"Sixpence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine work, is in the background, in our work the world gives all the credit to Us, whom they consider as their Journeymen, and therefore do they hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring the blood of us out, to put another sixpence in their mechanic pouches. I contend, that a Bookseller has a relative honesty towards Authors, not like his honesty to the rest of the world. B[aldwin], who first engag'd me as Elia, has not paid me up yet (nor any of us without repeated mortifying applials), yet how ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... interested some of the wild native boys, and they rushed about to tell it, and in less than five minutes a nice neat-looking middle-aged man stood at my elbow and said he had a good horse and trap and for seven-and-sixpence would drive me to the hill, help me there to find what I wanted, and bring me back in time to catch the conveyance. Accordingly in a few minutes we were speeding out of the town drawn by a fast-trotting horse. Fast trotters appeared to be common in these parts, and as we went along the road from ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... entertained by the juniors, of establishing a debating society for mutual improvement. This institution became known as the Forum; meetings were held weekly in a public hall of the city, and strangers were admitted to the discussions on the payment of sixpence a-head. The meetings were uniformly crowded; and the Shepherd, who held the office of secretary, made a point of taking a prominent lead in the discussions. He spoke once, and sometimes more frequently, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to go for the sake also of seeing whether there were still articles remaining which had been sent for the purpose of being sold, or whether there were any articles really needless, that we might turn them into money. I felt that the matter was now come to a solemn crisis. About half-past nine sixpence came in, which had been put anonymously into the box at Gideon Chapel. This money seemed to me like an earnest, that God would have compassion and send more. About ten, after I had returned from ...
— Answers to Prayer - From George Mueller's Narratives • George Mueller
... ejaculated, stopping short; "that's the worst o' my trade; makes a man suspicious of everything and everybody. Why, I nearly accused the missus of picking my pockets of that sixpence I forgot I spent with a mate. It's all right. They were as tight as tight. Ugh! ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... we could not help the little children who were starving, her prompt reply was, "What will you give up for them?" And then she said that if we liked to give up the use of sugar, we might thus each save sixpence a week to give away. I doubt if a healthier lesson can be given to children than that of personal self-denial ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... BROTHER ANTONY—Your letter arrived safe to hand on Wednesday last, and I must say that I was not a little surprised at its contents; indeed, I thought so much about it that I revoked at Lady Betty Blabkin's whist-party, and lost four shillings and sixpence. You say that you have a child at your house belonging to your cousin, who married in so indecorous a manner. I hope what you say is true; but, at the same time, I know what bachelors are guilty of; although, as Lady Betty says, it is better never to ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... horses together, and have made up all their quarrels. And of all ghosts in the world, the worst is, when an old true-love comes back to haunt a poor fellow like me. Mistress Deborah, though distressed enow for the loss of her place, has been already speaking of a broken sixpence, or some such token, as if a man could remember such things for so many years, even if she had not gone over seas, like ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... war to be the demon state of the monikin mind; as opposed to worship, to charity, brotherly love, and all the virtues. On its pecuniary penalties, he touched by exhibiting a tax-sheet. Buttons which cost sixpence a gross, he assured the house, would shortly cost sevenpence a gross.—Here he was reminded that monikins no longer wore buttons.—No matter, they bought and sold buttons, and the effects on trade were just the same. The political penalties of war he fairly showed to be frightful; ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... men upset everything. Having been among wrestlers so much as my duty compelled me to be, and having learned the necessity of the rest which follows the conflict, and the right of discussion which all people have to pay their sixpence to enter; and how they obtrude this right, and their wisdom, upon the man who has laboured, until he forgets all the work he did, and begins to think that they did it; having some knowledge of this sort of thing, and the flux of minds swimming ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Public Pleasure Grounds, near Sansome Walk, where fetes are given and bands frequently play. The grounds are tastefully laid out, portions being set apart for games of archery, cricket, bowls, and quoits. The usual admission fee is sixpence, but on Mondays they are ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... Bardolphian in hue, and stern of aspect, as all grog-dispensers must be, accustomed as they are to dive through the features of men to the bottom of their souls and pockets to see whether they are solvent to the amount of sixpence, answered my question by a wave of one hand, the other being engaged in carrying a dram to his lips. His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it wounded my personal sensibilities. Anything really superior ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... When the danger of frost is over in the spring, they uncover it, and begin its culture. There is a great deal of this in the neighborhood of Toulon. The plants are set about eight feet apart, and yield, one year with another, about two pounds of caper each, worth on the spot sixpence sterling per pound. They require little culture, and this may be performed either with the plough or hoe. The principal work is the gathering of the fruit as it forms. Every plant must be picked ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... not remind you that the different breeds should be housed separately, but you who always had a gift for carpentry can easily arrange this. Indeed it was only yesterday that in opening a chest of drawers I came across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria vine on Grandma Bartram's porch! I wished to punish you, but she said—'No, Susanna, rather preserve the tool as a memento of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... peculiarities, Paganini was an incarnation of avarice and parsimony, with a most contradictory passion for gambling. He would haggle with you for sixpence, and stake a rouleau on a single turn at rouge et noir. He screwed you down in a bargain as tightly as if you were compressed in a vice; yet he had intervals of liberality, and sometimes did a generous action. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... friend," says Mr. Joline; "the idea is a childish delusion. 'In early life,' says Walter Bagehot, 'there is an opinion that the obvious thing to do with a horse is to ride it; with a cake, to eat it; with a sixpence to spend it.' A few boyish persons carry this further, and think that the natural thing to do with a book is to read it. The mere reading of a rare book is a puerility, an idiosyncrasy of adolescence; it is the ownership of the book which ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... used to lie on the little carpet by her side and jumped up each time the bell rang; when they left, she would say mindingly, with a pathetic grimace; "Something for the chamber-maid." And they would tip her sixpence. ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... arrived at our billet we found Pay in process. A private, who has a moment or so ago saluted and withdrawn with his pay, seeks re-admission. "Colour-Sergeant!" he says. "What is it?" "I think you have given me sixpence short." To which the brutal Colours replies briefly, "'Op it." Later another private comes. "Colour-Sergeant!" says he. "What is it now?" "I think you have given me sixpence too much." "Come in, my lad, come ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... without an orchestra. In spite of that disappointment, the whole house was full, the staircase crowded from top to bottom, and when we had pushed our way through, we found that about 300 places had been retained for one and a half thalers (four shillings and sixpence), while tickets at the box-office were sold for two thalers (six shillings). Nevertheless, I managed to get a very good place, by simply not seeing a number of ladies who were pushing behind me. When Liszt appeared there was a terrible hissing—he looked as if petrified, glanced like a demon at ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... sometimes affected what would have been called at the time a "mighty unconcern" about political affairs. Writing once to Pope, he says, "Mrs. Pulteney is now in labor; if she does well, and brings me a boy, I shall not care one sixpence how much longer Sir Robert governs England, or Horace governs France." This was written while Horace Walpole was still Ambassador at the French Court. Pulteney, however, was very far from feeling anything like the philosophical indifference which ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon your knees for the admirable constitution of society and your own convenient situation in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the point of the inquiry; and you must first have BOUGHT THE SIXPENCE. Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit desires certainty in a thing of such ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do what I could for the boy; and he proceeded to take leave of his little nephew in my presence in terms equally eloquent, pulling out a long and very slender green purse, from which he extracted the sum of two and sixpence, which he presented to the child, who received the money with rather a queer ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... William, in a manner of speaking, close upon seven year. What I mean to say is, when he was nigh upon fourteen, and was to go away to his uncle in Somerset to learn farming, he gave me a kiss and half of a broken sixpence, and said— ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... penny. Treating Tony, one and twopence. Flying Boats (Tony paid for himself), a penny, one and threepence. Shooting-gallery again, one and fourpence; Fat Woman a penny, one and fivepence. Giddy-go-round again, one and sixpence. Shooting-gallery, one and sevenpence. Treating Tony, and then he wouldn't shoot, so I did, one and eightpence. Living Skeleton, a penny—no, Tony treated me, the Living Skeleton doesn't count. Skittles, a penny, one and ninepence. Mermaid (but when ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... ragged children who had collected on their faces more dirt than seemed humanly possible, and nothing would content Joan but that she should present each with a sixpence. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... worth a quarter; but keep your lamps out for thruppenny-bits, or the publicans 'll shove 'em on you for sixpence." ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... impart information. The party at the White Bear knew before she went home, that she had recently had her parlour newly hung with arras, representing the twelve labours of Hercules: that she intended to have roast veal to supper: that her worsted under-stockings had cost her four-and-sixpence the pair: that her husband was a very trying man, and her eldest son the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... "the unprotected male" declaring that he would shoot them or poison them. "A man is not a Chatham nor a Wallenstein; but a man has work too, which the Powers would not quite wish to have suppressed by two and sixpence worth of bantams.... They must either withdraw or die." Ultimately his mother-wife came to the rescue of her "babe of genius"; the cocks were bought off, and in the long-talked-of sound-proof room the last considerable work of his life, though painfully, proceeded. ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Aldgate, once so cringing and umble, wrote me a threatnen letter because I overdrew my account three-and-sixpence: woodn't advance me five thousand on 25,000 worth of scrip; kep me waiting 2 hours when I asked to see the house; and then sent out Spout, the jewnior partner, saying they wouldn't discount my paper, and implawed me to clothes my account. I ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Peke drew out of his tattered trouser pocket a dim and blackened sixpence—"'Ere 'e is, as large as life, a bit bald about the top o' 'is blessed old 'ead, Glory be good to 'im, but as useful as if all 'is 'air was still a blowin' an' a growin'! Aint that the King's picture, D. David? Don't it say 'Edwardus VII. D. G. Britt.,' which means Edward ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... never noticed before) that there is a curious dearth of them in the Gardens. The magic egg-cup I usually carried about with me, and with its connivance I did some astonishing things with pennies, but even the penny that costs sixpence is uncertain, and just when you are saying triumphantly that it will be found in the egg-cup, it may clatter to the ground, whereon some ungenerous spectator, such as Irene, accuses you of fibbing and corrupting youthful ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... with me, Tom?" inquired George, cheerful and business-like. "I am not a lucky man, but while I have a shilling there's sixpence for the man that brought me this—dew in the desert I call it. And to think you have seen her since I have; how was she looking; had she her beautiful color; what did she say to you ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... he spends no money, yet he spends five times the value of the money in time. Another says, 'Why, indeed, I was at the tavern yesterday all the afternoon, but I could not help it, and I spent but sixpence.' But at the same time perhaps it might be said he spent five pounds' worth of time, his business being neglected, his shop unattended, his books not posted, his letters not written, and the like—for all those things ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... 'I have got sixpence,' he said; 'that'll buy milk for her. We'll manage quite well, Floss. When mother goes out with her market-basket, we'll slip downstairs with Dickory, and well take her away, and we'll hide her somewhere. She shan't go to no workhouse, ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... for nothing," replied the Bornean. "The crocodile here eats men and women. Some are killed every year, and the government pays one and sixpence ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... decision, and superb seamanship—which he so eminently possessed. He was, above all, the frigate captain. "Nothing like hesitation was ever seen in him. His first order was always his last; and he often declared of himself that he never had a second thought worth sixpence." In 1799, by a new Admiralty rule, he was transferred to the Impetueux, a ship-of-the-line, and thenceforth served in that class of vessel ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... who'd had two nigger children, but I didn't mind; it's all the same to me. And I tell you she worked. She made a garden, and she and the other girl worked in it; I tell you I didn't need to buy a sixpence of food for them in six months, and I used to sell green mealies and pumpkins to all the fellows about. There weren't many flies on her, I tell you. She picked up English quicker than I picked up her lingo, and took to ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... at Dungeon Ghyll, a little ravine among the English lakes, down which trickles an exceedingly small stream of water, but which is, nevertheless, very picturesque,—as I followed the old man who shows it for a sixpence, he asked if we had come a long way. 'From America,' I replied. 'We have many Americans here,' said he; 'it is much easier to understand their language than that of other foreigners; they speak very good English, better than the French ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... country's charges. If incurable, or permanently disabled, he was then turned adrift and left to shift for himself. A clean record and a sufficiently serious wound entitled him to a small pension or admission to Greenwich Hospital, an institution which had religiously docked his small pay of sixpence a month throughout his entire service. Failing these, there remained for him only the streets and ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... keep it to yourself, and let nobody know anything of the matter. The other things against me are nothing but circumstances, and I shall come well enough off. And therefore I only desire you to let me have threepence or sixpence a day till the sessions be over; then I shall be at liberty to shift for ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... as it happened, his next week's personal allowance of seven and sixpence in his pocket—for to-day had been pay day; and his season ticket. The rest he had handed over to his wife at supper time. He had also, however, the moral support of knowing that he had in the savings bank the exact amount of his ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she said, to arrive, though occasionally the mariners had to wait some time for it. The woman's dwelling and appearance were ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prosperity, he was a hard master, paying his labourers, who were mostly married men with families, the wage of seven shillings a week, and employing their womenfolk at hoeing or binding for sixpence a day, while for fewer pence still the little children stumbled on uncertain legs after the birds which threatened the new-tilled crops. By such means—common to all his neighbours at a time when cultivation was slow and such luxuries as meat, white bread, bedding, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... of land in the neighbourhood, and who has built a nice little boat for sailing about in the summer season. I may as well mention in this place, that the roofing generally used for cottages is a wooden tile called "shingle," which is very cheap—twelve-and-sixpence purchasing enough to cover a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... this, now, you'd look like a full-blown rose. Come, I'll not be hard upon you, as it's the first time you've dealt with me. That shawl's worth ten shillings if it's worth a farthing, and I'll let you have it for seven shillings and sixpence; half a crown down, and a shilling a fortnight till it's ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... regulations were enacted against allowing the Indians the use of firearms, and against parting with corn to them, or sending it out of the jurisdiction, without a license. Constables were appointed for Salem and Dorchester. The wages of common laborers were fixed at sixpence a day, and those of mechanics who were employed in building at sixteen pence, in addition to "meat and drink." Order was given for the seizure of "Richard Clough's strong water, for his selling great quantity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... aspects of the scheme need not detain us; but a great reform of rate and scale in the system of the assessed taxes, the reduction of the duty on the beneficent practice of life insurance from half-a-crown to sixpence on the hundred pounds, and the substitution of a uniform receipt stamp, were no contemptible contributions to the comfort and well-being of the community. Advertisements in ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... who was Lord March's partner. But Mr. Morris must have been very keenly alive to the value of sixpence, if the loss of a few such coins could make his round face look so dismal. My Lord Chesterfield sate opposite Mr. Warrington, sorting his cards. No one could say, by inspecting that calm physiognomy, whether good or ill ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... round. Outside, Miss Thompson, small and staid, Felt, as she always felt, afraid Of this huge man who laughed so loud And drew the notice of the crowd. Awhile she paused in timid thought, Then promptly hurried in and bought 'Two kippers, please. Yes, lovely weather.' 'Two kippers? Sixpence altogether:' And in her basket laid the pair Wrapped face to face ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... he pricked the fourth finger of her right hand, between the middle and upper joints, (where the sign at the examination remained), and with a drop or two of her blood, she signed the paper with an O. Upon this the devil gave her sixpence, and vanished with the paper. That since he hath appeared to her in the shape of a man, and did so on Wednesday sevennight past, but more usually he appears in the likeness of a dog, and cat, and a fly like a miller, in which last ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... plan, Jack," Ruthven said, putting his hand in his pocket and bringing out sixpence, "will be for you to go across the road and wet your whistle ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... and reason weak: Make it a point, dear Marquess! or a pique. Once, for a whim, persuade yourself to pay A debt to reason, like a debt at play. For right or wrong have mortals suffer'd more? B—— for his prince, or —— for his whore? Whose self-denials nature most control? His, who would save a sixpence, or his soul? Web for his health, a Chartreux for his sin, Contend they not which soonest shall grow thin? What we resolve, we can: but here's the fault, We ne'er resolve to do ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... you Sally; so of course I do. But speaking to you—don't you see?..." The doctor hesitates—doesn't actually blush, perhaps. A slight pause in the conversation eases off the context. The little maiden has to lock up the church-door with the big key, and to receive sixpence and a kiss from Sally. The violet eyes follow the lady and gentleman, fixed in wonderment, as they move off towards the hill, and the last glint of the sun vanishes. Then Sally goes ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... speak to the point. It is money. It is expected that you will offer money.' We said that we had spoken to that point very explicitly, that we had given an answer. 'No,' he replied, 'you have not. What is your answer?' We replied, 'It is No, no, no; not a sixpence.'" The President concluded with a ringing paragraph which summed up the indignation of the American people at this insult. "I will never send another minister to France without assurances that he will be ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... them properly welcome—I'm a respectable married woman. I don't mind confessing to you, Zeally isn't a comfortable man. He's pleased enough to be sergeant, though he don't quite know how it came about; and he's that sullen with brooding over it, that for sixpence he'd give me the strap to ease his feelings. I ain't complaining. Mr. Endymion chose to take me on the hop and hurry up the banns, and I'm going to accommodate myself to the man. He's three-parts of a fool, and you needn't fear but I'll manage him. But I ain't for ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for some young surgeons. Being upon honour to their employers, rather than disappoint the evening lecture of the students, they stole a live child, murdered it, and sold the body for three shillings and sixpence. They were hanged, but for the murder, not for the plagium [Footnote: This is, in its circumstances and issue, actually a case tried and reported.]—Your civil law has carried you ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Pilgrim and the Rake are contrasted with each other. But how, I wonder! Is it a lecture or a magic lantern? Both, I dare say! Let's go in and see! I can't read any more of the bill. We may at least sit there till your ankle is better. 'Admission—front seats sixpence.' Come along. We may get a good laugh, who knows?—a thing cheap ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... quantity in the abstract; as, How, (meaning, in what degree,) however, howsoever, everso, something, anything, nothing, a groat, a sixpence, a sou-markee, and other ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... night, it was not very late, For I'd spent my last sixpence, and landlords won't wait On a fellow who's left every cent in their till, And has pawned his last bed, their coffers to fill. Oh, the torments I felt, and the pangs I endured! And I begged for one glass—just one would have cured,— ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... secured every advantage. Nothing like hesitation was seen in him. "His first order," said an officer who long served with him, "was always his last;" and he has often declared of himself that he never had a second thought worth sixpence. This would be an absurd boast from a common character, but it is an important declaration from one whose life was a career of enterprise without a failure. Always equal to the occasion, his power displayed itself the ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... dwarfs to be seen for a penny, with white Circassians, silver-haired, and actors of all sorts and sizes. "Walk in, ladies and gentlemen! walk in! Here's the rope-dancing and juggling, with lots of gilt gingerbread,—and all for sixpence! Here is the great Numidian lion!"—leading forth a creature not larger than a moderate-sized English mastiff,—"with a throat like a turnpike gate, and teeth like mile-stones, and every hair on his mane as big as a broomstick!" It was worth sixpence to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... yer like ter see the future? I sees what 's comin' in this here magic glass. I tells yer when ter set yer nets—and of rising storms. Has any o' yer a kind o' hankerin' fer matrimony? I can tell yer if the lady be light or dark. It will cost yer only a sixpence. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... and here it is. "Stodge" they call it, a horrible name, but very true. I am sure much more sensible are those who walk off to the neighbouring village of Stoke Fleming, where they can get a nice tea from Mrs. Fox from sixpence to ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the corner when he had finished his lunch. "I don't mean the seaside at Ostend or Trouville, but honest English seaside with nigger minstrels, three-shilling excursionists, and dirty, expensive furnished apartments, where they charge you a shilling for lighting the hall gas on Sundays and sixpence on other evenings. Do you ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... "if you don't come, I will cut and run. There is not a creature but yourself within twenty miles to whom I can speak—not a man worth a sixpence. I wish my father had broken his neck before he accepted that confounded embassy, which encumbers me with the charge ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... because riding on them makes Titania's eyes so bright. More widely, the word connotes anything that produces that desirable result, such as bunches of violets, lavender peddlers, tea at Mary Elizabeth's, spring millinery, or finding sixpence in her shoe. This last is a rite ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life; he could not have 'scaped sixpence a-day; an the duke had not given him sixpence a-day for playing Pyramus, I'll be hanged; he would have deserved it: sixpence ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Englishwomen; there were two or three children running about, but none of them could speak anything but their father's native language. After this inspection we drove on, and we are glad to be able to register the fact that Our Guest for once acted up to the first part of the old adage, "Earn sixpence a day and live up to it." The Jehu's coach had stayed behind for a while, to allow The Instigator to observe and note a great many things which were no business of his at all, and the peons had likewise ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... turn from him with the "get away" said to a dog. No! She had no intention of dismissing him. His outpourings of devotion caressed her woman's pride, even if she did not accept them as gospel truth. And however tedious she found his vamping song of sixpence, his sittings in the parlour counting out his mirage-money, she put up with them in ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... purse is done. How are we to get the steel rings and tassels for it? I am not justified now in spending sixpence unnecessarily, even for the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... no means of knowing the history of Master "Ebenezer Cook, Gentleman," who, one hundred and forty-six years ago, produced the Sot-Weed Factor's Voyage to Maryland. He wrote, printed, published, and sold it in London for sixpence sterling, and then disappeared forever. We do not know certainly that Mr. Cook himself was the actual adventurer who suffered the ills described by him "in burlesque verse." Indeed, "Eben: Cook, Gent." may be a myth—a nom de plume. Yet, there is a certain personal ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... rolled-out paste upon it, and by pressing the thumb of the right hand all round the upper part of the edge, the paste will be effectually fastened on, so as to prevent the juice from running out at the sides; a small hole the size of a sixpence must be made at the top of the pie, for ventilation, or otherwise the pie would burst. Bake the pie for an hour and ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... was puzzled, and did not know what to reply, for, though he would gladly have married the princess without a sixpence, he had spent all his money in building the ship, and knew he could not give her all she wanted. So he went to the hermit and said to him, 'The king will only give for her dowry as much as a man can carry. I have no money of my own left, and ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... a thought on the real sun and moon to be seen from their own doors; and we are all aware it by no means follows because we are moved to our very depths by the spectacle of unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance in a novel, that therefore we can step over the road to waste an hour or a sixpence upon the unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance of the poor lone woman left a widow in the little villa there. I was annoyed with myself because Clem's abandonment of me so much affected me. I wished I could cut the ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... at a house, where the hamper was taken out, carried in, and set down. The cook gave the carrier sixpence; the back door banged, and the cart rumbled away. But there was no quiet; there seemed to be hundreds of carts passing. Dogs barked; boys whistled in the street; the cook laughed, the parlour maid ran up and down-stairs; and a canary ...
— The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse • Beatrix Potter
... are always impatient of extravagance. But it is hard upon Frere. He is not a bad sort of fellow for all his roughness, and when a young man finds that an accident deprives him of a quarter of a million of money and leaves him without a sixpence beyond his commission in a marching regiment under orders for a convict settlement, he has some reason to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... all my other letters inside my name, not outside. They mused and said it was unfortunate that I was not a Master of Arts. Could I not get myself made a Master? I said I understood that a Mastership was an article the University could not do under about five pounds, and that I was not disposed to go sixpence higher than three ten. They again said it was a pity, for it would be very inconvenient to them if I did not keep to something between a bishop and a poet. I might be anything I liked in reason, provided ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... paper, and were to be attached to every piece of paper or parchment, on which a legal instrument was written. For these stamps the Government charged specific prices, for example, for a common property deed, one shilling and sixpence. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... the apostle Peter saith) "hath obtained the like precious faith." Mark, that there is a great deal of copper faith in the world—much counterfeit believing; but the saints do all partake of "the like precious faith." As when a man hath but a sixpence in silver, or a crown in gold, those small pieces, for the nature, are as good as the greatest of the same metal; so it is with the faith of God's elect. And look as it is in grafting; if there be many scions of the same kind grafted into one stock, they all ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... he had not sufficient money. Three shillings and sixpence were what remained until he received the cheque from one of ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... and long before, in Canadian history, was in beaver skins, which were approximately valued at the price of two shillings and sixpence a pound. Otter skins were valued at six shillings each, and marten skins at one shilling and sixpence, and others in proportion; but all these things were classed at being worth so many beaver skins or proportion of beaver skins. Thus, for example, the native ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... harvests and necessary preparations require a large number of hands, the wages of men averaging three francs, of women, the half. Thus at the time I write of, day labourers in remote regions of Provence receive just upon fourteen shillings and sixpence per week; whereas I read in the English papers that Essex farmers are reducing the pittance of twelve and even ten shillings per week ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... this my ill-humour broke fairly out in words. 'He!' I cried. 'He never dared to address her—only to look at her and vomit his vile insults! She may have given him sixpence: if she did, it may take him ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my young friend," said Aristide, raising his hat, "and here is something to buy a smile with," and, leaving a sixpence on the table to shimmer before the youth's stupefied eyes, Aristide strutted out of ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... belonging to King George's subjects. And, sometimes, a rosy little school-boy climbed into our chair, and sat staring, with wide-open eyes, at the alligator, the rattlesnake, and the other curiosities of the barber's shop. His mother had sent him, with sixpence in his hand, to get his glossy curls cropped off. The incidents of the Revolution plentifully supplied the barber's customers with topics of conversation. They talked sorrowfully of the death of General Montgomery, and the failure of our ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... breakfast, all these common luxuries, which are given away in America, and considered as necessaries of existence, are charged for in England, and if a bath is required in the morning in the tub which always stands near the wash-stand, an extra sixpence is required for that commonplace adjunct of the toilette. If ladies carry their own wine from the steamer to a lodging-house, and drink it there, or offer it to their friends, they are charged "corkage." On asking the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... said the little man. 'He mightn't like it perhaps. There's a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur' as I could, for sixpence. That's all. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... to your application on behalf of Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy, we beg to inform you that, under the administration of a paternal aunt who died intestate, your client is entitled to two thousand five hundred pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents.; one thousand five hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three per Cents., Reduced; one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred pounds, Bank Stock; three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock, besides other securities, making up about ten thousand ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... he is oppressed on all hands by existing conditions. He is exploited by the tradesman, who makes him pay half a crown for a spade which, measured by the labour spent on it, is not worth more than sixpence. He is taxed by the State, which cannot do without its formidable hierarchy of officials, and finds it necessary to maintain an expensive army, because the traders of all nations are perpetually fighting for the markets, and any day a little quarrel arising from the exploitation ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... society imposes thus inexorably on its millions of honest, industrious laborers (by its careless disregard of all the questions which concern the just remuneration of labor), may extend, we will describe how this poor girl contrived to live on three shillings and sixpence a week. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... anything you fancy. Stay, I'll say it for you. Yesterday I walked to Northbury. Northbury is over twenty miles from here. I walked every step of the way. In the evening I got there—I was footsore and weary. I had one and sixpence in my purse, no more for food, no more for bribes, no more for anything. I went to Northbury to see the Bertrams—to see that fine lady, that beloved friend of mine, Mrs. Bertram. She was from home. You probably know ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... on June 13. After paying the old Arab I had only sixpence left! I could not engage a room or buy anything to eat, and the prospect of going begging among Mohammedans was certainly not attractive. Fortunately I had heard of a rich Arab merchant, Agha Hassan, who lived in this town, and I directed my steps to his handsome house. In ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the night clerk at the Arlington. "Back again, like a bad sixpence! Have my trunk sent up, will ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... was a crooked man, And he went a crooked mile, And he found a crooked sixpence Against a crooked stile; He bought a crooked cat, Which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... Here is another: The French constitution says, that the right of war and of peace is in the nation. "Where else should it reside, but in those who are to pay the expense? In England, the right is said to reside in a metaphor shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling." Dropping the crown, he turned upon the aristocracy and the Church, and tore them. He begged Lafayette's pardon for addressing him as Marquis. Titles are but nicknames. Nobility and no ability are synonymous. "In ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... in the first year the tax produced L210,136. The tax was increased from a guinea to one pound three shillings and sixpence. Pitt's Tory friends gave him loyal support. The Whigs might taunt them by calling them "guinea-pigs," it mattered little, for they were not merely ready to pay the tax for themselves, but to pay patriotic guineas for their servants. A number of persons were exempt ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... nearly one hundred years old, withered and dried up like a mummy, with light blue eyes that gleamed with a lustre like that of insanity. She eked out her existence by selling favourable winds to mariners, for which her fee was sixpence, and hardly a mariner sailed out to sea from Stromness without visiting and paying his offering to Old Bessie Miller. Sir Walter drew the strange, weird character of "Norna of the Fitful Head" in his novel The ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the advantage of the open street of which we freely grant them the freehold. But we make the acquaintance of a tenant and ask some questions. We find that she has two children, that they have but one furnished room, for which they pay seven shillings and sixpence weekly in advance! ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Zeke? Why, jess caze they ain' no money in the kentry tew pay em with. It don' make a mite o' odds haow much propty a feller's got. It don' fetch nothin tew a sale. The credtor buys it in fer nothin, an the feller goes to jail fer the balance. A man as has got a silver sixpence can amos buy a farm. Some folks says they orter be a law makin propty a tender fer debts on a far valiation. I dunno, I don' keer, I hain't no fault tew find with my business, leastways the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... of the settlers declined to pay anything towards the building of a new gaol, and it was not long a matter of doubt which article would be most likely to bear a productive tax; so a duty of one shilling per gallon was imposed upon spirits, sixpence on wine, and threepence upon porter or strong beer, to be applied to the above purpose. Building gaols is, beyond question, a necessary thing, especially in a colony chiefly formed of convicts: and perhaps a tax upon intoxicating liquors is no bad mode of procuring the means of erecting them, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... course, she has not. I can't afford a guinea. You're poor enough; but in proportion to my expenses—a woman, of course, can live on less than half what a man can—I'm a great deal poorer than you; and I never said I gave her sixpence—did I? I have not got it to give, and I don't think she's fool enough to expect it; and, to say the truth, I don't care. I only advise you. There are some cheerful little cottages near the green, in Gylingden, and I venture to think, this is one of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... man and wife respectively. But Betty was as lively as ever, bustling about with every one, and looking out for the chance of groats, which the better off might be free with. And over the kneading-pan next day, she dropped three and sixpence out of her pocket; and Lizzie could not tell for her life how much more might have been ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... not; for if a man kills another with my sword, the sword is forfeited[d] as an accursed thing[e]. And therefore, in all indictments for homicide, the instrument of death and the value are presented and found by the grand jury (as, that the stroke was given with a certain penknife, value sixpence) that the king or his grantee may claim the deodand: for it is no deodand, unless it be presented as such by a jury of twelve men[f]. No deodands are due for accidents happening upon the high sea, that being out of the jurisdiction of the common law: but if ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Theobald,—I have received yours. I am at a loss to conceive its motive, but am very clear as to its effect. You shall not receive a single sixpence from me till you come to your senses. Should you persist in your folly and wickedness, I am happy to remember that I have yet other children whose conduct I can depend upon to be a source of credit and happiness to me.—Your affectionate but ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Overhaul in good time. Dad took the horse out of the dray and tied him to a tree. Dave led Bess about, and we stood and watched the shanty-keeper unpacking gingerbeer. Joe asked Dad for sixpence to buy some, but Dad had n't any small change. We remained in front of the booth through most of the day, and ran after any corks that popped out and handed them in again to the shanty-keeper. He did n't offer ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... beautifully soft and fine, are worth about thirty shillings apiece, and are exported to Hungary, where they are in great favor with the nobles as trimming for pelisses and hussar jackets; the gray wolves' skins are worth from three shillings and sixpence upward, and are principally exported to America and the North of Europe, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... will topple over, and fall flat upon the earth. But this is nothing. Our ragged guide conducts us across a wooden bridge, up a road, hollowed out by nature, through the rocks, till suddenly we reach what resembles the mouth of a mine, across which a door is drawn. The sum of four groschens, or sixpence a head, applies a key to the lock of that door, and we are immediately introduced into the giant's dwelling. For as the term Riesengebirgen signifies "The Giant's Mountains," so these fells are represented ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... already friends, they walked arm-in-arm to the Westminster Bridge Road. Then they went along till they came to a stall where an Italian was selling the required commodity, and having had a taste apiece to see if they liked it, Polly planked down sixpence and had her basin filled with a poisonous-looking mixture of red and ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... Pecunia, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled: for there are Rothschilds and English National Debts; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him,—to the length of sixpence.—Clothes too, which began in foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not become! Increased Security and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... old papers you find that two camels were to be seen in a certain stable, at a shilling a head for adults and sixpence for children. The camels were ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... get a little out of sorts when I was in the streets just now. There were so many things to be sold—such delicious things to eat, such fine things to look at, such delightful things to have—and there was so much calculating and calculating necessary, before I durst lay out a sixpence for the commonest thing; and the basket was so large, and wanted so much in it; and my stock of money was so small, and would go such a little way;—you hate me, ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... compeers. It had not, however, rendered the society of these unconscionable and cold female creatures distasteful to him. Not a bit! He had even sought it and been ready to pay for that society in the correct manner—even to imperturbably beggaring himself of his final sixpence in order to do the honours of the latest cinema. Only, he had a sense of human superiority. It certainly did not occur to him that in the victimized young men there might exist faults which complemented those of the parasitic ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... fancy, and ITS Hesperides Apples, golden and of gilt horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's poor spiritual gift of God (LOAN, not gift), such as it may be, in building the lofty rhyme, the lofty Review-Article, for a discerning public that has sixpence to spare! Times alter greatly.—Will the reader take a glimpse of Conrad von Thuringen's biography, as a sample of the old ways of proceeding? Conrad succeeded Hermann von der Salza as Grand-Master, and his history is memorable ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... up. It was a sixpence—a Jubilee sixpence. It was gilt; it had a hole punched near the ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Sugar was sixpence a pound, equal to six shillings of our money,[287:1] but in Shakespeare's time it must have been very common,[287:2] or it could not so largely have worked its way into the common English language and proverbial expressions; and it must also have been ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... one day," from the London, Paris and Brussels Exhibition, to tell your fortune from your face. And he stands, smiling encouragement, like a clumsy dentist. When the big men, romping and swearing a moment before, hand across their sixpence, and stand before him, they are suddenly serious, dumb, timid, almost blushing as the Professor's quick hand notches the printed card. They are like little children caught playing in a forbidden garden by the owner, stepping from behind ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... halfpence to Geoff to make up his sixpence for the hospital-cot collection at the children's service last Sunday. He had only fourpence halfpenny. I remember it all now. Oh, how stupid I've been, to be sure!' It was an intense relief to have chased successfully ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... Ireland is permitted to rot in field-cocks. The portion on the ground, as well as that on the outside of the cocks, is too often only fit for manure. And the loss of aftermath, and of the subsequent year's crop (if hay or pasture), suffers to the extent of from sixpence to one shilling per acre. If we unite all these sources, the loss sustained annually in this country is something serious to contemplate. On an average, for all Ireland, it is not under 20 per cent., or a fifth of the actual ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... dock; and he was so vain of his own cleverness that he could not refrain from boasting, ten minutes after, of the very trick by which he had deceived you. 'Why, now I have more money than when I came on board,' he said one night, exhibiting a sixpence, 'and yet I stood myself a bottle of beer before I went to bed yesterday. And as for tobacco, I have fifteen sticks of it.' That was fairly successful indeed; yet a man of his superiority, and with a less obtrusive policy, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bommaney, tie him!' gurgled Barter. 'He's been the ruin of me, curse him. I should have been an honest man if it hadn't been for him. It's him that led me into it, and he's had every sixpence of the money. I've been his tool, his miserable tool. Tie him, Mr. Bommaney, before he comes round again. I'll hold him ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... recalls that he has said "by Jove," and being near the collection-box, he quietly pulls sixpence out of his pocket and ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... many reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely people rather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which they submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England, one grudges five minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; in America one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (with the executioner's tip)[G] from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge would be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endless processes to which one is subjected; ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... two elder brothers left the Oratory, which I may say was a school where the boys were allowed very considerable liberty, my father must have thought, no doubt, when he remembered the twenty-two and sixpence for birches, that it would be wise to send me somewhere where the rules of the college were, in his opinion, somewhat stricter. So off I was sent, early in 1870, to dear old Beaumont College, the Jesuit school, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... heart sank a little. He had read a certain amount of poetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings and sixpence for the last line of a limerick in a competition in a weekly paper, but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not his long suit. Still there was a library on board ship and no doubt it would be possible to borrow ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... requires very little art. With sensible persons, however, it needs to be done very delicately, and more by suggestion than actual words. A good many like it wrapped up in the form of an insult, as—"Oh, you are a perfect fool, you are. You would give your last sixpence to the first hungry-looking beggar you met;" while others will swallow it only when administered through the medium of a third person, so that if C wishes to get at an A of this sort, he must confide ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... services, quite equally with teachers and railwaymen, will be permanently employed. They will be no more taken on and turned off by the day or week than we should take on or turn off an extra policeman, or depend for our defence upon soldiers casually engaged upon the battlefield at sixpence an hour. And if by adopting some ingenious device we dispense suddenly with the labour of hundreds of men, the Socialist State will send them, not into the casual wards and colonies as our State does, to become a social burthen there, but into the technical schools ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... late quiet road beneath my window was alive with the tread of feet and clack of tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely a "show house!" the tower and its contents being shown to strangers at sixpence a head. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of these extravagant flights of fancy, he perceived an alehouse. "Come," said he, on entering it, "I will indulge myself with spending one sixpence of this money." He hesitated, however, some few moments, about calling for punch, which was his favourite liquor, as his conscience loudly told him that his time for enjoyment ought to be at some distance, and not till he had paid his friend the money he had borrowed; that it would ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... seem almost amphibious in their habits, and the yacht is surrounded all day by boats full of small boys, who will dive to any depth for sixpence, a dozen of them spluttering and fighting for the coin in the water at the same time. They will go down on one side of the yacht too, and bob up on the other, almost before you have time to run across the deck to witness ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... was trimmed with real lace. She twists her hair in Hinde's wavers every night, and keeps a pot of complexion cream on her dressing-table. She always uses stephanotis scent that she gets from one special place in London, and it costs four and sixpence a bottle. She hates bacon for breakfast, and she has seventeen relations at the front. She's thin and brown, and her nose wiggles like a rabbit's ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... did—once,' murmured Chippy; it seemed a hundred years since he was pleasantly engaged in the task of earning the substantial sum of four-and-sixpence a week. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... her house, and she found a little crooked sixpence. "What," said she, "shall I do with this little sixpence? I will go to market, and buy ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... remained for some time silent, till, fearing that Simpson would realize his threat, he used the most abject submission, to hinder him from betraying his wicked schemes to his father; nor would the artful servant pacify his apprehensions, till he had succeeded in frightening him out of every sixpence of pocket-money ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... hen. But no such fool was the Arab who lost his camel, and, after a long and fruitless search, anathematised the errant quadruped and her father and her mother, and swore by the Prophet that, should he find her, he would sell her for a dirham (sixpence). At length his search was successful, and he at once regretted his oath; but such an oath must not be violated, so he tied a cat round the camel's neck, and went about proclaiming: "I will sell this ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of these clumsy vehicles, but the trip, especially to the younger men, was not without its enjoyments. They carried their provisions in a large, round, wooden box over which closed a round, wooden cover. They also carried provender for their teams and the only necessary cash expense was a sixpence each night for lodging. The more sumptuous and less economical might, if they chose, diminish their exchequer to the amount of an extra sixpence by indulging in a glass of "flip." Nearly every farm-house of any pretension on the high road to Albany was a hotel, so-called, if not in ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... he scornfully, "if you don't know the value of sixpence, you'll never be worth fivepence three farthings. How do think got rich, hay?—by wearing fine coats, and frizzling my pate? No, no; Master Harrel for that! ask him if he'll cast an account with me!—never knew a man worth a penny with such a ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... have been. Well, we'll know soon enough, as they said they would call again. But to change the subject, I happened to see a basket of hothouse strawberries at a really ridiculous price; it really is absurd! Just imagine, hothouse strawberries at one and sixpence a basket! And at this ...
— Married • August Strindberg |
