"Eightpence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that it was at times remarkably cheap. In 250 B.C., in many ways a wonderfully productive year, wine was sold at an as the congius, which is nearly three quarts;[64] under the early Empire Columella (iii. 3. 10) reckoned the amphora (nearly 6 gallons) at 15 sesterces, i.e. about eightpence That the common citizen did expect to be able to qualify his water with wine seems proved by a story told by Suetonius, that when the people complained to Augustus that the price of wine was too high, he curtly and wisely answered that Agrippa had but lately given them an excellent water-supply.[65] ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... and buy a few small pearls from the "pearl-breeding river"; and while we gazed our fill at the mighty monument, we learned from a guardian that in old days a certain Lady Erskine hired the castle for six shillings and eightpence a year, in addition to a "dish of fish for the Queen," when her majesty ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... some part of my rubies, for which I only got 500 ducats, though well worth 1000. When I began to recover my health and strength, very little of my money remained, every thing was so scarce and dear. Every chicken, and these not good, cost me seven or eight livres, or from six shillings to six and eightpence, and all other things in proportion; besides which the apothecaries, with their medicines, were a heavy charge upon me. At the end of six months the siege of Goa was raised, and as jewels rose materially in their price, I began to work[168]; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... wonderful half revealed city with its million yellow eyes. He passed on, crossing to the right bank, and found the Strand. Here in a bar, and for the price of half a pint of beer, he sat for some twenty minutes watching the customers and killing Time, then, with his worldly wealth reduced to eightpence, he wandered off westward, passing the Savoy, and pausing for a moment to peep down the great archway at the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... to charge you for it," explained Sam reassuringly. "I give it you as a friend, not as a lawyer. Six-and-eightpence to ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to be considered, Mr. Prosper. It is all my own, and comes to very nearly one thousand a year. I think it is nine hundred and seventy-two pounds six shillings and eightpence. Of course, when there is so much money it would have to be tied up somehow." Mr. Prosper was undoubtedly disgusted, and if he could have receded at this moment would have transferred his affections to Miss Puffle. "Of ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... archives of the Cathedral are preserved the accounts of the materials used in this painting, the prices of the colours, and the wages paid to the workmen. The name of the principal artist was Walter; he is dignified by the name of "Pictor," but he only received Eightpence per week, "praeter mensam et robam" the "roba" being the painter's dress of the period, which was very like a modern gentleman's dressing gown. The colouring of this "Walter" between the years 1335 and 1351 seems to have been of a very simple character. ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... Venice." The rich architecture, the colour, the moonlight, the music, the enchanting silence made up a unity of pleasures like nothing that she had previously known. When evening came she and her husband would follow the opera from their box hired for "two shillings and eightpence English," or sit under the moon in the piazza of St Mark sipping coffee and reading the French papers. But as the month went by, Browning lost appetite and lost sleep. The "soothing, lulling, rocking atmosphere" which suited Mrs. Browning made him, after the first excitement ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... up at the "Hunting-horn," a fine hotel, but ridiculously expensive. A little back room cost me 45 kreutzers (about one shilling and eightpence) ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... required. Temporary relief was found in adopting a suggestion from Lindsay whereby cotton was made the basis for an advance of L60,000, a form of cotton bond being devised which fixed the price of cotton at eightpence the pound. These bonds were not put on the market but were privately placed by Lindsay & Company with a few buyers for the entire sum, the transaction ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... mandate The lawyer did obey; The thought of six-and-eightpence Did make his heart full gay. "What is't," says he, "your majesty Would wish ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... deliberate and lengthy communications of Roman gentlemen like Cicero: and there is little wonder that the good folk made the most of their paper and their time. We find Godwin casually mentioning the fact that he paid twenty-one shillings and eightpence for the postage of a letter from Shelley; readers of The Antiquary will remember that Lovel paid twenty-five shillings postage for one epistle, besides half a guinea for the express rider. Certes a man had good need to drive ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... noblemen. They could not like to be second in their own assembly (and yet that was their position from age to age) to a lawyer who was of yesterday,—whom everybody could remember without briefs, who had talked for "hire," who had "hungered after six-and-eightpence". Great peers did not gain glory from the House; on the contrary, they lost glory when they were in the House. They devised two expedients to get out of this difficulty: they invented proxies which enabled them to vote without being present, without being offended by vigour and invective, without ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... know, waiter. Look here! here's yesterday's sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again, two shillings. And what ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... highest ambition was to be taken on at the colliery where his father worked; and he shortly joined his elder brother James there as a "corf-bitter," or "picker," to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross. His wages were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence when he was set to drive ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... trembling like a leaf. But, when they began to talk big owre me, and to threaten me wi' bringing the terrors o' the law upon my head—(and be it remembered I have an exceeding horror o' the law, and would rather lose a pound ony day, than spend six and eightpence, which is the least ye can spend on it)—as good luck would have it, while they were stamping their feet, and shaking their nieves in my face, my mother came forward to where we were standing, and says she to me—'Nicholas, what is a' this about? What ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... followed throughout and there be added the personal gifts made by Mr. Muller to various benevolent objects, it will be found that the aggregate sum from this "servant" reaches, up to March 1, 1898, a total of eighty-one thousand four hundred and ninety pounds eighteen shillings and eightpence. Mr. Wright, now that this "servant of the Lord Jesus" is with his Master, who promised, "Where I am there shall also My servant be," feels free to make known that this donor was no other than George Muller himself who thus gave out of his own money—money ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... Singleton gave twenty tons of meal to be sold in Drogheda at one shilling and a penny a stone; the Rt. Hon. Wm. Graham did the same—it was then selling from one shilling and sixpence to one shilling and eightpence a stone; Lord Blundell gave L50 to his tenants; Dean Swift gave L10 to the weavers ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... charge you six-and-eightpence for answering that question," the lawyer had said with a laugh. "At any rate there is a good deal to be discovered about electricity yet. Turn your attention to that and leave this ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... ago, written on the largest sheets purchasable, crossed and crammed to the point of illegibility, filled with the news of many and many a week, still witness of the time when "a letter from London to Brighton cost eightpence, to Aberdeen one and threepence-halfpenny, to Belfast one and fourpence"; when, "if the letter were written on more than one sheet, it came under the operation of a higher scale of charges," and when the privilege of franking letters, enjoyed and very largely exercised by ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... As far as I could make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of London before, and didn't seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and the cabby said he should ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the needle is almost the sole refuge of the unskilled worker, every industry is invaded. A recent report as to English nail and chain workers shows hours and general conditions to be almost intolerable, while the wage averages eightpence a day. In the mines, despite steady action concerning them, women are working by hundreds for the same rate. In short, from every quarter comes in repeated testimony that the majority of working Englishwomen are struggling for a livelihood; that a pound a week is a fortune, and that the ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... essence of being a public man is that you do nearly everything in private. Nobody would imagine a chorus of money-lenders. Every one knows the story of the solicitors' corps of volunteers who, when the Colonel on the battlefield cried "Charge!" all said simultaneously, "Six-and-eightpence." Men can sing while charging in a military, but hardly in a legal sense. And at the end of my reflections I had really got no further than the sub-conscious feeling of my friend the bank-clerk—that there is something spiritually ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Teignmouth, in presents of money, six pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence. 3. From brethren living at Teignmouth and elsewhere, not connected with the church at Teignmouth, ninety-three pounds six shillings and twopence. Altogether, one hundred and thirty-one pounds eighteen shillings and eightpence. There had been likewise many articles of provision, and some articles of clothing given to us, worth at least twenty pounds. I am so particular in mentioning these things, to show that we are never losers from acting according to the mind of the Lord. For had I ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... looked at his hat, and then came forward and laid down six and eightpence on the desk in ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... parliament to export corn when it was at low prices; wheat at six shillings and eightpence a quarter, money of that age; barley at three shillings and fourpence.[****] It appears from these prices, that corn still remained at near half its present value; though other commodities were much cheaper. The inland commerce of corn was also opened in the eighteenth of the king, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... bought ptarmigans at eightpence the brace; but—" she added in a more conciliatory tone, so as not to upset him altogether, "that was in a ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... woke and found himself there, and asked no questions, and he was tacking about on this daily though perilous voyage, when, from his station at the coffee-stall, Huxter spied him. To note his friend, to pay his twopence (indeed, he had but eightpence left, or he would have had a cab from Vauxhall to take him home), was with the eager Huxter the work of an instant—Costigan dived down the alleys by Drury-lane Theater, where gin-shops, oyster-shops, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the floor above was a waistcoat maker, who, when work was brisk, could earn eight and sometimes nine shillings a week; but who now, as work was slack, seldom went beyond six or seven. Out of this must be taken thread, which she got for eightpence a dozen. She worked for a small exporter in a street some ten minutes' walk away; but often had to spend two hours or more taking back her work and waiting for more to be given out. She fared better than some, however, as she knew women who many a time had had to lose five or six ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... a state of remorse about the fourpence, that I forgot the maternal joy and caresses, the tender paternal voice. I pull out the twenty-four shillings and eightpence with a trembling hand. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Eight shillings for a bed and eightpence for a glass of sherry pointed to one of the most expensive hotels. There are not many in London which charge at that rate. In the second one which I visited in Northumberland Avenue, I learned by an inspection of the book that Francis H. Moulton, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in Denbighshire. This estate was said to be worth more than a hundred thousand pounds. The annual income, therefore, can hardly have been less than six thousand pounds; and the annual rent which was reserved to the Crown was only six and eightpence. This, however, was not the worst. With the property were inseparably connected extensive royalties, which the people of North Wales could not patiently see in the hands of any subject. More than ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... soldi. Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi. Quarterer saltee, fourpence Quattro soldi. Chinker saltee, fivepence Cinque soldi. Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi. Say oney saltee, or setter Sette soldi. saltee, sevenpence Say dooee saltee, or otter Otto soldi. saltee, eightpence Say tray saltee, or nobba saltee, Nove soldi. ninepence Say quarterer saltee, or dacha Dieci soldi. (datsha) saltee, tenpence Say chinker saltee, or dacha one Dieci uno soldi saltee, elevenpence Oney beong, one shilling Uno bianco. A beong say saltee, one shilling Uno bianco sei soldi. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... world counts richness. No one ever heard of his having a "practice," although it was believed he did a great deal in the way of "lending his name" and profession to impecunious and uneducated men; who could turn many a six-and-eightpence under its prestige. So great is the moral "power of attorney," as contradistinguished from ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... boys that I fell in with a soldier—his name is Henderson—who was twelve years with Lord Wellington and other commanders. He returned very lately with only eightpence-halfpenny in his pocket, and found his father and mother both in life, though they had never heard from him, nor he from them. He carried my great-coat and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same time three shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuation was excessive; a table of its possible variations describes it as ranging from eighteenpence the quarter to twenty shillings; the average, however, being six and eightpence.[16] When the price was above this sum, the merchants might import to bring it down;[17] when it was below this price the farmers were allowed to export to the foreign markets.[18] The same scale, with a scarcely ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Warwickshire, for the year 1718. In the first place, a man was sent from Southam to Daventry to make a drawing of the ducking-stool of that town, at a cost of three shillings and twopence. The sum of one pound one shilling and eightpence is charged for labour and material in making and fixing the engine of punishment. An entry of ten shillings is made for painting it, which appears a rather heavy amount when we observe that the carpenter only charged a little over a pound for labour ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... rolls:—"Item, paid to Henry, the king's barber, for money which he lent the king to play at cross and pile, five shillings. Item, paid to Pires Barnard, usher of the king's chamber, money which he lent the king, and which he lost at cross and pile; to Monsieur Robert Wattewille eightpence." At length the barons, tired of Edward's misgovernment, revolted, and made the king a prisoner. During the Christmas festival of 1326, Edward was imprisoned in Kenilworth Castle. While there he was informed that in a Parliament ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson |
