"Threepenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... purse. He had, carefully stowed away, thirty shillings in gold, and of his regular pocket-money a two-shilling piece, a shilling, a threepenny bit, and some coppers. It was enough to take him some hours' distance out of London, where he would be quite as likely to find what he wanted, employment at some farmhouse, as ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... accustomed to eat it himself, as it seemed blasphemous to throw it away, but Philip's keen appetite relieved him from the duty. Then they counted the money. It consisted of pennies, sixpences and threepenny bits. There were always two single shillings, one put in the plate by the Vicar and the other by Mr. Graves; and sometimes there was a florin. Mr. Graves told the Vicar who had given this. It was always a stranger to Blackstable, and Mr. Carey wondered who he was. But Miss Graves had ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Do you not know that the tarantula, which is no bigger than a threepenny bit, (13) has only to touch the mouth and it will afflict its victim with pains and drive him out ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... S. Orr & Co. (the London agents of Chambers, of Edinburgh), who had fallen into financial difficulties, and looked to Bradbury and Evans to help them out; and through their organisation Punch was taken up by the trade "on sale or return." To work up the sale of a threepenny publication was at that time a formidable task; but Orr certainly accomplished it, and for a time Punch undoubtedly owed more to his efforts than to Jerrold's pen or Leech's pencil. The head of the firm, in both senses, was William Bradbury, the keenest man of business that ever trod the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Simon Perkins had his painting-room in Berners Street: thither it was his custom to resort in the morning, by penny steamer or threepenny omnibus, and there he spent many happy hours working hard with palette and brush. Not the least golden seemed those in which Nina accompanied him to sit patiently while he studied, and drew her, line by line, feature ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... and corn, cattle, and other commodities were made legal tenders in payment of debts.[23] In 1652 a mint was established at Boston, and a law was passed providing for the coinage of all bullion, plate, and Spanish coin into "twelve-penny, sixpenny, and threepenny pieces." The master of the mint was John Hull, and the shillings coined by him were called "Pine-Tree Shillings," because they bore on one side the legend "Massachusetts" ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... silvering spoons, and the hair-restorer were all the same mixture. Then a great popular demand for Dr. Crips set in at Tarra, but by this time Nickie the Kid was back in town, amazing his friends with his lavish hospitality in threepenny bars. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... to have been considered a sign of great astuteness and infantine perception. His fond parents—the late Mr. Gurrage was alive then—gave him a new threepenny bit each week to give to a barrel-organ man who played before the house at Bournemouth. Augustus at the age of two invariably changed it on the stairs with the butler for two pennies and two halfpennies, keeping one penny ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... to. Though once I got hauled over the coals pretty sharply for doing so. My sitter happened to be a pretty society woman, possessed of about as much soul as would cover a threepenny-bit, and when I'd finished her portrait she simply turned and rent me. 'I wanted a taking picture,' she informed me indignantly, 'not the bones of my personality laid bare for ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... own walks, except that once, long ago, when the German women came round with threepenny brooms?" asked Arthur, throwing out his right arm, as if he were making a speech. "And think of all the years John has been getting leaf mould for himself out of our copper beech leaves and now refuses us a barrow ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Westhope were a great event. At two o'clock exactly the three children rushed down-stairs, Regie bearing in his hand his tin money-box, in which a single coin could be heard to leap. Hester produced a bright threepenny-piece for each child, one of which was irretrievably buried in Regie's money-box, and the other two immediately lost in the mat in the pony-carriage. However, Hester found them, and slipped them inside their white gloves, and the expedition started, ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... sometimes questioned Tom concerning his parents; and when Tom informed his majesty they were very poor people, the king led him into his treasury and told him he should pay his friends a visit and take with him as much money as he could carry. Tom procured a little purse, and putting a threepenny piece into it, with much labor and difficulty got it upon his back; and, after travelling two days and nights, arrived at ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... jury, you that, either right or wrong, With my threepenny provision I've maintained and cherished long, Come to my aid! I'm ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... unless you have that audacity he prefers to keep the teaspoon on his side of the bar, out of harm's way. This may seem strange, when you perceive that the teaspoon is fashioned of a metal unknown to silversmiths and might be priced at threepence. But even a threepenny teaspoon is a souvenir which ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... the Bishop, "was a sort of cosmopolitan—he tried to teach a little of everything. He was a good-hearted man. He loved to give threepenny-pieces to the boys who pleased him. I well remember one day during prayers—we were all assembled in the big hall—and the head master was reading them. Suddenly the door opened and a big boy, very nervous and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... it reverted to him, I imagine. They got that of course; but it was a mere crumb in a Sahara of starvation, a drop in the thirsty ocean. I dare say that not a single soul in the world got the comfort of as much as a recovered threepenny bit out of the estate. Then, less than crumbs, less than drops, there were to be grabbed, the lease of the big Brighton house, the furniture therein, the carriage and pair, the girl's riding horse, her costly trinkets; down to the heavily ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... seen. The Chapel was dressed with flowers, the wedding party in as new and cheerful attire as could be procured, the English Marriage Service translated into Mota. We make rings out of sixpences or threepenny bits. The place before is full of the sound of the hammer tapping the silver on the marlingspike. The wedding ceremony is performed with as much solemnity as possible, all the school present in their new clothes and with flowers ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Gwen got up very quietly, and unlocked her savings box. It seemed dreadfully hard to have to take her treasured fifteen shillings; pocket money was such a scarce article at the Parsonage that she did not know when she would have the chance of accumulating so much again. There were only two threepenny bits and a penny left to rattle when she shook the box, so she sighed ruefully as she locked it, and put it back in its place on the top shelf of the bookcase. She hoped Netta would not forget to bring the half-sovereign she had promised to lend, though how the loan ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... reign of Edward II, the price of provisions was regulated by Act of Parliament. Twenty-four eggs were ordered to be sold for one penny, but the penny of that period contained as much silver as the threepenny piece of Bunyan's, and of our time. I have bought, within the last forty years, the finest eggs at four ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... could recollect, ten or twelve shillings; and it annoyed him all the more to reflect that if he had put it by, it would have gone far towards the purchase of an 'Orient' carpet in brilliant colours. Then there had been other expenses of his youth: he had purchased threepenny and even fourpenny cigars, the latter rarely, but the former frequently, sometimes singly, and sometimes in bundles of twelve for half-a-crown. Once a meerschaum pipe had haunted him for six weeks; the tobacconist ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... morning—according to Mr. Strachey this was the motor impulse of the thefts—because a lolly shop had stretched out its octopus arms after you. She could imagine, too, with a shiver, how easy it would be, the loss of the first pennies having remained undiscovered, to go on to threepenny-bits, and from these to sixpences. More particularly since the money had been taken, without exception, from pockets in which there was plenty. Not, Laura felt sure, in order to avoid detection, as Mr. Strachey supposed, but because to those who had so much a few odd coins could not matter. She ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... so. And I brought it to London and it hangs in my bedroom. And the vicar, he was so kind to me, he did give me a lot of advice, and Mrs. Amersham, who kept the chandler's shop, she did give me ninepence, all in threepenny bits." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... inclined to decry social culture than moral principle; but I acknowledge no aristocracy except one of service and self-sacrifice, in which he that is chief shall be servant, and he that is greatest of all, servant of all. And it is surely time to notice the threepenny braggadocio of caste which makes the languid Captain Vemon de Vere (or words to that effect) an overmatch for half-a-dozen hard-muscled white savages, any one of whom would take his lordship by ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... sent to me a small old gold watch, a half sovereign, a half guinea piece, two twenty-franc pieces, six small Turkish gold coins, a quarter of a franc, a threepenny piece, a silver toothpick, and a brass pencil-case. The produce of these articles likewise ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... for removing stones from horses' hoofs. Not that Tommy had removed many stones from horses' hoofs, not very many, but if you had a tooth that was loose it was very helpful. Miss Price gave him a new threepenny bit, and Tommy tried hard to please her in arithmetic by reducing inches ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... picture-gallery, smoke a cigarette in the court of fountains, write a letter in the lounge, and finally ask to be directed to the stationery department, where seated on a specially designed chair and surrounded by the most precious manifestations of applied art, you could select a threepenny box of J pens, and have it sent ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... read originals, so long as there are good translations), Sir William Temple's Essays, Addison's works, Swift's "Tale of a Tub," Clarendon's "History," "Gil Blas," Buckingham's Poems, Churchill's Poems, "Life of Bacon"—not so bad for the old threepenny tub. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a threepenny bit last week," Constance put in guiltily. "It was a long time since ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... not go far among twenty-four people. But though presents were out of the question, one could get twenty-four really beautiful Christmas cards for the money, and if some of them were ha'penny ones, then one could afford real snow on a threepenny one for the most important uncle, meaning by "most important," perhaps (but I have forgotten now), the one most likely to be generous in return. Of the fun of choosing those twenty-four cards I need not now speak, nor of the best method of seeing to it that somebody else paid for the necessary ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... another man's servants is absurd, and reminds one of the 'plate, glass, and linen' that used to be charged for at the posting-house on the Dover road with every threepenny-worth of brandy-and-water, I have been asked 6d. for an orange (when oranges were cheap) at a London hotel, upon the ground that they never charged less than 6d. for anything; and I have read of 'an old established and family hotel' near Piccadilly, where the charge for putting ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... have moved to Clipstone Street. I suppose you know my farce was damned. The noise still rings in my ears. Was you ever in the pillory?—being damned is something like that. Godwin keeps a shop in Skinner Street, Snow Hill, he is turned children's bookseller, and sells penny, twopenny, threepenny, and fourpenny books. Sometimes he gets an order for the dearer sort of Books. (Mind, all that I tell you in this letter is true.) A treaty of marriage is on foot between William Hazlitt and Miss Stoddart. Something about settlements only retards it. She has somewhere ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... voice. "I wouldn't laugh at you. Don't you know you're made to be loved—not like me. Men hate thin, bony faces and scraggy hair; they want something they can pinch and pet. Lord! Imagine a man pinching my cheeks—it 'ud be like picking up a threepenny bit off a glass ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the Seely-Hardwickes were a force in this capital. They were three,—Seely-Hardwicke himself, who owned a million or more, and to my knowledge drank Hollands and smoked threepenny Returns in his Louis Quinze library; Mrs. Seely-Hardwicke, as beautiful as the moon and clever to sinfulness; and Billy, their child, aged seven-and-a-half. To-day their whereabouts would be as difficult to find as that of the boy in Mrs. Hemans's ballad. You jump to the ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... couples," said Wally, gleefully. "They hold each other firmly round the neck, and they revolve on the space of a threepenny bit. It's beautiful. May I try ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... money, a sovereign and two halves, into his unwilling hand. Then he understood her relief, for, looking down into the little sealskin purse, he saw that there was no more gold in it. The last ten shillings must have been counted out in silver, and he was not quite sure it would not have ended in a threepenny piece ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... bold to say it, miss," said the porter, "an open-hearted gentleman as ever I see. There's many as gives us a threepenny for more than I've done for 'im. And look at what he's give me," he said, showing the half-crown ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... tactile and grasping projection (sometimes called "a finger") placed above between the two nostrils at the end of the trunk; the African elephant has one above and one below. I have seen the elephant pick up with this wonderful trunk with equal facility a heavy man and then a threepenny piece. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... I, "it isn't that I doubt your word, but my mind is set on the adventure. So, if Simon will let me have threepenny worth of candles, and some bread and meat—no matter what—I'll be off, for I should like to get there ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... new and appetising. It is very easily prepared, requiring only about 10 minutes' cooking. It is put up in threepenny packets, with which full directions for cooking are given. I may say that I generally make of a stiffer consistency than quantities given, and cook ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... love, she had shown him how much less to her was his love than the crowd's. And now again it was only the crowd she cared for. He followed with his eyes her long slender figure as she threaded her way in and out of the crowd, sinuously, confidingly, producing a penny from one lad's elbow, a threepenny-bit from between another's neck and collar, half a crown from another's hair, and always repeating in that flute-like voice of hers "Well, this is rather queer!" Hither and thither she fared, her neck and arms gleaming white from the luminous blackness of her dress, in ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... wealth of gold and silver and luscious sulphurets—none save the Duke could tell how much of these good things the Duke possessed in that great land beyond the sea, upon which if England were bodily set down it would be as hard to find as a threepenny bit in a ten-acre field. But the Duke never told. He went about his business quietly, for he said in his heart, "Tush! I have children to be provided for; and if anything happens to the old country, I will save some bacon for them in the new, and they may call themselves dukes or farmers ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... down the little leather bag and turned it upside down. A threepenny-piece and a penny rolled out. "Dat's all," he said. "Not enough ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hue by boiling them previous to peeling). Brown stuff is sorted, before it reaches the workman, into lengths varying from 3 1/2 ft. to 8 or 10 ft., the smallest being known in London and the home counties as "luke," the largest as "great," and the intermediate sizes as "long small," "threepenny" and "middleboro." White and buff rods are more carefully sorted, the smallest, about 2 ft. or less, being known as "small tack," and rising sizes as "tack," "short small," "small," "long small," "threepenny," "middleboro" and "great." Rods of two to three years' growth, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... possible disguises, Mr. Narkom. A wig, a stick of grease-paint, a threepenny twist of crepe hair, and there you are! No, I do not believe that the man is a Cingalese at all; and, far from his having any connection with what you were pleased to term just now a change of front on the part of the Buddhists ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... knots. Her long fair hair hung down her back tied with a pink ribbon, and her fringe was fluttering in the breeze. Behind her fringe she wore a wreath of green ivy. In one hand she carried a leghorn hat with red and blue ribbon, and in the other a silken bag filled with a threepenny bit and two biscuits, ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... Praed Street with a condescension that was meant to represent a correct and proper pride. One evening, seated at the counter there, and waiting for the return of Gertie, he gave a formal warning to the effect that any cigar presented to him was, in future, to be taken from the threepenny box. ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... CASSELL & Co. have just brought out a one-and-threepenny edition ("the threepence be demmed!") of the Yellowplush Papers, with a dainty canary-coloured Jeames on the cover. At the same time the same firm produce, in the same form, The Last Days of Pompeii, The Last Days of Palmyra, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... her, bills in hand, speaks in a whisper, very rapidly and fiercely.] Yes! And I say that a woman who goes and runs up bills like these, [dashing the back of one hand against the bills in the other] while her husband is smoking threepenny cigars, will very soon bring herself and him to one of those new palatial workhouses where, thank heaven, the cuisine and appointments are now organized with a view of providing persons of your tastes with every luxury at the ratepayers' expense. ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... of church pantomime," she said thoughtfully—"beautiful pictures and things about the Holy Land, and the loveliest music, and beautiful children in white, singing hymns, and bright colours all about, and no collection plates to take your only threepenny bit—oh! and no ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... step, she examined the contents of her little red purse. A whole shilling, a sixpence, and a threepenny bit. That would be more than enough. Might they go to some shops that afternoon, she asked, when she and Nurse were starting for ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... add that the cases in which the accident is the result of mere indolence are very rare, and though in such cases strictness may be necessary, yet actual punishment is out of place. As a rule, reward answers much better. A penny, or a threepenny-piece every night that the accident does not happen, and a forfeit of a halfpenny or two pence for every night of misfortune, is a very efficacious help to ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... ancestry, and it had no progeny. The pretence that our glorious literature derives its lineage from "Beowulf" is in vulgar phrase 'a put up job'; a falsehood grafted upon our text-books by Teutonic and Teutonising professors who can bring less evidence for it than will cover a threepenny-piece. Its run for something like that money, in small educational manuals, has been in its way a triumph ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the awful accession of power which had just befallen him? The following morning he gathered together every sixpence he had in the house, and went out of one grocer's shop into another, and out of one baker's shop into another, until he had changed the whole into threepenny pieces. Then he walked to town, as usual, to business. But one or two of his friends who were walking the same way, and followed behind him, could not think what Mr. Belper was about. Every crossing that he came ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... with a rockery filling up the corner, and scarcely a gleam of colour from one end to another! That at least was the effect from a distance, but as the proprietor pointed out his treasures, insignificant little blossoms were distinguishable among the greenery, and flowers the size of a threepenny piece were produced proudly from lurking-places and exhibited for admiration. They all came from some unheard-of spots at the other side of nowhere, had been reared with prodigious difficulty, and were of such rarity and value that the heads of public gardens had paid special pilgrimage ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... and said: "How are we ever to get out of the wood?" But Hansel comforted her. "Wait a bit," he said, "till the moon is up, and then we'll find our way sure enough." And when the full moon had risen he took his sister by the hand and followed the pebbles, which shone like new threepenny bits, and showed them the path. They walked on through the night, and at daybreak reached their father's house again. They knocked at the door, and when the woman opened it she exclaimed: "You naughty children, what a time ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... beautiful inlets of Sydney Harbour. The place is now a populous marine suburb with terraces of shoddy, jerry-built atrocities crowding closely around many beautiful houses with spacious grounds surrounded by handsome trees. Threepenny steamers, packed with people, run every half-hour from Sydney, and the once beautiful dell at the head of the bay, into which a crystal stream of water ran, is as squalid and detestable as a Twickenham lane in ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... (ragweed), sez I to meself there was apt to be somebody lookin' after him. For bedad it seems to me mostwhiles the littler a thing is the more people there'll be consaitin' they can't get on widout it; and that's lucky, belike, or else it might aisy get lost entirely, like a threepenny bit rowled away into a crack. But if you come to considher," Con said, hurrying on lest his allusion to the coin should be construed as a hint that he thought of payment for his services, "most people's lookin' out for somebody, or else somebody's lookin' out for them. It's on'y a few odd ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... nine-and-sixpence that Celia hands over to her, without asking any questions. Indeed, anything that the Government wished deducted from Jane's wages we could deduct with a minimum of friction—from income-tax to a dog-licence. A threepenny insurance ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... were both happy to see him, and the more so as he had brought such an amazing sum of money with him; but the poor little fellow was excessively wearied, having traveled half a mile in forty-eight hours, with a huge silver threepenny-piece on his back. His mother, in order to recover him, placed him in a walnut shell by the fireside, and feasted him for three days on a hazel-nut, which made him very sick; for a whole nut used to serve him ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... real wine of three kinds, namely, blackthorn wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours out, but the bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to pour out. There is bread and butter to begin with, of the size of a threepenny bit; and cakes to end with, and they are so small that they have no crumbs. The fairies sit round on mushrooms, and at first they are very well-behaved and always cough off the table, and so on, but after a bit they ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the Democrat roughly, as he pocketed the coin. 'Do you suppose that you are going to feed thousands of starving men, women, and children on a threepenny bit?' ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... fragments of Druids' wisdom, the healing power of herbs. So she came another day, and brought some herbs, and sorted them out on a table, and said: 'This is Dwareen (knapweed); and what you have to do with this, is to put it down with other herbs, and with a bit of threepenny sugar, and to boil it, and to drink it, for pains in the bones; and don't be afraid but it will cure you. Sure the Lord put it in the ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... dug themselves in. Just in front of them where they paused, he saw a fine young officer come along the road on a motor bicycle, carrying despatches. The next minute a high-explosive shell burst, and, to use his own words, "There was not enough of the young officer to put on a threepenny bit." Always men tell me there is nothing left to bury. One minute there is a splendid piece of upstanding, vigorous manhood, and the next there is no finding one piece of him to ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Francesca persists in dating her letters to Ronald from 'The Rale Thing,' which it undoubtedly is.) We take almost all the rooms in the house, but there are a few other guests. Mrs. Waterford, an old lady of ninety-three, from Mullinavat, is here primarily for her health, and secondarily to dispose of threepenny shares in an antique necklace, which is to be raffled for the benefit of a Roman Catholic chapel. Then we have a fishing gentleman and his bride from Glasgow, and occasional bicyclers who come in for a dinner, a tea, or a lodging. These three comforts of a home are sometimes ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... participating in the credit of admitting to their homes products of intellectual industry and ingenuity beyond such matter as Family Bibles, Directories, Railway Guides, Charles Lamb's Biblia-a-Biblia, and sixpenny or threepenny editions of popular authors, which constitute the staple decorations of the average British middle-class household ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Gentleman dives vaguely in a pocket, and eventually produces a threepenny bit, which he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... the little theatre, and the Cobbler with them; but the last retired modestly to the threepenny row. The young gentlemen were favoured with reserved seats, price one shilling. "Very dear," murmured Vance, as he carefully buttoned the pocket to which he restored a purse woven from links of steel, after the fashion of chain mail. Ah, Messieurs ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the subject of uncles as a class. 'Uncles,' he said, 'are tricky. You never know where you've got 'em. You think they're going to come out strong with a sovereign, and they make it a shilling without a blush. An uncle of mine once gave me a threepenny bit. If it hadn't been that I didn't wish to hurt his feelings, I should have flung it at his feet. Also I particularly wanted threepence at the moment. Is your uncle likely to do ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... Government were driven to pledging their own private credit in order to obtain the smallest article necessary to its continuance. In fact, to such a pass did things come that when the country was annexed a single threepenny bit (which had doubtless been overlooked) was found in the Treasury chest, together with acknowledgments of debts to the extent of ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... the archdeacon in the early days of the war. Its presence in Tuppence's coat was due to the fact that she had used it for pinning in some flowers a day or two before. But Tuppence had sharp eyes, and had noted the corner of a threepenny detective novel protruding from Albert's pocket, and the immediate enlargement of his eyes told her that her tactics were good, and that the fish would rise ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... have shown, among a gang of spiritual thieves or coiners, who passed the basest metal upon him without his finding it out, so childish and inexperienced was he in the ways of anything but those back eddies of the world, schools and universities. Among the bad threepenny pieces which had been passed off upon him, and which he kept for small hourly disbursement, was a remark that poor people were much nicer than the richer and better educated. Ernest now said that he always travelled third class not because it was cheaper, but ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... imagine. Like a true goldsmith he kept all your holidays; there was not one wanting in his calendar; when ready money was scarce, he would set them a-telling a thousand pounds in sixpences, groats, and threepenny-pieces. It would have done your heart good to have seen him charge through an army of lawyers, attorneys, clerks, and tradesmen; sometimes with sword in hand, at other times nuzzling like an eel in the mud. When a fellow stuck like a bur, that there ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... in all his pockets, and, finally, with some difficulty, produced a threepenny bit. The mob ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... In itself the threepenny tax was a trifle, as the ship-money tax of twenty shillnigs was to John Hampden (S436); but underlying it was a principle which seemed to the Americans, as it had seemed to Hampden, no trifle; for such principles revolutions had been fought in the past; for such they would be fought ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... themselves upon making—such curios, for instance, as the silver and copper kettles and coffee pot shown in Figs. 58, 59, and 60. The larger specimen (drawn larger than the original) was made from a copper farthing, the smaller kettles being hammered out of threepenny-pieces; the coffee pot is of ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... threepenny bits and five and twenty farthings—the whole show! Ha! May the Lord Jesus never remember them or ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... battling for a knot of pine-wood, knew that they could charm the pennies and the threepenny bits out of his waistcoat; the baked potatoes and the roasted chestnuts looked so nice ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, and in our little house it was an event, the first great victory in a woman's long campaign; how they had been laboured for, the pound- note and the thirty threepenny-bits they cost, what anxiety there was about the purchase, the show they made in possession of the west room, my father's unnatural coolness when he brought them in (but his face was white) - I so often heard the tale afterwards, and shared as boy and man in so many ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie |
