ask alms

A bat-eared young man with the mournful features of a card player who has aces wired, Murray could not ask alms as a disabled vet, since he had not been in service.

From Time Magazine Archive

Yet they omitted not to ask alms once or twice a-week, that they might not disuse themselves from the spirit of mortification and poverty.

From The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 16 by Sir Walter Scott

A wretched, cracked earthen cup, or an old wooden shoe, hanging by a string to his belt, he uses to ask alms in the shape of wine.

From The Devil's Pool by George Burnham Ives

They had become so much disliked that the very beggars were afraid to ask alms of them, for fear of offending their other patrons.

From Black Forest Village Stories by Berthold Auerbach

If any go to ask alms, it must be by appointment of the superiors.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 30 of 55 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century, Volume XXX, 1640 by Antonio Alvarez de Abreu