"Halfpence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inches. The captors have claimed and obtained from the local authorities the promised reward of one hundred dollars, besides having sold the flesh of the animal itself to the Chinese, Klings, and others for six fanams a catty (a fanam is about three halfpence), by which they ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... saves by avoiding a two miles' scamper through the muddy ways, would damage the purse of a decent man more than would the cost of several journeys. These are considerations which the humbler classes appreciate, and therefore they flock to the cheap boats, and spend their halfpence to save their pence and their time. This latter consideration of time-saving it is that brings another class of customers to the boats. In order that it may be remunerative to the projectors, every passage must be made with a regular and undeviating rapidity; and this very necessity becomes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... supply the lack of copper, and invited tenders from the owners of mines for the supply. A Mr. William Wood, a man who owned iron and copper mines, and iron and copper works, sent in a tender which was accepted. A patent was given to Wood permitting him to coin halfpence and farthings to the value of one hundred and eight thousand pounds. Walpole had not approved of the scheme himself, but for various reasons he did not venture to upset it. He had the patent prepared, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to reckon up their means—that is, to count the money which they may have in their pockets. At all events, this was done by Timothy and me, and I found that my stock amounted to twenty-two pounds eighteen shillings, and Timothy's to the five guineas presented by Mr Cophagus, and three halfpence which were in the corner of his waistcoat pocket—sum total, twenty-eight pounds three shillings and three halfpence; a very handsome sum, as we thought, with which to commence our peregrinations, and, as I ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... go so far as to say that we ought not to get books too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so much to its reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a bookstall, and bought out of saved halfpence; and perhaps a day or two's fasting. That's the way to get at the cream of a book. And I should say more on this matter, and protest as energetically as I could against the plague of cheap literature, with which we are just now afflicted, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... as good a glass of Port (called here "Port Elizabeth," after Miss ELIZABETH MARTIN, who first took to it, but didn't finish it, thank goodness!) as you'd wish to get away from the Turf Club. The little boys toss for halfpence in the street, which impressed me with the wonderful mineral wealth of South Africa. Having nothing better to do, I joined them, and won. I lectured them on incautious play, and they said something in South-African, which the street Arabs here speak to perfection, and which, I fancy, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... the third day, having slept one night at Thornhill, and another at New Cumnock; and having needed, owing to the kindness of acquaintances upon whom I called by the way, to spend only three halfpence of my modest funds. Safely arrived, but weary, I secured a humble room for my lodging, for which I had to pay one shilling and sixpence per week. Buoyant and full of hope and looking up to God for guidance, I appeared at the appointed hour before the examiners, as did also the other candidate; and ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... appeared, that he would return, if once let loose, on any other terms. Mr Brass, struck with the humour of this jest, and carrying out its spirit to the utmost, sought from his wide connection a pair of friends whose joint possessions fell some halfpence short of fifteen pence, and proffered them as bail—for that was the merry word agreed upon both sides. These gentlemen being rejected after twenty-four hours' pleasantry, Mr Brass consented to remain, and did remain, until ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... laughed a little. "Frankly, I assure you, it is to me the most deplorable arrangement that a true woman should be destined to give all the passion and love of her life to one man, while the same man scatters his worthless affections about like halfpence among dozens of drabs! My dear Mr. Leigh, do not frown at me in that tragic way! I am not blaming YOU! I am not in the least inclined to put you in the general category,—at least not at present. You do not look like the ordinary man, though you may be for all that! Expression ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... property of the crown. Coals prohibited to be worked by individuals, but to be procured by government at ten shillings per ton, and cedar at three halfpence per superficial foot, exclusive of other duties and fines; viz. Licence 2s. clearance 1s. harbour-dues at Sydney at established rates, entrance in and clearance from the river 2s. entrance at Sydney 1s. King's dues for Orphans: ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... a couple of foxes' brushes. Small as the shelves were, they were larger than his lordship wanted—two books, one for Jack and one for himself, being all they contained; while the other shelves were filled with hunting-horns, odd spurs, knots of whipcord, piles of halfpence, lucifer-match boxes, gun-charges, and ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... was on the moneys of this part of the world. There is something in the simplicity of a decimal coinage which is revolting to the human mind; thus the French, in small affairs, reckon strictly by halfpence; and you have to solve, by a spasm of mental arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, or even a hundred halfpence. In the Pacific States they have made a bolder push for complexity, and settle their affairs by a coin that no longer that no ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Auntie Alice was able to put away from her the dread fears which in the darkness took such real and awful shapes, and to agree with Dr. King and Mrs. Grey that the children had only gone off for a frolic somewhere, and, like bad halfpence, would certainly come back when least expected. They were not dead, she told herself; they could not be dead, she said in her heart over and over again. Darby, the wise, manly little lad, many of whose quaint, sweet sayings were carefully ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I don't know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... talking, such as poets, or men that call themselves poets, affect when the 'fit' is on them. Just a string of words,—mere babble! You'd better write them down, though,—you musn't waste them! Publishers pay for so many words I believe, whether they're sense or nonsense,—please don't lose any halfpence on my account! Do you know you are smiling up at the sky as if you were entirely mad? Ordinary people would say you were,—people to whom dinner is the dearest thing in life would suggest your being locked up. And me, too, I daresay! You haven't answered my question,—why ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... musician, you beer-house fiddler! wait till I catch you alone, I will hunt you till the soles of your shoes fall off! You ragamuffin! just put five farthings in your mouth, and then you may be worth three halfpence!" and went on abusing him as fast as he could speak. As soon as he had refreshed himself a little in this way, and got his breath again, he ran into ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... side of the field. Bracebridge and Blackall tossed up to settle which side was to begin. "Heads!" cried Ernest. The shilling came down with the head up. It was considered low by the big boys to employ halfpence on such occasions. Blackall looked daggers at his opponent. Bracebridge took the ball, and placed it about a third of the distance away from his line. His side were arranged behind and on either hand of him. He planted his feet firmly, and lifting his stick above his head, cried "Play!" and, looking ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... tea-drinking. She did not even go near her old friends the Scobels, in these days of smothered wrath and slow consuming indignation. She deserted the schools, her old pensioners, even the little village children, to whom she had loved to carry baskets of good things, and pocketfuls of halfpence, and whose queer country dialect had seemed as sweet to her as the carolling of finches and blackbirds in the woods. Everything in the way of charity was left to Mrs. Trimmer now. Vixen took her long solitary ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... of the House is the driest and the dullest. If this question had been one merely of pounds, shillings, and pence, it would have been dull and complicated enough; but this is a question in which are concerned not pounds and shillings, but pence, and halfpence, and farthings.' ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... the great house, having a misgiving that they would not receive me; so I turned my back to the great house where I was born, and where my poor mother died, and wandered for several days I know not whither, supporting myself on a few halfpence which I chanced to have in my pocket. It happened one day, as I sat under a hedge crying, having spent my last farthing, that a comfortable- looking elderly woman came up in a cart, and seeing the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They were a very shabby set, and must have made a very scanty living at best. Sometimes it was a boy with an accordion, and his sister, a smart little girl, with a timbrel,—which, being so shattered that she could not play on it, she used only to collect halfpence in. Ballad-singers, or rather chanters or croakers, are often to be met with in the streets, but hand-organ players are not more frequent ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... influence was made by the Drapier's Letters, in 1724. One Wood, of Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire, a man enterprising and rapacious, had, as is said, by a present to the dutchess of Munster, obtained a patent, empowering him to coin one hundred and eighty thousand pounds of halfpence and farthings for the kingdom of Ireland, in which there was a very inconvenient and embarrassing scarcity of copper coin; so that it was possible to run in debt upon the credit of a piece of money; for the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... certain it is in the power of witches to raise the wind whenever they please. I have seen it happen very often in my time: and if ever I saw a witch in all my life, that old woman was certainly one. I thought so to myself at that very time; and if I had had any halfpence in my pocket, I would have given her some; for to be sure it is always good to be charitable to those sort of people, for fear what may happen; and many a person hath lost his cattle by ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... receipt of custom, than if, moving forth upon the road, he were to require a contribution from each person whom he chanced to meet in his journey, when, according to the vulgar adage, he might possibly be greeted with more kicks than halfpence. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... only one rate of traveling, the price is enhanced on poor travelers exactly in proportion as it is made cheap to those who are not poor. For the poorer classes, traveling in America is by no means cheap, the average rate being, as far as I can judge, fully three halfpence a mile. It is manifest that dearer rates for one class would allow of cheaper rates for the other; and that in this manner general traveling would ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... than pork fetches in the market, has she a right to complain when some curious doctor makes her understand that her viands have not been supplied exclusively from the pig? She insists on milk at three halfpence a quart; but the cow will not produce it. The cow cannot produce it at that price, unless she be aided by the pump; and therefore the pump aids her. If there be dishonesty in this, it is with the purchaser, ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... money for running after a coach. I have seen children of both sexes run until their breath failed, and, completely exhausted, drop down on the grass; merely because some injudicious persons had thrown halfpence to them. I have also seen little boys turn over and over before the horses, for the purpose of getting money, to the danger of their own lives and of the passengers; and I recollect an instance of one boy being, in consequence, killed on the spot. In some counties children will, in spring and ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... written in the years of quiet which Swift enjoyed between the pamphleteering crusade against the Whigs, when Harley and St. John were in power, and the famous social and political troubles which began with Wood's halfpence. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... not only graciously accepted, but duly returned; cakes, apples, tarts, and gingerbread, halfpence in profusion, and now and then a new shilling, or a bright sixpence—all, in short, that poor Phoebe had to bestow, she showered upon her uncouth favourite, and she would fain have amended his condition by more substantial benefits: but authoritative as she ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... copy of Emerson, and can almost see her mind gradually collecting conclusions about him. The attendant, too, as he asks for his paper, eyes him shrewdly and suspiciously, and waits till the three halfpence are actually handed across under the brass wire partition before giving him the penny stamp. These circumstances may be incorrect, but I am absolutely clear as to Frank's own attitude of mind. Honestly, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... mentioned our little incomes. Look at the most unreasonable point of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is done us! Whether it is owing to our always carrying so much change in our right-hand trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat-tails, or whether it is human nature (which I were loth to believe), what is meant by the everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich? How did that fable get into circulation? Who first ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... remember them. The letter alluded to in the enclosed, 'to the Cardinal,' was in answer to some queries of the government, about a poor devil of a Neapolitan, arrested at Sinigaglia on suspicion, who came to beg of me here; being without breeches, and consequently without pockets for halfpence, I relieved and forwarded him to his country, and they arrested him at Pesaro on suspicion, and have since interrogated me (civilly and politely, however,) about him. I sent them the poor man's petition, and such information as I had about him, which I trust will get him out again, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... people yet alive who can recollect the day when Manchester cottons could not have stood one hour's competition with the free, or even 100 per cent taxed fabrics of India.[40] How, indeed, could competition have been possible, with the wages of weaving and spinning in India at three-halfpence per day, whilst for equal quantities and qualities of workmanship, the British weaver was earning five shillings, and the spinner ten shillings per day on the average? In 1780, Mr Samuel Crompton, the ingenious inventor of the mule frame for spinning, such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... letters to be posted, which was done. I anticipated your request by making a few remarks on Owen's review. (104/1. "The Edinburgh Review," April, 1860.) Hooker is so weary of reviews that I do not think you will get any hints from him. I have lately had many more "kicks than halfpence." A review in the last Dublin "Nat. Hist. Review" is the most unfair thing which has appeared,—one mass of misrepresentation. It is evidently by Haughton, the geologist, chemist and mathematician. It shows immeasurable conceit and contempt of all who are ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... settle about wages. I could not tell how much to offer you, till I saw how you worked. You've done very well for a new hand. I'll give you three-halfpence a-day till you've fairly learnt the trade, and twopence afterwards: maybe, in time, if I find you useful, I may raise you a halfpenny more: a penny of it in bread, the rest in money. Will that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... with my uncle, and we set out upon this bright enterprise of selling slightly injurious rubbish at one-and-three-halfpence and two-and-nine a bottle, including the Government stamp. We made Tono-Bungay hum! It brought us wealth, influence, respect, the confidence of endless people. All that my uncle promised me proved truth and understatement; ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday; and when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do, and furthermore, out of my shilling returned me what seemed to be real copper halfpence, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind as the beatific vision of an immortal druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission to myself. And it confirms me in ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... you must be to imagine that any man in the world could possibly tell you which of those two brutes was likely to be the winner! It is the merest guess-work; you have all the chances against you and you might as well bet on the tossing of halfpence. The bookmaker does not need to care, for he is safe whatever may win; but you are defying all the laws of chance; and, although you may make one lucky hit, you must fare ill in the end." But no commonsensical ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of oranges and halfpence thrust indiscriminately on each young Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the family were speedily transported to their own home, by means of the hackney-coach kept in waiting for that purpose. The children, under the guardianship of Jemima, blocked up the window, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and of good inches, fell into a mistake lately,—bad company getting round the poor fellow; they, he among them, slipt into a house and stole something; trifle and without violence: pay is but three halfpence, your Majesty, and the Devil tempts men! Well, the Criminal-Collegium have condemned him to be hanged; an excellent soldier and of good inches, for that one fault. Nobleman Schlubhut was 'to make restitution,' ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Farmers and shepherds gossiped and bargained on the footpaths or on the grass before the New Inns; the Abercrombie clattered with convivial glass and sometimes rose the chorus to a noisy ditty of Lorn. Old Brooks, with his academy shut for holiday, stood at the Church corner with a pocket full of halfpence for his bairns, and a little silver in his vest for the naughty ones he had thrashed with the ferule and grieved for. "To be good and clever is to be lucky enough," he said; "I must be kind to my poor dunces." Some of them, he saw, went with his gift straight ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... received legislative sanction by an Act of Parliament, March 28, 1808, which fixed the duties to be paid on the foreign goods thus passing through British custom-houses. Cotton, for instance, was to pay nine pence a pound, an amount intended to be prohibitory; tobacco, three halfpence. These were the two leading exports of United States domestic produce. In the United States this Act of Parliament was resented more violently, if possible, than the Order in Council itself. In the colonial period there had been less jealousy of the royal authority than ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... not intend here to speak,—it does not come into this story,—but he found that it was most complicated and difficult, and kicks rather than halfpence would be the certain reward. And Bohun ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the courage of your convictions. I will give you a royalty of three halfpence in the shilling on every copy after the first five thousand. Thus, if it succeeds, you will share in the profit. If it fails, my loss will be the less. That's ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... 'll be gran'!' cried Shargar, incapable of jealousy. 'We can gang to a' the markets thegither and gaither baubees (halfpence).' ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... invasion as your Lord Dido, with eighty thousand per annum, is simply nonsense. If you," cries he to one of his supporters, "were to be offered your life by a highwayman on surrendering some few pence or halfpence you carried in your pocket, you do not mean to dictate what my Lord Marquis might do, who has got a gold watch and a pocketful of notes in his. And so I say once more, let the rich pay for the defence of what they value. You and I have nothing ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... hue. Even at the Scilly Islands the cutting of the Loe Bar has been notified by the altered colour of the water." As the pool belonged to the lord of Penrose, it was customary to present him with a purse containing three-halfpence to obtain his permission for the cutting of the Bar. All this is a thing of the past, but Loe Pool remains as the only sheet of water in Cornwall worthy to be termed a lake, with banks finely wooded and carpeted with flowers. In shape it is more like a broad river than a lake, and it ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the prevailing wind, until they are about nine miles from the shore or until they lose the fish. When the fisherman gets a bite the wind is spilled out of the sail so as to deaden the boat's way. The fish is then got alongside, promptly gaffed, and got on board. Tunny sells for about three halfpence a pound in Lequeito. The season extends from June to November. Bream are taken in the winter and spring, 9 to 12 miles off the coast. They are caught by hook and line in two ways. The first is worth describing. A line ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... it had gone to Bearside whom Nickem remembered as a junior to himself when they were both young hobbledehoys at Norrington,—a dirty, blear-eyed, pimply-faced boy who was suspected of purloining halfpence out of coat-pockets. The thing was very trying to Nat Nickem. But suddenly, before that Wednesday was over, another idea had occurred to him, and he was almost content. He knew Goarly, and he had heard of Scrobby and Scrobby's history in regard to the tenement at Rufford. As he could not ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... moment his aunt came in, looking for her spectacles. Furtively, in a whisper, she asked him for a little money. In old days she used to save the halfpence to slip them into the "little lad's " hand; now, grown feebler than the child, she trembled at the idea of destitution; she hoarded, and asked charity of the priests. The fact is, her wits were weakening. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Narramore. "When I was a boy of twelve I once cheated an apple-woman out of three-halfpence. At the age of sixteen I encountered the old woman again, and felt immense satisfaction in giving her a shilling. But then, you see, I had done with petty cheating; I wished to clear my conscience, and look my ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing |
