"Half-penny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stock by a sliding-scale, and are sometimes out of stock altogether: Pussy's provider, on the contrary, sticks to one price from year's end to year's end, and never, in the memory of the oldest Grimalkin, was known to disappoint a customer. A half-penny for a cat's breakfast has been the regulation-price ever since the horses of the metropolis began to submit to the boiling process for the benefit of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... amends, fell one-half in my demand; upon which he stared at me and told me his hands were full. I attempted others without finding employment, and was actually reduced to a very uncomfortable prospect, when I bethought myself of offering my talents to the printers of half-penny ballads and other such occasional essays, as are hawked about the streets. With this in view I applied to one of the most noted and vociferous of this tribe, who directed me to a person whom I found entertaining a whole crowd of them with gin, bread, and cheese; he carried me into a little ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... with her at one time," said old Timothy Tangs. "But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman, and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd take her up like a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he'll make her as nesh as her mother was. But here ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... tunes, and they get very well paid, for the people in the poorer shops and in the foreign parts of London like the noise, and give them pennies. Sometimes the man has a monkey, which always attracts the children. Other men walk about with barrows selling ice-cream; this is sold at a half-penny a time, and the children lick it out of little glasses and have no spoons: one wonders how often the glasses are washed. But that does not trouble the little street children at all; they follow the ice-cream man in throngs like flies in summer whenever it is hot. Poor little bairns! they have no ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... fivepence half-penny, besides the value of the wood," said Foster; "and I am to have ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... child of 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
... 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 pudding in ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... Newton said, "I see in this world 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 ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... offended by rain. Upon the north side of the church, places were built gallery wise, one above another, where the dean, prebends and their wives, gentlemen, and the better sort, very well heard the sermon: the rest either stood or sat in the green, upon long forms provided for them, paying a penny or half-penny a-piece, as they did at S. Paul's Cross in London. The Bishop and chancellor heard the sermons at the windows of the Bishop's palace: the pulpit had a large covering of lead over it, and a cross upon it; and there were eight or ten stairs of stone about it, upon which the hospital boys and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... theodolite, And boxed the trembling compass well, Before the days of Robert Bell. A little further up the street, James Martin's name the eye did greet A round faced Caledonian, who Good eating and good drinking knew; And "Four-pence-half-penny" McKenzie Daily vended wolsey linsey, Next door to one of comic cheer Acknowledged the best auctioneer, That ever knock'd a bargain down, Or bidder if he chanced to frown; He set himself up in the end As Carleton's most worthy friend And ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... Edward the First, called the statute concerning the passing of pence, which I give you here as I got it translated into English; for some of our laws at that time were, as I am told, writ in Latin: Whoever in buying or selling presumeth to refuse an half-penny or farthing of lawful money, bearing the stamp which it ought to have, let him be seized on as a contemner of the king's majesty, and ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... have concluded by a protestation that, in making these frank statements as to the working of, and against, the Conspirators, I personally draw no pecuniary benefit of any sort, not a sovereign, not a bob, not a half-penny stamp. It is perhaps better, however, to anticipate discovery by owning up to the fact that my frankness is being paid for at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... to me I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted creature—a piece of good fortune for the Company—a man you don't get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital—you know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Spread-Eagle pudding:—Cut off the crust of three half-penny rolls, then slice them into your pan; then set three pints of milk over the fire, make it scalding hot, but not boil; so pour it over your bread, and cover it close, and let it stand an hour; then put in a good spoonful of sugar, a very ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... won't sell for fattening, and women's advice is never worth twopence. Yours isn't worth even a half-penny. What ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... cottages, and bounded with undulating hills, with now and then glimpses of blue water; and as we walk down Citadel Hill, we feel half-reconciled to Halifax, its queer little streets, its quaint, mouldy old gables, its soldiers and sailors, its fogs, cabs, penny and half-penny tokens, and all its little, odd, outlandish peculiarities. Peace be with it! after all, it has a quiet ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... obtaining the 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
... 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
... their ruinous church would leave, and the half-finished structure sustain damage by winter weather.[137] The act-books teem with such presentments as the following: one Holaway refuses to give to the poor-box, "and is found able by the parish."[138] Thomas Arter will give but a half-penny to the poor. Arter appears and "saithe that he is not of the wealthe that men takithe him to be." The judge commands him to pay a half-penny every week, and dismisses him.[139] "John Wilson haithe not paide his clerke wages by the report of the ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... same epithets—for six. If you were a luxurious person, you paid half-a-crown a bottle for the genuine produce of the Charente, little or not at all inferior to Martell or Hennessy, and a florin for excellent Scotch or Irish whiskey.[110] Fourpence half-penny gave you a quarter-pound slab of gold-leaf tobacco, than which I never wish ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... answered Bertrand. "I have not a half-penny to my purse, and owe more than ten thousand livres in this city, which have been lent me since I have been held prisoner here. I cannot well ask more ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... again, 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 ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... I never kept a 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 a withered ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... "Like most things in this country, it appears to be purely a matter of s. d. Now, I have taken the liberty of totting up, in my own mind, some of your earnings. Will Thompson permit me to take his case as an illustration? I find, Thompson, that the tariff of your wool is exactly sevenpence half-penny per ton per mile. You have eight tons on your wagon at the present time. This will give you five shillings for each mile you travel. You have ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... society of Burghley once more manifested itself. After taking infinite pains to that end, he had the satisfaction of convincing his father and mother that his poetry was of somewhat greater merit than the half-penny ballads sold at the village feast; but his neighbours could not bring themselves to approve John's course of life, and they adopted various disagreeable modes of showing that they thought he was a mightily presumptuous fellow. His shy manners and his habit of talking to ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... ounces of silver, which after five shillings the ounce is 187 pounds, ten shillings." This would be in American money over nine and a quarter millions of dollars as the sum of the ten thousand talents. The same authority gives as the value of the penny (Roman) sevenpence half-penny, or fifteen cents, making the second debt equivalent to about fifteen dollars. Comparison with talents mentioned elsewhere may be allowable. Trench says: "How vast a sum it was we can most vividly realize to ourselves by comparing it with ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... one-third of the book; but some of these were such as will be remembered by those who read them in school. There was "Respect for the Sabbath Rewarded," in which a barber of Bath had become so poor because he would not shave his customers on Sunday, that he borrowed a half-penny to buy a candle Saturday night to give light for a late customer, and was thus discovered to be the long-lost William Reed of Taunton, heir to many thousand pounds; "The Just Judge," who disguised himself as a miller and, obtaining ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... Knight; Thus far I'm sure th' art in the right; And know what 'tis that troubles thee, 1405 Better than thou hast guess'd of me. Thou art some paultry, black-guard spright, Condemn'd to drudg'ry in the night Thou hast no work to do in th' house Nor half-penny to drop in shoes; 1410 Without the raising of which sum, You dare not be so troublesome, To pinch the slatterns black and blue, For leaving you their work to do. This is your bus'ness good Pug-Robin; 1415 And your diversion dull ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Red Lion," No. 48, Parliament Street, "at the corner of the very short street leading into Cannon Row," where David Copperfield ordered a glass of the very best ale—"The Genuine Stunning with a good head to it"—at twopence half-penny the glass, but the landlord hesitated to draw it, and gave him a glass of some which he suspected was not the "genuine stunning"; and the landlady coming into the bar returned his money, and gave him a "kiss that was half-admiring and half-compassionate, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... smallest coin. Excellent oranges cost about a penny the half-dozen. Any one who is fond of the prickly fig should go to Catanzaro. I asked a man sitting with a basket of them at a street corner to give me the worth of a soldo (a half-penny); he began to fill my pocket, and when I cried that it was enough, that I could carry no more, he held up one particularly fine fruit, smiled as only an Italian can, and said, with admirable politeness, "Questo per complimento!" I ought to ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... ragged, there were bald patches of skin on the jaw; one inferred that he wore that beard only to save the trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of the three on my side of the carriage, and he was absorbed in the pages of a half-penny paper—I think he was reading the police reports—which was interposed between him and the child in the corner diagonally opposite ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Rome rendered that island superior as a granary to even the more productive portions of the Italian mainland. Sicily could never have revealed the marvellous fertility of the valley of the Po, where a bushel and a half of wheat could be purchased for five pence half-penny, and the same quantity of barley was sold for half this price;[205] but it was easier to get Sicilian corn to Rome by sea than to get Gallic corn to Rome by land; and the system of taxation and requisitions which had grown out of the provincial organisation of the island, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... mediocrity in paint, settled down to keeping the mediocre paintings against which his protests were loudest. He who thundered against the degeneracy of journalism accepted the patronage of the titled promoter of the half-penny press. Architects carried their respectability to the professional chair it adorns, and illustrators rested in the comfortable berths provided by Punch. Friendships cooled, and friends who never missed a Thursday look the other way when ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... trouble as this. She called out as we came away to tell us that the poor crayter next door was quite helpless. The next house was, in some respects, more comfortable than the last, though it was quite as poor in household goods. There was one flimsy deal table, one little chair, and two half-penny pictures of Catholic saints pinned against the wall. "Sure, I sold the other table since you wor here before," said the woman to my friend; "I sold it for two-an'-aightpence, an' bought this one for sixpence." At the house of another Irish family, my friend inquired where all ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... went out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read that morning; it was a paper called emphatically the New Paper, but everybody ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... proceedings will be taken." The rest were similar in tone. Thereupon we resolved to call at the last address given to us by "CROESUS." It was somewhere in the Mile End Road. We arrived, entered, ascended the stairs, and found in a dingy back bed-room, three used half-penny stamps, a false nose, a pair of whiskers, and a large sheet of paper on which were written only these words: "Sold Again"—which obviously referred to some financial scheme or other. On inquiring of the landlady, we heard that her lodger had departed two ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... the sea. The Covenanters, one of whom had shot at the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and hit the Bishop of Orkney, were very harshly treated. 'They were obliged to drink the twopenny ale of the governor's brewing, scarcely worth a half-penny the pint,' an inconvenience which they probably shared with the garrison. They were sometimes actually compelled to make their own beds, a cruel hardship, when their servants had been dismissed, probably for plotting their escape. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... woman among the laborers who used to sell us soup: I got a cupful every day for a half-penny, with a bit of bread in it; and might eat as much beet-root besides as I liked; not a very wholesome meal, to be sure, but God took care that it ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... owner of the shop, was a special friend of the child's. He had once or twice, charmed by her sympathetic way, confided some of his griefs to her. He found it, he told her, extremely difficult to make the toy-shop pay; and Sibyl, in consequence, considered it her bounden duty to spend every half-penny she could spare at this special shop. She entered now, went straight up to the counter and ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... LOWE proposed to extract "ex luce lucellum" by putting a tax of a half-penny a box upon matches, and was duly punished for his pun. When the matchmakers of the East-end (quite as dangerous in their way as those of the West-end) marched in procession to the House of Commons, the Government ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... look about me! All the deposits would have been covered. All the securities I had dealt with so daringly should have been in their places again as before. Vast companies were within a hair's-breadth of being floated. Not a soul should have lost a half-penny. ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... be his before the June roses were in bloom, and that of itself kept him in a happy frame of mind. He was very attentive to Blanche and very kind to his mother, and he wrote long letters to Bessie three times a week, and went to church every Sunday and gave a half-penny to every little ragged child he met, and felt that Neil McPherson was a pretty good ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... desire I would burn your letters; I desire you would keep mine. I know but of one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge three-pence for a half-penny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear George, and dear Harry; not as formally as if ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... given up a lucrative addition to his regular business—the purveying of oysters—for the sake of having more time to attend the office. Nimblecut, the hairdresser, has been endeavouring to raise his charge for shaving one half-penny per chin, to be enabled to speculate more largely. Shavings, journeyman carpenter, calculates upon clearing considerably more by 'Sister to Swindler' than a year's interest from the savings-bank. There are thousands of similarly circumstanced speculators: they make a daily, if not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... speculated to considerable advantage. Nor did 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, both large and small, and more especially ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... crossed his face that his new word should be thus lightly bandied, but he went on—"Just listen here: an apple-woman who had four score of apples in her cart, sold three dozen at four pence, half-penny a dozen; two and a half dozen at five pence a dozen. At what price would she have to sell the remaining, in ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... the only country of China in which cowries had continued in use, though in ancient times they were more generally diffused. According to him 80 cowries were equivalent to 6 cash, or a half-penny. About 1780 in Eastern Bengal 80 cowries were worth 3/8th of a penny, and some 40 years ago, when Prinsep compiled his tables in Calcutta (where cowries were still in use a few years ago, if they are not now), 80 cowries were worth ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... love which we bear our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with that supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen, which really does but sanctify and exalt what is of earth. At a later date Dr. Russell sent me a large bundle of penny or half-penny books of devotion, of all sorts, as they are found in the booksellers' shops at Rome; and, on looking them over, I was quite astonished to find how different they were from what I had fancied, how ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... document he had left, and found a most righteous statement of the services rendered by this great and good man; which, after giving credit to Mr. Bumpkin for cash received from Mr. Skinalive, Mr. Prigg's friend, of seven hundred and twenty-two pounds, six shillings and eightpence-half-penny, left a balance due to Honest Lawyer Prigg of three hundred and twenty-eight pounds, seven shillings and threepence,—subject, of course, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... 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 door but ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... doing all sorts of little mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness. The misfortune is, also, that this class of persons let their economy apply in only one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfully economical in saving a half-penny where they ought to spend twopence, that they think they can afford to squander in other directions. A few years ago, before kerosene oil was discovered or thought of, one might stop over night at almost any farmer's ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... a half-penny," said Comus, reflectively. "It's a ridiculous sum to last me for the next three days, and I owe a card debt of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... and towns we frequently see the same Pantomime title not only "billed" at one theatre, but perhaps at several others. This clashing and clashing year after year with one another's titles (I say nothing about the "plots," as these, in many instances, only consist of a half-penny worth of author to an intolerable deal of music-hall gag), cannot but, I have long been of opinion, adversely affect the box-office receipts, unless, of course, the Pantomime-goer makes a point of "doing the round," so to speak, which, however, is ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... 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
... forgiving our sins when we stop committing them, but for all our aims and objects. Nothing that concerns us is so small but that His Infinite Intelligence follows it; no need of ours is so large but that His All-Ownership can meet it. "Do not two sparrows sell for a half-penny?" is our Lord's illustration on this point, "yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave. But as for you," He reasons, in order that we may understand the infinitesimal ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... said a sergeant-major of the old Regular type, who was having a quiet pipe over a half-penny paper in a shed at the back of some farm buildings in the neighborhood of Armentieres, which had been plugged by two hundred German shells that time the day before. (One never knew when the fellows on the other side would take it into their heads to empty their guns that ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... observed to the following effect:—"You should have taken it to master, because he would know if it was bad better than you." This was a convincing argument, and to my great delight, the boy replied—"How much did the song cost?" The reply was, "A half-penny." "Here, then, take it," says the child, "I had one given me to-day; so now remember I have paid you for it, but if you bring any more songs to school I will tell master." This seemed to give general satisfaction to the whole party, who immediately ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... hours and minutes one spends in a country where the existence of time is scarcely recognised, and as for the money—of all the multitudes of men who have been fooled by Commerce in the guise of Love only a few have had the luck to escape with a total loss not exceeding four-pence half-penny. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... the morning following his reflections was sauntering along the gravel path which bordered the cliff. He was reading the half-penny morning paper, in which he had just come upon a paragraph describing the discovery by the police of a batch of infernal machines supposed to have been sent over from America by friends of the Royalists. Among the emissaries captured he read ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... stream bickering over the stones. Mifflin was writing busily in his notebook on the other side of the bridge. I thought to myself, "Bless the lad, he's jotting down some picturesque notes of something that has struck his romantic eye." And just then he spoke—"Four and eleven pence half-penny ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... to tell ye the plain truth, I also had it to pay. This was a dreadfu' loss to me; and I found there was naething left for me but so sit down,(if ye understand what that means,) as mony a guid man has been compelled to do. Hooever, I paid every body seventeen shillings and sixpence half-penny in the pound. Some of my creditors said it was owre meikle—that I had been simple and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... today as usual. March 20. This has been again a day of very great mercies. In the morning we met round our breakfast which the Lord had provided for us, though we had not a single penny left. The last half-penny was spent for milk. We were then still looking to Jesus for fresh supplies. We both had no doubt that the Lord would interfere. I felt it a trial that I had but little earnestness in asking the Lord, and had this not been the case, perhaps ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... balcony, the men smoking, reading, playing at dominoes. Here too are more cafes and cabarets, open-air stalls for the sale of fried fish, and cheap restaurants for workmen and students, where, for a sum equivalent to sevenpence half-penny English, the Quartier Latin regales itself upon meats and drinks of dark and enigmatical origin. Close at hand is the Place and College of the Sorbonne—silent in the midst of noisy life, solitary in the heart of the most crowded quarter of Paris. A sombre mediaeval gloom pervades that ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... 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, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... among the macers, who congregated nightly at the 'flash houses.' One of these is described as follows:—This gaffer laughed a great deal and whistled Moore's melodies, and extracted music from a deal table with his elbow and wrist. When he hid a half-penny, and a flat cried 'head' for L10, a 'tail' was sure to turn up. One of his modes of commanding the turn-up was this: he had a half-penny with two heads, and a ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... heart!" he said. "On this condition, Graybrooke, that every farthing of it is settled on Natalie, and on her children after her. Not a half-penny to me!" he cried magnanimously, in his brassiest tones. "Not a ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... life-long poverty, she thinks—could at no time have so effaced the marks of native gentility which were once so visible in a face otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would have wanted bread before he would have begged or borrowed a half-penny. "If any of the girls," she says, "who were my school-fellows, should be reading, through their aged spectacles, tidings from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit." They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all grains: that is, the wheat loaf, must weigh as much as the penny wheat loaf and the half-penny white loaf. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... were 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
... he exclaimed harshly. "I've lost her! It was only the kiddie that bound us together. She never cared a half-penny about me. I always knew I should never hold her unless we had a child. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... meal a day,—a sufficiently meagre one,—there 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 people, and of the dire sacrifice ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... confusion and yielding in his fat patient—'you'd tell me all that concerns your health, and know that Tom Toole would put his hand in the fire before he'd let a living soul hear a symptom of your case; and here's some paltry little folly or trouble that I would not—as I'm a gentleman—give a half-penny to hear, and you're afraid to tell me—though until you do, neither I, nor all the doctors in Europe, can do you a ha'porth ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... subscription—L.800 of which was contributed by 20,000 of the working-classes. To their honour be it recorded! But the inhabitants have done yet more; they have made over the library to the town-council, that it may become one of their public institutions, and have agreed to pay a half-penny rate to provide the necessary funds for its perpetual maintenance. May they have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... 31, 1712, Addison wrote: 'This is the day on which many eminent authors will probably publish their last words.' On August 1 the Stamp Tax came into operation, and every half-sheet periodical paid a duty of a half-penny. The price of the Spectator rose to twopence, and only half the former number of copies were sold, yet towards the close of the seventh volume about ten thousand copies were being ...
— The Coverley Papers • 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 ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... not a friendly call, Mr. Sinclair," he said, "but simply a matter of business. I wish to clear my account with you to the last halfpenny, and I will take my shares away with me. I have paid in the amount I owe. Let one of your clerks ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... old earthenware stuff—not worth a halfpenny. Evie's was quite different. You'd have to ask anyone to the wedding who gave you a pendant like that. Uncle Percy and Albert and father and Charles all said it was quite impossible, and when four men agree, what is a girl to do? Evie ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... quiet. The toys lay in their places looking so incredibly attractive that I reflected with disgust that all my ready cash, except one shilling and some coppers, had melted away amid the tawdry fascinations of a village booth. I was counting the coppers (sevenpence halfpenny), when all in a moment a dozen sixpenny fiddles leaped from their places and began to play, accordions of all sizes joined them, the drumsticks beat upon the drums, the penny trumpets sounded, and the yellow flutes took up the melody on high notes, and bore it ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pounds twelve shillings of our present money for the best stalled ox; for other oxen, two pounds eight shillings; a fat hog of two years old, ten shillings; a fat wether unshorn, a crown; if shorn, three shillings and sixpence; a fat goose, sevenpence halfpenny; a fat capon, sixpence; a fat hen, threepence; two chickens, threepence; four pigeons, threepence; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... money I gave him he spent about 4s. or more buying his good-for-nothing son an elegant snuff-bottle. In short, the man's folly makes it utterly useless to help him. I once before relieved him from threatened detention for debt for the amount of twopence-halfpenny, just after I had made him a present, and I expect perhaps to have to do so again. What astonishes me is that the Mongols can get into debt so far. I don't believe my Mongol can pass a single man he knows without being in danger of being dunned ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... from his journal will show the trials to which Mr. Mueller has been subjected: "Never were we so reduced in funds as to-day. There was not a single halfpenny in hand between the matrons of the three orphan houses. There was a good dinner, and by managing to help one another by bread, etc., there was a prospect of getting over the day also; but for none of the houses had we the prospect ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... direction with what might be done; with the time given to matters of comparatively no importance; with the absence of any attention to things of the highest moment; and one is tempted to think of Falstaff's bill and "the halfpenny worth of bread to all that ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... 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 of the ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... were old friends, and Nosey's affairs having gone crooked, why of course, like most men in a similar situation, he was all the better for it; and while his creditors were taking twopence-halfpenny in the pound, he was taking his diversion on his wife's property, which a sagacious old father-in-law had secured to the family in the event of such a contingency as a failure happening; so knowing Jorrock's propensity for sports, and being ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... away from Farnham to be a gardener. He was employed as a boy in the castle grounds, and there he met a man who was a gardener at Kew. They talked, and the eleven-year-old boy was fired to see for himself what gardening could be. Next day he started off, with sixpence-halfpenny in his pocket, and walked all day till he came to Richmond. There he should have had supper; he had threepence left to get it with. But threepence was exactly the price of a little book, The Tale of a Tub, which he spied in a bookseller's window. He bought it, took it ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... their lifting margin 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 informed by at least some pretence of knowledge of ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 his robes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... instancing how, on one of these occasions, the girl concealed herself under a bookcase of the library belonging to the mansion in which her father served as footman, and having taken with her there, like a young Fawkes, matches and a halfpenny candle, was going to sit up all night reading when the family had retired, until her father discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... commission; and, after every bargain, the seller returned to 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
... was a true blue, didn't think so well on Mr. Pegram as the most of us. Friends he made, but hadn't much use for the women, though he declared himself as not against them. He was a bachelor-minded man by nature, and yet, what ain't so common in that sort, he liked childer and often had a halfpenny in his pocket for one of ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... weekly cost 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
... Scotsman who was injured in the rush outside the post-office on the last night of the three-halfpenny postage, is now able to get about with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... dragged by horses. They are capable of holding forty passengers each, and as far as my experience goes carry an average load of sixty. The fare of the omnibus is six cents, or three pence. That of the street car five cents, or two pence halfpenny. They run along the different avenues, taking the length of the city. In the upper or new part of the town their course is simple enough, but as they descend to the Bowery, Peck Slip, and Pearl Street, nothing can be conceived more difficult or devious ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... was Friday: five days, from seven to five, less half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner, eight and a half hours a day—forty-two hours and a half. At sevenpence an hour that came to one pound four and ninepence halfpenny. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... butter do you allow yourselves during the week?" The widow answers: "Two ounces of shilling butter once a week." "Yes, mother," says the invalid, "on a Saturday." She knew the day of the week and the hour too, when her eyes brightened at the sight of three-halfpenny worth of butter. Truly they fared sumptuously on the Sabbath, for they ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Anglais, voila la generosite des Anglais," with evident sincerity. I thought to myself that the less we English corrupted the primitive simplicity of these good folks the better; it was really refreshing to find several people protesting about one's generosity for having paid a halfpenny more for a bottle of wine than was expected; at Monetier we asked whether many English came there, and they told us yes, a great many, there had been fifteen there last year, but I should imagine that scarcely fifteen could travel up ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... street and interrupting people who are talking, he said: 'If they are tradesmen, their conversation will soon end, and may be well paid for by a halfpenny; if an inferior clings to the skirt of a superior, he will give twopence rather than be pulled off; and when you are happy enough to meet a lover and his mistress, never part with them under sixpence, for you may be sure they will never part ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord: 'What is your best—your very best ale a glass?' For it was a special occasion. I don't know what. It may have been my birthday. 'Twopence-halfpenny,' says the landlord, 'is the price of the Genuine Stunning Ale.' 'Then,' says I, producing the money, 'just draw me a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... Timothy, if a man earns four shillings and sixpence halfpenny a day, how much does he make in ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Tammas's without the minister. As certainly as the shutting of a money-box is followed by the turning of the key, did the precentor walk stiffly from the vestry to his box a toll of the bell in front of the minister. Tammas's halfpenny rang in the plate as Gavin passed T'nowhead's pew, and Gavin's sixpence with the snapping-to of the precentor's door. The two men might have been connected by a string that tightened ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... have taught my wife that constantly talking of our expenses does not reduce them, but my wife refuses to learn by experience, and regularly every morning discusses our officer son, and tells me that bread, thank God, is cheaper, while sugar is a halfpenny dearer—with a tone and an air as though she were ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... more impudent every day. It's 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 ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... came and went without fear of necessity, working hard because of the life that was in them, not for want of the money. Neither were they thriftless. They were aware of the last halfpenny, and instinct made them not waste the peeling of their apple, for it would help to feed the cattle. But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... might be expected, nothing else was talked about. Conversation at breakfast was confined to the topic. No halfpenny paper, however many times its circulation might exceed that of any penny morning paper, ever propounded so fascinating and puzzling a breakfast-table problem. It was the utter impossibility of detecting the culprits that appealed to the schools. They had swooped down like ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... . even to himself Ger hardly liked to confess what it was—and he had gone off in such a hurry! To Ger, a shilling seemed a very large sum, his own greatest wealth, amassed after many weeks of hoarding, had once reached five pence halfpenny, nearly all in farthings; and he even found himself conjecturing the sort of monetary difficulty into which Reggie had fallen, and from which a shilling might extricate him. He knew there were such things as "debts," ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... books, and asked no questions, until the winding up of the executor's business; and the quarterly settlement of accounts made startling revelations that the balance at her bankers was just eleven shillings and fourpence halfpenny, and what was nearly as bad, the discovery was made in the presence of her fellow executor, who could not help giving a low whistle. She turned pale, and gasped for breath, in absolute amazement, for she was quite sure they were living at much ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remained all night in the streets; and next morning, finding himself very hungry, he got up and walked about, asking those 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 anything; so that the poor boy was soon in the most miserable condition. Being almost starved to death, he laid himself down at the door of one ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... 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 company, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the sale of these ballads is immense, and printers in Dublin, Drogheda, Cork, and Belfast live by their sale exclusively. Were an enterprising man to issue the choice songs of Drennan, Griffin, Moore, on good paper, and well printed, he would make a fortune of "halfpenny ballads." ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... natural faculty for this useful department of art. I improved it greatly by practice in secret after I left school, and I ended by making it a source of profit and pocket money to me when I entered the medical profession. What was I to do? I could not expect for years to make a halfpenny, as a physician. My genteel walk in life led me away from all immediate sources of emolument, and my father could only afford to give me an allowance which was too preposterously small to be mentioned. I had helped myself ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the "Broker's Man," and similar subjects, for example. It is quite possible that respectable people did not care for their babies to read the chap-books of the eighteenth century any more than they like them now to study "halfpenny comics"; and that they were, in short, kitchen literature, and not infantile. Even if the intellectual standard of those days was on a par in both domains, it does not prove that the reading of the kitchen ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... weather after you. Your blessing, quotha? I'll not give a single halfpenny for't. Who would live under a mother's nose and a granam's tongue? A maid cannot love, or catch a lip-clip or a lap-clap, but here's such tittle-tattle, and Do not so, and Be not so light, and Be not so fond, and Do not kiss, and Do not love, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... grew clear to him that, with milk at threepence halfpenny a quart, the kittens would soon drink themselves out of ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... impatience. "You know. You know very well. They were meant for the people whom you yourself despise—the crowd you broke away from—men and women like the Farringmores who live for nothing but their own beastly pleasures and don't care the toss of a halfpenny for anyone else ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... them that they must take care of themselves. The parents of the astonished baby moved the heaven and earth of the Five Towns to force the coroner to withdraw the stigma of the jury's censure; but they did not succeed, not even with the impassioned aid of two London halfpenny dailies. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... of hoops being marked on a drinking-pot, by which every man was to measure his draught. Shakspeare makes the Jacobin Jack Cade, among his furious reformations, promise his friends that "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 a felony to drink small beer." I have elsewhere observed that our modern Bacchanalians, whose feats are recorded ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... was 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, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, through life, to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... were informed that their flavour then, and when in perfection, was not to be compared. Vegetables (which were brought from the opposite shore) were in great plenty. The beef was small and lean, and sold at about two-pence halfpenny per pound: mutton was in proportion still smaller, and poultry dear, but not ill-tasted. The marketplace was ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... trade at 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 have a nice ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... saw them, they were gazing greedily into the window of the sixpenny-halfpenny shop, which is one of the most deliciously dramatic spots in London. Mary was taking notes feverishly on a slip of paper while he did the adding up, and in the end they went away gloomily without buying anything. I was in high feather. "Match abandoned, ma'am," I said ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... 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
... was now being made for the repeal, caused the Government to decide upon bringing in a measure of relief. It took six months and an immense deal of speechifying to bring this measure to maturity; but at last, in 1836, the stamp duty was reduced from fourpence to one penny, being one halfpenny less than it had been originally fixed at in 1760. The Tories were the great friends of this reduction, and Lord Lyndhurst, who had been instrumental in abolishing many of the most oppressive enactments with which the measure had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... down when she is there. If you miss her at school on the Sunday morning, her mother has sent her to the shop, and perhaps told her to tell a falsehood about it; if her hand is clammy with lollipops, or there is a perfume of peppermint all round her, or down clatters a halfpenny in the middle of church, it ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... humanity. Is it history—when did it throw a light for you on modern politics? Is it science—when did it show you order in apparent disorder, and help you to put two and two together into an inseparable four? Is it ethics—when did it influence your conduct in a twopenny-halfpenny affair between man and man? Is it a novel—when did it help you to "understand all and forgive all"? Is it poetry—when was it a magnifying glass to disclose beauty to you, or a fire to warm your ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett |
