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Foundling   Listen
noun
Foundling  n.  A deserted or exposed infant; a child found without a parent or owner.
Foundling hospital, a hospital for foundlings.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Foundling" Quotes from Famous Books



... Eastern courtier, he knew how to dissemble, but not to forgive, and bided his time. The Magi, to their credit, told Astyages that his dream had been fulfilled, that Cyrus—as we must now call the foundling prince—had fulfilled it by becoming a king in play, and the boy is let to go back to his father and his hardy Persian life. But Harpagus does not leave him alone, nor perhaps, do his own thoughts. He has wrongs to avenge on his grandfather. ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the Director of the Registrar's Department has sent for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent... asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire Brigade? From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of the lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were continually being ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... him for years—not since Drusilla used to bring him to dances, when we were young girls. She didn't like it particularly, but she had to do it because he was her father's ward and had gone to live with them. He was uncouth—aggressive. Wasn't he a foundling, or a street Arab, or something like that? He certainly seemed so. He wasn't a bit—civilized. And once he—he said something—he almost insulted me. You wouldn't take ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... in pregnancy, is admitted, if there be room to receive her, without an inquiry, if she be in distress; she enters into an engagement to support the child, and if she cannot fulfil it, she must make a declaration and it is sent to the Foundling Hospital, but if she retain it, clothing and a small sum of money is given her on quitting the hospital. A school for midwifery is established here, the practitioners being females, who, when considered competent, receive a diploma from the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... Rousseau's preaching and his practice, as it stands revealed in the Confessions—the lover of independence who never earned his own living, the apostle of equality who was a snob, and the educationist who left his children in the Foundling Hospital. All this has often been done, and no doubt will often be done again; but it is futile. Rousseau lives, and will live, a vast and penetrating influence, in spite of all his critics. There is something in him that eludes their foot-rules. It is so ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills—that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating—he may have found food and nourishment, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... favorites. They'll throw that up at us from every stump in the State. And when our leaders explain that it was done for the maw'l good of the State, they'll give us the laugh—same as they did when we established the Foundling Hospital in '98. Now I tell you the party can't stand any talk of that kind this year. We're on shaky ground right now f'r the same reason that we're all so proud of—spendin' money f'r the maw'l ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... of a heartless man and a cruel law. She tied to her baby's wrist a paper on which she had written its father's name, placed it in the rota at the Foundling of Santo Spirito, and flung herself ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... improve it, but what assistance comes from above? A Father in Heaven would be a glorious fact. But who can believe it? "Our Father" is utterly careless of his children. The celestial Rousseau sends all his offspring to the Foundling. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in one of those no-questions-asked garages where they keep motors that are not for family use. I had a lively cousin who had put me up to that dodge, and I looked about till I found a queer hole where they took in my car like a baby in a foundling asylum... Then I practiced running to Wrenfield and back in a night. I knew the way pretty well, for I'd done it often with the same lively cousin—and in the small hours, too. The distance is over ninety miles, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... "Nancy Dawson". Nancy Dawson was a famous 'toast' and horn-pipe dancer, who died at Haverstock Hill, May 27, 1767, and was buried behind the Foundling, in the burial-ground of St. George the Martyr. She first appeared at Sadler's Wells, and speedily passed to the stage of Covent Garden, where she danced in the 'Beggar's Opera'. There is a portrait of her in the Garrick Club, and there are several contemporary prints. She ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... on the occasion of a previous visit. She slept in one of the two other beds which the room contained, and now sat beside it mending some linen. She was to leave the house on the morrow, having already sent her child to the Foundling Hospital; and in the meantime she was mending some things for Rosine, the well-to-do young person of great beauty whom Mathieu had previously espied, and whose story, according to Norine, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... small when compared with the others. Well, Finn served this giant a considerable time, doing all kinds of hard and unreasonable service for him, and receiving all kinds of hard words, and many a hard knock and kick to boot—sorrow befall the old vagabond who could thus ill- treat a helpless foundling. It chanced that one day the giant caught a salmon, near a salmon-leap upon his estate—for, though a big ould blackguard, he was a person of considerable landed property, and high sheriff for the county Cork. Well, the giant brings home the salmon ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... Address at the Opening of Cornell University, by the author of these chapters. For the citation regarding the evolution of better and nobler ideas of God, see Church and Creed: Sermons preached in the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital, London, by A. W. Momerie, M. A., LL. D., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in King's College, London, 1890. For a very vigorous utterance on the other side, see a recent charge ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... in a heart-rending chapter of "Our Old Home" called "Outside Glimpses of English Poverty." And it was then that he revealed the vast depth and the reality of his human sympathy toward the wretched and loathsome little foundling child that silently sued to him for kindness, till he took it up and caressed it as tenderly as if he had ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... classes and begin training them for occupations. Some we educate as scholars, some laborers, some professional men. In me, dear friend, you see one of the triumphs of our methods. I myself was a foundling—raised and educated in the School of Environment. Whatever I may be, I ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe

... it has eyes and a nose; so have all portraits. But where are the strokes that constitute identity, and determine the original?—There is no mention of Crockford's or of the Missionary Society, of the Old Bailey or the Foundling Hospital; and if Ordonez is named, who gets rich by managing the affairs of the poor, this can never be meant for a satire on the blundering pedantry of your Somerset-house commissioners.—Here is no hint that can be tortured into a glance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... Pang-yeh, held at present the post of Secretary in the Peking Field Force, and was well-nigh seventy. His wife had died at an early period, and as she left no issue, he adopted a son and a daughter from a foundling asylum. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... significant fact that these humanitarians are continually breaking the simplest rules of honesty and decent living. Rousseau, the father of them all, sending his children (the children of his body, I mean) to the foundling asylum, is a notorious example of this; and John Howard is another. I have in my own experience found these people ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... Anna went off to her orphan and foundling asylum where she was virgin mother to the motherless, drawing the mantle of her spotless life around little waifs straying into the world from ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... Malloch the useful Hint of introducing in some of his future Productions, the whole Foundling Hospital, which with a well painted Scene of the Edifice itself would certainly call forth the warmest Tears of Pity, and the bitterest Emotions of Distress; especially when we consider that many ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster

... cannot forget the disappointment of being cast out of Scutari after one of the most strenuous and glorious campaigns of her history, and lastly Albania, poor and helpless, without any support from her creators, feels all that a weak and wretched foundling has to feel toward those responsible for its misfortunes and miseries. In contrast with these feelings, Rumania was the only Balkan State perfectly satisfied with the new arrangement. In fact, Rumania, having played ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... engine-hose. "The world's a stage,"—as Shakespeare said, one day; The stage a world—was what he meant to say. The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here. Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, When the young couple, old folks, rogues, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... and above him, under the portico, the grand lady whose laugh had made me sad. And I remembered, too, the wild, neglected lad who had been to me as a brother, warm-hearted and generous, who had shared what he had with a foundling, who had wept with me in my first great ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... take kindly to the idea of their marriage, for Oswald has not always revered Westphalian traditions, the secret tribunal, for example, as he should have done; Oswald's friends in Suabia object to his marrying a foundling, and advise him to come home and straighten out a love affair he has there before entering into a new and foreign one; the doctor is not even certain that the wedding is hygienically wise. But love dispels all fears and doubts, and the good Deacon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... baptized at the express wishes of the mother. Charlotte wrote down what its name was to be—Jacques (after me), Charles (after her), son of Antonio della Croce and of Charlotte de (she gave her real name). When it was brought from the church she told Madame Lamarre to carry it to the Foundling Hospital, with the certificate of baptism in its linen. I vainly endeavoured to persuade her to leave the care of the child to me. She said that if it lived the father could easily reclaim it. On the same day, October 18th, the midwife gave me the following certificate, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... unappreciative, and coarse, the author of many of his subsequent miseries. She lived with him till he died,—at first as his mistress and housekeeper, although later in life he married her. She was the mother of his five children, every one of whom he sent to a foundling hospital, justifying his inhumanity by those sophistries and paradoxes with which his writings abound,—even in one of his letters appealing for pity because he "had never known the sweetness of a father's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... part of the Irish Parliament House will perpetuate his name in Dublin while that city lasts—each helped to make the capital, even in its decay, one of the most interesting in Europe. Nor should we forget Thomas Ivory (d. 1786), whose Foundling Hospital is another of Dublin's many graceful edifices; nor Sir Richard Morrison (1767-1849) and his son William (1794-1838), much of whose work remains to testify ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... loo with Mrs. Moriarty; may be you didn't break the lamp in the hall with your umbrella, pretending you touched it with your head, and wasn't within three foot of it; may be Counsellor Brady wasn't going to put you in the box of the Foundling Hospital, if you wouldn't behave quietly in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... will have to take care of your child, because I cannot. Bring it up tenderly, and don't, for heaven's sake, send it to the Foundling Asylum. I shall go ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... command, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophet no harm. From that small seed, accordingly, sprang the greatest tree that grew in those old days upon the earth. Moses, the terror of Pharaoh, the scourge of Egypt, the leader of the Exodus, the lawgiver of Israel—Moses in his manhood was to the foundling infant what the towering tree is to the imperceptible ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... once more on the roll of papers. He went on smoothly. "We questioned of him in the village. He is a foundling. None knows his parentage. From childhood he has made pictures upon rocks, and sand beds, and the inner bark of trees. He wanders for days together among the peaks, and declares that he is searching for his mate, a Dragon Princess, withheld from him by ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... virtuous race. Clinging to the colder zone Whose dark sky sheds the snow-flake down, The snow-flake is her banner's star, Her stripes the boreal streamers are. Long she loved the Northman well; Now the iron age is done, She will not refuse to dwell With the offspring of the Sun Foundling of the desert far, Where palms plume and siroccos blaze, He roves unhurt the burning ways In climates of the summer star. He has avenues to God Hid from men of northern brain, Far beholding, without cloud, What these with slowest steps attain. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... Bulbo, Crown Prince of Crim Tartary, found the child, and, with THAT ELEGANT BENEVOLENCE which has always distinguished the heiress of the throne of Paflagonia, gave the little outcast a SHELTER AND A HOME! Her parentage not being known, and her garb very humble, the foundling was educated in the Palace in a menial capacity, under the name ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... child to his own house, and his wife having at that time an infant daughter at her breast, she took the foundling from her husband's arms, and became unto it as a mother, nursing it with her own child. But John told not his wife of the purse, nor the ring, nor the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... toward the centre of the square, till now not a foot of vacant space remains. At one of its stalls may still be found an ancient marketman, whose name, Anthony Piazza, is a memory of a parish custom which named after this favorite walk many of the foundling ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... alone in the world, sir. When I tell you that she had been brought up in the Foundling Hospital, you will understand what I mean. Oh, there is no romance in my sister-in-law's story! She never has known, or will know, who her parents were or why they deserted her. The happiest moment in her life was the moment when she and my brother first met. It was an instance, on both ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Bolivar and his companions, who were at the base of the hill. The hero Caesar could not imagine that he beheld the liberator of the world of Columbus!" And small blame to him, one would say. We are not, then, it seems, the only foundling of Columbus, as we are so apt to take for granted. The great Genoese did not, as we supposed, draw that first star-guided furrow across the vague of waters with a single eye to the future greatness of the United States. And have we not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... is to go to church and offer a candle in simple-hearted faith, upon my word it is. Then there would be an end to my sufferings. I like being doctored too; in the spring there was an outbreak of smallpox and I went and was vaccinated in a foundling hospital—if only you knew how I enjoyed myself that day. I subscribed ten roubles in the cause of the Slavs!... But you are not listening. Do you know, you are not at all well this evening? I know you went ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... reared her; she had been a foundling. She told me this at the beginning of our intimacy. We often played games of picking out the handsomest houses and chateaux we passed, pretending that her parents lived in them. She was very jolly, was my little Leontine, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... Twist, which teaches the brotherhood of man. Some novels are avowedly and insolently vicious; such are the Adventures of Faublas and the Memoirs of a Woman of Quality. Others, under the guise of philanthropy, sap every notion of right and duty: such are Martin the Foundling, Consuelo, et id omne genus. It is the novels of this last class which are the most deleterious; for, with much truth, they contain just enough poison to vitiate the whole mass. Chemists tell us that the smallest atom of putrid matter, if applied to the most gigantic body, will, in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... dispositions and bequests for the nursery of every virtue that could be named, but more especially of industry, providence, and thrift. A man may be brought into the world by voluntary contributions; he may be maintained and educated at a foundling asylum, if his parents, as thousands do, choose to throw him upon the public compassion; he may ride into a good business upon the back of a borrowed capital, for which he pays but a nominal interest; and if he fail to realise a competence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... the studio three-quarters of an hour late because she had been hanging about the neighbourhood of the Foundling Hospital merely for the chance of seeing Jacob walk down the street, take out his latch-key, and open the door, "I'm afraid I'm late"; upon which Nick said nothing and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... astonishment. Why, he was positively handsome! His dark head, standing out boldly against the bolstering pillows, the fine lines of his face definite, the pallor—he was like a Roman cameo. Who and what could he be, this picturesque foundling? ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... Jewess. Her name is Mirah, the anagram of Hiram, an Israelite mark that stamps her, for she was a foundling picked up in Germany, and the inquiries I have made prove that she is the illegitimate child of a rich Jew banker. The life of the theatre, and, above all, the teaching of Jenny Cadine, Madame Schontz, Malaga, and Carabine, as to the way to treat an old man, have developed, in the child whom ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... adopted, thank God, not the morals, but the maxims I found to be established there. Honest men injured, husbands deceived, women seduced, were the most ordinary topics, and he who had best filled the foundling hospital was always the most applauded. I caught the manners I daily had before my eyes: I formed my manner of thinking upon that I observed to be the reigning one amongst amiable: and upon the whole, very honest people. I said to myself, since ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... clasping and unclasping the quiet hands in her lap, "and one was a Catholic priest who had been reared in a foundling asylum and educated by charity. When I knew him he was on his way to a leper island in the South Seas, where he would be buried alive for the remainder of his life. All he had was an ideal, but it flooded his soul with light. Another was a Russian Nihilist, a girl in years ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... supposed to have perished by wild beasts. But a shepherd, who found him in this perishing state, pitied his helplessness, and carried him to his master and mistress, King and Queen of Corinth, who adopted and educated him as their own child. That he was not their own child, and that in fact he was a foundling of unknown parentage, oedipus was not slow of finding from the insults of his schoolfellows; and at length, with the determination of learning his origin and his fate, being now a full- grown young man, he strode off from ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... hitherto done, the ambition of meriting it.—Yet, sir, pardon me if I now discover a desire with which I long have laboured, of doing something of myself which may repair the obscurity of my birth, and prove to the world that heaven has endued this foundling with a courage and resolution capable of undertaking ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... at the Foundling Hospital in the morning, still in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night. There he heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for peace. Coming out, he bought a Referee. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... thus mingles sense and nonsense:—'Though tea and gin have spread their baneful influence over this island and his Majesty's other dominions, yet you may be well assured that the Governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost skill and vigilance to prevent the children under their care from being poisoned, or enervated, by one or the other.' Johnson's Works, vi. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... sons, however, were jealous because their parents loved the little foundling as well as them, and when they played with Crivoliu and quarrelled, they called him a "foundling." The boy's heart was saddened by this and he went to his foster-parents and said: "Dear parents, tell me, am I truly not your son?" The fisherman's wife said: "How should you ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... race. Clinging to a colder zone Whose dark sky sheds the snowflake down, The snowflake is her banner's star, Her stripes the boreal streamers are. Long she loved the Northman well; Now the iron age is done, She will not refuse to dwell With the offspring of the Sun; Foundling of the desert far, Where palms plume, siroccos blaze, He roves unhurt the burning ways In climates of the summer star. He has avenues to God Hid from men of Northern brain, Far beholding, without cloud, What these with slowest steps attain. If once the generous chief arrive To lead him ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... is this?" said Emile, laughing; "plain Valentin, say you? Raphael DE Valentin, if you please. We bear an eagle or, on a field sable, with a silver crown, beak and claws gules, and a fine motto: NON CECIDIT ANIMUS. We are no foundling child, but a descendant of the Emperor Valens, of the stock of the Valentinois, founders of the cities of Valence in France, and Valencia in Spain, rightful heirs to the Empire of the East. If we suffer Mahmoud on the throne of Byzantium, it is out of pure condescension, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... manners,—enthusiasm which age cannot extinguish, and which spends but does not waste itself on small but not trifling objects. I wish I could at seventy-two be such a woman! She told me that Rousseau, whilst he was writing so finely on education, and leaving his own children in the Foundling Hospital, defended himself with so much eloquence that even those who blamed him in their hearts, could not find tongues to answer him. Once at dinner, at Madame d'Ouditot's, there was a fine pyramid of fruit. Rousseau in helping ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... foundling was brought up with Mr. Gordon's own daughters, and when she had attained to womanhood, by an inexplicable coincidence, a storm similar to that just mentioned occurred. An alarm-gun was fired, and ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... which the Genevans are proudest is probably that of Rousseau, who has sometimes been spoken of as "the austere citizen of Geneva." But "austere" is a strange epithet to apply to the philosopher who endowed the Foundling Hospital with five illegitimate children; and Geneva can not claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from the town of his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples. It was, indeed, at Geneva that Jean Jacques received from his aunt the disciplinary chastisement ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... person who was concealed, and he sank to the ground unconscious. The man who attacked my father dug out the box which had been buried, and which he supposed contained money, and thereby saved my life. He brought me to the foundling asylum, where I was inscribed as No. 37. Three months later I was taken from the asylum by the sister-in-law of the man, who was a Corsican, and brought me to Corsica, where I was brought up, and in spite of the care of my foster-parents ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... the blessedness of education. For when we are freed we are by no means perfected. We are liberated babes; and our Emancipator does not desert us in our spiritual infancy. The foundling is not abandoned. "Having loved His own He loved them unto the end." He begins with us in the spiritual nursery, and He will train and lead and feed us until we are ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... the tiny monster opened its eyes and stared at her. Well! . . . somehow, neither of us could forget the look it gave us,—such a solemn, warning, pitiful, appealing sort of expression! There was no resisting it,—so we took the foundling and did the best we could for him. We gave him the name of Sigurd,—and when Thelma was born, the two babies used to play together all day, and we never noticed anything wrong with the boy, except his natural deformity, till he was about ten or twelve years old. Then we saw ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... and looked about him, doubtfully turned over the leaves, and then began the service "for the baptism of a foundling," as the most appropriate for the present peculiar circumstances ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker

... course, before very long, well known about the country that Mr. Duff's crofters upon Glashgar had taken in and were bringing up a foundling—some said an innocent, some said a wild boy—who helped Robert with his sheep, and Janet with her cow, but could not speak a word of either Gaelic or English. By and by, strange stories came to be told of his ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... way that the project conceived in the obscure dreams of an out-at-elbows young man, and born a foundling upon his money, should have been adopted at sight as the spoiled darling of fashion's ultra-fashionable. Undoubtedly, astute Mr. Dayne had had somewhat to do with this, he who so well understood the ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... her parents; for, notwithstanding her disguise, her air, which she could not conceal, sufficiently discovered her birth to be infinitely superior to theirs. Fanny, bursting into tears, solemnly assured him he was mistaken; that she was a poor helpless foundling, and had no relation in the world which she knew of; and, throwing herself on her knees, begged that he would not attempt to take her from her friends, who, she was convinced, would die before they would lose her; which Adams confirmed with ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... a very fair rich purse containing a great sum of gold. To secure the benefit of this wealth, he carried the babe home as secretly as he could, and gave her in charge to his wife, telling her the process of the discovery. The shepherd's name was Porrus, his wife's Mopsa; the precious foundling they named Fawnia. Being themselves childless, they brought her up tenderly as their own daughter. With the gold Porrus bought a farm and a flock of sheep, which Fawnia at the age of ten was set to watch; and, as she was likely to be his only heir, many rich farmers' ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... to-night," he replied, shaking his head and chuckling. "Feel my old bones too sore from sliding down that confounded rampart. I mustn't keep you chattering here, however, for you've got to see about those youngsters. You are sure you don't mind the trouble of putting up my foundling Dick ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Children's Free and the United States Marine hospitals; St Luke's hospital, church home, and orphanage; the House of Providence (a maternity hospital and infant asylum); the Woman's hospital and foundling's home; the Home for convalescent children, &c. In 1894 the mayor, Hazen Senter Pingree (1842-1901), instituted the practice of preparing, through municipal aid and supervision, large tracts of vacant land in and about the city for the growing of potatoes and other vegetables ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... much about the exposure of children, and about Chinese foundling hospitals, in the Lettres Edifiantes, especially in Recueil xv. 83, seqq. It is there stated that frequently a person not in circumstances to pay for a wife for his son, would visit the foundling hospital to seek one. The childless rich also would sometimes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Old Year flits, the New Year comes, And, through such severance, man contrives To parcel out in little sums The little measurements of lives. We feign the one a different year, Outworn, by solemn bells outrung— The other, foundling of our sphere, As radiant, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various

... novel can deliberately put himself in the way of temptation and as unhesitatingly avoid it must be worth following. And so, if for no other reason, one might look forward to Mr. BERNARD DUFFY'S next book with uncommon interest. His hero comes into the story as a foundling, being deposited in a humble Irish home and an atmosphere of mystery by some woman unknown; he is supported thereafter by sufficiently suggestive remittances, and he passes through a Bohemian boyhood and a more normal though still intriguing early struggle and fluctuating love-story to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... behind her the home which, for several hours, she had plunged in grief and anxiety. An examination of the infant which had been kidnaped showed that it had sustained no injury, and, filled with a spirit of thankfulness, Frank and Inza Merriwell resolved that the little foundling which had been substituted for their baby son should be placed in a more worthy home than was afforded by the asylum from which it had been taken. In a few days such a home was found, and the infant ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... not disappear, those childish terrors, even when a kitten moved across the floor and began to toy with the vallance of the bed, explaining at once the door's opening. For might not the kitten, he thought, be more than Peggy's foundling be the other Thing disguised? He watched its gambols at the feet of that distressed household, watched its pawing at the fringe, turning round upon itself in playfulness, emblem surely of the cruel heedlessness ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... Protestant. Orders given concerning the passage of the Imperial railway train. Soldiers kept sitting in the mud—cold, hungry, and cursing. Decrees issued relating to the educational institutions of the Empress Mary Department. Corruption rampant in the foundling homes. An undeserved monument. Thieving among the clergy. The reinforcement of the political police. A woman being searched. A prison for convicts who are sentenced to be deported. A man being hanged for ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... together of the child and the race; Rousseau, who told of childhood as "refuge from present evil, a mournful reminiscence of a lost Paradise, who (like St. Pierre) preached a return to nature, and left his own offspring to the tender mercy of a foundling asylum"; Luther, the great religious reformer, who was ever "a father among his children"; Goethe, who represents German intellectualism, yet a great child-artist; Froebel, the patron saint of the kindergarten; Hans Andersen, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... said a sharp, strong man, well-dressed, and in good condition, coming up to the crowd; "another foundling! Confound the place, the very stones produce ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... situated above the falls, where the hospitable superintendent begged us to remain, and offered to take care of the child until its friends could be discovered. My wife, however, refused to part with her treasure-trove, as she called the little foundling, and so strongly expressed her wish to adopt her, that, having none of our own, I consented, provided no relative appeared to claim her. On seeing the ornaments which we had taken from the Indian woman, the superintendent pronounced them to be those worn by Crees, and thought by ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston

... proceed along the Via Calzaioli (which means street of the stocking-makers), running away from the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza della Signoria. The fascinatingly pretty building at the corner, opposite Pisano's Baptistery doors, is the Bigallo, in the loggia of which foundling children used to be displayed in the hope that passers-by might pity them sufficiently to make them presents or even adopt them; but this custom continues no longer. The Bigallo was designed, it is thought, by Orcagna, and it is ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... world, he seemed to know nothing whatever, as far at least as his own experience went. He did not speak either of his family or of any friend he possessed, and they soon came to the conclusion that he was either a foundling or an orphan, without any relation whom he wished to own. Still they were very much pleased with ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... it does? He's nothing but a foundling. He ought to be glad we are willing to dress him up prettily and play ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... suddenly sober, turned toward him a face grave and thoughtful. A certain portion of the old morbidness returned to her. "It's not kind of you, Colonel Cal," said she, "to remind me that I'm nobody. I'm worse than an orphan. I'm worse than a foundling. How I endure staying here is more than I can tell. Shall I ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... now was, tried to pester him he would break every bone in the skinflint's body." So the Major and old Joel rode over next day to see Nathan, and Nathan with his shifting eyes told them Chad's story in a high, cracked voice that, recalling Chad's imitation of it, made the Major laugh. Chad was a foundling, Nathan said: his mother was dead and his father had gone off to the Mexican War and never come back: he had taken the mother in himself and Chad had been born in his own house, when he lived farther up the river, and the boy had begun ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... interesting reference to anthems in connexion with the Foundling Hospital,[15] an institution which Dickens mentions several times. Mr. Wilding (N.T.), after he had been pumped on by his lawyer in order to clear his head, names the composers of the anthems he had been accustomed to sing at ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... United States Minister, describing the originating causes of the outrage: "At many of the principal places in China open to foreign residence, the Sisters of Charity have established institutions, each of which appears to combine in itself a foundling hospital and orphan asylum. Finding that the Chinese were averse to placing children in their charge, the managers of these institutions offered a certain sum per head for all the children placed under their control, to be ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... Italy, and a box of light literature from England having arrived at ten o'clock of the night, she could not but open it and "falling upon Fielding's works, was fool enough to sit up all night reading. I think "Joseph Andrews" better than his Foundling"—the reference being, of course, to "Tom Jones"; a judgment not jumping with that of posterity, which has declared the other to be his masterpiece; yet not an opinion to be despised, coming from one of the keenest intellects of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... in the same breath," cried Henry hastily. "And wherefore—if such be his honour to him whom he slew and mutilated— art thou to disown thy name, and stand before him like some chance foundling?" ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... believe what we heard he had been presented to Commodus by the same nobleman who had presented Murmex Lucro, and on the very next day; he was from Apulia; he was a Roman all his days; he was a Sabine; he was a nobleman in disguise, he had been a foundling brought up in the Subura; he was a half brother of Commodus, offspring of an amour between Faustina and a gladiator, reared in Samnium on a farm, lately recognized and accepted by the Emperor; he was Commodus himself ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... would be produced by a dictionary of modern names, consisting of such articles as the following:-"Jones, William, an eminent Orientalist, and one of the judges of the Supreme Court of judicature in Bengal—Davy, a fiend, who destroys ships—Thomas, a foundling, brought up by Mr. Allworthy." It is from such sources as these that Temple seems to have learned all that he knew about the ancients. He puts the story of Orpheus between the Olympic games and the battle of Arbela; as if we had exactly the same reasons for believing that Orpheus led beasts with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the scurrying rats among the roof-timbers. They ran like the thoughts in my brain. And before I slept I prayed again and again that God would put it in my power to reward him whom charity for a friendless foundling had brought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... a tender-hearted hind, Who, wond'ring at our loud unusual note, Strays curiously aside, and so doth find The orphan child laid in the grass remote, And laps the foundling in his russet coat, Who thence was nurtured in his kindly cot:— But how he prosper'd let proud London quote, How wise, how rich, and how renown'd he got, And chief of all her ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him: for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, gave him gifts: a good king he! To him an heir was afterward ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... as the great composer, but he was not so busy in this that his thoughts were not also dwelling upon other things. If ever you go to London, you should of a Sunday morning hear the service at the Foundling Hospital. You will see there many hundreds of boys and girls grouped about the organ. Their singing will seem beautiful to you, from its sweetness and from the simple faith in which it is done. After the ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper

... in Miss Bentley's eyes caused him to add quickly: "Not that I am a foundling. But my father and mother were lost at sea when I was three years old. We were coming from Victoria to San Francisco, when the steamer went down. Only a few of the passengers were ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard

... heterogen'ous By strangers seen as A refuge for destitute bons mots— Depot for leaden jokes and pewter pots; Repertory for gin and jeux d'esprit, Literary pound for vagrant rapartee; Second-hand shop for left-off witticisms; Gall'ry for Tomkins and Pitt-icisms;[3] Foundling hospital for every bastard pun; In short, a manufactory for all sorts of fun! * * * * Arouse my muse! such pleasing themes to quit, Hear me while I say "Donnez-moi du frenzy, s'il vous plait!"[4] Give me a most tremendous ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various

... although it is nominally a foundling institution, really presents many educational advantages which are only to be found in the ladies' colleges of England and the United States. A large proportion of the scholars are foundlings or orphans; but many pay for their instruction, and some of the girls ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... laugh thus raised having subsided, Mademoiselle Cormon asked the reason of her success. Then began the forte of the gossip. Du Bousquier was depicted as a species of celibate Pere Gigogne, a monster, who for the last fifteen years had kept the Foundling Hospital supplied. His immoral habits were at last revealed! these Parisian saturnalias were the result of them, etc., etc. Conducted by the Chevalier de Valois, a most able leader of an orchestra of this kind, the opening of the ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... together, collected his thoughts, concentrated his attention on the game, and played well. But no sooner was the game over than once again there rose before his eyes the face and figure of the beautiful foundling of the Black Forest, with her strange story and her extraordinary likeness not only to the picture of the young girl in the drawing-room of the manor, but also to his gentle friend ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous

... university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods, multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. When she was building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? Alas! When she was projecting her noble Society for the Purifying of the Sex, what was he doing? Ah, what, indeed! When she and the W. C. T. U. and the Woman with the Hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal bottle from the land, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... in the way of making a mint of money. There's only one thing: you must give up the baby and never let anybody know you ever had it. Don't freeze up and turn away. There are so many ways of disposing of a baby. Send it to a foundling asylum. No questions will be asked. The baby will have the best of care and grow so strong that some rich couple will insist on adopting it, or you could come back when you are married to a rich man and pretend you took a fancy to it and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... rupes a rumpere. Indeed, there is an analogous Sanscrit root, meaning break, crack. But though Mr. Wedgwood lets off this coughing, hawking, spitting, and otherwise unpleasant old patriarch Rac so easily in the case of the foundling Crag, he has by no means done with him. Stretched on the unfilial instrument of torture that bears his name, he is made to confess the paternity of draff, and dregs, and dross, and so many other uncleanly brats, that we feel as if he ought ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... horn included, as a last concession, and because he had hitherto forborne to play on it); and in the second, the five Fulmers, the bonne, who at the eleventh hour had refused to be left, a cage-full of canaries, and a foundling kitten who had murderous designs on them; all of which had to be taken because, if the bonne came, there would be nobody ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... Bills for the Encouragement of Seamen, and for explaining the Militia Act..... Act for repairing London Bridge..... Act for ascertaining the Qualification of voting..... Bill for more effectually manning the Navy..... Amendments in the Habeas-Corpus Act..... Scheme in Favour of the Foundling Hospital..... Proceedings relative to the African Company..... Session closed..... Vigorous Preparations for War..... Death of the Princess Caroline..... Sea Engagement off Cape Francois..... Remarkable success of Captain Forest..... French evacuate Embden..... Success of Admiral Osborne..... ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... Lady Janet's visit) was, of course, discovered in a touching domestic position! She had a foundling baby asleep on her lap; and she was teaching the alphabet to an ugly little vagabond girl whose acquaintance she had first made in the street. Just the sort of artful tableau vivant to impose on an old lady—was ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... left; he had sold two-thirds of his books; for three men and four women servants, he had but one old woman and his own daughter to do the work of the house; for all quadrupedal menie, he had but a nondescript canine and a contemptuous feline foundling; from a devoted congregation of comparatively educated people, he had sunk to one in which there was not a person of higher standing than a tradesman, and that congregation had now rejected him as not up to their mark, turning him off to do his best with fifty pounds a year. He had himself ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... bless him whom thou weddest, whoever he may be," he said. "I am but a foundling, and the King's servant to boot—it would be against all rule and custom were he to wed me ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... child of the fairies, but she was considerably more fortunate in her choice of a foster family than is usually the fate of the foundling. The rigorous altitude of intellect in which she was reared served as a corrective to the oversensitive quality of ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... flycatchers are generally the sufferers, though I sometimes see the slate-colored snowbird unconsciously duped in like manner; and the other day, in a tall tree in the woods, I discovered the black-throated green-backed warbler devoting itself to this dusky, over-grown foundling. An old farmer to whom I pointed out the fact was much surprised that such things should happen in his ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... matter, and self-existence is the most majestic of attributes, and includes all others."[271] "If Natural Theologians were content to stop where they prove a superior something to exist, Atheists might be content to stop there too, and allow Theologians to dream in quiet over their barren foundling."[272] "If I supposed that the Christian meant no more than that something exists independently of Nature, that it may be boundless, that it may be limited, that it may be one, that it may be many beings, if I supposed nothing more than that was meant, then surely I would not occupy ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... was our next station. It is, as its name signifies, an institution with a benevolent purpose, an orphan asylum and foundling hospital in one. The State here charitably considers that infants who are abandoned by their parents are as much orphaned as they can become by the interposition of death,—nay, more. The death of parents oftenest leaves a child with some friend or relative; but the foundling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... the editor of "Clarissa," had access. It was written, apparently, after the disgraceful success of Lovelace's disgraceful adventure, and shows us that scoundrel in company not choice, indeed, but better than he deserved, the society of Mr. Thomas Jones, a Foundling. Mr. Jones's admirable wife (nee Western), having heard of Lovelace's conduct, sent her husband to execute that revenge which should have been competed for by every man of heart. It will be seen that Mr. Jones was no match for the perfidies of Mr. Lovelace. The cynical reflections of ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... with our skeleton, trotting our little foundling round town on the organ, where she witnessed with infant eyes street rows, cricket matches, bicycle races, a murder or two, and such other little incidents of life which we deemed ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... you would say," he broke in, with cold, measured words. "I can put it for you in a breath—I am an English gentleman; you are a Dutch foundling!" ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic



Words linked to "Foundling" :   babe, baby



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