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Beggary   Listen
noun
Beggary  n.  
1.
The act of begging; the state of being a beggar; mendicancy; extreme poverty.
2.
Beggarly appearance. (R.) "The freedom and the beggary of the old studio."
Synonyms: Indigence; want; penury; mendicancy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beggary" Quotes from Famous Books



... both in our polls and that small pittance of estate which, through much hard labor and industry, we have got together to sustain ourselves and families withall. We apprehend it, therefore, to be hard usage, and will doubtless (if continued) reduce us to a state of beggary, whereby we shall become a burthen to others, if not timely prevented by the interposition of ...
— 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

... banker answered bitterly; "and I swear they shall never see my face again, living or dying. Not one dollar from my purse shall they ever receive, even though want and beggary come upon them. Think not I can ever change, Judge Le Grande. As my people and my people's God, the Eternal Father, are unchangeable, so is my purpose concerning these disobedient children. Good morning." Mr. Mordecai then turned slowly from the ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... Scotia; but Braddock was defeated; Niagara and Crown Point remained unreduced; the savages were let loose from the wilderness; many thousand farms were abandoned; the King's subjects inhumanly butchered or reduced to beggary. To all which might be added an impoverishment of finances to a desperate state, the Crown Point expedition having cost, on the part of Massachusetts Bay alone, L76,618 8s. 9-1/2d., besides unliquidated accounts to a large amount for the charge of the sick and wounded, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... in this dreadful exigency, were certainly liberal; and all was done by charity that private charity could do; but it was a people in beggary; it was a nation which stretched out its hands for food. For months together these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the allowance of our austerest fasts, silent, patient, resigned, without sedition or disturbance, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... and unmoved amidst the scenes that darkness favours, the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. Wealth and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together, are gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering housetops, and you shall have within its space everything, with its opposite extreme and contradiction, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... says he, "there's your sister ——, I'll go and talk with her; and your uncle ——, I'll send for him, and the rest. I'll warrant you, when we are all together, we will find ways and means to keep four poor little creatures from beggary and starving, or else it would be very hard; we are none of us in so bad circumstances but we are able to spare a mite for the fatherless. Don't shut up your bowels of compassion against your own flesh and blood. Could you hear these ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... her situation! Sickness and grief had so debilitated her constitution, that she was unable to do any kind of work, whereby to procure a subsistence; and, after having passed her youth in ease and pleasure, she had no resources left in the evening of her life, but that of a workhouse, or common beggary. ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... length took ship from Gythium to fight against the Persians under you, Croesus. On landing at Teos, I heard that you were king no longer, that the mighty Cyrus, the father of yonder beautiful youth, had conquered the powerful province of Lydia in a few weeks, and reduced the richest of kings to beggary." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... dismay, and rage seized the nation. The directors in their rage called the colonists white-livered deserters. Accurate accounts brought the realization of the truth that hundreds of families, once in comparative opulence, were now reduced almost to beggary, and the flower of the nation had either succumbed to hardships, or else were languishing in prisons in the Spanish settlements, or else starving in English colonies. The bitterness of disappointment was succeeded by an implacable hostility to the king, who ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... mother fled to England with my father, de Garcia persecuted my grandmother and his aunt with lawsuits and by other means, till at last she was reduced to beggary, in which condition the villain left her to die. So poor was she indeed, that she was buried in a public grave. After that the old woman, my informant, said she had heard that de Garcia had committed some ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... point of some mystery to the present writer that Bernard Shaw should have been so long unrecognised and almost in beggary. I should have thought his talent was of the ringing and arresting sort; such as even editors and publishers would have sense enough to seize. Yet it is quite certain that he almost starved in London for many years, writing occasional columns ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... buy any, a visitor found the pair busily engaged in waltzing about their bare room in order to keep warm. At another time they were rescued from their extremity only by the kindness of their friend, the Baroness Waldstaetten, who intervened just in time to save them from beggary. After three years, Leopold Mozart relented enough to visit his daughter-in-law, whom he found far more deserving than he had expected; but he himself was not well off, and could be of little ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... no thanks for his heroism. He was compelled to give up a small estate that he had purchased with the remains of his property, the purchase-money proving insufficient, and he must have been consigned to beggary, had not Hofer's son, who had received a fine estate from the emperor, engaged him ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... for, though I spent very little, my slender finances were almost exhausted. I was without resource; no news of Madam de Warrens; not knowing what would become of me, and feeling a cruel pang at heart to see the friend of Mademoiselle Galley reduced to beggary. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... returns to the Commissioners of the Income-tax as those we have quoted, as a consequence of our forced and hot-bed encouragement, remains to be seen. Lord Brougham objects to the railroad mania, on account of the beggary to be induced when the employment they give rise to is over. When the ferment of patronage shall again have settled down to a selection of a few favourites, may we not entertain somewhat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... when he stumbled upon the lights of the post, That night he would have died in the deep snows. Wrapped in its thick coat of bearskin he clutched his violin to his breast, and sank down in a ragged heap beside the hot stove. His eyes traveled about him in fierce demand. There is no beggary among these strong-souled men of the far North, and Jan's lips did not beg. He unwrapped ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... another species appear on the scene and seek for corn under the earth in the nests of the Psammomys. A single rat can store up more than a bushel. Those who are skilful in finding their holes can thus in a day glean a good harvest, to the detriment of the rats who are thus in their turn reduced to beggary. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... in France;" he was inventor of the famous fable "his masterpiece," of the "Sinking of the Vengeur," "the largest, most inspiring piece of blaque manufactured, for some centuries, by any man or nation;" died in beggary ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... comparative: with a lovely climate—a continual summer—and all the absolute requirements of life at hand, there is not one-tenth of the misery in the Philippines that there is in Europe, and none of that forlorn wretchedness facing the public gaze. Beggary—that constant attribute of the highest civilization—hardly exists, and suicide is extremely rare. There are no ferocious animals, insects, or reptiles that one cannot reasonably guard against; it is essentially one of those countries where "man's greatest enemy is man." There is ample room for ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... hard labor—clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in some remote little town of Italy (where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beggary), I have never been honored with nearly such ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... their destruction was inevitable should they continue any longer in the territory of the pasha, who would not fail to seize this opportunity of levying fines and exactions, and reducing them to want and beggary. They were assembled in the men's tent, to the number of ten persons; the place of honour, the corner, being given to my father's uncle, the elder of the tribe, an old man, whose beard, as white as snow, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... of our outfits were landed on the right bank of the Missouri River, our trouble with the Indians began, not in open hostilities, but in robbery under the guise of beggary. The word had been passed around in our little party that not a cent's worth of provisions would we give up to the Indians. We believed this policy to be our only safeguard from spoliation, and in that ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... with cool ruthlessness while grey-haired nobles were hurried to the block. The terrible bloodshed of Towton woke no pity in his heart; he turned from it only to frame a vast bill of attainder which drove twelve great nobles and a hundred knights to beggary and exile. When treachery placed his harmless rival in his power he visited him with cruel insult. His military ability had been displayed in his rapid march upon London, the fierce blow which freed him from his enemy in the rear, the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... month was out, I am sorry to say, the Triplets were reduced to a state of beggary. Mrs. Triplet's health had long been failing; and, although her duties at her little theater were light and occasional, the manager was obliged to discharge her, since she could not ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... he knew not the true from the false, expended all his wealth in purchasing mere imitations of the lightning-stick of Tchew-Koung, a glazed cup of the time of the Emperor Cheun, and the mat of Confucius; and being reduced to beggary, he carried these spurious relics about with him, and said to the people in the streets, "Sirs, I pray you, give me ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston

... country and cities: and, in the first century of their institution, the infidel Zosimus has maliciously observed, that, for the benefit of the poor, the Christian monks had reduced a great part of mankind to a state of beggary. [55] As long as they maintained their original fervor, they approved themselves, however, the faithful and benevolent stewards of the charity, which was entrusted to their care. But their discipline was corrupted by prosperity: they gradually assumed the pride of wealth, and at last indulged the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... "I am ruined, undone, I shall come to beggary,—five hundred and ninty-four pounds, ten shillings and sixpence," and the teeth of the old man began to chatter, terror and dotage and cunning, seeming to be striving within him for the mastery and altogether depriving him of the power ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... brick and give them no straw, so he tasks him to be a gentleman, and leaves him nothing to maintain it. The pride of his house has undone him, which the elder's knighthood must sustain, and his beggary that knighthood. His birth and bringing up will not suffer him to descend to the means to get wealth; but he stands at the mercy of the world, and which is worse, of his brother. He is something better than the serving-men; yet they ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... of the investment; for the purchase was heavily encumbered and paid them nothing till some years before their death. In the meanwhile, the Jackson family also, what with wild sons, an indulgent mother and the impending emancipation of the slaves, was moving nearer and nearer to beggary; and thus of two doomed and declining houses, the subject of this memoir was born, heir to an estate and to no money, yet with inherited qualities that were to make ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... now giving them some three hundred a year out of his fees; and dead directors unfortunately earned no fees! Six thousand pounds at four and a half per cent., settled so that their mother couldn't "blue it," would give them a certain two hundred and fifty pounds a year-better than beggary. And the more he thought the better he liked it, if only that shaky chap, Joe Pillin, didn't shy off when he'd bitten his nails short ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... its management or any possible chance of profit if he is successful; but with a fearful certainty that if from any cause he makes a failure, my earnings must make it good, even though it reduces my family to beggary. Since my own misfortune I have made this a matter of study, and I find that a very large per cent. of the business failures, of the country (and nearly all among farmers) ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... thorough-fares of Baghdad and her market-streets, distributing charity to the poor and the paupers, until the last of the day. And whilst so doing, the Commander of the Faithful chanced to espy a woman seated at the head of a highway who had extended the hand of beggary, showing at the same time her wrist and crying, "Give me somewhat for the sake of Allah Almighty!" Hereat he considered her nicely and saw that her palm and her wrist were like whitest crystal and yet more brilliant ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... was shot, what then? I have a wife and children. It is my duty to live for them. If I died, I should get no glory and no reward, and my family would be reduced to beggary,—to which they'll soon be near enough as it is. This affair will blow over in a day or two. The white people will be ashamed of themselves to-morrow, and apprehensive of the consequences for some ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... crimes, but often of lesser ones; and are, moreover, in the daily practice of vices that give rise to suspicion, neglect, and reproach. Here together are associated, and made hereditary, poverty, ignorance, idleness, beggary, and vagrancy. Surely these instances are not common, probably not so common as they were in the last generation. But how is the boy or girl of such a family to rise above these circumstances, and throw off these ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... year by being deprived of his five main sources of income, namely the Governorship of Jersey, the Patent of the Wine Office, the Wardenship of the Stannaries, the Rangership of Gillingham Forest, and the Lieutenancy of Portland Castle. He besought that he might not be reduced to utter beggary, and he did his best to retain the Duchy of Cornwall and his estates at Sherborne. The former, as he might have supposed, could not be left in the charge of a prisoner. It was given to a friend, to the Earl of Pembroke, and Raleigh showed a dangerous obstinacy ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... opposed to more than twenty thousand Indians, and the subjugation of the latter, without help from abroad, is impossible. The troops of Yucatan are destitute of clothing and supplies, and as most of the wealthy citizens of the State have been reduced to beggary by these reverses, the threatened extermination of the Spanish race seems near at hand. A conspiracy to burn the city of Merida, formed by some of the soldiers, in conjunction with the convicts in the city prison, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... And then what a terrible disappointment to survivors! Many families as well as individuals were by this calamity not only bereft of friends, but of their property—some reduced to a state of comparative beggary. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... may ask with scorn, is this thinking nation to live? With all its wisdom, will it not be reduced to beggary and starvation? ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... wife's penetration, until I could make arrangements prior to my leaving the country, for to this I had already made up my mind. In a foreign climate, being unknown, I might, with some probability of success, endeavor to conceal my unhappy calamity—a calamity calculated, even more than beggary, to estrange the affections of the multitude, and to draw down upon the wretch the well-merited indignation of the virtuous and the happy. I was not long in hesitation. Being naturally quick, I committed to memory the entire tragedy of "Metamora." I had the good fortune to recollect that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... own interest and of that of the people, whom they represented. It was stated that the ruin of the islands would be the ruin of themselves and of the country. Its revenue would be half annihilated. Its naval strength would decay. Merchants, manufacturers and others would come to beggary. But in this deplorable situation they would expect to be indemnified for their losses. Compensation indeed must follow. It could not be withheld. But what would be the amount of it? The country would have no ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... ruining us all. You are keeping us in beggary and starvation. But for your whims, we might ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... every six months he had an intimacy with some new woman; and all the presents he gave reduced him almost to beggary. Still, it's difficult to believe that, for however fond a woman may be of flowers and sweets, one does not quite see why that should reduce anyone to beggary. Before we went to sleep last night Hella told me that Lajos had already been "infected" more or less; she says there is not an officer who has not got venereal disease and that is really what makes ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... wretches does my present acquaintance with infamy and wickedness enable me to number among the heroes of debauchery. Reptiles whom their own servants would have despised, had they not been their servants, and with whom beggary would have disdained intercourse, had she not been allured by hopes of relief. Many of the beings which are now rioting in taverns, or shivering in the streets, have been corrupted, not by arts of gallantry which stole gradually upon the affections ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... years also affects us in Europe. The scarcity of cotton causes great suffering. The workmen of Rouen and Mulhouse are as severely tried as the spinners and weavers of Lancashire; entire populations are reduced to beggary, and to exist through the winter they have no resource and no hope save in special charity or assistance from the government. In so severe a crisis, and in the midst of such unmerited sufferings, it is but natural that public opinion should become restless in Europe, and condemn ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the hither brow of the Pincian Hill. Old Beppo, the millionnaire of his ragged fraternity, it is a wonder that no artist paints him as the cripple whom St. Peter heals at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,—was just mounting his donkey to depart, laden with the rich spoil of the day's beggary. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... kinder tone, he accompanied with an action which gave the most horrible alarm to my pride, and suggested to my imagination a new and frightful idea. He passed his hand into his pocket as if feeling for cash. Great God! said I to myself, have I incurred the suspicion of beggary! the thought roused all of the man that was within me, and I replied, "No, sir, I am not afraid; nor do I want anything." He afterwards owned that the words, and still more the delivery of them, made a strong impression upon him. Well then, my good boy, what is it you wish ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... replied, "O my lord, there is no hurry, we have time enough for this." Then he went forth from the house meaner and meeker than a donkey, for verily five things were gathered together in him viz.: love, beggary, hunger, nakedness and hard labour. Nevertheless he heartened himself with the hope of gaining the lady's favours. When he had made an end of all their jobs, they played him another trick and married him to their slave girl; but, on the night when he thought to go in to her, they said to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... succeed; and I understand your father well enough to know that he will not survive its defeat. And if Maurice and your brother should both be killed, what would become of you? Oh, my God, would you not be reduced to beggary? ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... Professions, when, instead of consulting the Reputation or Interest of their Children, by such a preposterous Choice, they turn them out to live in an Element no way suited to their Nature, and expose them to Contempt and Beggary all their Days; while at the same Time they spoil an Head, admirably turn'd for Traffick or Mechanicks. And he is left to bring up the Rear in the learned Profession, or it may be lost in the Crowd, who would ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... received my legacy of the lawyer, I seemed to be encumbered with wealth. Reflection and the expence at which I now lived, to the visible and quick consumption of a sum I then thought so ample, had since taught me that I was in imminent danger of being reduced to beggary. I had no profession, nor any means of subsistence till a profession could be secured; at least no adequate means, unless by retiring to some humble garret, and confining myself to the society of the illiterate, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... health of many others-penetrated the dark regions of Arabia, and there found the very seat of Satanic power. It was firmly pegged to Paganism and Mahomedan darkness! This news the world was expected to hail with consternation. Not one word is lisped about that terrible devil holding his court of beggary and crime in the Points. He had all his furnaces in full blast there; his victims were legion! No Brother Spyke is found to venture in and drag him down. The region of the Seven Churches offers inducements ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... deprive us of some resources? But those resources were in the cellars, which the fire could not reach. Besides, why destroy one of the finest towns of the world, and the work of ages, to accomplish so paltry an object? It is the procedure followed since Smolensk, and it has reduced 600,000 families to beggary. The fire-engines of Moscow were broken or carried off, and some arms from the arsenal given to ruffians, who could not be driven from the Kremlin without using cannon. Humanity, the interests of your Majesty ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... children of God,—all that keeps, and is designed by God to keep our hearts up amid the labours and the faintings, the hopes and the fears of the spiritual life. All that keeps us at the least and the worst above famine and beggary. Now, the whole pity with Little-Faith was, that though he was not a bad man, yet he never, even at his best days, had much of those things that make a good and well-furnished pilgrim; and what little he had he had now clean lost. He had never been much a reader of his Bible; he had never ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... was no money to be got from him, and I had no other course. Your bankruptcy would have meant your downfall. That dressmaker woman was inexorable. You would have been sued by your stock-broker, and—who knows what wretchedness was awaiting us?—perhaps absolute beggary in obscure lodgings, and our daily bread purchased with money begged from our friends. You know what father is: you know how he hates both you and me, how he would rub salt into our wounds, and gloat over our humiliation. If—if Dick hadn't gone ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... answered dryly. "If I were to give you a free hand, you'd bring us to beggary. Aren't you aware of our position? We are going as fast as ever we ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... he believed himself, to be able to cause death to those whom he excommunicated. This was so firmly acknowledged that it saved him in many a severe pinch, and shielded him from indifference, beggary, and defeat. Many instances are given us, in which misfortune and death followed upon his censures. If any one likes to plead post hoc, non ergo propter hoc, judgment may go by default; but at any rate the stories show the life of the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... interest, high and low, though chiefly, no doubt, the middle and smaller proprietors and tenants, will be compelled to curtail their expenses to the lowest sum, and those who have already but a narrow margin of surplus, be reduced to beggary and ruin. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... hearts of the Greek-Orthodox people are no more. But have the Jews actually gained by the change from the illegal persecutions [in the form of pogroms] to the legal persecutions of the third of May? Maltreated, plundered, reduced to beggary, put to shame, slandered, and dispirited, the Jews have been cast out of the community of human beings. Their destitution, amounting to beggary, has been firmly established and definitely affixed to them. Gloomy darkness, without a ray of light, has descended upon that ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... consumption of alcohol does not necessarily mean that crime has increased. Neither does the reverse hold good. When crime appears first it is not long before all forms of animal indulgence follow. Sometimes drunkeness appears first, and when the home has been reduced to beggary, ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... man can bake. And if a plumber wants a crumb, He may unto the baker come And plumb. A joker needing hats or cloaks Can go and pay for them with jokes, And so on: what a fellow's got Shall pay for things that he has not. If beggars' rags were cash, you'd see No longer any beggary; In short, there'd be no poverty." "A splendid scheme," quoth I; "but stay! What of the nation's credit, pray?" "Ha-ha! ho-ho!" he loudly roared. "We'll leave that problem to the Lord. And if He fails to keep us straight Once more we'll have to legislate, And so create, Confounding greed, As much ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... relieved from the fear of back-door beggary, soon became reconciled to bankruptcy; thought it rather a good joke, on the whole, for children like novelty, and don't care much for Mrs. Grundy. She regarded the new abode as a baby house on a large scale, where she was allowed to play her part in the most satisfactory manner. ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... been worsted in the encounter with this arch-swindler. He would sail for San Francisco on the Columbus. Perhaps he would make his fortune there, while Joe, whom he had so swindled, might, within three days, be reduced to beggary. ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... wear your passion lightly. Such a tempestuous wooing! You ask me to marry you because you fear I might do worse—because you believe that I'm irresponsible, and that without you I'll end in spiritual beggary. I appreciate your motives. They're large, ingenuous and heroic. Thanks. Love is not a matter of expediency or marriage a search for a guardian. If they were, mon ami, I should have long ago married my Trust ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... clothworkers, and builders who are dismissed (the remaining thirty out of every hundred) being without work and without houses, are at once in a state of beggary. Only by betaking themselves to some new industry will they be able to get a livelihood, and it rests with them to devise their new industries. Meanwhile they can only subsist on charity, which is doled out to ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... inflate a naturally buoyant temperament with inordinate hope; but, in that very period, instigated and approved of investigations and actions at law, which resulted in reducing Perez, in so far as wealth and honours were concerned, to beggary and rags. He threw into a dungeon Pedro de Escovedo, who talked unreservedly of his desire to assassinate Perez; and refused the fervent entreaties of Perez himself to remove, for a temporary relief, the fetters with which, when his ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... almost as a sound of distant thunder, he crept closer to her as though to share the excitement of which she was mistress. The specks upon the green were nothing to him—those dots of color moving swiftly across the scene, how odd to think that they might bring riches or beggary in their train! This he knew to be the stern fact, and when men began to shout hoarsely, to press together and crane their necks, when that very torrent of sound which named the distance arose, he looked again at Anna and saw that she was ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... am a poor man. How I came to be reduced to a position little better than beggary is not known by any of you, for I have studiously avoided airing my troubles to any one. To-day I intend to tell the story. It will cast some light on the subject that we will be ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... eight others, their property being confiscated, in utter beggary, were driven as vagabonds from the kingdom. The rest, after being impoverished by fines, were restored to liberty. Ferdinand adopted vigorous measures to establish his despotic power. Considering the Protestant religion as peculiarly hostile to despotism, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... cloud is past from my mind. Mutual confidence, so long preserved between us once, is restored, to know no further interruption. Now, welcome poverty!' cried Mr. Micawber, shedding tears. 'Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... fumes that were staining the sky, at the hurrying crowd of men and women and children going into the mines, the mills, the shops, hurrying to work with the prod of fear ever in their backs—fear of the disgrace of want, fear of the shame of beggary, fear to hear some loved one ask for food or warmth or shelter and to have it not. When the great motherly body had ceased its paroxysms, he went to Mrs. Bowman and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... which he dies possessed, and no indefeasible title whatever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, a husband may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers, of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widowhood. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... did they well who forced me, but what was well came to me from Thee, my God. For they were regardless how I should employ what they forced me to learn, except to satiate the insatiate desires of a wealthy beggary, and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom the very hairs of our head are numbered, didst use for my good the error of all who urged me to learn; and my own, who would not learn, Thou didst use for my punishment- a fit ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... English legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats, and, finally, forfeitures; this last was at all times more strictly observed in England than in any other feudal country, and by its enactments so many noble families have, in the course of ages, been reduced to beggary, and their chiefs often brought to the block. English history is ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... walked off: it pricked his chin about a dozen times before the day was over; but he forgot the next day, and the next, and the next, to have the button sewed on. He was content to make shift, as he called it, with the pin. This is precisely the species of content which leads to beggary. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... of the latter days came over my spirit like a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see nothing in the years to come but beggary and starvation,—myself a fallen-back old man. with an out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat, and a bald brow, hirpling over a staff, requeeshting an awmous: Nanse a broken-hearted beggar-wife, torn down to tatters, and weeping like Eachel when she thought on better days; and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... which sold in December, 1861, in Liverpool for 113/4d. per pound had risen in December, 1862, to 241/2d. per pound, and as a result, half a million persons in England, dependent for their daily bread upon this manufacturing industry, were thrown out of employment and reduced to beggary. So great was the distress that by April, 1863, nearly two million pounds sterling had been expended for their relief, and this sum does not include the vast amounts expended in local volunteer charities. English manufacturers saw that the supply ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... themselves from destruction only by living a squalid life outside and a princely life in hidden quarters. It has been said: "You might follow an old merchant, spotted and stained with all the squalor of beggary upon him, through byways foul to the feet and offensive to every sense, and through some narrow lane enter what looks like the entrance of an ill-kept stable. Thence opens out a squalid hall of noisome odors. But ascending the steps you come to a secret passage, when, opening the door, you ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... was, how to act with regard to Sophia. The thoughts of leaving her almost rent his heart asunder; but the consideration of reducing her to ruin and beggary still racked him, if possible, more; and if the violent desire of possessing her person could have induced him to listen one moment to this alternative, still he was by no means certain of her resolution to indulge his wishes ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... me that I have not yet sunk to the lowest possible depths. But that is not what I mean to enlarge on. What I wish you to understand is, that after Shank and I had gone to the dogs, and were reduced to beggary, I made up my mind to join a band of men who lived chiefly by their wits, and sometimes by their personal courage. Of course I won't say who they are, because we still hang together, and there is no need to say what we are. The profession is ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... take away queen Mary, the devil would." Cooper denied all such words, but Cooper was a protestant and a heretic, and therefore he was hung, drawn and quartered, his property confiscated, and his wife and nine children reduced to beggary. The following harvest, however, Grimwood of Hitcham, one of the witnesses before mentioned, was visited for his villany: while at work, stacking up corn, his bowels suddenly burst out, and before relief could be obtained he died. Thus ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... evidently desired to avoid me when he recognized who I was. But, shocked to find him in so pitiable a condition, I pressed my questions, and finally told him I could not bear to see any one who had been in my service reduced to beggary; and though I had no actual need of his services, yet, rather than see him thus, he might return to his old position as servant in my house, and be paid the same wages as he had before. He hesitated, was much embarrassed, and, after a pause, said,—'A thousand ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... of a stain," said Hilda, calmly. "As to Lord Chetwynde, he, at least, has nothing to say. To him General Pomeroy was such a friend as he could never have hoped for. He saved Lord Chetwynde from beggary and ruin. When General Pomeroy first came back to England he found Lord Chetwynde at the last extremity, and advanced sixty thousand pounds to help him. Think of that! And it's true. I was informed of it on good authority. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... not choose to deal in generalities with regard to it until my ignorance has lost something of its density. Liverpool impressed me unfavorably, but I scarcely saw it. The working class seemed exceedingly ill dressed, stolid, abject and hopeless. Extortion and beggary appeared very prevalent. I must look over that city again if ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... thing remained but a cow. The poor woman one day met Jack with tears in her eyes; her distress was great, and for the first time in her life she could not help reproaching him, saying, "Oh! you wicked child, by your ungrateful course of life you have at last brought me to beggary and ruin. Cruel, cruel boy! I have not money enough to purchase even a bit of bread for another day—nothing now remains to sell but my poor cow! I am sorry to part with her; it grieves me sadly, but we ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... consult Mr. Burton, she and Jack planned out for the dear culprit a dramatic trial which would have convulsed the soberest of judges. His sentence was ten years' imprisonment, and such heavy fines that the family would have been reduced to beggary but for the sums made by Jill's fancy work and Jack's ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... the stranger, "if by distress is meant beggary. I am in all respects perhaps better ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... whom she loved, decline From nobler cause, fit for my birth and mind: And therefore, by her love's authority, Willed me these tempests of vain love to fly, And anchor fast myself on Virtue's shore. Alas, if this the only metal be Of love new-coined to help my beggary, Dear! love me not, that ye ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... in the year America was discovered, original binding and clasps, not in Dibdin, for three guineas! Hurrah! It excites my madness so that I must rush straight to Piper's and buy right and left. Kind friends, come and take me away ere I am reduced to beggary. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... this scene, that the outcast king encounters the victim of tyranny, whose eyes have been plucked out, and who has been turned out to beggary, as the penalty of having come athwart that disposition in 'the duke,' that 'all the world well knows will not be rubbed or stopped';—it is in this scene that Lear finds him smelling his way to Dover, for that is the name in the play—the play name—for ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the king was enriched by thirty-two thousand pounds a year, and one hundred thousand pounds ready money—an immense sum in that age. By this spoliation, perhaps called for, but exceedingly unjust and harsh, and in violation of all the rights of property, thousands were reduced to beggary and misery, while there was scarcely an eminent man in the kingdom who did not come in for a share of the plunder. Vast grants of lands were bestowed by the king on his favorites and courtiers, in order to appease the nation; and thus the foundations of many of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... your work, ye born idiot: 'mind your own business,' says you: you must despise your wedded wife, that has more brains in her finger than you have in all your great long useless carease: you must have your secrets: one day poison, another day beggary: you have ruined me, you have murdered me: get out of my sight! for if I find a knife I'll put it in you, I will." And in her ungovernable passion, she actually ran to the dresser for a knife: at which Maxley caught up a chair and lifted it furiously, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... given the question of a husband, or settlement in life any serious thought as yet. I was only supposing a case. One never knows what may happen, and even royalties now and then are reduced to genteel beggary." ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... time the public had had a little too much of it, as they were nearly reduced to beggary by the contributions they had given to one ideal-originator after another; and they certainly would have lynched any new aspirant to the Idea, had one (sufficiently ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... priests), while Paris carried off an airy phantom in her likeness, for which the Greeks and Trojans fought for ten long years. By this contrivance the virtue of the heroine is saved, and Menelaus, (to make good the ridicule of Aristophanes on the beggary of Euripides' heroes,) appears in rags as a beggar, and in nowise dissatisfied with his condition. But this manner of improving mythology bears a resemblance to the Tales of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... was an undoubted will, and in my father's own handwriting, and dated more than a year before he died and when I was rusticating from college. I thought I must needs sow my wild oats, and day after to-morrow I pay for them all by total beggary. The devisee, by the will, acted very strangely about the property. He did not disturb me for a very long time. He probably feared to do so; and then he made a mortgage of one hundred thousand dollars on the property, took the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... and we filed out into the dusty street, at the corner of which sat another of our visible tokens of the coming of the season of flowers; a dirty, shrivelled old Irishwoman, full of benedictions and beggary, who, all through the summer, sold "posies" to the passers-by. We school-girls were good customers to her. We were all more or less sentimental, more or less homesick, and had more or less of that susceptibility to the influence of scents which may, some day, be the basis of a new school of medicine. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... that fox-covers and game-preserves would be seriously prejudiced by the formation of railroads; that agricultural communications would be destroyed, land thrown out of cultivation, landowners and farmers reduced to beggary, the poor-rates increased through the number of persons thrown out of employment by the railways,—and all this in order that Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham shopkeepers and manufacturers might establish a ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... consequently tread thrift under our feet? It was not known till the iron age, donec facinus invasit mortales, as the poet says; and the Scythians always detested it. I will prove it that an unthrift, of any, comes nearest a happy man, in so much as he comes nearest to beggary. Cicero saith, summum bonum consists in omnium rerum vacatione, that is, the chiefest felicity that may be to rest from all labours. Now who doth so much vacare a rebus, who rests so much, who hath so little to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... less polished lens of the telescope of Dr. King. It is, however, a similarity, though it may not be an imitation; and is given as an example of that art in composition which can ornament the humblest conception, like the graceful vest thrown over naked and sordid beggary. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... the practical part of the situation. You know enough about Australian ups and downs to realise that a cattle or sheep owner out West, may be potentially wealthy one season and on the fair road to beggary the next. It will be different when times change and we take to sinking artesian bores on the same principle as when Joseph stored up grain in the fat years in Egypt against the lean ones that were coming. That's what I meant to do and ought to have done at ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... he was reduced to poverty, or rather to actual beggary; for shortly before his death, when fourscore years old, he was permitted, by royal letters patent, to become a mendicant. This curious document is printed in Mr. Bolton Corney's Curiosities of Literature Illustrated, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... would be merely a jest. If he has a spite against any one, he can pluck his heart out of his body with a look, just as easily as his money out of his pocket. The enemy he sets eye on will waste away and die miserably, or will sink into beggary, while he himself becomes as rich ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... Soon must you leave the woods you buy, Your villa, wash'd by Tiber's flow, Leave,—and your treasures, heap'd so high, Your reckless heir will level low. Whether from Argos' founder born In wealth you lived beneath the sun, Or nursed in beggary and scorn, You fall to Death, who pities none. One way all travel; the dark urn Shakes each man's lot, that soon or late Will force him, hopeless of return, On board ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... throat, and seemed to choke her. Oh, of all the base, heartless, mercenary, ungrateful wretches on earth, was there another so heartless, so ungrateful as she! Poor—Charley poor! For one moment—one—the impulse came upon her to give up all—to go with him to beggary if need be. Only for one moment—I will do Miss Darrell's excellent worldly wisdom ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... astronomer Heu was carried up to Heaven in his house, which stood at this place, leaving behind him an old faithful servant who, being thus deprived of his master and his habitation, was reduced to beggary; but happening by accident to throw a little prepared rice into the ground, it immediately grew and produced grain without chaff for his sustenance; from whence the place is called Sen-mee, rice growing ready dressed, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... found myself a free man again. I suffered only in thinking how I had fooled away some of the best years of my life for a woman who despised me from the first, and was as heartless as the stones of the street. I found her in beggary, or close upon it. I made myself her slave—it's only the worthless women who accept from a man, who expect from him, such slavish worship as she had from me. I gave her clothing; she scarcely thanked me, but I thought ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... my wounded soul; For every cordial that my thoughts apply Turns to a corsive and doth eat it farther. There is no taste in this philosophy; 'Tis like a potion that a man should drink, But turns his stomach with the sight of it. I am no such pill'd Cynick to believe, That beggary is the only happiness; Or with a number of these patient fools, To sing: "My mind to me a kingdom is," When the lank hungry belly barks for food, I look into the world, and there I meet With objects, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... scanty resources, eked out by what little they could derive from beggary or robbery, formed their chief subsistence; for many of them were positive mendicants, and were so denominated: and being possessed of a sanctuary within their own quarters, to which they could at convenience retire, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... scene, and it is no wonder that the Prussians, in 1871, here levied a heavy toll; their sojourn at Meaux having cost the inhabitants not less than a million and a half of francs. All now is peace and prosperity, and here, as in the neighbouring towns, rags, want, and beggary are not found. The evident well-being of all classes is delightful ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... had several, but they all died before their mother. We had been reduced to beggary by misfortunes, and I had become too weak and ill to work. I buried my poor wife's bones by the side of the road where she died; raised the little shrine over them, planted the trees, and there have I sat ever since by her side, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... general renovation, of the estate, which could not have been accomplished without considerable expenditure of time, money, and labor, they shook their heads in strong disapprobation, and predicted that that woman's extravagance would bring Herman Brudenell to beggary yet. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... proclamation to be issued that all persons having demands upon him were to present their claims on a certain day. On the previous night he and his train noiselessly took their departure. The heavy debts remained unpaid, and many opulent families were reduced to beggary. Such was the result of the confidence of the people of Amsterdam in the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... in several places, which they carefully conceal from the knowledge of the Dutch. During the last war in Java, which continued from 1716 to 1721, the inhabitants of some parts of the country were so often plundered that they were reduced to absolute beggary; yet, after a year's peace, they were observed to have grown excessively rich, having plenty of gold, both ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... Paschal feast, another beggar wishing to rent his profit from him, Vieux par-Chemins refused ten crowns for it; in fact, the same evening he spent fourteen crowns in drinking the health of the alms-givers, because it is the statutes of beggary that one should show one's gratitude to donors. Although he carefully got rid of that of which had been a source of anxiety to others, who, having too much wealth went in search of poverty, he was happier with nothing in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... brought down next door to beggary? Mr. Jones had an income of a thousand a year, secured by the Funds. But there came along a wicked Company promoter (why are wicked Company promoters permitted?) with a prospectus, telling good Mr. Jones how to obtain a hundred per cent. for his money by investing ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... ten sons, who had been governors in various provinces, Haman had twenty others, ten of whom died, and the other ten of whom were reduced to beggary. (187) The vast fortune of which Haman died possessed was divided in three parts. The first part was given to Mordecai and Esther, the second to the students of the Torah, and the third was applied to the restoration of the Temple. (188) Mordecai thus became ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... sun beat down with its old ferocious glare on shop and bazaar. Grave merchants lolled over their priceless treasures of gold and silver work, heaped up jewels and bullion-threaded shawls for princely wear. Under the awnings lingered the familiar polyglot groups, while beggary and opulence jostled ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... this he required all his tenants to send their bullocks when they became unfit for work, and he sold them new cattle, good and strong, at prices fixed by himself. If any of his old debtors, when reduced to beggary, came to his door for alms, they were never sent away without a handful of rice or a copper coin. He kept a bag of the smallest copper coins always ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... had much rather he would go any where in the world, than by his debaucheries here reduce his father to beggary! For if I go on supplying his extravagance, Menedemus, in that case my circumstances will undoubtedly be {soon} reduced to the level ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished his days in writing epitaphs in the churchyard, laughing at Sir Thomas Lucy, and bequeathing deathless scoffs, to the beggary of mankind. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... I was enabled to reserve all my rents for carrying on my lawsuits, without at all impairing the estate. In eighteen years, I thank God, I ruined my three opponents, and they all died in beggary. The year after I came into undisputed possession of my estates, the next heir got a writ issued against me of "de inquirendo lunatico," on the ground of the strange and unworthy manner that I, as a baronet with an immense estate, had lived for those last eighteen ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... to fill his coffers the Duke of Alva established a system of taxation that if carried out would reduce to beggary every man, woman and child in the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... wise reasons hast thou ordered it, that beggary and urbanity, which are at such variance in other countries, should find a way to be at ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... young novice, thou must; they are a sort of poor starved rascals, that are ever wrap'd up in foul linen; and can boast of nothing but a lean visage, peering out of a seam-rent suit, the very emblems of beggary. No, dost hear, turn lawyer, thou shalt be my solicitor.—- 'Tis ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... clothing for body. All, rich and poor alike, must petition God for these, for each one stands in God's hand. God can cast the rich man down like Job, and free the poor man from all want. The word bread includes all necessities of life. "Give me neither beggary nor riches: give me only the necessaries of ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings

... she said in a doubtful tone. Something of old Nelson's dread of the authorities had rubbed off on the girl since she had to live with it day after day. "I don't know. Papa's afraid of being reduced to beggary, as he says, in his old days. Look here, kid, you had better ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... away with such idiocy as you do. You conduct yourself as if you were a millionaire, sir; and what are you? A pauper on my bounty, and on your brother Montagu's after me—a pauper with a tinsel fashion, a gilded beggary, a Queen's commission to cover a sold-out poverty, a dandy's reputation to stave off a defaulter's future! A ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... the German invasion was soon followed by more imposing additions. The repeated strategic devastations of the Rhenish Palatinate during the French and Spanish wars reduced the peasantry to beggary, and the medieval social stratification of Germany reduced them to virtual serfdom, from which America offered emancipation. Queen Anne invited the harassed peasants of this region to come to England, whence they could be transferred to America. Over thirty thousand took advantage ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... having lived with us as long as life was agreeable to her, and free from any mixture of bitterness. What is there at present in Christendom to make us desire life? Divisions in the Church, bloody wars, men slaughtered, women violated, cruel murders, and multitudes reduced to beggary; Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia pillaged; the heirs of the most noble families reduced to the necessity of living on alms, if it can be called living to drag out their days in misery, wishing for death, which alone can put an ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... indeed, was it in my power to do much for their assistance, since my situation was not what it would have been if my dear husband had lived to become Marquis de Nidemerle. And we were neither of us young enough to think that even the most constant love could make it fit to drag Millicent into beggary. Yet still I could see that Eustace did not give up hope. The more I began to despond, the more cheerful he became. Was not the King in Scotland, and when he entered England as he would certainly do next summer, would not all ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... does not determine me to accomplish my purpose in effecting this union. If your mother was unhappy, the fault lay in her own weak and morbid temper. As for me, I now tell you, once for all, that your destiny is either beggary or a coronet; on that I ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... the bulk of our Irish natives are not kept from thriving, by that cynical content in dirt and beggary which they possess to a degree beyond any other people ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... doth swell thy heart, Yolande, light the glamour in thine eyes and set thee a-tremble—e'en as I? Nay indeed, thou'rt a-thrill with Folly ... and I, with Roguery. Loved Folly! Sweet Roguery! O Yolande, let us fly from empty state, from this mockery of life and learn the sweet joys of ... of beggary, and, crowned ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... subordination and the honours of birth; for I can hardly tell who was my grandfather." Johnson further informed Mrs. Thrale that he did not delight in talking much of his family: "There is little pleasure," he says, "in relating the anecdotes of beggary." He constantly deprecated his origin. According to Miss Seward, he told his wife before he married her that he was of mean extraction; but the letter in which Miss Seward gives her version of Johnson's courtship is worth recalling, although I do not ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... mechanic that the man in the landau has been the ruin of thousands, and you mention people whom he himself knows, people in various grades of life, widows and orphans amongst them, whose little all he has dissipated, and whom he has reduced to beggary by inducing them to become sharers in his delusive schemes. But the mechanic says: 'Well the more fools they to let themselves be robbed. But I don't call that kind of thing robbery, I merely call it out-witting; and everybody in this free country has a right to outwit others if he can. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... were never supposed to contain more than 3,000,000; and France is a much richer country than North America; though, on account of the more unequal distribution of riches, there is much more poverty and beggary in the one country than in the other. France, therefore, could afford a market at least eight times more extensive, and, on account of the superior frequency of the returns, four-and-twenty times more advantageous than that which our North American ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... fashionable party given the same evening by one of their own clique, and then vanished, leaving Mrs. Fairchild with the mortified wish that they had not come at all, to see the splendor of preparations and the beggary of guests. Some few young men dropped in and took a look, and bowed themselves out as soon as the Fairchilds gave them a chance; and so ended this last and most ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... name Eumenides." He relates that a rich usurer of Nyssa, so covetous as to deny himself and children necessaries, and not to use the bath to save three farthings, dying suddenly, left his money all hid and buried where his children could never find it, who by that means were all reduced to beggary. "The usurers answer me," says he, "then we will not lend; and what will the poor do? I bid them give, and exhort to lend, but without interest; for he that refuses to lend, and he that lends at usury, are equally criminal;" viz. if the necessity of another ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... peat; but, for all she kept trying, she could not light her candle. The old man thought it was because she was dead, not because he was dead in sin, and losing his patience, cried, 'You foolish woman! haven't you wit enough left to light a candle? It's small wonder you came to beggary!' Still she went on trying, but the more she tried, the blacker grew the peat she was blowing at. It would indeed blaze up at her breath, but the moment she brought the candle near it to catch the flame, it grew black, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... said Willy, rising and walking aimlessly across the room. "They might turn us from this shelter, true; they might leave us nothing but charity or beggary, that is sure enough. Is this worse than banishment? ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... people should give up themselves again to the vanquished was never yet heard of, seems rather void of all reason and good policy, and will in all probability subject the subduers to the subdued,—will expose to revenge, to beggary, to ruin and perpetual bondage, the victors, under the vanquished: than which what can be ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... whose very existence was dependent on a single agricultural product. What divinity hedges cotton, that competition may not touch it,—that some disease, like that of the potato and the vine, may not bring it to beggary in a single year, and cure the overweening conceit of prosperity with the sharp medicine of Ireland and Madeira? But these South Carolina economists are better at vaporing than at calculation. They will find to their cost that the figures of ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... authorities of the United States will be bound by their orders to maintain and protect the perpetrators of such acts. Wherever the invasion of the Southern States is crowned by victory, society will be disorganized, industry suspended, large and small proprietors of land alike reduced to beggary[924]." ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... strict equity, and it would be doing them injustice to suppose, that it was thus they treated those unfortunate poor, whose indigence was occasioned by infirmities, by age, or unforeseen calamities. Every family constantly assisted its branches to save them from being reduced to beggary; which to them appeared worse than death. The magistrates protected those who were destitute of friends, or incapable of labour. When Ulysses was disguised as a mendicant, and presented himself to Eurymachus, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... money: and for a shepherd's life, O mistress, did you but live awhile in their content, you would say the court were rather a place of sorrow than of solace. Here, mistress, shall not fortune thwart you, but in mean misfortunes, as the loss of a few sheep, which, as it breeds no beggary, so it can be no extreme prejudice: the next year may mend all with a fresh increase. Envy stirs not us, we covet not to climb, our desires mount not above our degrees, nor our thoughts above our fortunes. Care cannot harbor in our cottages, nor do our ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense are they not EQUALS? And if the bias, the instinctive bias, of their souls run the same way, why may ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... rice; and a great many of them are so obdurate, that even this allowance is stopped, when sickness prevents the slave from working. The poor creatures are therefore forced to sacrifice their chastity, in order to procure clothing; and beggary is the usual resource of those who are old and infirm. The Ketis of the court, indeed, are allowed some privileges, and have a considerable influence among the young men of family. In the day time they attend the Maha Rani or queen; and ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... worse; dost thou maintain my man, And this my maid? 'tis I maintain them both. I am thy wife; I will not be dress'd so, While thy gold lasts; but then most willingly I will bequeath thee to flat beggary. I do already hate thee; do thy worst; [He threatens her. Nay, touch me, if thou dar'st; what, shall ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... We need not enter into further details. The proprietors were the capitalists of the time. Frequent bad harvests, plagues, fires, military raids, and similar misfortunes often reduced even prosperous peasants to beggary. The muzhik was probably then, as now, only too ready to accept a loan without taking the necessary precautions for repaying it. The laws relating to debt were terribly severe, and there was no powerful judicial organisation to protect the weak. If we remember all ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... shame was it for such as I to turn beggar? Beggary was an ancient and most honourable mystery. What did holy monks, and bishops, and kings, when they would win Heaven's smile? why, wash the feet of beggars, those favourites of the saints. 'The saints were no ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... he been so completely mastered by his passion as he was now. The consideration that had once been so potent with him—love of ease, money, and position—seemed all to have vanished away. What mattered it that to abandon Ethel Kenyon at the last moment would mean disgrace and perhaps even beggary? He had no care left for thoughts like these. If Lesley would acknowledge her love for him, he was ready to throw all other considerations ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his past life which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium of the religion with which he had diligently ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... live together, she will think; and shall this hated encroacher find refuge from beggary and vileness under her roof,—be lodged and banqueted at her expense? That her indignant ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown



Words linked to "Beggary" :   solicitation, need, mendicancy, begging, indigence, mendicity, beg



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