"Half-pay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this be distributed according to their rank and wealth. Notwithstanding, the governors do not make the allotment in accordance with this order. Sometimes they give it, under pretext of gratuities, to officers on half-pay, thus obliging the inhabitants to buy space at excessive prices. Sometimes they allot many toneladas for charitable purposes, in order that these may be sold, and the price [obtained for them] be used therefor, to the prejudice of the general welfare; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... out with you. At the same time, under your peculiar circumstances, I think if you were in a crack regiment you would, in all probability, have to fight one half the mess, and be put in Coventry by the other. You must then exchange on half-pay, and your commission would be a great help to you. As for the law—I'd sooner see a brother of mine in his coffin. There, you ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... time, from one of the servants, that he is a nephew of Sir Edgar Egerton, and a lieutenant-colonel on half-pay, or furlough, or ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... spoke to her. Butts, however, managed to become a visitor at the squire's house. Fancy MY going to the squire's! But Butts did, was accepted there, and even dined there with a parson, and two or three half-pay officers. The squire never called on Butts. That was an understood thing, nor did Mrs. Butts accompany her husband. That also was an understood thing. It was strange that Butts could tolerate and even court such a relationship. Most men would scorn with the scorn of a personal ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... as great an event ashore as the Dead Horse day was at sea. The sailors' wives, mothers, or sweethearts always celebrated half-pay day by wearing white stockings and by carrying their skirts discreetly high enough so that it might be observed. This custom was carried out with rigid regularity, and the participators were the objects of sympathetic attraction. ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... with affected sternness, but a twinkling in his eye, "you take your half-pay, make tracks, enjoy yourself, and don't worry about a trifle of a dollar or two. If you happen to drop around this way about nine o'clock, I'll be glad of your ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... for its betrayal of the Loyalists by taking them under its wing. It arranged for the transportation of all those who wished to leave the revolted states; it offered them homes in the provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec; it granted half-pay to the officers after their regiments were reduced; and it appointed a royal commission to provide compensation ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... The half-pay of Major Sutherland was gone, of course; and all that remained for Mrs. Sutherland was a small annuity, secured by her husband's payments to a certain fund for the use of officers' widows. From this she could spare ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... service after date of return. An employee entitled to thirty-five days' accrued leave per annum who visits the United States after having rendered three years of service receives a total of two hundred thirteen days' accrued leave, vacation leave, and half-pay travel time. If he postpones his visit till he has completed five years of service, he receives a total of two hundred ninety-one days' accrued leave, vacation leave and travel time. An employee entitled to thirty days' accrued leave per annum who visits the United States after three years of service ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of his travels, entitled Journey from India to England. He was aide-de-camp to the Marquess Wellesley, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, for two years, was promoted captain in the 62nd Foot, studied in the senior department of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and in 1827 obtained a half-pay unattached majority. He did not again serve on full pay, but rose to be a general. In 1829 he visited the seat of the Russo-Turkish war and was with the British fleet in Turkish waters. In 1832 he was returned in the Whig interest to the first reformed parliament ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of September, the gendarmes were ordered to surround the house of General Makriyani, an officer of irregulars on half-pay, and to arrest him on a charge of treason. On approaching the house they were warned off; but pressing forward they were fired on, and one gendarme was killed and one or two wounded. In consequence of the alarm given by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... remainder of his days in quiet and respectability; his means, it is true, were not very ample; fortunate it was that his desires corresponded with them: with a small fortune of his own, and with his half-pay as a royal soldier, he had no fears for himself or for his faithful partner and helpmate; but then his children! how was he to provide for them? how launch them upon the wide ocean of the world? This ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... comic account of the undertaking. "The opera, a tawdry, expensive and meretricious lady, who had been accustomed to high keeping, was now reduced to a very humble state. Her establishment was not only diminished, but her servants reduced to half-pay. Pescetti seems to have been her prime minister, Carestini her head man, the Muscovita her favourite woman, and Andreoni a servant for all work." Concerts and pasticcios formed the main repertory, and Burney ascribes such success ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... a valet-de-chambre, two lords, a customhouse-officer, five half-pay captains, and a baronet, (all noted gamesters,) came publicly into a church at Westminster, and deposited a very considerable sum of money in the minister's hands; the parties, whom they had defrauded, being either out of town, or not to be found. But so great is the hardness of heart of this ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... manner."[6140] It is the least of all penalties; there are others of greater and greater gravity,[6141] "the reprimand in presence of an academical board, censure in presence of the University board, transfer to an inferior office, suspension with or without entire or partial deprivation of salary, half-pay or put on the retired list, or stricken off the University roll," and, in the latter case, "rendered incapable of obtaining employment in any other public administration."—"Every member of the University[6142] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... neither of them had any money; but there never were two people who wanted it less, or did more good without it to all who came near them. They had a hard time of it too, for my father had to go on half-pay; and a commander's half-pay isn't much to live upon and keep a family. For they had a family; three besides me; but they are all gone. And my mother, too; she died when I was quite a boy, and left him and me alone; ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... lights. In the centre sits the banker, gold and silver in piles and rouleaux, and bank-notes before him. On either hand, the croupier, as before, now wielding the rakes and plying them to bring in the money, now balancing them, now shouldering them, as soldiers do their muskets, half-pay officers their canes, and dandies their silk umbrellas. The banker's cards are, as throughout all the Rhenish gaming-places, of French design; the same that were invented, or, at least, first used in Europe, for crazy Charles the Simple. These cards are placed ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... were limited, yet he was not destitute. He had an annual income of a few hundred dollars, in addition to his half-pay as a colonel in the revolutionary army. For two or three years before his death he suffered under the effects of a paralysis. Much of the time he was in a measure helpless, so far as locomotion was concerned. His general health, however, was tolerably good, by using ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Loughbank as missing, and the owners ceased the monthly remittance of Samuel's half-pay to his wife. It was the question of the child's legitimacy that preyed on her mind, and, when all hope of Samuel's return was abandoned, she drowned herself and the child in the loch. And here enters the greater tragedy. The Loughbank was not lost. ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... laid in the law courts. It is unnecessary to recall the awful "reversal of fortune" that overtook one of the most brilliant of modern dramatists. About the same period, another drama of the English courts ended in a startling and terrible peripety. A young lady was staying as a guest with a half-pay officer and his wife. A valuable pearl belonging to the hostess disappeared; and the hostess accused her guest of having stolen it. The young lady, who had meanwhile married, brought an action for slander against her quondam friend. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... witnessing his incapacity in Italy, in 1800, put him on the full half-pay, and has lately made him a commander of the Legion ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... before Tom reached home he met Captain Bulldog, an old officer of the Guards, who had retired on half-pay, with an extra pension for the loss of one of his legs, which he had left on the field, and to him Tom recounted all the circumstances of the assault. The Captain immediately told Tom that he had but one course to pursue, which was, to call Chanticleer ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... examples when we come to treat of gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... years, was in Braddock's expedition, and was wounded at Ticonderoga in 1758. He also served for a time in Portugal, but certain infelicities of temper hindered his advancement, and he never rose higher in the British service than a half-pay major. As a "soldier of fortune" he was vastly more successful. In all the pages of American history, indeed, it would be difficult to find anybody whose career was more interestingly and ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the public street, in a loud military voice, alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a particular house. The ladies of Cranford were already rather moaning over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman. He was a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring railway, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little town; and if, in addition to his masculine gender, and his connection with the obnoxious railway, he was so brazen as to talk of being poor—why, then, indeed, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... they had a very long talk about their people, and it appeared that they were both descendants of French peasants. That was why Jean loved the country folk around Longueval. And when he had served his time in the army, he thought he would retire on half-pay—an old colonel, perhaps—and come back ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... nearly a year and a half. My half-pay I have given up to satisfy my creditors, and my child supports me by her industry: sometimes by fine needlework, sometimes by painting. She leaves me every night, and goes to a lodging near the bridge; but returns ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... habitual dram-drinker; and this practice exposed her to such communication as debauched her reason, and perverted her sense of decorum and propriety. She and her husband gave a loose to vulgar excess, in which they were enabled to indulge by the charity and interest of some friends, who obtained half-pay for ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... following, Captain Luttrell, having been appointed to the Ganges, took with him Mr. Riou as second lieutenant. He served in this ship until the following summer, when he retired for a time on half-pay, devoting himself to study and continental travel until March, 1786, when we find him serving under Admiral Elliot as second lieutenant of the Salisbury. It was about this time that he submitted to the Admiralty a plan, doubtless suggested by his voyage with Captain Cook, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... of longevity, and he is careful to tell us his age if he have not lost the power of speech; but if the coats of poor men could speak, how much more marvellous in our eyes would their powers of life appear! A stranger would have taken the Count for a half-pay officer of good birth in straitened circumstances. The expression of his face at the time in question was grave and thoughtful, as though he were thinking of matters weightier to his happiness, if not more necessary to his material welfare than his work. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the same that Blair and Holker wrote to me about when at Rome, the end of 1751. He has been a constant correspondent of John Murray's, and all along suspected of being a spy. Cameron's remarks leave it without a doubt.' Samuel, Edgar adds, is now a half-pay lieutenant in French service, at Dunkirk. Lord Ogilvie and Lochiel mean to secure him, but Lord Lewis Drummond does not think the evidence sufficient. From 'The Scots Magazine' of September 1753, we learn that ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... burn me, it wearies me, and then I have sudden aspirations toward a calmer existence which might recall my childhood. One has always had a childhood, whatever one becomes. Don't be alarmed; I am not going to tell you that I am the daughter of a colonel on half-pay, and that I was brought up at Saint-Denis. I am a poor country girl, and six years ago I could not write my own name. You are relieved, aren't you? Why is it you are the first whom I have ever asked ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... in which the Republic usually kept only a garrison of one hundred half-pay Sclavonians, happened to contain at that time two thousand Albanian soldiers, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Hudson, watching the British in New York. Word might come at any day that the treaty had been signed, and the army did not wish to be disbanded until certain matters had been settled primarily the question of their pay. The officers had been promised half-pay for life, but nothing definite had been done toward carrying out the promise. The soldiers had no such hope to encourage them, and their pay was sadly in arrears. In December, 1782, the officers at Newburg drew up an address in behalf of themselves ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away, freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family, whose study was to make four-pence do as much as others made four-pence halfpenny do. But, when he had got money, he was very liberal.'[1176] I presumed to animadvert on his eulogy on Garrick, in his Lives of the Poets.[1177] 'You say, Sir, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... all abode here is a genuine seclusion; for the ordinary stream of life does not run through this little, quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabitants seem to be troubled with any business or outside activities. I used to set them down as half-pay officers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people of respectability, but small account, such as hang on the world's skirts rather than actually belong to it. The quiet of the place was seldom disturbed, except by the grocer and butcher, who came to receive orders, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of lands which they managed in one way and another to obtain, availed themselves of every opportunity to buy up land which had been granted to persons who had expended their little all on their properties, and had thereby become impoverished. Among these latter were many half-pay officers and others of good birth but limited means, who had sought homes for themselves in the Canadian wilderness. Not a few had been compelled to sell their commissions in order to obtain the wherewithal ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... 382.).—Rear-Admiral Robert Long died 4th July, 1771, having been superannuated on the half-pay of rear-admiral some time before his death. His seniority in the navy was dated from 21st March, 1726, and he was posted in the Shoreham. He never was Sir Robert. An account of the charity he founded may be seen in the Commissioners' Reports on ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... and courage, and having been, according to the custom of the provinces, intrusted with commands much superior to those to which he was entitled by rank, with reputation also. When Major Effingham yielded to the claims of age, he retired with dignity, refusing his half-pay or any other compensation for services that he felt he could no ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... sustained by the principle of patriotism alone, but required, in addition, the prospect of interest, or some reward. The members of Congress did not all agree with him in his views, and expected that officers would make greater sacrifices than private citizens, but, after a while, the plan of half-pay for life, as Washington proposed, was adopted by a small majority, though afterwards changed to half-pay for seven years. There was also a prejudice in many minds against a standing army, besides the jealousies and antipathies which existed between different sections ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... within the British lines, he was permitted to embark for England. On landing at Portsmouth, he had the mortification of hearing he had been placed on half-pay, in consequence of the army having been reduced, although he had fought in three general actions, several skirmishes, and two sieges, since he purchased his company in 1779. Having repeatedly offered his services, he was ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... tactical ideas. He rose through the intermediate grades to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the regiment (1773) and brevet colonel in 1780, and in 1781 he became colonel of the King's Irish infantry. When that regiment was disbanded in 1783 he retired upon half-pay. That up to this time he had scarcely been engaged in active service was owing mainly to his disapproval of the policy of the government, and especially to his sympathies with the American colonists in their struggles for independence; and his retirement is no doubt to be ascribed to similar feelings. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... equal to about 141l. (59). The second college includes those with an income ranging from 100 to 300 ducats (47l. to 141l.)(60). The third (61) comprises persons in trade paying the State 80 francs (about 3l. 4s.) or upwards per annum. Members of the liberal professions, half-pay officers, and some others, are exempted from the money qualification. These colleges elect each one Deputy, and the towns elect an additional number according to their importance, from such places as Pitesti ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... drink and dinners, Half-pay captain, younger son, Boldly throw while all are winners, Laugh henceforth at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... State of New York fifteen years of her life, she had seen the need of many improvements in the mode of teaching and in the sanitary arrangements of school buildings; and more than all, the injustice to women in their half-pay as teachers. Her interest in educational conventions was first roused by listening to a tedious discussion at Elmira on the "Divine ordinance" of flogging children, in which Charles Anthony, principal of the Albany Academy, quoted Solomon's injunction, "Spare the rod, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late imperial guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a formidable footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his friends and many officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former quartermaster at headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of those men whom troopers call "hard-to-cook," a nickname derived from the mess kitchen where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud picked ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... "Emeritus" was originally given to Roman soldiers who had served out their term and been discharged, on the understanding of being given a settled sum of money which was practically the equivalent of our English half-pay. The term is now used to designate a professor who has been "honourably relieved" of his office, either because of physical disability or on account of a term of long service fulfilled. It is, in effect, a ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Government.' The few French Canadians raised for Pontiac's war had of course been properly paid during the continuance of their active service. But they had been disbanded like mere militia afterwards, without either gratuities or half-pay for the officers. This naturally made the class from which officers were drawn think that no career was open to them under the Union Jack and turned their thoughts towards France, where their fellows were enjoying full ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... are expended daily by this Method, are realy surprizing. I knew a Clerk to a Vestry, a Half-pay Officer, a Chancery Sollicitor, and a broken Apothecary, that made a tolerable good Livelihood, by calling into a Tavern all their Friends that passed by the Window in this manner. Their Custom was to sit with a Quart of ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... his money had a mysterious property of attraction; that the coins were marked with strange characters, and grew red-hot of their own accord. In short, there were a thousand extravagant reports. But what is most remarkable is, that this population of Kolomna, made up of pensioners, half-pay officers, petty functionaries, obscure artists, and others equally necessitous, preferred bearing the utmost distress to having recourse to the dreaded money-lender. They all declared they would rather mortify their bodies than destroy their souls. Those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... and us of the Lower Empire. Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, among us; and if I had to begin again, I would mould myself accordingly. Crabbe's the man, but he has got a coarse and impracticable subject, and * * * is retired upon half-pay, and has done enough, unless he were to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... but all the islands could only furnish six hundred paid soldiers. In order to supply this lack, three hundred and eighty men were provided from the citizens of this city, and from captains, alferezes, and sergeants on half-pay—the captains numbering thirty-four, the alferezes one hundred and six, the sergeants eighty, and the common soldiers one hundred and sixty. These men showed a willingness to take service on this occasion for honor. But to fulfil their obligations they had not the means with which to buy any arms, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... Kamchatka, North Eastern Siberia, and Manjouria, and act as tow boats along the Straits of Tartary. The officers commanding them are sent from Russia, and generally remain ten years in this service. At the end of that time, if they wish to retire they can do so and receive half-pay for the rest of their lives. This privilege is not granted to officers in other squadrons, and is given on the Siberian station in consequence of the severer duties and the distance from ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... my own account. We know of three already: Shatov, Kirillov, and that sub-lieutenant. The others I am only watching carefully... though I am pretty sharp-sighted too. It's the same over again as it was in the X province: two students, a schoolboy, two noblemen of twenty, a teacher, and a half-pay major of sixty, crazy with drink, have been caught with manifestoes; that was all—you can take my word for it, that was all; it was quite a surprise that that was all. But I must have six days. I have reckoned it out—six days, not less. If you want to arrive at any result, don't ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... county of Westmeath. The family accordingly quitted their cottage in the wilderness for a spacious house on a frequented road, near the village of Lissoy. Here the boy was taught his letters by a maid-servant, and was sent in his seventh year to a village school kept by an old quartermaster on half-pay, who professed to teach nothing but reading, writing, and arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about ghosts, banshees, and fairies, about the great Rapparee chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a fishing-town, for besides the quantity of John Dorys caught there, it is a celebrated place for pursey half-pay officers to angle in for rich widows. The bait they generally use consists of dyed whiskers, and a distant relationship to some of the "gentles" or nobles of the land. The town itself is built upon the downs—a series of hills, which those in the habit of walking over them are apt to call ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... rendered important services to the officers commanding the British army, and coming to England was employed by Lord George Germaine, and rewarded with the rank of a provincial lieutenant-colonel, which entitled him to half-pay. [Picture: No. 45 Brompton Row] In 1784 he was knighted, and officiated for a short time as one of the under-secretaries of state. He afterwards entered the service of the King of Bavaria, in which he introduced various ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens, back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammed choke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords, Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay Officers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in the headlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, setting fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance to a ruinous height, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... this year that they called the "Hotel des Quatre Saisons" the "Hotel of Quarter Sessions." There were judges and their wives, serjeants and their ladies, Queen's counsel learned in the law, the Northern circuit and the Western circuit: there were officers of half-pay and full-pay, military officers, naval officers, and sheriffs' officers. There were people of high fashion and rank, and people of no rank at all; there were men and women of reputation, and of the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the simple history of Alice. Her father was an officer on half-pay in the British army. He had no influential connections, and never rose beyond the rank of lieutenant. A severe wound received in the battle of Waterloo affected his health so seriously that he was compelled to retire from active ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... party administers the government, women will continue to get only subordinate positions and half-pay, not because of the party's or the president's lack of chivalric regard for woman, but because, in the nature of things, it is impossible for any government to protect a disfranchised class in equality of chances. Women, to get ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... and Vaughan went this winter. Well, we are all permanently shelved upon the world's half-pay list as it is. The obituary column is just the last formality which gazettes us out of the service altogether," and Sutch stretched out and eased his crippled leg, which fourteen years ago that day had been crushed and twisted in ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... face was always somewhat grim, do you see—nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, 'All right, old chap.' The next moment . . . my eyes water. He had a high heart, got into a scrape whilst in the Marines, lost his half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had. But he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never did half the bad things ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... order—drives, donkey-rides, picnics of the small and early type. An air of slow respectability pervades the place; the bulk of the colonists are people well-to-do, who can afford the expense of a winter away from home and of a villa at L150 the season. The bankrupt element of Boulogne, the half-pay element of Dinan or Avranches, is as rare on the Riviera as the loungers who rejoice in the many-changing toilets of Arcachon or Biarritz. The quiet humdrum tone of the parson best harmonises with that of the winter resort, and parsons of ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Fischtaminel is good looking for a man of thirty-six years; he received the cross of the Legion of Honor from Napoleon upon the field of battle, he is an ex-colonel, and had it not been for the Restoration, which put him upon half-pay, he would be a general. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the restored king, was partial to officers who had served in Spain. Only not even the marshal's protection could secure for him active employment. He remained irreconcilable, idle, and sinister. He sought in obscure restaurants the company of other half-pay officers who cherished dingy but glorious old tricolour cockades in their breast-pockets, and buttoned with the forbidden eagle buttons their shabby uniforms, declaring themselves too poor to afford the expense of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... glad of that, kinsman," said the Marquis, "for I am ashamed to tell you half what she said. It is enough—her mind is made up, and the mistress of a first-rate boarding-school could not have rejected with more haughty indifference the suit of a half-pay Irish officer, beseeching permission to wait upon the heiress of a West India planter, than Lady Ashton spurned every proposal of mediation which it could at all become me to offer in behalf of you, my good kinsman. I cannot guess what she means. A more honourable connexion she could not ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott |
