"Poorhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that for the last few months of her pilgrimage Jess was left alone. Yet I may not say that she was alone. Jamie, who should have been with her, was undergoing his own ordeal far away; where, we did not now even know. But though the poorhouse stands in Thrums, where all may see it, the neighbors did not think only ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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. ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... stocks has not been replaced by a modern one, and adds greatly to the interest of the central portion of the village.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 ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... silks, satins, bonnets, fancy goods, shoes, and all sorts of merchandise. There was no law and there were no officers; there was only confusion, helpless despair on every side. Before sunrise there was a terrific explosion which shook the whole city; the magazine back of the poorhouse was blown up.... At six o'clock in the morning the evacuation was complete, and the railroad bridges ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Louis hotly added. "He gave a talk to the papers the next day, and told how many Irish paupers were in the poorhouse, and said how there must be an end to favoring ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... mother 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 ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... there was but one thing could happen. He had reached the office at ten and heard the first vicious little click of the ticker—that beating heart of the Stock Exchange—as it began the unemotional story of what men bought and sold over on the floor. Its inventor died in the poorhouse, but Capital would fare badly without his machine. Consolidated was down three points. The crowd about the ticker grew absorbed at once. Reports came in over the telephone. The bears had made a set for the stock. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... keeps on, I shall be ruined! It's too bad, when I am slaving here, for Eben to waste my substance on riotous living. I've a great mind to disown him. Let him go his own way, and fetch up in the poorhouse, if ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 pair ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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
... thousand of these 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 reach and relieve their parents, of mothers moaning ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... heard of anyone going to the poorhouse, or into bankruptcy," I said, "because of the money spent on a child. I fancy ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... cried Patsy, laughing. "You're just as bad as the Major, every bit. If you men hadn't me for a guardian you'd be in the poorhouse in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... fight is, the able person is loath to give up and accept charity. But whether she wants to or not, if she can't find work she must go to the poorhouse. Before the war it was estimated that over one-half the inmates of the Irish workhouses were employable. During the war, when there were more jobs than usual to be had, there was a great exodus from the hated poorhouse; there was a drop ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... that, there is 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
... two earliest 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 ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... 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; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... doesn't look like it, but she wrong here," continued Campbell, tapping his forehead. "Why, she fancies herself immensely rich, Mrs. Bradshaw, when, as a matter of fact, she's a penniless cousin of mine, who would have gone to the poorhouse but for ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... 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
... me curiously. "Is grandpa rich?" she asked. "He says sometimes that the greenhouses cost so much money that they will send him to the poorhouse. I do not think grandpa can be rich. But if he were rich," she cried out indignantly, "that makes no difference: he has nothing but me—nothing to care about. There was poor grandmamma: she died—oh so long ago!—and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... both of the honor and safety of your King and commonwealth, should disable yourself to this shameful imbecility, that you are not able to ride or walk the journey of a Jew's Sabbath, but you must have a reeky coal brought you from the next poorhouse to kindle your tobacco with? whereas he cannot be thought able for any service in the wars that cannot endure ofttimes the want of meat, drink, and sleep; much more then must he endure the want ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the 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 surprise. You have forced me, against my ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... we calc'lated on. Yew jine the Old Ladies'; yew've got friends over thar, yew'll git erlong splendid. An' I'll git erlong tew. Yer know"—throwing his shoulders back, he assumed the light, bantering tone so familiar to his wife—"the poorhouse doors is always open. I'd jest admire ter go thar. Thar's a rocking-chair in every room, and they say the grub is A No. 1." He winked at her, smiling his broadest smile ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... and legions; John Barleycorn his scepter wields o'er all these smiling regions. I find new victims every day as I go blithely roaming; a million feet I lead astray between the dawn and gloaming. With sparkling beer and foaming ale I am my friends befriending, and to the poorhouse and the jail my followers are wending. You hear the pageant's dreary song as down the road it ambles; I wonder, oftentimes, how long you'll ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... 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 ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... disgust by constantly hearing new stories of the man's grasping avarice. The 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 ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... livelihood. Tom Abbott was a lawyer, like his father before him, and his 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
... Robert, laughing. "He takes a great interest in my affairs. He predicts that we shall come to the poorhouse yet." ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... 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
... planning new and more heinous crimes, and 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 ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... of these stories one may see most clearly the principle that underlay almost all of Dickens's work. He was never content merely to tell an interesting story. He wrote with a purpose. In Oliver Twist that purpose was, first, to better the poorhouse system, and second, to show that even in the lowest and wickedest paths of life (the life wherein lived Fagin with his pupils in crime and Bill Sikes the brutal burglar) there could yet be found, as in the ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... 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 store," said Mr. Kinney briskly; yet he lingered. "I suppose we'll all have to club in and keep old Fanny out of the poorhouse if he does blow up. From all I hear it's usually only a question of time. They say she hasn't got ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... The fellow 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 commenced to wring ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... sometimes I feels bahd, not to be airnin' nothin', and gets some afeard o' the poorhouse; but, bless ye, I can't help thinking the Lord'll keep ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... The Old Testament 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 ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... that old clock there; it was one that b'longed to old Peter Thomas. I bought it when he broke up an' went to the poorhouse. Doctor Prescott he foreclosed on him 'bout ten years ago—you don't remember. He had his old house torn down, an' sowed the land down to grass. I s'pose I paid more'n the clock was worth, but I guess it kept the old man in snuff an' terbaccer a while. Now you look ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were to 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 in a ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... look like poorhouse breed— not at all. You're too pretty dressed and you're too well fed. I know what they be there, for I have been there myself. Yes, ma'am! Jabez Potter came after me to the poor farm. I was sickly, too. There's them that said he went to ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... wife will have so much charity work for me to do that there will be no time for anything else, and, in a little while, she will have given away all the money we both have. Then when we're sitting together in the sun on the front steps of the poorhouse, we can fittingly lament the end ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... is any poorhouse in Chicago," thought Walter, not wholly in jest. "It is not the sort of home I should prefer, but it is better than ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... 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
... last services were performed. Then, at length, Philip realized that he had lost his best earthly friend, and that he was henceforth alone in the world. He did not as yet know that Squire Pope had considerately provided him with a home in the village poorhouse. ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... Smith, 'when it 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
... he couldn't help that," Walter observed. "We're liable to go to the poorhouse the way it is. Well, what's the matter our walkin' to ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... is divided roughly into these two classes: those who act without thinking (and as a result are often in jail); and those who think without acting (and as a result are often in the poorhouse). ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... race abroad under fair conditions 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
... from vengeance. He would dismiss a disobedient servant with curses which would make one's hair stand on end, and would hope within his heart of hearts that before the end of the next week the man with his wife and children might be in the poorhouse. When the end of the next week came, he would send the wife meat, and would give the children bread, and would despise himself for doing so. In matters of religion he was an old Pagan, going to no place of worship, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the 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
... weather. I could learn nothing for certain after that. People lie so, you see. Some say poor Moreno shot himself because his daughter left him when she got placed on the stage; others say that he died like a dog in a poorhouse. The only sure thing is that he died and that his daughter went on having a great time all over those countries over there. The way she went it! They even say she had a king or two. As for money! Say, boys, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... off of house-rent when wages come down? I'll work as cheap as the next one if ye'll gi' me a cheap house to live in and cheap beef and bread. I doant care for money in the savin's bank, or a house that they tax all out o' sight. When I'm old I'll go to the poorhouse, I will; but I'm danged if I like starvin' before then, and they a-ridin' over us in their carriages. I left 'em over yonder"—with a ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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 ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... these poor fellows were ruined. Many of them died of a broken heart. Many became insane; not a few ended a miserable existence by taking their own lives; or died in almshouses, and under other dependent conditions. Of all classes of men, I do not know any who have such an abhorrence for the poorhouse as the sailor class. They will suffer the greatest privations in order to avoid it. It was a hard, cruel fate to have the earnings of a lifetime, and the means of livelihood, taken from them by a stroke of the pen, without compensation; and England again degraded herself by ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... opportunity I had for earning a livelihood. To be sure I had seen no reason why an intelligent man should not in time be advanced to foreman, and why he should not then be able to save enough to ward off the poorhouse before old age came on. But now—with that first dollar tucked away in the ginger jar—I felt within me the stirring of a new ambition, an ambition born of this quick young country into which I had plunged. Why, in time, should I not become the employer? Why ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... self-conscious; occasionally she 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 him for money ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... me like that, young fellow. You're poorhouse rearing, even though you are a pet. Will he be sitting up here to-night, do ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... built, or an important road in which several communities are interested is to be constructed, the county government can best raise the money and manage the work. So, too, in caring for the poor, the county may aid the local governments, or it may take entire charge of the paupers, and maintain a poorhouse. ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... 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
... 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
... be ditch-digging to keep her out of the poorhouse, instead of pushing in with respectable boys here. Sometimes I think that myself," added Dan in another tone. "But it wasn't any of that blamed plute's business ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... in a better and more complete social organization, sent to a hospital, which did not exist in Schenectady. With several other students and two or three young ladies of the city we held services at the "poorhouse" every Sunday. Short exhortations with prayers and the singing of hymns composed the service, and I remember that one day, in giving out a hymn in long metre, I started it to a short metre tune, and had to go through it ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... without the rightful breast to feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived of the breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their all to their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the poorhouse in the end—ah, if one did not smile, one would die of weeping, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... presenting her with the things that she desired, still quite as effectually by crippling the energy of her desires, until they were content to sun themselves quietly in a row, like aged, enfeebled paupers along the south wall of the poorhouse. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... them by the social misery of dull necessity, produces greater 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 as the heroic deeds of Hannibal's ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... "a lucky thing that Brother Kalle did not live to see all this. He worked himself to skin and bone for his children, and now, for all thanks, he lied buried in the poorhouse burying-ground. Albinus, who travels about the country as a conjurer, was the only one who had a thought for him; but the money came too late, although it was sent by telegraph. Have you ever heard of a conjuring-trick like that— to send money from England to Bornholm ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... visit to an almshouse (sometimes called the poorhouse), and report to the class upon ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... gin palace; bar, bar room; barrel house [U.S.], cabaret, chophouse; club, clubhouse; cookshop^, dive [U.S.], exchange [Euph.]; grill room, saloon [U.S.], shebeen^; coffee house, eating house; canteen, restaurant, buffet, cafe, estaminet^, posada^; almshouse^, poorhouse, townhouse [U.S.]. garden, park, pleasure ground, plaisance^, demesne. [quarters for animals] cage, terrarium, doghouse; pen, aviary; barn, stall; zoo. V. take up one's abode &c (locate oneself) 184; inhabit &c (be present) 186. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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; but she called me a dirty little brat, and told me to ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... his country, that, under the Captain of his salvation, he might endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ, without entanglement in the affairs of this life. Aside from this, his stay at the capital had not been unprofitable, for he had preached five times a week in the poorhouse and conversed on the Lord's days with the convicts in ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... tramps that go along the road and beg at 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 ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... life and care for herself and babies. The case came into the hands of the Mission and she was cared for by them until the time of her confinement, when, with her children, she was taken to Dunning Poorhouse where she was kindly cared for. A baby boy was born to G. Great pressure was brought to bear upon this little Italian mother who spoke no word of English, to induce her to give up her children. Frightened and weeping, she refused to do this, declaring she would make a living for them, ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... when there's nothing else left but the poorhouse. It's pretty tough if I have to ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the bulrushes, Emmy dear," corrected Rebecca laughingly. "Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as romantic a scene—Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day; and sitting down at your ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... objected the old woman. "'Tain't me that's done for him. I was a poor lone creeter in the poorhouse when Jabez Potter came and took me out. I know that deep down in his old heart there's a flame of charity. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take away the whisky, and give me a little money," he gasped. "I was a King once. I'll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. I've urgent private affairs—in the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the part, and I shall be glad enough to do it with him again. I have a great deal of compassionate admiration for poor Knowles, who, with his undeniable dramatic genius, his bright fancy, and poetical imagination, will, I fear, end his days either in a madhouse or a poorhouse. The characters beside Sir Thomas Clifford and Modus (which you know are taken by Henry Greville and ——) are filled by a pack of young Guardsmen, with whom I dined, in order to make acquaintance, at Lady Francis's t'other day. Two of them, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... hold your breath until then, though," said Larry. "The way things are breaking for us lately, we'll be more likely to be inviting our friends to come and visit us in the poorhouse." ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... to herself. "Joe's new wife is certainly starting in early to spend his money for him. He'll find out it's easier to spend money than it is to make it, and I'll be glad when I get away from here so that they can't say I helped to put him in the poorhouse." ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a short cut to the second. I maintain a legal department here, and it costs a lot of money, but it's to keep me from going ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... merits of poetic 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 property of the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... of feminine humanity that makes him so fair to the sinning woman who trusts to her ruin or proves what is called weak because of the generous movement of her blood. No one can despise faithful-hearted Fannie Robin, dragging herself to the poorhouse along Casterbridge highway; that scene, which bites itself upon the memory, is fairly bathed in an immense, understanding pity. Although Hardy has thus used the freedom of France in treatment, he has, unlike so much ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... tiger, and the poker kitty have bigger appetites than any healthy critter has a right to have; and after you've fed a tapeworm, there's mighty little left for you. Following the horses may be pleasant exercise at the start, but they're apt to lead you to the door of the poorhouse or the jail ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... 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 she ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 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 ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive. He naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very early. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public charity. He was, in fact, better able to well support a family when ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... 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. of ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... Sam Ross comes—Sam's an idiot who lives at the poorhouse—if he comes, he'll expect a dinner—my, my, I'm afraid he'll cry when he finds we're not here! But you can send him to the hotel to me. Don't let Aunt Cindy speak rough to him. Aunt Cindy's awfully good to me, but she can't bear Sam. She ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... summit. But it was the herald of the doom of the old-world England. Highways and coaching roads, canals and rivers, were abandoned and deserted. The old coachmen, once lords of the road, ended their days in the poorhouse, and steam, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... night long. Somethin' was swimmin' in the cistern last night, too,—if it made the other side safe I 'm all right, but if it drowned there 'll be another bill. It ain't no use your tryin' to cheer me up, Mrs. Lathrop, because I ain't to be cheered. I know I 'm goin' to the poorhouse, 'n' I don't thank you nor no other man for tellin' me to my face as what I know ain't so. Gran'ma Mullins 'n' me is two very sad hearts these days, 'n' Heaven help us both. To hear her talk you 'd think the Siamese twins was ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... 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 founded ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... break of day, having gained many miles, he succeeded in ridding himself of his seaman's clothing, having found some mouldy old rags on the banks of a stagnant pond, nigh a rickety building, which looked like a poorhouse—clothing not improbably, as he surmised, left there on the bank by some pauper suicide. Marvel not that he should with avidity seize these rags; what the suicides abandon, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... 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 you're willing to share ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... worse in a congregation than a single man. But he was heard to speak of his children and we all supposed there was a mother, too. And when they came there was nobody but old Aunt Martha, as they call her. She's a cousin of Mr. Meredith's mother, I believe, and he took her in to save her from the poorhouse. She is seventy-five years old, half blind, and very deaf ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... deposited her 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 there. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... near her, 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
... 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
... voice that was for a long time discredited, the news spread itself through the country that the food of the people was gone. That his own crop was rotten and useless each cotter quickly knew, and realized the idea that he must work for wages if he could get them, or else go to the poorhouse. That the crop of his parish or district was gone became evident to the priest, and the parson, and the squire; and they realized the idea that they must fall on other parishes or other districts for support. But it was long before the fact made itself known that ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... at five minutes before ten came back to the bridge at the 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 had broken a serious engagement with him. In anger ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... deputy sheriff had visited the premises, 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
... Poorhouse System and the substitution in its stead of adequate outdoor relief to the aged and the infirm, and the employment of the able-bodied in the reclamation of waste lands, afforestation, and other National and ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... been bound out in this neighborhood!" said Chase sharply. "If you don't want to do it, don't do it. That's all I've got to say. If you'd rather go to the poorhouse than see your son in steady and honorable employment, in a good home, and learning a business under a man that's made some success of it, that's your lookout, not mine. But that's where you'll land the minute you set your foot out in that road. Then the county court'll take your ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... 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 ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... have a 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 wish ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Ball, "you're peelin' them pertaters with thick peelins' and you'll land in the poorhouse. I've ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... Stevens's, thinking that Abby Matilda had less housework to do than most of the girls; her mother kept a hired woman, and perhaps she'd be willing to go for one day; but Abby was afraid of catching the fever, and said 'they'd better have Widow Burt taken to the poorhouse at once, for nobody would like to stay in that damp Hollow and take care of her, poking their eyes out in the dismal ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his old benefactor voluntarily offered Mrs. Preston an allowance of five hundred dollars. It cost her pride a great deal to accept this favor from the boy she had looked down upon as "only an Irish boy," but her necessity was greater than her pride, and she saw no other way of escaping the poorhouse. So she ungraciously accepted. But Andy did not care for thanks. He felt that he was doing his duty, and he asked no other reward than that consciousness. Mrs. Preston was allowed to make her home, rent free, in Mrs. Burke's old house, Andy having built a better and more commodious one, ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 she would have given to her own children had ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... the more highly developed species had long since passed on the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark Twain and his friend, who, having ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... beside the dinner-table. He ate more heartily than before, for his forenoon's labor made even poorhouse fare palatable. ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... Margaret. "It's a peculiar case. Mrs. Comstock had a great trouble and she let it change her whole life and make a different woman of her. She used to be lovely; now she is forever saving and scared to death for fear they will go to the poorhouse; but there is a big farm, covered with lots of good timber. The taxes are high for women who can't manage to clear and work the land. There ought to be enough to keep two of them in good shape all their lives, if they only knew how to do it. But ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... 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, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... 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 them I had ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... that. We consider the pinch of poverty the highest incentive that a man can have. If our gifted friend here," he said, indicating me, "were not kept like a toad under the harrow, with his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhouse staring him in ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... won't let her. I'm a man of influence in this town, and outside of it, too. I'm head of the parish committee and a member of the National Regular Society. I can't reach your precious ward, maybe, but I can reach the fellow she's after, and if he marries her, I'll drive 'em both to the poorhouse. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of the dirtiest streets of the Twelfth Arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris, that in which two-thirds of the population lack firing in winter, which leaves most brats at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which sends most beggars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street corners, most decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which the sun shines, most delinquents to ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... face as he voiced these observations, but then he was tired and hungry, and nobody noticed the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time regime, dispatched the exotic meal with the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 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,' ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... we have to do is to crawl to the poorhouse gate. Or to go dig a pit in the graveyard, as it is short till we'll be stretched there with the ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... 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 ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... are you going to give away more stuff?" demanded his sister. "Why, you'll be in the poorhouse first ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... worn-out labourer is the poorhouse, described in lines of which it is enough to say that Scott and Wordsworth learnt them by heart, and the melancholy deathbed already noticed. Are we reading a poem or a Blue Book done into rhyme? may possibly be the question of some readers. The ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 of the nineteenth century an awakened sense of the collective ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... unmistakable accent of sincerity. He hobbled off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings, and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "Good mornin', an' 'tis a foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe would be as welkim as the flowers of May, an' 'tis England is the grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that Englishmen is tin per cint. betther than Irishmen, aye, twinty per cint."—and so forth, and so forth. There were six ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... wouldn't let you stay. When Mary Morton's mother died last year and left her alone, they took her to the poorhouse. Maybe they'd make ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... fancies: it runs in the family. My father's brother wasn't right. They kept him Locked up for years back there at the old farm. I've been away once—yes, I've been away. The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; You know the old idea—the only asylum Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, Rather than send their folks to such a place, Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. But it's not so: the place is the asylum. There they have every means proper to do with, And you aren't darkening other people's lives— Worse than no good to them, and they ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... lived in New Ross, in the county of Wexford, two old men. The one, a slater named Furlong, a person of very intemperate habits, died an inmate of the poorhouse in his 101st year: he was able to take long walks up to a very short period before his death; and I have heard that he, his son, and grandson, have been all together on a roof slating at the same time. The other man was a nurseryman named Hayden, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... and then be a giddy idler for a year or so. But it's up to me. I have to get into the collar. Otherwise I should have stayed south all winter. You know we've just got home. I had to loaf in the sun for practically a year. Now I have to get busy. I don't mean to say that the poorhouse stares us in the face, you know, but unless a certain amount of revenue is forthcoming, we simply can't afford to keep up ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... They are charmingly expressed. There is a sketch of a cicerone at Bologna which will remain in his books among their many delightful examples of his unerring and loving perception for every gentle, heavenly, and tender soul, under whatever conventional disguise it wanders here on earth, whether as poorhouse orphan or lawyer's clerk, architect's pupil at Salisbury or cheerful little guide to graves at Bologna; and there is another memorable description in his Rembrandt sketch, in form of a dream, of the silent, unearthly, watery ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster |
