"Poorhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... getting it now," he remarked when he came back. "The Merricks took her out of the poorhouse years ago; and if her loyalty would let her, I guess the poor old thing could tell tales that would curdle your blood. She's the mulatto woman who was standing in here a while ago, with her apron to her eyes. The old woman is a fury; there never was anybody like ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Marcia, you're not going to be so severe as that, are you?" pleaded Bartley. "A few dollars, more or less, are not going to keep us out of the poorhouse. I just want to stay here three days: that will leave us a clean hundred, and we can start fair." He was half joking, but ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... fine view of the squire's new tomb and the poorhouse, with a wing of the jail behind the trees. And I've stuck my second-best hat in that broken pane of glass, and there's a chest of drawers to set against the door; so you'll be warm and free from intrusion. I ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... men who marry us. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership—husband and wife as partners. But if the man knew as little about his part of the job as the woman generally does about hers when she gets married, most married couples would be in the poorhouse in a year." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... papers to children seriously handicapped by physical defects is to buy future industrial trouble, hospital and poorhouse bills. A boy with adenoids, a girl with eye trouble, should not be permitted to begin the fight for self-support without at least being clearly shown that the correction of these defects will increase ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... melodiously or melted to a mellow music that woke a sympathetic thrill in those who listened. Rose glowed with pride as she accompanied her friend, for Phebe was in her own world now a lovely world where no depressing memory of poorhouse or kitchen, ignorance or loneliness, came to trouble her, a happy world where she could be herself and rule others by the magic ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... ago old Sarah Cooper was to be taken to the poorhouse. She was broken-hearted. One man took the poor, bed-ridden, fretful old creature into his home, paid for medical attendance, and waited on her himself, when his housekeeper couldn't endure her tantrums and temper. Sarah Cooper died two years afterwards, and her latest breath was a benediction ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... said that nothing could be more cheerful than the approach to this edifice, when, on coming from Paris, one entered it by the poorhouse yard. Thanks to a forward spring, the elms and the lindens were already beginning to shoot forth their leaves; the large plots of grass were of a luxuriant growth; here and there the flower beds were enameled with crocuses, primroses, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... and more served faithfully and well. Names, dates, commanders, ports, ships, engagements, and battles, rolled from his lips in a steady stream, but it is beyond me to remember them all, for it is not quite in keeping to take notes at the poorhouse door. He had been through the "First War in China," as he termed it; had enlisted with the East India Company and served ten years in India; was back in India again, in the English navy, at the time of the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the British colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia—one thousand and twenty to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without resources, hating the poorhouse as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... father—lived in the village and were the "big" men of the community. Bailey was the more important and respected at that time, for Samuel speculated in stocks a good deal and there were seasons when he was so near bankruptcy that gossip declared he could not pass the poorhouse without shivering. If it had not been for his brother Bailey, so that same gossip affirmed, he would most assuredly have gone under, but Bailey lent him money and helped him in many ways. Both brothers were widowers and each had ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... which would land you in the poorhouse. Have you no desire for the things other women like—fine ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... taking your part in the fun of the world, going to balls or theatres, or paying attention to girls, and yet old enough to have married and have your families around you, content to stay in this God-forsaken place; old bachelors, pigging together like poorhouse paupers. That's what gets me! Say you LIKE it? Say you expect by hanging on to make a strike—and what does that amount to? What are YOUR chances? How many of us have made, or are making, more than grub wages? Say ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... She was going to send me to the poorhouse, when Mr. Maxwell took me in. I have often and often wanted to see the room where we lived in, and where mother died, but she wouldn't let me go up. One day I begged and cried for her to let me go up—I wanted to, so bad; ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... bit of gossip of a neighbour who had come in to see Miss Bennett, and was telling her about a family who had lately moved into the place and were in serious trouble. "And they do say she'll have to go to the poorhouse," she ended. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... three boys who are playing in a wagon. Take this boy as the germ of a tavern-haunter, a country roue, to spend a wild and brutal youth, ten years of his prime in the State Prison, and his old age in the poorhouse. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... plenty of fun then," said Westy. "This old car has got the County Poorhouse turning green ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was rash, colic, fever, and measles in their earliest years; slaps in the face and degrading drudgeries up to thirteen years; deceptions by women, sicknesses and infidelity during manhood and, toward the last, infirmities and agonies in a poorhouse ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... He won't know whether he's runnin' a poorhouse er a hospital, will he?' said Uncle Eb. 'Look here, children,' he added, taking out his old leather wallet, as he held the reins between his knees. 'Here's tew shillin' apiece for ye, an' I want ye t' spend it jest eggsackly as ye please.' The last words ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... they can stand all you eat without going to the poorhouse. It's a bargain then. I'll ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... worse, though," answered the hut-keeper; "poverty out here can scarcely be said to pinch. I often ask myself what might it have been, or what certainly would it have been, had I remained in London till my last shilling was gone. To rot in a poorhouse or to sweep a crossing would have been my lot, or there might have been a worse alternative. I had enough left to pay my passage out here. It was a wise move—the only wise thing I ever did in my life. My expectations on landing were foolish, and before I could realise ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... for all me," said Sam. "It's ridiculous for a poor boy to put on such airs. You'll die in the poorhouse yet." ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... angrily. "My clover! I tell you, they won't leave me a roof over my head. They'll eat me into the poorhouse. But I'll turn them off. I'll send them packing, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... fact be stated, that old folks who are sent over the hill to the poorhouse have invited their fate. And conversely, elderly people who are treated with courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect are those who, in manhood's morning, have sown the seeds of love and kindness. Water rises to the height of its source; results follow causes; chickens come home to roost; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... introduction. For the benefit of others let me explain that Dave had once upon a time been a homeless child, having been found wandering along the railroad tracks near Crumville. He was placed in the local poorhouse, and later on bound out to a broken-down college professor named Caspar Potts, who had taken to ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... of which several prisons in England and America have been built. There were about twelve hundred prisoners—arrangements wonderful, discipline apparently perfect—kept by twenty-eight men. Visited a poorhouse, a benevolent establishment to assist poor old people; about three hundred inmates; grateful feelings, sympathy. Visited the celebrated convent, containing about eight hundred nuns, who come and remain voluntarily; none, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... end in the poorhouse, it wouldn't be so hard after this. He was a totally different man from what he had been, and he would be respected and honoured ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... no stopping. The bank at the Corners failed, and I lost my savings. The turkeys wandered away, the cow died, and now there's the mortgage. It's due to-morrow, and then—the man that holds it will wait no longer. So it is the poorhouse, which I ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... developed into girlhood, her aunt grew more and more covetous of her. Following a secret plan, she adopted a boy from the poorhouse, and brought him up with every advantage that money could buy. My mother, on her visits, was thrown a great deal into this boy's society, but she liked him less than the poodle. This grieved her aunt, who cherished in her heart the hope that my mother ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Traders' had been a favorite bank for small tradespeople, and in its savings department it had solicited the smallest deposits. People who had thought to be self-supporting to the last found themselves confronting the poorhouse, their two or three hundred dollar savings wiped away. All bank failures have this element, however, and the directors were trying to promise twenty per cent. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his good friend, Frank, had learned that the money came through a lawyer in New York, really an uncle of young Allen. Then, later on, it was found that Ralph was only an adopted son of the Wests, who had taken him from a poorhouse. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating at Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monson Poorhouse. We were passing through one of the large halls, when my ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... snapped his wife; "you think that more important than my nerves? I don't more'n half like Janet comin' here. If it hadn't been fur me, I know you'd taken her fur nothin'! No matter if I do have t' go t' the poorhouse on account of yer shiftlessness. I, stricken an' helpless! She can come here fur nothin'! I jest know, David, that it would be a real release fur a great, strong man like you to be rid of a poor stricken wife; but I guess you'll have to bide the Lord's will whether you want ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... of parish priest in his boyhood, and this is how he introduces him. He has been describing, with an unmitigated realism, the village poorhouse, in all its squalor ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... sleep to digest it. But I know these things by bitter knowledge—by experience. Don't talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living lives of moral anaemia and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... wages in the bank for the last twenty years, and also a little legacy from Mr. Hardie's father. She now went about the house of her master and debtor, declaring she was sure he would not rob her, and, if he did, she would never go into the poorhouse. "I'll go out on the common and die ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... unknown woman who died in the workhouse of an English village, almost as soon as her babe drew his first breath. The mother's name being unknown, the workhouse officials called the child Oliver Twist, under which title he grew up. For nine years he was farmed out at a branch poorhouse, where with twenty or thirty other children he bore all the miseries consequent on neglect, abuse, and starvation. He was then removed to the workhouse proper to be taught a ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the most of it," Sarah quoted from the young girl, as they rode on. "I guess He's saved 'em from the poorhouse to-day. I hope they'll ketch up with us. I'd like to look after those children a little. They ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... this event, he was able to earn a scanty living, and when he failed to do that, he was dependent on the 'world's cold charity,' and died in a poorhouse. Isabella had herself and two children to provide for; her wages were trifling, for at that time the wages of females were at a small advance from nothing; and she doubtless had to learn the first elements of economy-for what slaves, that ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... Besides, Nathaniel, the poorhouse lad, turning round at sound of his master's voice, presented so fair a mark, with his gaping mouth, that, half involuntarily, the snow-ball left Mr. Coffin's hand, and the next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel's open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage to ornament ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... answered Ethel cheerfully. "As soon as he's well enough to be moved, they're going to take him to the county hospital. I guess that's the poorhouse. But Rob says he's so old they're afraid the bone won't knit; he suffers like everything. Poor old man, I'm awful sorry for him. Rob has ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... wonder!" Noyon and Peronne are sacked and ruined. At Chauny 1800 houses out of 2500 were deliberately burned, and at a distance they bombarded the remainder, full of old folks and children whom they had parked there. All the public buildings, churches, hospitals and poorhouse were blown up. Three hundred towns and villages were burning at one time in this small section of the Cradle of France. Hindenburg was at Roisel when they rounded up the populations, went through their pockets for their money (giving "receipts"), took their clothes ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... not return to the poorhouse—after fifteen years!" exclaimed the girl. "Do you know what I should do?" and she ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... elation at the sight of the gate of Berlin had been speedily subdued by the discovery that he must bide in the poorhouse the Jews had built there till the elders had examined him. And there he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom—a point-blank refusal to allow him to enter ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Calico's habit to be on the watch for unusual sights, and when he saw them to stick his ears forward, throw his head up, snort nervously and crowd against the pole. Generally he got one leg over a trace. There was a white bowlder at the top of Poorhouse Hill which Calico never passed without going through some ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... the poorhouse precisely twelve hours. It did not enter the minds of the authorities that any one so fortunate as to be admitted into that happy haven would decline to stay there. The unwilling guest disappeared early on the morrow of his arrival, and, after some search, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... money to loan you two that ups an leaves me in the lurch, without no notice," Scraggs flared at them. "If you two stiffs ain't able to support yourselves you'd ought to apply for admission to the poorhouse or the Home ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... shirt and necktie had been stored in the clothes press for more than a year but they were nevertheless "new" to Aunt Deel. Poor soul! She felt the importance of the day and its duties. It was that ancient, Yankee dread of the poorhouse that filled her heart I suppose. Yet I wonder, often, why she wished us to be so proudly adorned for ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... Leastwise, he said he hadn't been aroun' here fer more'n twenty year. Y'see, it was this way. I was over to Lem Hudlow's to ask if he had any hogs stole last night—Lem lives nigh the poorhouse, you know. He said he hadn't missed any an' ast me if any hogs had been found. I tole him no, not that I knowed of, but I jest thought I'd ask; I thought mebby he'd had some stole. You never c'n tell, you know, an' it pays to be attendin' to business all the time. Well, I was drivin' back ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... have charge of the old toll-gate when he wasn't attendin' to it himself, just the same as when my father was alive and was toll-gate keeper, and I was helpin' him. But I've got to go now, and where I'm goin' to is more'n I know. But I'd rather go to the county poorhouse than stay here, or anywhere else, with Maria Port. She's a regular boa-constrictor, that woman is! She's twisted herself around people before this and squeezed the senses out of them; and that's exactly what she's doin' with the captain. If she could come here to live and ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... "Shadows of the poorhouse! Don't! I'll make the fellow trim it with a butter knife. Come along, children. I'll show you the newest in chaperonage ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... be my mistress. I won't have no mistress. When her time is come, I shall be in the poorhouse at Portsmouth, because I shan't be able to earn a penny to buy gin for him." As she said this, ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... about in the plaza and listened to the band playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes, mostly rockaways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at the unveiling of the new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove, and lifted their high silk hats to their friends. The common people walked around in barefooted bunches, puffing stogies that a Pittsburg millionaire wouldn't ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... had heard much of the necessity of capital to develope the resources of the land. The capital came, but the development consists in turning tillage lands into pasture, clearing out the labouring population and sending them to the poorhouse, or shipping them off at a few pounds per head to keep down the rates. And yet is it not possible to set all our peasantry to work at the profitable cultivation of their native land? Is it not possible to establish by law ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... direction) in loaves at least as large as biscuits. His fame steadily increased with his charity. I did not understand the principle of his manner of life then, and I do not now. By all the laws of my experience he should at this moment be in the poorhouse, but he isn't—he is ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... mental pabulum of these two men consisted of an offended nasal comment extended through the years upon the institution—army, business, or poorhouse—which kept them alive, and toward their immediate superior in that institution. Until that very morning the institution had been the "government" and the immediate superior had been the "Cap'n"—from these ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the New Order. "Give him room! Give him an opportunity! Give him a full stomach to pump blood to his muscles and life to his brain! Wait and see! If he fails then, let him drop to the bottom of the social pit without stop of poorhouse or help!" ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... contemptuously, tossing the garment aside. "It's half worn out it is, dragging it back and forth over the counter these six months. Take it or leave it. Hallo! What have we here? Little Finnegan, eh? Your mother not dead yet? It's in the poorhouse ye will be if she lasts ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... answered. "You see, Ticknor, old man, you're a Cornstalk and therefore an outsider—just a medico, who saws bones for a living, satisfied to keep your body out of the poorhouse, your soul out of hell, and your name out of the newspapers. Your wife is presumably more so. There are several officials' wives who would jump at the chance to be useful; but a sudden trip toward Damascus just now would ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... nearly a dozen years, once each year, hi made his appearance in the city, tarried a month, perhaps, and then quietly disappeared, and we saw him no more for a twelvemonth. Inoffensive? Decidedly—as mild-mannered a man as ever asked grace at a poorhouse table. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... him standing beside the dinner-table. He ate more heartily than before, for his forenoon's labor made even poorhouse ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... soul sensations in the spectator than the stilted tragedy of a Corneille. Those who witness a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Hannele" and fail to be stirred by the grandeur and depth of that masterpiece, regardless of its petty poorhouse atmosphere, deserve to see nothing else than the "Wizard of Oz." And again is not the long thunderous march of hungry strikers in Zola's "Germinal" as awe-inspiring to those who feel the heart beat of our age even ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... my dear. I don't know why I was sending the man away. I never saw this way of dining before, except at the poorhouse, where each poor creature has his plateful given him, and pockets what he can't eat.' And here she laughed long and heartily at ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... of "He Fell in Love with His Wife," I merely saw a paragraph in a paper to the effect that a middle-age widower, having found it next to impossible to carry on his farm with hired help, had gone to the county poorhouse and said "If there's a decent woman here, I'll marry her." For years the homely item remained an ungerminating seed in my mind, then started to grow, and the story was written ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... and turned toward the window. "I've heard of 'Over the Hills to the Poorhouse' and similar things," the underwriter went on, after a moment, not looking at the girl, "but this somehow seemed different. Perhaps it was its unexpectedness, or finding it in such a way. Do you know," he said, "I felt as ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... grandfather in the fifties. It was one of the oldest firms in San Francisco, but she recalled his frequent and bitter allusions to the necessity of sitting up nights these days if a man wanted to keep out of the poorhouse. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... atmosphere with the merit of a greater concentration upon action. Between the two lie the collections of short stories On this Side (1907) and Neighbors (1908). From the second is taken the story here translated, In the Old Sun, which as an idyll of the Poorhouse has something of the qualities of Gottfried Keller, while the mystic setting is quite the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Ross. "He expects us to support him, I suppose. He looks as poor as poverty. He ought to have gone to the poorhouse ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... chaise-percee, was trimmed with point-lace of very considerable value, and the harness of whose carriage was studded with paste, in imitation of diamonds. This woman, however, lived to repent of her folly; and if she did not literally die in a poorhouse, she at least ended ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... before we took it over, and the unfortunate natives had been pillaged and robbed mercilessly. Thousands starved to death. When I was at Deli Abbas ghastly bands of ragged skeletons would come through to us begging food and work. Soane turned a large khan on the outskirts of the town into a poorhouse, and here he lodged the starving women and children that drifted in from all over Kurdistan. It was a fearful assemblage of scarecrows. As they got better he selected women from among them to whom he turned over ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... win—only don't forget to give me that tip. You wouldn't want to see a man of my age going to the poorhouse." ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... is different with my father. My father has what is called a regular income. One of these days I shall inherit it. It will keep us out of the poorhouse. But meanwhile I have only the pittance that he ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... railroad station, at which five trains a day, each way, to and from Boston, made regular stops. The Centre contained the Town Hall, two churches, a hotel, and express office, a bank, newspaper office, and several general stores. Not very far from the hotel, on a side road, was the Almshouse, or Poorhouse, as it was always called by the ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... noticed the odor from a sick and miserable multitude crowded together—like the exhalation from a prison or poorhouse infirmary. He saw a throng that seemed crazy or stupefied with grief. They did not know exactly where they were; they had come thither, they didn't know how. The terrible spectacle of the invasion was still so persistent in their minds that it left room for no other impression. They were ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mosques. The Touloun is exquisite—noble, simple, and what ornament there is is the most delicate lacework and embossing in stone and wood. This Arab architecture is even more lovely than our Gothic. The Touloun is now a vast poorhouse, a nest of paupers. I went into three of their lodgings. Several Turkish families were in a large square room neatly divided into little partitions with old mats hung on ropes. In each were as many bits of carpet, mat and patchwork as the poor owner could collect, and a small chest ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... of lunch puts a touch of romance upon life. Then because our days are so unutterably the same, we turn to the newspapers, we go to the magazines and read only the "stuff with punch," we seek out a "show" and drive serious playwrights into the poorhouse. "You can go through contemporary life," writes Wells, "fudging and evading, indulging and slacking, never really hungry nor frightened nor passionately stirred, your highest moment a mere sentimental orgasm, and your first real contact with primary and elementary necessities ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the same shop with Pa she thought of him when she had nowhere to go." The little fellow concluded by saying that our house was so much bigger than theirs that he thought we would have more roomfor beds. The old woman herself said absolutely nothing, but looking on with that gripping fear of the poorhouse in her eyes, she was a living embodiment of that dread which is so heartbreaking that the occupants of the County Infirmary themselves seem scarcely less wretched than those who are making their last stand ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... lower end of the town, and sat himself upon the parapet. The clocks struck the hour, and no Fanny appeared. In fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse—the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had ever been honoured with. The quarter went, the half hour. A rush of recollection came upon Troy as he waited: this was the second time she ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... to take it home to his own girl!" she said. "I saw her in the street the other day, and I wouldn't have been seen dead with the hat she had on; not a flower, nor even a scrap of a feather; just a plain band and a goose-quill stuck in it. Real poorhouse, I thought it looked, and he as rich as a Jew. I guess I sha'n't go to Mr. Gordon; he's just as hateful as he can be. He gave out word that no one was to touch that bag, nor so much as go near it; and he had it set off in a corner of ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... larger than any diamond ever found in the districts of Golconda—the one jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut with the words: "Inasmuch as ye did it to father;" the other jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut with the words: "Inasmuch as ye did it to mother." "Over the Hills to the Poorhouse" is the exquisite ballad of Will Carleton, who found an old woman who had been turned off by her prospered sons; but I thank God I may find in my text "Over ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... considerate, and obedient. His mother had no idea that he would ever be able, or indeed willing, to make a living; but there was a forest of young timber growing up, a small hay farm to depend upon, and a little hoard that would keep him out of the poorhouse when she died and left him to his own devices. It never occurred to her that he was in any way remarkable. If he were difficult to understand, it reflected more upon his eccentricity than upon her density. What was a woman to do with a boy of twelve who, ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a Sunday-school book once; but I made the good boy end in the poorhouse, and the bad boy go to Congress; and the publisher said it wouldn't do, the public wouldn't stand that sort of thing. Nobody but ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... I, "what may have become of the old beast that could be the ruin of those young creatures?" "Why, I do not well know," says she; "but I have heard that, as all her goods were seized upon, she was sent to the poorhouse; but it soon after appearing that she had the French disease to a violent degree, was removed to a hospital to be taken care of, but I believe she will never live to come out; and if she should be so fortunate, the gentleman that was robbed, finding that she was the guilty person, intends to ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... he's spent on the kid since I kin remember, an' he's allus talkin' poverty an' says how he'll die in the poorhouse if prices keep goin' up, as they hev durin' the furrin war that's now hummin' acrost the water. If he's that poor, an' on a sudden springs a ten-dollar bill on me for fixin's fer his kid, there's sure ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... for preference. The question of Sophie's legitimacy anses from the fact that her mother, Jane Callaway, was registered at death as "a spinster.'' Sophie was one of ten children. Dickey Daw drank his family into the poorhouse, an institution which sent Sophie to fend for herself in 1805, procuring her a place as servant at a farm ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... out of thirty-four millions who inhabit this country, two-thirds—say twenty-two millions—live within thirty years of that abominable institution the poorhouse. That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet "pauper" is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... it's true," answered John, laughing at the ludicrous appearance of Fayette upon the ground. "He was born in the poorhouse, an' I've heard his mother died. His father had before then, I ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... groaned the old lady. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! I'm a poor, rheumaticky creeter—and nobody but Jabez would have taken me out o' the poorhouse an' done for me as ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... when Valens himself and Basil met face to face, the Emperor was overawed. More than once the order was prepared for the obstinate prelate's exile, but for one reason or another it was never issued. Valens went forward on his journey, leaving behind a princely gift for Basil's poorhouse. He reached Antioch in April, and settled there for the rest of his reign, never again leaving Syria till the disasters of the Gothic war called ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... of the old ones. The old stone cross that stands by the stocks has not been replaced by a modern one, and adds greatly to the interest of the central portion of the village. On the road that leads towards Ellerburne there stand some old cottages generally known as the Poorhouse. They are built on sloping ground, and on the lower side there is a small round-topped tunnel leading into a little cell dug out of the ground beneath the cottages. This little village prison was known as ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... to the widow. The youngest was only three years old, and Bobby, the oldest, was nine, when his father died. Squire Lee, who had always been a good friend of John Bright, told the widow that she had better go to the poorhouse, and not attempt to struggle along with such fearful odds against her. But the widow nobly refused to become a pauper, and to make paupers of her children, whom she loved quite as much as though she and they had been born in a ducal palace. She told ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... wants a Nicholson pavement—it wants a jail and a poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... expect to end?" the Judge began irritably, "in the poorhouse? You're so damn young," he grumbled. "It's a good thing I didn't know you when I was young. I'd ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... law make her lord come home and live with her, even such a cat and dog life as must in such case have been hers. Her money rights were all that she could demand;—and she found it to be impossible to get anybody to tell her what were her money rights. To be kept out of the poorhouse seemed to be all that she could claim. But the old tailor was true to her,—swearing that she should even yet become Countess Lovel in ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... are the governor's palace, the cathedral, the city hall, the arsenal, the buildings used as quarters for the troops, the forts, the castles of Morro and San Cristobal, the house which Ponce de Leon built, the palace of the bishop, the theater, the hospital, the orphan asylum, the poorhouse, the jail, the library, ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... name, or where he lives. He don't belong in Pleasantville. Oh, dear!" she concluded, with a sigh of deep depression, "I wish Lem would get back on the road in a steady job, instead of scheming at this thing and that. He'll land us all in the poorhouse yet, for he spends all he gets down ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... friends from the start, however, who, in their several ways, help her to endure her troubles. One is Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who is nobody's relation but everybody's aunt, and whom Jabez Potter, the miller, has taken from the poorhouse to keep his home tidy and comfortable. Aunt Alvirah sees the good underlying miserly Uncle Jabez's character when nobody else can. She lavishes upon the little orphan girl all the love and affection that ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... don't believe you would," said Tom. "Well, I'll tell you. You see I live at the poorhouse, having no relations to take care of me, and no place to live. But in the summer I hire out to the farmers around here that want me, and work to earn ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... shops we see the hovels of the artisan. We watch along our highroads the long procession of labourers deserting their ancestral villages for the cities; we trace them to the slum and the sweater's den; we follow them to the poorhouse and the prison; we see them disappear engulfed in the abyss, while others press at their heels to take their place and share their destiny. And in face of all this we do not think it to be our duty to fold our arms and invoke the principle of liberty. ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Revelation adds its teaching about a future resurrection and glorification of that body of which the Apostle says that "it is sown in dishonor, but it shall rise in glory." Be men of science, but be not human ghouls. There is such a thing as retribution. But lately a former millionaire died in a poorhouse and left his body as a cadaver for medical students. We cannot afford to ignore the mysterious ways of Divine Justice. Ever handle human remains in a humane manner; and as soon as they have answered the purpose of science, see that they ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... and carefully considered all the facts, without affording the miserable man a particle of consolation. He groaned from morning till night, forlorn and desolate, declaring that he should come to want, and die in the poorhouse. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... was indignant that she should always have to petition him for the money with which to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief that, since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse had once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue to be his daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run down the street after him because she had forgotten to ask ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the case of those who are able and willing to work. There remain still the uncounted thousands who by accident or illness, age or infirmity, are unable to maintain themselves. For these people, under the older dispensation, there was nothing but the poorhouse, the jail or starvation by the roadside. The narrow individualism of the nineteenth century refused to recognize the social duty of supporting somebody else's grandmother. Such charity began, and ended, at home. But even with the passing ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... and though the Thrums poor help each other bravely, they are at present nigh as needy as herself. Nanny is coming to the poorhouse, Mr. Dishart." ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... to the dialect group in their effective use of the homely speech of country people are several popular poets, of whom Will Carleton and James Whitcomb Riley are the most conspicuous. Carleton's "Over the Hills to the Poorhouse" and other early songs won him a wide circle of readers; whereupon he followed up his advantage with Farm Ballads and other volumes filled with rather crude but sincere verses of home and childhood. For half a century ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the doors of their warehouses. Its fine situation upon the Mediterranean shore is its one recommendation, forming an entry port connected with Rome, Pisa, and other inland cities of Italy. There are pointed out to us here three special hospitals, an observatory, a poorhouse and a public library, but there is not much ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... off! Woman-hater! You hate women same as the boy at the poorhouse hated ice cream—'cause there ain't none around. Why, I wouldn't trust you as fur as I could ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... very small youth Dave had been found wandering along the railroad tracks near Crumville. He could tell little about himself or how he had come in that position; and kind people had taken him in and later on had placed him in the local poorhouse. From that institution he had been taken by an old college professor, named Caspar Potts, who at that time had been farming ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... all longing for the time when they and society could cry "quits," and they be at liberty to pursue their career of villainy. With these, the vilest of the vile, and also with the hoary criminal who knew no home save the prison, who preferred it to the poorhouse, and to whom its comforts were luxuries and its privations but trifles of no account, I was condemned to mingle. Repentant for what I had done in the past, capable and resolved to make amends in the future, having already suffered for my crime loss of friends, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... followers of a primeval calling, tainted little by the dirt of profit-seeking. They risk their lives daily in the hazards of the ocean, the victims of cold-blooded insurance gamblers and of niggardly owners, and rewarded with only a seat in the poorhouse or a niche in Davy Jones's Locker. I was once of their trade, and I longed to know the happenings of their ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... knows how frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the State." [Footnote: A note sent to Lord Courtney in 1909 will show exactly what Sir Charles's position had been on this fundamental ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... honorable pauperism. It is no disgrace to be poor or to be in a poorhouse if there is a good reason for it. One may be manly in poverty. But the Jukes were never manly or honorable paupers, they were weaklings ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... I intimated to him that it then might be too late. Alas! alas for that young man! he became a drunkard; he spent the farm left by his father; his wife died; his children were scattered among friends; and years after, when I returned to my native town, I was told that he was a pauper at the poorhouse. ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... alas! his poor mind was hopelessly affected, and the doctor said that, though he might be much better, he would never be quite right again. Everybody thought they ought to send him to the poorhouse, as he had no home to be sent to, but Captain Maxwell refused to do this. So he stayed on, and, gradually, as he grew stronger, he took up some simple duties again. However, he had forgotten everything, even ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... thousand dollars in bank. Now I hear that he is in trouble. He has lost money, and a knavish neighbor has threatened to foreclose a mortgage on the farm and turn out the old people to die or go to the poorhouse." ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... is so marked in the youth who has grown to maturity, what a miracle is possible in the lad who is taken early and put under a course of drill and systematic training, both physical, mental, and moral. How many a man who is now in the penitentiary, in the poorhouse, or among the tramps, or living out a miserable existence in the slums of our cities, bent over, uncouth, rough, slovenly, has possibilities slumbering within the rags, which would have developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race instead of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... bitter-spoken lady when any little thing about the place didn't go just right, making a mountain out of a mole hill, and crying over spilt milk, and always coming back to the same old subject, and so forth, till you'd think she couldn't talk about anything else, and had one foot in the poorhouse, and couldn't take a joke, and all like that. I could believe it or not, but that was the simple facts of the matter when all was said and done. And the Chink was only too glad to show off how smart he was with a ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... we can sell brandy is at Storisende spaceport, and we have to take what the trading-ship captains offer. You've been on a rich planet for the last five years, Conn. You've forgotten what it's like to live in a poorhouse. And that's what ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... all. Joe was the poorest person in the town. He was the only boy there who really had no home and nobody to care for him. Three or four years before this March morning, Joe had been left an orphan, and being utterly destitute, he should have been sent to the poorhouse, or "bound out" to some person as a sort of servant. But Joe Lambert had refused to go to the poorhouse or to become a bound boy. He had declared his ability to take care of himself, and by working hard at ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... old man, flicking off his ash with an admirable effect of calm, "to save a small nest-egg from the wreck, to keep me from the poorhouse in my old age. I did not wish to tell you this because, with your lack of acquaintance with business methods, the details would only confuse, and possibly mislead, you. I had, too, another reason for wishing to keep it a ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... England died the other day in the poorhouse. He had a little English farm upon which he could raise no grain and he let it go to waste and died a pauper. His heirs discovered that on this little English possession there was a copper mine and they are living in luxury ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... And you the pride of this town! The only author that ever lived in it—unless you call Joshua Snow an author, and he lived in the poorhouse and nobody but himself ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... has robbed me! Oh, this is dreadful! What shall I do? I am a poor man! Oh, I'll have to go to the poorhouse!" And the miser ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... can tell or he either. He hails from a poorhouse. He was 'bound out' to a woman truck farmer. He's been 'taken up' by Mrs. Cecil Somerset-Calvert, of Baltimore, and lots of other places. A lady that's so rich she has homes in ever so many different parts of the country. But better than that he's a 'trump,' a life-saver, ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... different degrees of poverty, ranging from the helpless incompetents at the bottom of the scale to those who are in a fair degree of comfort, but who have so little laid aside for a rainy day that they live in constant fear of the poorhouse. Some struggle harder than others, and maintain an existence on or just above the poverty line—these are technically the poor. Charles Booth defines the poor as those "living in a state of struggle to obtain the necessaries of life." A few cease to struggle at all and, if they continue to live, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... for evening prayers. The inmates of the poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the principal service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages to the Royal ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... feature of our national life, and if it does not make justice more even-handed for all, and the people of this country as prosperous as any on earth, then the fault must be in the plan itself, and not in the resources which we possess, for of those we have enough to empty every poorhouse in the land, and eighty-five per cent. ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... without having medical aid or ministerial consolation. There was not simply studious neglect, but a strong prohibition against their entrance into institutions sustained by the county and State for white persons not more fortunate than they. At one time a good Quaker was superintendent of the county poorhouse. His heart was touched with kindest sympathy for the uncared-for Colored paupers in Cincinnati. He acted the part of a true Samaritan, and gave them separate quarters in the institution of which he was the official head. This fact came to the public ear, and the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost singlehanded a poorhouse the order had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... doctrine that the criminal should suffer the consequences of his act has had its effect, and the factor of expense has not been forgotten. Some of the States still permit county commissioners to commit the care of the poor to the lowest bidder. On the other hand the poorhouse has been transformed into a "Home for the Aged and Infirm" in some States, and inspections of public institutions by the grand jury are becoming more than merely cursory. State boards of charities are being established, and men have even attacked ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... thrifty parent had laid by for him. He in his weak-mindedness was compelled to hire the brains of a mere substitute, a manager, if you prefer. Should anything happen, and such things happen every day, where would Mr. Strumley be? And where, pray, would be his wife and family? In the poorhouse! ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the unions are not Gipsies. The Rommany never do that—they'd sooner stay in the open field (literally, air-field). We would ask the farmer for leave to stop the night in the barn, but we'd sooner sleep under the hedge in the rain than go in the poorhouse. Gipsies are not like tramps, for they have a ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... lonely, half-demented old fellow with the fixed delusion that he was a financier behind prison bars and left free the sharp slick crook who had no bowels or mercies and would snatch away the widow's mite and leave her and her consumptive daughter to die in the poorhouse. Yet such was the case, and there they all were! Could you blame people for being Bolsheviks? And yet old Doc Barrows was as far from a Bolshevik ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... through the whole staff and mercilessly dismisses the elderly or the least efficient, dividing up their work among those who remain. So these discarded men fall to rise no more and drift to the poorhouse or the Shelters or the jails, and finally into the river or a pauper's grave. First, however, many spend what may be called a period of probation on the streets, where they sleep at night under arches or on stairways, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... was clear that he couldn't do nuthin', we ast him if the' wa'n't nobody could put up fer him, an' he said you was his brother, an' well off, an' hadn't ought to let him go t' the poorhouse.' ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... yes, Boss, He's working for gov'ment now,— They give him his board for nothin',— All along of a drunken row. An' Mam? Well, she's in the poorhouse,— Been there a year or so; So I'm taking care of the others, Doing ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... they do it in the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you—yam? Men, as a general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-coloured novel line, sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... wicked. Wimmen who would run like deers if company came when they wuzn't dressed up slick, they would say the minute they got back into the room, all out of breath with hurryin' into their best clothes, they'd say a pantin' "That old woman ought to be made to go to the poorhouse, to take the pride out of her, pride wuz so awfully, dretfully wicked, and it wuz a shame that she wuz so ongrateful as to want a home of her own." And then they would ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... state school for the feeble-minded, cripples to the poorhouse. The able-bodied will have to get out and go to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... unfairly enjoyed by them elsewhere. The taille, which was a personal tax in other parts of the kingdom, was in Languedoc an equitable land tax, assessed according to a valuation periodically revised. There was not a poorhouse in the whole province, and such was its prosperity and excellent administration that it enjoyed better credit in the market than the Central Government, and the king used sometimes, in order to get more favourable terms, to borrow on the security of the States of Languedoc instead ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... because he needed all his Money to buy more Poland Chinas and build other Cribs. If she wanted a Summer Kitchen or a new Wringer or a Sewing Machine, or Anything Else that would lighten her Labors, Henry would Moan and Grumble and say she was trying to land him in the Poorhouse. ...
— More Fables • George Ade |
