"Penniless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his dog, found it, and crossed the Channel to Boulogne. Here he met Meyerbeer, who gave him an introduction to a bankrupt theatre, the Renaissance, in Paris. In Paris he met many well-known people, amongst them Heine, who clasped his hands and looked heavenwards when he heard of a penniless German coming to such a city to seek his fortune, with nothing save an unfinished opera and an introduction from Meyerbeer. The late Sir Charles Halle met him at this time, and left some amusing reminiscences in his Autobiography. Heine's view of the situation was speedily justified. Not ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... account of. Some notorious love affairs at home and abroad; a wild practical joke or two, played on prominent people, and largely advertised in the newspapers; an audacious novel, and a censored play—he had achieved all these things by the age of thirty, and was now almost penniless, and still unmarried. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pause she resumed by alluding to Laura's offer to remain with her always, without marrying; and while poor Laura listened with a feeling as if the very earth was sinking beneath her feet, Mrs. Jaynes reminded her that she was a penniless orphan, who had been maintained for years by the bounty of one upon whom she had no claim, except that she was the sister of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the latter trait very well. "It was a little camp, the name of which is not given and perhaps is not important. The day was a hot one when a youth of sixteen came limping along, footsore, weary, hungry, and penniless. There were at least thirty robust miners at work in the ravine and it may well be believed they were cheerful, probably now and then joining in a chorus or laughing at a joke. The lad as he saw and heard them sat down upon the bank, his face telling the sad story of his misfortunes. Though ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he married, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare. He told Drummond curtly that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest"; for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... wandering and penniless, foretells that your affairs will undergo a change from promise to threatenings of failure. To those enjoying domestic comforts, it is a warning of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... was a penniless young man from the West. A self-made youth, with an unusual brain and an overwhelming ambition, he had risen from chore boy on a western farm to printer's apprentice in a small town, thence to reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent, and after ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... survey of Ireland had laid his career, plus fifty pounds per annum and some impalpable expectations, at the feet of Muriel, the clearance effected by Sir Thomas had been that of Lieutenant Aubrey Hamilton. "Is it marry one of my daughters to that penniless pup!" he had said to Lady Purcell, whose sympathies had, as usual, been on the side of the detrimental. "Upon my honour, Lucy, you're a bigger fool than I thought you—and that's saying a ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... said; felt anxious to do better; behaved well in prison; was well flogged the morning he left; back bruised, but not quite bleeding; was then turned into the street, ragged, barefooted, friendless, homeless, penniless; walked about the streets till afternoon, when he received a penny from a gentleman to buy a loaf; met, next day, some expert thieves in the Minories; went along with them, and continues in a course of vagrancy ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... fruition. How pathetic the reverses of the last four years. The condition of our land as to the overthrows of its leaders answers to the condition in Poland when Kossuth and his fellow patriots, accustomed to life's comforts and its luxuries, went forth penniless exiles to accustom themselves to menial toil, to hardship and extreme poverty. His heart must be of iron who can behold those who have been leaders of the industrial column, who now stand aside and see the multitude sweep by. Just at the moment of expected victory ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... farm alone awaited my coming; hardly a remembered face, scarcely a future hope. The glitter of a passing troop of cavalry drew my mind for an instant to Edith Brennan, but I crushed the thought. Even were she free, what had I now to place at her proud feet,—I, a penniless, defeated, homeless man? No, that was all over, even as the cause for which I had fought; love and ambition must lie buried in the same grave. The clothes I wore, that tattered suit of faded gray, soiled by months of hard service in the open, was all I possessed in the ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... place on the 13th of October, stating that by the wreck of the Martha he had lost in tools, stores and baggage, property of the value of L200 stg. His loss included the greater part of his effects and left him well nigh penniless. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... by many devoted adherents of the church, who, in order to pay church debts in Ohio and the East, had given up their property in exchange for orders on the Bishop at Far West. In other words, they were penniless. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... became the most obsequious of hosts, and so would remain while it lasted. But Dennis saw that the moment it was gone his purchased courtesy would change, and he trembled at his narrow escape from being thrust out into the wintry streets, friendless, penniless, to beg or starve—equally hard alternatives ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the marriage articles of her parents; and twenty years of careful husbandry, during which every shilling had been scrupulously devoted to accumulation, had quite doubled the original amount. So far from being penniless, therefore, Maud's fortune was often alluded to by the captain, in a jocular way, as if purposely to remind her that she had the means of independence, and duties connected with it. It is true, Maud, herself, had no suspicion that she had been educated altogether by her "father," and that her ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... various times." Knox tried the case at Jedburgh; Paul was excommunicated, and fled the realm, sinking so low, it seems, as to take orders in the Church of England. Later he returned—probably he was now penniless—"and prostrated himself before the whole brethren with weeping and howling." He was put to such shameful and continued acts of public penance up and down the country that any spirit which he had left awoke in him, and the Kirk knew him no more. Thus "the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... week later, and we were sitting on the verandah looking out across Essex County towards Manhattan. To us, who some five years before had been shaken from our homestead in San Francisco and hurried penniless and almost naked across the continent, our location here in the Garden State, looking eastward towards the Western Ocean and our native isle, had always appeared as "almost home." We endeavoured to impress this upon ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... good as his word. He sailed in the next packet, and arrived in Paris almost as penniless as the day ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Utterly incapable of cultivation. It's no use considering it, my dear boy. I have viewed the matter from every conceivable angle. There is no reprisal. I am doomed. This beloved house will be sold, my family scattered. I an old man, a penniless outcast——" ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... and fall of the market. I was not aware of all this, and when the crisis came I was unprepared for the result. The money he made in the store went to keep up the margins, and changes in the market. At last the door of his store was closed and we were penniless and saw no way out ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... beating of the wild winter storm against the window pane, his heart went out to the homeless hungry poor of the city. Ordering his carriage he went to the city mission and asked for a helper, and then drove to London Bridge, under the shelter of which the penniless poor gather in time of storms. He took them two by two to shelter, gave them food, and cots on which to sleep, and then returned to his princely home. We are told that for years after, when Parliament would adjourn ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... people 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 ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... I'll tell you all. She came in here this morning, wet and bedraggled. Her poor widow's weeds were dripping with the rain. She sat there. You see where her boots have left their mark. She said her husband had just died, and left her, of course, penniless, with four young children. There was nothing before her but the workhouse, unless I would help her,—and she heard that I was good to the poor; sure every one ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... was cold, but Beaumont-Greene suddenly found himself in a perspiration. None the less, it seemed easier to forge a letter than to avow himself penniless. Detection? Impossible! Two or three tradesmen in Harrow would advance the money if he showed them this letter. Next Christmas they would be paid. Within a quarter of an hour he made up his mind to cross the Rubicon, and crossed it with undue haste. He forged the letter, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... exchanged that they had already realised it and understood each other. Without the will the blood-relatives would inherit all of Lewis Langley's interest in the old Langley estate. Tom and his sister would be penniless. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... Sir Robert looked unconcerned and Mr. Haswell rubbed his hands and whistled cheerfully. Almost he could envy them, these men who were realizing great fortunes amidst the bustle and excitement of that fierce financial life, whilst he stood penniless and stared at the trees and the ewes which wandered among them with their lambs, he who, after all his work, was but a failure. With a sigh he turned away to fetch his cap and go out walking—there was a tenant whom he must ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... Indians, have risen to a level only to be appreciated by comparing the African and the Indian side by side. There, also, was the Mexican, the lord of all this region in his earlier and better days, but now a penniless degenerate of Old Castile. Among them stood the masterful Anglo-Saxon, whose energy has pushed aside the Spaniard, civilized the Negro, developed half a continent, built this amazing path of steel through ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Ursus. "What has it got to do with me? Who speaks of me? Wretched little barefooted clerk of Penniless Parish, I tell you, eat it all up! You are here to eat, drink, and sleep—eat, or I will kick ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... son, she spends all or nearly all her money. Or if she finds him, it may well be that he has no funds with which to help her. In the little buildings on one side of the refuge for the sick are rooms where some sixty-five can receive decent lodging and nourishing food; and if actually penniless, the Commission will procure them tickets and send them back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Penniless, and soured by disappointment, Churchill returned to his father's house; and, being idle, soon obtained work from the proverbial "taskmaster" of all idle people. Having become acquainted with a young lady, named Scott, whose father lived in the vicinity of Westminster School, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... if we are robbed, to take us down to Lima. With the gold dust we could get a couple of mules and enough provisions to take us down there. We should be in a very awkward position if we found ourselves penniless." ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... have had 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 some countenance among ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impossible for both or for either to win absolutely. The success of one must leave the other penniless. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... reconstructing the Government of Ireland on a revolutionary and Jacobin basis; entrusting the protection of property and the maintenance of law to some democratic assembly consisting mainly of Fenians and Land-leaguers, of paid agitators and of penniless adventurers. The Parliamentary system of the eighteenth century might be represented in very different lights by its enemies and by its friends. Its enemies would describe it as essentially a government ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... her—this day. How beggared she felt! The fact that she was very nearly penniless troubled her very little; it was the homelessness—friendlessness—that frightened her. She had never had but two friends: the one who had gone so long ago was past helping ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... financial genius who dominated more than one powerful group in the city, who controlled a ring of theaters in London and the provinces, who had declined a knighthood, and would surely be created a peer with the next change of government,—that he should openly declare himself a suitor for the hand of a penniless girl was a sensation with a vengeance. His description of Millicent as an ex-chorus girl offered another bonne bouche to the crowd. She would never again skip airily behind the footlights of the Wellington, or any other important theater in England. So far as she ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... from his rank, driven in disgrace from the army, sat alone in his bedroom conning over the words of the telegram clutched in his listless hand: words whereby he understood that he was no longer the son of his father, but sat, a penniless outcast, alone in a pitiless, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... very kind, sir, but I am afraid Jack and I will not be able to compensate you. The bushrangers took all we had, and left us penniless." ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... the first time how a great man may condescend—how unostentatiously, how fully, how delightfully. He felt what tact and kindness perfectly combined may accomplish, and he burned inwardly with a sense of duplicity that crushed and elated him alternately. He was John Loder, friendless, penniless, with no present and no future, yet he walked down Whitehall in the full light of day with one of the greatest statesmen England ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... us, he set up his professional whine; and I looked at my friend with the heartiest compassion, for I knew well from Martha—it was common talk—that at this time of day he was certainly and surely penniless. Morn by morn he started forth with pockets lined; and each returning evening found him with never a sou. All this he proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously and even shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the gentleman of the road, realising ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... a furious longing to leave them suddenly, without warning; to go out when no one would notice her, and never to come back; to go she knew not where, out into the world, risking she knew not what, a high-born, penniless, fair-haired girl ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... his fortune to Loo. As far as dear Loo is concerned I am glad; for myself I am sad, for it is awkward, to say the least of it, to have been brought up with unlimited command of pocket-money, and expectations of considerable wealth, and suddenly to find myself all but penniless, without a profession and without expectations, at the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mrs. Morley, very pale. "Hold your tongue, Daisy. My husband has treated you in the kindest manner. When your father died you were left penniless. He took you in, and both he and I have treated you like our own child. Ungrateful girl, how can you speak so of those who ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... 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 the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... gently nurtured and innocent folk, let me explain what a ward is. It is a building where the homeless, bedless, penniless man, if he be lucky, may casually rest his weary bones, and then work like a navvy next day ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... endeavor in his university career. Finally he decided to make literature his profession. Disgruntled with things in general and more especially with Germany—he had been crossed in his love for Amalie's younger sister Therese, the rich uncle not wanting a penniless poet for a son-in-law—Heine went to Paris in 1831, where he lived till his death (February 17, 1856), often reviling but always cherishing and loving Germany, the country of sweet romantic song. Compare his poem In ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... least a moderate bank account; that is, it is never penniless, indeed it can never afford to be, because it is peremptory that it should possess funds in order to disburse them to needier brothers. There is never an hour when Mr. William Beresford is not signing notes and bonds ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... against the people, my subjects, on whom he hath heaped insult, I have taken counsel with my advisers, the ministers of state, and it is my royal will and pleasure to pronounce sentence. Wherefore, I declare that my son, the prince, shall be cast forth into the world, penniless, and shall not return until he shall have learned how to Count Five. And be it further known that none may minister unto his wants should he crave assistance by declaring he is ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... Patin could no longer understand how he had ever imagined Desiree to be different from other women. What a fool he had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had put ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... chapter of a book must always possess a special and melancholy interest for the author. He gives his words reluctantly, almost grudgingly, like one who is spending his last coins and will soon be left penniless upon the world. Or like one who is passing his last moments at the house of a friend whom he may see no more for ever. The author is taking farewell of his characters and his readers, and therefore ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... troops, they have proved an easy mark in Paris and the port cities. As soon as they were paid several months' back salary, some of them took "French leave," went on a spree, and did not come back until they were penniless. The officers, fully alive to the danger, are now doing their utmost to cope with the situation; they are seeking to reduce the cash payments to the men and are endeavoring to persuade them to send more of their money home. Court martial and strict punishment have been imposed ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... 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 whether even you, my dear Rosy, could dispose him ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and disorganized, and it will be 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," ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... I had some money left. I traveled by night and concealed myself by day, and so got out of Spain. Soon after I crossed the Pyrenees I found myself penniless, and was ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... among banners. Yet the good Geoffrey loved her, while to Milt Daggett she could be nothing more than a strange young woman in a car with a New York license. If her tiny gift could so please him, how poor he must be. "He probably lives on some barren farm," she thought, "or he's a penniless mechanic hoping for a good job in Seattle. How white ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the other. "We have many clients who do not give us their names, they have their own reasons for that; some of them are married, and, as a man of the world, I respect their reserve." M. Gritz prided himself on being a man of the world. He had started as a penniless Swiss waiter and had reached the magnificent point where broken-down aristocrats were willing to owe him money and sometimes borrow ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... the late Mr. Temple Barholm, and I had not really the SLIGHTEST claim upon him." She placed pathetic emphasis on the fact. "It was most generous of him to be so kind to me. When my poor father died and I was left quite penniless, he gave me a—a ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shows us how the young millionaire wastes his nights in a dissipated life, and when he drinks his blasphemous toast at a champagne feast with shameless women, we suddenly see on the screen the vision of twenty years later when the bartender of a most miserable saloon pushes the penniless tramp out into the gutter. The last act in the theater may bring us to such an ending, but there it can come only in the regular succession of events. That pitiful ending cannot be shown to us when life is still blooming and when a twenty years' downward course ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... said that as a matter of fact no young woman has been under her roof for thirty years, and that if a young man stays there for any length of time it is a sure sign that his allowance must be of the slenderest. In 1819, however, the time when this drama opens, there was an almost penniless young girl among ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... to her and tell her not to make a fool of Uli, whom she didn't really want, or would tell her not to grieve her parents in this way, Elsie would accuse her of wanting Uli herself and of trying to entice her away from him in order to climb up in the world; but Uli wouldn't take such a penniless pauper as she—he was too shrewd for that. She needn't imagine that she could get a husband so easily; the poorest servant would think twice before he'd take a poor girl, and twice again before he'd take a bastard—that was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... were excited by his success and thought that if they went to foreign parts they also could gain great wealth; so they took some money from their father and went off. But all they did was to squander their capital and in the end they had to come back penniless to their father. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the forward impulse of his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to separate, and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, a valiant though needy soldier, conducted a van guard of pilgrims, whose condition may be determined from the proportion of eight horsemen to fifteen thousand foot. The example and footsteps of Peter were closely pursued by another ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the wheel, all the externals of his life changed. His rich father died penniless and he found himself on his own hands, and within a month the boy who had owned five polo ponies was a hard-working reporter on a great daily. The same quick-wittedness and energy which had made him a good polo player made him a good reporter. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... herself! To make others happy was the way to be happy—or so they said. She would try—must try. Betty—so stout, and with that rheumatism in her leg—did she ever think of herself? Or Aunt Rosamund, with her perpetual rescuings of lost dogs, lame horses, and penniless musicians? And Dad, for all his man-of-the-world ways, was he not always doing little things for the men of his old regiment, always thinking of her, too, and what he could do to give her pleasure? To love everybody, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Velazquez, and that spiritual lift which ennobles Murillo. The difference, I conceive, lies in the moral character of the three. Ribera was a great artist, and the others were noble men. Ribera passed a youth of struggle and hunger and toil among the artists of Rome,—a stranger and penniless in the magnificent city,—picking up crusts in the street and sketching on quiet curbstones, with no friend, and no name but that of Spagnoletto,—the little Spaniard. Suddenly rising to fame, he broke loose from his Roman associations and fled to Naples, where he soon became the wealthiest and ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... invariably made by his own capital and labour. Even a leaseholder, when his lease expired, had no prescriptive claim to renewal, but must take his chance at a rent-auction with strangers, the farm going to the highest bidder. If he lost, he was homeless and penniless, while the fruits of his labour and capital passed into other hands. The miserable Catholic cottier was, of course, in a similar case, though relatively his hardship was less, since his condition, being the lowest possible in all circumstances, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... her kindness, who ever had or would look for aught else from one who was an angel of goodness and pity? After what has been said, 'tis needless almost to add that poor Esmond's suit was unsuccessful. What was a nameless, penniless lieutenant to do, when some of the greatest in the land were in the field? Esmond never so much as thought of asking permission to hope so far above his reach as he knew this prize was—and passed his foolish, useless life in mere abject sighs and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stolen from you. It can not be bought or sold. You may be poor, and the sheriff come into your house, and sell your furniture at auction, or drive away your cow, or take your lamb, and leave you homeless and penniless; but he can not lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of your mind. This can not be taken for debt; neither can you give it away, though you give enough of it to ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Mr. Bayne, that though she gets the child's estate if he dies or continues lost—if he lives and this expenditure goes on, she will be penniless—you don't realize that. She will be a poor woman—she will have nothing left of her ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... married a Kentucky girl, it was true; but her youth had been passed on a Mississippi plantation. He had years ago heard more or less idle gossip about the hard, miserly nature of the old planter, Hamilton, and of his bitter opposition to his daughter's match with penniless young Carleton. There had been an elopement, or something. It came back to him like some hideous nightmare. His pure, spotless darling—his promised wife! Could there be sin or shame enveloping such a being? He must know. He wrote to Mrs. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... form fast asleep, the arm propped on the hard stone supporting the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. The dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew near and nearer; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is the only means of pointing out the danger, and averting the evil. You talk of your life's happiness. What is that? A true noble thinks of his name above all. Mademoiselle d'Arlange is very pretty, and very attractive; but she is penniless. I had ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... shadowless and penniless: but a heavy weight had been removed from my bosom, and I was calm. Had I not lost my love, or had that loss left me free from self-reproach, I believe I might have been happy; but I knew not what steps I should take. I searched my pockets, and found that a few pieces of ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... rags than degrade my womanhood by accepting anything at your hands!" And off she went, to try her fate in some other place and way, absolutely sure that in some unknown manner she was to wrest success from the future. Young, inexperienced, penniless, and with few friends, she passed weeks looking for a situation in vain. At last she was offered work in a store, but when she found that she must tell what was not true about goods to customers rather than lose a sale, she put on her hat and left at once, and again began ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... add no signature. He must receive this before he learns of the reward placard—before he rises in the morning—lest he lose his head and fly the place penniless." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... done well," the Arab said, "and your words shall not be forgotten. When you land tomorrow, inquire for the house of Isaac Ben Ibyn. You are doubtless penniless, and I may be able to obtain employment for those of you who may stop at Tripoli, and to assist those who desire to take passage to their homes elsewhere. We are commanded to be grateful to those who befriend us, and as you have shown yourselves to be so, it ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... not brook the disgrace your obstinacy has brought upon me; and you have yourself alone to blame that you are not the mistress of a princely fortune. Go to your beggarly lover, if he will receive you when penniless and homeless—the tie between us is broken,' And with these words he rose to quit ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... of an education could a girl who married a penniless rogue and afterwards knew nothing ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... been a well-to-do silk manufacturer, but, while Alphonse was still a child, lost his property. Poverty compelled the son to seek the wretched post of usher (pion) in a school at Alais. In November, 1857, he settled in Paris and joined his almost equally penniless brother Ernest. The autobiography, 'Le Petit Chose' (1868), gives graphic details about this period. His first years of literary life were those of an industrious Bohemian, with poetry for consolation ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... miners, had been stolen; and though a search had 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 pitiful to see; indeed, the Doctor told me that out of the thousands who went fortune hunting ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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
... analogues of this droll; but partial variants, both serious and comic, are numerous. In our story a penniless, unscrupulous hero finds a centavo, and by means of sophistical arguments with foolish persons makes more and more profitable exchanges until he wins the hand of a princess. A serious tale of a clever person starting with no greater capital than a dead mouse, and finally succeeding in ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... his brain was functioning clearly; and, it might be added, swiftly—as the brain always acts when confronted by a perplexing riddle. No matter how swiftly he pursued this riddle, he could not bring it to a halt. Why had Ruth married him? A penniless outcast, for she must have known he was that. Why had she married him, off-hand, like that? She did not love him, or he knew nothing of love signs. Had she too been flying from something and had accepted ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... chance—I would, by Heaven! for she was a pretty girl, and a good girl, till she and I met; but you know the old song, "Kirk would not let us be." A gentleman, in my case, would have settled the matter with the kirk-treasurer for a small sum of money; but the poor stibbler, the penniless dominie, having married his cousin of Kittlebasket, must next have proclaimed her frailty to the whole parish, by mounting the throne of Presbyterian penance, and proving, as Othello says, "his love a whore," in face of the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... nice-mannered and unsensational story. Perhaps it was my own fault. Mr. HAROLD OHLSON (whose previous book I liked) has obviously, perhaps a little too obviously, done his best for these people. It is a tale of two rivalries: that for the heroine, between the penniless artist-hero and a pound-full other; and that in the breast of the p.a.h., between the flesh-pots of commerce and the world-well-lost-for-Chelsea. It is typical of Mr. OHLSON'S care that, though one would in such a situation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... unconsciously, but nevertheless stolen, my sole treasure. She was rich, she had a father and mother, she had many friends and would certainly have been married had she never seen B. I, as I have said, was almost penniless; I was an orphan, with few friends; he was my first love, and I knew ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark 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
... alter my decision, my man," said the Colonel. "Do as I said: go right away and get work; but I know it is hard upon a man to be out of work and penniless. You are a good hand, and ought not to be without a job for long, so in remembrance of ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and much dreaming, time passed until the world outside loomed up again at close quarters. The present view was a new struggle. The great money question intervened. There had come a blight upon his father's dollar crop, and when Grant Harlson left the university he was so nearly penniless that the books he owned were sold ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Philip," her letter began. "We have written and written. What has become of you these last months? Haven't you received the solicitor's letters or mine, telling you of father's sudden death, and the discovery that we are almost penniless—all the ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... the present and the past were concerned, had been an end of it. The young man had been no favourite with her step-mother; and her father, who was almost on his death-bed, had heard what was going on almost without a remark. He had been told that the man was penniless, and as his daughter had been to him the dearest thing upon earth, he had been glad to save himself the pain of expressing disapproval. John Gordon had, however, been a gentleman, and was fit in all things to be the husband of ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... little off the ground. Unfortunately the bulkheads are close above, instead of being latticed for draught. The items are two boxes—sleeping-room and store-room—with a larger lodging of four rooms which sadly wants a flying-roof. The offices are kept in good order by the penniless caretaker, who has been left entirely without supplies, and who is ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... these four and one-half millions of human beings practically homeless, penniless, and friendless, and absolutely dependent upon the very same people to whom they were in bondage for two hundred and forty years, and against whom they had taken up arms in a civil war. The forty acres of land ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... like successive claps of thunder from a cloudless sky. Satan was watching the effect, ready to exult over the first expression of repining and rebellion. But how sublime the resignation of the loyal heart of the childless, homeless, and penniless sufferer! After the eastern custom in time of affliction, he cut off his hair, rent his robe, fell upon the ground, and worshipped. The lips, tremulous with sorrow, uttered the often-quoted and beautiful words: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... went home. But before leaving, she searched in the poor old garments to see if; indeed, he had been penniless. The discovery of the money at first astonished her, but immediately after she found the pawn ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... chisel 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, but it breathed the spirit of a Roman ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... enough; I could not acquire knowledge sufficient, in that brief interval of days, between the acquisition of my little wealth and the spending of my last farthing. The miserable moment came. I was literally penniless, and without the means of realizing any thing. For a week I retained possession of my room through the charity of my landlord, and I was furnished with two loaves by a good fellow who lived in the same house, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... stories not over decent. During some months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to the West of England, lived there as he had lived everywhere, and in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Heywood, there's some magic in the fellow, or my name's not Henslowe!" cried the manager. "His very words bewitch one's wits as nothing else can do. Why, I've tried them with 'Pierce Penniless,' 'Groat's Worth of Wit,' 'Friar Bacon,' 'Orlando,' and the 'Battle of Alcazar.' Why, tush! they will not even listen! And here I've put Martin Gosset into purple and gold, and Jemmy Donstall into a peach-colored gown laid down with silver-gilt, for 'Volteger'; and what? Why, ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... yet penniless and homeless. A man of toil, but one whose own and whose ancestral toil had created a material and social grandeur which now mocked at his poverty and arrogantly denied him a share in its blessings. A free man, but ignorant, the greatest curse imposed by his former status which had contributed ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... awaiting his answer at Munich they were painfully surprised by the entrance of five old soldiers of noble birth, part of the body-guard they had left behind at Mittau, relying on the protection of Paul. The "mad Czar" had decreed their immediate expulsion, and, penniless and almost starving, they made their way to Louis XVIII. All the money the royal family possessed was bestowed on these faithful servants, who came to them in detachments for relief, and then the Duchess offered her diamonds to the Danish consul for an advance of two thousand ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... necessary to be performed. In truth, however, the teaching of Sir Lionel and Harcourt had not been altogether without effect: at this present moment, having just paid to Mr. Neversaye Die his first yearly contribution, he was well-nigh penniless; and, after all, if a rich uncle have money to bestow, why should he not bestow it on a nephew? Money, at any rate, was not in itself deleterious. So much George ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... lodgings, he should have kept his promise and not tried to see her again. Even if her straightforwardness had not roused his emulation, his understanding of her difficulties would have moved his pity. He knew on how frail a thread the popularity of the penniless hangs, and how miserably a girl like Susy was the sport of other people's moods and whims. It was a part of his difficulty and of hers that to get what they liked they so often had to do what they disliked. But the keeping of his promise was a greater bore than he had expected. Susy Branch ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... sight, ye viper," he said; "ye frozen viper that I warmed till ye stung me! Are ye not afraid that the walls of my father's dwelling should fall and crush ye, limb and bone? Were ye not friendless, houseless, penniless, when I took ye by the hand; and are ye not expelling me—me, and that innocent girl— friendless, houseless, and penniless, from the house that has sheltered us and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... and disinherit the man aforesaid, and who, to crown his virtues, pretends to be a miser in order to teach the young woman, also aforesaid, how bad it is to be mercenary, and to induce her to marry the unrecognized and seemingly penniless son; their marriage accordingly, with ultimate result that the bridegroom turns out to be no poor clerk, but the original heir, who, of course, is not dead, and is the inheritor of thousands; subsidiary groups of characters, of course, one which I think rather ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... embrace his sick wife and his daughter, so soon to be left alone, when, shedding bitter tears, he was led away. A year and a half after her husband's departure, Madame Fedor died in the arms of her daughter, who was thus left alone and almost penniless. Nadia Fedor then asked, and easily obtained from the Russian government, an authorization to join her father at Irkutsk. She wrote and told him she was starting. She had barely enough money for this long journey, and yet she did not hesitate to undertake it. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... suddenness of their emancipation, and the consequent disorganisation of their social life, could not but involve a good deal of suffering. In regard to the general condition of the coloured people at the time in question, Mr F. J. Loudin says: "They were homeless, penniless, ignorant, improvident—unprepared in every way for the dangers as well as the duties of freedom. Self-reliance they had never had the opportunity to learn, and, suddenly left to shift for themselves, they were at the mercy of the knaves who were everywhere so ready to cheat them out ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... you have been left penniless. Albrecht has not even spoken about any pay to me since I joined the company; and when I learned he had deliberately left us stalled here, my first thought was of your unpleasant situation if ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Supplementing this all-important clause there was a set of conditions governing the final disposition of the estate. The most extraordinary of these conditions was the one which required the heir to be absolutely penniless upon the twenty-sixth anniversary of his birth, ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... As a matter of fact, he knows more about most things than we do; but that's not important. Mind, I'm admitting nothing of all that you suggest, but you might have said that I'm a penniless girl, living on your husband's charity. I must confess that ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... said, there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent penniless beginner in the world labors for wages a while, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... administered a narcotic as being the easiest and simplest way to handle a patient who seemed friendless and penniless. "The man is simply delirious with fever. He looks like a man emaciated from lack of food. What ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Dick Jarman—the solitary station keeper—ever indulged this fancy. An escaped convict from one of her Britannic Majesty's penal colonies, a "stowaway" in the hold of an Australian ship, he had landed penniless in San Francisco, fearful of contact with his more honest countrymen already there, and liable to detection at any moment. Luckily for him, the English immigration consisted mainly of gold-seekers en route to Sacramento and the southern mines. He was prudent enough to resist ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... choose to tell him immediately what I designed in his favour, but asked him if he could think of no way of satisfying the captain, or any one else, who might thereupon be induced to engage for him; and farther, how he expected to live when he should get to England, a man quite forgotten and penniless. Hereupon he told me he had, ever since his being on board, considering his destitute condition, entertained a thought of having his adventures written; which, as there was something so uncommon in them, he was sure the world ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... might have felt for the alliance, whatever love she might have cherished for another, had been trampled down and subjugated, and he, Stephen Whitelaw, had obtained the desire of his heart. He had won her, against that penniless young jackanapes, lawyer Randall's son, who had treated him with marked contempt on more than one occasion when they happened to come across each other in Malsham Corn-exchange, which was held ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... than you deserve. An annuity larger than anything you ever had before you married me, a house up the Hudson, and your promise never to return to New York. With my death, the annuity will cease, and you will be penniless. I don't choose to be put out of the way by you or ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... about Marian? It was a hint, a very broad one. It meant that Marian might love him if he were a poor man, but could love him much more if he were a rich one. As a fact, she would marry him if he had money, but not if he were penniless. After all, why not? She, Marian, had often said all that to him, or at least some of it. But that other word, of her marrying some other ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... money is far from pleasant under any circumstances, but to be penniless a thousand miles from home, in the midst of strangers, is far worse. Jasper found himself in this position so unexpectedly that as he stood beside the little depot with his carpet-bag in his hand he ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr. |
