"Threepenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too late. They kept a strict account against every man; it was full of what they called deductions, and we had to pay for so many things out of that shilling that sometimes for months together I hadn't the price of a pint o' threepenny with a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... hamlet on the South Coast, was withered in the bud beyond redemption. To this lamentable canker of a seedling hope the eternal harmony of the sea was a principal contributor; but Miss Whiffle confirmed the blight. I had fled from the jangle of a city, and the worries incidental to a life of threepenny sociabilities; and the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... these eleven tales is decidedly English, but they are so unusually good that our children will read them with enjoyment notwithstanding the unfamiliar setting. The Thousand Threepenny Bits, The Anti-Burglars, and the uncommonly funny one called The Monkey's Revenge, are among ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... apt to be somebody lookin' after him. For bedad it seems to me mostwhiles the littler a thing is the more people there'll be consaitin' they can't get on widout it; and that's lucky, belike, or else it might aisy get lost entirely, like a threepenny bit rowled away into a crack. But if you come to considher," Con said, hurrying on lest his allusion to the coin should be construed as a hint that he thought of payment for his services, "most people's lookin' out for somebody, or else somebody's lookin' out for them. It's on'y a few odd ones ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... real wine of three kinds, namely, blackthorn wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours out, but the bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to pour out. There is bread and butter to begin with, of the size of a threepenny bit; and cakes to end with, and they are so small that they have no crumbs. The fairies sit round on mushrooms, and at first they are very well-behaved and always cough off the table, and so on, but after a bit they are not so well-behaved and ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... was born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, and in our little house it was an event, the first great victory in a woman's long campaign; how they had been laboured for, the pound- note and the thirty threepenny-bits they cost, what anxiety there was about the purchase, the show they made in possession of the west room, my father's unnatural coolness when he brought them in (but his face was white) - I so often heard ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... the wages of another man's servants is absurd, and reminds one of the 'plate, glass, and linen' that used to be charged for at the posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of 'an old established ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... tiny objects workmen sometimes prided themselves upon making—such curios, for instance, as the silver and copper kettles and coffee pot shown in Figs. 58, 59, and 60. The larger specimen (drawn larger than the original) was made from a copper farthing, the smaller kettles being hammered out of threepenny-pieces; the coffee pot is of ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... fry the onion to a light-brown colour. Now add the dry rice, and stir this up with the onion and butter till the rice also is fried of a nice light-brown colour. Now add two breakfastcupfuls of stock or water and a pinch of powdered saffron, about sufficient to cover a threepenny-piece; let the rice boil for ten or eleven minutes, move the saucepan to the side of the fire and let it stand for twenty minutes or half an hour till it has absorbed all the stock or water. Now mix ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... the easiest possible disguises, Mr. Narkom. A wig, a stick of grease-paint, a threepenny twist of crepe hair, and there you are! No, I do not believe that the man is a Cingalese at all; and, far from his having any connection with what you were pleased to term just now a change of front on the part ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... attention to the fact that a countryman was this day observed to buy a threepenny loaf, and on leaving the baker's to tear it asunder and distribute the fragments with three confederates!!! an act which I need not say was evidently symbolical of their desire to rend asunder the Corn Laws, and to divide the landed property amongst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... have caused more interest. The scene at the railway stations and book-stalls was unparalleled. We could not print quick enough to supply the demand. 140,000 copies went off in a few days—which, for a threepenny ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... They got that of course; but it was a mere crumb in a Sahara of starvation, a drop in the thirsty ocean. I dare say that not a single soul in the world got the comfort of as much as a recovered threepenny bit out of the estate. Then, less than crumbs, less than drops, there were to be grabbed, the lease of the big Brighton house, the furniture therein, the carriage and pair, the girl's riding horse, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... frightened," and felt hastily in her pocket for a threepenny-bit with a hole in it, which she had meant to hang on a ribbon round her neck, for luck. She hovered round the unfortunate plum-owner, and said, "We have had some of your plums; we thought it wasn't stealing, but now I am not so sure. So here's some money ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... and two halves, into his unwilling hand. Then he understood her relief, for, looking down into the little sealskin purse, he saw that there was no more gold in it. The last ten shillings must have been counted out in silver, and he was not quite sure it would not have ended in a threepenny piece and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the device of a local training corps originated by the archdeacon in the early days of the war. Its presence in Tuppence's coat was due to the fact that she had used it for pinning in some flowers a day or two before. But Tuppence had sharp eyes, and had noted the corner of a threepenny detective novel protruding from Albert's pocket, and the immediate enlargement of his eyes told her that her tactics were good, and that the fish would ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... the catechism in his pocket. At lunch he drank water and poured wine for everyone else. About three they set out for the Church. Suddenly Father O'Connor asked G.K. if he had brought the Ritual. G.K. plunged his hand in his pocket, pulled out a threepenny shocker with complete absence of embarrassment, and went on searching till at last he found the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... awake, Gwen got up very quietly, and unlocked her savings box. It seemed dreadfully hard to have to take her treasured fifteen shillings; pocket money was such a scarce article at the Parsonage that she did not know when she would have the chance of accumulating so much again. There were only two threepenny bits and a penny left to rattle when she shook the box, so she sighed ruefully as she locked it, and put it back in its place on the top shelf of the bookcase. She hoped Netta would not forget to bring the half-sovereign ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Pepperpot, at a stone less than weight for age, with a baby on his back, at Esher last year, the betting being then 20 to 7 against the Harkaway filly, he showed what his true form was. Pepperpot, of course, is a rank impostor, but a careful man might do worse than put a spare threepenny-bit on Toothpick, who always runs better in a snow-storm. As for Dutchman, everybody knows he's not a flyer, and only a man whose brains are made of fish-sauce ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... a jackdaw myself," said one of the men. "I got it from a woman that came to the door with a basket for fourpence. My mother stood on its back one day, and she getting out of bed. I split its tongue with a threepenny bit the way it would talk, but devil the word it ever said for me. It used to hop around letting on it had a lame leg, and then it ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... full of simple sagacity. Just now the gray eyes looked doom. Paul knew he had done something awful, and felt guilty, though he knew nothing as yet of the charge against him. 'What ha' ye dune wi' the threepenny-bit ye ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... requested him to do so; but unless you have that audacity he prefers to keep the teaspoon on his side of the bar, out of harm's way. This may seem strange, when you perceive that the teaspoon is fashioned of a metal unknown to silversmiths and might be priced at threepence. But even a threepenny teaspoon is a souvenir which some collectors would ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... on empty cups and bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout. He played for threepenny points with as grave an interest as if they had been pounds; and yet, in all his attention to strangers, he had an eye on his suffering daughter— for suffering I was sure she was, though to many eyes she might only appear to be irritable. Miss Jessie ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ever swept our own walks, except that once, long ago, when the German women came round with threepenny brooms?" asked Arthur, throwing out his right arm, as if he were making a speech. "And think of all the years John has been getting leaf mould for himself out of our copper beech leaves and now refuses us ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Clipstone Street. I suppose you know my farce was damned. The noise still rings in my ears. Was you ever in the pillory?—being damned is something like that. Godwin keeps a shop in Skinner Street, Snow Hill, he is turned children's bookseller, and sells penny, twopenny, threepenny, and fourpenny books. Sometimes he gets an order for the dearer sort of Books. (Mind, all that I tell you in this letter is true.) A treaty of marriage is on foot between William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something about settlements only retards it. She has somewhere about ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... had, however, W. S. Orr & Co. (the London agents of Chambers, of Edinburgh), who had fallen into financial difficulties, and looked to Bradbury and Evans to help them out; and through their organisation Punch was taken up by the trade "on sale or return." To work up the sale of a threepenny publication was at that time a formidable task; but Orr certainly accomplished it, and for a time Punch undoubtedly owed more to his efforts than to Jerrold's pen or Leech's pencil. The head of the firm, in both senses, was William Bradbury, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... informed his majesty they were very poor people, the king led him into his treasury, and told him he should pay his friends a visit, and take with him as much money as he could carry. Tom procured a little purse, and putting a threepenny piece into it, with much labour and difficulty got it upon his back; and after travelling two days and nights, arrived at his father's house. His mother met him at the door, almost tired to death, having in forty-eight hours travelled almost half a mile with a huge silver threepence upon his ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... and my mother went downstairs to inspect the premises; of the back windows, thirty-four in number, there was not a bit of glass as big as a threepenny piece left. Our brougham was in the yard; the window next the explosion was intact, but the one on the further side was ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... immense trouble to work off any small swindle in the sporting line. In short the general consensus of opinion was that they were a very "fly" crowd at Mulligan's, and if you went there you wanted to "keep your eyes skinned" or they'd "have" you over a threepenny-bit. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... books of half a century ago, we meet with one whose title reminds us of the "Life in London." It is called, "Doings in London; or, Day and Night Scenes of the Frauds, Frolics, Manners, and Depravities of the Metropolis." It came out in threepenny numbers, in 1828, and its professed object (in the queer language of George Smeeton, its compiler and publisher) was to "show vice and deception in all their real deformity, and not by painting in glowing colours the fascinating ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the child is! And how eloquently the blue eyes invite a purchaser, for it is only with looks that the wares are extolled! I still see them both before me! The threepenny pieces they get are to help their starving mother to heat the attic room in those winter days which, cold though they are, may warm the heart. Looking at them our mother told us how hunger hurts, and how ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the cases in which the accident is the result of mere indolence are very rare, and though in such cases strictness may be necessary, yet actual punishment is out of place. As a rule, reward answers much better. A penny, or a threepenny-piece every night that the accident does not happen, and a forfeit of a halfpenny or two pence for every night of misfortune, is a very efficacious help to ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... value of money. If you held out to him a penny in one hand and a threepenny-bit in the other, he would snatch at the threepence, and then break his heart because he could not get the penny in as well. You might safely have left him in the room with a leg of mutton, but it would not have been wise ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... said the Bishop, "was a sort of cosmopolitan—he tried to teach a little of everything. He was a good-hearted man. He loved to give threepenny-pieces to the boys who pleased him. I well remember one day during prayers—we were all assembled in the big hall—and the head master was reading them. Suddenly the door opened and a big boy, very nervous and conscience-stricken, who thought he ought to be at prayers, crept quietly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... panacea For ev'ry conceivable ill, When you cherish the soothing idea That somebody else pays the bill! Old wine is a pleasure that's hollow When at your own table you sit, For you're thinking each mouthful you swallow Has cost you, has cost you a threepenny-bit! So bumpers—aye, ever so many— And then, if you will, many more! This wine doesn't cost us a penny, Tho' it's ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the 6.30 editions would reach Camden Town, and if you remember it was the six-thirty editions which had the first news of the murder. The tavern-keeper declares that Hill drank nearly two bottles of Tarragona port, in threepenny glasses, during the day." ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Nov. 12, 1844, and was continued for nearly two years.—Twopenny weekly "Concerts for the People" were started at the Music Hall, Broad Street (now Prince of Wales' Theatre), March 25, 1847, but they did not take well.—Threepenny Saturday evening concerts in Town Hall, were ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... pause for a moment and look at the collections. The poorer classes besiege the stores on Saturday with anxious inquiries for 'stickeys,' i.e., threepenny-pieces. To a poor man with a large family of church-goers this matter of church collections is a serious business unless he can get four mites out of a shilling, as coppers are not used in the Transvaal; ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... elbowed out of many a chance threepenny job by the added thousands who contended with him against starvation, nevertheless, somehow he continued to subsist, as those tough old oaks of the cliffs, which, though hacked at by hail-stones of tempests, and even wantonly maimed by the passing woodman, still, however cramped ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... hand-bag and umbrellas and half the contents of an extra luggage van. The long-suffering porter who had looked after her boxes and finally put her in the train, was crimson with his exertions. The generous lady, having searched several pockets before finding the necessary coin, bestowed on him a threepenny piece for his trouble! "Thank yer, mum," he went off muttering grimly, "I'll bore a 'ole in the middle and 'ang it ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... understand giving a threepenny bit, or even sixpence, at the offertory on Sunday at church, and of course one 'as to give Christmas-boxes to the tradesmen; but to give your whole salary away! 'Aven't you ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... as a member of the Council, to introduce the envoys. But what should I have done? Was I to propose not to introduce those who had come for the express purpose of speaking with you? or to order the lessee of the theatre not to assign them seats? But they would have watched the play from the threepenny seats,[n] if this decree had not been proposed. Should I have guarded the interests of the city in petty details, and sold them wholesale, as my opponents did? Surely not. (To the clerk.) Now take this decree, which the prosecutor passed over, though ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... end with the singing of a hymn to an accompaniment of grunts and wheezes from an ancient harmonium and the dropping of pennies and threepenny bits into a wooden plate. Then the congregation hurried out to the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... light. However, as I have said, Lord Palmerston effectually cleared Crockford's, and it almost seemed, from the evidence of those who knew Crockford's best, that they never played anything there but old-fashioned whist for threepenny ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton |
