"Halfpenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strong man will ever find work, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. But to make-out a victory, in those circumstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganisation, Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of those Three ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... give it up, to abandon the struggle for intellectual superiority of that kind. They have produced greater minds when, the mass of their countrymen were steeped in brutality, and Elizabethan surfeit of beef and ale, than they will ever produce with a twopenny-halfpenny universal education. What is the use? Progress. What is progress? Merely the adequate arrangement of inequalities—in the words of one of their own thinkers who knows most about it and troubles himself least about theories. ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of labelling and tying up, and in a very short time I was very expert; and as Timothy predicted, the rudiments were once more handed over to him. Mr Cophagus supplied me with good clothes, but never gave me any pocket-money, and Timothy and I often lamented that we had not even a halfpenny ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... worth every halfpenny of it. I am alluding to the Christmas Number of the Penny Illustrated Paper, in which appears A Daughter of the People, by JOHN LATEY, Junior, who is Junior than ever in December. Capital Christmas Number, and will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... at the little constellation of gold and silver coins. "Wants a little more spending," he said. "Two-pence halfpenny is the mystic sum which turns to millions. So Lisle has swindled you, has he? I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... My eyes are fully open to my awful situation— I shall go at once to Roderic and make him an oration. I shall tell him I've recovered my forgotten moral senses, And I don't care twopence-halfpenny for any consequences. Now I do not want to perish by the sword or by the dagger, But a martyr may indulge a little pardonable swagger, And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter, But I've got to die tomorrow, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... with the colour of the postilion's jacket, the age of the landlord and the weight of his wife, and the height in inches of the cook and chambermaid. To which will be added, "Ten Minutes' Advice" upon making one shilling go as far as two. If you can give me a three-halfpenny puff in your admired publication, you will confer a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... children. Three were daughters, the eldest being sixteen; and two were sons, the elder being twelve. With rigid economy, thrift, and hard work, she reared her family. In working out the road tax she was allowed four pence halfpenny for every cart-load of stones dumped into miry places on the highway. She helped the boys fill the cart with stones. While the boy who became Carleton's father managed the steers, hauled and dumped the load, she went ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... she had been the recipient or the witness. Mary supplemented the recital by incidents from her own observation. She had often seen a man in the street give a penny to an old woman. She had often seen old women give things to other old women. She knew many people who never looked for the halfpenny change from a newsboy. Mrs. Makebelieve applauded the justice of such transactions; they were, she admitted, the things she would do herself if she were in a position to be careless; but a person to whom the discovery of her daily bread is a daily problem, and who can scarcely keep pace with the ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... request as soon. His comings in are like a taylor's, from the shreds of bread, [the] chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink themselves. He divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than Keckerman,[33] and sub-divides the a primo ortum so nicely, that a stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers; ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... of my schoolmates told me, when a boy, of a seventh son of a seventh son, somewhere in Essex County, who touched for the scrofula, and who used to hang a silver fourpence halfpenny about the neck of those who came to him, which fourpence halfpenny it was solemnly affirmed became of a remarkably black color after having been some time worn, and that his own brother had been subjected to this extraordinary treatment; but I must add that my schoolmate drew a bow of remarkable ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... twenty acres. I put the rental at 30s. an acre. You know what you get, Mr. Morton, for the land that lies next to it. And I think twenty-eight years' purchase isn't more than it's worth. Those are my ideas as to price, Mr. Morton. There isn't a halfpenny owing on it—not in the ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... degenerated into two or three children who huddle together on the doorsteps of houses and sing through the keyhole and letter box as fast and as loud as they can utter the various hymns of which, "When shepherds watched their flocks by night." As soon as they receive a halfpenny away they trot to the next house ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... rifles and guns is carefully arranged, and I proceed to wipe my heated brow and settle down to the calm enjoyment of the honk. Drawing forth my cigar-case, I am soon wreathed in the fragrant clouds engendered by the incineration of a halfpenny cheroot, and, with a sigh of satisfaction, I spread out my writing or sketching materials and proceed to scribble or paint, calm in the knowledge that nothing on earth is in the least likely to disturb the flow of ideas, or ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... private reading; an ordinal, very beautiful to look upon, being sumptuously bound.[411] Indeed, so multis voluminibus did he bestow, that he expended more than 100l. in this way, an immense sum in those old days, when a halfpenny a day was deemed fair wages ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... 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, his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.' [1178] ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... meat for fivepence per head, pease soup (No. 221) will cost only sixpence per quart, ox-tail soup (No. 240) or the same portable soup (No. 252), for fivepence per quart, and (No. 224) an excellent gravy soup for fourpence halfpenny per quart, duck-giblet soup (No. 244) for threepence per quart, and fowls' head soup in the same manner for still less (No. 239), will give you a good and plentiful dinner for six people for two shillings and twopence. See also shin ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... my lad?' he answered. 'I didn't want particular to go out again to-day, but anything to encourage a good young chap. There is a nice shop in Edgware Road—hundreds of books for fourpence-halfpenny each. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... thought indispensable to every army or garrison in the wilderness. Throughout this campaign it is repeatedly mentioned in general orders, and the soldiers are promised that they shall have as much of it as they want at a halfpenny a quart.[725] ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... and postcards, telegrams furnish another means of communication. For a telegram sent to any place in the United Kingdom, the charge is sixpence for the first twelve words, and a halfpenny for every word after the first twelve. Addresses are charged for, so a sixpennyworth of telegraphing does not represent a long message, but by ingenuity—and a business woman is nothing without ingenuity—a few words may be made to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... not churlish in bestowing their information, either. There were the Lewisite partisans, who knew exactly the value of the jewels to a halfpenny, and how they were kept in a box under the bed, and how the prisoner had carried them off by stealth, and buried them somewhere in the sands of Newton Bay. Some of these, the more charitably disposed, could go even further than this. They explained ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... looked at it than I perceived myself to be lost. I had been short of money and had allowed my debt to mount; and it had now reached the sum, which I shall never forget, of twelve pounds thirteen and fourpence halfpenny. All evening I sat by the fire considering my situation. I could not pay the bill; my landlady would not suffer me to remove my boxes; and without either baggage or money, how was I to find another lodging? For three ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... it must have been a near thing, for when I next opened my knapsack, I found the ball had gone through the leather and my thickly-folded blanket and had at last been stopped by the sole of a shoe, and was lying there as flat as a halfpenny ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... from them sufficient for her rent. On two other occasions she had also applied to them for the money to pay her workwomen, so that the debt had increased again to four hundred and twenty-five francs. Now, she no longer gave a halfpenny; she worked off the amount solely by the washing. It was not that she worked less, or that her business was not so prosperous. But something was going wrong in her home; the money seemed to melt away, and she was ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... portraits need not be uniform, as my apparatus enlarges or reduces as required, at the same time that it superposes the images; but the portraits of the heads should never be less than twice the size of that of the Queen on a halfpenny piece. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... wrote alway the names, as he stood; Of all the folk that gave them any good, Askaunce* that he woulde for them pray. *see note "Give us a bushel wheat, or malt, or rey,* *rye A Godde's kichel,* or a trip** of cheese, *little cake **scrap Or elles what you list, we may not chese;* *choose A Godde's halfpenny, or a mass penny; Or give us of your brawn, if ye have any; A dagon* of your blanket, leve dame, *remnant Our sister dear, — lo, here I write your name,— Bacon or beef, or such thing as ye find." A sturdy harlot* went them aye behind, *manservant That was their ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of the currency was carried out as proposed.(1340) Yet, in spite of all remonstrances and threats, a proclamation went forth that after the 17th August the shilling should be current for six pence sterling and no more, the groat for two pence, the penny for a halfpenny, and the halfpenny for a farthing.(1341) The price of every commodity rose 50 per cent. as a matter of course, and nothing that Warwick could do could prevent it. Seeing at last the hopelessness of attempting to overcome economic laws by a mere ipse dixit, he caused a "contrary proclamasyon" to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... if I had more. Perhaps, he replied, he could get one of the men to bring him a half-pennyworth. I said I had no money, and he answered a gentleman (Mr. Clifton, I suppose) had just given him sixpence, for holding his horse; that he intended to save it for his mother, but that he would spare a halfpenny to buy me ink. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... to the various ways in which such names may have come into existence. To the same class must belong Besant, the name of a coin from Byzantium, its foreign origin giving it a dignity which is absent from the native Farthing and Halfpenny, though the latter, in one instance, was improved ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... a-longing, if he overheard me. And yet, for all this considerateness and attention to other people's feelings; I was never much a favorite with my school-fellows; which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never defrauded any one of them of the value of a halfpenny, or told stories of them to their master, as some little lying boys would do, but was ready to do any of them all the services in my power that were consistent with my own well-doing. I think nobody ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of it. If the Pinkerton press were all, it would be fightable. But look at the Fact—a sworn enemy of everything the Pinkerton press stands for, politically, but fighting it with its own weapons—muddled thinking, sentimentality, prejudice, loose cant phrases. I tell you there'll hardly be a halfpenny to choose between the Pinkerton press and the Fact, by the time Peacock's done with it.... It's not Peacock's fault—except that he's weak. It's not the Syndicate's fault—except that they don't want to go on losing ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... year of Henry VII. the chief justice of the court of King's Bench had the yearly fee of 140 marks granted to him for his better support; he had besides 5l. 6s. 11-1/4 d., and the sixth part of a halfpenny (such is the accuracy of Sir William Dugdale, and the strangeness of the sum,) for his winter robes, and 3l. 6s. 6d. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... smitten our home mails and general transport for close upon a fortnight. No letters, no parcels—but one case of wine, six weeks overdue, with half the bottles in shards: no newspapers. This last specially afflicts young Sammy Barham, who is a glutton for the halfpenny press: which again is odd, because his ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... remorse. He achieved the highest deed or daring, or deepest calculation of thought, as he performed the very meanest action of which a man is capable; told a lie or cheated a fond woman or robbed a poor beggar of a halfpenny, with a like awful serenity, and equal capacity of the highest and lowest acts ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Connie's tone was extremely cheerful. "Which means, I hope, that you'll give up that absurd copying in the Bodleian. You get about twopence halfpenny for it, and it'll cost you your first-class. How are you going to get a First I should like to know, with your head full of bills, and no sleep ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... odd that in one of these papers Walpole proposes, in jest, precisely our modern system of postage cards, only charging a penny instead of a halfpenny. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a clever schemer, no doubt, Mr. Carrington," he added, bitterly; "but clever as you are, you have been outwitted as completely as the veriest fool that ever blundered into ruin. Do you understand, Carrington—we are not richer by one halfpenny for ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the greatest commoner in England, as Swift said, turning the whole Parliament, who can do nothing without him. This great position and the future it might bring him he was throwing away for a title, and becoming Viscount Bolingbroke. His last political act as a commoner was to impose the halfpenny stamp upon newspapers and sheets like those of the 'Spectator.' Intolerant of criticism, he had in the preceding session brought to the bar of the House of Commons, under his warrant as Secretary of State, fourteen printers and publishers. In the beginning of 1712, the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in the plain field) to employ my travail and time wholly or chiefly on those studies and practices that carry, as they say, meat in their mouth, having evermore their eye upon the Title, De pane lucrando, and their hand upon their halfpenny. For I pray now what saith Mr. Cuddie, alias you know who, in the tenth AEglogue of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... raised to 4s, I think, for ling, 3s. 2d. for tusk, and 2s. 6d. for cod, for all the rest of the summer fishing.' '8987. Did you get these prices for a number of years?-I think for the thirteen years that I was on the station they never varied one halfpenny for the summer fishing. The prices for the winter fishing varied a little. Sometimes we would sell the small cod as low as 2s. 6d, and at other times at 3s.' '8988. Did you sell the winter fishing for payment at the time, or did it go into the account too?-It ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... at Cheltenham and ask him for news of you. As to Alfred, I have heard of his marriage, etc., from Spedding, who also saw and was much pleased with her indeed. But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well satisfied to see one when one falls in his way. You will think I have a spite against him for some neglect, when I say this, and say besides that I cannot care for his In Memoriam. Not so, if I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... During our residence in Japan, we bought the best hens and pheasants at three-pence each, large fat pigs for twelve-pence, a fat hog for five shillings, a good ox, like our Welsh runts, at sixteen shillings, a goat for three shillings, and rice for a halfpenny the pound. The ordinary drink of the common people is water, which they drink warm with their meat, holding it to be a sovereign remedy against worms in the maw. They have no other drink but what is distilled ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... sold for two-pence-halfpenny each in Kentish Town, says a news item. One bricklayer declared that he wouldn't know what to do for exercise without his to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... voila la generosite des Anglais," with evident sincerity. I thought to myself that the less we English corrupted the primitive simplicity of these good folks the better; it was really refreshing to find several people protesting about one's generosity for having paid a halfpenny more for a bottle of wine than was expected; at Monetier we asked whether many English came there, and they told us yes, a great many, there had been fifteen there last year, but I should imagine that scarcely fifteen ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... off from the life and splendour of the south. They had become so cretinous and idiotic, that when St. Wilfrid came wandering among them they did not know how to get food. There was a famine, and as their miserable religion, such as it was (probably it was very like these little twopenny-halfpenny modern heresies of their cousins, the German pessimists)—their religion, I say, not giving them the jolly energy which all decent Western religion gives a man, they being also by the wrath of God deprived of the use of ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the strangest and oddest of the rags and rinsings of humanity: among them a Persian nobleman of the late shah's household, who kept a small tobacco-shop at the corner of a by-street, and an old French exile, once of the court of Louis Phillippe, who sold the halfpenny papers. At other times he went out hardly at all, and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... measures to be adopted on arriving in France, is to acquire the knowledge of the value of the coin, which is indeed rather intricate; first a sou, or what we should call a halfpenny, is four liards or five centimes; then there are two sou pieces, which resemble our penny pieces; there is likewise a little dingy looking copper coin, with an N upon one side and 10 centimes on the other, that is also two sous; they once ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... by a hot halfpenny flying out of the air. Then Bert thought of the papers in his pockets, and staggered back, trying to extinguish his burning jacket—checked, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... more delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys dance a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure to turn it into a halfpenny. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Italian copper coin, about equal to our halfpenny. Also a generic term for copper ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... I don't understand," Lord Runton continued. "It is certain that there is an extraordinary amount of activity at Portsmouth and Woolwich, but even the little halfpenny sensational papers make no more than a passing allusion to it. Then look at the movements of our fleet. The whole of the Mediterranean Fleet is at Gibraltar, and the Channel Squadron is moving up the North Sea as though to join the ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... PRICES.—Would any reader inform me what is the lowest price at which wholesome aerated waters are sold? I have been drinking some "Shadwell Seltzer, special cuvee," at a penny-halfpenny the syphon, and I fancy this may have something to do with my present symptoms, which include partial paralysis of the left side, violent spasms, an almost irresistible tendency to homicide, together with excruciating pain in every part of the body. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... I wrote a few days ago. This nasty bargaining about twopence-halfpenny in the matter of cuts is repulsive to me; but Genast remains a ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... and they seems to be well off! Four an' fourpence a year! think o' that—not to mention the deduction w'en they goes for a month or two to the country each summer. Four an' fourpence a year, Dick! Some of 'em even goes so low as a halfpenny, which makes two an' twopence a year—7 pounds, 11 shillings, 8 pence in a seventy-year lifetime, Dick, supposin' their liberality began to flow ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... was I, and I faithfully served the ships With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny dips, And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights, And fine fresh peppermint drops for the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... you making such a fuss about?" said the old lady, with annoyance. "You are a good fellow, but very silly. One gives you a halfpenny, and you are as grateful as though one had saved your life. You think this is praiseworthy on your part, but it is ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... He longed to see it unpack itself and display its wonders, and he followed it through more streets than he knew; and when he found that it was not going to unpack at all, but was just going home to its bed in an old coach-house, he remembered the fire-wood; and the halfpenny clutched tight and close in his hand seemed to ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... on his heel as if irresolute. "Yes, I am going. I am going back to my cabin, back to my wallowing in the mire. Why not? Is there anyone who cares the toss of a halfpenny ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... two oranges of the woman, and paid her a halfpenny over and above the price of them. She seemed very grateful for this kindness, and took great interest in showing him which of the boats he and Rollo must ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... fine sportsman, and he saved my life in the Rockies, which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes. He has a sense of justice, for he heard of this mine from a man in prison, and he has kept accounts showing the fellow's share down to the last halfpenny. But I have never yet known him to speak a kindly word or do a kindly deed. He seems intent upon carrying out to the letter his own principles—to make as many people as possible suffer for his own broken life. Now he is back here, a millionaire, with immense power ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... new threepenny bit each week to give to a barrel-organ man who played before the house at Bournemouth. Augustus at the age of two invariably changed it on the stairs with the butler for two pennies and two halfpennies, keeping one penny halfpenny ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... were some. And this, while the Government has an organ of its own, the London Gazette, dull, high-priced, and of comparatively limited circulation! I say, make the price of the London Gazette a halfpenny; change its name to the London Gazette and Divorce Intelligencer; let it include besides divorce news, all cases whatever that have an interest of the same nature for the public mind; distribute ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... darning-cotton," said Babs in a whisper. "I buyed it last week with twopence-halfpenny; you remember the day I went with Mrs. Sutton to town. She said it was a very useful thing, for Hilda will want to mend Jasper's socks, and if she hasn't darning-cotton handy ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... little smooth chap," he said, "with smooth hair an' smooth clothes and a smooth voice. You could hardly tell it was hair, it was that smooth. You'd nearly think somebody had painted it on his skull. He couldn't make me out when I said I'd rather starve than let a halfpenny of my money be used to make a mess of Glendalough, an' he talked about the necessity of havin' a broad outlook on the world. I suppose he went away an' told everybody that I was a reactionary an' a bad landlord. Oh, I can hear him spoutin' away about me ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Death's Head patience: Card- game that justified its sinister name in three generations." He wrote out a full story of the fatal occurrence for the Essex Vedette, the editor of which was a friend of his, and to another friend he gave a condensed account, to be taken up to the office of one of the halfpenny dailies. But in both cases his reputation as a romancer stood fatally in the way of the fulfilment of his ambitions. "Not the right thing to be Munchausening in a time of sorrow" agreed his friends among themselves, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... that in use throughout British India; in all the northern provinces of which, adjoining Nepaul, it passes current: the copper coinage is most extensive, and consists of shapeless lumps of copper, eighteen or twenty of which go to a halfpenny; they are used by the natives of India in preference ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... produce my effects by means of the costumes, and asked for considerable funds for that purpose, only to learn, after I had been wearied by one subterfuge after another, that the management was determined not to expend a halfpenny on my ballet, which they regarded as completely wasted. Such was the substance of what my trusty friend Truinet conveyed to me. This was the first sign out of many which soon revealed to me the fact, that even in the circles of the operatic administration ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... They were meant for the people whom you yourself despise—the crowd you broke away from—men and women like the Farringmores who live for nothing but their own beastly pleasures and don't care the toss of a halfpenny for anyone else under ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... in fact a bad parishioner, as his servant had told him, and had only one good quality in the eyes of that careful housekeeper, "that he was always shining like a new halfpenny." ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... About the doors of this temple sat women with baskets of yellow marigold blossoms, to sell to native visitors for decorating purposes at the altar. Great use is made of this flower, which seems to be raised in large quantities for this object. Once or twice we saw these women sell a handful for a halfpenny; but it must be a sorry trade whereby to earn a living. Pigeons swarm in and about Benares enjoying a superstitious veneration and protection; while sacred bulls obstruct the passages, and the narrow, nauseous, over-crowded streets, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... and constant struggles; instancing how, on one of these occasions, the girl concealed herself under a bookcase of the library belonging to the mansion in which her father served as footman, and having taken with her there, like a young Fawkes, matches and a halfpenny candle, was going to sit up all night reading when the family had retired, until her father discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... an admirable name, and one that is likely to stick by her-instead of Lady Bath, they call her the wife of Bath.(681) Don't you figure her squabbling at the gate with St. Peter for a halfpenny. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... if they are," Harry said cheerfully, "Evan can buy some more. Here, Evan; here are thirty-eight shillings and ninepence halfpenny, and it's all ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... an observing eye, when any event of importance takes place in a great city. They were, perhaps, more apparent than usual on the present occasion; for in the short distance he had to go he saw two hawkers of halfpenny sheets bawling down unintelligible tidings to maids in the areas, and two or three groups gathered together in the sunshiny morning at ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... or three years with the colours the men receive an allowance or pay of twopence halfpenny a day. Their service is not a contract but a public duty, and while performing it they are clothed, lodged, and fed by the State. When passed into the reserve they resume their normal civil occupation, except ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... went to the window. There, below, stood the group of grey black little figures, relieved against the snow, which now enveloped everything. "For old sake's sake," as she phrased it, she counted out a halfpenny apiece for the singers, out of the copper bag, ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... three good-sized newspapers for 5 cents, or twopence-halfpenny. One of them, The Daily Morning Post, was a large sheet, measuring 3 feet by 2, and well filled on both sides with close letter-press, for 2 cents, or one penny. The absence of duty on paper and of newspaper stamps is no doubt one great cause of the advanced intelligence ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... pimpernel, 7 and a half pence; one piece of sturgeon, 6 pence. Poultry—100 eggs, 5 pence; cheese and butter, 3 and three-quarter pence... milk, one and a quarter pence; drink, 1 penny; Saltry:—half a quarter; mustard, a halfpenny; half a quarter of vinegar, three-quarters pence; ... parsley, a farthing. For May 1st, Saint Philip's and a feast-day: Pantry: 100 loaves, 22 and a half pence. Buttery: one sextarius, 3 and a half pitchers of wine from the King's ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... drake, And a halfpenny cake, With a penny to pay the old baker. A hop and a scotch Is another notch, Slitherum, slatherum, ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... fallen cheek, a bloodshot eye, crippled limbs resting on crutches, a seldom shaven beard, a shabby suit of clothes and a generally neglected person, drew at first pity, with wonder to see such a figure in a drawing-room. It was currently reported that a person in Limerick offered him a halfpenny, mistaking him for a beggar; and if not true, the story was yet well invented. This young man had taken high honours in Dublin University and had studied for the bar, where under the auspices of his eminent kinsman he had excellent prospects; but his ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... corner. Shall we live over the offices?—there are four very good rooms, a kitchen, and a garret for Laura, in Catherine-street, in the Strand; or would you like a house in the Waterloo-road?—it would be very pleasant, only there is that halfpenny toll at the bridge. The boys may go to King's College, mayn't they? Does all this read to you ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a halfpenny; she wished me luck, and I proceeded. I passed some huge black buildings which a man told me were collieries, and several carts laden with coal, and soon came to Rhiwabon—a large village about half way between Wrexham and Llangollen. I observed in this place ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... When you hear these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,—buy a watermelon for a halfpenny,—split it, and scoop out the middle,—sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and feast upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the Sunday morning, her mother has sent her to the shop, and perhaps told her to tell a falsehood about it; if her hand is clammy with lollipops, or there is a perfume of peppermint all round her, or down clatters a halfpenny in the middle of church, it is ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... put up the sign, "Come to the subterraneous barber—he shaves for a penny." The other barbers found their customers leaving them, and reduced their prices to his standard, when Arkwright, determined to push his trade, announced his determination to give "A clean shave for a halfpenny." After a few years he quitted his cellar, and became an itinerant dealer in hair. At that time wigs were worn, and wig-making formed an important branch of the barbering business. Arkwright went about buying hair for the wigs. He was accustomed to attend the hiring fairs throughout Lancashire ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... dear father," replied Newton, "for I have not a halfpenny. Do you know what became of my chest, that I left ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for it; for which, I hope, somebody may duck you with one hand, and rub you dry with the other. Kindness and honesty, for kindness and honesty's sake, is the true coin; but many a one, like you, is content to be a passable Birmingham halfpenny. [Exeunt JOB THORNBERRY ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... which was the brass plate of 'Creed, Tailor and Robe-maker.' Creed was dead, however. His widow was a pew-opener in the cathedral hard by; his eldest son was a little scamp of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny, led his little brothers into mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel. A couple of the latter were sitting on the door-step, down which you went into the passage of the house; and they jumped up with great alacrity to meet their lodger, and plunged wildly, and rather ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... am delighted that you will return in the nick of time for the London season. You will put the noses of the Christian Scientists out of joint, and the New Theologians will argue no more in the columns of the halfpenny papers. For you are going to be the lion of the season. Comb your mane and have it neatly curled and scented, for we do not like our lions unkempt; and learn how to flap your tail; be sure you cultivate a proper roar because we expect to shiver delightfully in our shoes at the sight of you, ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... them, the laughing fits of the younger had subsided, although he chose to fall in the rear. "Now, to shew you how much more profitable it is to respect than to mock at your superiors in years, there's a (let me see)—there's a halfpenny for you ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... seen land but once. It is true that during a voyage of eight or ten months he has drunk brackish water, and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with the tedium of monotony; but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of his tea for a halfpenny less than the English merchant, and his purpose ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... issue we have to describe are in the nature of Provisionals issued during a temporary shortage of halfpenny and penny stamps. The Bathurst correspondent of Ewen's Weekly Stamp News, writing April 30, 1906, communicated the following information, which is published in the issue of that journal for ...
— Gambia • Frederick John Melville
... eight-and-six to measure, seven-and-six if from stock; fastened our neckties in dashing style with a horseshoe pin. I think in the matter of waistcoats we had the advantage of you; ours were gayer, braver. Our cuffs and collars were of paper: sixpence-halfpenny the dozen, three-halfpence the pair. On Sunday they were white and glistening; on Monday less aggressively obvious; on Tuesday morning decidedly dappled. But on Tuesday evening, when with natty cane, or umbrella neatly rolled ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... other examples of this persistence of ballads in the popular memory, even in our day, and only persons ignorant of the facts can suppose that, a century ago, there were no reciters at the head of Ettrick, and elsewhere in Scotland. Not even now has the halfpenny newspaper wholly destroyed the memories of traditional poetry and of traditional tales even in the English-speaking parts of our islands, while in the Highlands a rich harvest ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... he declared with a covert sneer. "If you really are bent upon providing the halfpenny newspapers with a fresh sensation, pray let me know in plenty of ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... somehow. Just you try! There are people all over the country ready to back you, if you'd only back yourselves. But you won't. You won't fight—that's the worst of you; that's what makes all of us sick when we come down to talk to you. You won't spare twopence halfpenny a week from boozing—not you!—to subscribe to a union, and take the first little step towards filling your stomachs and holding your heads up as free men. What's the good of your grumbling? I suppose ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arrangement possible. The "Omnibus,"—for they still have Latin enough in France for the name of this travelling collection of all sorts of human beings—the Omnibus is a long coach, carrying fifteen or eighteen people, all inside. For two-pence halfpenny it carries the individual the length of the Boulevard, or the whole diameter of Paris. Of those carriages there were about half-a-dozen some months ago, and they have been augmented since; their profits were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... saved a halfpenny. It isn't much, but it shows that I can save when I give my mind ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... selling. Novelettes left her cold, but the devices to attract customers, the lines that were sold at a loss for advertisement, the history of the famous Silver Shoe that Jonah sold in thousands at a halfpenny a pair profit, astonished her like a fairy-tale that happened to ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... campaign in favour of a nickel three-halfpenny coin has not succeeded. In Mr. CHAMBERLAIN'S opinion it would not be a coin of vantage. Among his objections to it may be the extreme probability that the present Administration would promptly be nicknamed (I will not say nickel-named) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... before. Fletcher felt the tightening of the lasso, but could not free himself from the fatal noose. He must pay whatever the cold-eyed creditor demanded. Two thousand dollars was the sum asked for the acknowledgment of having appropriated five hundred. Twopence for halfpenny has been accounted fair usury among the Jews; but in Christian communities it is only crime ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Age, thirty-four. Married, but not much. Private residence, Jawbones, Halfpenny Hole, Surrey. ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... not found necessary to have an office competing with another office, trying to send out pinker postage-stamps or more picturesque postmen. It was not necessary to efficiency that the postmistress should buy a penny stamp for a halfpenny and sell it for twopence; or that she should haggle and beat customers down about the price of a postal order; or that she should always take tenders for telegrams. There was obviously nothing actually impossible about the State management of national needs; and the Post Office was at least ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... you, young ladies," she said, "but could you oblige me with the loan of three and tenpence-halfpenny. Dove has put in no appearance, and unless I can pay three and tenpence-halfpenny on account to the baker he refuses positive to allow me sufficient ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... rows, on mats placed upon the ground. Each will have a square of space allotted, perhaps six feet square, and there she will sit with her merchandise in a basket or baskets before her. For each square they will pay the lessee a halfpenny for the day, which is only three hours or so. The time to go is in the morning from six till eight, for that is the busy time. Later on all the stalls will be closed, but in the early morning the market is thronged. Every householder is then buying his or her provisions ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... the sympathetic answer. "If the message has not come direct from Mrs. Forbes may it not be rather exaggerated in tone? Some people can never write telegrams. The knowledge that each word costs a halfpenny weighs on them ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... runs lapse to the Government. The general opinion appears to be, that they will be re-let, at a greatly advanced rent, to the present occupiers. The present rent of land is a farthing per acre for the first and second years, a halfpenny for the third, and three farthings for the fourth and every succeeding year. Most of the waste lands in the province are now paying three farthings per acre. There is the danger also of scab. This appears to depend a good deal upon the position of the ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... Chinese bazaar are hundreds of small shops in which a miscellaneous collection of hardware and dry goods are to be found, and where many things are sold wonderfully cheap. You may buy gimlets at a penny each, white cotton thread at four balls for a halfpenny, and penknives, corkscrews, gunpowder, writing-paper, and many other articles as cheap or cheaper than you can purchase them in England. The shopkeeper is very good-natured; he will show you everything he has, and does not seem to mind if you buy nothing. He bates a little, but not so much ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Tennant," she said. "It is yours entirely. You tell her you got it at a cheap sale. Say you went to a jumble sale and bought it; you paid one-and-twopence-halfpenny for it. That's the right figure, isn't it, for the best things at a jumble sale? Tell her it's quite new, and ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... from that which causes Jeannette and Jeannot in their Paris attic to light their charcoal fire, stop up the chinks with their love-letters, and die (very disreputably) 'clasped in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.' There is not one halfpenny's worth of sentiment about it in the Englishman's case, nor are any such thoughts bred in his brain while youth is in him. It is in our midway days, with old age touching us here and there, as autumn 'lays its fiery finger on the leaves' and withers them, that we first ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... correspondence, upon his face was a look of happiness and self-contentment. He walked boldly into the warehouse where, in a big office, glazed, partitioned, and ramparted with a mighty counter, was a small army of clerks, who, loyal to their master, stood ready to pillage the goldsmith of every halfpenny he possessed. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... fellow in mourning, dressed in a pea overcoat, and wearing thick leather gaiters, and gloves like a hedger's, came ambling towards the street corner where Silas Wegg sat at his stall. A few small lots of fruits and sweets, and a choice collection of halfpenny ballads, comprised Mr. Wegg's stock, and assuredly it was the hardest little stall of all the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and the mercurial Major Richardson, after agitating the chief book-sellers in Canada on behalf of one of his literary ventures, found that his total sales amounted to barely thirty copies, and even an auction sale at Kingston discovered only one purchaser, who limited his offer to sevenpence halfpenny. In speaking, then, of the Canadian political community in 1839, one cannot say, as Burke did of the Americans in 1775, that they were a highly educated or book-reading people. Their politicians, progressive and conservative alike, might have shortened, simplified, and civilized certain stages ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... two and a half cents, or even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents. In country places all over the Pacific coast, nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases the cost of life; as even for a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or sevenpence-halfpenny, as the case may be. You would say that this system of mutual robbery was as broad as it was long; but I have discovered a plan to make it broader, with which I here endow the public. It is brief and simple - radiantly simple. There is one place where five cents ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... maddened Barry by following him through the street, and being continually found at the house-door when he went out. Jack's attendance was certainly dictated by affection rather than any mercenary views, for he never got a scrap out of the Dunmore House kitchen, or a halfpenny from his new patron. But still, he was Barry's fool; and, like other fools, a ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... possible way by which he could earn enough money to buy a new scaldino. He dressed hurriedly and ran off to talk it over with Father Giacomo, and the result of the conference was a long but kind lecture of good advice, and permission to weed in the Padre's garden for the sum of one halfpenny ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... cheapen a goose: their drive is like a royal progress; a happy people is supposed to press round them and bless them. Tradesmen bow, farmers' wives bob, town-boys, waving their ragged hats, cheer the red-faced coachman as he drives the fat bays, and cry, "Sir Miles for ever! Throw us a halfpenny, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... learn that in 1745, the streets were so thinly built in the neighbourhood, that 'when the heads of the Scottish rebels were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields, with a telescope, to give persons a sight of them for a halfpenny a piece.' Just as we are sometimes offered a view of Saturn's rings from Charing Cross! Hogarth's house now forms part of a French Hotel. The lean French cook staggering under the roast beef in the 'Gates of Calais' picture has been ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... me half-naked, she says, 'Where are your clothes?' and I told her I had been fighting. But she said, 'Why, you have not your stockings on; you didn't fight your stockings off!' 'No,' I said; 'I drew them off.' (The man played me with a two-headed halfpenny.) ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... to run up a bill, it is so much simpler to say, "Will you please enter it to my account?" than to pay your money down. First the bill has to be added up, and, strange as it may seem, these shop people appear to take hours over a simple addition sum. "Eight and elevenpence halfpenny if you please, ma'am." Of course you have not enough silver, and so are obliged to wait for change. Then someone has to be found to sign. Altogether it takes quite five minutes longer paying ready money; and ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... retires. The putwarries present two rupees each, shouting out their names, and the names of their villages. Afterwards a small assessment is levied on the villagers, of a 'pice' or two 'pice' each, about a halfpenny of our money, and which recoups ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... impudent every day. It's bound to end in a blow-up. These imitation Scotch niggers in their plaid sarongs, as they call them, will be getting up a big quarrel with my men with their bounce and contempt for my well-drilled, smart detachment. Here's every common, twopenny-halfpenny Malay looking down upon my fellows, while there isn't one among my lads who isn't a better man than their Rajah. There will be a row some day; ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... smiling. He admitted at the same time that Garrick had raised the profession of a player. He defended Garrick, too, against the common charge of avarice. Garrick, as he pointed out, had been brought up in a family whose study it was to make fourpence go as far as fourpence-halfpenny. Johnson remembered in early days drinking tea with Garrick when Peg Woffington made it, and made it, as Garrick grumbled, "as red as blood." But when Garrick became rich he became liberal. He had, so Johnson declared, given away more money than any ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... it's a laughing matter," he proceeded. "I've just ruined myself by marrying you; that's what I've done. Not a soul in the place will come to the house because of you. Nobody could ever stand you but me; and what have I got by it? Not a halfpenny! It was just a swindle, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... an hour's rapid walking from his father's door, took Zack well out of the neighborhood of Baregrove Square, and launched him in vagabond independence loose on the world. He had a silk handkerchief and sevenpence halfpenny in his pockets—his available assets consisted of a handsome gold watch and chain—his only article of baggage was a blackthorn stick—and his anchor of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... consent—nay, probably at the instigation—of the members of the Government themselves. The fulfilment of some of the promises would have been feasible enough. Others had been as absurdly impossible of fulfilment as were Jack Cade's pledges that seven halfpenny loaves should be sold for a penny, and that the three-hooped pot should have ten hoops. The Government now realized that their performances were far from being commensurate with the promises so lavishly made. In the event of a new election taking place within the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... An' Mrs. Dreissiger there may play the lady as proud as she likes, but for all that she's no better than us. Many a hundred times she's served my father with a halfpenny-worth ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... dadda, is the Vanishing Halfpenny—only they've put it this way up so's we can't ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny addition to ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... employed as a boy in the castle grounds, and there he met a man who was a gardener at Kew. They talked, and the eleven-year-old boy was fired to see for himself what gardening could be. Next day he started off, with sixpence-halfpenny in his pocket, and walked all day till he came to Richmond. There he should have had supper; he had threepence left to get it with. But threepence was exactly the price of a little book, The Tale of a Tub, which he spied in a bookseller's window. He bought it, took it into a ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... ran about till he was tired and it was growing dark. And at last he sat himself down in a corner and fell asleep. When morning came he was very cold and hungry, and though he asked every one he met to help him, only one or two gave him a halfpenny to buy some bread. For two or three days he lived in the streets in this way, only just able to keep himself alive, when he managed to get some work to do in a hayfield, and that kept him for a short time longer, till ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... highly-paid, well-chosen, and accomplished servants, had not a conception of the nature of the rough material from which her servants came. Besides, in her establishment, so that the result was good, no one inquired if the small economies had been observed in the production. Whereas every penny—every halfpenny, was of consequence to Miss Galindo; and visions of squandered drops of milk and wasted crusts of bread filled her mind with dismay. But she swallowed all her apprehensions down, out of her regard for Lady Ludlow, and desire to be of service ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the Scotsman who was injured in the rush outside the post-office on the last night of the three-halfpenny postage, is now able to get about with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... court in the sun, smoking cigarettes. The acolytes with the removal of their scarlet cassocks, were become somewhat ragged urchins playing pitch and toss with much gesture and vociferation. Two of them quarrelled fiercely because one player would not yield the halfpenny he had certainly lost, and the altercation must have ended in blows if a corpulent, elderly cleric had not indignantly reproved them, and boxed their ears. A row of tattered beggars, very well contented in the sunshine, were seated on ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Freudenberg agreed. "You do me no less than justice, my dear Sir Julien. What I do hope that you have firmly fixed in your mind is that I, despite your halfpenny papers, your novelists seeking for a new sensation, and your weird middle class, I, Carl Freudenberg, maker of toys, am the honest and sincere friend of England. The work which I ask you to do for me would be as much in the interests of your country as of my own, only when I say your ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the proof," he said to himself, "if she likes this twopenny halfpenny cross, she is a miracle among women. But, of course, she won't like it and there'll be another scene. What a devil of a temper she was in this morning and how she made the fur fly! If she's like that now, I shall just take her into my arms and kiss her until she's done fighting. After all, I ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... keep no books, the whole secret is "Sixpence farthing to the half shilling, twelve pence halfpenny to the shilling." The new twopence halfpenny, or cent, will be at ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... little house!" said Mrs. Shiffney, looking quickly round her with searching eyes, while they waited for their hostess. "Nothing worth twopence-halfpenny, but nothing wrong. I declare I quite ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... department of art. I improved it greatly by practice in secret after I left school, and I ended by making it a source of profit and pocket money to me when I entered the medical profession. What was I to do? I could not expect for years to make a halfpenny, as a physician. My genteel walk in life led me away from all immediate sources of emolument, and my father could only afford to give me an allowance which was too preposterously small to be mentioned. I had helped myself surreptitiously to pocket-money at school, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... covered with cinders: the compositor disappeared through a trapdoor in the roof, and made off over the tiles of the neighbouring houses. In these dens were manufactured treasonable works of all classes and sizes, from halfpenny broadsides of doggrel verse up to massy quartos filled with Hebrew quotations. It was not safe to exhibit such publications openly on a counter. They were sold only by trusty agents, and in secret places. Some tracts ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... underground cellar and put up his sign—"Come to the subterraneous barber; he shaves for a penny." This caused brisk competition, and a general reduction in barber's prices. Yet not to be beaten, Arkwright altered his sign to "A clean shave for a halfpenny." Then he turned his attention to wig-making, and from that to machine-making. And years and years passed. Years filled with patient labour, privations, obstacles, and at last Success! "Eighteen years after he had constructed his first machine ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... of a halfpenny or less apiece one may buy the cigar boxes made to hold twenty-five cigars. These boxes, being fashioned by machinery, are all—at any rate all those devoted to a particular "brand"—of the same dimensions; they are neatly constructed, and their ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... to the amount of five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, through life, to use tobacco in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... muscle making constituents in the milk. I could never induce my village folk to accept this rudimentary proposition; they fancied that all the goodness was gone with the cream, and though I offered the skim milk at the nominal price of one halfpenny a quart, very few would send their children to fetch it, though they mostly lived within a hundred ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... seen the black man on the beach at all? No? Him with the performing birds? You know—jacks and ravens and owls and such like. Well, he's been wanting something like you this long time. Wouldn't trust, but he'd give twopence-halfpenny for you—and drinks all round. You'd make his fortune ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... to complete volumes may be obtained; and the complete series is now in course of issue in Three-halfpenny Weekly Numbers, or ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... time of Henry VII., the Duttons claimed, by prescriptive right, that the Cheshire minstrels should deliver them, at the feast of St. John, four bottles of wine and a lance, and that each separate minstrel should pay fourpence halfpenny. . . . . ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... such, at the beginning of the century, was the abundance of salmon caught in the Elbe, and even in the Mulde at Dessau, that it was stipulated as in Scotland, that servants should not have salmon more than twice or thrice in the week. The lowest price for salmon was then twopence halfpenny a pound. As a boy I can remember seeing the salmon in large numbers leap over a weir in the very town of Dessau, and though they had travelled for so many miles inland, the fish was very good, though not so good as Severn salmon. Game also ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... the smoke. "Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity, the Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence—a pot of bitter twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's most amusing on the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about myself. They are both ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... the lack of confidence displayed by Selina, he sat on the side of her bed one afternoon glancing thoughtfully round the room. He was alone in the house, and now, or never, was his opportunity. After an hour's arduous toil he had earned tenpence-halfpenny, and, rightly considering that the sum was unworthy of the risk, put it back where he had found it, and sat down gloomily to peruse a paper which he had found secreted at the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the whole story all over the town at any rate, and in the lane, and all about the courts; and they declare it don't matter a toss of a halfpenny which way the matter goes, as you're to become Lady Ball the very moment ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... funds on a certain day, with a view to oblige persons who should purchase into the funds on that day to pay an increased price, the crime would be complete if the funds were raised on that day, though no person should purchase a halfpenny-worth of stock; in like manner as conspiring to raise the price of commodities in a market, though no person should purchase, would still be ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney |
