"Half-penny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first, just like a beggar, crave One penny or one half-penny to have; And if you grant its first suit, 'twill aspire, From pence to pounds, and so will still mount higher To the whole soul: but if it makes its moan, Then say, here is not for you, get you gone. For if you give it entrance at the door, It ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Dick, and he kissed every one, beginning with Hester and finishing with the dolls. Then they all sat down to the tea-party, and partook largely of the delicacies, and after tea Dick solemnly asked the children if they had seen the flying half-penny he had brought back with him from Australia. The children crowded round him, and the half-penny was produced and handed round. Each child touched it, and found it real. Auntie Hester and Auntie Rachel examined it. Boulou was requested ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... they apply at the office; the charge is twopence for cleaning a room, making the bed, bringing water, &c. If there is more than one bed in a room, a penny must be paid for every bed over the first. Boots can be cleaned for a penny, shoes for a half-penny. For carrying wood, &c., either a halfpenny or a penny will be exacted according to the time taken. Payment for these services must not be made to the servant, but at ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... now and then," he added, "and we'll talk about the stars, the future of Socialism, and the Woman Question—anything you like except about yourself and your twopenny-half-penny affairs." ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... silver pennies, and when anyone wanted a half-penny, he chopped the silver penny in two, and if he wanted a farthing he chopped the silver penny in four, so that money was all sorts of queer shapes. But Edward the First had caused round copper half-pennies and farthings to be made, and when the Welsh prince had heard of this he ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... with which he went to London in March 1737. His pupil, David Garrick, went with him to study law, and when Garrick was a rich, famous and rather vain man, Johnson, who liked to curb the "insolence of wealth" once referred to 1737 as the year "when I came to London with twopence half-penny in my pocket; and thou, Davy, with three-halfpence in thine." Nothing came of this first visit to the capital. He lived as best he could, dining for eightpence, and seeing a few friends, one of whom was Henry ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... gone back to her people, and I've come back to town; and what do I find? Nothing but bills, and I can't pay one of them. After settling for the special license, my fare back to town, and that telegram to Aurora. (feels in pocket, produces coppers) I've got sevenpence half-penny in the wide world and a wife! It's all Quayle's fault! Damn Quayle! I'll never believe in him again. I don't even know where my next meal is coming from, ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... three years that had swallowed a half-penny, Atkins reports rupture of the innominate artery. No symptoms developed, but six weeks later, the child had an attack of ulcerative stomatitis, from which it seemed to be recovering nicely, when suddenly it ejected ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... go to Hambledon, in Hampshire, to see the cradle of cricket, as it is called—the old ground on Broad Half-penny Down where they used to play cricket in tall hats, as described in John Nyren's book, which someone ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... If a man has not a half-penny, ought he to ask a woman to share it? Rather an Irish way of putting the matter," with a laugh, not without bitterness, "but you understand. Ought he not to wait till he has at least something to offer besides ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... lady? Oh, her. She is not a young lady—leastways she is not dressed like one, but like a plain, decent body. She was all of a piece—blue serge! Bless your heart, the peddlers bring it round here at elevenpence half-penny the yard, and a good breadth too; and plain boots, not heeled like your'n, miss, nor your'n, ma'am; and a felt hat like a boy. You'd say the parish had dressed her for ten shillings, and got a pot of beer ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... consolations of smuggled brandy; in which, besides it's intrinsic excellence, every glass would derive an additional zest from the consideration that it had been the honored means of cheating government out of three pence half-penny.—With all his horror however of regular government and subordination, Mr. Dulberry was made sensible that on the present occasion he must submit to some such oppression; for, as he was wholly unsupported in ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... established for the first time. "It is important to note that the concessions made during its course to the convictions of Tories and Churchmen, in the matter of religious education, stirred the bitter and abiding wrath of the political Dissenters." The measure was passed, while the half-penny postage for newspapers, and the half-penny post cards were ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... finding purchasers; while, after one had passed rudely on, another had looked at her young face and smiled, another had said, "What a nice child!" but not one had taken the flowers, and left the penny or the half-penny that was to pay for them the little girl, as if accustomed to all this, only arranged again the pretty nosegays that had been disarranged in the vain hope of selling them, and commenced anew in her pretty singing tone, "Come, buy my flowers; flowers ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... he trouble his borrowers with abstract calculations of figures, or references to ready-reckoners; his simple rule of interest being all comprised in the one golden sentence, 'two-pence for every half-penny,' which greatly simplified the accounts, and which, as a familiar precept, more easily acquired and retained in the memory than any known rule of arithmetic, cannot be too strongly recommended to the notice of capitalists, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... for baptism was not to exceed forty pence, whilst that for marriage was not as a general rule to be more than half a mark. One farthing was all that could be demanded for a mass for the dead, and the priest was bound to give change for a half-penny when requested or forego his fee.(645) Steps were taken at the same time to improve the morality of the city by ridding the streets of lewd women and licentious men. On the occasion of a first offence, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... looking very dejected. That morning he left the house with five pounds in his pocket to try his luck at the races, but, alas! he had returned at nightfall footsore and weary, and nothing in his possession but a bad half-penny. ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light them, especially not if the match be a German one. The German match is quite a high ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... hand now pinioned flat, Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass; Or dropped a half-penny in Homer's hat; Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass; Or held, by Solomon's own invitation, A torch at ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to play, The moon does shine as bright as day, Leave your supper, and leave your sleep, And meet your play-fellows in the street; Come with a whoop, and come with a call, And come with a good will, or not at all. Up the ladder and down the wall, A half-penny roll will serve us all. You'll find milk and I'll find flour, And we'll have ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... men. The excellence of the music, the masses of flowers, the number of great names and well-advertised society beauties present, would subsequently provide material for long and eulogistic paragraphs in the half-penny press ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... fruit was this: Le Grice was in the habit of eating apples in school-time, for which he had been often rebuked. One day, having particularly pleased the master, the latter, who was eating apples himself, and who would now and then with great ostentation present a boy with some half-penny token of his mansuetude, called out to his favorite of the moment: "Le Grice, here is an apple for you." Le Grice, who felt his dignity hurt as a Grecian, but was more pleased at having this opportunity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... features, to pay a nightly visit to some quiet and timid man, whom they swore, on pain of death, to visit the neighboring chapel in order to inform the priest, in the face of his own congregation, that unless he reduced the fees for marriage to half-a-guinea, those of baptism to nineteen-pence half-penny, and celebrate Mass for thirteen pence, he might prepare his coffin. If he got hay and oats for his horse at a station, he was at liberty to take them, but if not, he was to depart quietly, on pain of smarting for it. The unfortunate individuals on whom they imposed this ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... courage, burning zeal for doing good, but great kindness, and even tenderness of heart. "I see in this world," he said, "two heaps of human happiness and misery; now if I can take but the smallest bit from one heap and add it to the other I carry a point—if, as I go home, a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something." There was even in him a strain, if not of humour, of a shrewdness which was akin to it, and expressed itself in many pithy sayings. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... England. A heavy blow was impending over the fourth estate. In 1712 a tax, in the shape of a half-penny stamp, was levied upon each newspaper. The reason alleged for this measure was that political pamphlets had so increased in number and virulence that the queen had called the attention of Parliament to them, and had recommended it to find a remedy equal to the mischief, and, in one of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... like a bad half-penny," said the sailor; and sitting down wearily on a chair which Katie placed for him directly, Bolton gave a short account of what he called the most unlucky mischance that had ever happened to him in the course of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... four-fourths, seeing that Petit's wife was a virtuous woman, who had a lover for pleasure and a husband for duty. How many were there in the town as careful of their hearts and mouths? If you can point out one to me, I'll give you a kick or a half-penny, whichever you like. You will find some who have neither husband nor lover. Certain females have a lover and no husband. Ugly women have a husband and no lover. But to meet with a woman who, having one husband and one lover, keeps to the deuce without ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... custom to pay a half-penny each for all queen wasps in the spring, but Mr. C.S. Martin, who had many years' experience on the fruit plantations of the Toddington Orchard Company, extending to about 700 acres, as well as on his own plantations at Dunnington, writes to me ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... motives and ideals. This sort of journalism "cuts no ice" in the United States. It is just "yellow journalism." Voila tout! Why take it seriously? But the British people do not know this; and as the British half-penny Press, when it does quote the American Press, rarely quotes anything but the most virulent extracts from this particular class of newspaper, one is reduced yet again to wondering whence the blessings of a common ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... wretch that one would say, Ugh! at, and kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. But he looked at it as a coin-collector would look at a Pescennius Niger, if the coins of that Emperor are as scarce as they used to be when I was collecting half-penny tokens and pine-tree shillings and battered bits of Roman brass with the head of Gallienus or some such old ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the policeman taking his prize to the station house to lay the information, he discovered that he had been outwitted. The rouleau contained a hundred good farthings, for each of which he had paid two pence half-penny. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Crows, Black Birds, and Squirrels, by pulling up corn at this season of the year, therefore, be it enacted by this Town meeting, that ninepence as a bounty per head be given for every full-grown crow, and twopence half-penny per head for every young crow, and twopence half-penny per head for every crow blackbird, and one penny half-penny per head for every red-winged blackbird, and one penny half-penny per head for every thrush or jay bird and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... his side. Unless the customer was loquacious, there was no bandying of words, and Hendry merely unbuttoned his east-trouser pocket, giving his body the angle at which the pocket could be most easily filled by the dulseman. He then deposited his half-penny, and moved on. Neither had spoken; yet in the country they would have roared their predictions about to-morrow to a ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... ransom on the march, but the majority were taken to Chagres. From there they were sent in a ship to Porto Bello, a neighboring coast town, Morgan threatening that place with destruction unless a heavy ransom was sent him. The inhabitants sent word back that not a half-penny would be paid, and that he might do what he pleased. What he pleased to do was to carry out his ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... friend above a week when I was able to joke. Thus I was forced to beg my bread, and a sorry trade I have found it, Mr. Harley. I told all my misfortunes truly, but they were seldom believed; and the few who gave me a half-penny as they passed, did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people do n't care to give alms without some security for their money,—such as a wooden leg, or ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... took the bottle from him and filled the glasses himself, telling the young gentleman that the brandy was the best in England, a relic of the old smuggling days, but far too good for scoundrels who had never paid the King's revenue one half-penny. Then when Mr. Benson had left the room he began to talk about the field again, and how anxious he was to start the excavations. That was about all I heard, sir, for shortly afterwards Mr. Glenthorpe told me to clear away the things, which took me ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... monument," he said, "was the lucky sentence. It stuck in the English memory and it will never go out of it. One wouldn't give a half-penny for a monument if one could get a phrase fastened in a people's memory ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... correct, that you pay him for his silence and not for his sounds. In spite of his discordant gurglings and squealings, he is welcomed by the nursery-maids and their infant tribes of little sturdy rogues in petticoats, who flock eagerly round him, and purchase the luxury of a half-penny grind, which they perform con amore, seated on the top of his machine. If, when your front garden is thus invaded, you insist upon his decamping without a fee, he shews his estimate of the peace and quietness you desiderate by his unwillingness to retire, which, however, he at length ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... glance I detected a place where I would not be too much crowded. So I went and sat down by the side of a man who seemed to me to be old, and who smoked a half-penny clay pipe, which had become as black as coal. From six to eight beer saucers were piled up on the table in front of him, indicating the number of "bocks" he had already absorbed. With that same glance I had recognized in him a "regular toper," one of those frequenters ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... once engaged all the men that he found, and sent them into his vineyard to begin work at six in the morning,—the first hour of the Jewish day. The terms were arranged beforehand,—a penny a day. The Roman denarius is reckoned equal to sevenpence half-penny of our money; but obviously it was considered the ordinary rate of a labourer's wages at ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... he has drunk brackish water and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with a tedious existence; but upon his return he can sell a pound of his tea for a half-penny less than the English merchant, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... is the government Beneficenza, which the more intelligent part account a great curse. Some fifteen hundred or two thousand persons, many of them able-bodied men, receive fifteen baiocchi,—sevenpence half-penny,—per day, in return for which they pouter about with barrows, removing earth from the old ruins, or cleaning the streets, which are none the cleaner, or picking grass in the square of the Vatican. Many deplorable tales are told in Rome of these ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... within a year of the abolition of Monopoly, a very good smokeable cigar could be purchased in the estancos [140] from one half-penny and upwards, but as soon as the free trade project was definitely decided upon, the Government factories, in order to work off their old stocks of inferior leaf, filled the estancos with cigars of the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... up St James's Street, saw a cart at Fox's door, with copper and an old chest of drawers, loading. His success at Faro had awakened a host of creditors; but, unless his bank had swelled to the size of the Bank of England, it could not have yielded a half-penny apiece for each. Epsom too had been unpropitious; and one creditor had actually seized and carried off Fox's goods, which did not seem worth removing. Yet, shortly after this, whom should Walpole find sauntering by his own ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... contradiction, she then tries 5d. and 2d. with a similar result. (N.B. This process might have been carried on through the whole of the Tertiary Period, without gratifying one single Megatherium.) She then, by a "happy thought," tries half-penny biscuits, and so obtains a consistent result. This may be a good solution, viewing the problem as a conundrum: but it is not scientific. JANET identifies sandwiches with biscuits! "One sandwich 3 biscuits" she makes equal to "4." Four what? MAYFAIR makes the astounding assertion ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... Welsh Ale Warehouse, where the finest and best old Arrack, Rum and French Brandy is made into Punch, with the other of the finest Ingredients—viz., A quart of Arrack made into Punch for six shillings; and so in proportion to the smallest quantity, which is half-a-quartern for fourpence half-penny. A quart of Rum or Brandy made into Punch for four shillings; and so in proportion to the smallest quantity, which is half-a-quartern for fourpence half-penny; and gentlemen may have it as soon made as a gill ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... says 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 tell ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... flour, and put it into munitions. So everything you made with war flour was apt to be dry and crumbly. And when you made cakes with it, and war sugar, which was half full of queer stuff like plaster of paris, and egg substitute, because eggs—when you could get them—were eightpence halfpenny, and butter substitute (and very little of that)—well, they weren't exactly what you would ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... overpaid class in Perigord. Food that is 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
... lasted solidly for many minutes, like the long silence below when the theft had been committed. Then it was broken by the ring of metal on the floor, and the sound of something spinning and falling like a tossed halfpenny. ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... never saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except that he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a halfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness was attended with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before Peepy was sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Caddy and her ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... 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 was in the beginning ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 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 ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... speaking, a poor little ragged boy came up to the brothers, and asked for a halfpenny to buy a bit of bread, saying he was so very hungry he knew not what to do. "What, have you had no breakfast! my little man?" asked James. "No, sir, nor supper last night, do pray give me a halfpenny, I am so very faint ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... a halfpenny for lodging nobut [Note 1] once, and that was th' last night afore I got here. Some nights I lay in a barn upo' th' hay: but most on 'em I got took in at a farm-house, and did an hour or two's work for 'em ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... 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 ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... allowed himself to be paid for his printing, more often than not, in bills for which no provision was forthcoming and in securities that were rotten. One debt of twenty-eight thousand francs was settled by the transfer of a lot of old unsaleable literature, which would have been dear at a halfpenny a volume. And then, when everything was in confusion—debtors recalcitrant and creditors pressing—what must he do but launch on another venture, buy the bankrupt stock of a type-founder, and start manufacturing. A fresh partner, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... to buy him everything that struck his fancy. Julian said no more; and when he went to bed he expressed great condolence, and said he would not ask his father for anything if he were so poor, but that he would give him all his own money (amounting to five-pence halfpenny). When he lay down, his face shone with a splendor of joy that he was able thus to make his father's affairs assume a brighter aspect. This enormous sum of money which Julian had he intended, at Christmas-time, to devote ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... sailor-men, two firemen, and the carpenter enter our private bar as we sit drinking. An indescribable uproar invades the room immediately. They are in their best clothes—decent boots, ready-made blue serge, red tie with green spots over a six-penny-halfpenny "dickey," and a cap that would make even Newmarket "stare and gasp." Nothing will pacify them short of drinks at their expense. A sailor with yellow hair and moustache curled and oiled insufferably, insists on providing ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... of acquittal or such a sentence as his pride may swallow. Which details of justice as understood in a province of France at the beginning of the century may be read at the Assize terms in those great newspapers, Le Petit Bastiais or Le Paoli Pascal, by any who have a halfpenny ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Fleet has come out at last. The Quartermaster-Sergeant, when he meets the ration parties behind the lines that night, announces to a platoon Sergeant that we have won a great naval victory. The platoon Sergeant, who is suffering from trench feet and is a constant reader of a certain pessimistic halfpenny journal, replies gloomily: "We'll have had heavy losses oorselves, too, I doot!" This observation is overheard by various members of the ration party. By midnight several hundred yards of the firing-line know for a ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... we'll see if we can't find 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 disappointment that he ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... kind of success Steele had desired—a widely-diffused influence for good. The 'Tatlers' were penny papers published three times a week, and issued also for another halfpenny with a blank half-sheet for transmission by post, when any written scraps of the day's gossip that friend might send to friend could be included. It was through these, and the daily 'Spectators' which succeeded ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... it be, worthy sir?' the disconcerted gingerbread—man responded in a thin, little voice. 'Some are a farthing—and others cost a halfpenny. Have you a halfpenny in ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hopes and fears, possibilities of virtue and of crime, a life to be made or marred. We shower money on generals and on nobles, we keep high-born paupers living on the national charity, we squander wealth with both hands on army and navy, on churches and palaces; but we grudge every halfpenny that increases the education rate and howl down every proposal to build decent houses for the poor. We cover our heartlessness and indifference with fine phrases about sapping the independence of the poor and destroying their self-respect. With loathsome hypocrisy we repair a prince's palace ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... left; he found a coin - prayed God that it was a sovereign - drew it out, beheld a halfpenny, and offered it to ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his punctiliousness, industry, and painstaking attention to detail—he kept accurate accounts not only of all his property by double entry but also of his daily expenditure, which he balanced to a halfpenny every evening, and his handwriting, always beautiful and legible, was more so at sixty- six than at twenty-six; nor of his patience and cheerfulness during years of anxiety when he had few to sympathize with him; nor of the strange mixture of simplicity and shrewdness that caused one who knew ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... 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
... twenty-eight pounds nineteen shillings and eleven pence halfpenny," he replied with composure. "That's leaving out what little he won at Van John. It's something ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... however, the 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 water ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... at last, for before that battery was delivered our available funds were exhausted, and no one would subscribe another halfpenny. Debentures, it is true, had been issued and taken up to the extent of about L1,000 out of the L5,000 offered, though who bought them remained at the time a mystery to me. Ultimately a meeting was called to consider the question of liquidating ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... After no small opposition from the French officers, we succeeded in putting them down; but we could not succeed so easily against the billiard tables. It was contended by many that it was an exercise, and a trial of skill; and if confined to a halfpenny, or one cent a game, it could not be dangerous to the morals, or property of the community. On this a warm and long dispute arose, in defining gambling. The playing of billiards for a cent a game, was contended to be a muscular exercise, and not gambling; whereas cards were ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... strength. But to make-out a victory, in those circumstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganisation, Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of those Three men rose to victory. That they fought truly ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... provided for those children whose parents work all day away from home at a trifling charge of a halfpenny and a penny. Also, for a trifle, poor children may receive assistance of various kinds in illness, or may have milk or baths through the kindness of the kindred 'Association for the Promotion of Health ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... tricks in public, and it was beneath Captain Vauvenarde's dignity to give her his name before the world. She must neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde. She must give up her fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a little back street on an allowance of twopence-halfpenny a week and be happy and cheerful and devoted. Lola refused. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... 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[obs3], fiddlestick end[obs3]; pack of nonsense, mere farce. straw, pin, fig, button, rush; bulrush, feather, halfpenny, farthing, brass farthing, doit[obs3], peppercorn, jot, rap, pinch of snuff, old son,; cent, mill, picayune, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... passes through sixteen or seventeen hands, including fifty or sixty operations, before they are ready for sale. Common scissors are cast, and when riveted, are sold as low as 4s. 6d. per gross! Small pocket knives, too, are cast, both in blades and handles, and sold at 6 s. per gross, or a halfpenny each! These low articles are exported in vast quantities in casks to all parts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... tired that she had better go to bed directly, Mrs. Halfpenny. You will make her comfortable, and don't let her be disturbed in the morning till she has had her ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the western horizon," she said, to a surly onlooker, "I will give you three piastres and a French halfpenny if you have ze goodness to tell me if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... what airs that fellow gives himself," he said to another friend of the same kidney. "That's young Annesley, the son of a twopenny-halfpenny parson down in Hertfordshire. The kind of ways these fellows put on now are unbearable. He hasn't got a horse to ride on, but to hear him talk you'd think he was mounted ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... so much of Finnish baths that he determined to try one; having arrived at some small town, he told the Isvoschtschik to go to the bastu. Away they drove, and finally drew up at a very nice house, where he paid the twopence halfpenny fare for his cab, rang the bell, and was admitted by a woman servant. He only knew half a dozen words in Swedish, but repeated bastu to the smiling lass, being surprised at the elegance of the furniture in the room into which he had been shown. The girl smiled again and left ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... tightening of the lasso, but could not free himself from the fatal noose. He must pay whatever the cold-eyed creditor demanded. Two thousand dollars was the sum asked for the acknowledgment of having appropriated five hundred. Twopence for halfpenny has been accounted fair usury among the Jews; but in Christian communities it is only crime that accumulates interest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... beg: these scenes are of daily occurrence now that we have compulsory service under the command of the halfpenny ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... these prices for a number of years?-I think for the thirteen years that I was on the station they never varied one halfpenny for the summer fishing. The prices for the winter fishing varied little. Sometimes we would sell the small cod as low as 2s. 6d., and ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... was saying nothing of the sort. I was saying that I told the Manager I knew that was why he thought I ordered it—a rather different thing! "You're quite wrong," I said. "You may pay twopence-halfpenny a pound for it, and charge me half-a-crown, if you like, but I mean to taste that tunny!" I was determined not to be done ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... small, are going to play that huge mass opposite? Indeed I do, gentlemen. They're going to try, at any rate, and won't make such a bad fight of it either, mark my word; for hasn't old Brooke won the toss, with his lucky halfpenny, and got choice of goals and kick-off? The new ball you may see lie there quite by itself, in the middle, pointing towards the School or island goal; in another minute it will be well on its way there. Use that minute in remarking how the Schoolhouse side is drilled. You ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... 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
... his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set going—whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are used to, the devil himself sometimes shall ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... years' industry, he amassed a fortune, and by his will, in remembrance of the seasonable charity of the Devizes, he bequeathed a sum in trust, for the purpose of distributing on the anniversary of the day when he was so relieved a halfpenny loaf to every person in the town, gentle and simple, and to every traveller that should pass through the town on that day a penny loaf. The will is faithfully adminstered, and the Duke of Austria and his suite passing through the town on the day of the ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... nor petty. I am a literary man, unworldly, and I wear long hair and a soft hat and a peculiar overcoat to indicate the same to ordinary people. Why, I say, should I know the price of gloves? I know they are some ordinary price—elevenpence-halfpenny, or three-and-six, or seven-and-six, or something—one of those prices that everything is sold at—but further I don't go. Perhaps I say ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... 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, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... eat, she puts it by, and lets it spoil and get mouldy rather than give it away; or if she sees a poor child begging in the streets, without shoes, stockings, or clothes to cover him, she will not part with a halfpenny to buy him a bit of bread, though she is told that he is starving with hunger. She never assists any one, nor is ever thankful or grateful for what is done for her. She covets everything she sees, yet takes no ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick
... introduction of the poor's laws, under Elizabeth, two pence halfpenny in the pound rent was collected every fortnight, for future support: time has made an alteration in the system, which is now six-pence in the pound, and collected as often as found necessary. The present levy amounts to above 10,000l. per ann. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... I don't understand," Lord Runton continued. "It is certain that there is an extraordinary amount of activity at Portsmouth and Woolwich, but even the little halfpenny sensational papers make no more than a passing allusion to it. Then look at the movements of our fleet. The whole of the Mediterranean Fleet is at Gibraltar, and the Channel Squadron is moving up the North Sea as though to join ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was very expert; and as Timothy predicted, the rudiments were once more handed over to him. Mr Cophagus supplied me with good clothes, but never gave me any pocket-money, and Timothy and I often lamented that we had not even a halfpenny to spend. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... dadda, is the Vanishing Halfpenny—only they've put it this way up so's we can't see how ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... And I 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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 scorn of ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... grow, and the old newspapers and the bees-wax and turpentine, and the horrid an stiff dark rags that are used for cleaning brass and furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps. She came back with a little pot that had once cost sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of red-currant jelly; but the jelly had been all eaten long ago, and now Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the paraffin over the tray just at the moment when Cyril was trying ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... perpetual rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny addition ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shoulder. "We have been fools, and have paid for it. You thought you could find your enemy in London, and find the hiding-place too big. I thought I could write, and find I cannot. As for legitimate work, sixteen and eightpence halfpenny, even with economy, will hardly carry us ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... happened, without any injury; but it must have been a near thing, for when I next opened my knapsack, I found the ball had gone through the leather and my thickly-folded blanket and had at last been stopped by the sole of a shoe, and was lying there as flat as a halfpenny and ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... women enter at noonday and stand at the counter among boon-companions of both sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a bumper together, and quaffing off the mixture with a relish. As for the men, they lounge there continually, drinking till they are drunken,—drinking as long as they have a halfpenny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for a sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets, so as to enable them to be drunken again. Most of these establishments have a significant advertisement of "Beds," doubtless for the accommodation of their customers in the interval between one intoxication ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... nine o'clock, and immediately afterwards the morning patients begin to drop in. Many of them are very poor people, belonging to the colliery clubs, the principle of which is, that the members pay a little over a halfpenny a week all the year round, well or ill, in return for which they get medicine and attendance free. "Not much of a catch for the doctors," you would say, but it is astonishing what competition there is among them to get the appointment. You see it is a certainty for one thing, and it leads ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... 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,' as ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... owed the butcher sixteen shillings and three pence halfpenny and took a pound note to pay him with, how much change ought ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... crippled limbs resting on crutches, a seldom shaven beard, a shabby suit of clothes and a generally neglected person, drew at first pity, with wonder to see such a figure in a drawing-room. It was currently reported that a person in Limerick offered him a halfpenny, mistaking him for a beggar; and if not true, the story was yet well invented. This young man had taken high honours in Dublin University and had studied for the bar, where under the auspices of his eminent kinsman he had excellent prospects; but his conscience would not ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... have disgraced herself as a woman and a wife for ever. Do your very worst; make public every shameful particular that you can—what advantage will you get by it? Revenge, I grant you. But will revenge put a halfpenny into your pocket? Will revenge pay a farthing towards your daughter's keep? Will revenge make us receive her? Not a bit of it! We shall be driven into a corner; we shall have no exposure to dread after you have exposed us; we shall have no remedy left, but ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... who sold gooseberry-tarts and hot mutton-pies on her board under an awning supported by clothes-props, was surrounded by a shoal of children, as happy as the sunshine; the man with the panorama was exhibiting, at one halfpenny a head, the murder of Lord William Russell to a string of boys and girls who mounted the stool in turn to look through the glasses; and the cheapjack was expatiating on the merits of cutlery, pictures, fire-irons, and proving that his brass candlestick, honestly-worth-ten-shillings-but-obtainable-at-one-and-four-pence- ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... engaged in at home were closed to her by mere overwhelming competition. The number of women who are prepared to make ten million shirts for a penny are already far in excess of the demand, and so, except by a severe under-cutting such as a contract to make twenty million shirts for a halfpenny, work of this description ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... grounds. Went on purpose to see a sick person and did not go all over it. It was not the right day, or something. It was very distressing to see the number of able-bodied looking young men and rosy-cheeked women about the grounds who begged for a halfpenny, and so many loungers in hall and corridor—perhaps they were only visitors. If they were inmates there was plenty of cleaning to be done—the smell in some parts was dreadful. In the hospital part the floors were very clean, and the head nurse, a bright, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... England till 1672. Edward VI. coined silver farthings, but Queen Elizabeth conceived a great prejudice to copper coins, from the spurious "black money," or copper coins washed with silver, which had got into circulation. The silver halfpenny, though inconveniently small, continued down to the time of the Commonwealth. In the time of Elizabeth, besides the Nuremberg tokens which are often found in Elizabethan ruins, many provincial cities issued tokens for provincial circulation, which were ultimately called ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and a drake, And a halfpenny cake, With a penny to pay the old baker. A hop and a scotch Is another notch, Slitherum, ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... boarding-house down in Southampton. You know the sort of place—retired sea captains and so on live there. All most respectable. In all its history nothing more sensational has ever happened than a case of suspected cheating at halfpenny nap. Well, a man ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... womankind, in the bazaar at Constantinople, and the rich Armenian who sold them begged for three-halfpence to pay his boat to Galata. There is something naif and amusing in this exhibition of cheatery—this simple cringing and wheedling, and passion for twopence-halfpenny. It was pleasant to give a millionaire beggar an alms, and laugh in his face and say, "There, Dives, there's a penny for you: be happy, you poor old swindling scoundrel, as far as a penny goes." I used to watch these Jews on shore, and making bargains with one another as soon as they came on board; ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... and within living memory, horses, donkeys and men may have been seen toiling up the winding ways to the top of the height, laden with tubs and barrels filled from the wells beneath the mountain, and hawkers retailing their contents at the price of a halfpenny a bucketful. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... to spin out my tenpence as far as I could, desired him to bring me a penny loaf only. When he returned we all resorted to him to receive our several provisions, which he delivered; and when he came to me he told me he could not get a penny loaf, but he had brought me two halfpenny loaves. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Gunter of Racton, with a leash of greyhounds as if for coursing. The King slept at the house of Thomas Symonds, Gunter's brother-in-law, in the character of a Roundhead. The next morning at daybreak, the King, Lord Wilmot and the two Gunters crossed Broad Halfpenny Down (celebrated by Nyren), and proceeding by way of Catherington Down, Charlton Down, and Ibsworth Down, reached Compting Down in Sussex. At Stanstead House Thomas Gunter left the King, and hurried on to Brighton to arrange for the crossing to France. The others ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... made a list," said Patty, "but I want to buy eight presents, and only spend three shillings. It allows just fourpence-halfpenny for each, or if I could spend a little less on some of the children's, I might ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the school kept by his godfather, Pierre Ricard, the village schoolmaster, "at once barber, bellringer, and singer in the choir." Rembrandt, Teniers, nor Van Ostade never painted anything more picturesque than the room which served at the same time as kitchen, refectory, and bedroom, with "halfpenny prints papering the walls" and "a huge chimney, for which each had to bring his log of a morning in order to enjoy the right to a place ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... Dirk, "a halfpenny for a herring; you have made your promise, and I'll give you mine; that's fair, although I am old to seek a new home in England. But it can't be to-night, wife, for I must make arrangements. There is a ship sailing to-day, and we might catch her to-morrow at the river's mouth, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... it, and plunge into the arms of a rough old fisherman, who is gazing quietly up at her with a sarcastic smile. He has put up a lot of fish for which she has offered "sex (six) skillings." A skilling is about equal to a halfpenny. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... the act of emerging from 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him with a little nod of farewell. Presently, through the openings of the balustrade, Manisty could watch her climbing the village street with her dress held high above her daintily shod feet, a crowd of children asking for a halfpenny following at her heels. Presently he saw her stop irresolutely, open a little velvet bag that hung from her waist and throw a shower of soldi among the children. They swooped upon ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pork were a halfpenny a pound—mutton was three farthings. They were fixed at these prices by the 3rd of the 24th of Hen. VIII. But the act was unpopular both with buyers and with sellers. The old practice had been to sell in the gross, and under that arrangement ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude |
