"Almshouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... provided for the inhabitants at the public expense, fearing that it must needs be a most comfortless one, or else their choice (if choice it were) of so miserable a life outside was truly difficult to account for. Accordingly, I visited a great almshouse, and was glad to observe how unexceptionably all the parts of the establishment were carried on, and what an orderly life, full-fed, sufficiently reposeful, and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of authority, seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... started for Southampton. And along the jolly Portsmouth Road we went, through Guildford, along the Hog's Back, over the Surrey Downs rolling warm in the sunshine, through Farnham, through grey, dreamy Winchester, past St. Cross, with its old-world almshouse, through Otterbourne and up the hill and down to Southampton, seventy-eight miles, in two hours and a quarter. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... journal, recently mentions the death in the almshouse of St. Petersburg of a man aged 122 years, whose mental faculties were preserved up to his death, and who had excellent health to the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... can plead guilty to neither; but I find you very much more of a sceptic than becomes your cloth. If you care to know about the dark lane you might do worse than ask my housekeeper that lived at the other end of it when she was a child.' 'Yes,' said I, 'and the old women in the almshouse and the children in the kennel. If I were you, I would send to your brother Quinn for a bolus to clear your brain.' 'Damn Quinn,' says he; 'talk no more of him: he has embezzled four of my best patients this month; I believe it is that cursed ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... events, the two subjects to divide the program equally. The club was to hold itself in readiness to grapple with questions of civic improvement, and already a committee had been appointed to arrange for a Harvest Home Festival at the county almshouse for the edification of the inmates. It really began to look as if the horizon of a number of people would be enlarged and the community as a whole uplifted, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... on some old pier or perched on some worm fence, looking straight up at the sky, as if it might answer the riddle of his father's hate and his own unreciprocated affection. He would also, on rainy or cold days, when the inmates could not stir abroad, mount his horse and ride to the almshouse beyond the town mill, and, taking a pleasant story or ballad from his pocket, read to the huddled paupers, as well as to the keeper's family, attracted by his pleasant condescension. By degrees the boy's face also took the shadow worn by ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... to you where I got it," said our hero, returning the money to his pocket. "I shan't go to the almshouse till this I is ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... neither picturesque nor quaint, but only tame; its long and lazy street, lounging wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the almshouse at the other—such being the features of my native town it would be quite as reasonable to form a sentimental ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... the Doctor, "why he would be as crazy with the hypo as a March hare. He would insist that he was going to die, or to the almshouse. He has made two or three dozen wills, to my certain knowledge, under the firm conviction that he would be in the ground in a week. A ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... would never suffer her to be imposed on by a parcel of girls who didn't care whether she lived or died—who perhaps would rather she did die—who stood open-handed for her bequests; she would leave her money to the almshouse, and if we wanted it we could go and get it there! And after that, to be sure, Aunt Pen would have a fit of remorse for her words, and confess her sin chokingly, and have us all come separately and forgive her, and would say she was the wretchedest woman on the face ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... ain't no need to be such a vast army of poverty marching on to the almshouse and grave, if it wuzn't for the dram-shop temptin' poor human nater, and the greed of the world, and the cowardice and indifference of the Church of Christ. Enough money is squandered for stuff that degrades ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... deficient in almshouses, the only houses of the kind having been pulled down between 1860 and 1870. These stood opposite the Vestry Hall, and are mentioned below. The Almshouse Charity includes the charity of Frances King. It is described as having been mentioned first on the Court Rolls of the manor of Paddington in 1720, but Lysons, in referring to the same charity, says: "Several small almshouses were built at the parish expense in the ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Frankland: "but that is the fault of my pride, and of my old prejudices; which are hard to conquer at my time of life. It is certain, I do not much like the thoughts of going into an almshouse." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... such impudence! That coughing has disturbed me for some time. Anybody would think you'd got into an almshouse for old women—Where is ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there amongst the poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The steps of this good man had been ordered him hither by Heaven's decree: to this almshouse! Here it was ordained that a life all love, and kindness, and honour, should end! I heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon, after that. How dared I to be in a place of mark, and he, he yonder among the poor? Oh, pardon, you noble ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... England. The other relic of the prosperity of Ewelme under the De la Poles is the hospital and school they founded. "God's House" is the name now given to it, and it is kept in good repair and used as an almshouse. The inner court is surrounded by cloisters, and the whole is in exactly the same condition as when it was built. The higher parts, constructed of brick, were the quarters of the priest and schoolmaster. The ruin and subsequent murder of the Duke, who adorned and beautified this model village ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... (a/c) dekalkulo. Allowance (share) porcio. All-powerful cxiopova. Allude aludi. Allure logi. Allurement logo. Allusion aludo. Alluvial akvemetita. Ally interligi. Almanac almanako. Almighty cxiopova. Almost preskaux. Almond migdalo. Alms almozo. Almshouse maljunulejo. Aloes aloo. Aloft supre. Alone sola (adj.), sole (adv.). Along with kune kun. Aloof, to keep eviti. Aloud lauxte. Alphabet alfabeto. Alps Alpoj. Already jam. Also ankaux. Altar altaro. Alter aliigi. Alteration aliigo. Altercation ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... an answer, Master Ned, you shall have it," replied he. "You were taken by me, boy, a foundling from an almshouse; and if ever hereafter you desire to know your kindred, you must take your chance of the first man you meet. He is as likely to be ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reading and writing, but also in the knowledge and fear of the Lord. As it is now, the school is kept very irregularly, one and another keeping it according to his pleasure and as long as he thinks proper. There ought also to be an almshouse and an orphan asylum, and other similar institutions. The minister who now goes home, should be able to give a much fuller explanation thereof. The country must also be provided with godly, honorable and intelligent rulers who are not ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... child handicapped by a weak constitution, an overcrowded home, inadequate food and care, and possibly a deficient mental equipment, winding up in prison or an almshouse, is too evident for comment. Every jail, hospital for the insane, reformatory and institution for the feebleminded cries out against the evils of too ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... repeated. "Tomorrow we are put out—then a public asylum for my mother—and the street or the almshouse for my father." Even now she was not thinking of herself. If it came to that she still believed God would not resent her opening for herself the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Mrs. Scattergood!" she exclaimed, turning to the old lady who had been in receipt of her confidences. "Is the almshouse near Poketown?" ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... back to Edinburgh with the deputation from "Auld Reekie," and I never saw Father Mathew again. He was, unquestionably, the most remarkable temperance reformer who has yet appeared. While a Catholic priest in Cork, a Quaker friend, Mr. Martin, who met him in an almshouse, said to him, "Father Theobald, why not give thyself to the work of saving men from the drink?" Father Mathew immediately commenced his enterprise. It spread over Ireland like wildfire. It is computed that no less than five millions of people took the pledge of total ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... consisting chiefly of mines, which, when he began to work them, turned out valueless, after entailing enormous expense. Loss upon loss succeeded, and in the end bankruptcy. I have even heard that this man, once so envied for his wealth, died the inmate of an almshouse. ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... have ruined this country; and if the Church of England is satisfied with being reconciled to the Church of Rome, and thinks it a compensation for the loss of America and all credit in Europe, she is as silly an old woman as any granny in an almshouse. France is very glad we have grown such fools, and soon saw that the Presbyterian Dr. Franklin[1] had more sense than our Ministers together. She has got over all her prejudices, has expelled the Jesuits, and made the Protestant Swiss, Necker,[2] her Comptroller-general. It is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the Revolution, the Penitentiary was established at Bellevue. In 1816, a portion of the almshouse was set apart for the punishment of felons, by the institution of the treadmill. This was on Twenty-sixth street, near First avenue, the present site of Bellevue Hospital, and its part occupancy as a prison somewhat relieved the overcrowded condition ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... was dead; it seemed that she had fallen a victim to some uncanny power. The minister talked in the pulpit with covert severity against the sin of superstition; still the belief prevailed. Not a soul in the village but would have chosen the almshouse rather than that dwelling. No vagrant, if he heard the tale, would seek shelter beneath that old roof, unhallowed by nearly half a century of ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... mental defectives from the almshouse used occasionally to wander over to his cabin in the woods, and he would treat them with gentle consideration, and accompany ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... tell him you are sorry for what you said, and ask him to forgive you," persisted Mrs. Wittleworth. "This is no time for poor people to be proud. The times are so hard that I made only a dollar last week, and if you lose your place, we must go to the almshouse." ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... and a portion of the wealth which had become of little value in his eyes, since it had caused dissension and bloodshed between the sons of one household. It was a common mode of charity in those days—a common thing for rich men to do—to found an almshouse or a hospital, and endow it, for the support of a certain number of old and destitute men or women, generally such as had some claim of blood upon the founder, or at least were natives of the parish, the district, the county, where he dwelt. The Eldredge ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when I came out an old man told us they received three loaves (cakes as big as a sailor's biscuit), four piastres a month—i.e., eightpence per adult—a suit of clothes a year, and on festive occasions lentil soup. Such is the almshouse here. A little crowd belonging to the house had collected, and I gave sixpence to an old man, who transferred it to the first old man to be divided among them all, ten or twelve people at least, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... house, pub, pot house, mug house; gin mill, gin palace; bar, bar room; barrel house [U.S.], cabaret, chophouse; club, clubhouse; cookshop^, dive [U.S.], exchange [Euph.]; grill room, saloon [U.S.], shebeen^; coffee house, eating house; canteen, restaurant, buffet, cafe, estaminet^, posada^; almshouse^, poorhouse, townhouse [U.S.]. garden, park, pleasure ground, plaisance^, demesne. [quarters for animals] cage, terrarium, doghouse; pen, aviary; barn, stall; zoo. V. take up one's abode &c (locate oneself) 184; inhabit &c (be present) 186. Adj. urban, metropolitan; suburban; provincial, rural, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fearlessness and freshness in regions where there has been nothing but timid convention for a long time; but what I was thinking of was the personification of Death as it appears there. The poor little dying pauper, lying in her dream at the almshouse, sees the figure of Death. It is not the skeleton with the dart, or the phantom with the shrouded face, but a tall, beautiful young man,—as beautiful as they could get into the cast, at any rate,—clothed in ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... performed on prospectin' pans by the band. Then, at the finish, Jake Cooledge is goin' to give one of his surkastic speeches,—kinder welcomin' Spindler's family to the Free Openin' o' Spindler's Almshouse and Reformatory." He paused, possibly for that approbation which, however, did not seem to come spontaneously. "It ain't much," he added apologetically, "for we're hampered by women; but we'll add to the programme ez we see how things pan out. Ye see, from what we can hear, all of Spindler's ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dwelt as a Sister of Mercy, bringing hope and comfort to the poor and suffering ones. Then it came to pass that a terrible pestilence fell on the city and thousands perished. The poor crept away to die in the almshouse, and thither by night and day came the Sister of Mercy to ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... harassed and driven to the wall, found thrust into his hand some morning a brief note with an enclosure which rolled all the sorrow back from his life. One day a thick double-breasted pea-jacket and a pair of good sturdy boots were served out to every old man in the almshouse. On another, Miss Swire, the decayed gentlewoman who eked out her small annuity by needlework, had a brand new first-class sewing-machine handed in to her to take the place of the old worn-out treadle which tried her ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quite forgiven Herbert Montaigne for their difference in life; as if it were the fault of the one that he had been born the son of the wealthy owner of The Towers and of the other that he was a penniless almshouse child. Second thoughts, however, always brought nobler feeling into the honest heart of Jim and a flush of shame rose to his face as ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... symbolized the times when everything was kept in common by the clan. This day, at least, all belonged to all; all sate at the same table and partook of the same meal. Even at a much later time the inmate of the almshouse of a London guild sat this day by the side of the rich alderman. As to the distinction which several explorers have tried to establish between the old Saxon "frith guild" and the so-called "social" or "religious" guilds—all were frith guilds in the sense above mentioned,(37) and all were religious ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... they will broaden, day by day, As the Progress-driven plough keeps on its way. It will riddle all the ancient roads that lead Into palaces of selfishness and greed; It will tear away the almshouse and the slum That the little homes and garden plots may come. Yes, the gardens green and sweet ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in this life. I'm going to ask it straight from the shoulder. You and I don't need to beat about the bush with each other. I want you to say 'yes,' for if you don't you're abandoning our old State as though she were a widow headed for the almshouse." ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... is equally reversed. It was our shame; it is our pride. The old Almshouse was a discreditable asylum for the politician who chanced to superintend it. Today our "Relief Home" is a model for the country. In 1906 the city was destroyed because unprotected against fire. Today we are as safe as a city can be. In the meantime the reduced cost of insurance ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... what you call nice," answered Richard. "It is a large farm and the house looks comfortable. I'll tell you one thing—if I had to be a county charge, I'd rather be sent to a country poor farm than to a city almshouse; in the country you at least have something green to ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... construct a dwelling-house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... support the children,—being now in this country without having been sent back,—she is entitled to go with her children to the almshouse, where suitable shelter, clean rooms, and good food would be provided. Is it better for her to try to support her children under existing conditions than to ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... of the happiest years of his life—in active work, in deep seclusion from the world of wealth and fashion, but in a state of happiness and peace. His house was school, hospital, and almshouse, and he lived entirely for others. "The poor, the sick, the unfortunate were welcome, and never did supplicant knock ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... that "the town farm-house and almshouse have been carried on the past year to our reasonable satisfaction, especially the almshouse, at which there have been an unusual amount of sickness ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... the keepers of boarding-houses, who often defrauded them of all that they possessed, and left them to charity. Most of those who, after these extortions, had the means, made their way into the interior and settled upon farms, but a large number remained to become inmates of the almshouse, or to starve and sicken in crowded and unwholesome rooms. Mr. Kapp, for some time a Commissioner of Emigration, relates, in his interesting work on Emigration, an example of the manner in which these ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... what good times we had going about amongst certain ones in whom she was interested, visiting the mission, enjoying the lovely ocean-breeze, etc.! On Sunday, April 16, we went with a large band of consecrated young people to assist in a meeting of song and gospel cheer for the inmates of the almshouse and county hospital. ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... seats and move out through the usual coal-yards and shanties and suburbs, passing the United States Arsenal, until we reach Gray's Ferry, where we see the Schuylkill, beautiful at high tide, the high banks opposite once a famous estate, now the seat of the Almshouse, where four thousand paupers live in the winter and about fifteen hundred in the summer. So mild and pleasant is this climate that the majority of the paupers creep out, like the blue bottleflies, with the coming of spring, preferring to sleep in barns or under the green trees ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... seen I had to do a piece of writing so I grabbed up that paper and let the fountain pen go crazy. I give the Kid's entire name, where he was born, what his people did to fool the almshouse, what was his mother's maiden name and why, whether he went to church or Billy Sunday, was he white and could he prove it, who started the war and a lot of bunk like that. The guy who doped out the entrance examinations for that hospital must have been figurin' on how many he could keep out. ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... did she take it into her head to die at that moment? But the more I thought of it, the more I felt the weight of it upon my mind; and I never got quite rid of the impression until I put a couple of old women into an almshouse and kept them there at my own expense. There, that's all. I repeat I dare say I have committed many a grievous sin in my day; but I cannot help always looking back upon this as the worst action ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea, as sailors before the mast; living here and there about the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the almshouse as the natural home of their old age. At last, after creeping, as it were, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge which, sooner or later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian. For thirty ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to dress. Her eyes were narrowed, her fingers rapid and steady. Christianna opened the window-blinds. The sound of the hurrying feet came strongly in, and with it voices. "The top of the Capitol!—see best from there—I think the hills toward the almshouse—Can you get out on the Brook turnpike?—No; it is picketed—The hill by the President's House—try it!" Christianna, turning, found Miriam taking a hat from the closet shelf. "Oh, Miss Miriam, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston |
