"Alehouse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... might be supposed that the English esquire of the seventeenth century did not materially differ from a rustic miller or alehouse keeper of our time. There are, however, some important parts of his character still to be noted, which will greatly modify this estimate. Unlettered as he was and unpolished, he was still in some most important points a gentleman. He was a member of a proud and powerful aristocracy, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... probably very soon thereafter Elizabeth had a premonition that this union only held in store a glittering blade of steel for her heart. For she grew ill and dispirited, and John found companionship at the alehouse, and came stumbling home asking what the devil was the reason his wife couldn't meet him with a smile and a kiss and a' that, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... prests that were alehouse hunters.] 3 That preests should not haunt alehouses, and further, that they should weare apparell of one maner of colour, and shooes after a comelie fashion: for a little before that time, prests vsed to ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (3 of 12) - Henrie I. • Raphael Holinshed
... years, plus seven thousand francs advanced by me to the Governor to pay for carriages, newspapers, cigars and American drinks on the days the council met, I would go and eat like a Christian at the nearest cheap alehouse, and should not be reduced to cooking for myself, in the directors' room, a wretched stew which I owed to the public compassion of cooks. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... first year of his change, not being of his persuasion, was often much troubled in her mind, and would often say from discontent, "Would to God I had married a drunkard, then I might have found him at the alehouse; but now I cannot tell where to ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... goblin melodies and strum "the viols of the dead" in the moonlit churchyard. The very essence of Mr. Hardy's reverie at this moment of his career is to be found, for instance, in "The Dead Quire," where the ancient phantom-minstrels revenge themselves on their gross grandsons outside the alehouse. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... as he was, sustained a severe defeat at Coslin in the war of 1755. Some time after, at a review, he jocosely asked a soldier, who had got a deep cut in his cheek, "Friend, at what alehouse did you get that scratch?" "I got it," said the soldier, "at Coslin, where your majesty paid ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... in spending it in luxury." He was then asked if this was not Mandeville's doctrine of "private vices are public benefits." Of course this did not suit him, and he demolished it. He said, "Mandeville puts the case of a man who gets drunk at an alehouse, and says it is a public benefit, because so much money is got by it to the public. But it must be considered that all the good gained by this through the gradation of alehouse-keeper, brewer, maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... old name Daymond (Daegmund), Portwine is a corruption of Poitevin, the man from Poitou (Chapter XI), and Tipler, which now suggests alcoholic excess, was, as late as the seventeenth century, the regular name for an alehouse keeper. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... dropped into the chair opposite. "There is a fine ship standing in the road below, off Smithick. You'll have seen her. Her master is a desperate adventurer named Jasper Leigh, who is to be found any afternoon in the alehouse at Penycumwick. I know him of old, and he and his ship are to be acquired. He is ripe for any venture, from scuttling Spaniards to trading in slaves, and so that the price be high enough we may buy him body and soul. His is a stomach that refuses nothing, so there ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... tale is, Was a mad coppersmith of Elis: Up at his forge by morning peep, No creature in the lane could sleep; Among a crew of roystering fellows Would sit whole evenings at the alehouse; His wife and children wanted bread, While he went always drunk to bed. This vapouring scab must needs devise To ape the thunder of the skies: With brass two fiery steeds he shod, To make a clattering as they trod, Of polish'd brass his flaming car ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... clothes are so perfumed with the beer he poured on me, that there shall not be a Dutchman within twenty miles, but he'll smell out and claim kindred of him. What a beastly thing it is to bottle up all in a man's belly, when a man must set his guts on a gallon-pot last, only to purchase the alehouse title of boon companion. "Carouse; pledge me, and you dare! 'Swounds, I'll drink with thee for all that ever thou art worth!" It is even as two men should strive who should run farthest into the sea for a wager. Methinks these are ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... bring home wives to their vicarages. A fiery outburst of popular discussion compensated for the silence of the pulpits. The new Scriptures, in Henry's bitter words of complaint, were "disputed, rimed, sung, and jangled in every tavern and alehouse." The articles which dictated the belief of the English Church roused a furious controversy. Above all, the Sacrament of the Mass, the centre of the Catholic system of faith and worship, and which still ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... minutes' repose and a glass of water, he next called on the company to supply him with rhymes for a sonnet. These, as fast as they were suggested by various persons, he wrote down on a slip of paper. The last rhyme given was "Ostello,"—(a common alehouse)—at which he demurred, and submitting to the company the difficulty of introducing so vulgar a word into an heroic sonnet, respectfully begged that another might be substituted. A lady called out "Avello" the poetical ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... and purple; his head bent acutely on one side, and his eyes upturned in dim speculation. His great feet planted on their heels faced him, suggesting the stocks; his arms hung loose. Full many a hero of the alehouse, anciently amenable to leg-and-foot imprisonment in the grip of the parish, has presented as respectable an air. His ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gentleman in black generously gave them half a crown, and the horses started off, leaving Tom with his blunderbuss, Harry, Bill, Sam, and their companions, bewildered with the mystery which the whole day spent in the alehouse by no means enabled them ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... the village. An old woman and a pretty girl seemed to take great pity on me, and gave me some bread and milk: but how great was our astonishment when the aged peasant called Schell by his name, and told him he well knew we were deserters, having the night before been at a neighbouring alehouse where the officer in pursuit of us came, named and described us, and related the whole history of our flight. The peasant knew Schell, because his son served in his company, and had often spoken of him when he was quartered ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... than this little poor place and sad alehouse, rather than inn; for it began to be dark, and Robin did not make so much haste as he might have done; and he was forced to make hard ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... note; but action was the only relief to my anxiety, and it may easily be supposed I did not lose much time on the road, so that it was but ten minutes after seven when I turned down the lane in which the little alehouse appointed as our rendezvous was situated. I found old Peter waiting to receive me, though the cloud upon his brow, speaking volumes of dark mystery, did not ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... had, as it has always in a Mammon-ridden world, the longest, strongest pull. Devil Hopwood found it easy to get the better of a poor unlettered tarpaulin, that knew well enough the way into a Wapping Alehouse, but quite lost himself in threading the mazes of a great man's Antechamber. 'Tis inconceivable how much dirty work there was done in my young days between Corinthian columns and over Turkey carpets, and under ceilings ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... word aloof. At least, Hakluyt speaks of a fish called "old-wives"; and in some other old book of travels we have seen the name derived from the likeness of the fish, with its good, round belly, to the mistress of an alehouse. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... out to me by a short thick fellow in brown top-boots, and bare-headed, who stood, with his hands in his pockets, at the door of a country alehouse as ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Paul's return over their nappy. The little I could make of their talk was not to my liking, but for the captain's sake I kept my anger under as best I could, for I had the sense to know that brawling with a lot of alehouse frequenters would not advance his cause. At length, however, came in the same sneering fellow I had marked on the wharf, calling loudly for swats. "Ay, Captain Paul was noo at Mr. Curries, syne banie Alan seed him gang forbye the kirk." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he said with much point, who have most of the spirit of prayer are all to be found in gaol; and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the alehouse. The doctrinal Articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised and defended. The most acrimonious of all his works is his Defence of Justification by Faith, an answer to what Bunyan calls "the brutish and beastly latitudinarianism" of Edward Fowler, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... are the young Scot who fought so well and kept his shield up day by day over the door of a common sergeant's tent, having no pavilion of his own, till it was all over dints like an alehouse tankard?" ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... about the country-side, That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, The same the Gipsies wore. Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring; At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors Had found ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... change, and trust great Charles to such a dress. When he was first obscur'd with this coarse thing, He grac'd plebeians, but profan'd the king: Like some fair church, which zeal to charcoals burn'd, Or his own court now to an alehouse turn'd. But full as well may we blame night, and chide His wisdom, Who doth light with darkness hide, Or deny curtains to thy royal bed, As take this sacred cov'ring from thy head. Secrets of State are points ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... obeyed his summons, and fetched a long circuit through the streets, but met with no purchase, and came home very weary and empty; but not content with that, I went out the next evening too, when going by an alehouse I saw the door of a little room open, next the very street, and on the table a silver tankard, things much in use in public-houses at that time. It seems some company had been drinking there, and the careless boys had ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... walls and gnaw a mouldy crust which he brought in his pocket, or, as an alternative of luxury, wade some ten miles through the mire, and feast upon a rasher of rusty bacon and a tankard of the smallest ale at the nearest hedge alehouse." ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... cultivated, save in the emerald green of the bottom, a few fields which lay where a stream ought to have been. Nowadays there are red-roofed houses peeping out at every corner, but at that period fashion had not even heard of Hurrymere, and, save for a farm-house or two, a village alehouse and posting-house at a corner of the high-road, and one or two great houses within the circuit of six or seven miles, retired within their trees and parks, there were few habitations. Mrs. Dennistoun's cottage was red-roofed ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... I hear that G[od] has shot an arrow into the midst of this Town. The small pox is in an ordinary ye sign of the Swan, the ordinary Keepers name is Windsor. His daughter is sick of the disease. It is observable that this disease begins at an alehouse, to testify God's displeasure agt the sin of drunkenness & yt of multiplying alehouses!" [Footnote: The Heart of the Puritan, p. 177, edited by Elizabeth ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... things on the outside of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university; and more home truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending a formal one in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and gossiped in a country ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the midst of the crowd, taller by the head than the others, seemed to be the leader of the party; they were disputing whether they should proceed further, spend the remainder of the night in the village alehouse, or return to Paris. Their leader ordered spirits to be distributed to his associates, and exhorted them in a loud voice to proceed in their glorious work. Tossing his firebrand over his head, he declared that he would ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... and, to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy driving his team a-field, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old, and the same poor country-lad crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... disorderly tippling in taverns, alehouses, coffeehouses, and cellars, be severely looked unto as the common sin of the time, and greatest occasion of dispersing the plague. And that no company or person be suffered to remain or come into any tavern, alehouse, or coffeehouse, to drink, after nine of the clock in the evening, according to the ancient law and custom of this city, upon the ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... riches dwell not there, but there is found the next best thing—an industrious and light-hearted poverty. Twenty years ago Rachel Hilton was the prettiest and merriest lass in the country. Her father, an old gamekeeper, had retired to a village alehouse, where his good beer, his social humour, and his black-eyed daughter, brought much custom. She had lovers by the score; but Joseph White, the dashing and lively son of an opulent farmer, carried off the fair Rachel. They married ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Scotland—thus furnishing an example, which is now become pretty general, of supplying an interesting and improving employment of the hours of relaxation from labour, instead of misspending the precious intervals at the alehouse or other ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... figures. All the degrees of stupidity and of drunkenness, all the grossness and mawkishness of orgies, the frenzy of the lowest pleasures, the cynicism of the vulgarest vice, the buffoonery of the wildest rabble, all the most brutal emotions, the basest aspects of tavern and alehouse life, have been painted by him with the brutality and insolence of an unscrupulous man, and with such a sense of the comic, such an impetuosity, such an intoxication of inspiration, one might say that words cannot express the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... she was the child of a miserably poor cobbler; and after a stormy youth she had brought her somewhat damaged little ship of life to anchor in the small garrison town at the bar of Grundmann's alehouse. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... effect upon him if offered by a stranger, but he obeyed and understood the slightest signal from his owner. This man was an habitual drunkard, at least whenever he could procure the means of becoming one. It was a cold, frosty night in November, when T——y was returning from a favourite alehouse, along one of the Thames Ditton lanes, some of which, owing to the flatness of the country, have deep ditches by their sides. Into one of these the unfortunate man staggered in a fit of brutal intoxication, and ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... self-defence, who had ventured to confront the young Titan, and was unexpectedly laid low, said in astonishment,—"You can be only one of the two: you are either Jack Wilson or the Devil." He proved himself to be the former, by not proclaiming, "Voe victis!" and by taking his prize of war to the nearest alehouse, and then and there filling him with porter. Sotheby said it was worth a journey from London to hear him translate a Greek chorus; and, at a later day, the brawny Cumberland men called him "a varra bad un ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... is, and hath loved hospitality and open housekeeping more than the present fashion, which lays as much gold lace on the seams of a doublet as would feed a dozen of tall fellows with beef and ale for a twelvemonth, and let them have their evening at the alehouse once a week, to do good to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Mamble That lies above the Teme, So I wonder who's in Mamble, And whether people seem Who breed and brew along there As lazy as the name, And whether any song there Sets alehouse ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... open at once to defend William. Maurice declared he was the most industrious man in the parish; that his books never kept him from his work, but always kept him from the alehouse and bad company; and that, as to his gimcracks and machines, he never laid out a farthing upon them but what he got by working on holidays, and odd times, when other folks were idling or tippling. His master, who understood the like of those things, said, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as nobody could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for consumers was strictly limited to a little board about six inches ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... a strain beyond the endurance of Ginx. Nor had he the heart to try the common plan, and turn his children out of doors on the chance of their being picked up in a raid of Sunday School teachers. So he turned out himself to talk with the humbler spirits of the "Dragon," or listen sleepily while alehouse demagogues ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... know is of course to be done at the first assembly of both houses; a bencher of the Temple both well learned and very eloquent, returning from the Parliament house asked another gentleman his frend how he liked M. Speakers Oration: mary quoth th'other, methinks I heard not a better alehouse tale told this seuen yeares. This happened because the good old Knight made no difference betweene an Oration or publike speach to be deliuered to the eare of a Princes Maiestie and state of a Realme, then he would ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... with great vexation, that the Corporal had disappeared within the alehouse; and looking through the casement, on which the ruddy light of the fire played cheerily, he saw the man of the world lifting a little measure of "the pure creature" to his lips; and close by the hearth, at a small, round ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... swearing, to which he was himself addicted. He tells a story of a man at Wimbledon, who, after uttering some strange blasphemy, was struck with sickness, and died cursing. Another such scene he probably witnessed himself,[1] and never forgot. An alehouse-keeper in the neighbourhood of Elstow had a son who was half-witted. The favourite amusement, when a party was collected drinking, was for the father to provoke the lad's temper, and for the lad to curse his father ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... chance to travel into that noble county of Kent. The weather being wet, and my two-legged horse being almost tired (for indeed my own legs were all the supporters that my body had), I went dropping into an alehouse; there found I, first a kind welcome, next good liquor, then kind strangers (which made good company), then an honest host, whose love to good liquor was written in red characters both in his nose, cheeks ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... an Alehouse-keeper and Brewer, who, to save the expence of Hops that were then two Shillings per Pound, use but a quartern instead of a Pound, the rest he supplied with Daucus Seeds; but to be more particular, in a Mug ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... conscience is clean gone. There is a young gentleman in this town, Who this same day now must be married: Yet though I would bestow a crown, That knave the clerk cannot be spied; For he is safe, if that in the alehouse He may sit tippling of nut-brown ale, That oft he comes forth as drunk as a mouse, With a nose of his own not greatly pale; And this is not once, but every day Almost, of my faith, throughout the whole year, That he these tricks doth use to play, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... the contrary the burning issues of the day were discussed in public house and marketplace with the same vivacity with which politics are now debated in the New England country store. "The Word of God was disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every alehouse and {308} tavern," says a contemporary state paper. In private, graver men argued with the high ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the campe, let him be a Lord of misrule, if you wil, for he kept a plaine alehouse without welt or gard of anie Iuibush, and solde syder and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came (at that verie name of syder, I can but sigh, there is so much of it in renish wine now a dayes). Wei, Tendit ad sydera virtus, thers great vertue belongs (I can tell you) ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... the military, led by so experienced a man as Eben McClure, with local knowledge and connections, the Preventive men displayed no initiative, and seldom ventured far from their barracks on the cliff. They might surround an alehouse in a village with all the pomp and circumstance which shows zeal and is put down to the Supervisor's credit as an efficient officer. But word was always sent before, so that everything dutiable might be ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... unimportant a nature, that I should blush to call the attention of the idlest reader to it, but for the reason alleged in the introductory paragraph. A person, whose name escapes me, had undertaken to paint a sign for an alehouse: it was to be a lion, but the unfortunate artist produced a dog. On this awkward affair one of my acquaintance wrote a copy of what we called verse; I liked it, but fancied I could compose something more to the purpose: I tried, and by the unanimous suffrage ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... Godfrey's body was found near London, stands thus: at the trial of the Jesuits a gentleman, Chetwyn, gave evidence that, on the morning of Tuesday, October 15, a Mr. Sanbidge told him that Dugdale had talked at an alehouse about the slaying of a justice of peace of Westminster. Chetwyn was certain of the date, because on that day he went to Litchfield races. At Litchfield he stayed till Saturday, October 19, when he heard from London of the discovery of Godfrey's body.** ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... loaded within and without with noisy jolly folks, and chaises and gigs that had been pleasuring in clouds of dust; every door and every window of every house was open, lights in every shop, every door with women sitting in the street, every inn crowded with jaded horses, and every alehouse full of drunken topers; for you know the English always announce their sense of heat or cold by drinking. Well! it was' impossible not to enjoy such a scene of happiness and affluence in every village, and amongst the lowest of the people; and who are told by ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Tom has won the Victoria Cross—dashed out under a storm of bullets and rescued the riddled flag. Who would have thought it of loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of his endeavours. Chance comes to Tom and we find him out. To Harry the Fates were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry—drank, knocked his wife about, they say. Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was good ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... imagined than the group in the alehouse. They have taken a refreshing walk into the country, and, being determined to have a cooling pipe, seat themselves in a chair-lumbered closet, with a low ceiling; where every man, pulling off his wig, and throwing a pocket-handkerchief over his head, inhales the fumes of hot punch, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the alehouse, a stranger observed to Morton that he was riding towards Milnwood, and asked for the advantage ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... arrest; to wit, a certain ballad that I had put forth against the Papists, and for that I was a Sacramentary. Well, when I came into the Tower, where the Council sat, they were already busied with Dr Coxe and the Lord Ferrers; wherefore I was to wait. So I and my two men went to an alehouse to dinner in the Tower, and after that repaired to the Council chamber door, to be the first taken, for I desired to know my lot. Then came Secretary Bourne to the door, looking as the wolf doth for a lamb; unto whom my two keepers delivered ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... Goldsmith—for such was the proprietor and driver's name—when he came to a place was in no hurry to leave it. All the tradesmen in the village had hampers or boxes to return, and it took some time to collect them; or messages and notes to send, and it took some time to write them; and at the alehouse there was always a little gossip to be done while the horses enjoyed their pail of water or mouthful of hay. Even at the worst there was no fear of being left behind, as by dint of running and holloaing you might get up with the cart, unless you were very much behind indeed. But you may be sure ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... these recollections the more vivid, it came on to snow as night set in; and, passing through Stamford and Grantham, and by the little alehouse where he had heard the story of the bold Baron of Grogzwig, everything looked as if he had seen it but yesterday, and not even a flake of the white crust on the roofs had melted away. Encouraging the train of ideas ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... flat silver ring on her finger, like our ale-wives; a femme publique, dressed avowedly for the purposes of alluring the men, with not a very small crucifix hanging at her bosom;—and the Virgin Mary's sign at an alehouse door, with ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... great ancient, king though he were, must have been far behind the great modern. Even that comparatively recent warrior, the Duke of Marlborough, made but a slight approach to the popular honours paid to the conqueror of Napoleon. A few alehouse signs and the ballad of "Marlbrook s'en va't en guerre," (for we are not talking now of the titles, and pensions, and palaces, granted to him by the Sovereign and the Parliament,) seem to have been the chief if not the only popular demonstrations ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... not with greater zeal ador'd. Strange fancy of the human race! Half sinner frail, half child of grace We see HERR WERTHER of the story In all the pomp of woodcut glory. His worth is first made duly known, By having his sad features shown At ev'ry fair the country round; In ev'ry alehouse too they're found. His stick is pointed by each dunce "The ball would reach his brain at once!" And each says, o'er his beer and bread: "Thank Heav'n that 'tis not we ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... forge and irons for horses, had an alehouse for men, which his wife kept, and his company sat on benches before the inn door, looking at the smithy while they drank their beer. Now, there was a pretty girl at this inn, the landlord's men called Nancy Sievewright, a bouncing fresh-looking lass, whose face was as red as the hollyhocks ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... about it which animates and enlivens my ideas. I can hardly think while I am still; my body must be in motion, to move my mind. The sight of the country, the succession of agreeable views, open air, good appetite, the freedom of the alehouse, the absence of everything that could make me feel dependence, or recall me to my situation—all this sets my soul free, gives me a greater boldness of thought. I dispose of all nature as its sovereign lord; ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... say'st, Adam," observed Seth, gravely. "But thee know'st thyself as it's hearing the preachers thee find'st so much fault with has turned many an idle fellow into an industrious un. It's the preacher as empties th' alehouse; and if a man gets religion, he'll do his work none the worse ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... denomination to which he may belong is technically known as the Methodist. He is stern, hard, uncompromising—one who sets duty above affection. His children are not spoiled because the rod is spared. He stands aloof from his fellows, and is never seen at the cottage alehouse, or lingering in groups at the cross-roads. He is certain to be at the "anniversary," i.e., the commemoration of the foundation of the Methodist chapel of the parish. The very next cottage may contain the antithesis of this man. This is a genius in his way. He has some idea of art, as you ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... came flocking all around me, at the blacksmith's forge, and the Brendon alehouse; and I could scarce come out of church, but they got me among the tombstones. They all agreed that I was bound to take command and management. I bade them go to the magistrates, but they said they had been too often. Then I told them that I had no wits for ordering of an armament, although ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... is nothing," says Herschel, "like reading an interesting book. It calls for no bodily exercise, of which he has had enough or too much. It relieves his home of its dullness and sameness, which, in nine cases out of ten, is what drives him out to the alehouse, to his own ruin and his family's. It accompanies him to his next day's work, and, if the book he has been reading be any thing above the very idlest and lightest, gives him something to think of besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... about nine at night, from this accursed neighbourhood. It was cold, starry, and clear, and the road dry, with a touch of frost. For all that, I had not the smallest intention to make a long stage of it; and about ten o'clock, spying on the right-hand side of the way the lighted windows of an alehouse, I determined to bait there for ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... being whispered by Colonel Potley that the Governor expected to be paid for his drink, which he usually sold to the passengers, Whitelocke ordered the reckoning to be paid, and hasted from this honourable alehouse to his coach. ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... farmer's servants and all the neighbors to read and write in the evening; and it was a constant practice, before they went away, to make them all go to prayers and sing psalms. By this means the people grew extremely regular, his servants were always at home instead of being at the alehouse, and he had more work done than ever. This gave not only Mr. Grove, but all the neighbors, a high opinion of her good sense and prudent behavior; and she was so much esteemed that the most of the differences in the parish were left to her decision; and if a man and wife quarreled (which ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... face? I am no loathsome leper; look on me. What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf? Be poisonous too and kill thy forlorn queen. Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb? Why, then, dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy. Erect his statue and worship it, And make my image but an alehouse sign. Was I for this nigh wrack'd upon the sea, And twice by awkward wind from England's bank Drove back again unto my native clime? What boded this but well forewarning wind Did seem to say 'Seek not a scorpion's nest, ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... when a gentleman goes by; especially if he be anything in drink. I believe in my conscience, that if an account were made of a thousand pounds in stolen goods; considering the low rates we sell them at, the bribes we must give for concealment, the extortions of alehouse-reckonings, and other necessary charges, there would not remain fifty pounds clear to be divided among the robbers. And out of this we must find clothes for our whores, besides treating them from morning to night; who, in requital, reward us with nothing but treachery and the pox. For ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... of it all comes back upon me while I write! I have but to close my eyes, and my fancy brings me back to that alehouse by the river, to a summer's eve with its golden shafts falling on the dingy woodwork and lending it a pathetic glory, upon the shining space of dwindled water in the middle of its banks of glistening mud, and there in the corner the pinched old rogue ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... drinking; drink hard, drink deep, drink like a fish; have one's swill [Slang], drain the cup, splice the main brace, take a hair of the dog that bit you. liquor, liquor up; wet one's whistle, take a whet; crack a bottle, pass the bottle; toss off &c (drink up) 298; go to the alehouse, go to the public house. make one drunk &c adj.; inebriate, fuddle, befuddle, fuzzle^, get into one's head. Adj. drunk, tipsy; intoxicated; inebrious^, inebriate, inebriated; in one's cups; in a state of intoxication &c n.; temulent^, temulentive^; bombed, smashed; fuddled, mellow, cut, boozy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... chance give way to an impetuous fancy, or an extravagant imagination, looks at you with a dead fish's eye, and asks you to write the name under your picture—I would as soon ride in a post chaise with a lunatic, or sleep with a corse. Never let me see the sign of such a man over an alehouse! It would fright me away sooner than the report of a mad dog or a scolding landlady. I would as soon enter the house if it hung out a pestle and mortar. The fear of a drug in my posset would not repel me ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Peele, Kyd, Greene, or Marlowe, were for the most part poor, and reckless in their poverty; wild livers, defiant of law or common fame, in revolt against the usages and religion of their day, "atheists" in general repute, "holding Moses for a juggler," haunting the brothel and the alehouse, and dying starved or in tavern brawls. But with their appearance began the Elizabethan drama. The few plays which have reached us of an earlier date are either cold imitations of the classical and Italian comedy, or rude farces like "Ralph Roister Doister," or tragedies such as "Gorbudoc" ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... the alehouse, where he sat, Came the Scalds and Saga-men; Is it to be wondered at, That they quarrelled now and then, When o'er his beer Began to leer ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... rents by the much-abused landlords; for in former times 'for all their frugality they were scarcely able to live and pay their rents on rent day without selling a cow or a horse'. Such also used to be their poverty, that if a farmer went to the alehouse, 'a thing greatly used in those days,' and there, 'in a braverie to show what store he had, did caste downe his purse and therein a noble or 6 shillings in silver unto them, it was very likely that all the rest could not lay downe so much against it.' And In Henry's ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... direct alms, the goodwife found that the little savings in the cracked teapot or the old stocking had greatly increased since the squire's return, while her husband came home from his moderate cups at the alehouse more sober and in better temper. Having already saved something was a great reason why he should save more. The new school, too, was so much better conducted than the old one; the children actually liked going there; and now and then there were little ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... always listening to what everybody talked about. On Sunday he was sure to get near the farmers as they sat talking on the tombstones in the churchyard before the parson was come; and once a week you might see little Dick leaning against the sign post of the village alehouse, where people stopped to drink as they came from the next market town; and when the barber's shop door was open, Dick listened to all the news that his customers told ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... leading my horse; receiving the homage of ostlers instead of their familiar nods; sitting down to dinner in the parlour of the best inn I can find, instead of passing the brightest part of the day in the kitchen of a village alehouse; carrying on my argument after dinner on the subject of the corn-laws with the best commercial gentlemen on the road, instead of being glad, whilst sipping a pint of beer, to get into conversation with blind trampers, or maimed Abraham sailors, regaling ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... unpainful interest in every subject brought before him; he wanders about listlessly, and exerts himself to find out things which are not sufficiently explained, and gradually he tires of it, and he goes back to his home, or to his alehouse, unless he is a very ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... father came home he threatened to beat me if I did not give up the money at once; I was frightened, and gave it; then he left, and Anna and I have been crying for bread, while our father is amusing himself at the alehouse and our mother has taken a holiday, and has been looking at the festivities which I also would have been glad to see, but could not, because I must stay at home and watch the shop into which no one has ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... lads in olden musical centuries, Sang, night by night, adorable choruses, Sat late by alehouse doors in April Chaunting in joy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as they arrived at the village, Spikeman went into the alehouse. During the remainder of the day he was in a brown study, and Joey amused himself with a book. At nine o'clock the company had all quitted the tap-room, and then Spikeman entered into conversation with the hostess. ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... was answered as the Dean himself tells us in his Reminiscences. Another of the water-side worthies, "Saunders Paul," was nominally the keeper of the public-house at Invercannie, where the water of Cannie falls into Dee. It was the alehouse of the country, but frequented much more by the gentry than by the commons. It was there that Mr. Maule in his young days, not yet Lord Panmure, led the riots and drank his claret, while Saunders capped him glass for ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... drama were John Hughson, a shoemaker and alehouse keeper; Sarah Hughson, his wife; John Romme, also a shoemaker and alehouse keeper; Margaret Kerry, alias Salinburgh, commonly known as Peggy; John Ury, a priest; and a number of Negroes, chief among whom were Caesar, Prince, Cuffee, and Quack.[1] ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... SCENE—An Alehouse Room. Several shabby Fellows with punch and tobacco. TONY at the head of the table, a little higher than the rest, ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... gentility in its day. We passed, too, a small Methodist chapel, making one of a row of low brick edifices. There was a sound of prayer within. I never saw a more unbeautiful place of worship; and it had not even a separate existence for itself, the adjoining tenement being an alehouse. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... speak thy luck will depart." When the man got home he found the purse filled with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full, whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat there he beheld the stranger with a bottle in his hand going round and gathering the drops which the guests shook from time to time out of their glasses. The rich peasant was surprised that one who had given him so much did not ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... were then all dispatched to prison under a guard of watchmen, and the justice and the constable adjourned to a neighbouring alehouse to take ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... estimation. He learnt to read in the long run, for he really had a good deal of native talent for a man, and set himself up for a politician and a something they call a philosopher, which any man can be with a pint pot in front of him, I am told, especially at a village alehouse. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... his head from the window and cried, "Faster! faster!" O'Toole, for his part, shouted, "Trinkgeldt!" It was the only word of German which he knew. "But," said he, "there was a Saracen lady I learned about at school who travelled over Europe and found her lover in an alehouse in London, with no word but his name to help her over the road. Sure, it would be a strange thing if I couldn't travel all over Germany with ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... went to see the Holdernesses. I met my Lady in a triumphal car, drawn by a Manx horse, thirteen little fingers high, with Lady Emily. Mr. Milbank was walking by himself in ovation after the car, and they were going to see the bonfire at the alehouse at the corner. The whole procession returned with me; and from the Countess's dressing-room we saw a battery fired before the house, the mob crying, 'God bless the good news!' These are all the particulars I know of the siege. My Lord would have showed me the journal; ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... besides, was to two persons of their frugal habits, a goodly sum in bank. Moreover they had Grip in company; and when they must otherwise have changed the guinea, it was but to make him exhibit outside an alehouse door, or in a village street, or in the grounds or gardens of a mansion of the better sort, and scores who would have given nothing in charity, were ready to bargain for more amusement ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... They ought to have known him. Had any of them ridden up to his house in Virginia, whether the master were present or absent, the guests would have been made welcome, and, in sight of his ancestors' hall, he had to go and ask for a dish of bacon and eggs at a country alehouse! ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disappointed there, scoured the neighbourhood; and at Prestwood the fugitive was taken, and committed to safe custody in Stafford Gaol. Even after they were secured, it was no easy matter to carry the other prisoners to Worcester. While they were "refreshing themselves" in an alehouse at Hagley—probably the tavern kept by Mrs Fynwood—a tumult arose among the people outside which almost led to their rescue; and a few miles from Hagley, Sir Thomas Undirhood and his company overtook the Sheriff, and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... to Banbury, where my son took his second wife, having made her acquaintance in an alehouse; and then, my daughter, I begins to know that Christian's mother ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... however, was not to last long; for near his house lived another gardener, whose name was Guzzle, and who spent his time, from morning to night, in an alehouse. The merry and thoughtless humour of Guzzle, by degrees, began to be pleasing to Jonathan, who soon fell into the same ruinous error. At first, he only went now and then to drink with him, and talk to him about gardening; but he very soon began to drop ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... bee found tiplinge or drinkinge in any taverne, inne, or alehouse after the houre of nyne of the clock at night, when the tap-too beates, he shall pay 2s. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Goldsmith thus refers to the first form of these verses:—'Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short; you should have given me your opinion of the design of the heroicomical poem which I sent you: you remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem, as lying in a paltry alehouse. You may take the following specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in which he lies, may be described ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... there now!" quoth Little John. "Thou hearest, landlord; thou art not fit company for these holy men; go back to thine alehouse. Nay, if these most holy brothers of mine do but give me the word, I'll beat thy head with this stout staff till it is as ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Johnson's abilities that, meaning at one time to dazzle him with the splendour of some of those luminaries in literature who favoured him with their correspondence, he told him that, if he would in the evening be at a certain alehouse in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of seeing Mr. Browne and another or two of the persons mentioned in the preceding note. [The note contained the names of some of Cave's regular writers.] Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... abbey, crowds flocked to Whalley from Wiswall, Cold Coates, and Clithero, from Ribchester and Blackburn, from Padiham and Pendle, and even from places more remote. Not only was John Lawe's of the Dragon full, but the Chequers, and the Swan also, and the roadside alehouse to boot. Sir Ralph Assheton had several guests at the abbey, and others were expected in the course of the day, while Doctor Ormerod had friends staying with him ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... its services called for instant attention. The Holy Communion had been celebrated only three times a year; the other services were few and irregular; on Sundays the church was empty and the alehouse was full. The building was badly kept, the churchyard let out for grazing, the whole place destitute of reverence. What the service came to be under the new Rector we can read on the testimony of many visitors. The intensity of his devotion at all times, the inspiration ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... advertisement which was published in 1665, the proprietor of the Cock did not allow business to interfere with pleasure. "This is to certify," his announcement ran, "that the master of the Cock and Bottle, commonly called the Cock Alehouse, at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants, and shut up his house, for this Long Vacation, intending (God willing) to ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... ten at night the pains of hunger and cold drove us to an alehouse in the flats of Bedfordshire not far from Bedford itself. In the inn kitchen was a long, lean, characteristic-looking fellow of perhaps forty, dressed in black. He sat on a settle by the fireside, smoking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a ridiculous fable. The Duke had the misfortune to be fatally injured in a fox-chase. In such an extremity, naturally, his servants carry him into the house nearest at hand, which happens to be an alehouse—not 'the worst,' since there was no other; nor was it possible that, to a man of his distinction, once the lord-lieutenant of that very East Riding, any room would be offered worse than the very best that contained a bed. In these dreadful circumstances, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned windows, and may well have stood for centuries—tho seventy or eighty years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been something better than a beggar's alehouse.... ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... furnish them with materials for disputing and railing, but that he might enable them to inform their consciences and instruct their children and families: that it grieved his heart to find how that precious jewel was prostituted, by being introduced into the conversation of every alehouse and tavern, and employed as a pretence for decrying the spiritual and legal pastors: and that he was sorry to observe, that the word of God, while it was the object of so much anxious speculation, had very little influence on their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... half a dozen male and female characters proclaim their views and join in a chorus in praise of drink. More direct suggestion for the setting of his "cantata" came from a night visit made by the poet and two of his friends to the low alehouse kept by Nancy Gibson ("Poosie Nansie") in Mauchline. The poem was written in 1785, but Burns never published it and seems almost to have ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... with some young lads in the neighbourhood to go out upon the rake, they steered their course to Whitechapel, and going into a little alehouse, began to drink stoutly, sing bawdy songs, and indulge themselves in the rest of those brutal delights into which such wretches are used to plunge under the name of pleasure. In the height, however, of all their mirth, the people of the house missing out of the till a crown piece ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... distance. He had, in this dilemma, cast his eyes upon Timothy Crabshaw, and admitted him to a considerable share of familiarity and fellowship. These companions had been employed in smoking a social pipe at an alehouse in the neighbourhood, when the knight made his excursion; and returning to the house about supper-time, found Mr. Clarke ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the ignorant or the refined, because he gives back the impression which the things themselves make upon us in nature. "That," said a man of genius, seeing a little shabby soiled copy of Thomson's Seasons lying on the window-seat of an obscure country alehouse—"That ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... a Fiddle) was the fictitious name for one Jackson, a milliner, who lived in the New Exchange, in the Strand. He had served with the Roundheads, and lost a leg, which brought him into reduced circumstances, until he was obliged to Fiddle from one alehouse to another for ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... man, or the red cwoats will hear thee; they hae been houlerying and poulerying every ane that past alehouse door this noight to make them drive their wagons and sick loike. Come into feyther's, or they'll ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... cried. "I see well that if I do not shoot one of you from time to time you will forget the man I am. What mean you by entering my cabin as though it were a Wapping alehouse?" ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... see, For a great flatterer then I deemed should be, Him and his wife, and modest daughter Bess, With earth, and heaven's felicity, God bless. Two days a man of his, at his command, Did guide me to the midst of Westmoreland, And my conductor with a liberal fist, To keep me moist, scarce any alehouse missed. The fourth of August (weary, halt, and lame) We in the dark, to a town called Sedbergh came, There Master Borrowed, my kind honest host, Upon me did bestowed unasked cost. The next day I held on my journey still, Six miles unto a place called Carling hill, Where Master Edmund ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... and adds so many minute passages of men's lives. I have been told that it was usual with him, for the most part, to rise about four o'clock in the morning, and to eat hardly any thing till night; when, after supper, he would go into some by-alehouse in town, or else to one in some village near, and there by himself take his pipe and pot," &c. "But so it is that, notwithstanding our author's great merits, he was but little regarded in the University, being observed to be more clownish than courteous, and always to go in an old antiquated dress. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... wisp of straw upon a pole, is or was some years ago the indication of an alehouse; and to this day a ship or vessel for sale may be discovered by a birch broom at the mast head. I remember reading, that in Fleet Market, on the eastern side, there were some small houses, with a sign ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in the alehouse and third at the dram, In midst of the breakfast, dividing the ham; I'm first in the army, second in battle, Unknown to the child, I'm found in his rattle; I'm found in all waters, but never in wells; I'm mixed up with witchcraft, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... fornicate, or thieve in an alehouse, Rob a purse with only a penny in it. Or break into a gentleman's house, To the magistrate we go; Then to gaol to be shackled, Whence to be hanged on the gallows in the morning, The pox and the devil take the constable ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... desires-if you had been the village shopkeeper, with his bad debts, and his temptations to make those who can pay for those who cannot,-if you had been one of your own labourers, environed with the struggle for daily bread, and the alehouse, and hungry children, and a sick wife, and a dull taste, and a duller head-in short, if you had been a man such as nine out of ten are- what would his school have taught you then? You want some truths which are common to men as men, which will ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... smuggling, but had a prejudice against murdering people, came voluntarily forward to state all they knew and suspected about the matter. By several, Myers had been seen on shore during the previous day; and, what is extraordinary, one of the witnesses, an alehouse-keeper, swore that he had seen him use the very handkerchief we had found to sweep the crumbs off a table at which he had been eating bread and cheese, in order to have it clean for writing. He had also given him a letter to post, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... narrow building of dark red brick, much ornamented, and probably built in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It had two benches on each side the door; for, previous to Tadpole's taking possession of it, it had been an alehouse, and much frequented by seamen. The doctor had not removed these benches, as they were convenient, when the weather was fine, for those who waited for medicine or advice; and moreover, being a jocular, sociable man, he liked people to sit down there, and would often converse with ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... and of drinking distilled spirits, has prevailed for some time without opposition; nor can any man enter a tavern or an alehouse, in which they will be denied him, or walk along the streets without being incited to drink them at every corner; they have been sold for several years, with no less openness and security than any other commodity; and whoever walks in this great city, will find his way very frequently ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... Michael Waddington, was a merry tailor of some note in his day, who formerly, that is to say, some eight or nine score years ago—dwelt in this very tenement, where he followed his profession, except when enticed by the smell of good liquor to the village alehouse—the detriment, and even ruin, of many a goodly piece of raiment, which at times he clipped and shaped in such wise as redounded but little to the credit of either wearer or artificer. Mike was more alive to a merry troll and graceless story, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Juventus," in Hawkins's English Drama, are choice specimens of the vulgarest abuse. Bishop Bale in his play of King John (published in 1838 by the Camden Society), indulges in a levity and coarseness that would not now be tolerated in an alehouse—"stynkyng heretic" on one side, and "vile popysh swyne" on the other, are among the mildest epithets used in these religious satires. One of the most curious is a dialogue between John Bon, a husbandman, and "Master ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... We are here, sir, at about an equal distance from Mittwalden in Grunewald and Brandenau in Gerolstein: six leagues to either, and the road excellent; but there is not a wine bush, not a carter's alehouse, anywhere between. You will have to accept my hospitality for the night; rough hospitality, to which I make you freely welcome; for, sir,' he added with a bow, 'it is God who sends ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seen, were, till of late years, resorted to by none but the genteeler sort of people, and from their retired situation, are every way capable of being made one of the most rural retreats for public amusement of any in the kingdom. Times are now completely changed, it being turned into an alehouse, where persons of all descriptions may be accommodated with that or any other liquor, on which account the upper classes of the inhabitants have entirely ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... promised him nothing; but why does not Tom come back and look after me? I can't mope here by myself; I have no one to keep company with; my father is always away at the alehouse, and I must have somebody to talk to. Besides, Tom is away, and may be away a long while, and absence cures love in men, although it does ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... conqueror. Pipes was congratulated upon his victory, not only by his friend Hatchway, but also by all the by-standers, particularly the priest who had espoused his cause, and now invited the strangers to his lodgings in a neighbouring alehouse, where they were entertained so much to their liking, that they determined to seek no other habitation while they should continue in town; and, notwithstanding the disgrace and discouragement they had met with, in their endeavours to serve our adventurer, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the highroad and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its bank was toward the kirktown of Balweary, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... quarrelling with her mother in a coarse, angry tone. The children, ragged and hungry, fighting for the fireside. The father away, at some unlawful occupation probably, or sitting drinking his wages in an alehouse. That was what they saw, and what any man may see to-day for himself in his own village, whether in England or Australia, that working man's paradise. Drink, dirt, and sloth, my friends of the working orders, will produce the same ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley |
