1 Marija listened with sympathy; it was easy to believe the tale of his late starvation, for his face showed it all.
2 Once again, as when he had come out of the hospital, he was bound hand and foot, and facing the grisly phantom of starvation.
3 In such a place Ona would not have stayed a day, but for starvation; and, as it was, she was never sure that she could stay the next day.
4 The winter went, and the spring came, and found them still living thus from hand to mouth, hanging on day by day, with literally not a month's wages between them and starvation.
5 A month ago Jurgis had all but perished of starvation upon the streets; and now suddenly, as by the gift of a magic key, he had entered into a world where money and all the good things of life came freely.
6 Grandmother Majauszkiene had lived in the midst of misfortune so long that it had come to be her element, and she talked about starvation, sickness, and death as other people might about weddings and holidays.
7 Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery.