"Impecunious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little surprised by the almost uniform behaviour of the men who frequented her house. Old or young, rich or impecunious, directly they perceived how comely Mavis was, and that her husband was an invalid, did not hesitate to consider her fair game to be bagged as soon as may be. Looks, manners, veiled words, betrayed their thoughts; but, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... the galleries were empty, dark, and deserted; the shopkeepers chatted among themselves. Towards two o'clock in the afternoon the Palais began to fill; at three, men came in from the Bourse, and Paris, generally speaking, crowded the place. Impecunious youth, hungering after literature, took the opportunity of turning over the pages of the books exposed for sale on the stalls outside the booksellers' shops; the men in charge charitably allowed a poor student to pursue his course of free studies; and in this way a duodecimo ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... rot!" returned Phil, serious as an owl, nevertheless pale at the lips. "What chance has an impecunious day-labourer like me ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... clever crew, however, and never gave the faculty reason to complain of any failure on our part to keep up in our studies. When examination time came we hired an impecunious coach and, retiring from the world, acquired in five days knowledge that our fellows had taken eight months to imbibe. It is true that the college at large viewed us with some disgust, but we chose to ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... warn you not to let a question of this importance be settled by the celebrated matchmakers flourishing in almost every community. Depend upon your own judgment divinely illumined. These brokers in matrimony are ever planning how they can unite impecunious innocence to an heiress, or celibate woman to millionaire or marquis, and that in many cases makes life an unhappiness. How can any human being, who knows neither of the two parties as God knows them, and who is ignorant of the future, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... made the discovery that his two brothers spent a great deal of their time in the pleasant though unprofitable occupation of card-playing with two or three of the other impecunious young men of the neighborhood, he remonstrated with them on this apparent waste of time. When he later discovered that they were becoming so engrossed in the game that they had but little time to plant, sow or reap, or do any of the things incidental to farm life, ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... the topic of discourse was none other than our common hostess and landlady; and gradually, too, I found myself listening to the history of Miss Elmira Jamison's career as a purveyor of bed and board to impecunious and homeless mortals. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... twenty-four hours. He had rather a hard time of it last night with a company from the Faubourg St. Antoine. As a rule, however, he says they are decent, orderly men. They complain very much that their business is going to rack and ruin; when they are away from their shops, they say, impecunious patriots come in to purchase goods of their wives, and promise to call another day to pay for them. On Saturday night the butler reports 300 National Guards were drawn up before his master's house, and twenty-five volunteers were demanded for a service of danger. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the world's eccentric round of joy complete When happy tourist-traveler, no more to roam, His fascinating, thrilling story shall repeat To impecunious, luckless multitudes who greet ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... must remember that he was deprived comparatively early in life of both his parents, and so ought rather to be pitied than blamed," agreed Mrs. Herbert, who would cheerfully have poured out all the vials of the Book of Revelation upon any impecunious doubter who had dared to add the mortal sin of poverty to the venial ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... nobleman—occasionally but not often the black sheep of some noble family—carrying not a bona fide but a courtesy title—the count and the no-account, the lord and the Lord knows who! The Yankee girl with a dot had become before the world war a regular quarry for impecunious aristocrats and clever crooks, the matrimonial results tragic in their frequency ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... very simply, as another man might speak of being ready to meet an improvement-rate or an application from an impecunious brother. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... nobody, giving long dinner-parties to other rich nobodies, living amongst City men, retired trades-people; envied only by their fat, vulgarly dressed wives, courted by seedy Bohemians for the sake of my cook; with perhaps an opera singer or an impecunious nobleman or two out of Dad's City list for my show-guests. Is that the court, Paul, where you ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... head of the institution had an idea. In the great metropolis there was an impecunious and popular member of Uppertendom whose name had been appearing in the society journals with great frequency for years. He formerly had been prosperous, but now he was down financially; yet society still received and liked him, ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... conceit of letting the donkeys work while the idle enjoyed life made such a deep impression on him that he determined to turn priest; and it is the same felicitous thought that has impelled so many impecunious gentlemen to become colonial officials. The little opening for civil labor in Spain and Portugal, and the prospect of comfortable perquisites in the colonies, have sent many a starving caballero ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... lady William's aunt immediately offered her house as a home, and promised to take care of her child's education and provide for its future. This offer was gratefully accepted by the bereaved and impecunious widow, who, with her child, soon became domiciled beneath the roof of the uncle ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... baron bowed coldly to Barbet and returned home, thinking that the policemen whom Nepomucene had pointed out must have come for the two impecunious authors on the upper floor. He walked slowly, lost in vague apprehensions; for, in spite of the explanation he gave himself, Nepomucene's words came back, and seemed to him more and more obscure and inexplicable. Was it possible that Godefroid ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... of the whites giving their version of the situation admitted that violent methods had been used so to intimidate the Negroes as to compel them to vote according to the dictation of the whites. It was also learned that the bulldozers concerned in dethroning the non-taxpaying blacks were an impecunious and irresponsible group themselves, led by men of ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... of the many impecunious young Englishmen of education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and were rewarded in some cases with ready wealth, but in far more with bitter disappointment. Leaving Oxford without a degree ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... she did give way, and for a minute or so quite needed the shelter and rest of his arms. She cared for no other shelter or rest; he was quite enough for her in her brightest or darkest day,—just this impecunious young man, whose prospects were so limited, but whose affection for her was so wholly without limit. She might be daunted, but she could not remain long uncomforted while her love and trust were still unchanged. Ah! there was a vast amount of magic in the simple, silent pressure ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... see it all very vividly now. It was in the summer time and about seven years ago. I was practising at the time down in the little town of Bradford. It was a small and primitive place, just the location for an impecunious medical ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... satisfy the wants of exacting stage managers, slightly altered the plan, though not the purpose, of the work which Griffin had set himself to accomplish. He was compelled to give up writing tragedies, and write for a livelihood; but London was overcrowded with impecunious journalists, and he received the merest pittance in return for the most arduous species of literary drudgery. The author of "Irene," on his arrival in London, was not more incontestably the literary helot at the mercy of Cave, Millar, and Osborne, than was Gerald Griffin the typical booksellers' ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... An impecunious speculator once flooded a town with handbills and posters containing this announcement: "Your Uncle is coming." The streams of passers-by looked at the bill boards and wondered what it meant. The speculator ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... London or Paris or Vienna, and wear tiaras and coronets, and speak of disgraceful, boorish America in hushed whispers! The empty-headed fool! She forgets that the tarnished name she bears was dragged up out of the ruck of the impecunious by me when I received Jim Crowles into my house! And that I gave him what little gloss he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... marriage,—and every possible advantage that could lead to that one culminating point, had been offered to her. She had been taught everything; that could possibly add to her natural gifts of intelligence; she had been dressed exquisitely, taken about everywhere, and 'shown off' to all the impecunious noblemen of Europe;—she had been flattered, praised, admired, petted and generally spoilt, and had been proposed to by 'eligible' gentlemen with every recurring season,—but all in vain. She had taken a singular notion into her head—an idea which her matter-of-fact aunt ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Borrow in the premature death of The Universal Review, which expired with the sixth number (March 1824— January 1825). It is not known what was the rate of pay to young and impecunious reviewers {49a} certainly not large, if it may be judged by the amount agreed upon for Celebrated Trials. Still, its end meant that Borrow was now dependent upon what he received for his compilation, and what he merited by his translation into ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... expostulations—stood quietly smiling, and wiped his face at last with a kerchief of finest lawn. Dominating the others in the Babel rose the voice of Sir Rowland Blake—impecunious Blake; Blake lately of the Guards, who had sold his commission as the only thing remaining him upon which he could raise money; Blake, that other suitor for Miss Westmacott's hand, the ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... tempest-tossed by the perfidy, the defalcation, the dishonesty, or neglect of any one of a hundred thousand subordinates utterly unknown to the President of the United States, not to say the eternal worriment by a vast host of impecunious friends and old military subordinates. Even as it is, I am tortured by the charitable appeals of poor distressed pensioners; but as President, these would be multiplied beyond human endurance. I remember well the experience of Generals Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Grant, Hayes ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... of the cheaper sort is stored. The narrow neck that leads off Leicester Square opens abruptly into a small court. Hotels occupy two sides of this; the third is at present given up to rooming houses for the impecunious. These are always just going to be pulled down in the name of progress to make room for another hotel, but they never do meet with that fate; and as they stand now so will they in all probability ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... great deal of talk in the city about the marriage. The people said they did not know what Jordan could be thinking of. They were convinced that he was in desperate financial straits if he would marry his daughter to an impecunious musician. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... was open-handed and not much of an economist: he spent a good deal on pretty trifles, assisted liberally his needy countrymen, made handsome presents to his friends, and is said to have had occasionally to pay bills of his likewise often impecunious lady-love. Moreover, his total income was not so large as may be supposed, for although he could have as many pupils as he wished, he never taught more than five hours a day, and lived every year for several months in the country. And ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... (contralto). Impecunious, mercenary widow, determined to settle her daughters in life without any regard to ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... impecunious young man, and, the other day, on seeing this Advertisement in the Times, I was seized with a wild desire to "at once secure above reward." Said I to myself, "I have 'wealthy and influential friends.' There ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... the past twelve months it is obvious that the days when most of the directed and inferior work of the community will be done by intermittently employed and impecunious wage-earners is drawing to an end. A large part of the task of reconstruction ahead of us will consist in the working out of schemes for a more permanent type of employment and for a direct participation of the worker in the pride, profits, and direction of the work. Such schemes admit ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... famous palace on the Loire. The walls are of panelled oak, with an eight-foot dado of Arras cloth imitated from unique Continental examples. The carpet, woven in one piece, is an antique specimen of the finest Turkish work, and it was obtained, a bargain, by Felix Babylon, from an impecunious Roumanian Prince. The silver candelabra, now fitted with electric light, came from the Rhine, and each had a separate history. The Royal chair—it is not etiquette to call it a throne, though it amounts to a throne—was ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... several other rich families and native priests were seized and shipped off. Poor old Manuel Abella, like scores of others, was tortured in Bilibid prison and finally shot. He was a notary, unfortunately possessed of a fine estate coveted by an impecunious Spaniard, who denounced Abella, and was rewarded by being appointed "Administrator" of his property, out of which he so enriched himself that he was able, in a few months, to return to Spain in a good financial ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Coaches, chairs, wheelbarrows, fops, chimney-sweeps, porters bearing huge burdens, bullies swaggering with great swords, bailiffs chasing some impecunious poet, cutpurses, funerals, christenings, weddings, and street fights, would seem from some contemporary accounts to be invariably mixed up together in helpless and apparently inextricable confusion. The general bewilderment was made more bewildering by the very babel of street ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... eye on a bench facing Green Park," he replied. "It is a favourite locality for the impecunious philosopher. In other words I don't know where I'm going but I have a pretty solid conviction that one of these days I shall get there. There are two empty trunks in my bedroom which I should be glad if you ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... trodden ground beneath With smashed incisors, like the teeth, The dragon's tusks of ancient ken From which sprung hosts of armed men. Such pastime was a frequent thing, The entertainment of the ring, Without equestrian or clown Was often seen in Cork's own town, And best, for impecunious boys Who boasted few of modern joys, Who daily went to see the play Had no admission fee to pay. But gone is Corkstown, vanished too The whitewashed shanty from our view, Where once the minstrel's youthful eyes Beheld strange orgies with surprise. In dust its stalwart hostess now, Reposes, ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... unfortunate agent was recalled by Congress,—a broken-down man, who soon after died in England, poor and dishonored. Deane had also embarrassed Franklin, and still more the military authorities at home, by the indiscriminate letters of commendation he gave to impecunious and incapable German and French officers as being qualified to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... had come to naught because of his monstrous lack of ambition, and his endless yielding to circumstance, which had finally, by a series of inconceivable migrations, landed him in the German colony of La Chance, impecunious and obscure and invincibly convinced that he had everything worth having in life. "Of vat use?" he would say, even now, when asked to play in public—"de moosic ist all—and dat is eben so goodt here mit friends." Or, "Dere goes a thousand peoples ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... counts for much. I am glad you liked the doggerel: I have already had a liberal cheque, over which I licked my fingers with a sound conscience. I had not meant to make money by these stumbling feet, but if it comes, it is only too welcome in my handsome but impecunious house. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... herself, she regarded it only as a brilliant expression of Verena's gift. Olive thought, afterwards, that if a collection could only be taken up on the spot, the good lady would be made easy for the rest of her days; then she remembered that most of her guests were as impecunious as herself. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... "ancestry" of the Mesuriers, and it is to be feared that the last state of the family was socially worse than the first. James Mesurier was unapproachably its present summit, its Alpine peak; and he was made to suffer for it no little by humble and impecunious relatives. Still, whatever else they lacked, Henry Mesurier loved to insist that these various connections were rich in character, one or two of them inexhaustible in humour; and their rare and somewhat timorous visits to the castle of their exalted relative, James Mesurier, were occasions ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the beginning of 1820, driven from Paris by the sufferings to which the impecunious are exposed there. He must often have been a victim to the secret storms, the terrible rage of mind by which artists are tossed to judge from the only fact his uncle recollected, and the only letter he preserved of all those which Louis Lambert wrote to ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... obtain all you wanted at the Conservatorium, to be favoured above your fellows, it was only necessary flagrantly to bribe one of the clerks, Kleefeld by name, who was open to receive anything, being wretchedly impecunious and the father ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... woman like Helen Markson. I tried to speak in a very low tone, but Mrs. Markson seemed to understand what I said, for she favored me with a look more malevolent than any I had ever received from my most impecunious debtor; the natural effect was to wake up all the old Adam there was in me, and to make me ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... to have been written by an impecunious and mediocre penman called Villemarest, who also wrote "Memoires de Constant" (the Emperor's valet), and both books have been very extensively read and believed. Men have got up terrific lectures from them, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... and society until, alarmed at the loss, they should dismiss the cause of it: but upon further reflection he came to the conclusion that it might be unwise to adopt so very drastic a step, for two very good and sufficient reasons, the first of which was that, being impecunious himself, he had fully made up his mind to marry Dona Isolda and thus acquire a substantial interest in the Montijo property and estates, and was therefore unwilling to do anything which might possibly jeopardise ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... ancestry could be traced beyond the Revolutionary War. He had enjoyed exceptional opportunities, and enjoyed the distinction of being the first, and for a long time the only colored lawyer in North Carolina. His services were frequently called into requisition by impecunious people of his own race; when they had money they went to white lawyers, who, they shrewdly conjectured, would have more influence with judge or jury than a colored lawyer, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... according to the world's wise indulgent maxims, especially when we consider that Miss MacArgent's father's income, daily, is almost identical with the amount of dollars and cents that find their way to the pockets of the impecunious Bob ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of ecclesiastical property. During the years 1551 and 1552 the churches were stripped of their valuables, and the church plate, chalices, copes, vestments, and altar cloths, were disposed of to provide money for the impecunious members ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... allow Antoinette to see her husband's telegram. He even sent more than was necessary, muttering to himself: "The poor devil may have some bills to settle before he can get away, and in any event she must not be disappointed because her impecunious husband lacks a few dollars. I fancy the poor artist will be amazed to find himself suddenly raised from poverty to affluence, for little Lory's income will be enormous and he will have seven years, at least, to enjoy it unrestrained. I hope," he added thoughtfully, as he drove ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... which Strachey was to receive for his services in India. Thus Sutton Court was saved. Thanks to Clive there are still Stracheys at Sutton and I am here to tell the tale. In those days twelve thousand pounds was a very big sum of money indeed to an impecunious country gentleman, and a considerable sum even to a man as rich as Clive. The modern equivalent would be over 30,000. But Clive was not a man who hesitated to do things in a big way, and he was well repaid. Henry Strachey was not only devoted to him ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... endeavouring to convert you by argument. The imbecility of your traditions can be quite finally exhibited to anybody with mere ordinary knowledge of the world, the same kind of knowledge which teaches us not to sit in draughts or not to encourage friendliness in impecunious people. It is folly to talk of this or that demonstrating the rationalist philosophy. Everything demonstrates it. Rubbing shoulders with men ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Bobsborough is not much of a town, and was honoured with the judges' visits only every other circuit. Frank began pretty well, getting some little work in London, and perhaps nearly enough to pay the cost of his circuit out of the county in which the cathedral was situated. But he began life after that impecunious fashion for which the Greystocks have been noted. Tailors, robemakers, and booksellers gave him trust, and did believe that they would get their money. And any persistent tradesman did get it. He did ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... mercenary alliances. The sorely-tried daughter of impecunious parents, whose youth has been clouded by grey, grinding poverty, and who sees the prospects of her brothers and sisters blighted by lack of means to start them in life, is to be pardoned, if not commended, ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... defeat, and if it should be fought to the bitter end Austria-Hungary will obviously suffer far more severely than will Germany. A protracted war, which would lead merely to the lasting impoverishment of Germany, would bring about the economic annihilation of impecunious Austria. Besides, while a complete defeat would cause to Germany only the loss of territories in the east, west, and north which are largely inhabited by disaffected Poles, Frenchmen, and Danes, and would not very greatly reduce the purely German population of Germany, it would ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... memory!" spoke the spirit, sternly. "In this, the last rough resting place of the impecunious dead, do you dare to discuss commonplace topics with one of the departed? Look at me, uncle, clove-befogged, and shrink appalled from the dread sight, and pray ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... impossible of fulfillment, which as a young man fresh from college he had cherished. While young, he met and loved the girl he married. That she had visions he perfectly believed. That her visions were unworthy no power then could have made him believe. She came from an impecunious family whose lineage was older and greater than his. How she could have thought the high-browed, sensitive-faced young man the one who could fulfill her grasping desires is not to be fathomed. She had believed so, and he did bring to pass all her aspirations. That in doing ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... poor fellows who constituted that frontier club had been only too glad when its members from other stations insisted that they should pay their share of the long three weeks' burden on the culinary department. But Nevins now was penniless, so he said, and why should impecunious infantry subalterns support in idleness a disgraced and virtually dismissed officer? Yet that is precisely what the government compelled them to do—or starve him. Thinking it all over during the day, Major Starke concluded that at least Camp Cooke had something to be thankful ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... not find," she continued vivaciously, "that it leads to matrimonial complications, as the men who seek employment as Brothers are usually so very impecunious that they understand that marriage is out of the question for them. I was told by my friends, by which I mean all those who felt themselves privileged to say nasty things to me, that we should degenerate into a matrimonial ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... insolvent debtor—to obtain liquidation from the Southern planter—was really the soulless and mercenary object of the craven Northerners. Let the common people of England look to this. Let the improvident literary hack, the starved impecunious Grub Street debtor, the newspaper frequenter of sponging- houses, remember this in their criticisms of the vile ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... effort was to plant intact in Maryland a feudal order. He would be Palatine, the King his suzerain. In Maryland the great planters, in effect his barons, should live upon estates, manorial in size and with manorial rights. The laboring men—the impecunious adventurers whom these greater adventurers brought out—would form a tenantry, the Lord Proprietary's men's men. It is true that, according to charter, provision was made for an Assembly. Here were to sit "freemen of the province," that is to say, all white males who ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... had a great stain in the middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp and excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than real regal characters. Every now and then the comparatively few remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... my fashionable aunt in town remarked, we were picturesquely impecunious—which, to that soft lady, probably meant that, we had to worry along without motor cars—we were just as desperately happy as we were poor; for we had each other at least. Every other deprivation seemed comparatively ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... said Nannie promptly. "I'm the only niece of poor but impecunious relatives, and they expect me to do ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... and drew the designs which gave it more the style of an English country house.[102] The local gossips said that Morse aspired to the hand of his friend's eldest daughter, Susan Augusta Fenimore, then twenty-one years of age, but that Cooper had no mind to yield so fair a prize to an impecunious painter, a widower, and already forty-three years old. Morse was at this time experimenting with the telegraph instrument which was afterward to bring him wealth and such fame as an inventor as to overshadow ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... meetings of universal peace societies and of woman's rights associations. The movement had its grotesque aspects, which Lowell has described in his essay on Thoreau. "Bran had its apostles and the pre-sartorial simplicity of Adam its martyrs, tailored impromptu from the tar-pot. . . . Not a few impecunious zealots abjured the use of money (unless earned by other people), professing to live on the internal revenues of the spirit. . . . Communities were established where every thing was to ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... to do other than acknowledge the results obtained. Molly looked more like a stately young empress than an impecunious doctor's daughter as she floated into the room, to be embraced and complimented by the Lavender Lady and to receive a generous meed of admiration, seasoned with a little gentle banter, from ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... heartlessness. It was not very gratifying to think of what might be in store for them if all memories were as short as Brewster's. Old Mrs. Ketchell changed her will, and two nephews were cut off entirely; a very modest and impecunious grandson of Joseph Garrity also was to sustain a severe change of fortune in the near future, if the cards spoke correctly. Judge Van Woort, who was not expected to live through the night, got better immediately after hearing some one in the sick-room whisper that Montgomery Brewster was to give ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... an interval of repose with compassionate but impecunious American friends in Paris—that Miss Viner had been drawn into the turbid current of Mrs. Murrett's career. The impecunious compatriots had found Mrs. Murrett for her, and it was partly on their account (because they were such dears, and ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... things, but for his daughter's sake he held his peace. Then, too, though he never forgave John Britton for having married his daughter, yet John Britton as a man whose wealth exceeded even his own was an altogether different person from the ambitious but impecunious lover of thirty years before. He had never forgiven Darrell for being John Britton's son, but mingled with his long-cherished animosity was a secret pride in the splendid physical and intellectual manhood of this sole representative of his ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Hunter. "Mos' sad, too. I will now drink to the mouse. The moral of the story is," he pointed out, "that everybody, no matter how impecunious, can help; even you fellows could ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... salad and a wonderful cheese. Around him was the constant hum of gay conversation. Every one save himself seemed to have friends here, and many of them. It was indeed a very ordinary place, a cosmopolitan eating-house, good of its sort, and with an excellent connection of lighthearted but impecunious foreigners, who made up with the lightness of their spirits for the emptiness of their purses. To Douglas, whose whole upbringing and subsequent life had been amongst the dreariest of surroundings, there was something about it all peculiarly fascinating. ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... city was a large encampment of tents in which dwelt the more impecunious or more economical of the miners. Here too had been located a large hospital tent. There was a great deal of sickness, due to the hardships of the journey, the bad climate, irregular living, the overeating of fruit, drinking, the total lack of sanitation. In fact only ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... sensible artist will compromise. There is in political economy a region called "the margin of subsistence." It is a sort of purgatory. Above it, we enter the heaven of superfluities; below it, lies the dread Hades of hunger. It is here that the impecunious artist—with a family (and, alas! the artist is nearly always impecunious—with a family) should pitch his tent. He may be allowed to prostitute himself, if need be, sufficiently to pay the ground-rent. He must not be driven ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... crab, and obstinate as the devil. His fixed idea was that none of his daughters should ever be carried off by a fortune-hunter. The two older girls apparently escaped this danger by making fairly wealthy matches. But Alice—come away! why should she take up with this impecunious painter? He was good-looking and had the gift of the gab, but what was that worth? If he would come into the sugar-business, where a place was waiting for him, and make good there, it would be ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... that something had happened, or was about to happen, in connection with the shoe corporation; and this deprived them of sleep, particularly the elder Miss Terwilliger, who had danced four times at a recent ball with an impecunious young earl, whom she suspected of having intentions. Ariadne was in a state of grave apprehension, because she knew that much as the earl might love her, it would be difficult for them to marry on his income, which was literally too small ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... smiled. "No," she said, "I agree there are limits. But up here, what does it matter if a woman's husband is an Engineer or a Paymaster or a Commander or only an impecunious Lieutenant like mine—as long as she is nice? Yet if it weren't for people like Sybil Gascoigne we should all be clinging to our ridiculous little pre-war sets, and talking of branches and seniority till we died of loneliness and boredom with our aristocratic noses ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... her impecunious father might have spoken. He, the master of Wendover Abbey, to whom the possession of things that money could buy must needs be a dead certainty. But it was evidently a part of his character to make light of his wealth; ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... that he is incapable of these ideals: on the contrary, he has swallowed them all in his boyhood, and now, having a keen dramatic faculty, is extremely clever at playing upon them by the arts of the actor and stage manager. Withal, he is no spoiled child. Poverty, ill-luck, the shifts of impecunious shabby-gentility, repeated failure as a would-be author, humiliation as a rebuffed time server, reproof and punishment as an incompetent and dishonest officer, an escape from dismissal from the service so narrow that if the emigration of the nobles had not ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... refreshment into which negroes could not gain admittance, even though he might carry a good supply of cash. He soon found out that a boy of colour could not hope to find lodging in an hotel intended for white people; and on reaching Richmond, footsore and famished with hunger, he was so utterly impecunious that, for some nights in succession, after earning a little by day, he had to repeat the experience of "sleeping out." The wonder is that, in the case of so young a boy, all of this suffering did not damp his ardour and discourage his still ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... floor of the room, examining each again and again, and with avaricious thoughts intent, lamenting that we were not allowed to appropriate what would have been to us a fortune. Truly such a temptation to enrich themselves without fear of detection was never till this occasion set before two impecunious subalterns of the British Army. Here, spread out before us, lay loot to the value of thousands of pounds, all our own were we to follow the example of some who had already feathered their nests with much larger amounts, defying those in authority to take the plunder from them. However, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... Champlain made in the wilderness three hundred years ago, has become one of the last refuges of the romantic dream and the courtly illusion, still haunted by the shades of impecunious young noblemen with velvet cloaks and feathered hats and rapiers at their hips; of delicate, high-spirited beauties braving the snowy wildwood in their silks and laces; of missionary monks, tonsured and rope-girdled, pressing with lean faces and eager eyes to ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... his predominant feelings. There were other reflections which he thrust aside as indecorous at this acute stage of the tragedy, but which, nevertheless, were able to exercise a mildly consoling influence in the background. He would be spared the anxieties of early and impecunious marriage, his professional career would not be weighted by family cares, the whole world was once more open before him, and the slate clean. These were considerations which could not prudently be overlooked, though it would be unseemly to emphasise ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... for baccarat, or the kindred games indulged by the vast majority of his class. Cared he naught for these, there was yet another, phase of mannish existence to which he might agreeably be introduced. But when aspiring sycophants, members of the great mass of impecunious people of "family," found that this eccentric son of Prince Michael failed to appreciate the charms of a single member of the opera ballet (now indulging in the delights of their summer vacation, and expending part of their savings of fifteen rubles a week upon champagne suppers or coaching-parties ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Konrad Karl was in low water financially. His private fortune was small. Madame Corinne had no money of her own, though she had jewels. Perhaps Mr. Beaufort—if the proprietor of the hotel is indeed a Mr. Beaufort—makes enough money out of the millionaires to enable him to entertain impecunious kings. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... accomplished and he rich beyond his wildest dreams, he was precisely the same man in bearing, manner, and speech that he had been in his impecunious days in Bedford Place. He was rich then—in hopes, in plans, in the reality of his dreamland. He was no richer now. The check in his pocket ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... compositions for his theatre, but often to relieve their immediate wants; and it is plain that he constantly availed himself of their necessitous condition to effect bargains with them very advantageous to his own interests. Robert Daborne, the dramatist, for instance, appears to have been particularly impecunious, and he was, moreover, afflicted with a pending lawsuit; the sums he obtained for his plays from the manager were therefore very disproportionate and uncertain. His letters to Henslowe are urgent in solicitations ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... emerged from the tissue paper where it had lain these many months, yellowed and soiled, in dire need of the cleaner's ministrations or the dyer's art. Marie could not afford the cleaner, and did not dare the wash-tub and soap, but she bought one of those fourpenny-ha'penny dyes with which impecunious women achieve amazing results, wherewith she dyed the frock, and the bath, and her own hands a shade of blue satisfactory at least by artificial light. Under it she would wear the purple petticoat, whose flounces would cause the skirt ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... nor the other, but continued to air his grievance; and among those who heard him was one Laporte, an impecunious visitor at the house of the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... was the most impecunious spendthrift in Essex. He lived by his wits, with which he was more generously endowed than anything in the shape of gold or precious jewels. His raiment was accumulative. His spending-money came to him through an allowance that his grandmother considerately delivered to ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... company of troops and all the soldiers with families, all the tents, mess chests and camp kettles, was sent to Cruces, a town a few miles higher up the Chagres River than Gorgona. There I found an impecunious American who had taken the contract to furnish transportation for the regiment at a stipulated price per hundred pounds for the freight and so much for each saddle animal. But when we reached Cruces there was not a mule, either for pack or saddle, in the place. The contractor ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... foolishness. You see, you had the advantage of me. Your governor was a gentleman. He says, 'Very well, if you won't go to Cambridge, if you refuse to enter the Church as the younger son of a blue-blooded but impecunious baronet should, and to step into the living which is fattening for you, then I must refuse to take any further responsibility for your future. Here is a thousand pounds; it is the money I had set aside for your college course. Use it for your ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... impress upon her was very foolish indeed, for she works almost as hard as Lulu twice in the week. However, she, or rather her parents, take high ground in the matter, which of course is very praiseworthy on their parts, and convenient for their guests if they happen to be impecunious. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... being then entirely out of employment, and equally out of money, Patrick rounded out his embarrassments, and gave symmetry to them, as it were, by getting married,—and that to a young woman quite as impecunious as himself. The name of this damsel was Sarah Shelton; her father being a small farmer, and afterward a small tavern-keeper in the neighborhood. In the very rashness and absurdity of this proceeding on the part of these two interesting young paupers, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... outlived his sense of the injurious appellation; had outlived much prejudice, the wear of poverty, his memory of many things, and, very early, his scorn of the plebeian processes that to the impecunious are a condition of living at all. He was certainly a man of courageous independence, inasmuch as from the hour of his setting foot in England—and that was at the outset of the century—he had controlled his own little fortunes without a hand to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... subjects for study in the married life of this parish; but he will be ridiculously mistaken if he supposes the ugliness to be normal. A kind of dogged comradeship—I can find no better word for it—is what commonly unites the labouring man and his wife; they are partners and equals running their impecunious affairs by mutual help. I was lately able to observe a man and woman after a removal settling down into their new quarters. It was the most ordinary, matter-of-fact affair in the world. The man, uncouth and strong, like a big dog or an amiable big boy, moved about willingly under his wife's ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... Bahanapur—you know him?—a very elegant young, handsome chap. A splendid Shikarri! I was often on the verge of asking if you were related; but being then but a second-class passenger, and under an impecunious cloud, did not dare to take the liberty. Now, being on the bed of clover owing to decease of wealthy uncle, I can address you without the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Madame Gay's salon was the Duchesse d'Abrantes; and between her and Balzac there existed a literary comradeship, possibly cemented by the impecunious condition which was common to both. In 1827 she lived at Versailles; and whenever Balzac went to see his parents, he also paid her a visit; when long talks took place about their mutual struggles, misfortunes and hopes of gaining ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... receiving, at what rate of interest we do not know, the enormous sum of nearly one hundred thousand pounds per annum from the tributary king of Cappadocia, and this was less than he was entitled to. Other debtors of this impecunious king could get nothing; every thing went into Pompey's purse, and the whole country was drained of coin to the very uttermost. In the end, however, Cicero did manage to get twenty thousand pounds for Brutus, who was also one of the king's creditors. We cannot but wonder, if such ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... in quickly enough, for she wore a white hat of the proportions of a parachute, which might have wafted her away into the coloured clouds of evening. She was their one splash of splendour, and irradiated wealth in that impecunious place (staying there temporarily with a friend), an heiress in a small way, by name Rosamund Hunt, brown-eyed, round-faced, but resolute and rather boisterous. On top of her wealth she was good-humoured and rather good-looking; but she had not married, perhaps because there ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... after all, had poor Eliza Farrel, that morbid victim of her own hunger for love, known what economies were practised at her expense, in order that all this should be maintained, she would have rebelled. She knew that the impecunious female relative was a person fully adequate to educate Rose, but she did not know that her only stipend therefor was her bread-and-butter and the cast-off raiment of Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela. She did not know that ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... one that I well remembered, and my spirit seemed to sink lower and lower as I neared the place; for it was terrible to think of those whom I had left, if not in affluence, at least in a comfortable position in life, brought down to so sad and impecunious a state, suffering real poverty, and with the home of so many years now ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... admitted. "There are no hospitals for impecunious litigants; it is assumed that only persons of means have a right to go to law. Of course, if we knew the man and the circumstances we might be able to help him; but, for all we know to the contrary, he may be an ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... elected without opposition as his successor by an arrangement among the ruling families. Place was disgusted at the distribution of 'bread and cheese and beer,' and resolved to find a truly popular candidate. In the general election which soon followed at the end of 1806 he supported Paull, an impecunious adventurer, who made a good fight, but was beaten by Sir J. Hood and Sheridan. Place now proposed a more thorough organisation of the constituency, and formed a committee intended to carry an independent candidate. Sir Francis Burdett, a typical country gentleman of no great brains and ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... called, and resumed his seat as a lady entered—a stranger to him. At first glance he guessed she might be the wife of some impecunious musician, come to plead for restitution of an instrument. Such things happened now and again on Monday mornings; nor was the mistake without excuse in Miss Sally's attire. When travelling without her maid she had a way of putting on anything handy, and in the order more ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Hungarian Counts, rose up against them to take vengeance for their plundering and reckless deeds, suddenly every trace of the pursued would be lost. The larger robber-hordes would withdraw to their strongholds and defy every attack; the lesser ones, led by impecunious noblemen, left their drawbridges down before the pursuing bands, and let them seek at will what they so eagerly pursued. The enemy searched everywhere, in every corner, cellar, loft, chapel, and crypt; and when they could find nothing more, still lingered on, days and ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... disappointment. It had been hoped that she would make a great match, and she received many letters from members of her family and friends, pointing out the deplorable manner in which she was throwing herself away on an impecunious young baronet who occupied an obscure position in the Consular Service. She was begged to remember that the Duke of Dachet had seemed distinctly smitten when he was introduced to her at the end of the last season; and told that if she would not consider her own ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... after the betrothal, and a month later Herr Weigand, in his capacity of son-in-law, could take possession of the same garret which he had inhabited as an impecunious guest. This arrangement, however, was not a permanent one. An inn was to be rented for the young couple—with her ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... hundred of Tourgeneff's letters was published last winter in St. Petersburg by the "Society for Assisting Impecunious Authors and Scholars." It is to be followed by a second, and the proceeds are to be devoted to the foundation of a "Tourgeneff Memorial Fund." The whole collection will, we may hope, be translated into English. The following ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... able to acquire any skill in the fine art of inducing people to give for things more than it cost to make them. These deficiencies the younger Adams had already exhibited before the death of his father, from whom he received on one occasion a thousand pounds, half of which he promptly loaned to an impecunious friend, and which he would in any case doubtless have lost, as he soon did the other half, on his own account. In such incompetent hands the malt business soon fell to be a liability rather than an asset. Other liabilities accumulated, notably one incurred by the tax collectors of the town of ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... the British Army to set out on a journey like this without sixpence in his pocket?" There is nothing improbable in such an occurrence, and it was matched only sixteen months later, when he was on the point of starting for Khartoum in the same impecunious condition. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a magnet, attracting New York's Bohemian population. If he had his preferences among the impecunious crowd who used the studio as a chapel of ease, strolling in when it pleased them, drinking his whisky, smoking his cigarettes, borrowing his money, and, on occasion, his spare bedrooms and his pyjamas, he never showed it. He was fully as pleasant to Percy Shanklyn, the elegant, perpetually ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... their united means afforded a not abundantly luxurious style of living; but they loved each other, and the fact that he was the portionless son of a Church of England divine, and she the daughter of an impecunious Greek of noble family and royal lineage, was no drawback to the early happiness of their wooing and wedding. They had two children, a boy and a girl, born within two years of each other in Athens: the girl, the elder of the two, they named Hyacinthe; the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... thinking of it. Had he gone to the depth of ruin without a wife, what would it have mattered? For years past he had been at the same kind of work,—but while he was unmarried there had been a charm in the very danger. And as a single man he had succeeded, being sometimes utterly impecunious, but still with a capacity of living. Now he had laden himself with a burden of which the very intensity of his love immensely increased the weight. As for not thinking of it, that was impossible. Of course she must help him. Of course ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... castle, a short hour's ride, "An impecunious old lady lived, two marriageable and impecunious daughters beside, "Whom Bluebeard had seen and at love's highest pitch "Sent to say he would marry, he didn't care which! "Sent to say he would ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... friends, was called to the bar, I'd an appetite fresh and hearty. But I was, as many young barristers are, An impecunious party. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... son, or some dissipated captain in a marching regiment? I am sure even under such circumstances I should not perform the part of the 'cruel parent' in the comedies! I should say, 'Bless you my children,' with all my heart! And I should enrich the impecunious young son, or reform the tipsy soldier. Anything but the convent for my only child!" concluded the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... marble, as it is sometimes called, has a delicate gray vein, which is brought out by polish on the cornice and balustrade, as a relief to the unpolished surface elsewhere displayed. There is no inscription; but visitors are usually told about Mrs. Charlotte Hart, the apparently impecunious pew-opener at the church, who surprised her friends by dying worth close upon L3,000, and by leaving L600 to the restoration fund. A new pulpit happened to be wanted at the time, and the bequest ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... herself continued to recline comfortably in her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones. He was the very impecunious colonel of one of the regiments then stationed in Cairo, and as he never wasted time on sentiment, he had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress who had twenty thousand pounds a year in her own right might not be a "half bad" arrangement for ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... railroads were small tradesmen, landlords, mill owners, merchants, bankers, associated politicians and lawyers. Not infrequently, however, did it happen that some charters and grants were obtained by politicians and lawyers who, at best, were impecunious sharpers. Their greatest asset was a devious knowledge of how to get something for nothing. With a grandiloquent front and a superb bluff they would organize a company to build a railroad from this to that point; an undertaking costing millions, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... to one another by a conservative instinct at sight of Cornudet, talked money in a certain tone of contempt for the impecunious. Count Hubert spoke of the damage inflicted on him by the Prussians, of the losses which would result to him from the seizing of cattle and from ruined crops, but with all the assurance of a great landed proprietor, ten times millionaire, whom these ravages might inconvenience ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... complexion; the jobbers maintained that this saved book-keeping, and Marion, who of course never knew any better, paid the double express charges like a lamb. She acted, too, as banker for the other impecunious tradespeople in the block, and as this included nearly all of them she was often pressed for funds herself. McCloud undertook sometimes to intervene and straighten out her millinery affairs. One evening he went so far as to attempt an inventory of her stock and some schedule ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... sister, and in neither case does the author seem to be conscious of anything out of the ordinary. Not that there is any air of naughtiness about the business. Peter, a rich cripple, loved Cherry, the youngest and prettiest of the three Strickland girls. But Martin, a casual impecunious stranger, stepped in and took her in one bite before Peter could quite realise she was no longer a child. So in default he married Alix, who was, incidentally, worth six of her. Meeting his Cherry, disillusioned about an unsatisfactory and unsuccessful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... be told what had brought the elder artist into such an impecunious condition. His face with its unnatural flush showed that his habits ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... horse of a great deal of character, and had a great history; but of this none in that section, save the little deacon, knew a word. Dick Tubman, the deacon's youngest, wildest, and, we might add, favorite son, had purchased him of an impecunious jockey, at the close of a disastrous campaign, that cleaned him completely out, and left him in a strange city a thousand miles from home, with nothing but the horse, harness, and sulky, and a list of ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... been sketched both by Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Thackeray. In "Vanity Fair" we find it described as the temporary abode of the impecunious Colonel Crawley, and Moss describes his uncomfortable past and present guests in a manner worthy of Fielding himself. There is the "Honourable Capting Famish, of the Fiftieth Dragoons, whose 'mar' had just taken ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... been the theme of the novelists and the horror of the dowagers having marriageable daughters. Considered as "stock," the American Girl has been quoted high, and the alliances that she has formed with families impecunious but noble have given her eclat as belonging to a new and conquering race in the world. But the American Girl has not simply a slender figure and a fine eye and a ready tongue, she is not simply an engaging and companionable person, she has ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... When I had brooded over it myself, I posted it to Fenton at Khartum; and his opinion had brought me to Egypt. Thinking of the matter in this way, it seemed that we owed our love stories to the impecunious artist, who had probably spent his eighty pounds and forgotten me by this time. In a few hours, or a few days, we ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the abolition of the House of Lords will suffice. They fear that party politics and party intrigues may become more pernicious in a Labour Parliament than they have proved to be in a middle-class Parliament. They fear that adult suffrage may not improve matters, and that impecunious professional politicians may prove worse than the class of politicians who up till now have sat in Parliament. "We stand in England at the parting of the ways. One leads to the payment of members and the creation of a class of professional political adventurers; the other ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... her port of destination, when they would profit by the first opportunity to leave the vessel undiscovered. A small bribe would tempt the average blockade-running sailor to connive at this means of escape. The "impecunious" deserter fared more hardly; and would, usually, be forced by hunger and thirst to emerge from his hiding place, while the steamer was on the outward voyage. A cruel device, employed by one of the captains, effectually put a stop, I believe, certainly a check to the escape ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... he had recourse more often than he wished to the old convivial habits, gathering about him once again, at club or restaurant, the kind of society in which he always felt at ease—good, careless, jovial, and often impecunious fellows, who, as in days gone by, sometimes made a demand upon his purse which he could not resist, though he had now such cause for rigid economy. Was it that he grew old?—he could no longer take his wine with disregard of consequence. The slightest excess, and too surely ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... this impecunious noblesse merely a passive burden to New France, for the dignified hardships of their estate soon bred active conditions equally distressing to those in authority. Having no inducement to remain peacefully at home, the sons of the seigneurs took to the woods, often ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... notes. In other words, the note-issuing business would once more have to be regulated on banking principles and controlled by the price asked, for advances, instead of expressing the helplessness and improvidence of an impecunious and invertebrate Government. In this manner the new departure might be a convenient halfway-house on the way from chaos back to sanity. But probably it is too revolutionary and goes too straight in the teeth of the Bank of England's privilege to receive much practical consideration; ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... cotton wool, and I went away to break a fast which was then entering on its fifth day. My next proceeding, after having somewhat refurbished myself, was to go back to the dingy old hole in Bouverie Street and to write an article on "Impecunious Life in London." ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... fences were broken in places, damp stains were spread over the house front. Everywhere were signs of neglect and decay. Had I not known his honour to be a wealthy man, I should have supposed him an impecunious person with no income to maintain his property. As it was, there was some other cause to seek, and that cause I set down to the absence of ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... note. She was studying music, and her mother, who was the Archduchess, was watching her. But now and then, when her mother's eyes were glued to the stage, Hilda stole a glance at the upper balconies where impecunious young officers leaned over the rail and gazed at ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... This led to one or two very intimate private dinners, to my inclusion in one or two house parties and various odd offers of introductions and services that I didn't for the most part accept. Among other people who sought me in this way was Archie Garvell, now a smart, impecunious soldier of no particular distinction, who would, I think, have been quite prepared to develop any sporting instincts I possessed, and who was beautifully unaware of our former contact. He was always offering me winners; ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... fundamental sanity and rightmindedness; for a sufficient income is indispensable to the practice of virtue; and the man who will let any unselfish consideration stand between him and its attainment is a weakling, a dupe and a predestined slave. If I could convince our impecunious mobs of this, the world would be reformed before the end of the week; for the sluggards who are content to be wealthy without working and the dastards who are content to work without being wealthy, together with all the pseudo-moralists ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... ostentation, and that in so good-natured a way as never to give pain to the person whom he obliged in that respect." He was, in truth, indolent and extravagant, faults which did not, however, detract from his popularity. He was the prey of adventurers, and the providence of impecunious poets such as Pope and Swift. All the literati of the day were allowed access to his library. Oldys drew therefrom the materials for his Life of Sir Walter Raleigh; Joseph Ames and Samuel Palmer had recourse to it in their ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Eva Brackwell, the most beautiful DEBUTANTE of last season. She is to be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt. This fiend has several imprudent letters—imprudent, Watson, nothing worse—which were written to an impecunious young squire in the country. They would suffice to break off the match. Milverton will send the letters to the Earl unless a large sum of money is paid him. I have been commissioned to meet him, and—to make the best terms ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... romance, "Goesta Berling," she has interpreted the life of the province at Vermland, where she herself was born on a farmstead in 1858. A love of starlight, violins, and dancing, a temperament easily provoked to a laughing abandon of life's tragedy characterizes the folk of Vermland and the impecunious gentry who live in its modest manor halls. It is a different folk to whom one is introduced in "Jerusalem," the people of Dalecarlia, the province of Miss Lagerloef's adopted home. They, too, have their dancing festivals at Midsummer Eve, and their dress is the most gorgeous in Sweden, but ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof |
