# John Hardshaw — In the Midst of Life character guide

> John Hardshaw in In the Midst of Life by Ambrose Bierce.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** John, Hardshaw

**First appearance:** 0065-a-lady-from-redhorse

## Snapshot

A shabby, aging applicant shuffling through winter snow toward the Abersush Home for Old Men, carrying a past that the charity's rules have no room for.

## Who they are

Hardshaw arrives at the Home's gate in midwinter, ill-clad but with a strange fitness and good taste about him, and deliberately avoids the bright lamp over the main door in favor of a dimmer side entrance. The superintendent, Mr. Tilbody, regards every new inmate as a personal insult, and the institution itself treats poverty as a qualification rather than a misfortune. Hardshaw's quiet, evasive approach to the place signals that his need is not simply for shelter, and his arrival opens the story's examination of charity, shame, and what the old are made to pay for their keep.

## In the story

### [The Man Out of the Nose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_midst_of_life_se/chapters/the-man-out-of-the-nose)

Once a wealthy physician and socialite, now a broken man living in poverty, compelled by a daily ritual of walking to stare at a window associated with his lost love, Mrs. Barwell.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_midst_of_life_se/characters/john_hardshaw
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_midst_of_life_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_midst_of_life_se/characters