"Penny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last century, and set up in the old museum-building on Mulberry Street what was called "a piece goods store." He was the third Timothy in his monotonous family, and in order to differentiate himself he inscribed on the sign over his shop door, "Timothy Winn, 3d," and was ever after called "Three-Penny Winn." That he enjoyed the pleasantry, and clung to his sign, goes to show that he was a person who would ripen on further acquaintance, were further acquaintance now practicable. His next-door neighbor, Mr. Leonard Serat, who kept a modest tailoring establishment, also tantalizes ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... did not know it before. The trustees who would have sniffed had George written to them, turned round from their desks, and begged him to take a chair, when he came to talk with them. Had he put every penny he was worth into that stock? Then it was worth something which they did not know of, for George Orcutt was no fool about railroads. The man who bridged the Lower Rapidan when a freshet was running was ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... wily infant who married the widow and made Profit of coke and of breeze, and never a penny he paid! Oh for the Corporation of Birmingham cheated and snared, Taking orders for coke that the widow and infant prepared! Oh for the Court of Appeal, and oh for Lords Justices three! Oh for the Act that infants ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... and must uphold it at any cost. We are inclined to wonder at Miss Fairfield's mention of a king, when the name Phillipe La Roque so clearly proclaims the hero a Frenchman. France, be it known, has been a republic for some little time. "Penny in the Slot", by Vaughn Flannery, possesses a humor that is pleasing and apparently quite spontaneous. We should like to behold more of Mr. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... with boulders. This filling in should proceed section by section, as the planking goes forward, otherwise there will be no escape for the water of the stream, until it rises and spills over the top timbers. The planking should be of two-inch chestnut, spiked home with 60 penny wire spikes. When the last section of the crib is filled with boulders and the water rises, the remaining planks may be spiked home with the aid of an iron pipe in which to drive the spike by means of a plunger of iron long enough to reach above the level of the water. When the ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... the deadlock. Only the robber-publications seemed to remain actively in business, and to them Martin disposed of all his early efforts, such as "Pearl-diving," "The Sea as a Career," "Turtle-catching," and "The Northeast Trades." For these manuscripts he never received a penny. It is true, after six months' correspondence, he effected a compromise, whereby he received a safety razor for "Turtle-catching," and that The Acropolis, having agreed to give him five dollars cash and five yearly subscriptions: for "The ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... lose a penny out of his pocket, would he sit down on a curb-stone and cry? And shall a man possessed of everlasting fortunes wear himself out with grief because he has lost worldly treasure? You have only lost that in which ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... did know what a naughty boy he had been, both by what he used to do at home, and because he changed a good Master for a bad, &c.) He should not therefore have given him money so soon. What if he had pinched a little, and gone to Journey-work for a time, that he might have known what a penny was, by his earning of it? Then, in all probability, he had known better how to have spent it: Yea, and by that time perhaps, have better considered with himself, how to have lived in the world. Ay, and who knows but he might have come to ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... a penny. It would make all the difference to me. And I give you my word, if that is any satisfaction to you, I would be an honest man ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... employment save that of the army, seem determined to live amongst themselves, in tranquillity and retirement, in such a way as to attract the least possible notice from the press or from the crowd. Their portraits never find their way into the illustrated papers, and no penny-a-liner ventures to make them the subject of a biographical sketch: indeed, any one rash enough to seek to tread upon this forbidden ground would find himself met at the threshold by a dignified but very decided refusal of all information ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... at haymaking or weeding of corn, for instance, a woman got one penny. For mowing an acre of grass or threshing a quarter of wheat a man was paid four pence. The reaper received also four pence for his day's labor. Eight hours constituted a working day. The people of the Middle ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... very different affair was the Lapsus Linguae from the Edinburgh University Magazine. The two prospectuses alone, laid side by side, would indicate the march of luxury and the repeal of the paper duty. The penny bi-weekly broadside of session 1823-4 was almost wholly dedicated to Momus. Epigrams, pointless letters, amorous verses, and University grievances are the continual burthen of the song. But Mr. Tatler was not without a vein of hearty humour; and his pages afford ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and looked at the sports. At one place a man, with his face heavily blackened, except one cheek and eye—an extraordinary effect—was standing shots of a wooden ball behind a board with a large hole in the middle, at three shots a penny. When I came past half an hour afterwards he had been hit in the mouth—by a girl some one told me—but seemed as cheerful ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... English farmers could eat at a meal, which to me was for some time a very nauseous sight. She would craunch the wing of a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although it were nine times as large as that of a full-grown turkey; and put a bit of bread in her mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves. She drank out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The spoons, forks, and other instruments, were all in the same proportion. I remember when Glumdalclitch carried me, out of curiosity, to see some ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... me a Penny, Sir! My hope is almost dead; You hold the swag in that black bag, And high you lift your head. Some years I have been asking this, But no one heeds my plea. Will you not give me something then, This year, good Mister G.? Oh! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... sent forth that all Russians, with the exception of the clergy, should shave. Those who preferred to keep their beards could do so by paying a yearly tax into the public treasury. This was fixed at a kopeck (one penny) for peasants, but for the higher classes varied from thirty to a hundred rubles (from sixty dollars to two hundred dollars). The merchants, being at once the richest and most conservative class, paid the highest tax. Every one who paid the tax was given a bronze token, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... said Sheba, "what we shall do when all our money is gone—every penny of it. It cannot last long now. We cannot stay here and we cannot pay our way back to the mountains. What ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that very 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 ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of hungry relations, who quarrel over every half-penny she makes; and she is so good! But you can understand why she is anxious not to think ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Pahang. His money—including that which had been Eric's—was on board in the shape of a venture of cheap toys. He had been advised by a shrewd old mariner of Bristol whom he knew, and who knew the ways of the Chersonese, who predicted that every penny invested would be returned with ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... yclept (there's something very consonant in that word) Nicholas. The Reverend Mr Forster, who had no inheritance to bequeath to his family except a good name, which although better than riches, will not always procure for a man one penny loaf, naturally watched for any peculiar symptoms of genius in his children which might designate one of the various paths to wealth and fame, by which it would be most easy for the individual to ascend. Now it did occur that when Nicholas was yet in womanish attire, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ought not to supply soldiers with a greater quantity for nothing. It is to be remembered, that small beer, like other liquors, is charged with an excise in publick-houses; and that two quarts will probably cost the landlord a penny, and as we cannot suppose that fire, candles, vinegar, salt, pepper, and the use of utensils, and lodging, can be furnished for less than threepence a-day, every soldier that is quartered upon ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... you here till the gentlefolks get up, and then I'll bring 'em round to see the monkey in his cage, just like they do in the shows, when you pay a penny. See you for nothing, middy. I say, where's your sword? Why don't you draw it, and come out and fight? I'll ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... of her wages to some worthless, mysterious husband whose whereabouts nobody knew. This took all Molly's money but so much as was needed for her return trip, for it has to be confessed of her that she never saved a penny in her extravagant life. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... my paper; but as to its being very diverting, there is no doubt of that. However, when Peter came to the years of discretion, Peter had sense enough in his noddle to discover, that "a rowing stane gathers no fog"; and, having got an inkling of the penny-pie manufacture when he was a wee smout, he yoked to the baking trade tooth and nail; and, in the course of years, thumped butter-bakes with his elbows to some purpose; so that, at the time of our colleaguing together, Peter was well to do in the world—had bought his own bounds, and built ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Mr. G.'s speech—will mean immediate and greatly extended use of the Protection Act. There will be a miraculous draught of fishes directly. In for a penny, in for a pound. I hope it will be a clean sweep. The electors will better stand a crushing blow than coercion by driblets. There is no other alternative except new legislation—and from that may Heaven ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... result was that vivisection at Alfort was suspended at once, though how long for is unknown to me. As, after all this, many may like to see my four sonnets before-mentioned, I have no room to place here more than one: it is fair to state that they are easily procurable for a penny at the S.P.C.A. office in Jermyn Street. They were written by me in the train between Hereford and London, at the request of a lady, the chatelaine of Pontrilas Court, for a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and returned to the attack. "If he wouldn't take the money, how could you give it?" The girl was silent. "It was the father, I know; they say a penny never ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... you, who are only a boy! Why, you haven't a penny to your name. All you've got in the world ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... "If it is a penny less than ten thousand or I find a mark on the bills I'll call to Enrico, and your daughter will be ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... flared out, low and vivid and fierce, but her words were slow and measured. "There is no reason why I should marry you—not one. You offer me marriage as a prince might give a penny to a beggar. If my mother were not an Indian woman, you would not have taken it all as a matter of course. But my father was a white man, and I am a white man's daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who would think me the best thing there was in the light of the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... could make me so happy again, and I can never tell you how I love you for it. I will improve every minute. I will make you all proud of me. No one shall ever have cause to call me 'Wild Jennie' again, and when I graduate and get to teaching I shall pay you back every penny it has cost to fit ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... many duties, Charles Livingstone was engaged in collecting specimens of cotton, and upwards of three hundred pounds were thus obtained, at a price of less than a penny a pound, which showed that cotton of a superior quality could be raised by native labour alone, and that but for the slave trade a large amount might be raised in ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... either country on articles imported from the other than on the same articles imported from any other place. In 1836 rough rice by act of Parliament was admitted from the coast of Africa into Great Britain on the payment of a duty of 1 penny a quarter, while the same article from all other countries, including the United States, was subjected to the payment of a duty of 20 shillings a quarter. Our minister at London has from time to time brought this subject ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... overhead, through the dingy panes, he could see the little fleecy clouds floating about in peaceful unconcern. May was a slack month. And at its end came June—June, with its four weeks' inventory period wherein each stick and stone of the entire plant, each ten-penny nail, each carriage bolt, would have to be listed, valued, and carried into an imposing total. It meant working late into the night under a pitiless glare with handkerchief tied about one's neck like a washer. It meant cramped fingers, and hot dry eyes, and a back that ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... in particular was not much raised; for in the beginning of the year, viz., in the first week in March, the penny wheaten loaf was ten ounces and a half, and in the height of the contagion it was to be had at nine ounces and a half, and never dearer, no, not all that season; and about the beginning of November it was sold at ten ounces and a half again, the like of which, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the Man in black bids them welcome, and they all make low obeysance to him.—[Elizabeth Style, Alice Duke, Anne Bishop, Mary Penny] met about nine of the Clock in the Night, in the Common near Trister Gate, where they met a Man in black Clothes with a little Band, to whom they did Courtesie and due observance.—Mary Green [went with others ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... Cambridge, contain more remarkable rules, which are in theory still valid, although obsolete in fact. All the scholars, it is there said, who are absent from prayers,—Bachelors excepted,—if over eighteen years of age, 'shall be fined a half-penny, but if they have not completed the year of their age above mentioned, they shall be chastised with rods in the hall on Friday.' At this chastisement all undergraduates were required to be lookers on, the Dean having the rod of punishment in his hand; and it was provided also, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... enter your head. Submit patiently to the poverty that must always be your portion. Be industrious, sober and discreet, and I dare say, you may find some honest young man, bye-and-bye, who will want such a wife to help him turn an honest penny, and lay up something for a rainy day. Not that I think there is the least danger, unless you are forward enough to put yourself in this gentleman's way, because men think so much of beauty, that plain girls ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... and large profits, than those produced in the neighbourhood. Salt codfish was twopence per pound cheaper than the vile salt pirarucu of the country. Oranges, which could formerly be had almost gratis, were now sold in the streets at the rate of three for a penny; large bananas were a penny each; tomatoes were from two to three pence each, and all other fruits in this fruit-producing country had advanced in like proportion. Mandioca-meal, the bread of the country, had become so scarce ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... for general terms.*—This is a most important rule. Instead of "I have neither the necessaries of life nor the means of procuring them," write (if you can with truth), "I have not a crust of bread, nor a penny to buy one." ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... and asked the lad what ailed him. He told me his mother did lie at death's door, not far thence. 'Hath she any doctor or apothecary?' quoth I. 'Nay,' saith he, 'neither the priest nor the apothecary would come without money, and father hath not a penny.' Well, I 'light from mine horse, and throwing his bridle athwart mine arm, I bade the lad lead me to his mother, for I was a physician, and could maybe do her some good. I found her under an hedge, with nought save a ragged rug to cover her, twain other children beside clamouring for bread, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the bills," Mr. Ruck went on, rising to his feet. "Don't hesitate, Sophy. I don't care what you do now. In for a penny, in ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... body will steale that from thee: yet for the out-side of thy pouertie, we must make an exchange; therefore dis-case thee instantly (thou must thinke there's a necessitie in't) and change Garments with this Gentleman: Though the penny-worth (on his side) be the worst, yet hold ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... second island, the people speaking the language of Otaheite. As the Englishmen proceeded, other canoes appeared, bringing with them roasted pigs and very fine potatoes. The Captain says: "Several small pigs were purchased for a six-penny nail, so that we again found ourselves in a land of plenty. The natives were gentle and polite, asking whether they might sit down, whether they might spit on the deck, and the like. An order restricting the men going ashore was ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... answered Lautrec; "'twas your Majesty yourself: I several times warned you that, if I were not helped with money, there was no means of retaining the men-at-arms, who had served for eighteen months without a penny, and likewise the Swiss, who forced me to fight at a disadvantage, which they would never have done if they had received their pay." "I sent you four hundred thousand crowns when you asked for them." "I received the letters ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a pretty penny for damages," said he warningly, when he had satisfied himself at the inn that I was known as "a gentleman who often drove over there in the summer, and always paid for ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... hitherto, cheerless prisoner. Some unforgiving spirits hail the joyful event as bringing them nearer the period of revenge, which they longed to exercise on some of their tyrannical keepers. Many who had meditated escape, and had hoarded up every penny for that event, now brought it forth to spend in celebration of their regular deliverance. Even hard hearted Shortland appeared to bend from the haughty severity of his jailor-like manner, and can now speak to an American as if he were of the same species ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... strongly disapproved of the proceedings. He writes, 'There was a great outcry against the Criminal Judges, their timorous dishonesty....' These words, 'consistent with my loyalty, were judged taxative and restrictive, seeing his loyalty might be below the standard of true loyalty, not five-penny fine, much less eleven- penny,' ... 'The design was to low him, that he might never be the head of a Protestant party, and to annex his jurisdiction to the Crown, and to parcel out his lands; and ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the key clear, but he could not draw it out. A dozen times it seemed that he must give up in despair, that all the danger and toil he had gone through were for nothing. Then an idea came to him, and he went through his pockets with feverish haste, and found what he sought—a ten-penny nail. ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... his instinctive attitude toward the established order of things was that of a dissenter. Yet here were religion and learning coming back, and not in vain, to claim their penny of tribute. He had defied the authority of the Church, and had nevertheless accepted her doctrine of the sanctity of marriage; he had scorned the College, and now he turned by preference to one of her representatives, influenced, in spite of prejudice and ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... press. But, in the fifteenth century, the vast majority of writers of manuscripts,—those who were in general employment from not commanding the high prices obtained by the "crack" transcribers, and might be compared to "penny-a-liners" among us, suppliers of scraps of news to the papers,—were still to be found only in convents, knowing more about ploughs than books, and for literary acquirements standing on a par with professors of handwriting and dancing masters of the present day. These monkish ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... be more desirous than I was of adopting a practice conformable to my principles, as far as I could do so without affording reasonable ground of offence to any other person. I was anxious not to spend a penny on myself which I did not imagine calculated to render me a more capable servant of the public; and as I was averse to the expenditure of money, so I was not inclined to earn it but in small portions. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... and not a penny more," said the broker, surveying her distressed face, shrewdly. "You can take ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... it had been treated as something distinct from the ordinary revenue of the kingdom. In the reign of Charles II. it had been given to the Duke of York, and the grant was regarded as conferring on him such extensive rights, that when, some years afterward, an enterprising citizen set up a penny post for the delivery of letters in the City and its precincts, the Duke complained of the scheme as an infraction of his monopoly, and the courts of law decided in his favor. That grant ceased, as a matter of course, on ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... to raise the supplies of the year, they resolved to tax all persons according to the true value of their real and personal estates, their stock upon land and in trade, their income by offices, pensions, and professions. A duty of one penny per week for one year was laid upon all persons not receiving alms. A further imposition of one farthing in the pound per week was fixed upon all servants receiving four pounds per annum as wages, and upwards to eight pounds a-year inclusive. Those who received from eight to sixteen pounds were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... George Castner, and the service he gave, it was very cheap," Bella defended. "I lived with him for three years. There was never a morning that he was out of his bed later than half-past four. He was the soul of devotion to his employers. Honest to a penny in his accounts, he gave them full measure and more of his time and energy. Perhaps that was what helped make our life so grey. But listen, Martha. Out of his eighteen hundred, he laid aside sixteen hundred each year. Think of it! The two of us lived on two hundred ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... father's put her in a convent school in Paris and she ran away from it and Mercedes found her on the verge of starvation in the forest of Fontainebleau. The Baron von Marwitz had known Mr. Woodruff in Rome and Mercedes persuaded him to take the child into their lives. She hadn't a friend or a penny in the world. The father's relatives were delighted to be rid of her and Mercedes has had her on her hands ever since. That is the ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... called him father, and Queen Harmonia mother. The five old soldiers of the dragon's teeth grew very fond of these small urchins, and were never weary of showing them how to shoulder sticks, flourish wooden swords, and march in military order, blowing a penny trumpet, or beating an abominable rub-a-dub ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... intervals to steal or beg for something to assuage the pangs of hunger. They were vicious to a degree, and at first seemed to prefer a raw shin-bone that they had stolen to an abundant meal obtained honestly. They would rather fight than eat, and prized a penny obtained by lies more than dollars secured by telling the truth. Some were stupid as donkeys; but others possessed minds of surprising acuteness. I once asked one of these why he was ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... lying at the exact distance of 440 yards from the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal—if you can call "stealing" the forced sale the Master now planned consummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands every ultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once the coup should be put through—realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of a ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... machine on a table with two things for your ears like the penny-in-the-slot affairs. I puts it on and listens. A female voice starts up reading headlines of murders, ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... say you could buy another house such as you own in Plainton, and scarcely miss the money. Compared to your health and happiness, the loss of that house, even if it should burn up while you are away, would be as a penny thrown to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... dear L., that the people of Zayla are by no means industrious. They depend for support upon the Desert: the Bedouin becomes the Nazil or guest of the townsman, and he is bound to receive a little tobacco, a few beads, a bit of coarse cotton cloth, or, on great occasions, a penny looking-glass and a cheap German razor, in return for his slaves, ivories, hides, gums, milk, and grain. Any violation of the tie is severely punished by the Governor, and it can be dissolved only by the formula ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... and fall of the empire of the tobymen to its remoter causes; to ascertain the why and the wherefore, that with so many half-pay captains; so many poor curates; so many lieutenants, of both services, without hopes of promotion; so many penny-a-liners, and fashionable novelists; so many damned dramatists, and damning critics; so many Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviewers; so many detrimental brothers, and younger sons; when there are horses to be hired, pistols to be borrowed, purses to be taken, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... what I did, Bennie. I thought of you, and I paid him the cost price on his papers. It wasn't much, for they were all penny papers, but the poor little fellow seemed ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... not vary much. Quoits, cards, reading, and talking, and sometimes a game of romps, such as "Walk, my lady, walk!" We have tried to form a committee, with a view to getting up some Penny Reading or theatrical entertainment, and to ascertain whether there be any latent talent aboard; but the heat occasions such a languor as to be very unfavourable for work, and the committee lay ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... employ some one else. They talked of sitting up all night—as if I cared whether they lost their beauty sleep or not! A week from to- day everything must be settled, so that I have not in my possession a penny that does not belong ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... not press the poor devil, Grantham; I dare say the story of his hunting is all a hum, and that the fact is, he is merely going to earn an honest penny in one of his free commercial speculations—a little contraband," pointing with his finger to the bows, "is it ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... that B. and S. were now as much at variance as they were aforetime friendly and united. But Eadie was the main cause of it by telling his scandal to Steeraway, who he knew would repeat it the first opportunity, and could no more keep it secret than a child can keep from the candy-shop a penny given it by its ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... detective stories, almost worn to tatters, which he is going through for the second or third time. These adventures, I find, he later recounts to Olie, who is slowly but surely succumbing to the poison of the penny-dreadful and the virus of the shilling-shocker! I even caught Dinky-Dunk sitting up over one of these blood-curdling romances the other night, though he laughed a little as I dragged him off to bed, at the absurdity of the situations. Terry's eyes lighted ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... down the tricolor, and set up the red flag of destruction; it would make penny-pieces out of the Column of the Place Vendome; it would hurl down the statue of Napoleon, and set up that of Marat in its place; it would suppress the Academie, the Ecole Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honor. To the grand motto of 'Liberty, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... light a world, a sky, eternity. A word we have no business with; a high-sounding word for a penny purpose. Look, we try to keep alive because it's necessary to life, to nature; and the effort, the struggle, breeds the dream. You can understand that. Men who ought to know say that love is nothing more." He rose and stood over her, towering and portentous against the curtained light. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... glass window of St. Joseph. The girl with the black eyes holds you tight, and you run... and run past the wild, wild towers... and trees in the gardens tugging at their feet and little frightened dolls shut up in the shops crying... and crying... because no one stops... you spin like a penny thrown out in the street. Then the man clutches her by the hair.... He always clutches her by the hair.... His eyes stick out like spears. You see her pulled-back face and her black, black eyes lit up by the glare.... Then everything goes out. Please God, don't let me dream any more ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... tragedy was enacted in London last week. It appears that a small boy, on being offered a penny by his mother, who had just returned from the winter sales, refused it, saying that he was not allowed to accept ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... searched the coast from Point Barrow to the Mackenzie River, is endeavouring now to push from thence, in a northerly direction, for Bank's Land. Dr. Rae is to do the same from the Coppermine River. Capt. Penny, a first-rate whaling captain, with two fast brigs, is now ahead of us, hoping to make an early passage across the middle ice of Baffin's Bay. He goes to Jones's Sound and Wellington Channel, to reach the Parry Isles by a ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... came to see her now, and she took no more of his medicines. It was of no use, and she had paid him every penny that she had to spare, besides a great many other things in the way of little odds and ends that lay about the house. But when Patsey stopped in, one afternoon, a month or two after she had brought the first bunch of flowers, she said to ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... medicines, such as are sold in drug stores and chemists' shops, be avoided, for reasons already mentioned. Great harm, also, often results from the employment of "galvanic belts," "galvanic batteries and pads," and other catch-penny devices, with which the too confiding are not only duped and swindled, but terribly injured. They are all worse than useless, and often render the mildest case very difficult to cure by inducing serious ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... day in certain courts, "can leave it without feeling devoutly thankful." About the candles Fassola says that there was a kind of automatic arrangement for getting them like that whereby we can now buy butter-scotch or matches at the railway stations, by dropping a penny into ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... pleasanter example of extreme social democracy. The young man of the East, unprovided with a private income, finds no scope here for his specially trained capacities, and is glad to turn an honest penny and occupy his time with anything he can get. Thus there are gentlemen in the conventional sense of the word among many of the so-called humbler callings, and one may rub shoulders at the charming little clubs with an Oxford-bred livery-stable keeper or a ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... If we look back upon our earliest sorrows (and who are they that have none to look upon?), and take into consideration the narrow limits of our capacity for either pleasure or pain when we are young, we must admit that a broken doll or a lost penny are, after all, as fruitful of genuine and hopeless misery in their way, as are, in after-life, a broken heart or a ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... list of Roman and other coins found at Horncastle, has been supplied by the Rev. J. A. Penny, Vicar of Wispington, who has them in his ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... dower. Part only had been paid, and Ferdinand not merely refused to hand over the rest, but demanded the return of his previous instalments. Henry, on the other hand, considered himself entitled to the whole, refused to refund a penny, and gave a cold reception to the proposed marriage between Catherine and his sole surviving son. He was, however, by no means blind to the advantages of the Spanish matrimonial and political alliance, and still less to the attractions of Catherine's ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... freehold farm his father held at Pitstock, and lives in independence on what the land brings him. And when Farmer Derriman dies, he'll have all the old man's, for certain. He'll be worth ten thousand pounds, if a penny, in money, besides sixteen horses, cart and hack, a fifty-cow dairy, and at least ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... General does everything in the power of mortal man to prevent plundering, and to encourage the people round about to bring in provisions. He has declared soldiers shall be shot who dare to interrupt or molest the market-people. He has ordered the price of provisions to be raised a penny a pound, and has lent money out of his own pocket to provide the camp. Altogether, he is a strange compound, this General. He flogs his men without mercy, but he gives without stint. He swears most tremendous oaths in conversation, and tells stories which Mountain ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... losing her for ever. Besides, it was not the first time I had run counter to the law, I who came of a lawless stock; but it would be the first time I had deserted a comrade or broken faith with one. I would do neither. In for a penny, in ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... can only say, sir, that in my estimation Mr. Self is a man of the highest integrity. And, in addition, that I have never spent a penny on a chorus girl in my life and have no intention of beginning, counterfeit ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... this time that d'Ache, an exile, concealed in the Chateau of Tournebut, without a companion, without a penny, without a counsellor or ally other than the aged woman who gave him refuge, conceived the astonishing idea of struggling against the man before whom all Europe bowed the knee. Looked at in this light ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... bankrupt. Montreal was penniless, though sixty more men and thirty-two girls were accompanying the nuns out this very year. The Sulpician priests had from the first been ardent friends of the Montrealers. The priests of St. Sulpice now assumed charge of Montreal. Though "God's Penny" was still collected at the fairs and market places of Old France for the conversion of Indians at Mont Royal, the fur trade was rapidly changing the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... although you didn't think so. Weren't you pointed out to me the night o' the divil's bonfire, that your mother, they say, got up for you; and didn't I see you since spakin' to that skamin' blaggard, Caterine Collins, my niece, that takes many a penny out o' my hands; and didn't I know that you couldn't be talkin' to her about anything that was good. Troth, you're not your mother's son or you'll be comin' to me as well as her. Bad luck to her! she was near gettin' ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... returned she. "Well, what idle beggars! not to have a penny to pay honest people; and get tipsy with wine in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... them. 'I'm the finest apple on the tree,' yet no one has picked them for all their labels, because every one has guessed that they aren't—That crab apple labelling itself a pippin and daring to laugh at you! And that long loony Silas Grangerson, a man without a penny to bless himself with, a creature whose character is just kinks. Well, I'm sure—pass me the butter—laughing at you. And what were they laughing at pray? Aren't you straight and the best looking man in Charleston? Couldn't you buy the Rhetts ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he said, "step up; the show is ready. Those who have got a penny cannot spend it better. Those who haven't must try and get their father or mother to give them one, and see the show later on. Girls first. Boys should always give way to their sisters. The bravest men are always the most courteous and gentle ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... without any knowledge of it at all. The moment he enters a sick room, he will see his father spiritually present there; and unless he finds him seated at the sick's man's head, that man is not yet doomed. Thus endowed, Doctor ——can cure a patient who was despaired of, with a dose of penny-royal, and justly predict death for one whose only ailment is a pimple. His success carries all before it. One day, however, he is summoned to the emperor, who lies sick; and the emperor offers gold, and power, and, lastly, his daughter's hand, as the price of his recovery. But this ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Swathinglea alone—which I had deemed, perhaps not unjustly, altogether illiterate—we gathered a whole dust-cart full of cheap ill-printed editions of the minor English classics—for the most part very dull stuff indeed and still clean—and about a truckload of thumbed and dog-eared penny fiction, watery base stuff, the dropsy of our nation's mind. . . . And it seemed to me that when we gathered those books and papers together, we gathered together something more than print and paper, we gathered warped and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... try at earning something, for the fun of the thing; and, to make the experiment satisfactory, I start to-morrow morning for a district in the West Highlands, where the most ingenious fellow I know couldn't get a penny loaf on credit. You have been very good to me, Aunt Lavender: I wish I had made a better use of your kindness. So good-bye just now, and if ever I come back to London again I shall call on you and thank you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... the unity of science spreads among them, and along with it its correllate, that all mankind are one organism, no individual of which can be indifferent to each and all of the others. Enlightened, far-seeing, all-benefiting selfishness will then take the place of short-sighted, suicidal, penny-wise pound-foolish cunning; and that barricade of hypocrisy, duty, that most fallible of all guides, conscience, and 'virtue' and 'vice,' those most unscientific and mischievous expressions that have ever crept into the vocabulary of ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... the other across the sea at this particular time? Is it connected with the facts he cherishes; the presence of this other one in Algiers? and if so, what does Duncan Craig mean to do; cut him off with a penny because he has dared allow the longing in his heart to have its way, and has endeavored to find the mother ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... in the right and her husband in the wrong. One result was that Sir John stopped the income that he had always allowed his son, and took a frightful oath that if Master Charles were dying of starvation before his eyes he would not give him as much as a penny to buy bread with. But her ladyship, who had money in her own right, said that Master Charles's income should go on as usual. Then she and Sir John quarrelled; and she left him and came to live at Deepley Walls, leaving him at Dene Folly; ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... Durgin. Curiously enough, this man, so reckless in many things, held his pledged word sacred. Meanwhile his wavering condition became apparent to Durgin, who grew alarmed, and demanded the stolen property. Torrini refused to give it up; even his own bitter necessities had not tempted him to touch a penny of it. For the last three days he was in deadly terror lest Durgin should wrest the money from him by force. The poor woman, here, knows nothing of all this. It was her presence, however, which probably prevented Durgin from proceeding to extremities with Torrini, who took ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... before me at the present moment the envelope of an old letter. It was received from England in 1863 by my father. The three stamps on it show a value of 34 cents—one shilling, one fourpence and one penny. It is only a single letter, and a small one at that. In fact, if it were any larger it would have had more postage on it. Just think of the difference between now and then. The first postmaster I remember in ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... a general confession which she desired to make; when she wrote it, however, her mind was disordered; she knew not what she had said or done, being distraught at the time, in a foreign country, deserted by her relatives, forced to borrow every penny. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sent out by resort keepers to work up some girls, for whom we were paid from $10 to $50 dollars each, though the cash bonus was much more. The majority of them were girls we met on the streets. We would go around to the penny arcades and nickel theaters, and when we saw a couple of young girls we would go up and talk with them. I will say for myself—I never took a girl away from her home; the girls I took down there I met in the stores ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... odd that in one of these papers Walpole proposes, in jest, precisely our modern system of postage cards, only charging a penny instead ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... mainly rest on a misunderstanding on the one hand of the old frugal economy—which might very well consist with considerable prosperity —and on the other hand of the beautiful old custom of burying men who had deserved well of the state from the proceeds of penny collections —which was far from being a pauper burial. The method also of explaining surnames by etymological guess-work, which has imported so many absurdities into Roman history, has furnished its quota to this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Great Taylor again fumbled in the bag and extracted a coin which transformed the little girl into an India-rubber thing that bounced up and down on one foot at the side of the junk-cart. "Grit never gave me only a penny a pound," ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the day who has a Perryian pen in hand, is pleased to exercise it on the decline of the drama; one of the legitimate targets of penny-a-liners. But how inadequately are the goose quills, and ostrich quills, phoenix quills, and roc quills, of the few standard critics of the age, directed towards the monstrous abuse of public patience which will render the Victorian age the sad antithesis of the Elizabethan, in the literary history ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... were out of work. My employer, a blacksmith, had just died, and for more than six weeks I had not been able to get employment or to earn a farthing. This caused me great distress, for my father had died without leaving a penny in the world, and my mother depended on me entirely. The money I had saved out of my wages was soon spent, and one morning when I sat down to breakfast, my mother looked across the table and ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... this towne should be, I am not able to resolue the asker: for I confesse that for mine owne part, I had not so much good lucke, as to be partaker so much as of one pennie, or penny worth. Howbeit my ill fortune maketh that towne neuer a whit the poorer. But as it should appear by the great pillage by the common souldiers, and some mariners too, and by the goodly furnitures; that were defaced by the baser people, and thereby vtterly ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... to the wedding," he said to Ducky Waddles. "It's to be at five o'clock at my house. Please tell Henny Penny and Cocky Doodle that they're invited, and ask Goosey Lucy and Turkey Tim to come, too. I'm in such a hurry I can't wait ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... many prisons, treacherous employees, half-jailers, half-thieves, who assist in escapes, who sell to the police an unfaithful service, and who turn a penny whenever they can. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... master Hatchway come hither every evening, and drink a couple of cans of rumbo a piece; but he has been confined to his house this fortnight by a plaguy fit of the gout, which, I'll assure your worship, is a good penny out of my pocket." ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... penny takes from me. As sages the matter explain;— Bob owes it to Tom, and then Tommy Just owes it to Bob back again. Since all have thus taken to owing, There's nobody left that can pay; And this is the way to keep going,— All ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... girls their slutt'ry rue, By pinching them both black and blue. And put a penny in their shoe The house for ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... a Spanish Block, he cast it from him, swearing he neither loved them nor their fashions. Another time, bringing him Roses on his Shooes, he asked, if they would make him a ruffe-footed-Dove? one yard of six penny Ribbond served that turne: His Dyet and Journies were so constant, that the best observing Courtier of our time was wont to say, were he asleep seven yeares, and then awakened, he would tell where the King every day had been, and every dish ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... gave him half-a-crown as the cab started. After a while he came running after us, shouting to the cabman to stop. I thought to myself that finding me to be such an innocent he had hit upon some excuse for demanding more. As the cab stopped he said: "You must have mistaken a half-crown piece for a penny, Sir!" ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... ship-wrecked mariner struggling for the possession of a floating spar. Had he not confessed to M. Fortunat that he had suffered the tortures of the damned in his struggle to maintain a show of wealth, while he was often without a penny in his pocket, and was ever subject to the pitiless surveillance of thirty servants? His agony, when he thought of his precarious condition, could only be compared to that of a miner, who, while ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... that," Barbara contributed disgustedly. "But he's only nineteen—not of age, even! And he hasn't one single penny! Why, Mrs. Carter was thinking of sending him abroad for two years' work with his music. I see her doing it now! Little sloppy-haired, conceited idiot, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... more than carnage call you claimant, Paying you a penny for each son you slay? Man, the whole globe in gold were no repayment For what you have lost. And how shall ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... 3. "A penny a bunch is the price; I think you'll not find it too much; They're tied up so even and nice, And ready to ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... be seen on the steps of the Franciscan Church, chuckling to herself and laughing, and soliciting alms from the worshippers; he himself, urged by some inward inexplicable propensity, had often thrown her a hard-earned penny, which he had not had to spare. "Leave me, leave me in peace, you insane old woman," he said; "but you are right, it is hunger more than my wound which has made me weak and miserable; for three days I have not earned a farthing. I wanted to go over to the monastery[15] ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... don't care. Yours is a 'spectable calling. To save your 'spectability, it's worth your while to pawn every article of clothes you've got, sell every stick in your house, and beg and borrow every penny you can get trusted with. When you've done that and handed over, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... enough, poor dear," Hilda said, patting her neck. "A couple of loaves are penny buns to her appetite. Let her drink the water, while I go in and fetch out the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... said Lady Mary, "I cannot sympathise with any of the people who lost their property. They were all of them people who never gave a penny away in their lives! In fact, Mr. Rohscheimer's particular set are all dreadfully mean! When you come to think of it, isn't it funny ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... I undone, madam; for there was never yet a Lord Treasurer that could find a penny for anything over and above the necessary expenses of your government, save for a war or a salary for his ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... to where in a dimly-lit hole, so it seemed to Sydney, about half a dozen youths were seated beneath a swinging lanthorn busily engaged in some game, which consisted in driving a penny-piece along a dirty wooden table, scoured with lines and spotted with ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... pay back every cent of the two thousand I had taken and enclosed my check for the seven hundred and fifty I had put by. Since then I have paid him two hundred and fifty more, goodness knows how. I have squeezed every penny from my salary that I could spare. I have paid him half of the two thousand and, if everything had gone on well, some day or other I would ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... hard—you know that. I was drunk yon night, and I hadn't a penny in my pouch. On my way home from the inn I lay down in the dike and fell asleep. I was awakened by the voices of two men quarrelling. You know who they were. Old Wilson was waving a paper over his head ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 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. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... was very long sitting in the dark, scrunched up behind those cans. He must tell himself stories to pass the time; and he started to relate the interminable legend of Cocky-locky and Henny-Penny who by their superior subtlety evaded the snares set for them by Toddy-Loddy the fox. He felt a sort of kinship with those harried fowls. Gradually the constant repetition of the various other birds involved, "Juckie-Puckie, Goosie-Loosie, Turkey-lurkey and Swannie-Lonnie," had a soothing ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... seventy years on a sufficient pension which her husband faithfully paid, and she died in 1800. These vicissitudes in great part explain why Haydn, though he earned much, could not for a long while put aside a penny and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Monks drop these at quite a distance from each other, so that they will not interfere while growing; then they cover them up neatly with earth, and put up a sign-post with "Rocking-horses" on it in evergreen letters. Just so with the penny-trumpet seed, and the toy-furniture seed, the skate-seed, the sled-seed, and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... there—the nearest timber was better than a mile away, and I wanted to give Bill a good start across the flat before the go-as-you-can commenced; so I talked for a while, and while we were talking I thought I might as well go the whole hog—I might as well die for a pound as a penny, if I had to die; and if I hadn't I'd have the pound to the good, anyway, so to speak. Anyhow, the risk would be about the same, or less, for I might have the spirit to run harder the more I had to run for—the more spirits I had ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal, and knock ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... dread cry, each of the million Chinamen took out of his pocket a penny, a Chinese penny. And a Chinese penny is rather big, with a hole in the centre, and funny chicken-track letters stamped ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... so long as you turn an honest penny?" cried Lousteau. "Besides, my boy, what grudge had you against the theatre? You must have had some reason for it, or you would not have cut up the play as you did. If you slash for the sake of slashing, the paper will get into trouble, and when there is good reason ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... purpose than sweet-hearting. I hear tell that he is very rich; but Steve is not poor,—no, not by a good deal. His grandfather and I have been saving for him more than twenty years, and Steve is one to turn his penny well and often. If you marry Steve, you will not have to ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... give thee two changes of raiment, together with a mess of barley-pottage; and every year thou shalt have a penny at Easter, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... breath away. They were too horrible to realise. I positively couldn't speak. I went up to the bookstall, laid down my penny without moving my lips, and took the paper in my hand ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... yet) used to express either one loaf, value twelvepence or two loaves, value sixpence each: and even when the sizes and price of the loaves varied, it was used to express the larger loaf, or the two smaller loaves. A dozen of bread was also divided into six twopenny, or twelve penny loaves. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various
... whether I appeared mean or not; I do know that I spent every penny of that ten dollars, and considerable more besides. If there was anything at that fair that no one else wanted, and that was not calculated to supply any known want of the human race, it was palmed off on me. I became the unhappy possessor of five dressed dolls, a lady's "nubia," a baby-jumper, ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... they are frequently burned down by bonfires kindled under them to destroy the furze. The chestnut shoot is only four years old before it begins to bear. Three pounds of fresh chestnuts fetch about one penny—dried, or in flour, about double that price. The peasants bake a little cake of the chestnut flour called "netche," about the thickness of a crimpet, and having much the flavour and appearance of potato scones. This paste they bake between two hot stones, with a couple ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... big-headed, with the body of an underfed child, and an ambition that kept me up half the night with Von Holst's "Constitutional Law," Walker's "American Law," or a sheepskin volume of Lawson's "Leading Cases in Equity." I was so mad to save every penny I could earn that instead of buying myself food for luncheon, I ate molasses and gingerbread that all but turned my stomach; and I was so eager to learn my law that I did not take my sleep when ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... If you can conceive of yourself as having been a prosperous farmer and waking up one morning broken in heart and dirty in person, with your barns, live-stock, daughters, sons, everything gone—not a penny left in the world—you can imagine your necessities, and then form some picture of the fore-thought that goes to the running of a Red ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... man, she said. So she took the money, for of course she had to bring us up, and couldn't do it without—and what they call invested it. That means, you know, that somebody took charge of it. So it's all gone, and she gets no interest on it, and the shops won't trust us a ha'penny more. We can't always pay down for the kind of thing she likes, and must take what we can pay for, or go without; and she thinks we might do better for her if we would, and we don't know how. The other day—I don't like to tell it of her, even to you, Barbara, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... suspicions from you, 'otherwise,' said he, 'the young wolf-cub will never thrust himself into the trap for the deliverance of the old he-wolf. Were he once in my prison-house,' your uncle continued to speak of you, 'he should rot and die ere I sent one penny of ransom to set at liberty the lover ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... worked quick enough for its disposal. The earth had given forth her increase so abundantly that the lap of created humanity could not stretch itself to hold it. At Dixon, in 1861, corn cost four pence a bushel. In Ireland, in 1848, it was sold for a penny a pound, a pound being accounted sufficient to sustain life for a day; and we all felt that at that price food was brought into the country cheaper than it had ever ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... of life, that confounded dying man, and he made himself master of every moment of our existence. We grew desperate, and remained submissive. Emotional little Belfast was for ever on the verge of assault or on the verge of tears. One evening he confided to Archie:—"For a ha'penny I would knock his ugly black head off—the skulking dodger!" And the straightforward Archie pretended to be shocked! Such was the infernal spell which that casual St. Kitt's nigger had cast upon our guileless manhood! But the ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... a "living skeleton" brought to England in 1825 by the name of Claude Seurat. He was born in 1798 and was in his twenty-seventh year. He usually ate in the course of a day a penny roll and drank a small quantity of wine. His skeleton was plainly visible, over which the skin was stretched tightly. The distance from the chest to the spine was less than 3 inches, and internally this distance ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a penny in my pocket," he said, "I would betake me to that little inn, just to see these ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson |
