Old people's home

“ If you were here you might build an old men’s 87home for the poor men to whom society has never given a chance, who, through no fault of their own, have been forced from their cradle to live in stifling attics or damp, unwholesome hovels, breathing poison, working their fingers off to give their hungry children bread. You might build a comfortable home where these decrepit, useless old fellows might enjoy the food which you give in charity, wear your charity uniform, and look forward to filling a pauper’s grave, as does one in nine of all the people who die in London. ”

“ The old House looks down approvingly on the happy company, for it has come into its own, sheltering in these later days kind, cheery people that respect its past glories and love its present homelike spirit, for to them its every stick and stone spell Home. ”

“ These good old people declared that they had not seen better days, but that they were living the simple life from choice. They loved the peace of this isolated mountain home and the companionship of the grand old peak. ”

“ It was very quiet, very handsome, in its own obsolete style, and must be an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad. ”

“ The old man thought it was better not to let anyone know where he was going, for either his son or his sons-in-law might then have begged him to remain at home, and old people like to have their own way. ”

“ An old man going home, nearer eighty than seventy as the people said, a good old man leaving the world in charity with everybody, and leaving nobody behind whom he would miss much when he got there. A woman, here and there, at her doorhead or her stairfoot, flung her apron over her head as she watched the procession defiling into the wide space before the churchyard, which was visible from the houses at the fishers’ end of the lower street. ”

“ The sparkle and flicker,
In the eyes of youth!
And, of a truth,
'T is youth, old house! 't is youth that fills you;
Youth that calls to you; youth that thrills you.
VI
Old house! Old home! O, do not dare
To be sad, tho' aware
Of the golden, and the raven, and the pretty, pretty curls,
Of the little dead girls—
Treasures put away in the old chest in the garret.
Be glad, old house! the new girls have come to share it:
The great, deep hearth, with room and to spare;
The dark garret, and the wide hall, and the quaint, old stair—
And to bring back to earth
The old, sweet mirth. ”

“ The village had been there yesterday, and now was gone!
"Alas!" cried these kind-hearted old people, "what has become of our poor neighbors!"
"They exist no longer as men and women," said the elder traveler, in his grand and deep voice, while a roll of thunder seemed to echo it at a distance. "There was neither use nor beauty in such a life as theirs; for they never softened or sweetened the hard lot of mortality by the exercise of kindly affections between man and man. ”

“ And it is certainly a good arrangement, as the old people can thus, when they will, be alone, and also can, when they will, enjoy society and books in a large, light, warm room, furnished with tables, chairs or benches. ”

“ I have frequently observed, in old English towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully and genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads in solitude. ”

“ There were no nephews or nieces to come on visits, to break up the usual solemnity reigning throughout the house, with young voices and such laughter as is only heard in youth, to tempt the old people into a temporary forgetfulness of self, and into a remembrance of days when they had hopes and fears and human interest in matters passing around them. ”

“ In the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the old men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to sit down among them there, and find out what is really the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen themselves, they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the venerable personages whom I found so quietly at anchor there. ”

“ The place painted, and lace curtains at the windows, and an air of luxury around his miserly abode. Surely something out of the ordinary run of events has transpired. The old man has slipped off this mortal coil, or rented the house to some one who knows better than he did how to keep up a house in a first-class neighborhood—that will be a pride, instead of a disgrace and a nuisance to the people on both sides of him. ”

“ Go into his cottage any time, any day, and you will find one and another with him, and you will see the old man, with his loving face and almost quite blind eyes, bending patiently to catch every word of the story they are telling, and then you will hear him advising and comforting, as a father would his child. For miles round that countryside the people know him, and he is honoured by Hindus and by Christians as India honours saints. ”

“ Paying a tardy visit to the scenes so lovingly and pleasurably remembered, the careworn elderly man finds dear old houses levelled; new, raw ones reared on their site; old paths and ways deserted, and new roads laid down; new and uninteresting topics filling up conversation, the once fresh and fair romantic boys and girls now common-place husbands and wives, except such as have been removed by death or change of residence. ”

“ But our lives are so short, we come and go so fast, no wonder at times the old House seems looking down on us with sadness; for surely the graveyard in the meadow near by tells the story of man’s short existence. The happy, merry people whose voices once made the walls of the old House ring rest there under the myrtle and boxwood, watched over by the nightingale and whip-poor-will. ”

“ As we scan the fair scene that once greeted their eyes, As we tread the same paths which they trod, Let us tenderly think of our elders by birth, Who have gone to their rest, and their God. God bless the old homestead! some linger there still, In the haunts which their childhood has known, While others have wandered to places remote, And planted new homes of their own; But Time cannot weaken the ties Love creates, Nor absence, nor distance, impede The filial devotion which thrills all our hearts, As we bid our old mother God-speed. ”

“ Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.
Refrain.
All de world is sad and dreary,
Ev'rywhere I roam;
D.S.—Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home. ”

“ Way down upon the Swanee ribber,
⁠Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
⁠Dere's wha de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation,
⁠Sadly I roam;
Still longing for de old plantation,
⁠And for de old folks at home. ”

“ Affection for the past and a reverence for the memory of the dead have caused the royal wife and mother to preserve with the same care souvenirs of her passage in other royal residences. The apartments that sheltered the first happy months of her wedded life, the rooms where she knew the joys and anxieties of maternity, have become for her consecrated sanctuaries, where the widowed, broken old lady comes on certain anniversaries to evoke the unforgotten past, to meditate and to pray. ”

“ Still, I hope the old place will be just as beautiful when my grandchildren get old enough to appreciate it as it is now, and not be sold and turned into a sanitarium, or a girls' school. The walls of the house are a soft grayish white, like a dear old grandmother's hair ”

“ It is a ‘sweet old home.’ It is perfectly beautiful, and besides it seems to me that every one who was ever born here, or ever lived and died here, must have been very good and loving, that their spirits still pervade the place, and make it holy,” said Drusilla, warmly.
“My dear, you will make me so much in love with my home that I shall not like to grow old and die and leave it,” said the General, smiling.
92“Dear uncle, please to believe that there is not the slightest necessity for you to grow old, much less to die before your century is completed. ”

“ Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty left over from the War—"too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint"—clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts. ”

“ Can a more honourable shelter be found, under which we can pass an old age with dignity and lustre, than the study of the law? For my own part, I own that this is a relief which I have provided even from my youth, not only with a view to my practice at the bar, but even to grace and embellish my old age ”

“ Far from the old folks at home. ”

“ When an old man, whose days are dwindling to the shortest span, can work no longer, he is sure to find a refuge, an asylum, a home, at a neighbour’s, where he is looked upon as one of the family. There he may remain till he is called to “that bourne from whence no traveller returns.” ”

“ Fare you well, old house! you're naught that can feel or see,
But you seem like a human being—a dear old friend to me;
And we never will have a better home, if my opinion stands,
Until we commence a-keepin' house in the house not made with hands. ”

“ Once upon a time there lived an old man and his wife in a dirty, tumble-down cottage, not very far from the splendid palace where the king and queen dwelt. In spite of the wretched state of the hut, which many people declared was too bad even for a pig to live in, the old man was very rich, for he was a great miser, and lucky besides, and would often go without food all day sooner than change one of his beloved gold pieces. ”

“ They jumped about, they played with their dolls, sometimes they also sang, for old people consider nothing so good for health, and so invigorating, as vocal music. And in this manner everything conduced to assist the expirations of the little girls in supporting our old man. If ever he was compelled to leave the room, one might see the children dragging at his coat-tails to detain him, and fervently desiring his return. Adjoining the orphanage was a pleasant garden, in which were plants and flowers calculated by their odour to quicken the vital spirit, and assist in the prolongation of life. ”

“ Not yet, but the place must have been desolate enough for one. I have sometimes tried to imagine the scene surrounding that broken-down old man. There was no furniture in the room, save what was indispensable to his bare comfort. Miss Thankful expressly said there was no carpet,—you will presently see why. Even the windows had no other protection than the bare shutters. But he was in his old home, and seemed content till Miss Charity fell sick, and they had to call in a nurse to assist Miss Thankful, who by this time had a dozen lodgers to look after. ”

“ Behold that poor old man!—whose head is already sprinkled with the silvery threads of over fifty winters—beside whom stands the companion of his sorrows—both of whose lives have been spent in quiet, honest pursuits—whose doors have ever stood open—whose board has ever been free to the needy wayfarer. You yourself have been a partaker of their hospitality, in their own home—which, alas! ”

“ Let this fact be stated, that old folks who are sent over the hill to the poorhouse have invited their fate. And conversely, elderly people who are treated with courtesy, consideration, kindness and respect are those who, in manhood's morning, have sown the seeds of love and kindness. ”

“ In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. ”

“ The gates to the grounds of his old home are always open to the visitor, but within the house the bereaved family are secure from intrusion, and their life goes on as it did before his death, save for the great void that never can be filled. ”

“ He communicated his feelings to two young girls, who, both orphans, maintained themselves by the labor of their hands, and prevailed upon them to adopt these poor, neglected, old people—first one, then two, then several, of the most forlorn. The blessing of God rested upon their work. The old people rewarded their young benefactors by a renewed life, us it were, both of soul and body, as well as by the most heart-felt gratitude. A larger room was obliged to be hired for the old people, who placed themselves under the protection of the young. ”

“ She was only one of his many phantoms.
[44]
OLD SCORES
A night of untold beauty.
Cobwebs on the heavens.
A gray winter sky, brightened by the moon shining through it.
Bare branches of hundreds of trees interlacing their silvery boughs.
And a cottage with thatched roof and square leaded panes—a setting for romance, for dreams of visionary splendor.
Is the master at home, asked a strange woman of the old man servant. ”

“ Neither Dick nor, of course, the twins had ever known the dower-house unassociated with the quiet lives of the old ladies, and they shared in their different degree the same feeling of strangeness as they stood under the porch and listened to the bell echoing in the empty house. It was like a human body from which life had departed, but with its age and many memories it still kept a soul of its own which could be revivified by fresh occupancy. ”

“ The two old people had lived in almost as harmoniously vacant and vital a silence as the old trees in the forest back of the house. In the surroundings which generations of human use had worn to an exquisite fitness for their needs, and to which a long lifetime had adjusted their every action, they conducted their life with the unthinking sureness of a process of Nature. ”