There was one man in the town who was known to be getting rich, while all the rest grew poor.

Even the keepers of the dram-shops, though they seemed to do a thriving business, did not thrive.

A great deal of work was done, but people were paid very little for it.

If a man tried to leave the town for the purpose of improving his condition, there was always some mortgage on his property, or some impossibility of selling what he had for money, or his absolute dependence on each day's labor for each day's bread, that stood in the way.

One by one--sick, disabled, discouraged, dead-beaten--they drifted into the poor-house, which, as the years went on, grew into a shabby, double pile of buildings, between which ran a county road.
This establishment was a county as well as a town institution, and, theoretically, one group of its buildings was devoted to the reception of county paupers, while the other was assigned to the poor of Sevenoaks.