"Sixpence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no port charges in Australia or anywhere else on the voyage, except at Pernambuco, till she poked her nose into the custom-house at Melbourne, where she was charged tonnage dues; in this instance, sixpence a ton on the gross. The collector exacted six shillings and sixpence, taking off nothing for the fraction under thirteen tons, her exact gross being 12.70 tons. I squared the matter by charging people sixpence each for coming on board, and when this business got ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... shilling, etc., are fractions. The next time he has a chop and a pint of stout in the city, the waiter should say—"A pound, sir, to you," and should add, "Please to remember the waiter in integers." Mr. Lowe fancies that when he pays one and sixpence, he pays in integers, and so he does, if his integer be a penny or a sixpence. Let him bring his mind to contemplate a mil as the integer, the lowest integer, and the seven cents five mils which he would pay under the new system would be payment in integers also. But, as it happens with some others, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Pleasure Grounds, near Sansome Walk, where fetes are given and bands frequently play. The grounds are tastefully laid out, portions being set apart for games of archery, cricket, bowls, and quoits. The usual admission fee is sixpence, but on Mondays they are free to ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... Ireland was not such a California as to make a very pretty girl with twelve thousand pounds an everyday chance. She had numerous offers of marriage, and with the usual luck in such cases, there were commonplace unattractive men with good means, and there were clever and agreeable fellows without a sixpence, all alike ineligible. Matty had that infusion of romance in her nature that few, if any, Irish girls are free from, and which made her desire that the man of her choice should be something out of the common. She ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... profitable trade by selling winds to sailors. Even so late as 1814, Bessie Millie, of Pom[o]na (Orkney Islands), helped to eke out a livelihood by selling winds for sixpence. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Betty, "the only ring that I have is my wedding ring, and that's not worth sixpence to anybody but myself, so I don't suppose it stands much chance of ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... bakery, plainly you who eat must do something in your turn. It is not enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon your knees for the admirable constitution of society and your own convenient situation in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the point of the inquiry; and you must first have BOUGHT THE SIXPENCE. Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit desires certainty in a thing of such a nature; he must see to it that ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... true he charges at the rate of a penny a week for every sixpence lent out; but many a fellow to whom tarts are a present necessity is happy to pay this interest for the loan. These transactions are kept secret. Mr. Bullock, in rather a whining tone, when he takes Master Green aside ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yet not more so than was proper, considering that the rent of it came to about sixpence a minute. There was room, even after all the packages were stowed, for both of them to lie down. But instead of lying down they eagerly inspected the little abode. They found a lavatory basin with hot and cold water taps, but no hot water ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... I might only try my hand at portrait-painting—the thing of all others that I am naturally fittest for. But I have nobody to start me; no sitter to give me a first chance; nothing in my pocket but three-and-sixpence; and nothing in my mind but a doubt whether I shall struggle on a little longer, or end it immediately in the Thames. Don't let me detain you from your walk, my dear sir. I'm afraid Lady Malkinshaw ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... for her sole use and benefit in future, and not only him, but all my other admirers into the bargain wherever she can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't care sixpence. Assure her also as a last and indubitable proof of Warren's indifference to me, that he actually drew that gentleman's picture for me, and delivered it to ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... give me one sixpence, or one penny, for God's sake," cried a voice from the other side of a fancy paling which separated the grounds in that quarter from a thoroughfare. "For heaven's sake, Mr. Lawson, help me as ye helped me before. I know you've the heart and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... cock-shy a gentleman came, and Wantelo halloed out, "Three sticks for a penny, eighteen for a sixpence!" And the gentleman took a stick, and we had five shillings for three dozen throws! The gentleman played well, and got five cocoanuts, and took us to his carriage and gave me three glasses of brandy, so that I ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... clothes—midshipmen in mufti—yes, you are so: a couple of young swindlers, without a sixpence in your pocket, passing yourselves off as young men of fortune, and walking off through the window without ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... in form is a dense cushion of little spiked rosettes, of a dark green colour, slightly silvered. The flowers are produced on bright ruddy stems 3in. high, and are creamy white, nearly the size of a sixpence. Small as the plant is, a moderate sized specimen is very attractive, especially before the flowers open, when they are in their prettiest form. They open slowly and endure nearly ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... settled that Paul should attend Mr. MacGrawler two hours a day; that Mr. MacGrawler should be entitled to such animal comforts of meat and drink as the Mug afforded, and, moreover, to the weekly stipend of two shillings and sixpence,—the shillings for instruction in the classics, and the sixpence for all other humanities; or, as Mrs. Lobkins expressed it, "two bobs for the Latin, and a site ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and, A Merry Meeting; or, 'tis Merry when Knaves meet; both of which subsequently reappeared under the titles respectively of Humour's Ordinarie, where a man may be verie merrie and exceeding well used for his sixpence, and the Knave of Clubs. Either work would now cost much more than sixpence, and probably fail to make the reader very merry, or even merry at all. One of the epigrams, however, of the first work may be quoted as of more than ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... unconscionable and cold female creatures distasteful to him. Not a bit! He had even sought it and been ready to pay for that society in the correct manner—even to imperturbably beggaring himself of his final sixpence in order to do the honours of the latest cinema. Only, he had a sense of human superiority. It certainly did not occur to him that in the victimized young men there might exist faults which complemented those of the parasitic ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... field. Ah! I thought as much. No schoolboy can do without his sweetstuff, and here it is. "Stodge" they call it, a horrible name, but very true. I am sure much more sensible are those who walk off to the neighbouring village of Stoke Fleming, where they can get a nice tea from Mrs. Fox from sixpence to a shilling. ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... must confess that the day's work has been a trick throughout. The diamond was pawned years ago. This trinket here is a copy in paste and worth perhaps some seven shillings sixpence. And those fellows were not constables, but just my cousin Eiran and two footmen in disguise. Nay, madam, you will learn with experience that to display unfailing candor is not without exception the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... public in more than one literary year-book of her day. Originally they were to be unsigned, but Godwin "cheated" Lamb into putting a name to them (see letter of Jan. 29, 1807). The single stories, which Mrs. Godwin issued at sixpence each, are now excessively rare. The ordinary first edition in two volumes is a valuable ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of London, who had found out that there was at the King's Arms at Cornhill a Debating Society, where principles of the most dangerous tendency were propagated; where people went to buy treason at sixpence a head; where it was retailed to them by the glimmering of an inch of candle; and five minutes, to be measured by the glass, were allowed to each traitor to perform his part ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... holding him in bondage till by the payment of a heavy ransom he had woefully subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence, moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that for the rest of his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence-worth of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible and burnt ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it into two pieces, and took it out of its cover; now could not Murray without any other change add to his advertisement a line saying, "if bound in two volumes, one shilling or one shilling and sixpence extra." You thus might originate a change which would be a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... sixpence, A pocket full of rye; Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie; When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing; Was not that a dainty dish To set ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... but quite natural under the circumstances. I felt in my pockets, to see if I was the proprietor of any loose change; my search was magnificently successful, for I discovered that I had a sixpence! ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... near PFEIFER, so as to seize on any favourable opportunity. He laughs at PFEIFER'S little witticism, then steps forward and again addresses him.] I wanted to ask you, sir, if you would perhaps have the great kindness not to take my advance of sixpence off to-day's pay? My missus has been bedridden since February, She can't do a hand's turn for me, an' I've to pay a bobbin ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... weather.' The author of Primitive Culture (Mr. Tylor) rebels against this theory. There is no legend, no allegory, no nursery-rhyme, he says, safe from it, and, as an amusing illustration, he supposes the Song of Sixpence to be thus interpreted by the mythologists. Obviously, the four-and-twenty blackbirds are four-and-twenty hours, and the pie to hold them is the underlying earth covered with the over-arching sky. How true a touch of nature is it, 'when the pie is opened,' that is, when day breaks, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... furnished house that suited them in the Schadow Strasse, opposite Geissler's, where for two hours every Thursday and Sunday afternoon you might sit for sixpence in a pretty garden and drink coffee, beer, or Maitrank, and listen to lovely music, and dance in the evening under cover to strains of Strauss, Lanner, and Gungl, and other heavenly waltz-makers! With all their faults, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... best plan, Jack," Ruthven said, putting his hand in his pocket and bringing out sixpence, "will be for you to go across the road and wet your whistle before ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... out her subsistence by selling favourable winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she said, to arrive, though occasionally the mariners had to wait some ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a silver sixpence without asking. And you'd better sit on the bench by the door here, and eat a crust and a cut of cheese, and drink a drop of good ale, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... wedding they are going to have. Mrs Miff is told, that the new furniture and alterations in the house cost full five thousand pound if they cost a penny; and Mrs Miff has heard, upon the best authority, that the lady hasn't got a sixpence wherewithal to bless herself. Mrs Miff remembers, like wise, as if it had happened yesterday, the first wife's funeral, and then the christening, and then the other funeral; and Mrs Miff says, by-the-bye she'll soap-and-water ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... at a house, where the hamper was taken out, carried in, and set down. The cook gave the carrier sixpence; the back door banged, and the cart rumbled away. But there was no quiet; there seemed to be hundreds of carts passing. Dogs barked; boys whistled in the street; the cook laughed, the parlour maid ran up and down-stairs; and a canary sang like ...
— The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse • Beatrix Potter
... according to the capacity of man and wife respectively. But Betty was as lively as ever, bustling about with every one, and looking out for the chance of groats, which the better off might be free with. And over the kneading-pan next day, she dropped three and sixpence out of her pocket; and Lizzie could not tell for her life how much more might ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... which are left "Al jdi-k" to thy generosity; and the higher the bather's rank the more he or she is expected to pay. See Pilgrimage i. 103. In 1853 I paid at Cairo 3 piastres and twenty paras, something more than sixpence, but now five shillings would ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... I sent thee six-pence for thy leman (mistress): had'st it?" Read as Shakespeare wrote: "I sent thee sixpence for thy lemma"—lemma is properly an argument, or proposition assumed, and is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... little feet tramp twelve and fourteen miles a day delivering and collecting; often they are sworn at by the foreman for being late; often they are very unhappy, and hardly ever do they get more than seven-and-sixpence a week. But they always smile: a little timidly, you know, because they are so young and London is so full of perils; yea, though they work harder than any other ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... had but one and sixpence in the world. The manifold worries and perplexities consequent upon her poverty had affected her health. She was no longer able to supply her baby with its natural food. She was compelled to buy milk from the neighbouring dairy and to sterilise it to the best of her ability. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Young Lochgair, heir to untold acres in the far north and master of unlimited pocket-money, admitted frankly that the sum of eight-and-sixpence per day, which he was now earning by the sweat of his brow and the expenditure of shoe-leather, was sweeter to him than honey in the honeycomb. Hattrick, who had recently put up a plate in Harley Street, said it was good to be earning a living wage at last. Mr. Waddell, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... need differ appreciably from a Chestertonian essay, poem, or criticism. That a book by G.K.C. should describe itself as a novel means little more than that its original purchasing price was four shillings and sixpence. It might also contain passages of love, hate, and other human emotions, but then again, it might not. But one thing it would contain, and that is war. G.K.C. would be pugnacious, even when there was nothing to fight. His characters would wage their wars, even ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... and in Syria the Kays and Yaman (which remain to the present day) were as pugnacious as Highland Caterans. The tale bears some likeness to the accumulative nursery rhymes in "The House that Jack Built," and "The Old Woman and the Crooked Sixpence;" which find their indirect original in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... dame became slightly more animated. Prefacing her remarks by a repetition of her statement that it was a nice room, she went on to say that she could 'do' it at seven and sixpence per week 'for him'—giving him to understand, presumably, that, if the Shah of Persia or Mr Carnegie ever applied for a night's rest, they would sigh in vain for such easy terms. And that included lights. Coals were to be looked ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... doubt that there are certain exceptional complexions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, is natural. Nature is fertile in variety. I saw an albiness in London once, for sixpence, (including the inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,) who looked as if she had been boiled in milk. A young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair all in little pellets of the size of marrow-fat peas. One of my own classmates ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... since we know that he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible man. Before he was fourteen, having chosen the profession of his father, he left home, with his father's consent, and went to sea in the capacity of cabin-boy. He used to boast, late in life, that he began the world with sixpence in his pocket. Quite ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... would ask a sixpence a hundred,' said Rob, slowly; for he had been considering that question for ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... adrift and left to shift for himself. A clean record and a sufficiently serious wound entitled him to a small pension or admission to Greenwich Hospital, an institution which had religiously docked his small pay of sixpence a month throughout his entire service. Failing these, there remained for him only the streets and the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... custom; his stand is on the quay; his number is 415, inscribed in French characters on the lantern of his vehicle (we have a number 415 on board, one Le Goelec, gunner, who serves the left of one of my guns; happy thought, I shall remember this); his price is sixpence the journey, or five pence an hour, for his customers. Capital; he shall have my custom, that is promised. And now, let us be off. The waiting-maids, who have escorted me to the door, fall on all fours as a final salute, and remain prostrate on the threshold—as ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Imperial, library at Paris. Ibid. A similar, though less important, anecdote is here laid before the reader from a communication sent to me by Mr. Wm. Hamper of Birmingham. '"Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, black-letter, sewed," was valued at SIXPENCE, in a catalogue of a small Collection of Books on the sale at the shop of Mr. William Adams, Loughborough, in the year 1804: and, after in vain suing the coy collector at this humble price, remained unsold to the present year, 1809, when (thanks to your Bibliomania!) it ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... disclaim the ordinary motives, on account of which the whole world around me is toiling unremittingly, to the sacrifice of ease, comfort, health, and life. I do not affect the disinterestedness of that ingenious association of gentlemen mentioned by Goldsmith, who sold their magazine for sixpence a-piece, merely for their ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... about at hand. The clanging bell had been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of close to the day's adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. When the ferryboat with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for the wasted time but the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... used to call the quarter-deck, Lady Hamilton came up to him, and said she saw he was uneasy. He smiled, and said: 'No, he was as happy as possible; he was surrounded by his family, his health was better since he had been on shore, and he would not give sixpence to call the king his uncle.' She replied, that she did not believe him, that she knew he was longing to get at the combined fleets, that he considered them as his own property, that he would be miserable if any man but himself did the business, and that he ought to have them, as the price ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Nicholls turned out from the bottom of a desk. It is of a kind in which one might keep pins or beads, certainly of no value whatever apart from its associations. Within were four little pieces of paper neatly folded to the size of a sixpence. These papers were covered with handwriting, two of them by Emily, and two by Anne Bronte. They revealed a pleasant if eccentric arrangement on the part of the sisters, which appears to have been settled ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... copy of "Peter Bell" [1] a week ago, and I hope the author will not be offended if I say I do not much relish it. The humor, if it is meant for humor, is forced; and then the price,—sixpence would have been dear for it. Mind, I do not mean your "Peter Bell," but a "Peter Bell," which preceded it about a week, and is in every bookseller's shop-window in London, the type and paper nothing differing from the true one, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... in small matters of physic. They hand these things down in their traditions. Now in cancers and hydrophoby they are quite ingenious. I will just take this bark home and analyze it; for, though it cant be worth sixpence to the young mans shoulder, it may be good for the toothache, or rheumatism, or some of them complaints. A man should never be above learning, even if ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... said, taking sixpence from the heap of money and sliding the rest back into the purse, which she ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the danger of frost is over in the spring, they uncover it, and begin its culture. There is a great deal of this in the neighborhood of Toulon. The plants are set about eight feet apart, and yield, one year with another, about two pounds of caper each, worth on the spot sixpence sterling per pound. They require little culture, and this may be performed either with the plough or hoe. The principal work is the gathering of the fruit as it forms. Every plant must be picked every other day, from the last of June till the middle of October. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... rough, capable young fellow with fingers that are already becoming stumpy because he so often uses his hands instead of a spade. This is a sign that Dering will never get on in the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to clods. He will get a rise of one and sixpence in a year or two, and marry on it and become duller and heavier; and, in short, the clever ones could already write ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... to lay his hand, I found (what I had never noticed before) that there is a curious dearth of them in the Gardens. The magic egg-cup I usually carried about with me, and with its connivance I did some astonishing things with pennies, but even the penny that costs sixpence is uncertain, and just when you are saying triumphantly that it will be found in the egg-cup, it may clatter to the ground, whereon some ungenerous spectator, such as Irene, accuses you of fibbing and corrupting youthful minds. It was useless to tell her, ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... will, dear; and it will be a boon and a blessing to me to have you in our ranks—one of the new army of self-supporting, self-respecting women. I suppose you are right. I have never had a sixpence. But your husband deserves to be punished. Perhaps it is punishment ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... a sum of over nine millions is annually levied from off the inhabitants of the "favoured" portions of the British empire, towards which "oppressed Ireland" is not called upon to contribute sixpence! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... spoke, From Arthur's Seat[1] confirming thunders broke. The conscious culprits, to their fate resigned, Sank to their knees, all piously inclined. This act, from high Ben Lomond where she floats, The thrifty goddess, Caledonia, notes. Glibly as nimble sixpence, down she tilts Headlong, and ravishes away their kilts, Tears off each plaid and all their shirts discloses, Removes each shirt and their broad backs exposes. The king advanced—then cursing fled amain Dashing ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... him go, of course, for I had passed my word. But I watched him as long as he was in sight, and after he was gone lit out for cover as lively as you would want to see, and went the rest of the way home under the bush, for I didn’t trust him sixpence-worth. One thing I saw, I had been ass enough to give him warning, and that which I meant to do I must do ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life over again to be sitting in a circle, drinking tea out of enamelled mugs, and eating thick pieces of bread and butter. Miss Beasley had provided a large home-made plum birthday cake, with a sixpence baked in it, the acquisition of which was naturally a matter of keen interest to each several girl, until the lucky slice fell to the lot of Cynthia Greene, who fondled ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... catastrophe which happened ere this letter was well in his father's hand, accords ill with quotations from the Bible, and hopes fixed in heaven:—"As we gave," he says, "a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire, and burnt to ashes, and I was left, like a true poet, not worth a sixpence." ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... housewife pinched her arm and whispered sharply: "Not that, you good-for-nothing! Get the old one out of the cupboard. It leaks, and the Hillmen are so neat, and such nimble workers, that they are sure to mend it before they send it home. So one obliges the Fairy People, and saves sixpence in tinkering!" ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... be spent conjointly, and that no money should be spent unless three out of four consented to the expenditure. ("Damn it, is it my money or is it not?" said Ninian when the rule was proposed, and "Fined sixpence for cheek!" Gilbert replied, ordering Roger to collect the sixpence which was then divided between the three who had not murmured.) It was he who declared that "Henry" was too long and "Quinn," too short (though ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... imagination of that wounded whisper. It makes you feel like a (German) prince. You have the power of making happy and (even better in some cases) unhappy, at least, as Carlyle would say, 'to the extent of sixpence.' ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... and can be baked as wanted, so that we may estimate that in ten days a man may produce food for the whole year. This is on the supposition that he possesses sago trees of his own, for they are now all private property. If he does not, he has to pay about seven and sixpence for one; and as labour here is five pence a day, the total cost of a year's food for one man is about twelve shillings. The effect of this cheapness of food is decidedly prejudicial, for the inhabitants of the sago countries are never so ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... German marks cost me one shilling A hundred Austrian crowns cost me one and sixpence A hundred Polish marks cost me sixpence Twenty-five Russian (Czar)[15] roubles (1909) cost me sixpence Two Italian lire cost me eightpence Two Greek drachmas cost me eightpence Two Roumanian lei cost me sixpence Five Yugoslav dinars[16] ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... particular statement of my case; like a beggar who stands with his hat in one hand, and a full account of his cruel treatment on the coast of Barbary in the other, and so gives you his penny sheet for your sixpence, by way of half purchase, half charity. I have materials for another volume; but they were written principally while Clifton Grove was in the press, or soon after, and do not now at all satisfy me. Indeed, of late, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... infirmary for a long time, and it was doubtful whether the hand could be saved. The child was healthy, but on the flexor surface of the radial side of the right forearm just above the wrist—the same spot as the father's injury—there was a naevus the size of a sixpence. (W. Russell, Paisley, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the 81st? He gave me good advice: 'Always sew a fifty-pound note into the lining of each waistcoat you've got. Then you can't go short.' Tried it once, and, be George! if me demned man-servant didn't stale that very waistcoat and sell it for six and sixpence. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did so he talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to a first edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that he had picked up for sixpence in Liverpool, and thence to the Midland's proposal to drive a tunnel under the Knype Canal so as to link up the main-line with the Critchworth and Suddleford loop-line. Jos was too amazed to put in a word. Jos sat merely ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... of sixpence was made for the privilege of inspecting the interior of this chapel, but nowadays it is kept closed. For many years it was used as a vestry for the lay clerks. The windows contain glass (by Hardmar) dealing with events in the life of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... which the native perceiving, came up to him, holding the spear (still in the wound) in one hand, and turning round so as to expose the injury he had received, said, in the most moving terms, "Poor fellow, sixpence give it 'um." ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... waiter; and the company generally consisted of literary characters, a few Templars, and some citizens who had left off trade. The whole expenses of the day's fete never exceeded a crown, and oftener were from three-and-sixpence to four shillings; for which the party obtained good air and exercise, good living, the example of ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... dread she might turn from him with the "get away" said to a dog. No! She had no intention of dismissing him. His outpourings of devotion caressed her woman's pride, even if she did not accept them as gospel truth. And however tedious she found his vamping song of sixpence, his sittings in the parlour counting out his mirage-money, she put up with them in ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... time, but I couldn't follow your reasoning. Perhaps you have forgotten how I carried you on my back to Woodford, and then gave the milkman sixpence to drive us the rest of the way home. And you were such a contemptible little snob that you cried again because you had ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... already friends, they walked arm-in-arm to the Westminster Bridge Road. Then they went along till they came to a stall where an Italian was selling the required commodity, and having had a taste apiece to see if they liked it, Polly planked down sixpence and had her basin filled with a poisonous-looking mixture ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... You can't catch 'em alive. And I wouldn't sell no eggs at all till they'd first been blowed. I'd keep the business all in my own hands. Abner, I've been thinkin' a great deal about this thing. You've heard about the lively sixpence and the slow dollar? Well, sir, I'm goin' to sell them auk eggs for sixteen hundred dollars, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him. Never, so long as he lived, she told Stephen Verner, passionately, would she be obliged to him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind. And she ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... have just been paid their arrears, and it is so unusual to them to have a sixpence in their pockets, that they know not how to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... "and, of course, Peter would not allow you to work for nothing. You must remember that he is now in comfortable circumstances, and he will pay you such wages as you have never been paid before. Peter Pan authorises me to say that you shall all be paid sixpence ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the shadows lengthened till the sunbeams crept under the old trees and touched her hair with gold. It was in one of these drives that he had vowed that he would always love her. He had broken a sixpence with her in earnest of their betrothal contract. But he did not like to have those drives recalled with Maggie Windsor sitting just behind them. The horses were conveniently restive just then, and perhaps Geoffrey did not put on quite so much brake going down the hill as was necessary. The heavy ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... old time is dead also, never, never to revive. It was a sad time too, but so gay and so hopeful, and we had such sport with all our low spirits and all our distresses, that it looks like a kind of lamplit fairyland behind me. O for ten Edinburgh minutes - sixpence between us, and the ever-glorious Lothian Road, or dear mysterious Leith Walk! But here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling; here in this strange place, whose very strangeness would have been heaven ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a sixpence—a Jubilee sixpence. It was gilt; it had a hole punched near the rim. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... the Brady House. A magnificent old toddy-mixer, Bardolphian in hue, and stern of aspect, as all grog-dispensers must be, accustomed as they are to dive through the features of men to the bottom of their souls and pockets to see whether they are solvent to the amount of sixpence, answered my question by a wave of one hand, the other being engaged in carrying a dram to his lips. His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it wounded my personal sensibilities. Anything really superior in its line claims my homage, and this man was the ideal ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great mud-holes where one sank ankle-deep, for no one paved the street at that time, strangely enough preferring to pay the sixpence fine per square yard for leaving it undone. At one place, Brandon told me, a load of hay blocked the streets, compelling them to squeeze between the houses and the hay. He could hardly believe the girls had passed that way, as he had not always been ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Chimney-sweeper, provided with a well-ventilated chamber at Madame Tussaud's. Special charge of sixpence for adults, threepence for children, made ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... look for them. You must amuse yourself, Bessie, until they come of their own accord. Suppose we buy something at the Crawfords' stall. I want you to choose something pretty for each of your sisters. Throw that hideous fan away! It is not worth sixpence. Where did you pick up ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... triumphantly pointed out a few ordinary boulders at the end of it. They were large, it is true, but there their merits ended. However, I examined them with every appearance of pleasure, thanked Jock effusively and even gave him a sixpence, and at last bade him ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... should be glad to drink your Honor's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... I have absolutely nothing to which to look forward. Really, when that L2,000 is gone I do not know how to earn a sixpence. In this dilemma it occurred to me that the only thing I could do was to turn my shooting to practical account, and become a hunter of big game. Therefore I propose to kill elephants until an elephant kills me. At least," he added in a changed ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... we shan't!" interrupted Cross. "He only gets sixpence a week, and he's always breaking windows and other things, and ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... time Mr. Carley had had some reason to be disappointed with the result of his daughter's marriage, so far as his own prosperity was affected thereby. Not a sixpence beyond that one advance of the two hundred pounds had the bailiff been able to extort from his son-in-law. It was the price that Mr. Whitelaw had paid for his wife, and he meant to pay no more. He told William Carley as much one day ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to any beggar with a pottle of ale,—while the drink lasted,—we might look askance at his dealings, but we liked his company passing well. If he took half a poor rustic's crop for his fee, he was ready enough to toss him sixpence for drink money; and if he made the tenants of the lands allotted to his office leave their tobacco uncared for whilst they rowed him on his innumerable roving expeditions up creeks and rivers, he at least lightened their labors with most side-splitting tales, and with bottle ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... round, place the rolled-out paste upon it, and by pressing the thumb of the right hand all round the upper part of the edge, the paste will be effectually fastened on, so as to prevent the juice from running out at the sides; a small hole the size of a sixpence must be made at the top of the pie, for ventilation, or otherwise the pie would burst. Bake the pie for an hour and ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... which this calculation is to be founded; viz. the value of wool, the weight of the fleece, and the number of sheep to be kept in a flock. With regard to the value of the wool grown in this colony, the last importations of the best quality averaged five shillings and sixpence per pound in the fleece. This was sold last month; [March, 1819] and as the market was at that time overcharged, and as moreover the best description of wool yet produced in this colony, is far from having attained the perfection of which it ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Judge Bolitho found his way to Ezekiel Ashworth's house. He lived in a small, narrow street in one of a row of cottages which was let to him for four and sixpence a week. Ezekiel Ashworth had in his younger days been a weaver, but his mother, who was renowned as a very wise woman, had imparted her secrets to him before she died, and he had from that time followed his mother's ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his being then and there invested with a sum of money in the current coin of the realm,—the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers, that his eloquence is likely to prove unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he is at that moment in possession of a document ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was never late for anything, had instituted a system of fines for those who were late for meals. The fine for unpunctuality at dinner was sixpence. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... her side; for had we supposed that she had seen the murder committed by us, she would have shared the same fate with the deceased man. Next morning when she arose, she asked was the man up? We made answer, that he was gone two hours before, left sixpence for her, and took her bundle with him. 'No matter,' said she, 'for I will see him in Athlone.' When she went away, I (George Smith) dressed myself in my sister's clothes, and having crossed the fields, met her, I asked her how far she was going? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... Sixpence is twelve halfpennies. He is all head and shoulders. Vulnera totus erat. Tu es deliciae meae. [Greek: Hektor, atar su moi essi pater kai potnia meter,] [Greek: Ede kasignetos, su ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... glance or a thought on the real sun and moon to be seen from their own doors; and we are all aware it by no means follows because we are moved to our very depths by the spectacle of unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance in a novel, that therefore we can step over the road to waste an hour or a sixpence upon the unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance of the poor lone woman left a widow in the little villa there. I was annoyed with myself because Clem's abandonment of me so much affected me. I wished I could cut the rope and carelessly cast him ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... putt it downe upon account. Item, to a beggar ten pounds to make him happy!"—The point of this story has been marred in the telling: it was drawn up from the following letter by Aubrey to A. Wood, dated July 15, 1689. "A poor man asked Mr. Hill, his lordship's steward, once to give him sixpence, or a shilling, for an alms. 'What dost say, if I give thee ten pounds?' 'Ten pounds! that would make a man of me!' Hill gave it him, and put down in his account, 'L10 for making a man,' which his lordship inquiring about for the oddness of the expression, not only allowed, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... said Phil, consulting his paper again, "I give up the superannuation advantages. Then, as to wages, seven shillings a week, rising to eight shillings after one year's service. Why, it's a fortune! Any man at my age can live on sixpence a day easy—that's three-and-six, leaving three-and-six a week clear for you, mother. Then there's a uniform; just think ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... to it. Besides this, the pigeons are very fond of picking off the young sprouts. Lest you should think us too extravagant, I ought to tell you the cost of the flower-pots. Those which were presented to us, did not cost us anything. Those we bought, cost from a cent apiece to sixpence. Some two or three cost as high as fifteen or twenty cents apiece. But you will never understand how nice and how odd we have it, unless you step in some day to look ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... but seldom does more than listen in a large company of illumines. He made a great fortune in the city, and has the comfort of a good conscience. He is very hospitable, and is generous in dinners; though nothing would induce him to give sixpence to the poor, because he holds that all misfortune is from imprudence, that none but the rich ought to marry, and that all ought to thrive by honest industry, as he did. He is ambitious of founding a family, and of allying ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... is sixpence highing and sixpence lowing in the price of a quarter of wheat; for if he lack an ounce in the weight of a farthing loaf he to be amerced at 20d.; and if he lack an ounce and a half he to be amerced at 2s. 6d., in all bread so baken; and ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... unfinished, you see," said Lady Dashfort to Lord Colambre, the day after their arrival. "All begun as if the projectors thought they had the command of the mines of Peru, and ended as if the possessors had not sixpence. Luxuries enough for an English prince of the blood: comforts not enough for an English yeoman. And you may be sure that great repairs and alterations have gone on to fit this house for our reception, and for our English eyes!—Poor ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Amphitheatre. I say, Mister, look 'ere, after charging me sixpence for a seat, I'm 'anged if they don't want an extra penny for a bill ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... men out of ten, who do what you have done, think what you say you thought: that they shall be able to escape the consequences of their deeds. They act under the pressure of circumstances. They don't mean to do any wrong—they don't intend to rob any body of a sixpence. But that first false step is the starting point upon the road that leads to the gallows; and the worst that can happen to a man is for him to succeed in his first crime. Happily for you, detection has speedily overtaken you. Why did you ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... beaver hat for Sunday wear, and for week-days a cap shaped like a concertina; where I was measured for two suits after a pattern marked "Boy's Clarence, Gentlemanly," and where I expended two-and-sixpence of my pocket-money on a piratical jack-knife and a book of patriotic songs—two articles indispensable, it seemed to me, to full-blooded manhood; and I will come to the day when the Royal Mail pulled up before Minden Cottage with a merry clash of bits and ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... infancy, we ate and spared not. Cakes of the most recherche description, and pastry, the lightness of which would have shamed Gunter, were each and all in their turn discussed; and what was our astonishment to find that, on calling for the bill, the charge amounted to about sixpence. ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... miles around. The earl of the day was still the head landlord of a huge district extending over the whole barony of Desmond, and half the adjacent baronies of Muskerry and Duhallow; but the head landlord's rent in many cases hardly amounted to sixpence an acre, and even those sixpences did not always find their way into the earl's pocket. When the late earl had attained his sceptre, he might probably have been entitled to spend some ten thousand a-year; but when he died, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... previously, are allowed into the country free of duty, they might as well bring them over as everything of that sort in Winnipeg is so fearfully dear I do not like buying anything there. We sent for some unbleached calico the other day, worth twopence-halfpenny; was charged twelve cents or sixpence a yard. Besides the four yards of calico there were ten of bed-ticking, also ten of American cloth; and the bill was six dollars seventy cents, nearly seven-and-twenty shillings. Everything is equally dear, the demand is so much greater than the supply. Beef is tenpence to thirteenpence a pound, ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... is done. How are we to get the steel rings and tassels for it? I am not justified now in spending sixpence unnecessarily, even ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Dangerfield's contributions to Aunt Rebecca's menagerie, for those birds were not to be had for nothing; and Cluffe, who loved money as well, at least, as any man in his Majesty's service, would have seen the two tribes as extinct as the dodo, before he would have expended sixpence upon such tom-foolery, had it not been for Dangerfield's investments in animated nature. 'The hound! as if two could not play at that game.' But he had an uneasy and bitter presentiment that they were ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... And, sometimes, a rosy little school-boy climbed into our chair, and sat staring, with wide-open eyes, at the alligator, the rattlesnake, and the other curiosities of the barber's shop. His mother had sent him, with sixpence in his hand, to get his glossy curls cropped off. The incidents of the Revolution plentifully supplied the barber's customers with topics of conversation. They talked sorrowfully of the death of General Montgomery, and the failure of our troops to take Quebec; for ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... good for nothing," replied the Bornean. "The crocodile here eats men and women. Some are killed every year, and the government pays one and sixpence apiece ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... say they will do that?" said Charlie. "Oh, what a shame! I wouldn't believe it. They were so polite to me; and one old woman insisted upon telling me my fortune, and when I offered her a sixpence she wouldn't ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... kicked and had me up before the magistrate, and this old ink-bottle appeared for her. She's rich and always in hot water. Well, we had it measured and I was right, and it cost her me fare and fifteen bob besides. When it was figured up she owed me sixpence more measurement I hadn't charged her for the first time, and I summoned her and made her pay it and twelve bob more to teach her manners. What pay he got I don't know, but I got me sixpence. He was born ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The only sculptor worth a sixpence since the fine arts were invented," replied the self-satisfied ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... whom a variety of opinions were entertained,—some people thinking him not so foolish as he sometimes seemed. On one occasion a person, wishing to test whether he knew the value of money, held out a sixpence and a penny, and offered him his choice. "I'll tak the wee ane," he said, giving as his modest reason, "I'se no be greedy." At another time, a miller laughing at him for his witlessness, he said, "Some things I ken, and some I dinna ken." On being ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... man's cur shall cost him some thirteen shillings and sixpence within the year, look you, it goes hard; one that I brought up as a puppy; one of a mongrel litter that I saved from drowning, when three or four of his blind, breedless brothers and sisters went to it. Verily I will write to the Standard thereanent. Item—muzzle, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... not pause or hesitate. She did not seem to think. Swiftly and accurately she found her walking-shoes and put them on, her hat and cloak; her purse with its half-crown, its sixpence and its few coppers. Swiftly she laid together a change of underwear and took from her dressing-table its few toilet appurtenances. She paused then, looking at the ornaments of her girlhood. She must have ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... of October a Treasury Minute was published to the effect that such prices were to be allowed for Relief Works, executed by task, as would enable good labourers to earn from one shilling to one shilling and sixpence a day; the day's work system, at the wages fixed by the Treasury Minute of the 31st of August, was to be in future confined to those who were unable or unwilling to work by task. There was some concession in this. Under it the labourer could choose piece work or day's work ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... that the Act of 6 George II, c. 13, be continued, with modifications to make it effective, the modifications of chief importance being the additional duty of twenty-two shillings per hundredweight upon all sugar and the reduction by one half of the prohibitive duty of sixpence on all foreign molasses imported into the British plantations. It was a matter of minor importance doubtless, but one to which they had no objections since the minister made a point of it, that the produce of all the duties which should be raised by virtue of the said act, made in the ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... he said to the night clerk at the Arlington. "Back again, like a bad sixpence! Have my trunk sent up, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... to remark that he thought Johnny 'must have took 'em from the Minders.' Being asked what he meant, he answered, them that come out upon him and partickler his chest. Being requested to explain himself, he stated that there was some of 'em wot you couldn't kiver with a sixpence. Pressed to fall back upon a nominative case, he opined that they wos about as red as ever red could be. 'But as long as they strikes out'ards, sir,' continued Sloppy, 'they ain't so much. It's their striking in'ards that's to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Loulou, who was directing his steps toward the climbing roses. He unsaddled him, fastened him in the little shed, rubbed him down with a great handful of straw, after which he entered the house, relieved himself of his sword and kepi, replaced the latter by an old straw hat, value sixpence, and then went to look for ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... Mr. Morris, who was Lord March's partner. But Mr. Morris must have been very keenly alive to the value of sixpence, if the loss of a few such coins could make his round face look so dismal. My Lord Chesterfield sate opposite Mr. Warrington, sorting his cards. No one could say, by inspecting that calm physiognomy, whether good or ill fortune ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the sun, that the woman may be clothed with the sun, and become a sun, and thereby rule over the moon; that is to say, that he may get the moon under his feet. Now, this here elixir, sold for no more than sixpence a phial, contains the essence of the alkahest, the archaeus, the catholicon, the menstruum, the sun, the moon, and, to sum up all in one word, is the true, genuine, unadulterated, unchangeable, immaculate, and specific ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... was a virtue the more. When the jovial band strolled forth upon long walks the cheerful "lameter" bargained for three miles an hour, and kept up with the best. They would start at five in the morning, beguiling the way with endless pranks, on one occasion at least without a single sixpence in all their youthful pockets with which to refresh themselves during a thirty miles' round. "We asked every now and then at a cottage door for a drink of water; and one or two of the goodwives, observing our worn-out looks, brought ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of a money grabber as that muff Headland wanted you to believe, is he—eh? Waived every hope of a reward, and took the case on the spot. He'll get at the root of it, Lord, yes! Lay you a sovereign to a sixpence, Mr. Van Nant, he gets to the bottom of it and finds out what became of George Carboys in forty-eight hours after he begins ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... this one day? Then, when he had got some distance from the house, so that his curiosity could not be observed, he threw the reins on Maggie's neck, and proceeded to open this small packet covered with white paper. What did he find there?—why-only a sixpence—a bright new sixpence—not to be compared in value with the dozens on dozens of presents which were lavished upon him by his fair admirers in London—courteous little attentions which, it must be confessed, he had grown ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... company; not from any determination not to talk, but because he has not the first motion[516]. A man who is used to the applause of the House of Commons, has no wish for that of a private company. A man accustomed to throw for a thousand pounds, if set down to throw for sixpence, would not be at the pains to count his dice. Burke's talk is the ebullition of his mind; he does not talk from a desire of distinction, but because his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... in his place to help those already at the scaffold, and wrote the moment he was brought home to Master Tom Lowe, an assistant carpenter and friend of his, to go down to Whitehall, with three of his friends. Here's the letter he sent by a messenger, for sixpence, who sold it to me ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... over a new leaf with a vengeance, for he never would give a sixpence to anything during old Tomley's time," remarked Morris to Stella. "I suppose that he has taken a great fancy to your father, which is a good thing for the parish, as those Layards are richer ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the act of contemplating the heavens serenely, with their arms round each other's waists. There were also china dogs and cats, and a huge china cockatoo as a centre-piece; but there was not a single spot the size of a sixpence on which the captain could place his pipe ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Hill, where Abner Phipps accidentally had stuck his boots under the mahogany, for the purpose of recuperating his somewhat exhausted inner-man. Abner saw the arrest, he was quietly discussing his tapioca, and if thinking at all, was merely calculating what the profits were, upon a two-and-sixpence dinner, at a Boston restaurateur. He saw there was a muss between the black waiter and two red-nosed white men, but as he did not know what it was all about, he didn't care; it was none of his business; and being a part of his religion, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... replied young Tom; 'but I tried that last night, and unluckily stopped your treasurer, Peake, who told me you had been beforehand with him, and robbed him of every sixpence ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... their thirst, so he defied the law by having a drink with us, and allowing every Frenchman who made the request to enter and have his big water-bottle filled with water—but really with red wine, a whole litre of which they could buy for sixpence. Delicious wine it was, although ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... time a man (our crudities are not limited to the sex) stood up in a theatre, disputing the sixpence which you always have to pay for your program in the London theatres. He disputed so long that many people had to stand waiting to be ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... are likely to be commissioned, the characters of the captains and officers, when they are to sail, and where they are going to. Among so many friends mother drove a brisker trade than usual, and when the men heard that I was Jack Trawl's son they gave me many a bright shilling and sixpence, and kind pats on the head with their broad palms. "He's a chip of the old block, no doubt about that, missus," cried one. "He'll make a smart young topman one of these days," said another. Several gave her commissions to execute, and many sent messages to friends on shore. ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... of course might cost more, and he must take back the eightpence out of it for himself. But Cyril would have at least one and sixpence in his pocket when he arrived, which he could put in the offertory at the Mass of thanksgiving for his escape that he would attend on the following morning. Cyril would be useful to old Dorward, and he (Mark) would give him ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... visit to my friend Isaac, and asked him, "What will give me for this suit o' clothes? They cost me 3 pounds 10s in Bradford only three weeks ago, and, besides, these boots are nearly new." "Well, my frent," said the old Jew "tem poots vill be sixpence, an' tees cloas vill pe von shillin'; an' (speaking with warmth) I vill not gif you von penny more for tem—not von penny." "I'll be blessed if I'll take that" said I, also speaking with some fervour; "You vile dog of a ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... ploughed land, wheat, barley, &c. Under this head, also, the dead cats are comprised. They are, generally, the perquisites of the women searchers. Dealers come to the wharf, or dust-field, every evening; they give sixpence for a white cat, fourpence for a colored cat, and for a black one according to her quality. The "hard-ware" includes all broken pottery, pans, crockery, earthenware, oyster-shells, &c, which are sold to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... whiskeys have decided to put them up sixpence a bottle. In response to this move the owners of certain proprietary sixpences have decided not to put ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... the reason why the small, old-fashioned book, for which you need pay only sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's prompting; ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty |
