hard-got

After the endurance of a week's delirium, madness, and unconsciousness, they generally find themselves, when robbed of the greater portion of their hard-got earnings, thrust upon the world penniless, wretched, dispirited, and sick, to seek employment and re-enact the same scenes of solitary penance and wild debauchery.

Fern Vale (Volume 1) or the Queensland Squatter Colin Munro

But when I witnessed the lowering of the coffin to its future resting-place -- heard the soft crumbling of the churchyard soil, as it dropped from the grasp of the sexton on the below-sounding coffin, down below -- the anguished but stifled moan of the childless father, who had apparently expended his hard-got earnings for the interment of his child -- I not only repassed the gates considerably affected, but overpowered with an indescribable dread of impending death.

Confessions of an Etonian I. E. M.