"Impecunious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Go to 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
... she went back to the music; she held the score in her hand and followed it note by 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 ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The gas was always lighted in that cavernous kitchen, but it remained dark, mercifully leaving the dirt half unseen. A joint of mutton, cold and mangled, was discernible, however, when Henrietta descended to put her impecunious case before the landlady and, gazing at it, the girl saw also her opportunity. Mrs. Banks had no culinary imagination, but Henrietta found it rising in herself to an inspired degree and there and then she offered herself as cook in return for ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... experience in the practice, the lawyer surmised that the Magyar was never naturalized. If he was not naturalized, his widow has no standing in the court where the suit has been brought. In that case, it belongs to the Federal Court, and his widow and orphan, as well as the impecunious lawyer who has taken the widow's case on a contingent fee, will not have the means nor the fortitude to begin action ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... 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 ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... famous club whose meeting place, with all its art treasures, is now a heap of ashes, but which was formerly 'Frisco's head-centre of mirth. Founded by Henry George, the world-famous single tax advocate, when he was an impecunious scribbler on the San Francisco Post, it grew to be the choicest place of resort in the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... is 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 The ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... am, a mere rich 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
... sixty-five years of age, in a career that may, at any moment, [become] 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 and Garfield, all elected ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... Ascot, some of my impecunious Melton friends,—having heard a rumour that Archer, who was riding in the race, had made a bet on the result—came and begged me to find out from him what horse was going to win. I did not listen much to them at first, as I was staring about at the horses, the parasols ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... by Sam's evident good spirits. Considering that he was impecunious enough to require a loan which he had been unable to negotiate, it ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... was called to the Bar, I'd an appetite fresh and hearty, But I was, as many young barristers are, An impecunious party. I'd a swallow-tail coat of a beautiful blue - A brief which was brought by a booby - A couple of shirts and a collar or two, And a ring that ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... been employed in arrogant commercialism. The Academy holds a hundred thousand pounds in trust, left by Mr. Chantry for the furtherance of art in this country; and this money is spent on the purchase of pictures by impecunious Academicians, and the collection formed with this money is one of the seven horrors of civilisation. The Academy has tolerated genius when it was popular, it has trampled upon genius when it was unpopular; and the business of the new art criticism is ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... she has left but four. On the walls, is a very early Romanesque church, tottering to ruins, because the Society for the Promotion of Athletic Sports, to whom it has been surrendered up for tumbling, climbing, wrestling, are impecunious and cannot keep it watertight. Hard by is another church, still earlier, a temple adapted to Christian worship, now half swept away, half devoted to a cabaret. The church of the Cordeliers is turned into a school, and the octagonal ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... 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 serve in the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... heartily. "That advertisement counts for nothing. Professional kidnappers do not select the sons of impecunious ministers for their prey. Nor do they give addresses through which they may be found. You can dismiss the advertisement as a blind; the second ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... willow rockers scattered about the room. A long library table took up considerable space at one end of the room, and conveniently near it were rows of book shelves, lined with special books required by the Overton curriculum of study, which, in price, were out of reach of the more impecunious students, and were in such constant demand at the library that their temporary possession often meant weeks ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... said at last, "an impecunious prince who marries an American heiress, as so many of them do. The girl begins life in Austria on one million dollars, say two hundred thousand pounds, and a case of diamonds said to be worth another two hundred thousand at least—probably more. Not much ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... application of the spur. Captain Cumnock was an impecunious fearless rascal, therefore a parasite and a bully duellist; a thick-built north-countryman; a burly ape of the ultra-elegant; hunter, gamester, hard-drinker, man of pleasure. His known readiness to fight was his trump-card at a period when the declining custom of the duel taxed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it is only the rich man who can save money in this way, while his poorer neighbor, who has no country-seat to which he may escape, must pay to the uttermost farthing. The system stimulates the impecunious to become wealthy and helps the rich to become richer. It is, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the jobbing houses always had a C. O. D. 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 ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... small, stout youth, was not disposed to be reticent. The gist of his rambling statement was as follows. Rich uncle. Impecunious nephew. Visit of former to latter. Handsome tip, one sovereign. Impecunious nephew pouches sovereign, and ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 raised the value of even ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... eye. Often the wit is merely the measure of absurdity, as when a courtier in speaking of a fat friend said: "I found him sitting all around the table by himself." And there is a ridiculous story of the impecunious and notorious Marquis de Favieres who visited a Parisian named Barnard, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... eighteen, and 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, irresistibly smitten with each other's charms, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... erection of new school-houses in poor districts where they were most needed. The new plans, on the other hand, are designed according to the most modern ideas, and as a local contribution is not insisted upon in impecunious districts, where valuation is low, the Board can grant the whole of the cost where necessary. It is easy to appreciate what a difference this important reform must make, not merely to the landscape or ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... shaking his head mournfully and sitting down again, throwing into his expression as much despair as he conveniently can. A letter carrier's whistle is heard; a servant enters with a legal-looking letter. The impecunious hero, tearing it open, produces from it a roll of stage banknotes, and forthwith gives way to demonstrations of the most extravagant delight, upon ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... so, and she knew why. She had humbled his pride; he had understood, and forgiven her. But she still continued to treat him as she had always treated the Strefford of old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible impecunious Streff; and he wanted to show her, ever so casually and adroitly, that the man who had asked her to marry him was no longer Strefford, but ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the advantage of her advice. Rosier interpreted this information according to principles of his own. For "advice" read "cash," he said to himself; and the fact that Gilbert Osmond had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season confirmed his most cherished doctrine—the doctrine that a collector may freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Rosier presented himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the walls of the saloon; there were ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... inventories 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 ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Impecunious Draughtsman Abroad" was given by Mr. Myron H. Hunt, and Mr. George R. Dean has given a lantern-slide exhibition, ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol 1, No. 11, November, 1895 - The Country Houses of Normandy • Various
... The impecunious young man who marries a girl with a substantial check attached may very properly be said to ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... Maharajah of 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 mortifying fear ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... yourself plunged (bodily, not mentally) into the midst of a story by some particular author? If, for example, you could get inside the covers of a Mrs. ALFRED SIDGWICK novel, what would you expect to find? Probably a large and pleasantly impecunious family, with one special daughter who combines great practical sense with rare personal charm. You would certainly not be startled to find her brought into contact with persons of greater social importance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... German Count, if I remember rightly, and, like most German Counts, had not much money; and her father, as fathers will when proposed to by impecunious would-be sons-in-law, refused his consent. The Count then went abroad to try and make, or at all events improve, his fortune. He went to America, and there he prospered. In a year or two he came back, tolerably rich—to find, however, that he was too late. His lady, persuaded of his ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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; ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... 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, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... species, whose distinguishing characteristics are that the wings are transparent and have no cases or covers, there was a formidable army. I refer to the common little fly. There was the house fly, the horse fly, the dangerous blue-bottle, the impecunious blow fly, the indefatigable buzzer, and others. One's delicate skin got beset with flies: they got in one's ears, in one's eyes, up one's nose, down one's throat, in one's coffee, in one's bed; they bade fair to devour one within an hour or two, and brought ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the case. 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; no doubt in a spirit of anticipatory exchange for some really good thing ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Brown recognised that no other man could better fill the position. But the proprietor was careful to make the utmost of his employee's lack of worldly wisdom, offering him the very lowest salary that ever an editor worked for. The consequence was that Michael O'Connor lived and died an impecunious man, whose only legacy to his children was the record of a ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... from the actual life and manners, the native ideal. I have already spoken of the way in which the vast aggregation of beautiful works of art in the Italian cities strikes the visitor nowadays—so far as present Italy is concerned—as the mere stock-in-trade of an impecunious but thrifty people. It is this spiritual solitude, this conscious disconnection of the great works of architecture and sculpture that deposits a certain weight upon the heart; when we see a great tradition broken we feel something ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... of dark legend only brought the steady glow of his—and our—present felicity into richer relief. We gathered hints of, caught in passing smiling allusion to, straitened and impecunious early years. He had endured a harsh enough apprenticeship to the profession of letters in its least satisfactory, because most ephemeral, form—namely journalism, and provincial journalism at that. This must have painfully cribbed ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... was a 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 unpaid bills that must be met before he could leave the scene of ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... magnificent taste for literature. I can't call him anything but magnificent in this respect, so long as he must have his punctuation done by a nature distinguee. At the close of this period, by economy, he had made up his losses. His turning the screw during those relatively impecunious years represents, I am pretty sure, the only act of resolution of his life. It was rendered possible by his morbid, his actually pusillanimous dread of poverty; he doesn't feel safe without half a million between him and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... that 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 ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... his way to be amiable to Fanny, flattering her and making her presents, and encouraging Jimmie to talk of his wonderful ideas. Moreover, he gave him plainly to understand that, once Virginia and he were married, the shipping clerk's impecunious days would be over and a comfortable berth would be awaiting him in his office at a salary ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... his 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
... 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, ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... 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 ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... daughter L3000, which was to be invested "in the purchase either of a Church or Colledge lease, or of lands of Inheritance," for her sole use, her husband having "nothing to doe with it," would seem (as Mr. Keightley suggests) to indicate a distrust of his military, and possibly impecunious, son-in-law. This money, it is also important to remember, was to come to her children at her death. Sir Henry Gould did not long survive the making of his will, and died in March 1710. [Footnote: Mr. Keightley, who seems to have seen the will, dates it—doubtless by a ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... was impossible 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 ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... was 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 in the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... The London Company, thrice chartered to take over to itself the land and resources of Virginia and populate its zone of rule, was endowed with sweeping rights and privileges which made it an absolute monopoly. The impecunious noblemen or gentlemen who transported themselves to Virginia to recoup their dissipated fortunes or seek adventure, encountered no trouble in getting large grants of land especially when after 1614 tobacco ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... again lend his money or "go security" for his neighbours without consulting his family; but over the first blue of beer, at the first fair or market, he had been unable to withstand the pleadings of some impecunious friend. Only a week after he and Will had talked over their plans in the barn, Jos Hughes, who was his fellow-deacon at Penmorien Chapel, had met him in the market at Castell On, and had persuaded him to lend him the exact amount which his ricks had brought him, ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... with him at different times afterwards accompanied his rival, either as captains or pilots of his expeditions. Notable among these was Vicente Yanez Pinzon, one of the noble family that came to the rescue of Columbus when in straits at Palos, and furnished the funds with which the impecunious navigator provided and equipped the vessel he had promised his sovereigns to contribute. The Pinzons actually provided and manned this vessel, the Nina, though Columbus had the credit of it, and Vicente Yanez ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... not aware that she had any family pride, but, like most people in that neighborhood, she had a great appreciation of the value of money, and when she was left alone with her daughter, in consequence of Philip Cocker's premature death, she was more inclined to favor wealthy than impecunious suitors. My father had come to Shaw as a young attorney some time before he asked for Anne Cocker in marriage. He had very little to recommend him except a fine person, great physical strength, and fifteen quarterings. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... home that evening after attending one of the weekly sessions at the Colophon Club, where he had reluctantly contributed the sum of fifty-seven dollars to relieve the immediate needs of certain impecunious persons gathered there about a green-baize-covered table in a remote corner of the card room, he perceived by the light of an adjacent street lamp that someone was sitting upon the top of the steps ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... worst that the most searching critic of international finance can allege against the proposal that we imagine to be put forward by the Republic of Barataria—if we admit that a loan to balance a deficit and pay for ships probably implies wastefulness, corruption, political rottenness, impecunious Chauvinism and all the rest of it, the question still arises whether it is the business of an issuing house to refuse the chance of doing good business for itself and for the London money-market, because it has reason ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... Denis, they had been overtaken by another recent visitor to Nepenthe. It was Mr. Edgar Marten. Mr. Marten was a hirsute and impecunious young Hebrew of low tastes, with a passion for mineralogy. He had profited by some University grant to make certain studies at Nepenthe which was renowned for its variegated rocks. There was something striking about him, thought Mr. Heard. He said little of consequence, but Denis ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to poverty; pauperize, fleece, ruin, bring to the parish. Adj. poor, indigent; poverty-stricken; badly off, poorly off, ill off; poor as a rat, poor as a church mouse, poor as a Job; fortuneless^, dowerless^, moneyless^, penniless; unportioned^, unmoneyed^; impecunious; out of money, out of cash, short of money, short of cash; without a rap, not worth a rap &c (money) 800; qui n'a pas le sou [Fr.], out of pocket, hard up; out at elbows, out at heels; seedy, bare-footed; beggarly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... proclaimed immediately 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 ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... younger 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
... the sale 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 ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... insolvent. The landlord locked up the hall with all the belongings of the troupe nor would he release the goods until the rent was paid in full. Harrison was appealed to. He sneered at the impecunious minstrels and taunted them by saying: "Now go get your stuff out. If you all hadn't been so ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... was a 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, I might add, favorite son, had purchased him of an impecunious jockey at the close of a, to him, 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 unpaid bills that must be met before he could leave the ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... never of them. "I require of every man of sound mind that he should lay out for himself a plan of action," said the philosopher; and wandered to Breslau, to Amsterdam, to Potsdam, the parasite of protectors, the impecunious hack of publishers, the rebel of manners, the ingenious and honored metaphysician. When Kant declared he was the only one of his critics that understood The Critique of Pure Reason, Maimon returned to Berlin to devote himself to the philosophical work that was to give him ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was with Petronella, and he had not concerned himself as yet with any thoughts as to her poverty and his own somewhat impecunious position as his father's heir, but with three sisters to be provided for out of the revenues of the impoverished estate. He was man of the world enough to know that this dowry would do much to smooth his path when the time should come for making ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... new found protegee was such as would only have entered into the brain of a dreamy and impecunious poet. He saw in Lavinia Fenton the making of a fine actress—not in tragedy but in comedy—and of an enchanting singer. But to be proficient she must be taught not only music, but how to pronounce the English language properly. She had to a certain extent ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... French was a well-defined one. They were there for a purpose, spent their money freely, fought their battles victoriously, and would some day go back to France. But the Mexicans hated these foreigners, and the confidential offices held by impecunious Belgians and Austrians in the government and about the person of the chief executive added to the instinctive suspicion with which their permanent residence ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... 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. ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... Amic, the most beautiful woman in that city. Neither of the pair possessed a fortune, and 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Cosgrove belonged by birth and marriage to the staid middle class, and it seemed as if she made it her object to provide with social entertainment the kind of persons who, in an ordinary way, would enjoy very little of it. Lonely and impecunious girls or women were frequently about her; she tried to keep them in good spirits, tried to marry them if marriage seemed possible, and, it was whispered, used a good deal of her income for the practical benefit of those who needed assistance. A sprinkling of maidens ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... chief of the fire department felt themselves dwarfed into insignificance. For four years Mr. Perkins had been a busy man. He dispensed far more patronage than the delegate to Congress, as he was constantly besieged by a class of impecunious patriots to "put 'em on the next one." A stranger arriving by train and seeing a man shot down in front of some one of the gambling-saloons, would have been perplexed to account for the rush of the crowd in one direction, instead of scattering till the shooting was over and then concentrating ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... been unusual. After leaving the High School her father had for four years allowed her a private tutor (an impecunious graduate from the Harvard Theological School). She was ambitious, a devoted student, and her instructor's task was rather to guide than to enforce her application. She soon acquired a reading knowledge of French, and knew her Racine in the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... chorister. With her blond hair pressed meekly to her shapely head she was the delight and despair of poets, painters and musicians, for she turned an impassable cheek to their pleadings. Mrs. Minne would never remarry; and it was her large income that made water the mouth of the impecunious artistic tribe.... ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... 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, for he had ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... like one of those flat stone jars in which Italian wine 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 stand for ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... gigantic confiscation of Catholic church lands, amounting to about one-third of the soil of France, or two billion five hundred million of francs in nominal value, ordered by Mirabeau, backed up by the Revolutionary tribunals, than the supposedly impecunious French peasants came forward and purchased to the extent of millions of francs; and it is a fact today (1915) that one of the secret dreads of the French peasantry is that some sensational political change may come in the stability of the French Government, a change that will forfeit these old ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... married 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... as she remembered Sir Lyon Dilsford. He was an intelligent, impecunious, pleasant kind of man, still, like his host, on the sunny side of forty. Sir Lyon was "in the City," as are now so many men of his class and kind. He took his work seriously, and spent many hours of each day east of Temple Bar. By way of relaxation ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... said the Orchid 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 ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... the ancient Georgian house known as the Pyramids. Lucy's step-father had given the place this eccentric name on taking up his abode there some ten years previously. Before that time the dwelling had been occupied by the Lord of the Manor and his family. But now the old squire was dead, and his impecunious children were scattered to the four quarters of the globe in search of money with which to rebuild their ruined fortunes. As the village was somewhat isolated and rather unhealthily situated in a marshy country, the huge, roomy old Grange had not been easy to ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... except your letter. That, however, 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
... this was allayed by the instinctive feeling that it is more venial to defraud an institution than a man. Since Mrs. Fontage had to be kept from starving by means not wholly defensible, it was better that the obligation should be borne by a rich institution than an impecunious youth. I doubt, in fact, if my scruples would have survived a night's sleep, had they not been complicated by some uncertainty as to my own future. It was true that, subject to the purely formal ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... of his great Dictionary, mainly by a copyright of one cent or less on his Spelling-Book, and it is quite certain that the several other enterprises in which he engaged never supported him while they were going on, and often resulted in losses. But what a picture the letter presents of an impecunious scholar, bewitched by his pursuit, and sure that it was to end in some vast result! He writes like an inventor who needs but little to enable him to perfect a machine which is to ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... event they kept their places of concealment until the steamer had arrived at 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
... to justify the employment of a corrupted version of his name. It is of course untrue that Fastolfe was ever the intimate associate of Henry V when Prince of Wales, who was not his junior by more than ten years, or that he was an impecunious spendthrift and gray-haired debauchee. The historical Fastolfe was in private life an expert man of business, who was indulgent neither to himself nor his friends. He was nothing of a jester, and was, in spite of all imputations to the contrary, a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... 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 was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... 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 ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... between aestheticism and asceticism was one which she had never taken, though she had taken many steps, some of them, unfortunately, false ones. She had been a well-born girl, the daughter of aristocratic but impecunious and extravagant parents. Her father, Everard Page, a son of Lord Cheam, had been very much at home in the Bankruptcy Court. Her mother, too, was reckless about money, saying, whenever it was mentioned, "Money is given us to spend, not to hoard." So little did she hoard it, that eventually her husband ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... some 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, when she marries for money, but she should not deceive the man who ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... new order of things; and she rejected the idea that "a lady should transact business", with the same contemptuous indignation that would have greeted a proposition to wear "machine-sewed garments", that last resort of impecunious plebeianism. However unwelcome Leo had found this assumption of the grave duties of mature womanhood, she met the responsibility unflinchingly, and gathered very firmly the reins transferred to her fair hands for guidance. Judge Dent and Miss Patty ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... 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
... effect that "It would not do at all." I became convinced that nothing "would do at all" with a small band of men—who, at that time, had objects of their own—in Upper Canada. Some of them—few in number, I am happy to know, and impecunious—appeared to consider the old corporation of the Hudson's Bay in the light of Blucher, when driving through the streets of London, "Mein Gott! what a plunder." Some of them tried their best to confiscate the property; and once or twice, by ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... festivals, however, did take place: not in the days of the dear Colonel's prosperity, nor yet at Carter Hall, but in his impecunious days in New York, while he was still living in the little house on Bedford Place within a stone's throw of the tall clock-tower of Jefferson Market. This house, you will recall, sat back from the street behind a larger and more modern dwelling, its only outlet to the main thoroughfare ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dignity, a patient had been to him a prodigy, something precious for its rarity, even if it called him away from his dinner or ruthlessly rang him up in the middle of the night. But that was a long time ago, in the days of his impecunious youth; and now, in his prosperous middle-age, he would often have willingly bartered a good many patients ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... Ranelagh. His own quarters were in Queen's Road, Battersea, at no great distance. The two young men were soon seeing a great deal of each other. When their friendship had ripened through a twelvemonth, Franks, always impecunious, cheerily borrowed a five-pound note; not long after, he mirthfully doubled his debt; and this grew ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... during 1911, one of the producing companies released a picture entitled "The Class Reunion." To get the plot of the photoplay story, simply substitute an impecunious professor for the old gentleman in the short-story. Instead of the Hindoo servant, have one of the pupils—if our memory serves—turn out to be the thief, and have him drop the jewel—which is a ruby, and not a diamond—into a glass of red wine instead of into a glass ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... 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 all right. Otherwise, the affair ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... fascinating Fulkeward 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 ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... an 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 is my cousin's uncle, who has, I believe, thirty ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... ever tried to raise money for a worthy cause, all suffragists who have given balls and bazaars, all who have labored to make an audience pledge its last dollar for suffrage, all who have ever tried to run an impecunious newspaper, all who have ever tried to finance any kind of a movement for the betterment of mankind, will know that the figures given here are written in blood and should be read only by those of an ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... R. R. Blake as he signed his name, and "Railroad Blake" as the boys often called him, was Major Appleby's nephew, and the son of his only sister. She had married an impecunious young artist against her brother's wish, on which account he had declined ever to see her again. When she died, after two years of poverty-stricken widowhood, she left a loving, forgiving letter for her brother, and in it committed her darling boy to his charge. If she had not done this, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... misfortune now befell 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 ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... have invested heaps! You made me. But what is the use of saving money when there are only ourselves to consider? We may as well spend it, and have a good time. If there were kiddies to leave it to, it would be different. I had so long of being impecunious, that I particularly enjoy feeling bottomless! Besides, each year will bring in more. This African book ought to be worth all the rest ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... that your morning train may bear you from twilight to darkness. But to-day the enemy's maneuvering was more monotonous. From Bow even unto Hammersmith there draggled a dull, wretched vapor, like the wraith of an impecunious suicide come into a fortune immediately after the fatal deed. The barometers and thermometers had sympathetically shared its depression, and their spirits (when they had any) were low. The cold cut like a ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... had come there about money, and it occurred to him that the impecunious young barrister might already be in some scrape on that head. In nineteen cases out of twenty, when a man is in a scrape, he simply wants money. "Perhaps I can be of ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... eaten by moth, perched in this wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora cat, Madame Popinot's pet, restored to her no doubt with all the graces of life by some impecunious naturalist, who thus repaid a gift of charity with a perennial treasure. Some local artist whose heart had misguided his brush had painted portraits of M. and Madame Popinot. Even in the bedroom there were embroidered pin-cushions, landscapes in cross-stitch, and crosses in folded paper, so elaborately ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... 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 for payment ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... their laziness and shiftlessness, each received a hundred dollars outright. The Whalens, always with both hands metaphorically outstretched for alms, were loud in their praises of Miss Flora's great kindness of heart; but the Davises (Mrs. Jane Blaisdell's impecunious relatives) had very visible difficulty in making Miss Flora understand that gifts bestowed as she bestowed them ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... millionaire uncle is a pleasant one, nevertheless. In moments of trouble we dream of him, we form all sorts of affectionate hypotheses, even revel in thoughts of apoplexy and long for cholera, that Providence of impecunious heirs, which appears like a good fairy, robed in ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... dozen countries, been almost within reach of fortune a dozen times, and always missed her until, finally, in London, by promoting a great rubber syndicate he becomes a multi-millionaire. He marries the most beautiful and one of the most impecunious peeresses in England and retires to his country estate. There, as a gentleman of leisure, he loses his motive in life, loses power for lack of opportunity, and grows less commanding even in the eyes of his wife, who misses the uncompromising, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the works of others and rewrote and transformed them, besides bringing out original plays of his own . . . then it is natural enough that his name should not appear among those [of the] for the most part impecunious dramatists to whom Henslowe paid money for playwriting." {163a} Nothing can be more natural, and, in fact, the name of Bacon, or Southampton, or James VI, or Sir John Ramsay, or Sir Walter Raleigh, or Sir Fulke Greville, or any other "man in high position," ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... circumstances—to float in shallow, turbid water. She gave up the attempt to understand the cynical modus vivendi at which her companions seemed to have arrived; she knew it was not final but it served them sufficiently for the time; and if it served them why should it not serve her, the dependent, impecunious, tolerated little sister, representative of the class whom it behoved above all to mind their own business? The time was coming round when they would all move up to town, and there, in the crowd, with the added movement, the strain would be less and ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... wouldn't even so much as look at you," and offers to stake all that he is worth on the truth of his assertion. Ivan accepts the wager. The Princess appears, takes him by the hand, kisses him on the crown of his head, wipes the dirt off him, and leads him home, still inebriated but no longer impecunious.[40] ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... as he revealed to me, in agitated speech, his wife's more than suspicions, at the time, of that, Mrs., Mrs. What's her name's perfidious conduct. She actually seemed to have—Mrs. Fyne asserted—formed a plot already to marry eventually her charge to an impecunious relation of her own—a young man with furtive eyes and something impudent in his manner, whom that woman called her nephew, and whom she was always having down to stay ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... his outside arrangements with his sister were perfectly comfortable. No doubt there did creep out among those who were most intimate with him a knowledge that Mr. Carroll,—for the captain had, in truth, never been more than a lieutenant, and had now long since sold out,—was impecunious, and a trouble rather than otherwise. But I doubt whether there was a single inhabitant of the neighborhood of Fulham who was aware that Mrs. Carroll and the Miss Carrolls cost Mr. Grey on an average ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... would refuse to pay a penny piece over twelve thousand and fifty pounds—the extreme limit fixed in the correspondence; or rather he would pay, he would pay and sue him for damages. He would go to Jobling and Boulter and put the matter in their hands. He would ruin the impecunious beggar! And suddenly—though what connection between the thoughts?—he reflected that Irene had no money either. They were both beggars. This gave ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... one of those very everyday folk whose god was mammon, and who naturally hung on every word issuing from a person of means while she would ignore the most inimitable witticism from an impecunious individual, began to regard the lady-help from a new point ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... (SKEFFINGTON) is what AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE rather pleasantly call their latest hero, Terence O'Flaherty, impecunious gentleman of fortune, lover and general exponent of the picturesque arts of romance. In a special sense indeed, since you have him not only adventuring for fame and fortune, but, as a by-product, turning his exploits ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... 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 plant the banner of the Church ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... officers? Myra and I have been chums since she was four. We love each other, and she would be content to wait, but, in the meantime—well, you know my position. I can only describe it in the well-worn phrases, 'briefless barrister' and 'impecunious junior.' There's a great deal of truth in the weak old joke, Dennis, about the many that are called and the few that are briefed. Of course the General is right. He says that I ought to leave Myra absolutely alone, and ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... court to answer for his short-comings. But that, in many instances, could not but work an unwarranted hardship. The expenses alone, of a journey to the state capital, would strain to the breaking point the means of some of the more impecunious. Insisting on the minutest technicalities would indubitably deprive many an honest, well-meaning homesteader of his entire worldly property. It was all very well to argue that ignorance of the law was no excuse; that it is a man's own fault if he does not fulfill the simple requirements ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... twenty years ago, as the youngest of the pretty Wilde sisters, she had, in the romantic fervour of her youth and in spite of the opposition of her parents, made a love match with a handsome, impecunious young dabbler in "stocks." "Sophy is a creature of sentiment," her friends had urged in extenuation of a marriage which was not then considered in a brilliant light, but to the surprise of everybody, after the single venture by which she had proved the mettle of her dreams, she had ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... professor of botany at Harmouth—had married when over forty the eldest daughter of a distinguished though impecunious family in his own college town. His mother, on her deathbed, foresaw that he would need a housekeeper and suggested ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... not need to be told what had brought the elder artist into such an impecunious condition. His face with its unnatural flush showed that his habits had ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... (Alvaros') countenance 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 position which he had worked so hard to gain as a friend ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... every penny he ever had, publishing rotten verses in fancy bindings. No, we're an impecunious lot. My mother's always been awfully good to us, I must say. That is, up to now. Since her marriage, of ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... 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 ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... 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 and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and surrounded by what would now be called the Promenade. The latter, as Misson informs us,[A] was taken up for the most part by ladies of quality. In addition to these quarters and the boxes, there were two galleries reserved for the common herd, but into which, no doubt, impecunious beaux, down in the heels and at ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... negro, as said before, has one advantage over his impecunious white brother—a genius for theft. The white man may not have, as a general thing, sterner principle or a softer conscience, but it cannot be said, except in isolated cases, that he has a passion for stealing. The Chinaman is regarded ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... learned through his unintentional eavesdropping was something of a revelation. In his mild conjectures as to Crowheart's opinion of him it never had occurred to him that it considered him anything more interesting than an impecunious semi-invalid or possibly a homeseeker taking his own time to locate. But a hold-up! a loafer! a lazy cheap-skate! Van Lennop shook with silent laughter. A skinflint too mean to buy a drink! He had no notion of enlightening Crowheart in regard to himself because of the illuminating conversation ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... a 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
... attractive as a girl, and had many suitors; but with an eye to the comforts of life, she had said "no" to all the titled and impecunious lovers, and given her hand to a man of wealth, who, with his million of pounds, bade fair to add another million to them in ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... SOCIETY INTRODUCTION SYNDICATE. With the above appellation, a Company has been organised, under the Direction of an Impecunious Duchess, assisted by a Committee of Upper Class Ladies, whose want of ready money has become urgent, for the purpose of selling, at a fixed sale of prices, to any low-bred parvenue who can afford to pay for it, the entree to those exclusive and hitherto unapproachable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... slave, but the property of a well-born, if slightly impoverished, gentleman who lived on the Eastern Shore, and whose chief source of income was the hiring out to his friends and acquaintances of just such likely young darkies as Todd—a custom common to the impecunious ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that street breaks out into an eruption of automobile stores, found herself suddenly hungry, opposite a restaurant whose entire front was a sheet of plate glass. On the other side of this glass, at marble-topped tables, apparently careless of their total lack of privacy, sat the impecunious, lunching, their every mouthful a spectacle for the passer-by. It reminded Jill of looking at fishes in an aquarium. In the center of the window, gazing out in a distrait manner over piles of apples and grape-fruit, a white-robed ministrant at a stove ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Daily Telegraph on hearing the word "delicacy"; the "bold, bad men, the haunters of Social Science Congresses," who declaim "a sweet union of philosophy and poetry" from Wordsworth on the duty of the State towards education; the impecunious author "commercing with the stars" in Grub Street, reading "the Star for wisdom and charity, the Telegraph for taste and style," and looking for the letter from the Literary Fund, "enclosing half-a-crown, the promise ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... feeling of unsettlement, of instability, 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 he ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... against poverty, and having gained an education in spite of difficulties, and having supplied a city church acceptably for some months during the absence of the pastor in Europe, he came back to our native village to rest on his laurels a few weeks, and to decide which of three rather impecunious calls he would accept. When just about to leave he took it into his head, for some reason, to "drop in" on old Doctor Hood. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and the doctor's partner was making morning calls, while the old gentleman sat in ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... When a very impecunious youth, who could barely afford to pay for his cab fares, lost a pound to him at whist, Lord Houghton said, as he pocketed the coin, "Ah, my dear boy, the great Lord Hertford, whom foolish people called the wicked Lord Hertford—Thackeray's Steyne and ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... returned Phil, serious as an owl, nevertheless pale at the lips. "What chance has an impecunious day-labourer like me with ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... set of newcomers, he had friendships—or rather, habits of fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped, and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... often reduced not only to beg, but to borrow; and as this method of raising money might not always have been easy, even where security was offered, a system of pledging was devised by the authorities for the benefit of impecunious members of the University, both high and low. In all essentials this department is hardly distinguishable from a pawnbroking establishment conducted under respectable auspices, but we should go sadly astray if we suffered our views of the institution ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... 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 ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer |
