"Hard up" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something about wages and assault warrants, so I was given to him to make the matter up. Between you and I, the Cornet was very hard up." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "Hard up your helm!" the captain shouted aft, and, paying off like a bird, the Ocean Star swept by the stranger's stern near enough to almost touch her. As they went sailing past her, it became Captain Lane's turn to bend forward with a lantern, and ascertain who ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... to a lamppost, and Jurgis got a glimpse of the other. He was a young fellow—not much over eighteen, with a handsome boyish face. He wore a silk hat and a rich soft overcoat with a fur collar; and he smiled at Jurgis with benignant sympathy. "I'm hard up, too, my goo' fren'," he said. "I've got cruel parents, or I'd ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Tom Wright's free passage. Fortunately, there was always good fishing on the Fraser; but salt was a dollar twenty-five a pound, butter a dollar twenty-five a pound, and flour rarer than nuggets. So hard up were some of the {17} miners for pans to wash their gold, that one desperate fellow went to a log shack called a grocery store, and after paying a dollar for the privilege of using a grindstone, bought an empty butter vat at ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... to talk so much, and a lock of whose hair he kept so sacred. I remember I tried to buy a part of it from him, but could not succeed until once, when his funds from home failed to come, and he was so hard up, as we used to say, that he actually sold, or rather pawned, half of the shining tress for the sum of five dollars. As the pawn was never redeemed, I have the hair now, but never expected to meet with its fair owner, who needs ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... ever left her room. Mr. and Mrs. Mouse inspected the whole room carefully, she looking after their lodgings, and he seeing what chances there were of food, and what kinds of it, for Mr. Mouse was rather dainty in his eating, if he were not hard up for food, as they had been a good deal lately. They found everything perfection. As to lodgings, Mrs. Mouse found a hole which delighted her extremely. It was obscurely hid in the wainscot under the wardrobe, where nobody could ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... fireman, named Johnny King, was charged with attempting to commit suicide. On Wednesday defendant went to Bow Police Station and stated that he had swallowed a quantity of phosphor paste, as he was hard up and unable to obtain work. King was taken inside and an emetic administered, when he vomited up a quantity of the poison. Defendant now said he was very sorry. Although he had sixteen years' good character, he was unable to obtain work of any ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... thrashed; and I've a notion of goin' back and doin' it, for I've felt like thrashin' somebody for a good while. The bar ain't wuth fifteen cents, and won't be nothin' but a bother. Mebbe though he might be good for 'fresh,' if we git hard up." ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... what he can't have." Lord John made scarce more of it than that. "But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... the letter. Of course the direction on the packet and the inscribed slip of paper were in feigned handwriting, so he could gather nothing from that. Still, he did not think that Mrs. Jasher had sent the emerald. She was desperately hard up, and if she had become possessed of the gem by murder—presuming her to have been the woman who talked to Bolton through the window—she assuredly would have sold it to supply her own needs. Certainly, if guilty, ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... with broad diagonal bands of colour: claret, gold, and blue. It was obvious to us that Pete Corcoran, or, to give him his proper name, Mr. Corcoran, had said what he did merely in a humorous way, or possibly satiric, implying that we are generally so hard up for something to write about that we would even undertake so trifling a subject as haberdashery; but as we went downstairs again to our kennel, au dixieme, as Mr. Wanamaker would call it, we thought seriously about ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... and stirring it feebly with the poker, he tried to devise some feasible plan for supplying the vacuum in his treasury. He might borrow, but then all his friends were very poor, and particularly hard up—at this particular season of the year. The bull's eye watch might have been "spouted," if he had foreseen this contingency; but every avuncular relative was now at this hour of the night snug abed to a dead certainty. Purchasing ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... to have suffered. Desmond was beginning to think he was out of the wood when he heard a crash in front, followed by a still more ominous sound. The motion of the gallivat at once ceased, and, the grab slowly creeping up to her, Desmond had to put his helm hard up to avoid a collision. He could hear the Gujarati raging and storming on deck, and cries as of men in pain; then, as the grab came abreast of the smaller vessel, he became aware of what had happened. The mainmast of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... recompensed for his mood. Then it was that he wrote to Simmy Dodge, asking him to sell the furnishings and appliances in his office, sublet the rooms, and send to him as soon as possible the proceeds of the sale. He confessed frankly and in his straightforward way that he was hard up ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I became harder up. My financial state was described by a friend as "stone broke." I don't approve of slang, mind you, but such was my condition. But suppose we go in; there might be other people who would like to dine—it's ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole was then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope was traced half-way along the pole's length, and firmly secured so, with intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope—like the Three Fates—remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... formed the works at Harrison we divided the interests into one hundred shares or parts at $100 par. One of the boys was hard up after a time, and sold two shares to Bob Cutting. Up to that time we had never paid anything; but we got around to the point where the board declared a dividend every Saturday night. We had never declared a dividend when Cutting bought his shares, and after getting his dividends for three weeks ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... constitutional timidity to a certain point, then suddenly giving way,—I think something tragic might be produced. James Ballantyne's criticism is too much moulded upon the general taste of novels to admit, I fear, this species of reasoning. But what can one do? I am hard up as far as imagination is concerned, yet the world calls for novelty. Well, I'll try my brave coward or cowardly brave man. Valeat quantum. Being a teind day, remained at home, adjusting my ideas on this point until one o'clock, then walked as ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... fast below, to keep him out of mischief, when they went on shore, and had remained there since. I had an idea that he was very likely drowned if he was over on the lee side, but I didn't say so for fear of grieving his young masters. Thinks I to myself, if we are hard up for grub, whether dead or alive, he'll serve us for a meal or ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... his villa and bought a tiny house next door to the distillery, where he is now living. It is believed his money went at Monte Carlo, indeed it seems he is a wrong 'un all round. At all events he is known to be hard up now." ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... his high, sweet, husky voice, "It is no use beating about the bush. I want help. We are in need; we are horribly hard up, to put it baldly. That has passed between your family and mine which makes you the last person I should wish to appeal to as a beggar. I propose a business ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... guttering on the window-ledge. These glories over, Donald came hard up against the end of them all—the Chief dead at his feet, slain by his own hand. For a time he faltered, playing only in little, melancholy snatches. Then he got surer, and the music began to come in blasts. He was seeing his way, learning what it all meant to him and the Maclachlans. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... see you, I'm sure,' said Mr. Watkins Tottle, wishing internally that his visitor had 'dropped in' to the Thames at the bottom of the street, instead of dropping into his parlour. The fortnight was nearly up, and Watkins was hard up. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a month, I should ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... too were hard up for rations, for in the pursuit we could not wait for our trains, so I concluded to secure if possible these provisions intended for Lee. To this end I directed Young to send four of his best scouts to Burkeville Junction. There they were ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... London, and his proposed interview with Haydon. The two brothers went together to call upon the 'painter of the heroic' at his studio in Connaught Terrace, Hyde Park. There was some difficulty about their admission, and it turned out afterwards that Haydon thought they might be duns, as he was very hard up at the time. His eyes glistened at the mention of the L100. 'I am not very fond of painting portraits,' he said, 'but a mayor is a mayor, and there is something grand in that idea of the Norman arch.' And thus Mayor Hawkes came to be painted by Benjamin Haydon, and ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... yesterday I asked them to telegraph. I suppose they're horribly hard up, the poor dears, and they thought a letter would do as well as a telegram." The colour had risen to her face. "That's why I wrote instead of telegraphing; I haven't ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... thinks he has become famous when he has merely happened to meet an editor who was hard up ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... when funds were short, I took the laurel wreaths to the shop, and . . . guess what they weighed. Eighty pounds altogether. Ha, ha! you can't think how useful the money was. Artists, indeed, are often hard up. To-day I have hundreds, thousands, tomorrow nothing. . . . To-day I haven't a crust of bread, to-morrow I have oysters and anchovies, hang ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to find her teaching. I fancy they've been pretty hard up—grandfather drank, and ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... and Eleanor. They're here with their cousins, the Vails, summers. Two or three died between those two, I believe. Lucky, perhaps, for the family has been awfully hard up. Lived on in their big old place, in Maryland, with no money at all. I've an idea Madge's mother wasn't so sorry to die—had a hard life of it with the fascinating Colonel." The Bishop's hand dropped from the boy's shoulder, and shut tightly. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... when they were hard up for a mount, and it was this way. The squatters weren't alike, by any manner of means, in their way of dealing with them. Many of them had lots of fine riding-horses in their paddocks. These would be yarded some fine night, the best taken and ridden ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... him somewhat taken aback. "Well, by my soul, you can't help conceding to me that a man who is alive must live, and that's what your artist by profession hardly ever succeeds in doing, for he's always hard up." And he went on with a long rigmarole of bosh, which he clothed in fine words and stereotyped phrases. The end of it all appeared to be pretty much this—that by living he meant little else than having no debts but plenty of money, plenty to eat and drink, a beautiful wife, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... would but go in for pupils, but with all that he can't paint a picture. He has not a spark of imagination, nor an idea of art; he has no eye for color, or effect. He can paint admirably what he sees, but then he sees nothing but bare facts. He is always hard up, poor fellow, and it would be a real boon to him to take me for three months and stick at it hard with me, and by the end of that time I ought to be able to take my place in some artist's school in Paris ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Munson; "there is indeed no time to hesitate, with such an enemy within a quarter of a mile! Turn the hands up, Mr. Griffith, and pack on the ship from her trucks to her lower studdingsail-booms. Be stirring, sir, be stirring! Hard up with your helm! Hard up, and be ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ranged up on the quarter of Dampier's ship, "designing to board" her. The pirates dragged their cannon aft, and fired at her repeatedly, "in hopes to have lamed either Mast or Yard." As they failed to carry away her spars, they waited till "she was shearing aboard," when they rammed the helm hard up, "gave her a good Volley," and wore ship. As soon as she was round on the other tack, she stood to the westward, passing down the Spanish line under a heavy fire. The Toro held to her course, after the second pirate ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... real hard up I'll write for more," was his declaration. "You will need what you have saved, and I am sure I can get along ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... not raise anything on that; adding, with an air of authority, that he believed I spoke the truth, for it was not likely the hag would have kept anything from her oldest boarder. 'I dare say the real truth is,' he wound up, 'that you are hard up, like me, and want to ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... sure do some close figurin'. I sure paid ten for 'em. Got 'em from a Chola puncher what was hard up. Mebby you ain't figurin' that they's about twenty bucks' worth of hand-worked silver conchas on 'em which ain't wore ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... "Hard up? No; how like you! Of course, he has plenty of money, for him, but he spends it all, poor boy. Anyhow, of course, he's not really rich like Van Buren. It's on a totally different scale—a different sort of thing altogether. But, of course, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... worrying for money again,' returned Mr. O'Brien, ruffling up his gray hair in a discontented fashion; 'he says he is hard up. But that is only one of Joe's lies; he tells lies by the peck. He had a good coat on, and looked as thriving as possible, and I know from Atkinson, who has been in Leeds, that he is a traveller to some house in the wine trade. And yet he comes here, the bullying rascal! fretting the poor ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... man's hard up so soon," the exchange editor said to the editorial writer at the next desk, "It's only ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "I'm too hard up to be noble," said Wenlock drily. "I've not come here on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business. Besides, hang it all, man, think of what she is, and think of what I am." He looked himself up and down with a half humorous smile—"I ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Uncle Jacob," he said; "but if ever you get very hard up, let me know, and I'll see if I can't help you—in a ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... been 'hard up' and needed money before they succeeded," Helen pleaded. "Surely you know that crises come in nearly every undertaking where there isn't unlimited capital, obstacles and combinations of circumstances ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... feller can turn a good penny in the way o' fancy articles, just now; but 'tain't the time for prime plantation-stock. Planters are all buying, and breeders down Virginia way won't give a feller a chance to make a shaving. It drives a feller hard up, ye see, and forces more business in ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... sure," continued Benson: "there is a dead silence till pug is well out of cover, and the whole pack well in: then cheer the hounds with tally-ho! till your lungs crack. Away he goes in gallant style, and the whole field is hard up, till pug takes a stiff country: then they who haven't pluck lag, see no more of him, and, with a fine blazing scent, there are but few of us in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... did have one, and I take it beastly unkind of you to say that, Glossop!" blurted out the young duke impetuously. "Just because I'm hard up is no reason why I should commit murder and robbery. What could I want with the Siva stones? I couldn't sell them, could I, marked things that every diamond dealer in the world knows? Oh, yes, I know what people say: ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... when sea and sky were lighted up. And then, and even then, what was it? There it sat up in the cross-trees, a hairy, sulky bulk of man or beast, black, and the creature looked hard down whilst all hands were staring hard up. ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... as much as a common mariner can manage. You see, Mr. Effingham, we were running along a weather-shore, as close in as we could get, to be in the eddy, when a squall struck her a-beam, and she luffed right on to the beach. No helping it. Helm hard up, peak down, head sheets to windward, and main sheet flying, but it was all too late; away she went plump ashore to windward. But for that accident, I ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... years' stay in Paris did Wagner no particular harm that I have been able to trace beyond implanting in him that deadly fear of being hard up which haunted him all his life thenceforward, and is an offensive and yet pathetic feature of his letters to all his friends. On the other hand, he heard opera performances on a scale outside and beyond his past experience; he heard Habenek direct the Choral Symphony at the Conservatoire, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... still on deck working with these fine instruments, and screwing in metal screws with one's bare fingers, is not altogether agreeable. It often happens that they must slap their arms about and tramp hard up and down the deck. They are received with shouts of laughter when they reappear in the saloon after the performance of one of these thundering nigger break-downs above our heads that has shaken the whole ship. We ask innocently if it was cold on deck. 'Not the very ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... together at the wheel, jammed down the spokes with all our strength; but the blessed brig wouldn't come up to the wind as we wanted her. She wouldn't, although we both almost hung on the wheel and wrenched it off the deck. 'Hard up with the helm, men, do you hear?' again sings out the chief officer, rushing aft as he spoke. 'Hard up, men! all our lives are ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... importance and difficulty to require learning by experience and careful inquiry, just as much as any other art? They do not come by inspiration to the lady disappointed in love, nor to the poor workhouse drudge hard up for a livelihood. ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... of a young gentleman who, whenever he was hard up for money, went to his nearest relatives and threatened them with the publication of a volume of his original poems. This threat never failed to open the paternal purse. I do not know what effect the intimation of my histrionic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the Tennessee Shad. "Between you and me and the lamppost, Doc is devilishly hard up. Offer him a couple of ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... sorry to hear that, Mrs. Tyrrell;—we are very hard up for money here, and the landlord doesn't know on what hand to turn; I must raise a large sum for him forthwith:—indeed to tell you the truth, I have received instructions that are not at all pleasant to myself—I am to let no one pass, he says, and if I cannot get the rent otherwise, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... lad. Its hard up I've been myself before the now, but its a cold day when Barney O'Hara will let a ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... they come to get it fr'm th' box, 'twas found that manny iv th' vallyable gems in th' band was missin'. I don't know whether 'tis thrue or not, but 'tis said that th' ancesthors iv th' prisint king, bein' hard up, was used to pick a jool out iv th' hat iv a Saturdah night an' go down to Mose at th' corner an' get something on it. An' whin times was slack an' th' ponies backward, they cudden't get th' jools out, so they cut a piece fr'm th' window an' pasted it in. It looked f'r awhile as though th' king ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... John-Willy, and if it's true he can go. But of course it's Archelaus really, just because he knows how I feel about it. It isn't even as though it were the season for it, if you can talk of a season for such a thing, but no one can be very hard up for food as late as this. Oh, if I can't be free of him even now ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... stools, between Scylla and Charybdis; surrounded by shoals, surrounded by breakers, surrounded by quicksands; at cross purposes; not out of the wood. reduced to straits; hard pressed, sorely pressed; run hard; pinched, put to it, straitened; hard up, hard put to it, hard set; put to one's shifts; puzzled, at a loss, &c (uncertain) 475; at the end of one's tether, at the end of one's rope, at one's wit's end, at a nonplus, at a standstill; graveled, nonplused, nonplussed, stranded, aground; stuck fast, set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... first place, they tried in San Francisco to find out something about McLeish, but no one knew of such a man. They then began to consider some persons they did know about. They had heard in Lima that some of the people of the Castor had been rescued, and if any of them were hard up, as most likely they were, Shirley and Burke thought that by rights they ought to have some of the treasure that they had found. Shirley said at first they had gone on the idea that each of them would have six thousand dollars and could go into business for himself, but after a ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... 'Hard up, air ye, Pawliney? Well, well, don't colour up so, we all hev our scarce times. I ain't partial to payin' forehanded, but you was awful kind to Mis' Croaker when her rheumatiz was bad on her, an' I ain't ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... Advocate-Times. But Babbitt could not abide it. He grunted. He wrinkled the newspaper. He protested: "Can you beat it! I'm willing to hand a lot of credit to Charley McKelvey. When we were in college together, he was just as hard up as any of us, and he's made a million good bucks out of contracting and hasn't been any dishonester or bought any more city councils than was necessary. And that's a good house of his—though it ain't any 'mighty stone walls' and it ain't ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of his breast pocket, where it had been since the previous day. "My mother sent it to me," he explained; "you see she guesses that I am hard up, and, thanks to my father, she can't send me money. This piece of jewellery she has had for many years, but as it is rather old-fashioned she never wears it. So she sent it to me, hoping that I might get ten pounds ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... there were one or two "ifs." Was it likely that Frank should have heard the news? He was notoriously hard up, and the name Talgarth had not appeared, so far, on any of the posters. Yet he might easily have been given a paper, or picked ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... out a secret reconnaissance in South Africa I came across a farmhouse from which the owner was absent at the moment of my arrival. I had come far and would have still further to go before I came across any habitation, and I was hard up for a lodging ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... my father, "if you are so hard up as that, Ned shall go in and get it for you! We are not very busy here just now, and a trip to Port Elizabeth will do him no harm. But why do you require such a large quantity? Are you contemplating an up-country jaunt; or what ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to a sportsman in Ceylon to possess a sufficient stock of botanical information for his personal convenience. A man may be lost in the jungles or hard up for provisions in some out-of-the-way place, where, if he has only a saucepan, he can generally procure something eatable in the way of herbs. It is not to be supposed, however, that he would succeed in making a good dinner; the reader may at any time procure ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... that and can't do this. I'll just show you a few of the latest patterns in the can-and-can't line. You'll be compelled to resign? All right, if you think so I never saw the man yet that I was hard up for. And when any man thinks I can't get along without him, I just show him the latest pattern in that line of goods and give him ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... got five shillings for that little essay; not much, you will say, but better than nothing. The editor praised me and asked for more. I write occasionally in 'The Flower of Youth,' and when I am very hard up I am glad of the few shillings my ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... first thing an Englishman does when he is hard up for money is to abstain from buying books. The first thing I do when I am liver-y, lumbagy, and generally short of energy, is to abstain from answering letters. And I am only just emerging from a good many weeks of that sort of flabbiness ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... saying I never was hard up," I said. "I'll tell you what, Teddy. You needn't give me the money. I'll bring you some ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... begin work without a heavy retaining fee. We conclude that Balaam, like nearly every prophet mentioned in history, had a good eye for the main chance, and did not trust very much in the bounty of the gods. He was never hard up for bread and cheese while other people were hard up for divine assistance, and as that was an ignorant and credulous age, we presume that his larder was well-stocked. He must, indeed, have had a fine time, for he was the biggest pot ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... was only a step behind them when he heard Snyder say: "He must have money, because he refused a hundred dollars that the Major offered him. At any rate we'll hear from him soon enough if he gets hard up or into trouble. He ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... days after his appearance the baron asked me quietly enough to lend him a score of louis, as he was hard up. I replied as quietly, thanking him for treating me as a friend, but informing him that I really could not lend him the money, as I wanted what little I had for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the books over to the lib'ry," he heard himself meandering on, "with a queer story in it. I got to reading it through, one night last winter. It was about a feller named 'Fed'rigo.' A wop of some kind, I guess. He got so hard up he didn't have anything left but a pet falcon. Whatever a falcon may be. Whatever it was, it must'a been good to eat. But he set a heap of store by it. Him and it was chums. Same as me and Chum are. Then along come a lady he was in love with. And she stopped to his house ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... it. There's one as I can trust has told me he's hard up enough sometimes. Why, we've had twelve hundred ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... always had a fair amount of the ready. Apart from what he got from his uncle, I knew that he had finished up the jumping season well on the right side of the ledger. Why, then, was he lunching the girl at this God-forsaken eatery? It couldn't be because he was hard up. ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... do. In these days of failure, shortage at both ends and financial stringency generally, I often wonder that some people should go on, day after day, using just as extravagant language as they did during the flush times. When I get hard up the first thing I do is to economize in my expressions in every day conversation. If there is a marked stringency in business, I lay aside first, my French, then my Latin, and finally my German. Should the times become greatly depressed and failures and assignments become ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... don't you get up, and skip about like me?" If you have been robbing a man's till for ten years, and then decide—by the way you have not yet decided—to leave off, there is no sense in saying to him: "Why the devil are you always hard up? Look at me doing the same sort of business as you on absolutely equal terms, and I'm able to keep two motor-cars and six servants." But that is precisely what is said to us. You are eternally expecting ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... that Carroll had gone out and pawned his watch to pay him—then he desisted. He reflected that his sister was a woman, and would in all probability tell the woman down-stairs and her son about it, and that it would be none of their business whether he worked for a man who was honest enough, or hard up enough, to pawn his watch to pay him his month's salary or not. He was conscious of sentiments of loyalty both to himself and to Carroll. During the next two weeks he often strolled in the neighborhood of the office and stood looking up at the familiar windows. One day he saw some men carrying ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... $10,000 we can grasp that. But when nations shoot away so many million pounds sterling every day—that means nothing to me. I do know that there's going to be no money on this side the world for a long time to buy American securities. The whole world is going to be hard up in consequence of the bankruptcy of these nations, the inestimable destruction of property, and the loss of productive men. I fancy that such a change will come in the economic and financial readjustment ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... be touched if she'll take Merriston. I'm fearfully hard up. I suppose it would only be a little let; but that would be better ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Again and again it was repeated as he slowly left the country, even pausing at Quebec to say it again; and thereafter the cables took it up, repeating it over and over, until the people of Canada began to suspect that the correspondents were almost as hard up for news as some of them were during the war. Mr. Grattan O'Leary knew he had a difficult character to popularize on the cable; a man who until he became Premier, outside of Parliament was as diffident as the hero in "She Stoops to Conquer"; at High School in the little stone ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... baronet, with small eyes, a dusky, ruddy face, and peculiar hail-fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly. He was always hard up, but being a man of enterprise knew all the best people, as well as all the worst, so that he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... great clouds of smoke across the table. "I tell you what it is, we can't afford to keep your brother doing nothing all the time. If you insist on keeping him you must find the money—somewhere. It's no use being proud. We're hard up, and if people owe you money, well—dun 'em for it. I don't know how it is, but this darned business of yours seems to ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... reckon," replied the colonel. "We'll do the usual; I'll halt 'em, Logroller'll tend to the driver, Cranks takes the boot, an' Mac an' Perk takes right an' left. An'—I know it's tough—but consid'rin' how everlastin' eternally hard up we are, I reckon we'll have to ask contributions from the ladies, too, ef ther's ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the pigs. No, let's see: first about the trees. Da chopped off a lot of Elm trees that looked terrible nice from her windy. She's awful queer about a tree. She hates to see 'em cut down, an' that soured her same as if she owned 'em. Then there wuz the pigs. You see, one winter she was awful hard up, an' she had two pigs worth, maybe, $5.00 each—anyway, she said they was, an' she ought to know, for they lived right in the shanty with her—an' she come to Da (I guess she had tried every one else first) an' Da he squeezed her down an' got ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sick to care about ridin'," said the drover, while a wan smile flitted over his yellow-grey features. "I've rode him far enough. I've rode that horse a thousand miles. I wouldn't sell him, only I'm a bit hard up. Sellin' him now to get the money ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... as steel, had perceived the accident as soon as any of us, and he sprang to the very part of the vessel where he was most needed. He had a seaman's faculties in perfection, though ratiocination was certainly not his forte. A motion of my hand ordered him to put the helm hard up, and the answering sign let me know that I was obeyed. We could do no more just then, but the result ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... vanity is implicated! He is a handsome man!—He would bring you all to ruin for his pleasure; in fact, you are already on the highroad to the workhouse. Why, look, never since I set foot in your house have you been able to do up your drawing-room furniture. 'Hard up' is the word shouted by every slit in the stuff. Where will you find a son-in-law who would not turn his back in horror of the ill-concealed evidence of the most cruel misery there is—that of people in decent society? I have kept ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... churning of liquid mountains. One midnight, when eight bells had been struck to call the middle watch, there suddenly appeared on the poop the commander, who was known to be a man of God. He gave the order to hard up the helm and make sail. When she came before the wind the crew were puzzled to know the cause of this strange proceeding, and their captain did not keep them long in doubt. He called all hands aft, and when they had mustered he began: "Men, you know I ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... own dishes best, and we preferred ours, we did not trespass very largely on theirs. We found from the small amount of meat in the village, that the inhabitants were more hard up for food ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... more in earnest in my life,' said Undy. 'I'll just explain how the matter is; and as you are sharp enough, you'll see at once that you had better oblige him. Val, you know, is always hard up; he can't touch a shilling of that woman's money, and just at present he has none of his own. So he came to me this ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... much already, old man. Besides I had a sort of superstition that this temporary starvation—that's what it was, and it hurt— would bring me luck later. It's over and done with now, and none of the syndicate know how hard up I was. Fire away. What's the exact state of affairs ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... she declared. "I've wanted to confess it, though I'm horribly ashamed to—and I'm afraid you'll think I did not value it. I did indeed—I hated to part with it; but I was so hard up, and I didn't know which way to turn, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... will engage you, lad, for they are hard up for an assistant blacksmith just now, and I happen to be hand-and-glove with some o' the chief men of the yard, who'll be happy to take anyone recommended ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... crowding,—they were still talking about it. Jinks was saying that our whole generation is overfed and soft. If he had his way he would take every man in the United States up to forty- seven years of age (Jinks is forty-eight) and train him to a shadow. Blinks went further. He said they should be trained hard up to fifty. He ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... yet. But they're skilled miners. 'N when they git hard up, a couple on 'em put in a month's work for some skalliwag 'company' or other, 'n so they keep agoin'. The three married ones ain't ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... happened to run across Jim for ten years or more, but he didn't look much like this then. Poor old Jim, they tell me he's not having the best time in the world. Someway, all the old-timers that are living seem to be hard up, or in bad health, or unhappy. It doesn't seem right, after what they've done and what they've gone through. But I guess it's the way of life. It's the way life gets even with us for letting us outlive the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... farm-hand, old grandmother, each would be sure of a greeting and a few words of talk when they met the Rector on his rounds. In society he might at times be too impetuous or insistent, when questions were stirred in which he was deeply interested. Tennyson tells us how he 'walked hard up and down the study for hours, smoking furiously and affirming that tobacco was the only thing that kept his nerves quiet'. Green compares him to a restless animal, and Stopford Brooke speaks of his quick-rushing walk, his keen face like a sword, and his body thinned ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... representatives of Ali Amouri, the trader at the latter station, declared that they could not supply us with cattle, they being hard up for provisions themselves. Their looks belied the excuse. Wind south all day, but changed to north at 6.30 P.M. The boat of the French trader, Jules Poncet, that had accompanied the fleet, arrived ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... pause, in which he was perhaps estimating his own powers of persuasion against his brother's powers of resistance, and coming to the conclusion that it was not worth his while to contend with him any longer, "I have come to say this. I am hard up—devilish hard up. But that's not all. It is not enough to offer me a five-pound note or a ten-pound note and tell me to spend it as I please. I want something definite. You seem to have plenty of money: I have none. I want an allowance, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... mind the sir. That's so English. Now you're getting stand-offy again, as if you thought I was a sharper with a story about being hard up." ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... together, they have not said much about it; description depends so much on comparison, and comparison necessitates a something like. If there existed another Niagara on the earth, travellers might compare this one to that one; but as there does not exist a second Niagara, they are generally hard up for a comparison. In the matter of roar, however, comparisons are still open. There is so much noise in the world that analysis of noise becomes easy. One man hears in it the sound of the Battle of the Nile-a statement not likely to ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Steinmetz, "and I have come to the conclusion that our friend hates you personally. He has a grudge against you of some sort. Of course he hates me—cela va sans dire. He has come to Russia to watch us. That I am convinced of. He has come here bent on mischief. It may be that he is hard up and is to be bought. He is always to be bought, ce bon De Chauxville, at a price. We ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... of studying," Bobby went on, disdaining her interruption. "Now, when you get hard up for ideas, Arlt, when you actually can't get enough out of your gray matter to fill up your pattern, you go off somewhere and study something. Now, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... take me for a man yet," said Tony, at the same time drawing himself up to his full height; "though I don't know as I should care to work for him. I'd rather have a crossing, and be my own master. But if I get hard up, do you think he'd take to me, if you spoke a ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... look like a Turk hard up in London, who has bought a second-hand suit of English clothes that don't ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... pretty sick about it. It was partly through me and my wretched debts that father and mother got so short of money. Mother was always hard up. It runs in the blood. And, what with one thing and another, we were all of us in a pretty tight fix; and she tried to get ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... all that time the Hiram Dusenbery Company has been trying, by fair means or otherwise, to buy it of him, but Old Iron-Toe put the price so high that they preferred to wait, hoping that when he got hard up he might be willing to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... said Joe. "I've been lucky, and am doing well. I hope you'll make up your mind to turn over a new leaf. If you do, and are ever hard up for a meal, come to me, and you shall have it without money and ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... modern aged is the opportunity of our sisters, the girls "on the make,"' said Merton. 'What a lot of old men of title are marrying young women as hard up ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Bernard's—Tanguy was the only person in Paris who bought and owned pictures by Cezanne. He had dozens of his canvases stacked away in the rear of his establishment—Cezanne often parted with a canvas for a few francs. When Tanguy was hard up he would go to some discerning amateur and sell for two hundred francs pictures that to-day bring twenty thousand francs. Tanguy hated to sell, especially his Cezannes. Artists came to see them. His shop was the scene of many ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... before the mob of gentlemen who read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of time—the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' denounced this pastime, and made merry over a virtuoso's whim. Somebody else—Mr. Slater, I think it was—thought fit to put in a defence, and thereupon a dispute arose as to why men bought first editions dear when they could buy ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... that time she had not done very well; her husband used to drink, and died of spontaneous imbustion; but she had been a fine woman in her time, truth to tell, not that it did her any good, though she had friends among the lawyers. So, being hard up, she became a monthly nurse, and lived in the Rue Barre-du-Bec. Well, she went out to nurse an old gentleman that had a disease of the lurinary guts (saving your presence); they used to tap him like an artesian well, and he needed such care that she used to sleep on a truckle-bed ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... runnin' a store than the man who got his farm knows about runnin' a farm, which is nothin'. When men change their game, this way, they always lose. And that ain't all. Mr. Bennett is topplin' now. His house is mortgaged and he's hard up. But a fine house is always a bait to young men; and old folks always put out a bait in order to ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... said. "Farmer's hard up, or so he says, and wants to sell Mrs. Pedlar's cottage over her head. But there's one way out and only one. Of course, Bewes be a lot too crafty to put it in words; but he's let it soak into Jane's mind very clever that if Milly Boon was to see her way to take ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... There's something about the little shavers... I can't talk of them. And if you thought a cent about this father that I hear you talk of, or that sweetheart you were writing to this morning, you would feel like me. You would say, What matters laws, and God, and that? My folks are hard up, I belong to them, I'll get them bread, or, by God! I'll get them wealth, if I have to burn down London for it. That's what you would say. And I'll tell you more: your heart is saying so this living minute. I can see it ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... she said aloud. "He's up to some fresh devilment, an' 'pears like he's scairt. Trouble with Creed is, he ain't got no nerve—he's all mouth. I sure was hard up fer a man when I tuk him—but he treats me middlin' kind, an' I'd kind of hate to see him git caught—'cause he ain't no good a liar, an' a man anyways smart'd mix him up ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Satanic one. "You just take all there is a-going! You need it bad enough. I know when a man's hard up. I know the signs. I've been as bad off as you; had to look all ways for five dollars; had to play second fiddle and say thanky. But what I offer you ain't a second fiddle. It's as good a chance as my own. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... who were ever alert to befriend a man, You who were ever the first to defend a man, You who had always the money to lend a man Down on his luck and hard up for a V. Sure you'll be playing a harp in beatitude (And a quare sight you will be in that attitude) Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude, You'll find ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... again, twins, so you needn't be suspicious of me. And say! Whenever you want anything so badly it makes you feel like that, come and talk it over. We'll manage some way. Of course, we're always a little hard up, but we can generally scrape up something extra from somewhere. And we will. You mustn't—feel like that—about things. Just tell me about it. Girls are so—kind of funny, ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... tone of the most imperturbable self- possession, and perfectly staggered poor Amos by their amazing effrontery. But all was now plain enough to him. This needy adventurer, who had entangled poor Julia in his cruel meshes, and had deserted her for a time, was hard up for money; and, having found out that Amos had taken upon himself to provide for his children at present, had hit upon the scheme of withdrawing one of them from the cottage, as a way of extorting money from his brother-in-law. It was also pretty clear that he was afraid to show himself openly, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... be very hard up, only he certainly did not give that impression. Still, "no money at all, except twopence!" Would it be safe to try to get the half-crown into his pocket? That was what she wanted to do, but felt she might easily blunder over it. If she was to achieve it, she must be quick, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... arrangements—men stimulated by good dinners, or, later on, in the evening, those who left parties of elegant respectability after theater or opera. On this first night of business weather in nearly two weeks the streets were crowded with women and girls. They were desperately hard up and they made open dashes for every man they could get at. All classes were made equally bold—the shop and factory and office and theater girls with wages too small for what they regarded as a decent living; the women with young children to support and educate; the protected professional ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... 1656, mentions that Lilly, the astrologer of London, had written to say that the King would be restored to the throne next year, and that all the English at Bruges were delighted. But in the meantime they were very hard up for ready money. Ever since leaving England Charles and his followers had suffered from the most direful impecuniosity. We find Hyde declaring that he has 'neither shoes nor shirt.' The King himself was constantly running into debt for his meals, and his friends ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... course; but in America, it appears that the bridegroom makes presents to the best man and the ushers; so it was from Carolyn that I got a duck of a brooch, like an American flag, with stripes of diamonds and rubies, and the blue part sapphires. Mohunsleigh said that, as he was awfully hard up, it was bad luck for him to have to provide each of the bridesmaids with bouquets and chiffon muffs, and he could not see at all that it was a pretty idea for everything they carried in their hands to come from the ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... leavin's between ourselves. The Head hasn't told any one. I know he hasn't, because Prout grunted at me to-day that if I were more reasonable—yah!—I might be a prefect next term. I s'ppose he's hard up for ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... all well, but hard up for everything, 'speshly ammynition; but they could hold out for three days; and as soon as we come up he's going to make a sally and attack the Dwats in the rear.—Oh, sir, it is hard, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn |
