ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... hard times came upon the Franck family. The rich pupils, who formed the young men's chief clientele, all left Paris, alarmed by the forebodings of the revolution of 1848. Just at this most inopportune moment, Cesar decided to marry. He had been in ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... continents with iron roads and knit cities together with the mesh of telegraph wires; each day brings some new invention; each year marks a fresh advance—the power of production increased, and the avenues of exchange cleared and broadened. Yet the complaint of "hard times" is louder and louder: everywhere are men harassed by care, and haunted by the fear of want. With swift, steady strides and prodigious leaps, the power of human hands to satisfy human wants advances and advances, is multiplied and multiplied. Yet the struggle for mere ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Cruden, I am very sorry for you, and would gladly see you in a better position. But it is not a case where we can choose. This opening has offered itself. Of course, you are not bound to accept it, but my advice is, take what you can get in these hard times." ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... lose eight times as much. Just think of it! Sixteen thousand pounds would give me a fair balance to go on wi' i' these hard times, an' your two thou' would make the skipper's job in my ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... good stuff!" shouted another. "I guess it ain't everybody that can be trusted to christian a ship these hard times." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... nail making; death of my Father; leaving home; work on a farm; hard times; the great eclipse; bound out as a carpenter; carry tools thirty miles; work on clock dials; what I heard at a training; trip to New Jersey in 1812; first visit to New York; what I saw there; cross the North River in a scow; case making in New Jersey; ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... had employed in extorting Catholic emancipation. Monster meetings, mile-long petitions, copious effusions of printer's ink and oratory, and a National Charter Association were a part of the machinery. In 1848, when the prevalent hard times increased the restless discontent of the masses, the movement culminated in a vast assembly on Kennington Common. A respectful half-million were to march to Westminster and lay their demands, the six points backed by six million signatures, before the Commons. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... It must be hard times for that turbulent spirit. It will be a long time before she is on her feet again. It is a most pathetic case. I wish I could transfer it to myself. Between ripping and raging and smoking and reading, I could get a good deal of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of bidding for the wood and bid against one another till its price reached a thousand dinars, when they left bidding and my host said to me, "Hear, O my son, this is the current price of thy goods in hard times like these: wilt thou sell them for this or shall I lay them up for thee in my storehouses, till such time as prices rise?" "O my lord," answered I, "the business is in thy hands: do as thou wilt." Then asked he, "Wilt thou sell the wood to me, O my son, for an hundred gold ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... abundant mines of silver, and from those mines we draw every year an income which is beyond reason, but we have agreed—my husband, my sister, and myself—to give a very large share of this income to the poor. You see, Monsieur le Cure, it is because we have known very hard times that you will always find us ready to help those who are, as we have been ourselves, involved in the difficulties and sorrows of life. And now, Monsieur Jean, will you forgive me this long discourse, and offer me a little of that cream, which looks ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... and say it, the sooner the better, and I'll ask her if she remembers the year I was appointed as one of the collectors for the Foreign Missionary Society, and when I called upon her, after she had complained for some time of hard times and the numerous calls for money, put down her name for twenty-five cents, and did not even pay that down, and I had to go a second time for it; if she knows what's for the best she won't give herself any further trouble as to how we spend our money." On the whole I presume it ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... Costive? Sit down, sit down. Ay, these times are hard times; I can no more relish these times than I can a haunch of venison without sweet sauce to it; but, if you remember, I told you we should have warm work of it when the cook threw down the Kian pepper. Ay, ay; I think ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... "Poor Polly! She has hard times fighting her temper; but Molly does tease her unmercifully. After all, she comes naturally by it, for she's very much as I ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... Upper country would frequently refuse to sell us any thing for our dirty colored piastres of Egypt, and the Pasha would allow nobody to steal but himself. "Steal" a fico for the phrase. The wise "convey it call," says ancient Pistol, an old soldier who had seen hard times in the wars.] ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... Twist, Pictures of Italy, and American Notes. *Nicholas Nickleby. Old Curiosity Shop, and Reprinted Pieces. Barnaby Rudge, and Hard Times. *Martin Chuzzlewit. Dombey and Son. *David Copperfield. Christmas Books, Uncommercial Traveller, and Additional Christmas Stories. Bleak House. Little Dorrit. Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... "It's hard times we shall have of it, Mr Hurry, if the breeze don't be smart about coming, sir," he remarked, shaking his head. "I'd sooner by half have a chance of fighting, sir, than running ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... that brought hard times to the Cumberlands. Grain crops everywhere were light, and there were no local crops at all. Mountain floods had done much damage to property. Even game in the woods was so scarce that the hunters brought hardly enough home to keep their folk ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... resumed Mr. C., "I am for having a minister study, and have books and all that, if he can afford it; but in hard times like these, books are neither meat, drink, nor fire; and I know I can't afford them. Now, I'm as willing to contribute my part to the minister's salary, and every other charity, as any body, when I can get money to do it; but in these ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... personality, and trust that some day he may realise his dream of "an attic or basement printshop." "The Press Club," by Ruth Schumaker, is a pleasing sketch, as is also Miss Kelly's "Our Club and the United." We trust that the Appleton Club may safely weather the hard times of ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... he had brought me to the door of an old, decayed tavern, where I resigned him to the charge of a lame hostler, and made my way into the house in search of the landlord. I found him at last—a poor, poverty-pinched man, who had been ruined by the railroad. He complained bitterly of the hard times. 'But,' said I, 'you must have some custom; the stage coaches——' 'Bless your soul,' replied he, 'there hasn't been a coach on this road for fifteen years.' 'What do you, mean?' said I; 'I met a coach and passengers two miles back, near the river.' The landlord turned pale. 'What day is this?' he ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... land is thick with fools who think nothing of a great man the moment they discover he was a man. Tennyson was all the greater for his honest doubt. The cocksure centuries are passed for ever. In these hard times we have to work for our opinions; we cannot rely on inheriting ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... built up a fairly large trade. We had a home in a suburb near Boston and all the money we needed. The business had been expanding, and father had put into it not only all his own ready money, but a lot that he had borrowed from his friends. Then hard times came. Of course he had to retrench in every way he could. He took in his sails and worked hard to weather the storm. He'd have succeeded, too, but just as things were looking brighter, a big bank failure ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... to hard times, the enrollment at Tougaloo this year, 362, was less than that of the two previous years, the average attendance has been better than before, larger numbers having continued until the close. The year has been marked by specialty good work on the students' part, only one having failed of promotion. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... bully word, Daddy, for in most instances it is shameless. Open faced 'Lord save me and my wife, and my son John and his wife.' In our women's clubs and lectures, magazines and sermons, we've had a steady dose all winter of hard times, and economy, and I've tried to make my friends see that their efforts at economy are responsible for the very hardest ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Ashburnhams for over a century, took it upon himself to explain that he considered Edward was pursuing a perfectly proper course with his tenants. He erred perhaps a little on the side of generosity, but hard times were hard times, and every one had to feel the pinch, landlord as well as tenants. The great thing was not to let the land get into a poor state of cultivation. Scotch farmers just skinned your fields and let them go down and down. But Edward had a very good set of tenants who did their best ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... on hard times when in an exceptionally severe winter season he with others had been thrown out of employment at the farm where he worked; then with a wife and three small children to keep he had in his desperation procured food for them one dark night in an adjacent field. But alas! one of the little ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... about all sorts of things: I thought about hard times and financial depression and about our great President who is in a class all alone with himself and soon to become extinct; I thought about art and why there isn't any when it's talked about; I thought of macro-lepidoptera, of metagrammatism, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... and there was a savage rigidity in his countenance that suggested hard times for the man who attacked him; but he seemed to place the most implicit confidence in Tomati, obeying his slightest suggestion, and evidently settling himself into the place of lieutenant to ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... who, forced by the united influences of Captain Marryatt and hard times, embark at Nantucket for a pleasure excursion to the Pacific, and whose anxious mothers provide them, with bottled milk for the occasion, oftentimes return ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... aside and William J. Bryan became the party candidate, with the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 as its watchword. This appealed strongly to the distressed debtor class, very numerous in the West on account of the "hard times." The tone of the platform and of the speeches of the leaders was such as to attract the workingmen. The Republicans nominated McKinley, with the promise to reenact the former tariff legislation, to foster industries, and to protect the financial credit ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... none that has less elements of uncertainty; none whose returns in the aggregate are less varying. Every other business in the country, whether prospering or struggling, pays tribute to it. It rests on a cash basis, and suffers probably less from hard times than any business of its magnitude. Both the merchant and the manufacturer run large risks in doing business largely on a credit basis. The farmer sows in the spring, harvests in the fall, and often cannot realize ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... 12. HARD TIMES AND MATRIMONY.—Many persons, particularly young men, refuse to marry, especially "these hard time," because they cannot support a wife in the style they wish. To this I reply, that a good wife will care less ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... that sandy, desolate spot of Plymouth great deeds were done, and we are here to commemorate them. Those were hard times. It was a terrible voyage, and they were hungry and cold and worn out with labor, and they took their guns to the church and the field, and the half of them died in the first winter. They were not prosperous times that we recall with this hour. Let us take some comfort ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... have not sent him any of his salary, or anything for the expenses that he has incurred. He has expended considerable money from his own funds—something which few would have done, especially in so hard times—as he desired to give you entire satisfaction in regard to the matters with which you had charged him. By that means the great expenses that you might have incurred, if the said procurators had remained here with salaries ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... that the majority of the people are victims to Bacchus. In the present hard times they are more likely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... maternal affection in the way in which Ernest Daudet regards his younger brother, and the latter never mentions his early struggles without recalling the self-abnegation, generous kindliness, and devotion of "mon frere." The two went through some hard times together. "Ah!" says the great writer, speaking of those days, "I thought my brother passing rich, for he earned seventy-five francs a month by being secretary to an old gentleman at whose dictation he took down his memoirs." ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my exasperated feelings towards the scrivener by benevolently construing his conduct.—Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don't mean anything; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... already. Dark-colored, horny, flat, oblong, each corner furnished with a wiry, thorn-like projection;—what is it? A child tells you it is a Mermaid's Purse, and, giving the empty bag a shake, you straightway conclude that the maids of the sea know "hard times," as well as those of the land. But the Purse is not always so light. Sometimes it is found to contain a most precious deposit, the egg which is to produce a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Fauchelevent said to himself: "One does not question a saint." M. Madeleine had preserved all his prestige in Fauchelevent's eyes. Only, from some words which Jean Valjean had let fall, the gardener thought he could draw the inference that M. Madeleine had probably become bankrupt through the hard times, and that he was pursued by his creditors; or that he had compromised himself in some political affair, and was in hiding; which last did not displease Fauchelevent, who, like many of our peasants of the North, had an old fund of Bonapartism about him. While in hiding, M. Madeleine had ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... "calamity howlers" here than on Broadway during boom times, and you see no outward evidence of hard times, no acute poverty, no misery, no derelicts, for the war-time social organization seems as perfect as the military. In the last three months only one beggar has stopped me on the streets and tried to touch my heart and pocketbook—a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... minx, Lady VIOLET POWDRAY, has pointedly mentioned old cats in my hearing! PERGAMENT, my family lawyer, has declined to act for me any longer, merely because MONKSHOOD rack-rented some of the tenants a little too energetically in the Torture Chamber—as if in these hard times one was not justified in putting the screw on! Then the villagers scowl when I pass; the very children shrink from me—[A childish voice outside window: "Yah, 'oo sold 'erself to Old Bogie for a pound o' tea an' a set o' noo teeth?"]—that is, when they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... the influence of a local curate, the Athelney Peace Celebration Committee have unanimously resolved that in these hard times, when (as the curate pointed out) food is not too plentiful, it would be better if KING ALFRED cooked the cakes properly and they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... uncle said the next evening, as I took down the book to read. "I guess we'd better talk things over a little to-night. These are hard times. If we can find anybody with money enough to buy 'em I dunno but we better ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... Cranch that the whole profit from the sale of his books during the preceding year was less than a hundred dollars, and he thought there ought to be a law for the protection of authors. The real trouble was hard times. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... In Bombay, since hard times set in, the offices of Hamal and mussaul have got a little mixed, and a man will show you characters testifying that he has served in both capacities. Such a man is, properly speaking, simply a mussaul who has tried to do the Hamal's work. The cleaner of furniture and the lighter of lamps and washer ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... votes. They had been stuffed with all sorts of notions by the carpet-baggers, and I don't blame um for putting on airs and trying to rule us. It's human natur, that's all. We don't blame the niggers half so much as those who puts it in their heads to do so; but it's hard times we've had, we poor woods folks. They took our children for the cussed war, to fight fur niggers and rich people as ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... procuring work and adding to our dwindling stock of money. By a hard day's labour at translating from foreign languages for the booksellers, I could earn a few shillings—so few that a week's work would hardly bring me a guinea. Hard times were not over with us till some time after the Baroness Bernstein's death (she left everything she had to her dear nephew, Henry Esmond Warrington), when my uncle Sir Miles procured me a post as one of his Majesty's commissioners for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... sez I, 'Nimbus ain't dat ar sort of a chile, Nimbus hain't. He's been a heap luckier nor de rest of us, but he ain't got de big-head, nary bit.' Dat's what I say, an' durn me ef I don't b'lieve it too, I does. We's been hevin' purty hard times, Sally an' me hez. Nebber did hev much luck, yer know—'cept for chillen. Yah, yah! An' jes' dar we's hed a trifle more'n we 'zackly keered about. Might hev spared a few an' got along jest ez well, 'cordin' ter my notion. Den de ole woman's been kinder peaked this summer, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... nobody to hold office. Them whut didn't want to starve got someplace whut he could hold a plow handle. You don't know whut hard times is. Dem was hard times. They used to hide in big cane brakes, nearly wild and nearly starved. Scared to come out. I ain't wanted to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... clink of goblet and jovial gurgle of wine-flask. On the contrary, to one of us, at least—to wit, Godfrey Bellingham—the occasion is one of uncommon festivity, and his boyish enjoyment of the simple feast makes pathetic suggestions of hard times, faced uncomplainingly, but keenly ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... want to put your leddyship to ony trouble by this veesit; but, being in want o' some siller in thir hard times, I thocht I would tak the liberty o' ca'in upon yer leddyship, as weel for the sake o' being better acquainted wi' a leddy o' yer station and presence, as for the sake o' gettin' the little I require on my first introduction to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... booked and paid for by some "bird of passage" who was, unluckily for himself, a little late. Such elasticity will certainly not commend itself to purists in morality; but Pierrotin and his colleague justified it on the varied grounds of "hard times," of their losses during the winter months, of the necessity of soon getting better coaches, and of the duty of keeping exactly to the rules written on the tariff, copies of which were, however, never shown, unless some chance traveller was obstinate ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... try to win him with a mendicant ode or elegy, filled, as usual, with the whole population of Olympus. For Leo, prodigal of his money, and disliking to be surrounded by any but cheerful faces, displayed a generosity in his gifts which was fabulously exaggerated in the hard times that followed. His reorganization of the Sapienza has been already spoken of. In order not to underrate Leo's influence on hu- manism we must guard against being misled by the toy-work that was mixed up with it, and must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... laugh, and whispered behind her fan: 'If I had not come to America for the poor lads, I never should have found my Jo. The hard times are very sweet now, and I bless Gott for all I seemed to lose, because I gained the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... when food is plentiful, and every one is fat and is, or ought to be, care free. It is the season when Old Mother Nature intended all her little people to be happy, to have nothing to worry them for the little time before the coming of cold weather and the hard times which ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... Yankee, rapidly assuming a dogged air, as if ashamed of the discovery that had been so acutely made, "I expect you won't hurt a poor fellor for doin' a little in this way. Drot me, these are hard times, and this here war jist beginnin', quite ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... 'I made love to every pretty woman I met, in the search for happiness. I may have got five per cent. return on my outlay, which is perhaps not bad in these hard times; but I certainly did not get even that in happiness. I got ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... would not keep his people at their tables for more than two or three hours in a day. They might occupy the rest of their time as they could, and earn something in other ways, if they were able. When those hard times came poor Vjera picked up a little sewing, paid for at starvation rates, Johann Schmidt turned his hand to the repairing of furs, in which he had some skill, and which is an art in itself, and Dumnoff varied his existence ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... this, and a thousand other evils, are clear and manifest to you and all other thinking men, though hidden from the vulgar: these indeed complain of hard times, the dearth of corn, the want of money, the badness of seasons; that their goods bear no price, and the poor cannot find work; but their weak reasonings never carry them to the hatred, and contempt, borne us by our neighbours, and brethren, without the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... here, Citizen Albert?" she asked. "Well, I will tell you. I went to deliver some washing. The lady was not at home, and so I waited; for in these hard times every one needs what little money is coming to him. In that way it grew dark, and so I fell among these gentlemen—beg pardon, I would say citizens. They asked for my pass. As I did not have it with me, they were going to take me ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... but a step to the kirk door from the manse, but it took the minister nearly twenty minutes to overcome the drifts and get the key turned in the lock—for in these hard times it was no uncommon thing for the minister to be also the doorkeeper of the tabernacle. Then he took hold of the bell-rope, and high above him the notes swung out into the air; for though the storm had now settled, vast drifts remained to tell of the blast of the night. But the gale had ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... reward. When the farm-rent of a piece of land is once raised to its highest point, the proprietor never lowers it; high prices, the scarcity of labor, the disadvantages of the season, even pestilence itself, have no effect upon him—why should he suffer from hard times when he ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... had begun, that for the first time in its existence there had not been a case due to a drunken brawl in the hospital all Monday. The police courts gave the same testimony, while savings banks recorded increased deposits and pawnshops hard times. The most touching of all things was the fact that we received letters, literally by the hundred, from mothers in tenement-houses who had never been allowed to take their children to the country in the wide-open days, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... starvation along the banks of the hot, sluggish streams, while thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing above them, or standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with easy faith for fresh carcasses. The quails, prudently considering the hard times, abandoned all thought of pairing. They were too poor to marry, and so continued in flocks all through the year without attempting to rear young. The ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally industrious and enterprising race, as every farmer knows, were hard pushed for a ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Baumann, looking down; "I have had letters from my English brethren; they blame my lukewarmness. I fear I have done very wrong in not leaving you before; but when I looked at the heaps of letters, and Mr. Schroeter's anxious face, and thought what hard times these were, and that the house had lost most of its best hands, I was withheld. I too wish that Wohlfart would return; he ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and sullen, remained silent and began pacing up and down the long, bare floor of the room, Lepine added persuasively, "Well! what do you say? Two thousand francs for a packet of letters—not a bad bargain these hard times." ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ignorant creature, and doesn't seem to know rightly who he's like to meet; only he seems glad to get away fra' Monkshaven folks; he were really hurt, I am afeared, that night, Sylvie,—and he speaks as if he'd had hard times of it ever since he were a child,—and he talks as if he were really grieved for t' part t' lawyers made him take at th' trial,—they made him speak, against his ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... face are encouraging rather than discouraging. They show that our receipts from living donors are better by a few thousand dollars than last year, an evidence of the hold that we still have upon the churches, made all the more conspicuous in these hard times. But these figures do not tell the whole story. The $40,000 debt to which we have made frequent reference hitherto is still pending. To this must be added the $13,000 debt that came over ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... "I lately found a remedy for hard times. Looking for food one day, I came close to the home of a silk-spider who was about to make a new web. Now, what do you think I saw him doing? Why, he was eating up the old web, so as to turn it into thread again, and use it a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and Other. In Travel. New Submarine Cables. First Pacific Railway. Others. Consolidation of Railways. Electric Lighting. Brooklyn Bridge. Elevated Railways and New Modes of Surface Traction. Telephone. Black Friday. Chicago Fire. Boston Fire. Hard Times of 1873. Material Betterment for ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... there, too, an' somehow I think it was a better world to live in than now. Things was more sensible and natural. I don't exactly say what I mean. But it's like this: I don't understand life to-day. There's the labor unions an' employers' associations, an' strikes', an' hard times, an' huntin' for jobs, an' all the rest. Things wasn't like that in the old days. Everybody farmed, an' shot their meat, an' got enough to eat, an' took care of their old folks. But now it's all a mix-up that I can't understand. Mebbe I'm a fool, I don't know. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Then he laughed again. He spoke of his father, said the old gentleman was not getting along very well, that he was having quite a little trouble to get anything to do, but then what could be expected with a man of his age, and the competition and the hard times! Daniel asked if Eleanore was at home. No, she was not at home: she had gone on a visit with Frau Ruebsam over to Pommersfelden, and planned to stay there for a few weeks. "Well, I'll have to be hurrying along," said Benno, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... ideas entered into my support of the Whig candidate, I simply regarded him as a poor man, whose home was a log cabin, and who would in some way help the people through their scuffle with poverty and the "hard times"; while I was fully persuaded that Van Buren was not only a graceless aristocrat and a dandy, but a cunning conspirator, seeking the overthrow of his country's liberties by uniting the sword and the purse in his own clutches, as he was ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... he had exchanged with the farmer and the hind had left him musing. Why was England not the same land as in the days of his light-hearted youth? Why were these hard times for the poor? He stood among the ruins that, as the farmer had well observed, had seen many changes: changes of creeds, of dynasties, of laws, of manners. New orders of men had arisen in the country, new sources of wealth had opened, new dispositions of power to which ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... school little bit. Pretty soon Wagalexa Conka come back, for wants them Indians for work in pictures. My father go, my mother go, all us go. We work long time. I," she added with naive pride in her comeliness, "awful good looking. I do lots of foreground stuff. Pretty soon hard times come. Indians go home by reservation. I go—I don't like them reservations no more. Too lonesome. I like for work all time in pictures. I come, tell Wagalexa Conka I be Indian girl for pictures. He write letter for agent, write letter for my father. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... clean forgot it, what with the cold and the surprises," he said again, emerging with the knife and fork in one hand and a letter in the other. "Here it is. He'll be home to-morrow, he says, God willin', and eat our turkey with us. Poor Tom, poor boy! He's been away so long he's forgot Griffin and hard times, or he ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... their girls, they throw coin out of window, and then they have no time to work. They neglect their orders; we have to employ workmen who are very inferior, but who grow rich; and then they complain of the hard times, while, if they were but steady, they might have ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... were more than half-filled by men plainly "down on their luck." Some of these men, of course, were hopelessly besotted or vicious, and Uncle Sam had no use for any of these in his Army uniform. There were other men, however, on the seats, who looked like good and useful men who had met with hard times. Most of these men on the benches had not breakfasted, and had no assurance that they would lunch or ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... and for an instant his eyes blazed. "Well, for one, I can! By God, I don't mean to be run away from my home by a panicky notion of hard times. I can stay here an' fight to a finish—an' when I'm licked, my boys can go ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... I don't believe people ever have such hard times with themselves afterward as they ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... helps a lot. I just put my hand on that like the real knights used to do on their sword-hilts, and repeat my motto. It will be easier when papa comes home. Since I've known Jonesy, and heard him tell about the hard times some people have that he knows, it seems to me there's an awful lot of wrong in the world for somebody to set right. Some nights I can hardly go to sleep for thinking about it, and wishing that I were ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... narrow way, who live in a three-story house, originally of much pretension, but from whose front door hard times have removed almost all vestiges of paint, will tell you: "Yass, de 'ouse is in'abit; ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... time—just spoke in a mechanical way of the drought, and the hard times, 'an' butter 'n' eggs bein' down, an' her husban' an' eldest son bein' away, an' that makin' it so hard ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... said Abel. "It must mean something. Now I am at present between two doctrines; so I am neither on your nor on Arthur's side. If I can't live one way I must another; and these are hard times. If I can't distinguish myself in law, divinity, or physic, or as an artist, which I would prefer, I may turn planter, or may turn Abolition agent. I must do something for my living. Having no slaves I can't turn planter; therefore there is more probability of my talents ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone: it is always changing its habitat BODILY—is always moving bodily SIDEWISE. At Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the region it used to occupy. As a result, the original SITE of that settlement is not now in Louisiana at all, but on the other side of the river, in the State of Mississippi. NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... times dese days, ain't no hard times now like it was atter Sherman went through Yorkville. My ma and pa give me ash cake and 'simmon beer to eat for days atter dat. White folks never had no mo', not till a new crop was grow'd. Dat year de seasons was good and gardens done well. Till den ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... together. There are exceptions; and in times of prosperity some will prosper far more, and in times of adversity, some will suffer far more, than others; but speaking generally, a period of good times means that all share more or less in them, and in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater or less degree. It surely ought not to be necessary to enter into any proof of this statement; the memory of the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast them with the conditions ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... bitter hard times at the little cabin on The Edge. Doss Provine had begun actively looking for a "second," and his courting operations sorely interfered with the making of the small crop. Nancy took the field behind ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... their own impending ruin. Zealous Sons of Liberty, such as Alexander MacDougall and John Lamb, popular leaders of the "Inhabitants" of the city, were on the other hand determined that the non-importation agreement should be maintained unimpaired. The hard times, they said, were due chiefly to the monopoly prices exacted by the wealthy merchants, who were not ruined at all, who had on the contrary made a good thing out of the non-importation as long as they had anything to sell, and whose ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... but something! I should have liked a carrot or two, but in these hard times that would have been extravagant. And, after all, there is some credit in making good soup out of nothing at all. If one could run here and there in the market—'A pound of your best veal, monsieur'—'A bunch of those fine turnips, and ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... children if people love as you love? You must be mad! But you are a decent, respectable member of society, and therefore I'll give my consent; but make good use of the time, my boy, and increase your income, for hard times are coming. The price of wheat ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and ye couldn't tell yer hand afore yer face, hardly, t'were that thick, and tide she'd drawed us furder inshore 'n I mistrusted. The wind he were middlin' high an' gusty, too. I don't mind many sich hard times a-makin' th' cove. We was sure glad ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... beef, George," said his wife with a little laugh, "and miner's lettuce. We ain't the first folks that has had hard times—and got ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... pulled down by warrant of two justices of the peace; all money collected from the spectators was to be appropriated to the poor of the parish; and all spectators of plays, for every offence, fined five shillings. Assuredly these were very hard times for players, playhouses, and playgoers. Still the theatre was hard to kill. In 1648, a provost-marshal was nominated to stimulate the vigilance and activity of the lord mayor, justices, and sheriffs, and among other duties, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... people say that in civil engineering it depends on the prosperity of the country; in hard times they do not build and in good times they ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... remember all that rot I used to talk about the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We've been false to that theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why, Al, this work we've begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There mustn't be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all, we'll win, and save Lattimore—and ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... in the iron-mill and learned to smelt iron, and he became a pretty good molder, too. Then the hard times came on, and the iron-mill shut down. But there was a cooper's shop in town, and James was already very handy with a drawshave in getting out staves. Most of the men worked by the day, but he asked to work by the piece. They humored him, and he made ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... support one. We may rest assured, therefore, that the Prussian government will act in the future as it has done in the past, by sparing no efforts to make the Frederico-Gulielma the head of the Prussian system in fact as well as in name. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the present hard times and the unsettled state of society in Berlin tend to restrict the number of students. The remarkable contrast presented in the sudden growth of the Leipsic University shows how even matters of education are influenced by social and economic laws. This Saxon city seems marked out by Nature ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... got too many ideas; I don't think much of ideas myself; I've got on well enough in life without 'em; why shouldn't my children? There's Dmitri! could have stayed here and kept the inn; many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow to study the law! What does he want knowing about the law! let a man do his duty, say I, and no one ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... The hard times and the difficulty of the mountain people to get clothing is illustrated in the following, which comes to us in a recent missionary letter from ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 3, March, 1895 • Various
... with a person without trying to like them and wanting them to like me. And then, when the ungrateful things are saucy, or leave me in the lurch as they do half the time, it almost breaks my heart. But I'm thankful to say that in these hard times they won't be apt to leave a good place ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... his way, always. Besides, my husband's a violent-tempered man, and I did so want him to hold his job here. He's worked nearly a year for you now, and there aren't any complaints, are there? Before that it was irregular work for a long time, and we had real hard times. It wasn't his fault. He ain't ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... opportunity to see much of her in her own home, where Mrs. Morse was thoroughly prosecuting her campaign of entertainment. The exalted beings he met there, and to whom he had looked up but a short time before, now bored him. They were no longer exalted. He was nervous and irritable, what of his hard times, disappointments, and close application to work, and the conversation of such people was maddening. He was not unduly egotistic. He measured the narrowness of their minds by the minds of the thinkers in the books he ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... vicissitudes of life, ups and downs of life, broken fortunes; hard case, hard lines, hard life; sea of troubles; peck of troubles; hell upon earth; slough of despond. trouble, hardship, curse, blight, blast, load, pressure. pressure of the times, iron age, evil day, time out of joint; hard times, bad times, sad times; rainy day, cloud, dark cloud, gathering clouds, ill wind; visitation, infliction; affliction &c (painfulness) 830; bitter pill; care, trial; the sport of fortune. mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune; disaster, calamity, catastrophe; accident, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Thomas Rees in the chimney corner of Raglan kitchen, after the supper was served and the cook at rest. It was there my lad was turnspit once upon a time, for as great a man as he is now with my lord and all the household. Those were hard times after my good man left me, master Heywood. But the cream will to the top, and there is my son now—who but he in kitchen and hall? Well, of all places in the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... rest and write a little more. Yes, life has been hard. How little a poor ignorant girl thinks or knows what is before her when she gets married. My husband has felt all discouraged, so many babies, so much hard work, such hard times to get a dollar, always in debt to doctors; it made us both grow cross and cranky and just as soon die as live. Our love for each other grew cold, and the attraction we had for each other died out. ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge |
