"Sixpenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and conquest of twopence must be the most eager and fascinating of occupations. We might all engage in that business if we would. Do not whist-players, for example, toil, and think, and lose their temper over sixpenny points? They bring study, natural genius, long forethought, memory, and careful historical experience to bear upon their favorite labor. Don't tell me that it is the sixpenny points, and five shillings the rub, which keeps them for hours over ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... entered. She was not reading, as usual, but bent over a sketch-book; on the table was an open colour-box of un-English appearance, and a box of that slate-coloured liquid so familiar alike to the greatest artist in watercolours and to the humblest child with a sixpenny paintbox. ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... doctor as if his mistakes were necessarily malicious or corrupt malpractices (an inevitable deduction from the postulate that the doctor, being omniscient, cannot make mistakes) is as unjust as to blame the nearest apothecary for not being prepared to supply you with sixpenny-worth of the elixir of life, or the nearest motor garage for not having perpetual motion on sale in gallon tins. But if apothecaries and motor car makers habitually advertized elixir of life and perpetual motion, and succeeded in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... experience. Now, Tom, ride home very carefully and slowly, if you feel quite equal to it. The Lord has watched over you, and He will continue, as He does with brave folk that do their duty. Half a crown you shall have, all for yourself, and the sixpenny boat that you longed for in the shops. Keep out of the way of the smugglers, Tom; don't let them even clap eyes on you. Kiss me, my son; I am ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... you imagine they will pay the least attention to a noise like a sixpenny toy? Lot them see you insist upon ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... Myra," said Mrs. Dalmain, "I don't waste sympathy on false sentiment. And if Deryck had known you were already engaged to another man, instead of devoting to you four hours of his valuable time, he could have sent a sixpenny wire: 'Telegram a forgery. ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... till he was three or four and fifty, we have little information respecting him; little, we mean, compared with the full and accurate information which we possess respecting his proceedings and habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at length from cock-lofts and sixpenny ordinaries into the society of the polished and the opulent. His fame was established. A pension sufficient for his wants had been conferred on him: and he came forth to astonish a generation with which he had almost as little in common as with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... another is observing, for his information and further guidance, the process of manufacture of lead pencils as illustrated by samples in a glass-case. Others are being more jovial still; having exhausted the pictures and advertisements of the sixpenny Society papers, they are now actually reading the letter-press. The machine-gun officer, as I gather from his occasional remarks, is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... Half-pint, and Sixpenny Bottles, by John Parsons, Manufacturer of Printing and Writing Inks, 35 Orange street, Gravel lane, Southwark; and ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... untrimmed, some in process of trimming, lying about the room, on the different articles of furniture. There was a tiny dog in a basket, which barked shrilly and feebly as Gertrude approached the fire, and there were various cheap illustrated papers and a couple of sixpenny novels to be seen emerging from the litter here and there. For the rest, the furniture was of a squalid lodging-house type. On the chimney-piece however was a bunch of daffodils, the only fresh and ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... some of her bread left, according to her first account, till the Wednesday; according to the last, till the Friday before she made her escape; and that she should save some of her miraculous pitcher till the last day? Was the twenty-fourth part of a sixpenny loaf a day sufficient to satisfy her hunger? If not, why should she defer the immediate gratification of her appetite in order to make provision for a precarious, uncertain futurity? Shall we suppose some revelation from above in favour of one of the faithful? Perhaps ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... Launcelot Greaves," was not published till 1761, after it had appeared in numbers, in The British Magazine. This was a sixpenny serial, published by Newbery. The years between 1753 and 1760 had been occupied by Smollett in quarrelling, getting imprisoned for libel, editing the Critical Review, writing his "History of England," translating (or adapting old translations of) "Don ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Jewess accept the honourable offer of a cashiered lieutenant of the Bengal Native Infantry; or, if such a person does not come forward, the dishonourable offer of a cornet of a regiment of crack hussars. It makes poor Jews, male and female, forsake the synagogue for the sixpenny theatre or penny hop; the Jew to take up with an Irish female of loose character, and the Jewess with a musician of the Guards, or the Tipperary servant of Captain Mulligan. With respect to the gypsies, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... look at the great round lump of silver through the wrong end of the spy-glass till it got small enough for Edward to lift it. And then, unfortunately, Gustus looked a little too long, and the shilling, having gone back to its own size, went a little further—and it went to sixpenny size, ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... instance of this in the morning, when I was going ashore. A man in a canoe offered me a small pig for a six-inch spike, and another man being employed to convey it, I gave him the spike, which he kept for himself, and instead of it, gave to the man who owned the pig a sixpenny nail. Words of course arose, and I waited to see how it would end; but as the man who had possession of the spike seemed resolved to keep it, I left them before it was decided. In the evening we returned on board with what refreshments we ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... sinfulness of tampering with a girl's affections by what in slang is called 'spooning,' it was purely absurd to think of it. You might as well say that playing sixpenny whist made a man a gambler. And then, as to the spooning, it was partie egale, the lady was no worse off than the gentleman. If there were by any hazard—and this he was disposed to doubt—'affections' at stake, the man 'stood to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... its neighbours for pinching and scraping, and yet is haunted by the idea of sudden riches falling into its lap from the skies. Certainly Chook had given Fortune no excuse for neglecting him. He was always in a shilling sweep, a sixpenny raffle, a hundred to one double on the Cup. He marked pak-a-pu tickets, took the kip at two-up, and staked his last shilling more readily than the first. It was always the last shilling that was going to turn the scale and make his fortune. Well, he would try his luck again unknown to Pinkey, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... things. So with them he deals by means of his equivalent institutions, slavery, the lash, and death. You have just as much right, my logical friend, to call the West Coast Chief hard names for his habit of using brass bars, heads of tobacco, and so on, in place of sixpenny pieces, as you have to abuse him for clubbing an inveterate thief. It's deplorably low of him, I own, but by what alternative plan of government his can be replaced I do not quite see, under existing conditions. In religious affairs, the affairs ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... doctor, for he wanted me to be left behind When Mamma went to the sea for her health; but I begged and begged till she promised I should go, for Mamma is always kind. And she bought me a new wooden spade and a basket, and a red and green ship with three masts, and a one-and-sixpenny telescope to look at the sea; But when I got on to the sands, I thought I'd rather be on the esplanade, for there was a little girl there who was looking at me, Dressed in a navy-blue suit and a sailor hat, with fair hair tied with ribbons; so I told Mamma, And she got me a suit, ready-made (but ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the citizens. This is the case all through America. In every Public Institution, the right of the people to attend, and to have an interest in the proceedings, is most fully and distinctly recognised. There are no grim door-keepers to dole out their tardy civility by the sixpenny-worth; nor is there, I sincerely believe, any insolence of office of any kind. Nothing national is exhibited for money; and no public officer is a showman. We have begun of late years to imitate this good example. I hope we shall continue to do so; and that in the fulness of time, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... cheerful careless humor and brisk activity of Sterling, who took the matter all on the sunny side, as he was wont in such cases. We came home together in manifold talk: he accepted with the due smile my last contribution to his sea-equipment, a sixpenny box of German lucifers purchased on the sudden in St. James's Street, fit to be offered with laughter or with tears or with both; he was to leave for Portsmouth almost immediately, and there go on board. Our next news was of his safe arrival ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... by way of illustration. Before the Union "98 Peers, and a proportionate number of wealthy Commoners" lived in Dublin. The number of resident Peers in 1825 was twelve. At present, as I learn from those who read the sixpenny illustrateds, there is one. But when they abandoned Ireland they did not leave their rents behind. And it was a time of rising rents; according to Toynbee they at least doubled between 1790 and 1833. Precise figures are not easily arrived at, but Mr D'Alton in his "History ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... great and steady sale of their Sixpenny Novels, Messrs. Methuen have determined to issue a new series of fiction at a low price under the title of 'METHUEN'S SHILLING NOVELS.' These books are well printed and well bound in cloth, and the excellence ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... I have never at any time since relinquished. I smoked several cigarettes that evening, with steadily increasing satisfaction. And, on the following day, acting on the advice of my room-mate, Mr. Smith, I bought a shilling briar pipe and a sixpenny plug of black tobacco as a week's allowance. From that point my current outgoings were increased by just sixpence per week, no less, and for a considerable ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the Premier's arrival. The knot had to be cut instead of being unravelled. I put aside the elaborate and irreproachable volumes in which Mathers and his staff had been entering the tickets at the time when he was seized with illness, and, with the help of a sixpenny memorandum book and half a dozen smart bank clerks, succeeded in allotting and posting the whole of the thirty thousand tickets between ten o'clock on Wednesday night and eight o'clock on Thursday morning. I never worked harder in my life, but when my work was done, and the tickets had all passed ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... was New York born, as had been his knickerbocker ancestors before him clear back to the time when New York was not New York but New Amsterdam. To complete his costume, a floppy felt hat, distinctly Rembrandtish in effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny, white cotton undershirt covered his torso; and from a belt about his middle dangled a tobacco pouch, a sheath-knife, filled clips of cartridges, and a huge automatic pistol ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... some money,' said Owen, thoughtfully. 'But I seem to be one of those chaps who can't. Nothing I try comes off. I've never drawn anything except a blank in a sweep. I spent about two pounds on sixpenny postal orders when the Limerick craze was on, and didn't win a thing. Once when I was on tour I worked myself to a shadow, dramatizing a novel. Nothing came of ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... have the whole four series issued piecemeal in weekly or monthly parts, so as to meet (as Cassell's manager suggested) a certain demand from the middle and artisan class; seeing that the aristocracy and gentry had bought the whole volume so freely, but sixpenny parts in a wider field might bring on a new sale. I did not then know that Cassell's had numerous serials already on hand, and that many of them were unremunerative; and so I was a little surprised and vexed to find that my book was after all to appear as a whole and not in numbers, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... aweary of the sun, and to find the fair apple of life dust and ashes at the core — just because, perhaps, I can't afford Melampus Brown's last volume of poems in large paper, but must perforce condescend upon the two-and-sixpenny edition for the million — then I bring myself to a right temper by recalling to memory a sight which now and again in old days would touch the heart of me to a happier pulsation. In the long, dark winter evenings, ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... been utterly confused and concealed, but it has never been altered. Those who talk about anarchism and its dangers go everywhere and anywhere to get their information, except to us, except to the fountain head. They learn about anarchists from sixpenny novels; they learn about anarchists from tradesmen's newspapers; they learn about anarchists from Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday and the Sporting Times. They never learn about anarchists from anarchists. We have no chance of denying the mountainous slanders which are heaped upon our heads ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... What those treasures are they keep so secret that the court is maddened. In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots, crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses stuffed with Bank of England notes. It possesses itself of the sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr. Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr. Elwes, of Suffolk, and transfers all the facts from those authentic narratives to Mr. Krook. Twice when the dustman ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... hit straight from the shoulder; and following out this fundamental principle, he succeeded in landing his opponent a good hard drive between the eyes, which made him see more stars than are to be witnessed at the explosion of a sixpenny rocket. Grundy drew back, and after blinking and rubbing his nose for a moment, came on again, this time with greater caution. Jack, on the other hand, emboldened by his previous success, made an unwise attempt to rush the fighting, and was rewarded with a sounding smack ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Cockloft Hall. We are reminded of the change of manners by a letter of Mr. Paulding, one of his comrades, written twenty years after, who recalls to mind the keeper of a porter house, "who whilom wore a long coat, in the pockets whereof he jingled two bushels of sixpenny pieces, and whose daughter played the piano to the accompaniment of broiled oysters." There was some affectation of roystering in all this; but it was a time of social good-fellowship, and easy ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the boots of people who think their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and he walks as if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... women can—articles in themselves of slight value, so as to obscure the meagreness of the stock-in-trade; till she saw a figure pausing without the window apparently absorbed in the contemplation of the sixpenny books, packets of paper, and prints hung on a string. It was Captain Shadrach Jolliffe, peering in to ascertain if Emily were there alone. Moved by an impulse of reluctance to meet him in a spot which breathed ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... of eyes. There were dogs of all nationalities, all breeds, all twisted enormities of human invention. There were monstrous dogs of China and Japan; Aztec dogs; dogs in Sevres and Dresden and Chelsea; sixpenny dogs from Austria and Switzerland; everything in the way of a little dog that man had made. He stood in front of it with almost a doggish snarl on his lips. He had spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds over these futile ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... "It must be quite out of fashion, for I scarcely know half a dozen people who practice it." However, a second shop appeared to think differently, for it had Thomas a Kempis in every conceivable size, shape, and binding. Erica bought a little sixpenny copy and went back to the beach, where she made her father laugh over ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... which it is impossible to speak too highly. Brace's Kingdom of God, Stalker's Christology of Jesus, Harnack's What is Christianity? Horton's Teaching of Jesus, Watson's Mind of the Master, Selby's Ministry of the Lord Jesus, and Robertson's Our Lord's Teaching (a truly marvellous sixpenny worth), have all been laid under contribution, not the less freely because I have been compelled to dissent from some of their conclusions. Like many another busy minister, I am a daily debtor to Dr. Hastings and his great Dictionary of the Bible. And, ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... education was shared between his two guardians, or rather his academic education; the real education came either from what he read for himself in his grandfather's ancient library of from what he learnt of Cass Dale, who was much more than merely informative in the manner of a sixpenny encyclopaedia. The Vicar, who made himself responsible for the Latin and later on for the Greek, began with Horace, his own favourite author, from the rapid translation aloud of whose Odes and Epodes one after another he derived great pleasure, though it is doubtful if his grandson would have ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the head of that blue sheet of water in the village of Sackville. It is amusing to see the gravity and importance of the conductor, in uniform frock-coat and with crown and V. R. buttons, as he paces up and down the platform before starting; and the quiet dignity of the sixpenny ticket-office; and the busy air of the freight-master, checking off boxes and bundles for the distant terminus—so distant that it can barely be distinguished by the naked eye. But it was a pleasant ride, that by the Basin! Not less pleasant ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... hundred lines. Every reader must regret that this philosophical poem is but a fragment. It is in the style and measure of Dryden, of whom Gray was an ardent admirer and close student. His Elegy written in a Country Churchyard was completed and published in 1751. In the form of a sixpenny brochure it circulated rapidly, four editions being exhausted the first year. This popularity surprised the poet. He said sarcastically that it was owing entirely to the subject, and that the public would ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... an offending individual, but he had always been equally ready to shake hands when all was over, and in some cases, when having temporarily closed a companion's eyes in the heat of an argument, he had been known to lead him to the counter of "th' Public," and bestow nectar upon him in the form of "sixpenny." But of Lowrie, even the fighting community, which was the community predominating in Riggan, could not speak so well. He was "ill-farrant," and revengeful,—ready to fight, but not ready to forgive. He had been known to bear a grudge, and remember it, when it had been ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... who make "returns," Much at their own sweet will, Don't gauge the poor clerk's scanty purse, The small shopkeeper's till, How hard 'tis to make both ends meet, When hard times tightly nip; Or how small incomes sorely feel The annual sixpenny dip. So please ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... that the river would suit him to a "T." I don't know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... one of those romantic gentlemen that one reads of in sixpenny magazines, with a Kodak in his tie-pin, a sketch-book in the lining of his coat, and a selection of disguises in his hand luggage. Little disposed for merriment as I was, I could ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... changed. His arm moved furtively beneath the table. What could he be doing? Horrible moment of uncertainty. Still the arm worked, as if tugging at something. I could stand it no longer. Seizing the soda-water bottle, I stooped to cast the rays of the sixpenny dip beneath the table. As I did so, a boot-heel flashed in the air, the Count's arm descended with a terrific detonation, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... one in the Club, 'I see you've written another book, old man. You do turn 'em out.' A letter from a Press Agency who has never heard of one's name before, 'A little sheaf of thin miserable cuttings.' ... The Sixpenny Lot ... Ouf! And still I go on and shall go on until I die. Perhaps after all I'm more justified than any of them. I'm stripped of all reasons save the pleasure, the thrill, the torment, the hopes, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... correcting exercises on the dining-table in a lodging-house parlour, and cooking sausages in a chafing-dish for our evening meal. I 'dig' with the English mistress, and do most of our cooking myself, as the landlady's tastes and ours don't agree. I'm getting to be quite an expert at manufacturing sixpenny dainties." ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... anything remotely resembling a woman; and if you begin to talk like that, I'll hire a red-brick studio with white paint trimmings, and begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play among three-and-sixpenny pot- palms, and I'll mount all my pics in aniline-dye plush plasters, and I'll invite every woman who maunders over what her guide-books tell her is Art, and you shall receive 'em, Torp,—in a snuff-brown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... A common law obey, And rarity and worth Pass, arm in arm, away; And even so, to-day, The printer and the bard, In pressless Davos, pray Their sixpenny reward. ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waiter, who had been for so many years in her father's service. At that moment Jean—who was employed in the daytime at the Maison Collette, the well-known milliners in Conduit Street—happened to be in the cash-desk of her father's little establishment where one-and-sixpenny four-course luncheons and ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... terrible havock amongst his darling idols. How delicately he snubs Master Speight for not calling on him at Clerkenwell Green (How would Speight have travelled the distance in 1598? It was a long uphill walk for an antiquarian, and the fields by no means safe from long-staff sixpenny strikers); and how modestly he hints that he would have derived no "disparagement" from so doing; showing all the devotion to little matters of etiquette of an amiable but irritable old gentleman of our ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... the Stones of Venice, which Ruskin always considered the most important in the book, was first printed separately in 1854 as a sixpenny pamphlet. Mr. Morris paid more than one tribute to it in Hopes and Fears for Art. Of him Ruskin said in ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... writing a great deal, and Mr. Bernard Partridge was illustrating for me. Shortly afterwards I retired from the staff of Punch. I was then approached by the proprietors of an influential daily and weekly paper to edit a sixpenny high-class weekly, and they offered to put down L50,000 at once. This I would have willingly accepted, but it so happened that just at that time Mr. Astor reconstructed the Pall Mall Budget, regardless of expense—an extravagance with which ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Books, he had to wade through two or three Folios: an History of England, British Traveller, and a Geography. But he always read them as a task, or to oblige us who bought them. And as they came in sixpenny numbers weekly, he had about as many hours to read as ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... heartily by the hand, and told him he had sufficient room in his house to entertain him and his friends. Adams begged he might give him no such trouble; that they could be very well accommodated in the house where they were; forgetting they had not a sixpenny piece among them. The gentleman would not be denied; and, informing himself how far they were travelling, he said it was too long a journey to take on foot, and begged that they would favour him by suffering him to lend them a ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... that, when he came in, he had his arms full of good things—among which were a sixpenny cottage-loaf, half a pound of butter, two ounces of coffee, a quarter of a pound of sugar, and half-a dozen eggs. He now busied himself in putting those things in order, and quietly suffered the promising boy to take his will down to the road to ruin. The loaf he cut down ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... gathered up the crockery, marched off in disgrace, and came back with a molasses-hogshead, or a wash-tub, or some such overgrown mastodon, to turn his sixpenny-worth of ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... about to publish a new work in numbers,—a serial, as the newspapers call it. Thomas Carlyle is publishing (a sixpenny matter) in favor of the slave-trade. Novelists of all shades are plying their trades. Husbands are killing their wives in every day's newspaper. Burglars are peaching against each other; there is no longer honor among thieves. I am starting for Leicester on a week's expedition amidst the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... against Porto Bello in 1739, "with six Ships only." That Fielding was the author of the latter is sufficiently proved by his order to Mr. Nourse (printed in Roscoe's edition), to deliver fifty copies to Mr. Chappel. Another sixpenny pamphlet, entitled The Opposition, a Vision, issued in December of the same year, is enumerated by him, in the Preface to the Miscellanies, among the few works he had published "since the End of June ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... through scenes in which even Mr. Duffield would hesitate to place a bishop, is to rise to new ideas. But, alas! there was no Patterson about the Toll House. Only, alongside of "From Palace to Hovel," a sixpenny "Ouida" figured. So literature, you see, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meal at L8 per bag and flour at L5 per hundred pounds, the unfortunate man tried to make a small profit on the tiny sixpenny loaves. There was no question of engaging hired help, and he was obliged to work almost day and night in order to make the business pay. Sometimes he had neither sleep nor rest for thirty hours at a stretch except while partaking of his frugal fare. When flour became even more scarce he ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... their rights," he said, "but a poor lad like me can't spend his hard-earned wage without heving to pay this and that sixpenny claim—" ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... themselves in feelings of self-congratulation. It is not often true. A well-known millionaire told me that the happiest moment in his life was that when he ran as a little boy bareheaded through the rain into his mother's cottage carrying to her in a tight-clenched fist his first week's wage—a sixpenny bit. Mr. Lloyd George told me that he never looks back, never allows himself to dream of his romantic life. 'I haven't time,' he said; 'the present is too obsessing, the fight is too hard and insistent.' Mr. Chamberlain in the early days of Tariff Reform, told me much the same thing. Perhaps ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... three-quarters of an hour, during which the cook wept bitterly and was very unwell, reached the station. Contrary to the Vidame's wish, Mrs. Brown-Smith, in an ulster and a veil, insisted on perambulating the platform, buying the whole of Mr. Hall Caine's works as far as they exist in sixpenny editions. Bells rang, porters stationed themselves in a line, like fielders, a train arrived, the 9.17 from Liverpool, twenty minutes late. A short stout gentleman emerged from a smoking carriage, Mrs. Brown-Smith, starting from the Vidame's side, raised her ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... three rows of embroidered lozenge-shaped "tabs" of satin. The child wore a crown on her head, the basis of which was black velvet. At the top was an aigrette of diamonds of the purest water, the centre one as large as a sixpenny-piece. Solitaires flashing blue flames blazed all over the cap, and the front was ornamented with a dragon in fine filigree work in red Malay gold set with diamonds. I fear to be thought guilty of exaggeration when I write that this ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... uncultivated, mind. I do not believe in any exception; their votaries may have learning, but they have not digested it, they are not thoughtful, they are "young (or old) barbarians," for it is the unfailing mark of a cultivated mind, to use the right word in the right place, and never "to use a sixpenny word when a threepenny one ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... fulfilling the end for which he had been made. But in spite of these arguments, in spite of their acceptance by all who were about him, he had the grace to perceive the utter falsity and absurdity of the whole position. He was fortunate in his entire ignorance of sixpenny 'science,' but if the whole library had been projected into his brain it would not have moved him to 'deny in the darkness that which he had known in the light.' Darnell knew by experience that man is made ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... the parties looked at him, and at each other, with astonishment, until the first who had appeared addressed the latter with, "I say, Paul, did you ever see such a thing before? Damn it, why he's like a sixpenny fife,—more noise ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... produced on stout stems nearly a foot high, a section of which will cut the size of a sixpenny piece; the rose-coloured flowers are perfectly developed before they push through the many-times over-lapped foliage; they are neatly arranged, the branching stems sometimes giving the panicle of blossom the form and also the size of a moderate ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... our few belongings were packed. Egeria had come to the Inn to sleep, and stole into my room to warm her toes before the blaze in my grate, for I was chilly and had ordered a sixpenny fire. When I say that she came in to warm her toes, I am asking you to accept her statement, not mine; it is my opinion that she came in for no other purpose than to tell me something that was in her mind and heart pleading ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... have bought one, had he not, by one of his lucky mental illuminations, recollected that it was within his power to procure an order to taste wine at the Docks, where you may get as much wine as you like out of big sixpenny glasses, and try cask after cask, walking down gas-lit paths between the huge bellies of wine which groan to be tapped and tried, that men may know them. The idea of paying two shillings and sixpence for one miserable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not the Colonel. "Can this be he! This gibbering wreck!" He hides cigars in a hollow tree, and smokes on the sly. He plays truant. Lures other old gentlemen away from their lessons to join him. They are discovered in the woods, in a cave, playing whist for sixpenny points. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... all wood-ashes, soap-suds, and all articles having fertilizing qualities. A compost heap is like a sixpenny savings bank. Small and frequent additions soon make a large aggregate. The fruit-grower and his land usually grow rich together, and ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Bensington a long article about himself from a sixpenny weekly, entitled "A New Terror," and offered to supply one hundred such disturbances for a guinea, and two extremely charming young ladies, totally unknown to him, called, and, to the speechless indignation of Cousin ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... for an innkeeper, agreed with him that we should give a performance that night in a cart-shed very proper to our purpose, giving him half of our taking in payment of our entertainment. This did Jack, thinking from our late ill-luck we should get at the most a dozen people in the sixpenny benches, and a score standing at twopence a head. But it turned out, as the cunning landlord had foreseen, that our hanger was packed close to the very door, in consequence of great numbers coming to the town ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Campbell anecdotes was stimulated by the piquant sauce of scandal, for beside the several issues of "A Spy upon the Conjurer" a second and smaller volume of the same sort was published on 10 May, 1725. This sixpenny pamphlet of forty pages, entitled "The Dumb Projector: Being a Surprizing Account of a Trip to Holland made by Mr. Duncan Campbell. With the Manner of his Reception and Behaviour there. As also the various and diverting Occurrences that happened on his ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... assumed by the bursar, I have only to say that the terrors of the "Board" were never fulminated against me, harmless and innocent as I should have esteemed them. The threat of giving publicity to the entire proceedings by the papers, and the dread of figuring in a sixpenny caricature in M'Cleary's window, were too much for the worthy doctor, and he took the wiser course under the circumstances, and held his peace about the matter. I, too, have done so for many a year, and only now recall ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... books I shall, first of all, heartily recommend the series of cheap sixpenny reprints now published by the Rationalist Press Association, Johnson's Court, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Down ram sales in the palmy days of farming were organized upon the same scale of liberality, and while the sale was proceeding steam was kept up by handing round boxes of sixpenny cigars, and brandy and water in buckets. It is, of course, good policy to keep a company of buyers in good humour, but I think it has long since been recognized that hospitality was carried a little too far in those times of prosperity, and, in these degenerate if more business-like days, extravagance ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... never heard who invented it—that an author is finally judged by his best work. This would be comforting to authors if true: but is it true? A day or two ago I picked up on a railway bookstall a copy of Messrs. Chatto & Windus's new sixpenny edition of The Cloister and the Hearth, and a capital edition it is. I think I must have worn out more copies of this book than of any other; but somebody robbed me of the pretty "Elzevir edition" as soon as it came out, and so I have only just read Mr. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... giving each other the funniest slaps on the face that can possibly be imagined, without evincing the smallest tokens of fatigue. The strange noises, the confusion, the shouting and roaring, amid which all this is done, too, would put to shame the most turbulent sixpenny gallery that ever ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... brought back word that they would be happy to see him in the first floor as soon as convenient; that Mrs Kenwigs had, upon the instant, sent out to secure a second-hand French grammar and dialogues, which had long been fluttering in the sixpenny box at the bookstall round the corner; and that the family, highly excited at the prospect of this addition to their gentility, wished the initiatory lesson to come ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... couple of minutes' wait, the boy rose and went to the window in the corridor to see what was happening; and I took this opportunity to glance across at the papers scattered on the vacant seat. They included three or four sixpenny and threepenny magazines; a large illustrated paper (Black and White, I think); half a dozen penny weeklies—Tit-bits, Answers, Pearson's Weekly, Cassell's Saturday Journal; I forget what others: halfpenny papers in a ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stale straw. They drove with both windows closed so that the Vicar should not catch cold. The sexton was waiting at the porch to take the communion plate, and while the Vicar went to the vestry Mrs. Carey and Philip settled themselves in the vicarage pew. Mrs. Carey placed in front of her the sixpenny bit she was accustomed to put in the plate, and gave Philip threepence for the same purpose. The church filled up gradually and the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... consultation, good and fairly satisfactory, but guarded on every side, petted, pampered. How much would it cost to bring into his own boy's handsome face the glow of surprised delight which had overspread the pale features of this poor lad at the gift of the four-and-sixpenny book. ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... which still clings about religion may be found in two books: Cotter Monson's 'Service of Man,' which was published as long ago as 1887, and has since been re-issued by the Rationalist Press Association in its well-known sixpenny series, and J. Allanson Picton's 'Man and the Bible.' Similarly, those who wish to acquire a sane view of the relations between man and God would do well to read Winwood ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... children sat up that night watching by the sick, and waiting for the father to return, who lay so cold and still upon the sodden timber of that dismal pier. They had eaten nothing all day—at least Mary had not—and now they cut the sixpenny loaf in slices and partook of it, leaving a small covered dish, which had been prepared for Chester, untouched. His supper was sacred to those little girls. Hungry and worn-out as they were, neither of them even once glanced at it longingly. They were ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... continually in motion with one incessant wriggle. The boy was recompensed with twopence, which he acknowledged by a tug at his greasy hair with his dirty fingers; and then a visit was paid to the shop, where Harry bought a sixpenny ball of twine, and three sheets of white and blue tea paper for some particular purpose, which Philip seemed to be alive to, but which they would not reveal to their cousin until ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... the wire for wire nails. The old nomenclature for cut nails also survives, in which certain numbers are prefixed to "penny." For example, a threepenny nail is 1-1/4" long, a fourpenny nail is 1-1/2" long, a fivepenny nail is 1-3/4" long, a sixpenny nail is 2" long. In other words, from threepenny to tenpenny 1/4" is added for each penny, but a twelvepenny nail is 3-1/4" long, a sixteenpenny nail is 3-1/2" long, a twentypenny nail is 4" long. This is explained as meaning that "tenpenny" ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... Chancellor and the ceremony came to an end. Everybody supposed that Disraeli's career had come to an end also, and I myself was one of the mistaken prophets. I was writing at the time a weekly set of verses for Mayfair, a sixpenny Society journal long since defunct, and in the next issue of that journal I took Mr Disraeli's formal installation for my theme. I remember two verses which may perhaps be allowed to serve as an expression of the almost universal opinion of the time, an opinion ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... slowly churned its oddments. Every Thursday afternoon James sorted out tangles of bits and bobs, antique garments and occasional finds. With these he trimmed his window, so that it looked like a historical museum, rather soiled and scrappy. Indoors he made baskets of assortments: threepenny, sixpenny, ninepenny and shilling baskets, rather like a bran pie in which everything was a plum. And then, on Friday evening, thin and alert he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers, so ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... a good bargain for you," she added as she went on; "that spoiled little master has his own way, I think; it would be well for you, and your grandmother too, if you could sell sixpenny ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... the scheme must not be such as to produce injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit. Mere charity for instance, while relieving the pinch of hunger, demoralises the recipient. It is no use conferring sixpenny worth of benefit on a man, if at the same time we do him a ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... half to have dried up. Some melancholy four-wheelers and hansoms had made bold to steal out, and were finding customers. Little boys were playing soldiers in the middle of Pall Mall, no longer a maelstrom. There was no din of traffic to drown the frog-like music of their sixpenny drums and penny trumpets. Looking into the doorways of the biggest shops one saw nobody but the attendants, waiting to serve customers who were not there and would not come. Outside the little shops the proprietors were frankly standing, to wonder sadly ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to my bow, and press our departure as hotly as possible, I sent first Frij off with Nasib to the queen, conveying, as a parting present, a block-tin brush-box, a watch without a key, two sixpenny pocket-handkerchiefs, and a white towel, with an intimation that we were going, as the king had expressed his desire of sending us to Gani. Her majesty accepted the present, finding fault with the watch for ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... conjecture. For Mr. Jones, who had the indeterminate baldheadedness of the bank cashier and might have been anything from thirty-five to sixty, did not purchase a volume of essays or a political autobiography, but selected a flaming one-and-sixpenny narrative of spy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... not appear interesting, but Mary was interested, and wondered where they were going. When they took out fashion-papers and sixpenny novels, however, she felt that they were no longer worth attention. How could they read, when they were saying goodbye to England, and when each minute the windows framed charming pictures of skimming Kentish landscape? The strangely shaped oast-houses ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... their ward, and Sir W. Pen and his lady, and Mrs. Lowther, who is grown, either through pride or want of manners, a fool, having not a word to say almost all dinner; and, as a further mark of a beggarly, proud fool, hath a bracelet of diamonds and rubies about her wrist, and a sixpenny necklace about her neck, and not one good rag of clothes upon her back; and Sir John Chichly in their company, and Mrs. Turner. Here I had an extraordinary good and handsome dinner for them, better than any of them deserve or understand, saving Sir John Chichly and Mrs. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Menfolk at Womankind to gibe, And swear they do not care for games without some lure or bribe, But e'en in JAMES PAYN's armour there seems some weakish joints; He does not care for "glorious Whist" unless for "sixpenny points!" Whist! Whist! Whist! It charms the Bogey, Man: Whist! Whist! Whist! He'll play it when he can. But "pointless Whist," as PAYN admits, is not at all his plan; You must have "money on" to please ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... people often enjoy themselves immensely when they meet dull people only. The frost comes when the host unwisely mixes in one or two guests of another sort—people who give themselves airs of finding more pleasure in reading Stevenson than the sixpenny magazines, and who don't know where Hurlingham is. Then the sheep begin to segregate themselves from the goats, and the feast ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... occasion Bayard Taylor went to a chop-house where he could get a wretched bed for a shilling. The next morning he took a sixpenny breakfast, and started out to look for work. By good fortune he met Putnam, the American publisher, who lent him a sovereign (five dollars) and gave him work that would enable him to earn his living until he could get money from ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... that she had read and believed of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament, and the vulgarity of costliness, recurred to her as a hypocritical paraphrase of the "sour grapes" of the fox in the fable. She pictured to herself with a shudder the effect of a sixpenny Chinese umbrella in that fireplace, a cretonne valance to that bed, or chintz curtains to those windows. There was in the room a series of mirrors consisting of a great glass in which she could see herself at full length, another framed in the carved oaken dressing-table, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... for it. What we call Celts and Teutons are simply portions of the one race, humanity, camouflaged up upon their different patterns. So far as flood and ultimate physical heredity are concerned, I doubt there is sixpenny-worth of difference between any two of the lot. "Oi mesilf," said Mr. Dooley, speaking as a good American citizen, "am the thruest and purest Anglo-Saxon that iver came out of Anglo-Saxony." We call ourselves ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... who had gone to open her oven, and poke up the fire while Polly was speaking; "it's a weight off my shoulders, Miss, for I wasn't never one to be bothered with thinking. Mother says as I haven't brains as would go on the top of a sixpenny-bit, so what's to be expected of me, Miss. There, the oven's all of a beautiful glow, and 'ull bake lovely. You was asking what breakfast I has put in the servants' 'all—well, cold bacon and plenty of bread, and a good pat of the cooking butter. ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... disbelieved for three-quarters of a century, has in recent years been corroborated in the most unexpected way. Wild a fiction as his life was in many respects, it was a fiction he himself sincerely and innocently believed. His imaginative appetite, having devoured science by day and sixpenny romances by night, still remained unsatisfied, and, quite probably, went on to mix up reality and make-believe past all recognition for its next dish. Francis Thompson, with all respect to many critics, was right when he noted what a complete playfellow Shelley ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Useful Knowledge had been founded in the autumn of 1826, and Charles Knight, who had then conceived a plan of a National Library, was entrusted, in July, 1827, with the superintendence of its publications. Its first treatises appeared in sixpenny numbers, once a fortnight. Its "British Almanac" and "Companion to the Almanac" first appeared at the beginning of 1829. Charles Knight started also in that year his own "Library of Entertaining Knowledge." ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... in a bumper together, and quaffing off the mixture with a relish. As for the men, they lounge there continually, drinking till they are drunken,—drinking as long as they have a half-penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for a sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets so as to enable them to be drunken again. Most of these establishments have a significant advertisement of "Beds," doubtless for the accommodation of their customers in the interval between one intoxication ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... among men; he will tell you with pride of the times when he was pointed at, and people said, "He's the man!" and how a real gentleman once invited him into his house and gave him a glass of wine. But to enter the best room of the familiar tavern, to order, in politest but imperative tones, "beer"—sixpenny beer—for himself and "the other gentleman," is indeed bliss. Then, in addition to the honor of moving in distinguished society, before the very eyes and in the high places of those who have hitherto always considered him as a lowly cuss, the Romany realizes ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... more for the sake of talking of his than anything else that I kept up with him. I did not really doubt his care and conscientiousness, but it is always pleasant to chat about one's self. "My five shillings subscription to the Daily Telegraph's Sixpenny Fund for the Unemployed—got that down ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... rent of a four-roomed cottage must not exceed 3s. per week. Add to this the sixpenny ticket to and from London, and you have 3s. 6d. and if the company should insist on 1s., it will make 4s., for which there would be all the advantages of a comfortable cottage—of which it would be possible for the tenant to become the owner—a good garden, pleasant surroundings, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the wall up are alike, Haredale! It's funny I don't know any of 'em! You see them in the sixpenny monthlies, with the girl they're going to marry in the opposite column. Give me their names, will you—starting with the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... understand, don't you, Bridget, that they are not cheerful places that we are going to see? Cheerful positions in London mean big rents, and I mean to live among people who have to count every penny several times over, and try hard to make it into a sixpenny bit. You and I will have sunshine and light at Pastimes—you won't mind putting up with dullness for part ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... from the half sovereign into a sixpenny purse which Moseley had given her on Christmas Day. The precious Russia- leather purse was restored to its old hiding place in the bosom of her frock. Then, giving a mournful glance round the little chamber which she was about to quit, she ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... without, all was comfortable within doors, and a cheery (one-and-sixpenny) fire crackled in the grate. Our private drawing-room was charmingly furnished, and so large that, notwithstanding the presence of a piano, two sofas, five small tables, cabinets, desks, and chairs,—not forgetting a ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... settlements. The state of things in St. Paul's and Westminster, however, throws the money-table of York Minster far into the shade. The holinesses of St. Paul's we found converted into a twopenny, and those of Westminster into a sixpenny show. For the small sum of twopence one may be admitted, at an English provincial fair, to see the old puppet exhibition of Punch and Judy, and of Solomon in all his glory; and for the small sum of ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... there was an explosion, I can tell you. England rose! That, the birthplace of the master-genius of all the ages and all the climes—that priceless possession of Britain—to be carted out of the country like so much old lumber and set up for sixpenny desecration in a Yankee show-shop—the idea was not to be tolerated for a moment. England rose in her indignation; and Barnum was glad to relinquish his prize and offer apologies. However, he stood out for a compromise; he claimed a concession—England must let him have Jumbo. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Garters that can speak for themselves can pay for themselves! [Dashes the bill on the table, takes up another. Reading.] Three bottles coeur de Janette—three bottles Souffle de Marguerite—fifteen pounds for scent—and I have to smoke sixpenny ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar's saying, "The Devil take you," was worth a shilling any day, whereas "The Deuce" was a shabby sixpenny speech, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Universal Visitor[1019]. There was a formal written contract, which Allen the printer saw. Gardner thought as you do of the Judge. They were bound to write nothing else; they were to have, I think, a third of the profits of this sixpenny pamphlet; and the contract was for ninety-nine years. I wish I had thought of giving this to Thurlow, in the cause about Literary Property. What an excellent instance would it have been of the oppression ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... she was tempted, however ('such a civil obliging shopman, Frank!'), to buy four yards of so-called Astrakhan trimming, a frill of torchon lace, six dear little festooned handkerchiefs, and four pairs of open-work stockings—none of which were contemplated when she entered the shop—her sixpenny saving was not as brilliant a piece of finance ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... ask her; if he had the sitting-room he occupied when Rawson-Clew came in September, he would have felt quite grand. But that was a thing of the past, so he made the best of circumstances and went to the reckless extravagance of sixpenny worth of fire. When Julia came in, the towel-horse had been removed from the fender, and a fire was sputtering awkwardly in the grate, while Mr. Gillat, proud as a school-boy who has planned a surprise treat, was trying to coax the smoke ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad |
