"Halfpenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have demanded one rouble and a half for the binding of every section of the work, so that the sum required for the binding of one Testament alone would be twelve roubles. Dr. Schmidt assured me that one rouble and forty copecks, or, according to the English currency, fourteenpence halfpenny, were formerly paid for the binding of every individual copy of St. Matthew's Gospel. I pray you, my dear Sir, to cause the books to be referred to, for I wish to know if that statement be correct. In the meantime arrangements have been made, and the Society will have to pay for each volume ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... slaughtered countrymen?—I wish for my part they would allow the people to go about their business as on the other 362 days of the year, and leave the Champs Elysees free for the omnibuses to run, and the Tuileries' in quiet, so that the nurse-maids might come as usual, and the newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conversation reforming the world, dethroning princes, establishing new forms of government, and giving laws to the several states of Europe, till, fatigued at length with their legislative office, they began to feel the want of refreshment, but could not muster up more than four-pence-halfpenny. Savage, it is true, had many vices; but vice could never strike its roots in a mind like Johnson's, seasoned early with religion, and the principles of moral rectitude. His first prayer was composed in the year 1738. He had ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... mind Jerry and his troupe of dancing-dogs (O.C.S.), especially the unfortunate animal who had lost a halfpenny during the day, and consequently had to go without his supper. In fact, his master made the punishment fit the crime; for, having set the stop, he made the dog play the organ while the ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... come out to play, The moon does shine as bright as day; Leave your supper, and leave your sleep, And meet your playfellows in the street, Come with a whoop and come with a call, Come with a good will or not at all. Up the ladder and down the wall, A halfpenny roll will serve us all. You find milk and I'll find flour, And we'll have pudding in half ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... night. Every one who has been present at an Italian festa knows what it is like—men shouting and elbowing their way through the people with flaming lamps fitted to their baskets, selling water and syrups, cakes and confectionery, melon seeds and peanuts—others going about with halfpenny buttonholes of gelsomina, each neatly folded up in a vine-leaf to keep the scent in—three independent piano-organs and a brass band in the middle distance—an enthusiastic blind singer, a survival of Demodocus in the Odyssey, with a ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... the long shovels. The boy blocked the squirrel under his armpit, dived into his pocket, and brought out some copper coins and counted them. There was ninepence. Ninepence was the sum he had to take home every night, and there was not a halfpenny to spare. He knew that perfectly before he began to count, but his appetite had tempted him to try again if his arithmetic was not ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... a sideboard ready for supper. Two noble punch-bowls graced the table, and a number of long "churchwarden" pipes supported the large brass coffer filled with tobacco, which opened only by some cunning mechanism, set in motion by dropping a halfpenny in a slit at the top. Mr. Binks was in the chair; Clodd, the butcher, sat opposite; a great fragrance of spice and lemon-peel pervaded the place. It only needed a speech to commence the proceedings, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... jostle; forming interminable queues outside canteens, washing-places, and stuffy hammock-rooms in narrow alleys, and of leisure hours spent on deck among a human carpet of khaki, playing euchre, or reading the advertisement columns of ancient halfpenny papers. There was physical exercise, and a parade every day, but the chief duty was that of sentry-go, which recurred to each of us every five days, and lasted for twenty-four hours. The ship teemed with sentries. To look out for fire was our principal function, and a very important one it was, but ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... was you, I should say to a friend, 'Lend me a thou.,' and then take a little shop, put it up in bottles, with three-halfpenny stamps, and advertise it well as the new ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... bound to end in a blow-up. These imitation Scotch niggers in their plaid sarongs, as they call them, will be getting up a big quarrel with my men with their bounce and contempt for my well-drilled, smart detachment. Here's every common, twopenny-halfpenny Malay looking down upon my fellows, while there isn't one among my lads who isn't a better man than their Rajah. There will be a row some ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... himself or me: it was, however, rather hard that, as there were six legs to be damaged, the one that did scratch itself should belong to the part of the machine possessing only two, instead of the quadrupedal portion. I grazed about the size of a halfpenny on my left knee; and for a couple of days walked about as if nothing had happened. I found, however, that the skin was not returning correctly; and so sent for a doctor: he treated the thing as quite insignificant, but said I must keep my leg quiet ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... amount was considerable. A man must be rich to pay for this hobby, for in any case it would not return him a halfpenny per cent. He would even have to be immensely rich for the transaction was to be a "cash" one, and even in the United States it is as yet rare to find citizens with $1,100,000 in their pockets, who would care to throw them into the ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... a straw. If you love him enough to trust him with the whole of the rest of your life, you can surely trust him over a twopenny-halfpenny little secret which, after all, has nothing in the world to do with you. If you can't, do you know what ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... goes.] An' Mrs. Dreissiger there may play the lady as proud as she likes, but for all that she's no better than us. Many a hundred times she's served my father with a halfpenny-worth of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... five shillings an acre or go, he gits scared, he du, and down goes the rent of some of the best meadow land in the country from thirty-five shillings to five. Of course it don't signify to him not a halfpenny, the College must pay him his salary all the same, and he don't know no more about farming, nor land, nor northing, than my old mare yinder. Well, and what comes of it? Of course every tinant on the place hears that those College lands be going for five shillings an acre, and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... clouds: 'If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,—I'd let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny-halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... the iron beast was a weavin' and a reelin' and a dewin' of it all, how'd yer feel? Wi' six children, mebbe, biggest ony seven or eight, a crazin' ye for bread. And ye mayn't send 'em out, cos o' labour-laws, to pick up a halfpenny for theerselves; and tha passon be all agin yer, cos ye warn't thrifty and didn't gev a penny for the forrin blacks out o' the six shillin' a week? Would yer think iron beast wor o' use thin? or would yer ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a little boy," said the Prime Minister, "and since then your loyal people have been saving up to buy you a crown—so much a week, you know, according to people's means—sixpence a week from those who have first-rate pocket money, down to a halfpenny a week from those who haven't so much. You know it's the rule that the crown must be paid ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... almost bread and vegetables, and a wage of one franc a day, are the ordinary conditions on which men work from sunrise to darkness. Lodging is not always included. I have known men in the full vigour of life earning only the equivalent of ninepence halfpenny a day, paying rent out of it, and presumably supporting a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... on the windlass, and suggested retrenchment of the halfpenny a week hitherto spent in manners. "'Cos, you see, all this po-liteness of yourn es a'runnin' to waste," he ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Valentine, "but he throws it away somehow; and he's the most selfish fellow in the world, and never spends a halfpenny on any ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... woman soon found out that things were carried on in this world in a manner radically different from that in which the romances pictured. She soon found out that mutton was eightpence halfpenny a pound, and that if she did not look well after her butcher she would find her pound and a half of mutton chops weighing not quite a pound and a quarter; that bread was ten-pence a loaf, and that the baker was no more romantic than the butcher, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... debasement of the currency was carried out as proposed.(1340) Yet, in spite of all remonstrances and threats, a proclamation went forth that after the 17th August the shilling should be current for six pence sterling and no more, the groat for two pence, the penny for a halfpenny, and the halfpenny for a farthing.(1341) The price of every commodity rose 50 per cent. as a matter of course, and nothing that Warwick could do could prevent it. Seeing at last the hopelessness of attempting to overcome economic laws by a mere ipse dixit, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... before him, the number, 30, written upon it and the two black seals securing the lapels. He paused again in his walk. His reflections had led him to a second definite point and he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a time, seeking a certain brass coin about the size of a halfpenny, having a square hole in the middle and peculiar characters engraved around the square, one on each ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... are not all bred here, being brought from other places. They have also parrots of sundry colours, as green, purple, and other mixt colours, and they are so numerous that the rice fields have to be watched to drive them away. These birds make a wonderful chattering, and are sold so low as a halfpenny each. There are many other kinds of birds different from ours, which every morning and evening make most sweet music, so that the country is like an earthly paradise, the trees, herbs, and flowers being in a continual spring, and the temperature of the air quite delightful, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... their provisions, and spend the whole day at their devotions. Now the old woman spends her Sunday penny. At the back of the chapel there is a large room where a person is employed to boil the kettle and supply cups of tea at a halfpenny each. Here the old lady makes herself very comfortable, and waits till service begins again. Halfpenny a cup would not, of course, pay the cost of the materials, but these are found by some earnest member of the body, some farmer or tradesman's wife, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... making such a fuss about?" said the old lady, with annoyance. "You are a good fellow, but very silly. One gives you a halfpenny, and you are as grateful as though one had saved your life. You think this is praiseworthy on your part, but it ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wish to be abusive; but when I think of these poor little dullards, with their precarious hold of just that corner of evolution that a blackbeetle can understand—with their retinue of twopenny-halfpenny Torquemadas wallowing in the infamies of the vivisector's laboratory, and solemnly offering us as epoch-making discoveries their demonstrations that dogs get weaker and die if you give them no food; that intense pain makes mice sweat; and that if you cut off a dog's leg the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... seventh son," and others by not being born at all, as the unborn doctor, who I hear is lately gone the way of his patients, having died worth five hundred pounds per annum, though he was not born to a halfpenny. ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... possesses the monopoly of the bitumen; he alone works the pits, and sells the produce to the merchants of Damascus, Beirout, and Aleppo. It was now at thirty-three paras the Rotola, or about two-pence-halfpenny the pound. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... sum and formal good wishes the fathers of the Hospice of the Catechumens thrust him out of their doors into the broad world. The youth who had begun the day with dreams of palaces, found himself at night sleeping in a den where he paid a halfpenny for the privilege of resting in the same room with the rude woman who kept the house, her husband, her five or six children, and various other lodgers. This rough awakening produced no consciousness of hardship in a nature ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... heroic," he declared with a covert sneer. "If you really are bent upon providing the halfpenny newspapers with a fresh sensation, pray let me know in plenty of time, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... the whole story all over the town at any rate, and in the lane, and all about the courts; and they declare it don't matter a toss of a halfpenny which way the matter goes, as you're to become Lady Ball the very moment the case ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... Wapsie, we'll take such a nice little walk together, and we'll go and see poor Widow Maddock; and we'll buy three muffins on our way home, for a feast this evening; and we'll look at the pictures in the old French "Josephus;" and Mamma and I will tell stories; and I have a halfpenny to ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... all he orders." I replied that I desired nothing more than work to do, and would rather take it from the Duke than from any man whatever in the world. Whether they were popes, emperors, or kings, I should prefer to serve his most illustrious Excellency for a halfpenny than any of the rest of them for a ducat. He then remarked: "If that is your mind, you and he have struck a bargain without the need of further speech. So, then, go back to Florence, and be unconcerned; rely on the Duke's goodwill ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... little Primrose would be nice enough, but what should we do with that Halfpenny woman? If we had the other girls, I suppose they would be at school all day; but surely some might go to Beechcroft. And mind, Jane, I will not have you overtasking yourself! Do not take any of them without having Gillian to help you. That ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... myself I would write to Horatio at Cheltenham and ask him for news of you. As to Alfred, I have heard of his marriage, etc., from Spedding, who also saw and was much pleased with her indeed. But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well satisfied to see one when one falls in his way. You will think I have a spite against him for some neglect, when I say this, and say besides that I cannot care for his In Memoriam. Not so, if I know myself: I always thought ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... with joy and gratitude! And he would no more have taken pay for doing her uncle a service than he would have picked a pocket or robbed a henroost! He just adored her lovely clemency, and he was even turning over in his mind the problem how he, a poor, poor boy, hardly able to afford himself a halfpenny candle to read by, after dark, could repay her kindness—what could he find, invent, or ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... offices?—there are four very good rooms, a kitchen, and a garret for Laura, in Catherine-street, in the Strand; or would you like a house in the Waterloo-road?—it would be very pleasant, only there is that halfpenny toll at the bridge. The boys may go to King's College, mayn't they? Does all this read to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... air as I could muster, I offered him a beshlik—fourpence halfpenny. He thereupon became abusive and withdrew—in the end, hurriedly, because Rashid approached him in ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... would play with him at lansquenet, for a trifle, as he had laid it down for a maxim, to risk nothing considerable at play. "Waunds!" answered the knight, "I hope you don't think I come here in quest of money. Thank God! I have a good landed estate worth five thousand a year, and owe no man a halfpenny; and I question whether there be many counts in your nation—no offence, I hope—that can say a bolder word. As for your lambskin net, I know nothing of the matter; but I will toss up with you for a guinea, cross or pile, as the saying is; or, if there's such a thing ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... There are no kiosks; the papers are sold by children or by old women in the streets, and the Madrid night is rent by the appalling cries of these itinerant vendors of literature. For the Spanish newspaper is always literature, which is a good deal more than can be said for some of the English halfpenny Press. Whatever may be the politics of the particular journal, its Castellano is perfect; perhaps a little stilted or pompous, but always dignified ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... you a horse to ride. I dare say you think your old father a terrible martinet, but it's all for your good, you know. You must say to yourself when you feel dissatisfied about some little twopenny-halfpenny ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... people, Dick, and they seems to be well off! Four an' fourpence a year! think o' that—not to mention the deduction w'en they goes for a month or two to the country each summer. Four an' fourpence a year, Dick! Some of 'em even goes so low as a halfpenny, which makes two an' twopence a year—7 pounds, 11 shillings, 8 pence in a seventy-year lifetime, Dick, supposin' their liberality began to flow the ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst haue it to buy Ginger bread: Hold, there is the very Remuneration I had of thy Maister, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou Pidgeon-egge of discretion. O & the heauens were so pleased, that thou wert but my Bastard; What a ioyfull father wouldst thou make mee? Goe to, thou hast it ad dungil, at the fingers ends, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... am a gentleman, and have been doing nothing. That a man can do so and not starve is nowadays not even a paradox. Every halfpenny I possess is stolen money; but it has been stolen legally, and, what is of some practical importance to you, I have no means of restoring it to the rightful owners even if I felt inclined to. Do you know what ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... would scarce have sufficed to buy a pair of skates, I was at first astonished, although not for long. Indeed, I had no sooner called to mind how grown-up men and women of considerable estate will lose their temper about halfpenny points, than (making an immediate allowance for my fellow-students) I transferred the whole of my astonishment to the assistant teacher, who—poor gentleman—had quite forgot to show me to my desk, and stood in the midst of this hurly-burly, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Brimington, one toft with the buildings, and three acres of land in the fields there, with twenty pence yearly rent, which he used to receive of Thomas, son of Gilbert de Bosco, with the homages, etc., rendering yearly to him and his heirs a pair of white gloves, of the price of a halfpenny, at ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Nigeria, and as middle-aged men in St. Petersburg), and Belstairs, who was in abundant spirits and who was returning to England on the Gloritania at noon the next day, explained to the Duke that he had just borrowed fifty thousand pounds, on security that wouldn't be worth a halfpenny ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... themselves for the banknotes in their own possession with silver or gold, and, as they expected a run, they ordered all persons to be paid in copper coin, as long as any money of this metal remained. It required a long time to count those halfpennies and centimes (five of which make a sou, or halfpenny), but the people were not tired with waiting until towards three o'clock in the afternoon, when the bank is shut up. They then became so clamorous that a company of gendarmes was placed for protection at the entrance of the bank; but, as the tumult increased, the street was surrounded by ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... stout yeoman, tossing up a halfpenny, and catching the said coin in his right hand, which he immediately covered with the left,—"Ben, heads or tails that Lovett is hanged; heads hanged, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at first, just like a beggar, crave One penny or one halfpenny to have; And if you grant its first suit, 'twill aspire From pence to pounds, and so will still mount higher To the whole ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... conspiracy was, by false rumours to raise the price of the public funds on a certain day, with a view to oblige persons who should purchase into the funds on that day to pay an increased price, the crime would be complete if the funds were raised on that day, though no person should purchase a halfpenny-worth of stock; in like manner as conspiring to raise the price of commodities in a market, though no person should purchase, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... was I, and I faithfully served the ships With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny dips, And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights, And fine fresh peppermint drops for the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... answered. 'I didn't want particular to go out again to-day, but anything to encourage a good young chap. There is a nice shop in Edgware Road—hundreds of books for fourpence-halfpenny each. Come along, Jacky!' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a tax of a halfpenny was placed upon newspapers, and led to several leading journals being discontinued, a failure facetiously termed "the fall of the leaf." "The Spectator" survived the loss, but not unshaken, and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and are out of request as soon. His comings in are like a taylor's, from the shreds of bread, [the] chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink themselves. He divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than Keckerman[33], and sub-divides the a prima ortum so nicely, that a stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers; and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... height always ready for use, and to instruct his children in the art. In every township the butts were ordered to be set up, and the people were required to shoot "up and down" every Sunday and feast-day, under penalty of one halfpenny. ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... me so far as to Coventry, sir: where, finding a fair in progress as I passed through the town, and falling in with three bridesmaids who had missed their wedding-party in the crowd, I spent the other in treating them to the hobby-horses at one halfpenny a ride. Four halfpennies—there were four of us—make twopence, and two's into thirty are fifteen rides; a bold investment of capital, and undertaken (I will confess it) not only to solace the fair ones but to ingratiate myself with the fellow who turned the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... returns it to the agent, who must grant compensation. The medium of exchange is not cloth as in Bornou, nor iron as in Loggun, but cowries or little shells, brought from the roast, twenty of which are worth a halfpenny, and four hundred and eighty make a shilling, so that in paying a pound sterling, one has to count over nine thousand six hundred cowries. Amid so many strangers, there is ample room for the trade of the restaurateur, which is carried on by a female ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... newspaper shop, then fell to a haberdasher in consumption, and finally to a stationer; the three shops at the end of the street wallowed in and out of insolvency in the hands of a bicycle repairer and dealer, a gramaphone dealer, a tobacconist, a sixpenny-halfpenny bazaar-keeper, a shoemaker, a greengrocer, and the exploiter of a cinematograph peep-show—but none of them supplied friendship to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... halfpenny; she wished me luck, and I proceeded. I passed some huge black buildings which a man told me were collieries, and several carts laden with coal, and soon came to Rhiwabon—a large village about half way between ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... begin with, no doubt the dinner bore a fair proportion to the fluid which accompanied it, but by degrees the liquor encroached on and superseded the viands, until his tavern bills took the shape of the one purloined by Prince Henry, in which there was but one halfpenny-worth of bread to an intolerable deal of sack. It was this inordinate consumption of sack (and not sighing and grief, as he suggests) which blew him up like a bladder. A life of leisure in London always ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... was a view of Rome by twilight, seen between great umbrella pines, I thought it a splendid picture, and spurred somewhat, I confess, by a spirit of contradiction, I was seized with an eager desire to acquire it. But I had not a halfpenny of my own, there was my difficulty! To overcome it, I laid siege to my aunt Adelaide, who doted on her brother's children as if they had been her own, and who never (and well the rogues knew it!) could resist their wheedling. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the tale; He said, "I go my ways And when I find a mountain-rill I set it in a blaze; And thence they make a stuff they call Rowland's Macassar Oil— Yet twopence-halfpenny is all They give me for ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Massingbird is not likely to countenance such doings as these. That Mrs. Verner will not, I know; and, I tell you plainly, I will not. You shall pay the men's wages at the proper and usual time; you shall pay them in full, to the last halfpenny that they earn. Do you hear? I order you now to do so. We will have no underhanded truck system introduced on ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... all. I scream myself hoarse all day, and choke myself for twopence halfpenny. I don't know what's to come of it all. But you seem to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... paltry, blackguard sprite, Condemn'd to drudgery in the night; Thou hast no work to do in the house, Nor halfpenny to drop ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... off." Bad legs, indeed, ran a close race with fits in the pressed man's sprint for liberty. They were so easily induced, and so cheaply. The industrious application of the smallest copper coin procurable, the humble farthing or the halfpenny, speedily converted the most insignificant abrasion of the skin into a festering sore. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1439—Capt. Ambrose, 20 June 1741; Admiralty Records 1. 1544—Capt. Bowyer, 18 Dec. 1808; Admiralty Records ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... appetite made serious inroads into the meager profits of the college. After breakfast, Mavis went upstairs for her hat. She opened the drawers at the base of her old-fashioned looking-glass and counted up her possessions. These amounted to seven pounds, thirteen shillings and sevenpence halfpenny; in addition to which, there was a quarter's salary of four pounds ten shillings due to her; also, there was her fare which Mrs. Devitt had sent, a sum which she was undecided whether or not to accept. At any ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... like a bad halfpenny, ye see. And how a' ye bin ever since, lass? Purely, I warrant, be your looks. I'm jolly glad to see ye, I am; no cattle going like ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Square. We learn that in 1745, the streets were so thinly built in the neighbourhood, that 'when the heads of the Scottish rebels were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields, with a telescope, to give persons a sight of them for a halfpenny a piece.' Just as we are sometimes offered a view of Saturn's rings from Charing Cross! Hogarth's house now forms part of a French Hotel. The lean French cook staggering under the roast beef in the 'Gates of Calais' picture has ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... set a sum—"If a pound of mutton-candles cost sevenpence-halfpenny, how much must Dobbin cost?" and a roar would follow from all the circle of young knaves, usher and all, who rightly considered that the selling of goods by retail is a shameful and infamous practice, meriting the contempt and ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... I beg: these scenes are of daily occurrence now that we have compulsory service under the command of the halfpenny papers. Pray sit down. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... the buyer a stated part of the price by way of a blessing, or a "luck-penny" as it would be called in England. Cowries were here used as coins, though somewhat cumbersome, as twenty were worth only a halfpenny; thus, in paying a pound sterling, nine thousand six hundred shells had to be counted out. As he remarks: "The great advantage of the use of the cowrie is that forgery is excluded, as it cannot possibly be imitated." The natives show also great dexterity ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Henry VII. the chief justice of the court of King's Bench had the yearly fee of 140 marks granted to him for his better support; he had besides 5l. 6s. 11-1/4 d., and the sixth part of a halfpenny (such is the accuracy of Sir William Dugdale, and the strangeness of the sum,) for his winter robes, and 3l. 6s. 6d. for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... round with the tambourine, the golden youth of Castel-le-Gachis turned from her coldly. Here and there a single halfpenny was forthcoming; the net result of a collection never exceeded half a franc; and the Maire himself, after seven different applications, had contributed exactly twopence. A certain chill began to settle upon the artists themselves; it seemed as if they were singing to slugs; Apollo himself might ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... burden. There is a market at Coupang for the country people in which however there is little business done. I have seen a man from the country come to market with two potatoes: and this is not unusual. These being sold for two doits (equal to a halfpenny English) serve to supply him with betel to chew; and the remainder of the day is passed in lounging about the town. The inland people, who live at a distance from the Europeans, are strong and active, but their want of cleanliness subjects ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... no, not an atom from anybody's hand but mine if you please. That dog," said Jerry, pointing out the old leader of the troop, and speaking in a terrible voice, "lost a halfpenny to-day. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... still more delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys dance a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure to turn it into a halfpenny. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that one of my schoolmates told me, when a boy, of a seventh son of a seventh son, somewhere in Essex County, who touched for the scrofula, and who used to hang a silver fourpence halfpenny about the neck of those who came to him, which fourpence halfpenny it was solemnly affirmed became of a remarkably black color after having been some time worn, and that his own brother had been subjected to this extraordinary treatment; but I must add that ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... first attracted to the matter by an article in the Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles de Geneve, 1894, by M. Margot. It appears that clean aluminium used as a pencil will leave a mark on clean damp glass. If, instead of a pencil, a small wheel of aluminium—say as big as a halfpenny and three times as thick—is rotated on the lathe, and a piece of glass pressed against it, the aluminium will form an adherent, though not very continuous coating on ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... Baron was re-perusing in a halfpenny newspaper interested him. "La Voix du Peuple" was a noisy sheet which, under the pretence of defending outraged justice and morality, set a fresh scandal circulating every morning in the hope of thereby increasing its sales. And that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Think of a mountain of lavender lifting itself in purple poignancy into the silver skies and filling men's nostrils with a new breath of life—a purple hill of incense. It is true that upon my few excursions of discovery on a halfpenny tram I have failed to hit the precise spot. But it must be there; some poet called it by its name. There is at least warrant enough for the solemn purple plumes (following the botanical formation of lavender) which I have required people to wear in the ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfry go to grass; and when I am king, as king I ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... specimens it glorifies, without rejoicing in his prose, and thoroughly despising their poetry?—With a few brilliant exceptions, of course, (for ill-used Milton, Pope—and shall we in the same sentence put Dryden?—are there,) a more wretched set of halfpenny-a-liners never stormed mob-trodden Parnassus. The poetry of Queen Anne's time and thereabouts, I judge to have been at the lowest bathos of badness; all satyrs, and swains, fulsome flattery of titles, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sixpences, which passed for fourpence-halfpenny. See the note on vol. i., p. 36. Since writing that note I have discovered another proof of the contempt with which that coin was treated:—'Christian, the wife of Robert Green, of Brexham, Somersetshire, in 1663, is said to have made a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... opinion concerning Mr. M'Culla's project, of circulating notes stamped on copper, that shall pass for the value of halfpence and pence. I have some knowledge of the man; and about a month ago he brought me his book, with a couple of his halfpenny notes: but I was then out of order, and he could not be admitted. Since that time I called at his house; where I discoursed, the whole affair with him as thoroughly as I could. I am altogether a stranger to his character. He talked to me in the usual style, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... directed to ascertain the feeling of the citizens as to whether the provisions of the new act should be adopted, and a poll of the burgesses was taken on September 27th, when 150 voted in favour of the adoption of the act while only 7 voted against it. The act provided that a rate of one halfpenny in the pound might be levied for library purposes, but no provision was made for buying books. In 1855 this act was repealed by another, which remained the principal library act for England and Wales until 1892; it allowed one penny in ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... past," said Carroll, waving his pipe through the smoke. "Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity, the Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence—a pot of bitter twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's most amusing on the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about myself. They are ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... end, of glass stained with colours marvellous to behold. Men said indeed that Merchant Roger clearly owed that window to the Saint, seeing that when he first entered the town scarce a dozen years before, he came but as a poor pedlar, possessed of naught but 'a hap, a halfpenny, and a lambskin,' whereas these few years spent under the shadow of the Saint's protection had made him already a man ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... refuse to leave Florence Aylmer one halfpenny of my money; and, what is more, the thousand a year which I intend to settle on you will be only given on condition that you do not help Florence Aylmer with one penny of it. Do not answer me now. You are young ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... pounds of flour, a halfpenny worth of yeast, a pinch of salt, one pint of milk or water. Put the flour into a pan, with your fist hollow out a hole in the centre of the flour, place the yeast and salt at the bottom, then add the milk (which should be lukewarm), and with your ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... uncertainty of what will be done in the year 1870, when the runs lapse to the Government. The general opinion appears to be, that they will be re-let, at a greatly advanced rent, to the present occupiers. The present rent of land is a farthing per acre for the first and second years, a halfpenny for the third, and three farthings for the fourth and every succeeding year. Most of the waste lands in the province are now paying three farthings per acre. There is the danger also of scab. This appears to depend a good deal upon the position of the run and its nature. Thus, a run situated ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... be very injurious to the trade of the place. The only way to supersede it is to reduce the postage to 1d. Were this done, the post-office would be preferred, for its greater certainty, even though the carriers would go for a halfpenny. The post-office would unquestionably receive ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... 'em all on the fifth of November," said Joanna, "as we sing around here on bonfire nights—and 'A halfpenny loaf to feed the Pope, a penn'orth of cheese to choke him,' ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... name still?' I said. 'My name ever since I left England,' he said, giving me a look, 'is Braden—John Braden.' 'Yes,' he went on, 'I paid 'em—though I never had one penny of the money I was fool enough to take for the time being—not one halfpenny!' 'Who had it, Mr. Braden?' I asked him, thinking that he'd perhaps tell after all that time. 'Never mind, my lad!' he answered. 'It'll come out—yet. Never mind that, now. I'll tell you why I wanted to see you. The fact is, I've only been a ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... humour of "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur," and of "Innocents Abroad." Its dominant notes are democracy, freedom, and confidence. It is religious-spirited without superstition consciously Christian in the vein of a nearly Unitarian Christianity, fervent but broadened, broadened as a halfpenny is broadened by being run over by an express train, substantially the same, that is to say, but with a marked loss of outline and detail. It is a tradition of romantic concession to good and inoffensive women and a high development of that personal morality which puts ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... 'I won't marry you, but I'll give you money,' that's reason—listen to him. It is only little clerks and twopenny-halfpenny swells that deceive girls with promises of marriage, and these you must avoid; but a real gentleman always begins by giving something, and him you ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... cooperage is admirable; I have nowhere seen better-made casks. The handsomest shops, as we might expect, are the apothecaries'; and, here, as elsewhere, they thrive by charging a sixpence for what cost them a halfpenny. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... pass away their time. Now, in America, in the first place, there is no one who makes trifles; no one who will devote their time, as sellers of the articles unless well compensated; and no one who will be induced, either by fashion or idleness, to give a halfpenny more for a thing than it is worth. In consequence, nothing was sent to Mrs Trollope's bazaar. She had to furnish it from the shops, and had to pay very high salaries to the young women who attended; and the people of Cincinnati, aware that the same articles were to be purchased at ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... said. "I've saved a halfpenny. It isn't much, but it shows that I can save when I give my ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... hardly convinced. How, he asked Derues, had he found the 100,000 livres to buy Buisson-Souef, he who had not a halfpenny a short time ago? Derues replied that he had borrowed it from a friend; that there was no use in talking about it; the place was his now, his alone, and M. de Lamotte had no longer a right to be there; he was very sorry, poor dear gentleman, that his wife had gone ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... hopes that Graymarsh will put his trust in Providence," and also to that of Mobb's "mother-in-law," who was so disgusted with her stepson's conduct (for DICKENS meant step-mother when he wrote "mother-in-law"—an odd lapsus calami never subsequently corrected) that she "stopped his halfpenny a-week pocket-money, and had given a double-bladed knife with a corkscrew in it to the Missionaries, which she had bought on purpose for him." We don't blame Dr. BARNARDO—much; but we do blame these weak-knee'd parents and guardians, who apparently don't know their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... sat women with baskets of yellow marigold blossoms, to sell to native visitors for decorating purposes at the altar. Great use is made of this flower, which seems to be raised in large quantities for this object. Once or twice we saw these women sell a handful for a halfpenny; but it must be a sorry trade whereby to earn a living. Pigeons swarm in and about Benares enjoying a superstitious veneration and protection; while sacred bulls obstruct the passages, and the narrow, nauseous, over-crowded streets, rendering them too filthy for foot passage. Everything appears ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... as the good old Admiral said, as he and his men were about to perish, 'My lads, the way to heaven is as short by sea as by land.' But the wounded heart in the agony of its grief is slow to realize that fact. Sailors ought to be serious men; every halfpenny they earn is won at the risk of a life. In Lowestoft, I am glad to find, many of them are. 'The Salvation Army has done 'em a deal of good,' says a decent woman, with whom I happened to scrape an acquaintance at the most attractive coffee-house I have ever seen—the Coffee ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... and made us half ashamed of our long forgetfulness of home. But there are good things abroad too for poor men; the rich may live any where. An enormous salad, crisp, cold, white, and of delicious flavour, for a halfpenny; olive oil, for fourpence a pound, to dress it with; and wine for fourpence a gallon to make it disagree with you;[15] fuel for almost nothing, and bread for little, are not small advantages to frugal housekeepers; but, when dispensed by a despotic government, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... amount of ecstasy, he is not at all unlikely to have a second offered to him. Most men are generous with cigarettes. Many a man I know would far rather give a beggar a cigarette than a shilling, though the cigarette may have cost, originally, a penny-halfpenny, or more—a strange and paradoxical state ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... the presence of a closely packed assembly of politicians, idlers upon town, shop-men, and drunkards. Thither also Horne Tooke and Dunning used to adjourn after dining with Taffy Kenyon at the Chancery Lane eating-house, where the three friends were wont to stay their hunger for sevenpence halfpenny each. "Dunning and myself," Horne Tooke said boastfully, when he recalled these economical repasts, "were generous, for we gave the girl who waited on us a penny apiece; but Kenyon, who always knew the value ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... presently reach the postal authorities, with the result that an official called at the chemist's shop. The interview was unpleasant. It happened that Mr. Farmiloe (not for the first time) had just then allowed himself to run out of certain things always in demand by the public—halfpenny stamps, for instance. Moreover, his accounts were not in perfect order. This, he had to hear, was emphatically unbusinesslike, and, in brief, would ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... lost two and a half cents, or even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents. In country places all over the Pacific coast, nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases the cost of life; as even for a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or sevenpence-halfpenny, as the case may be. You would say that this system of mutual robbery was as broad as it was long; but I have discovered a plan to make it broader, with which I here endow the public. It is brief and simple - radiantly simple. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nowadays that she conquered him, and another that he conquered her. I do not know [which it was], my dear. Did you ever see a two-headed halfpenny? Yes? Throw it up, and when it falls down ask me which side is under. A Welsher told me that story. Welshers always ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... only cost fourpence-halfpenny," she said, gravely, "and the little you eat you had better ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... tenants were villeins or cottagers, thirteen of the former and eight of the latter. Each of the villeins had a messuage and half a virgate, 12 to 15 acres of arable land at least, for which his rent was chiefly corn and labour, though there were two money payments, a halfpenny on November 12 and a penny whenever he brewed. He had to pay a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on November 12, and at Christmas a cock, two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... in the streets; and next morning, being very hungry, he got up and walked about, and asked everybody he met to give him a halfpenny to keep him from starving; but nobody stayed to answer him, and only two or three gave him a halfpenny; so that the poor boy was soon quite weak and faint for the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... celebrated spot in Hampstead, for here flow the famous chalybeate waters, which rivalled those of Bath and Tunbridge Wells, and in their best days drew an amazing army of gay people to the spot. The earliest mention of the spring is in the time of Charles II., when a halfpenny token with the words "Dorothy Rippin at the well in Hampsted" on the obverse was issued. In 1698 Susanna Noel with her son Baptist, third Earl of Gainsborough, gave the well, encompassed by six acres of ground, to the poor of Hampstead. It ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... of each patient in the temporary hospitals, including the salary of the medical officer, was four shillings and one halfpenny. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... their programme; action the object of their lives. They receive no salaries; their simple necessaries are alone provided for. Some of them perhaps get half-a-crown a month as pocket money; but that will neither kill nor cure a man. Sevenpence halfpenny per week is a big sum—isn't it?—big enough for a Jesuit priest, but calculated to disturb the Christian balance of any other class of clergymen. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... have a certain amount of business in Dilborough. I'm generally down there once or twice a year. I walk over to Halfpenny Hole and lunch with Sharper. It's a seven mile walk. But lunch at the hotel is seven-and-six. Doing uncommonly well, is Sharper. He's in Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper. You know. The only jams that really matter. ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... flies. When you hear these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,—buy a watermelon for a halfpenny,—split it, and scoop out the middle,—sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Gibson was extravagant or not. Now two letters during the week of her absence showed what was in those days considered a very proper amount of conjugal affection. Yet not too much—at elevenpence halfpenny postage. A third letter would have been extravagant. Sister looked to sister with an approving nod as Molly named the second letter, which arrived in Hollingford the very day before Mrs. Gibson was to return. They had settled between themselves that two letters ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... not even a mentionable ache, and I tell you candidly, though I am afraid it is a dreadful confession, I have'nt felt wretched by any means since I left home. Poor old Daddy! I'm sorry he was bothered about such a trivial thing as a marriage settlement; perhaps it is that he wants twopence-halfpenny to square his accounts. Pump him, will you, and if it should be this that's preying on his mind, you may tell him he can draw on me for the amount, and I'll toss him double or quits when I come home. I suppose he's pretty nearly spliced by this time. Concerning ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... under perfect control." The sixpences do not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot from a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fare is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes inappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. Take, again, the harmless, necessary operation of shaving. In a good English barber's ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... his heel as if irresolute. "Yes, I am going. I am going back to my cabin, back to my wallowing in the mire. Why not? Is there anyone who cares the toss of a halfpenny what I do?" ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Baxter. There was a correspondence in the papers, but it never led to anything. There were several other similar cases, and then there was the death of Hay Connor. What a cackle there was about an unsolved mystery of the air, and what columns in the halfpenny papers, and yet how little was ever done to get to the bottom of the business! He came down in a tremendous vol-plane from an unknown height. He never got off his machine and died in his pilot's seat. Died of what? 'Heart disease,' said the doctors. Rubbish! Hay Connor's heart ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... granted towards the support of the British forts and settlements on the coast of Africa.. The sum total granted in this session arose to four millions one hundred and forty-one thousand six hundred and sixty-one pounds, nine shillings and eleven pence halfpenny, to be raised by the land-tax, at three shillings in the pound; the malt, and other duties, the surplus of divers impositions remaining in the bank and exchequer; one million by annuities at three per cent., charged ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... colouring, with nothing, so far as coarser folk can judge, to hurt the better feelings of the most exquisite purist. A cherry-red half window-blind kept up an imaginary warmth in the cold room, and threw quite a glow on the floor. Twelve cockle-shells and a halfpenny china figure were ranged solemnly along the mantel-shelf. Even the spittoon was an original note, and instead of sawdust contained sea-shells. And as for the hearthrug, it would merit an article to itself, and a coloured diagram to help the text. It was patchwork, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a halfpenny or less apiece one may buy the cigar boxes made to hold twenty-five cigars. These boxes, being fashioned by machinery, are all—at any rate all those devoted to a particular "brand"—of the same dimensions; they are ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... examples of this persistence of ballads in the popular memory, even in our day, and only persons ignorant of the facts can suppose that, a century ago, there were no reciters at the head of Ettrick, and elsewhere in Scotland. Not even now has the halfpenny newspaper wholly destroyed the memories of traditional poetry and of traditional tales even in the English-speaking parts of our islands, while in the Highlands a rich harvest awaits ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... toes or the carpet. By-and-bye he went out, after asking his mother's leave, to play with his hoop. He had not gone far when he saw an old blind pig, who, with his hat in his hand was crying at the loss of his dog; so he put his hand in his pocket and found a halfpenny which he gave to the poor old pig. It was for such thoughtful conduct as this that his mother often gave this little pig roast beef. We now come to the little pig ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... candle; but there were the usual headings, the usual ranks of capitals that tell us so quick that there is nothing we shall care about in the pale undecipherable paragraphs below, and that we have spent our halfpenny in vain. There was the usual young lady who had bought, or was trying on, a large hat, and whose top-story above, in profile, had got so far ahead of her other stories below. There were the consignments of locust-flights of boots, for this young lady's friends, with heels in the instep. And ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,—buy a water-melon for a halfpenny,—split it, and scoop out the middle,—sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and feast upon ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hadn't got a shilling in the world and he would never take a halfpenny from me. He had to have money. He told me about it that night before you came. Miller gave him five thousand pounds for it—secret service money from one of the branches of his party. Now you ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of gas; and it was evident that the process of settling down would go on until they settled into their graves. They read old-fashioned newspapers with effort, and were just taking with avidity to a new sort of paper, costing a halfpenny, which they believed to be extraordinarily bright and attractive, and which never really succeeded until it became extremely dull, discarding all serious news and replacing it by vapid tittle-tattle, and substituting for political articles ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... which was the brass plate of 'Creed, Tailor and Robe-maker.' Creed was dead, however. His widow was a pew-opener in the cathedral hard by; his eldest son was a little scamp of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny, led his little brothers into mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel. A couple of the latter were sitting on the door-step, down which you went into the passage of the house; and they jumped up with great alacrity to meet their lodger, and plunged wildly, and rather to Pen's surprise, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discovered there were hills to which he could lift his eyes after those humiliating interviews with Mr. Monk concerning the wrong delivery of cheese and bacon. I was aware of the means by which news of the outer world got to Clayton. It came in a popular halfpenny paper, and that outer world must therefore have seemed to Clayton to be all aeroplanes, musical-comedy girls, dog shows, and Mr. Lloyd George. The grocer's boy got his tongue free at last, and talked. He was halt and obscure, but I thought I saw a mind beating ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... being seven in number, that for swimmers 36 yards long by 18 wide, and cost L2,000. The place is now occupied by a timber yard, the old spring being covered in, though fitted with a pump for public use. For many years a tribe of water carriers procured a living by retailing the water at a halfpenny per can. The red sand from the New Street tunnels was turned to account in tilling up the old baths, much to the advantage of Mr. Turner, the lessee, and of the hauliers who turned the honest penny by turning in so near ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... wide truth in that, on which I do not now enlarge. The measure of my faith is the measure of my possession of Christ. He puts the key of the treasure-house into our hands and says, 'Go in, and take as much as you like'; and some of us come out with a halfpenny as all that we care to bring away. You are starving, some of you, whilst you are sitting in a granary bursting with plenty. Suppose a proclamation were made, 'There will be given away gold to anybody that likes to come. Let them bring a purse, and it will be filled.' How large a purse ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... night we put up at an hotel in Sackville-street, and the next morning the street re-echoed with cries of "Here is a full account of the miraculous parrot just arrived in the city of Dublin, with a list of his wonderful cures, for the small charge of one halfpenny." Shortly after we set off by the Ballydangan heavy fly, for Sourcraut Hall. I was placed on the top of the coach, to the delight of the outside passengers; where I soon made an acquaintance with the customary oratory of guards and coachmen, which produced much laughter. I rapidly added ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... sufferings escaped to England, where he published an account of Guiana in 1602. Sparrey is chiefly remembered by his own account of how he purchased eight young women, the eldest but eighteen years of age, for a red-hafted knife, which in England had cost him but a halfpenny. This was not the sort of trade which Raleigh left him behind ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... of the rough material from which her servants came. Besides, in her establishment, so that the result was good, no one inquired if the small economies had been observed in the production. Whereas every penny—every halfpenny, was of consequence to Miss Galindo; and visions of squandered drops of milk and wasted crusts of bread filled her mind with dismay. But she swallowed all her apprehensions down, out of her regard for Lady Ludlow, and desire to be of service to her. No one knows how ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 5 p.m., but the enterprising section of the London evening newspapers had their 6.30 editions on sale in the streets. To such a pitch had the policy of giving the public what it wants been elevated that the halfpenny newspapers were able to give the people of London the news each afternoon a full ninety minutes before the edition was supposed to have left the press. The time of the edition was boldly printed in the top right-hand corner of each paper as a guarantee of enterprise ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... 15 cents to 1 dollar, petticoats 30 cents to 1 dollar, etc., everything in proportion. We thought one dollar per dozen all round was exorbitant, but when hardly anything is less than eightpence (as a cent, according to the exchange, is more than a halfpenny) it ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... further imposition of one farthing in the pound per week was fixed upon all servants receiving four pounds per annum as wages, and upwards to eight pounds a-year inclusive. Those who received from eight to sixteen pounds were taxed at one halfpenny per pound. An aid of three shillings in the pound for one year was laid upon all lands, tenements, and hereditaments, according to their true value. Without specifying the particulars of those impositions, we shall only observe that, in the general charge, the commons did not exempt one member ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... I will undertake to place a capital dinner before you; and, except the trouble of catching the animals, it shall cost nothing beyond a halfpenny, which I will expend in mustard and pepper. I cannot grow the pepper, so I shall buy a farthing's-worth of that and a farthing's-worth of mustard seed, which I would grow, and could then give you mustard to eat, and also ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... waters." For her father's comfort, noting the sad wistful eyes that watched her coming in and going out, she had resigned herself to spend long melancholy hours within doors, reading aloud till Sir John fell asleep, playing backgammon—a game she detested worse even than shove-halfpenny, which latter primitive game they played sometimes on the shovel-board in the hall. Life could scarcely be sadder than Angela's life in those grey winter days; and had it not been for an occasional ride across country with her father, health and spirits ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... fellows who have their own way of interpreting the Social Contract. The whole mass of decrees, acts, and rhetorical flourishes which are dispatched to them from Paris, or which emanate from the new authorities, are not worth a halfpenny tax maintained on each bottle of wine. There are to be no more excise duties; they will only take the civic oath on this express condition, and that very evening they hang, in effigy, their two deputies, who "had not supported their interests" in the National Assembly. A few months ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... frippery; leather or prunello; chaff, drug, froth bubble smoke, cobweb; weed; refuse &c (inutility) 645; scum &c (dirt) 653. joke, jest, snap of the fingers; fudge &c (unmeaning) 517; fiddlestick^, fiddlestick end^; pack of nonsense, mere farce. straw, pin, fig, button, rush; bulrush, feather, halfpenny, farthing, brass farthing, doit^, peppercorn, jot, rap, pinch of snuff, old son; cent, mill, picayune, pistareen^, red cent [U.S.]. minutiae, details, minor details, small fry; dust in the balance, feather in the scale, drop in the ocean, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Wimpole Theatre reopened with the same company and gave 'Sunshine through the Clouds' and 'Only a Halfpenny'; and in 1860 for the last time with 'The Jacobite' by Planche; a scene from 'King John'; and 'Helping Hands' by Tom Taylor. The last was a beautiful play, but too refined for the ordinary theatre, and consequently did not ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... ye have me here. O, that I were within my fort of Bungay, Whose walls are wash'd with the clear streams of Waveney,[462] Then would not Gloster pass a halfpenny, For all these rebels and their poor king too.[463] Laughtst thou, King Henry? Thou know'st my words are true, God help thee, good old ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... of Hector," the boy said. "Would you have currants, lady? These once bloomed in the island gardens of the blue Aegean. They are uncommon fine ones, and the figure is low; they're fourpence-halfpenny a pound. Would ye mayhap make trial of our teas? We do not advertise, as some folks do: but sell as low ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he was ashamed to refuse him such a sum; but, "Upon my soul," said he, "I have not a single halfpenny in my pocket; for I am in a worse condition, if possible, than yourself; for I have lost all my money, and, what is worse, I owe Mr. Trent, whom you remember ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the rack, and stamping it, by sticking it in a noisy nick, before the would-be traveller could speak. When he could, it was with a bright shilling, given him at his father's last visit, a threepenny-piece, and twopence halfpenny, in his hand. ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... stones from horses' feet, a piece of string, a watch spring, twenty or thirty shot, a button, a magnet, a cog-wheel, a pencil, a match-box, a case of foreign stamps all stuck together with salt water, a whistle, a halfpenny with a hole in it, and a soaked and swollen cigar which the Captain had ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... It was three to one. To any one acquainted with the trio of sisters arrayed against me, it will at once be apparent that "these odds" (as the halfpenny papers say) "but faintly represent the superiority of ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, dressed in a pea overcoat, and wearing thick leather gaiters, and gloves like a hedger's, came ambling towards the street corner where Silas Wegg sat at his stall. A few small lots of fruits and sweets, and a choice collection of halfpenny ballads, comprised Mr. Wegg's stock, and assuredly it was the hardest little stall of all the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "When Rosanna came in this evening, she bought the fellow to that. 'It will just do,' she says, 'to put my cuffs and collars in, and keep them from being crumpled in my box.' One and ninepence, Mr. Cuff. As I live by bread, not a halfpenny more!" ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... convex, both have a hole in the centre and are soldered together by their edges in the manner shown in Fig. 10. [Footnote: Since writing this I find there are now sold to boys, for the large sum of one-halfpenny, whistles formed in tin, of almost similar construction to those described. I never yet found anyone to make them "speak" properly; boys not knowing how to modulate or inspire the breath. I have now tried one of them against my silver ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... their gowns to pieces and unpick their characters," he said. "Never mind, Stella! The time'll come when we shall settle down to domestic bliss at Camberley on twopence-halfpenny a year. That'll be jolly, won't it? Long walks over the heather and quiet evenings—alone with me. You must look forward to that, my dear." His voice rose to a veritable menace as he sketched the future which awaited ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... natural effort to turn our minds away from the contemplation of the subject, because it is painful and unpleasant. Do you think it would be a wise thing for a man, if he began to suspect that he was insolvent, to refuse to look into his books or to take stock, and let things drift, till there was not a halfpenny in the pound for anybody? What do you suppose his creditors would call him? They would not compliment him on either his honesty or his prudence, would they? And is it not the part of a wise man, if he begins to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... indeed, have we experienced a keener sense of our true greatness as a poet, than when we encountered, on one occasion, a peripatetic minstrel, deafening the Canongate with the notes of our particular music, and surrounded by an eager crowd demanding the halfpenny broadsheet. "This is fame!" we exclaimed to a legal friend who was beside us; and, with a glow of triumph on our countenance, we descended the North Bridge, to indite another of the same. Notwithstanding this, we cannot aver ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... six million pounds of pepper annually consumed in Europe, which used to cost, when purchased at Aleppo, brought over land thither from India, at the rate of two shillings per lb.; whereas it now cost, purchased in India, only two-pence halfpenny per lb.: the consumption of cloves was 450,000 lbs.; cost at Aleppo four shillings and nine-pence per lb., in India nine-pence: the consumption of mace was 150,000 lbs.; cost at Aleppo the same per lb. as the cloves; ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of the century, was the abundance of salmon caught in the Elbe, and even in the Mulde at Dessau, that it was stipulated as in Scotland, that servants should not have salmon more than twice or thrice in the week. The lowest price for salmon was then twopence halfpenny a pound. As a boy I can remember seeing the salmon in large numbers leap over a weir in the very town of Dessau, and though they had travelled for so many miles inland, the fish was very good, though not so good as Severn salmon. Game also was very cheap, and sold for not much more than mutton, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... for instance. "Nobby" was a weedy little Cockney who became my "batman," or servant. He had complete control of my privy purse, did all my shopping, and haggled over my every halfpenny as carefully as though it were his own. Then, when he had served me for over six months, I overheard him one day recounting his prison experiences, and I discovered that he had been a pilferer and ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... the Eastward into the Southward of the line of Canterbury's pilgrims when they set forth to worship, on his homeward course, after a walk of two days out of Dover. He descended London's borough, having exactly twopence halfpenny for refreshment; following a term of prudent starvation, at the end of the walk. It is not a district seductive to the wayfarer's appetite; as, for example, one may find the Jew's fry of fish in oil, inspiriting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hundredweight of brown sugar imported from the British plantations, and only eighteenpence upon that imported from any foreign colony. Upon every pound of refined sugar from the former one penny, from the latter one halfpenny. Upon every gallon of French wine twopence; of Spanish wine ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae |
