We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be.

We never had been, and we didn't know what to do.

We'd been almost rich; there was plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the town; he wanted to be richer, but instead--well, just about the time your father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything.
People say that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in comparison with other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't anything--we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything.
You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'-- and I wonder myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!--as if a wave of the hand made you into a stenographer.

No, I'd been raised to be either married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry.

The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there--and I didn't know how to be a stenographer.