"Poorhouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alas! his poor mind was hopelessly affected, and the doctor said that, though he might be much better, he would never be quite right again. Everybody thought they ought to send him to the poorhouse, as he had no home to be sent to, but Captain Maxwell refused to do this. So he stayed on, and, gradually, as he grew stronger, he took up some simple duties again. However, he had forgotten everything, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... chaise-percee, was trimmed with point-lace of very considerable value, and the harness of whose carriage was studded with paste, in imitation of diamonds. This woman, however, lived to repent of her folly; and if she did not literally die in a poorhouse, she at least ended ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... bit of gossip of a neighbour who had come in to see Miss Bennett, and was telling her about a family who had lately moved into the place and were in serious trouble. "And they do say she'll have to go to the poorhouse," she ended. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... under fair conditions knows how frank and handsome the Englishman is elsewhere, and might be here. But when he looks around him in Sheffield or in East London, he sees none but miserable and stunted forms. The life of the English labourer is a steady march down a hill with a poorhouse at the bottom. At the same time the observer finds, when he asks for the remedy, that in these matters there is not a pin to choose between the two parties in the State." [Footnote: A note sent to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... yes, Boss, He's working for gov'ment now,— They give him his board for nothin',— All along of a drunken row. An' Mam? Well, she's in the poorhouse,— Been there a year or so; So I'm taking care of the others, Doing ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... life was rash, colic, fever, and measles in their earliest years; slaps in the face and degrading drudgeries up to thirteen years; deceptions by women, sicknesses and infidelity during manhood and, toward the last, infirmities and agonies in a poorhouse or asylum. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... dirtiest streets of the Twelfth Arrondissement, the poorest quarter of Paris, that in which two-thirds of the population lack firing in winter, which leaves most brats at the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which sends most beggars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street corners, most decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which the sun shines, most delinquents to the ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... want sleep to digest it. But I know these things by bitter knowledge—by experience. Don't talk to me, you who had fathers and mothers to care for you, and comfortable homes to live in. I had none of these. I was nursed in a poorhouse and brought up in a hut on the Campagna. Because of the miserable laws of your predecessors my mother drowned herself in the Tiber, and I knew what it was to starve. And I am only one of many. At the very door of Rome, under a Christian Government, the poor are living ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Popple, dated the 12th of March, 1830, L4 yearly is to be paid unto the vicar, churchwardens, and overseers of the poor of the parish of Burnham, Buckinghamshire, to provide for the poor people who should be residing in the poorhouse, a dinner, with a proper quantity of good ale and likewise with tobacco and snuff ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of which the Apostle says that "it is sown in dishonor, but it shall rise in glory." Be men of science, but be not human ghouls. There is such a thing as retribution. But lately a former millionaire died in a poorhouse and left his body as a cadaver for medical students. We cannot afford to ignore the mysterious ways of Divine Justice. Ever handle human remains in a humane manner; and as soon as they have answered the purpose of science, see that they ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... poorhouse lad, turning round at sound of his master's voice, presented so fair a mark, with his gaping mouth, that, half involuntarily, the snow-ball left Mr. Coffin's hand, and the next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel's open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... temporarily incapacitated poor, who would have been, in a better and more complete social organization, sent to a hospital, which did not exist in Schenectady. With several other students and two or three young ladies of the city we held services at the "poorhouse" every Sunday. Short exhortations with prayers and the singing of hymns composed the service, and I remember that one day, in giving out a hymn in long metre, I started it to a short metre tune, and had to go through it alone, the ladies whose business was the musical part of the service not being ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time regime, dispatched the exotic meal with the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... discretion of the church-wardens, and are nearly 300 in number. The bread and cheese amounts to 540 quartern loaves and 470 pounds of cheese. The distribution is made on land belonging to the charity, known as the Old Poorhouse. Formerly it used to take place in the Church, immediately after the service in the afternoon, but in consequence of the unseemly disturbance which used to ensue the practice was discontinued. The Church ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... have so much charity work for me to do that there will be no time for anything else, and, in a little while, she will have given away all the money we both have. Then when we're sitting together in the sun on the front steps of the poorhouse, we can fittingly lament ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... part of it, at least, to pay for Benny's being sent to the north; but she insisted, while her tears were falling fast, that I should take the whole. "You may be sick among strangers," she said, "and they would send you to the poorhouse to ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... Oxford, where he was Savilian Professor of Astronomy. But Carey was not a Scotsman, and therefore the university was not for such as he. Like his school-fellows, he seemed born to the English labourer's fate of five shillings a week, and the poorhouse in sickness and old age. From this, in the first instance, he was saved by a disease which affected his face and hands most painfully whenever he was long exposed to the sun. For seven years he had failed to find relief. His attempt at work in the field were for two ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... the service of his country, that, under the Captain of his salvation, he might endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ, without entanglement in the affairs of this life. Aside from this, his stay at the capital had not been unprofitable, for he had preached five times a week in the poorhouse and conversed on the Lord's days with the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... to the store," said Mr. Kinney briskly; yet he lingered. "I suppose we'll all have to club in and keep old Fanny out of the poorhouse if he does blow up. From all I hear it's usually only a question of time. They say she hasn't got anything else to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... since passed on the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark Twain and his friend, who, having slept all day, rushed ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... to children seriously handicapped by physical defects is to buy future industrial trouble, hospital and poorhouse bills. A boy with adenoids, a girl with eye trouble, should not be permitted to begin the fight for self-support without at least being clearly shown that the correction of these defects will increase ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... kept him Locked up for years back there at the old farm. I've been away once—yes, I've been away. The State Asylum. I was prejudiced; I wouldn't have sent anyone of mine there; You know the old idea—the only asylum Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford, Rather than send their folks to such a place, Kept them at home; and it does seem more human. But it's not so: the place is the asylum. There they have every means proper to do with, And you aren't darkening other people's lives— Worse than no good to them, ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... won't know whether he's runnin' a poorhouse er a hospital, will he?' said Uncle Eb. 'Look here, children,' he added, taking out his old leather wallet, as he held the reins between his knees. 'Here's tew shillin' apiece for ye, an' I want ye t' spend it jest eggsackly as ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... after the "Swan" was closed, she was seen beating him and tearing his clothes. Fear for herself—fear of his supernatural gifts—were both merged in the stronger feeling of rage; and at last she, assisted by one Stammers, a carpenter, pushed the old man into a brook. He died at Halsted poorhouse from the effects of the ill-usage. Emma Smith and Stammers were sentenced to six months hard labour for their share in this outrage—the judge excusing the leniency of the punishment on the ground of the woman's state of mental ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... indignant that she should always have to petition him for the money with which to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief that, since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse had once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue to be his daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run down the street after him because she had forgotten to ask him for money ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... mightn't be taking your part in the fun of the world, going to balls or theatres, or paying attention to girls, and yet old enough to have married and have your families around you, content to stay in this God-forsaken place; old bachelors, pigging together like poorhouse paupers. That's what gets me! Say you LIKE it? Say you expect by hanging on to make a strike—and what does that amount to? What are YOUR chances? How many of us have made, or are making, more than grub wages? Say you're willing to share and share alike as you do—have you got enough ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... vagabond, roaming about the woods and the villages, sleeping in barns and out-buildings, and stealing his food when he could obtain it by no other means. Efforts had been made to commit him to the poorhouse; but he had cunningly avoided being captured, and retained his freedom until the accident placed him under the influence of Bertha Grant, who had before vainly attempted to induce him to join ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... charge of the old toll-gate when he wasn't attendin' to it himself, just the same as when my father was alive and was toll-gate keeper, and I was helpin' him. But I've got to go now, and where I'm goin' to is more'n I know. But I'd rather go to the county poorhouse than stay here, or anywhere else, with Maria Port. She's a regular boa-constrictor, that woman is! She's twisted herself around people before this and squeezed the senses out of them; and that's ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... for evening prayers. The inmates of the poorhouse flocked to the church and sat down in the pews left vacant by their wealthy owners, who had attended to their souls at the principal service of the day, and were now driving in their carriages to the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... comfortably fixed, with a small farm of his own, and two thousand dollars in bank. Now I hear that he is in trouble. He has lost money, and a knavish neighbor has threatened to foreclose a mortgage on the farm and turn out the old people to die or go to the poorhouse." ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... the garment aside. "It's half worn out it is, dragging it back and forth over the counter these six months. Take it or leave it. Hallo! What have we here? Little Finnegan, eh? Your mother not dead yet? It's in the poorhouse ye will be if she ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... pursuit. It would even be injuring society for him to do so. And so we see this man, the harsh slave-driver of thousands of men, building almshouses with little gardens two yards square for the workmen broken down in toiling for him, and a bank, and a poorhouse, and a hospital—fully persuaded that he has amply expiated in this way for all the human lives morally and physically ruined by him—and calmly going on with his business, taking pride ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... to loan you two that ups an leaves me in the lurch, without no notice," Scraggs flared at them. "If you two stiffs ain't able to support yourselves you'd ought to apply for admission to the poorhouse or the Home For ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... I thought I was being good to 'em. S'posing we had sent grandpa away when he came tramping around to our house in Parker—Faith wanted to—where would we be now? Still grubbing in Parker trying to get enough to eat, 'most likely; or maybe in the poorhouse, for 'twas grandpa who paid the mortgage on the farm. I guess I must wait till I'm grown way up to have ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Burton Bound to Rise Boy's Fortune, A Chester Rand Digging for Gold Do and Dare Facing the World Frank and Fearless Frank Hunter's Peril Frank's Campaign Helping Himself Herbert Carter's Legacy In a New World Jack's Ward Jed, the Poorhouse Boy Lester's Luck Luck and Pluck Luke Walton Only an Irish Boy Paul Prescott's Charge Paul, the Peddler Phil, the Fiddler Ragged Dick Rupert's Ambition Shifting for Himself Sink or Swim Strong and Steady Struggling Upward Tattered Tom ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... big stationary engine at the summit. But it was the herald of the doom of the old-world England. Highways and coaching roads, canals and rivers, were abandoned and deserted. The old coachmen, once lords of the road, ended their days in the poorhouse, and steam, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... friendly, and gave them nuts out of their own hoards; but the bees were selfish and rude, justifying themselves on the ground that Tangle and Mossy were not subjects of their queen, and charity must begin at home, though indeed they had not one drone in their poorhouse at the time. Even the blinking moles would fetch them an earth-nut or a truffle now and then, talking as if their mouths, as well as their eyes and ears, were full of cotton wool, or their own velvety fur. By the time they got out of the forest they ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... the mail sack. Ma Pettengill slit envelopes and read letters to an accompanying rumble of protest. She several times wished to know what certain parties took her for—and they'd be fooled if they did; and now and again she dwelt upon the insoluble mystery of her not being in the poorhouse at that moment; yes, and she'd of been there long ago if she had let these parties run her business like they thought they could. But what could a lone defenceless woman expect? She'd show them, though! Been showing 'em for thirty ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... end in the poorhouse, it wouldn't be so hard after this. He was a totally different man from what he had been, and he would be respected and honoured in a very ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... I was beatin' out into the bay in my dory. All around was the fog, thin as poorhouse gruel so fur, but thickenin' every minute. I was worried; not for myself, you understand, but for that cowboy shover. I was afraid he wouldn't fetch t'other side of the Cut-through. There wan't much wind, and I had to make ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... poorhouse precisely twelve hours. It did not enter the minds of the authorities that any one so fortunate as to be admitted into that happy haven would decline to stay there. The unwilling guest disappeared early on the morrow of his arrival, and, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they had ever received any wages. It was certain that Hucks had not a dollar in the world at the present time, and if turned out of their old home the ancient couple must either starve or go to the poorhouse. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... had been," said Paul, wringing his hands. "He's taken all my money—I shall die in the poorhouse." ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... exclaimed his uncle, half ashamed and wholly angry. "Is that the way you repay me for keeping you out of the poorhouse?" ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... robbed me! Oh, this is dreadful! What shall I do? I am a poor man! Oh, I'll have to go to the poorhouse!" And the miser ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... Old Testament doctrine that the criminal should suffer the consequences of his act has had its effect, and the factor of expense has not been forgotten. Some of the States still permit county commissioners to commit the care of the poor to the lowest bidder. On the other hand the poorhouse has been transformed into a "Home for the Aged and Infirm" in some States, and inspections of public institutions by the grand jury are becoming more than merely cursory. State boards of charities are being ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... now in the poorhouse he travels aroun' In just the same way, An' asks the same questions right over ag'in, By night an' by day; But he haint foun' no feller can answer 'em yit, An' he's ol' an' he's gray, But these same ol' conundrums they trouble him so, That ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... I'll have her," cried Colonel Witham; "you've got to give her to me. What are you afraid of? I won't starve her. Where'll she go when you die, if you don't? Let her go to the poorhouse, will you?" ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... of day, having gained many miles, he succeeded in ridding himself of his seaman's clothing, having found some mouldy old rags on the banks of a stagnant pond, nigh a rickety building, which looked like a poorhouse—clothing not improbably, as he surmised, left there on the bank by some pauper suicide. Marvel not that he should with avidity seize these rags; what the suicides ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... medical aid or ministerial consolation. There was not simply studious neglect, but a strong prohibition against their entrance into institutions sustained by the county and State for white persons not more fortunate than they. At one time a good Quaker was superintendent of the county poorhouse. His heart was touched with kindest sympathy for the uncared-for Colored paupers in Cincinnati. He acted the part of a true Samaritan, and gave them separate quarters in the institution of which he was the official head. This fact came to the public ear, and the trustees of the poorhouse, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... city boards, departments, buildings, etc.: boards, bureaus, commissions, committees, titles of ordinance, acts, bills, postoffice, courthouse (unless preceded by proper noun), city hall, almshouse, poorhouse, house of correction, county hospital, the council, city council, district, precinct: e. g., the fire ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... this prospect. She was a little, faded woman, with a brown face and red-rimmed, weak eyes, washed by many years of sorrow to the palest nondescript colour. She crept through the world with no ambition but to die out of the poorhouse, no prayer but a petition that the parish might not bury her at the end, no joy save in her son. Life at best was a dreary business for her, and an occasional trip to Okehampton represented about the only brightness that ever crept ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... house, he had avoided all conversation with his mother regarding the young girl, and Mrs. Farnham, after sending the poor girl's wardrobe after her, seemed to have forgotten that such a being existed, except that she talked to her son about the ingratitude of the world in general, and of poorhouse creatures in particular. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... help that," Walter observed. "We're liable to go to the poorhouse the way it is. Well, what's the matter our walkin' ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... any poorhouse in Chicago," thought Walter, not wholly in jest. "It is not the sort of home I should prefer, but it ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... snapped his wife; "you think that more important than my nerves? I don't more'n half like Janet comin' here. If it hadn't been fur me, I know you'd taken her fur nothin'! No matter if I do have t' go t' the poorhouse on account of yer shiftlessness. I, stricken an' helpless! She can come here fur nothin'! I jest know, David, that it would be a real release fur a great, strong man like you to be rid of a poor stricken wife; but I guess you'll have to bide the ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... to go. I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. "Let me take away the whiskey, and give me a little money," he gasped. "I was a King once. I'll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poorhouse till I get my health. No, thank you, I can't wait till you get a carriage for me. I've urgent private ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... powerful incentive. He naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very early. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public charity. He was, in fact, better able to ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Calico's habit to be on the watch for unusual sights, and when he saw them to stick his ears forward, throw his head up, snort nervously and crowd against the pole. Generally he got one leg over a trace. There was a white bowlder at the top of Poorhouse Hill which Calico never passed without going through some ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... struggles of existence than those who are intellectually and emotionally and volitionally well-balanced. They will take wrong steps in life, they may be unsuccessful, their stupidity may lead them to the poorhouse, their recklessness may lead them to the penitentiary. And yet we do not speak of them as patients because their disproportionate mental features may be sufficiently corrected by other mental states which are perhaps ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... exemptions so unfairly enjoyed by them elsewhere. The taille, which was a personal tax in other parts of the kingdom, was in Languedoc an equitable land tax, assessed according to a valuation periodically revised. There was not a poorhouse in the whole province, and such was its prosperity and excellent administration that it enjoyed better credit in the market than the Central Government, and the king used sometimes, in order to get more favourable terms, to borrow on the security of the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... of pay, any more?" asked Mary relentlessly, and poor Maggie's eyes grew dark with fright as the conversation abruptly pointed her way. She sometimes waked up in misery in Mrs. Kilpatrick's warm bed, crying for fear that she was going to be sent back to the poorhouse. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... three friends from the start, however, who, in their several ways, help her to endure her troubles. One is Aunt Alvirah Boggs, who is nobody's relation but everybody's aunt, and whom Jabez Potter, the miller, has taken from the poorhouse to keep his home tidy and comfortable. Aunt Alvirah sees the good underlying miserly Uncle Jabez's character when nobody else can. She lavishes upon the little orphan girl all the love and affection that she would have given to her own ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... "I expect they can stand all you eat without going to the poorhouse. It's a bargain then. I'll take you out ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... "to glorify the present." This is the avowed object of the second of his distinctly political works, which following on the track of the first, Charlism, and written in a similar spirit, takes higher artistic rank. Past and Present, suggested by a visit to the poorhouse of St. Ives and by reading the chronicle of Jocelin de Brakelond, was undertaken as a duty, while he was mainly engaged on a greater work,—the duty he felt laid upon him to say some thing that should bear directly on the welfare of the people, especially of the poor around ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... more served faithfully and well. Names, dates, commanders, ports, ships, engagements, and battles, rolled from his lips in a steady stream, but it is beyond me to remember them all, for it is not quite in keeping to take notes at the poorhouse door. He had been through the "First War in China," as he termed it; had enlisted with the East India Company and served ten years in India; was back in India again, in the English navy, at the time ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... that for the last few months of her pilgrimage Jess was left alone. Yet I may not say that she was alone. Jamie, who should have been with her, was undergoing his own ordeal far away; where, we did not now even know. But though the poorhouse stands in Thrums, where all may see it, the neighbors did ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Poorhouse System and the substitution in its stead of adequate outdoor relief to the aged and the infirm, and the employment of the able-bodied in the reclamation of waste lands, afforestation, and other ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... to be my mistress. I won't have no mistress. When her time is come, I shall be in the poorhouse at Portsmouth, because I shan't be able to earn a penny to buy gin for him." As she said this, Mrs ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... that—and a whole lot more. Said I've eternally disgraced him and dragged him down and will land him in jail or the poorhouse. And I guess maybe it's so. Only all the time he was talking I kept thinking how he teased me to marry him. I really liked Bud Willis over in Elmwood better, in a way, than I did John. And I meant to marry Bud. ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... standing beside the dinner-table. He ate more heartily than before, for his forenoon's labor made even poorhouse fare palatable. ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... when that's gone I don't know," said she, commencing to cry again, "unless I find George. I won't live on you, though, ma'am," she said, lifting her face up quickly out of her handkerchief; "I won't, indeed. I'll go to the poorhouse ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the funeral, and the last services were performed. Then, at length, Philip realized that he had lost his best earthly friend, and that he was henceforth alone in the world. He did not as yet know that Squire Pope had considerately provided him with a home in the village poorhouse. ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... the Revolution, and did not see the ruin which overtook his family. The property which had passed into the hands of his grandchildren was confiscated. They were guilty of loyalty to the crown and country for which their ancestor had fought, and the third generation was saved from the poorhouse "by the bounty of individuals on whom they had no claims for favour." In other words, Pepperell's memory was dishonoured, because in serving New England he had worn the king's uniform. In the eyes of the newly emancipated, treachery was retrospective. Pepperell's biographer explains ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... so fixed that you receive the interest as long as you live and have no power over the sum itself. It's not yours to use, to transfer or yet to bequeath. In your case the one safe investment, the single way I see to keep you out of the poorhouse." ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... tell. She was going to send me to the poorhouse, when Mr. Maxwell took me in. I have often and often wanted to see the room where we lived in, and where mother died, but she wouldn't let me go up. One day I begged and cried for her to let me go up—I wanted to, so bad; but she called ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... successful. We happened to be recreating at Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monson Poorhouse. We were passing through one of the large halls, when my ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... old Sarah Cooper was to be taken to the poorhouse. She was broken-hearted. One man took the poor, bed-ridden, fretful old creature into his home, paid for medical attendance, and waited on her himself, when his housekeeper couldn't endure her tantrums and temper. Sarah Cooper died two years afterwards, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... by the drink. Only place we can sell brandy is at Storisende spaceport, and we have to take what the trading-ship captains offer. You've been on a rich planet for the last five years, Conn. You've forgotten what it's like to live in a poorhouse. And that's ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... enough to waken the echoes of all the lower regions, down came a red-headed, drunken shoemaker. I can not say that he was drunk at that moment, but I knew the man the moment I saw his carroty poll, and it was drink which had sent him to the poorhouse. ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... believe you would," said Tom. "Well, I'll tell you. You see I live at the poorhouse, having no relations to take care of me, and no place to live. But in the summer I hire out to the farmers around here that want me, and work to earn ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... objected the old woman. "'Tain't me that's done for him. I was a poor lone creeter in the poorhouse when Jabez Potter came and took me out. I know that deep down in his old heart there's a flame of charity. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... idle poor of this island could in six months be taught how to earn six pence each per day, the aggregate benefit to the Irish and to mankind would be greater than that of all the gold mines yet discovered. The Poorhouse Unions could be nearly emptied in a year, and this whole population comfortably fed, clad and housed within the next three years. A beginning must be made with the simplest or household manufactures, for want of means to establish ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... it as straight as a string. Two days to get to it and to stake a claim; two days to come out with a couple of horses loaded to the guards. And that itself means a fortune, if it's clean, raw gold, as would seem to be the case. We need not fear the poorhouse, you ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... stated, that old folks who are sent over the hill to the poorhouse have invited their fate. And conversely, elderly people who are treated with courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect are those who, in manhood's morning, have sown the seeds of love and kindness. Water rises to the height of its source; results ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... He had begun by being a reckless gamester; and in that way he lost fifteen hundred thousand crowns, about six millions (of francs) of our day. "I don't know," said he, "whether I shall die on the scaffold or not; but I will never come to the poorhouse." He added, "When peace is concluded, the king's love-affairs, the scarcity of his largesses, and the discontent of many will lead to plenty of splits, more than are necessary to embroil the most peaceful kingdoms in the world. And, should that fail, we ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... smiling, "I'm afraid we can't conceive of that. We consider the pinch of poverty the highest incentive that a man can have. If our gifted friend here," he said, indicating me, "were not kept like a toad under the harrow, with his nose on the grindstone, and the poorhouse staring him ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... 4a3b4c3b4d3e4f3e, 6: Jack and Tom prevail upon their rich and aged father to send away their brother Fred as a "black sheep." Later, just as these two Pharisees are about to send the old man to the poorhouse, Fred reappears and saves ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... a Nicholson pavement—it wants a jail and a poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary imbecility, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Smith, 'when it was clear that he couldn't do nuthin', we ast him if the' wa'n't nobody could put up fer him, an' he said you was his brother, an' well off, an' hadn't ought to let him go t' the poorhouse.' ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... "View? Our next view will be the poorhouse if we don't hustle our stumps. We got to get out of here and find the cheapest place they is in town to live or go back home on ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... mother both died, leaving nothing, and the people wanted to send me to the poorhouse; but I didn't like that, so I borrowed five dollars and came to New York. When I got here I began to think I should have to go back again. I tried to get a place and couldn't. Finally, I bought some papers and earned a little money selling them. It was better than nothing; but all ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... and mebby he duz mean to vote different. He voted license to help Jonesville, most of the bizness men of the town sayin' that it would help bizness dretfully to have license. Well, it has helped the undertaker, the jail and the poorhouse. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Thousands starved to death. When I was at Deli Abbas ghastly bands of ragged skeletons would come through to us begging food and work. Soane turned a large khan on the outskirts of the town into a poorhouse, and here he lodged the starving women and children that drifted in from all over Kurdistan. It was a fearful assemblage of scarecrows. As they got better he selected women from among them to whom he turned ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... to give away more stuff?" demanded his sister. "Why, you'll be in the poorhouse first thing ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... they do that, there is no stopping. The bank at the Corners failed, and I lost my savings. The turkeys wandered away, the cow died, and now there's the mortgage. It's due to-morrow, and then—the man that holds it will wait no longer. So it is the poorhouse, which I have ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Joe was the poorest person in the town. He was the only boy there who really had no home and nobody to care for him. Three or four years before this March morning, Joe had been left an orphan, and being utterly destitute, he should have been sent to the poorhouse, or "bound out" to some person as a sort of servant. But Joe Lambert had refused to go to the poorhouse or to become a bound boy. He had declared his ability to take care of himself, and by working hard at odd ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... me curiously. "Is grandpa rich?" she asked. "He says sometimes that the greenhouses cost so much money that they will send him to the poorhouse. I do not think grandpa can be rich. But if he were rich," she cried out indignantly, "that makes no difference: he has nothing but me—nothing to care about. There was poor grandmamma: she died—oh so long ago!—and my uncles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... O me unhappy, Wandered on, O me unhappy, Wretched on the shores to wander, Toiling on, for ever wretched, Always to the doors of strangers, Always to the gates of strangers, On the beach, with poorest children, Sufferers of the village poorhouse. 830 ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... than him have been bound out in this neighborhood!" said Chase sharply. "If you don't want to do it, don't do it. That's all I've got to say. If you'd rather go to the poorhouse than see your son in steady and honorable employment, in a good home, and learning a business under a man that's made some success of it, that's your lookout, not mine. But that's where you'll land the minute you set your foot ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of play-day," said Daddy Bunker, "and I want you children to have a good time. I don't suppose one more ride will do any harm," he said to his wife. "And, I'll try to keep out of the poorhouse until we can use the sixty-five dollars in the pocketbook ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... behind us! I tell you we'll dodge them now. Why in blazes did I ever bother to take that other brat from the poorhouse where its mother died? It was your plan to substitute one child for the other, Bessie. I wanted to steal Merriwell's kid in the first place. Furies take him! I swore years ago to strike at his heart when the time came. He was ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... gin mill, gin palace; bar, bar room; barrel house [U.S.], cabaret, chophouse; club, clubhouse; cookshop^, dive [U.S.], exchange [Euph.]; grill room, saloon [U.S.], shebeen^; coffee house, eating house; canteen, restaurant, buffet, cafe, estaminet^, posada^; almshouse^, poorhouse, townhouse [U.S.]. garden, park, pleasure ground, plaisance^, demesne. [quarters for animals] cage, terrarium, doghouse; pen, aviary; barn, stall; zoo. V. take up one's abode &c (locate oneself) 184; inhabit &c (be present) 186. Adj. urban, metropolitan; suburban; provincial, rural, rustic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... be shaken, Silvia," her friend answered. "Of course everybody in the country knows that you live in daily fear of the poorhouse, and keep an advertising bureau busy trying to find you employment! However, I suspected you would make these silly objections, so I told Frank Earl yesterday that he ought to move heaven and earth to get you to defend his brother. He nearly fell on my ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... and his weaker sons; we exploit them, gull them, poison them, lie to them, filch from them. We crowd them into our money mills; we deny them youth, we deny them rest, we deny them opportunity, we deny them hope, or any hope of hope; and we provide for age—the poorhouse. So that charity is become of all words the most feared, most hated, most loathed and loathsome; worse than crime or shame or death. We have left them from the work of their hands enough, scantly enough, to keep breath within their stunted bodies. "All the traffic ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... mosques. The Touloun is exquisite—noble, simple, and what ornament there is is the most delicate lacework and embossing in stone and wood. This Arab architecture is even more lovely than our Gothic. The Touloun is now a vast poorhouse, a nest of paupers. I went into three of their lodgings. Several Turkish families were in a large square room neatly divided into little partitions with old mats hung on ropes. In each were as many bits of carpet, mat ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... wonder!" Noyon and Peronne are sacked and ruined. At Chauny 1800 houses out of 2500 were deliberately burned, and at a distance they bombarded the remainder, full of old folks and children whom they had parked there. All the public buildings, churches, hospitals and poorhouse were blown up. Three hundred towns and villages were burning at one time in this small section of the Cradle of France. Hindenburg was at Roisel when they rounded up the populations, went through their pockets for their money (giving "receipts"), took their clothes off ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... home to his own girl!" she said. "I saw her in the street the other day, and I wouldn't have been seen dead with the hat she had on; not a flower, nor even a scrap of a feather; just a plain band and a goose-quill stuck in it. Real poorhouse, I thought it looked, and he as rich as a Jew. I guess I sha'n't go to Mr. Gordon; he's just as hateful as he can be. He gave out word that no one was to touch that bag, nor so much as go near it; and he had it set off in a corner of the outer shed, ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... fine view of the squire's new tomb and the poorhouse, with a wing of the jail behind the trees. And I've stuck my second-best hat in that broken pane of glass, and there's a chest of drawers to set against the door; so you'll be warm and free from intrusion. I wish you ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... listened to the band playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes, mostly rockaways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at the unveiling of the new poorhouse at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove, and lifted their high silk hats to their friends. The common people walked around in barefooted bunches, puffing stogies that ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the case of those who are able and willing to work. There remain still the uncounted thousands who by accident or illness, age or infirmity, are unable to maintain themselves. For these people, under the older dispensation, there was nothing but the poorhouse, the jail or starvation by the roadside. The narrow individualism of the nineteenth century refused to recognize the social duty of supporting somebody else's grandmother. Such charity began, and ended, at home. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... asthore, the poorhouse is such a dangerous place for Catholics. I heard the priest say he would call to-morrow; and may be he will do ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... the old man sorrowfully. "The poorhouse in Aneholm parish and the poorhouse in Tomtebacke, some way from here, can't agree which should keep me, and now they are lawing about it. I've had a fever, and I seem to be broke down. I don't belong anywhere just now, but Karin there in the ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... seat in a corner had looked on and listened to all, and now followed the bishop down to the street, and on until they came to a big building. The boy did not know then what place it was. Afterward he learned that it was the poorhouse. ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... heard of anyone going to the poorhouse, or into bankruptcy," I said, "because of the money spent on a child. I fancy I can pay ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... entered the trust in good faith has spent the money they gave him, and tries to sell the stock he received, it has gone down to seven cents on a dollar, and the trust buys it in, and he cables his family to come home in the steerage of a cattle ship. His old employees have gone to the poorhouse or to selling bananas with a cart, and the former manufacturer who was happy and prosperous has become poor and shabby, and he looks at his closed factory, with its broken windows, and he tries to get a position pushing a scraper on the asphalt pavement, and if he fails he either ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... was an old fellow in our place who owned considerable property—at any rate he was taxed for fifteen thousand dollars. Whenever taxes became due he was always groanin' and predictin' that he'd end his days in the poorhouse. My father, who was only taxed for fifteen hundred, said to him one day, 'Mr. Higgins, if you'll give me half of your property, I'll agree to pay taxes on the whole, so that you'll ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... of his rank, not his capacity of course, Sir Richard was in great demand in Wreckumoft. He was chairman at every public meeting; honorary member of every society; a director in the bank, the insurance company, the railway, the poorhouse, and the Sailors' Home; in all of which positions and institutions he was a positive nuisance, because of his insane determination to speak as long as possible, when he had not the remotest notion of what he wished to say, so that business was in his presence brought almost to ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... first two of these stories one may see most clearly the principle that underlay almost all of Dickens's work. He was never content merely to tell an interesting story. He wrote with a purpose. In Oliver Twist that purpose was, first, to better the poorhouse system, and second, to show that even in the lowest and wickedest paths of life (the life wherein lived Fagin with his pupils in crime and Bill Sikes the brutal burglar) there could yet be found, as in the case of poor Nancy, ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... no will, for the good and sufficient reason that he had no property to dispose of. So, on the day after the funeral, Sam found himself a candidate for the poorhouse. He was a stout boy of twelve, strong and sturdy in spite of insufficient food, and certainly had suffered ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... well-meant efforts to "run" her house for her that he was obliged to "board 'em" with the Dowd girls, an arrangement that seemed to satisfy every one concerned except the farmer himself, who never missed an opportunity to praise the food and the comforts to be enjoyed at the county "poorhouse" when he paid his semi-annual visit to the venerable dependents; Mr. Charlie Webster, the rotund manager of the grain elevator, who spent every Saturday night and Sunday in the city and showed up for duty ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... have little or no literary news here. Our poets are all going to the poorhouse (except Tennyson), and our prose writers are piling up their works for the next 5th of November, when there will be a great bonfire. It is deuced lucky that my immortal (ah! I am De Quinceying)—I mean my humble—performances were printed in America, so that they will escape. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... poorer man than his son, and was very sore on the subject; but he had nothing beyond a life interest in his property, and there remained to him a certain amount of prudence which induced him to abstain from eating more of his pudding,—lest absolute starvation and the poorhouse should befall him. There still remained to him the power of spending some five or six hundred a year, and upon this practice had taught him to live with a very considerable amount of self-indulgence. He dined out a great deal, and was known everywhere ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... "It is different with my father. My father has what is called a regular income. One of these days I shall inherit it. It will keep us out of the poorhouse. But meanwhile I have only the pittance that he ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... a giddy idler for a year or so. But it's up to me. I have to get into the collar. Otherwise I should have stayed south all winter. You know we've just got home. I had to loaf in the sun for practically a year. Now I have to get busy. I don't mean to say that the poorhouse stares us in the face, you know, but unless a certain amount of revenue is forthcoming, we simply can't afford ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... not going to be so severe as that, are you?" pleaded Bartley. "A few dollars, more or less, are not going to keep us out of the poorhouse. I just want to stay here three days: that will leave us a clean hundred, and we can start fair." He was half joking, but she was ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... her husband and left without a dollar or a friend to face life and care for herself and babies. The case came into the hands of the Mission and she was cared for by them until the time of her confinement, when, with her children, she was taken to Dunning Poorhouse where she was kindly cared for. A baby boy was born to G. Great pressure was brought to bear upon this little Italian mother who spoke no word of English, to induce her to give up her children. Frightened and weeping, she refused to do this, declaring she would ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... savages. But seven thousand of these banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the British colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia—one thousand and twenty to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without resources, hating the poorhouse as a shelter for their offspring, and abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households, too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... blockhead! What else could you expect of her! Probably she hasn't any wit; besides, she isn't bound on a very jolly journey—got a pass up the road to the poorhouse. I'll go and tell her, and if you forget her to-night, see if I don't make mince-meat of you!" and our worthy ticket agent shook his fist menacingly at ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... told in the first volume of this series, entitled "Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm; or, The Mystery of a Nobody." At Bramble Farm Betty had met Bob Henderson, a lad a year or so older than herself and a ward from the county poorhouse. The girl and boy had become fast friends, and when Bob learned enough of his mother's family to make him want to know all and in pursuit of that knowledge had fled to Washington, it seemed providential ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... bulrushes, Emmy dear," corrected Rebecca laughingly. "Pharaoh's daughter found him there. It wasn't quite as romantic a scene—Squire Bean's wife taking little Abijah Flagg from the poorhouse when his girl-mother died, but, oh, I think Abijah's splendid! Mr. Ladd says Riverboro'll be proud of him yet, and I shouldn't wonder, Emmy dear, if you had a three-story house with a cupola on it, some day; ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lumberman's boarding-houses,—just so long as his money lasted, not one instant more. Then he was bundled brutally into the street, no matter what his condition might be. Penniless, without friends, sick, he drifted naturally to the county poorhouse. There he was patched up quickly and sent out half-cured. The authorities were not so much to blame. With the slender appropriations at their disposal, they found difficulty in taking care of those who came legitimately ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... too,—if it made the other side safe I 'm all right, but if it drowned there 'll be another bill. It ain't no use your tryin' to cheer me up, Mrs. Lathrop, because I ain't to be cheered. I know I 'm goin' to the poorhouse, 'n' I don't thank you nor no other man for tellin' me to my face as what I know ain't so. Gran'ma Mullins 'n' me is two very sad hearts these days, 'n' Heaven help us both. To hear her talk you 'd think the Siamese twins was the sun and moon apart compared ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... not by generously presenting her with the things that she desired, still quite as effectually by crippling the energy of her desires, until they were content to sun themselves quietly in a row, like aged, enfeebled paupers along the south wall of the poorhouse. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... government, instead of by their friend Rhodes and his Chartered Company of highwaymen, for these latter take half of whatever their mining victims find, they do not stop at a mere percentage. If the Johannesburg miners were under their jurisdiction they would be in the poorhouse ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Irish worker's fight is, the able person is loath to give up and accept charity. But whether she wants to or not, if she can't find work she must go to the poorhouse. Before the war it was estimated that over one-half the inmates of the Irish workhouses were employable. During the war, when there were more jobs than usual to be had, there was a great exodus from the hated poorhouse; there was a drop in workhouse ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... said she never would grow up, and I believe it. I was afraid when I went away she had some scheme in her mind. She's always getting up fool ideas. I remember that time when Mrs. Marsh died she wanted to adopt the twins and bring them up. The idea! When there was a county poorhouse and no reason why they shouldn't go to it! But she'll have to come down off her independence and be sensible. Herbert says we can't have any of her foolishness. It's us that would have to suffer if she got into trouble and lost what little she's got, and I suppose I've got to have ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... marry us. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership—husband and wife as partners. But if the man knew as little about his part of the job as the woman generally does about hers when she gets married, most married couples would be in the poorhouse in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... all, and the people of this country as prosperous as any on earth, then the fault must be in the plan itself, and not in the resources which we possess, for of those we have enough to empty every poorhouse in the land, and eighty-five per cent. ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... general angrily. "My clover! I tell you, they won't leave me a roof over my head. They'll eat me into the poorhouse. But I'll turn them off. I'll send them packing, bag and baggage. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... fellow concluded by saying that our house was so much bigger than theirs that he thought we would have more roomfor beds. The old woman herself said absolutely nothing, but looking on with that gripping fear of the poorhouse in her eyes, she was a living embodiment of that dread which is so heartbreaking that the occupants of the County Infirmary themselves seem scarcely less wretched than those who are making their ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... to market. He had said to the kitchen potentate that he would take supper with a friend in town and therefore would not be back before nine in the evening. This friend was the official keeper of the poorhouse and had been a crony of Holcroft's in early life. He had taken to politics instead of farming, and now had attained to what he and his acquaintances spoke of as a "snug berth." Holcroft had maintained with this man a friendship based partly on business relations, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... case of "He Fell in Love with His Wife," I merely saw a paragraph in a paper to the effect that a middle-age widower, having found it next to impossible to carry on his farm with hired help, had gone to the county poorhouse and said "If there's a decent woman here, I'll marry her." For years the homely item remained an ungerminating seed in my mind, then started to grow, and the story was ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... unmistakable accent of sincerity. He hobbled off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings, and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "Good mornin', an' 'tis a foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe would be as welkim as the flowers of May, an' 'tis England is the grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that Englishmen is tin per cint. betther ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... appearance sake and a smuggler for preference. The question of Sophie's legitimacy anses from the fact that her mother, Jane Callaway, was registered at death as "a spinster.'' Sophie was one of ten children. Dickey Daw drank his family into the poorhouse, an institution which sent Sophie to fend for herself in 1805, procuring her a place as servant at ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... of parish priest in his boyhood, and this is how he introduces him. He has been describing, with an unmitigated realism, the village poorhouse, in ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... pabulum of these two men consisted of an offended nasal comment extended through the years upon the institution—army, business, or poorhouse—which kept them alive, and toward their immediate superior in that institution. Until that very morning the institution had been the "government" and the immediate superior had been the "Cap'n"—from these two they had glided ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... built, or an important road in which several communities are interested is to be constructed, the county government can best raise the money and manage the work. So, too, in caring for the poor, the county may aid the local governments, or it may take entire charge of the paupers, and maintain a poorhouse. ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... steward of the county poorhouse in one of the eastern counties of Pennsylvania during the sixties, that spoke these words, and the circumstance that called forth the language was the appearance and request of Mrs. Fischer, a well-dressed young widow. The latter had come to the poorhouse with the intention ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... strange things to be seen. One evening a swarm of poor people with candles in their hands appeared to a dishonest guardian of the poor at Perugia, and danced round about him; a great figure spoke in threatening tones on their behalf, it was St. Alo, the patron saint of the poorhouse. These modes of belief were so much a matter of course that the poets could make use of them as something which every reader would understand. The appearance of the slain Lodovico Pico under the walls of the besieged Mirandola is finely represented by Castiglione. It is true that ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the plate, and take up a slight collection, are looked upon as men who would commit a crime. Why, gentlemen, our profession is more respectable than that of the man who is appointed administrator of the estate of his dead friend, and who blows in the money and lets the widow and orphan go to the poorhouse, or the officer of a savings bank who borrows the money of the poor and when they hear that he is flying high demand their money, and he closes the bank, and eventually pays seven cents on the dollar, and is looked upon as a great financier. It has been a pleasure to us to have ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck |
