"Sixpence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watching the kettles. It seemed like camp 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 ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... me the hat, I'll buy the wreath myself. They've got some lovely ones down at Tamlin's for one and five three. There are some at one and 'leven three, but that's sixpence more, and I ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Dulwich by a train which went round the west of London. It was all feasible, and the pundit told him that the stopping train from Liverpool was due there in six minutes, but that the express from the north would pass first. Lopez thanked the pundit and gave him sixpence,—which made the pundit suspicious. A pundit hopes to be paid when he handles luggage, but has no such expectation when ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Rosee disappeared, some say to open a coffee house on the Continent, in Holland or Germany. Bowman, having married Alderman Hodges's cook, and having also prevailed upon about a thousand of his customers to lend him sixpence apiece, converted his tent into a substantial house, and eventually took an apprentice to ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... absence of coppers up country; the lowest change is a threepenny bit, and you cannot well spend anything under a sixpence. I never had any copper in my pocket, except only a lucky farthing. Many asked me for it, to keep as a curiosity, saying they had never seen one since they left home. But I would not part ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... replied Folliard; "why, who the devil else should or could I introduce it to with such propriety? Here now are two religions; one's not sixpence better nor worse than the other. Now, you belong to one of them, and because you do you're here snug and fast. I say, then, I have a proposal to make to you: you are yourself in a difficulty—you have placed ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... southernmost seat and the south bowling-green, on that Saturday afternoon, stood Mr. James Ollerenshaw. He was watching a man who earned four-and-sixpence a day by gently toying from time to time with a roller on the polished surface of the green. Mr. James Ollerenshaw's age was sixty; but he looked as if he did not care. His appearance was shabby; but he did not seem to mind. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... that means should be taken to restrict the circulation of Punch, and on and after March 14th its price will be Sixpence. The Proprietors believe that the public will prefer an increase of price to a reduction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... be bought for sixpence," said she: "and if each of you twelve earn one halfpenny a-piece to-day, you can purchase it to-night, and I will put a little fire into it, and you will then he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... to carry this rule out strictly. Why does the nation give A. B., for instance, and all comers a large, comfortable, well-ventilated, warm room to sit in, with chair, table, reading-desk, &c., all more commodious than what he may have at home, without making him pay a sixpence for it directly from year's end to year's end? The three or nine days' visit to Oropa is a trifle in comparison with what we can all of us obtain in London if we care about it enough to take a very small amount of trouble. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... every one of their keys at my service, not only for my own person, but whoever I please to carry or send. I do not make much use of this privilege, to their great astonishment. It is the fashion for the greatest ladies to walk the streets, which are admirably paved; and a mask, price sixpence, with a little cloak, and the head of a domino, the genteel dress to carry you everywhere. The greatest equipage is a gondola, that holds eight persons, and is the price of an English chair. And it is so much the established ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... home last night, it was not very late, For I'd spent my last sixpence, and landlords won't wait On a fellow who's left every cent in their till, And has pawned his last bed, their coffers to fill. Oh, the torments I felt, and the pangs I endured! And I begged for one glass—just one would have cured,— But they kicked me out doors! I let that, too, pass, For I've ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... anxious to avoid, was little more than sufficient to keep his hunger alive, Shargar being gifted with a great appetite, and Robert having no allowance of pocket-money from his grandmother. The threepence he had been able to spend on him were what remained of sixpence Mr. Innes had given him for an exercise which he wrote in blank verse instead of in prose—an achievement of which the school-master was proud, both from his reverence for Milton, and from his inability to compose a metrical line ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... 'and with a shawl like this, now, you'd look like a full-blown rose. Come, I'll not be hard upon you, as it's the first time you've dealt with me. That shawl's worth ten shillings if it's worth a farthing, and I'll let you have it for seven shillings and sixpence; half a crown down, and a shilling a fortnight till it's ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... sewing away at those old things for?" Jill demanded, coming into the room and seating herself easily on the edge of the table. "It's much easier to buy match-boxes and needle-books. You can get beauties for sixpence three-farthings at the Christmas bazaars, and it saves no end of fag. You can give me safety-pins if you like, for my clothes are all coming to pieces, and my pins disappear like smoke. Mary eats them, I believe! What are you going to ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... history, though, watches and clocks were far less cheap and common and therefore Mr. Pitt may have classed them as luxuries and rated them as our government does perfumery. However that may be, his suggestion of levying two shillings sixpence on every silver watch and ten shillings on every gold one, with the additional tax of five shillings on every clock, ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... that," said Felgate, laughing, "and if only I'd got any tin I'd be delighted. By the way, I fancy I did see a sixpence ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... to buy any useful article or product which any man might make or produce, figuring on cost of the raw material and sixpence an hour for labor. This labor was to be paid for in Labor Script, receivable in payment for anything the man might want to buy. Here we get the Labor Exchange. Owen proposed that the Government should set delinquent men to work, instead of sending them to prison. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... corner, and looked, they were at another shop, the bigger girl with her arm round the smaller one's neck. I again passed them, going back to do so, and saying, "I'll give you three and sixpence." That was the exact sum, and then turned up a street which led to baudy houses, and waited at the turning into ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... and often highly poetic ideas. Like most of the members of the Mulberry and Shakespeare Clubs, he knew all the principal passages in Shakespeare by heart long before he became an illustrator of the plays. Like many artists and literary men of the period, he was always in financial straits. Every sixpence that he earned he handed over to his wife, a quiet thriftful woman, sister of Archibald Henning, and she used to give him a small sum whenever he spent his evenings abroad in company with Macready, Laman Blanchard, John Forster, Jerrold, and others, at the Shakespeare Club. He was a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... loud halloo, and turning, perceived an Arab running at full speed to me with my powder-flask. Now, powder is what Arabs prize more than gold even, precious stones, or tobacco, yet they might easily have taken this without my knowing anything. On my offering him coin worth about sixpence, the Arab, in broken lingua Franca, made me comprehend he preferred a few charges of powder, which I immediately gave, and which he carefully wrapped up in some old paper. I record this, because at Tunis and elsewhere, we hear of nothing but Arab dishonesty and thieving propensities. ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... Coleridge's soirees it was discussed for a considerable time; at length Coleridge, turning to Lamb, asked, "Do you know anything about this affair?" "I should think I d-d-d-did," said Elia, "for I paid s-s-s-seven and sixpence for it!" ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... able to learn what Wickham's debts have been," said Elizabeth, "and how much is settled on his side on our sister, we shall exactly know what Mr. Gardiner has done for them, because Wickham has not sixpence of his own. The kindness of my uncle and aunt can never be requited. Their taking her home, and affording her their personal protection and countenance, is such a sacrifice to her advantage as years of gratitude cannot enough acknowledge. By this time ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... this case, carry it, so pray let it be so, for I don't care sixpence for any of the opinions you mention, on such a subject: and P * * must be a dunce to agree with them. For my own part, I have no objection at all; but Mrs. Leigh and my cousin must be better judges of the likeness than others; and they hate it; and so I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... hastily, "is nothing. The house is better occupied. What I have done for you is less in proportion than the sixpence you may sometimes have given to a beggar for I am a rich, a ridiculously rich man, with no possible chance of spending one-quarter of my income. You had a distinct and obvious claim upon me, and, at no cost or inconvenience ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... water to make it extend its legs; then with the rough side of a knotty stick sawed upon them till the creature cried like a child; and when I ordered him to desist, told me he would not, till I had given him sixpence. There is something worse than all this. The avaricious rascals, when they can find nothing that they think will excite my pity, disable the first animal which is not dignified with the title of Christian, and then bring it to me as an object worthy of commiseration; so that, in fact, instead of ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... 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
... were inseparable companions. We took lodgings together in Little Britain at three shillings and sixpence a week—as much as we could then afford. He found some relations, but they were poor, and unable to assist him. He now let me know his intentions of remaining in London, and that he never meant to return to Philadelphia. He had brought no money with him, the whole he could muster ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Selameh's sandals. Also, that those three men whom we saw on the 2d April at Abu Dahook's camp were of the same faction, probably also my visitors of the Khazneh yesterday. Selameh thought that for a couple of gazis (about three shillings and sixpence) he might succeed in a redemption of his goods. These I gave him, and he trudged back over the hills with one of his people, while we kept on our way. He was to meet us ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... old papers you find that two camels were to be seen in a certain stable, at a shilling a head for adults and sixpence for children. The camels were a novelty and ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... morning, pale, red-eyed, he would come into the passage of the inn, with his beautiful bow and sweep of the lifted hat, with his courteous smile and ready "Good morning, Anne!" Then he would turn to the bar, and feeling in his pockets for what small moneys he might have—sixpence, eightpence, tenpence, as the case might be—he would order so much gin and sit there drinking till it was all gone, then still sit there silent; or sometimes he would passionately speak of the woman he loved, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Their landlady, who happened to see them, forbade them ever to bring such stuff there any more. The old man, when well enough, worked at his trade, which was tailoring. They had two shillings and sixpence per week ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... 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 of red ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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
... 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 ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... glad to be rid of the perpetual tying and untying and replacing of the straw shoes of the well- cared-for horses of the main island. A man rides with them, and for a man and three horses the charge is only sixpence for each 2.5 miles. I am now making Ito ride in front of me, to make sure that he does not beat or otherwise ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... a Potato Puff or Souffle, are inclined to make it extra peppery, as they do most of their Cheese Souffles, with not only "a dust of black pepper" but "as much cayenne as may be stood on the face of a sixpence." ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... a dinner for a Lord Mayor, but her principal talent is shown in managing everybody whom she comes near. Especially her husband and myself; she keeps the money of both and never allows either of us to spend sixpence without her knowledge.... You should see the manner in which she makes Ben reckon with her, and her contempt for all women who do not manage ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... gives his services free," replied Penrose. "It's jolly good of him too, for the poor wretch has hardly a sixpence to his name; still he does it. In his way he's quite a French scholar, and he has helped ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... undesirably. This had befallen him now so often, without producing any tangible effect, that a great many people, and especially the shooters (convinced of the accuracy of their aim), went far to believe that he possessed some charm against wholesome bullet and gunpowder. And lately even a crooked sixpence dipped in holy water (which was still to be had in Yorkshire) confirmed and doubled the faith of all good people, by being declared upon oath to have passed clean through him, as was proved by its being picked up ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... single performance, which will take place this evening under the Company's magnificent tent, in the Market Place, behind the old cross. Come one, come all! Performances to begin at eight precisely. Admission, one-and-sixpence. Children under ten years of age, half price. God ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... that is 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 ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... well-known coin in most parts of Europe; the average gold ducat being nine shillings and sixpence, and the silver ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... we tells you to open your mouth and shut your eyes, and you'll find sixpence in your hand,—you'll find it there," ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their talk!" Or he is whispered a bit of gossip, how Castlemaine is much in love with Hart, an actor of the house. Then Pepys goes back into the pit and lays out a sixpence for an orange. As the play nears its end, footmen crowd forward at the doors. The epilogue is spoken. The fiddles squeak their last. There is a bawling outside ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... students' day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day for nothing and found the floor ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the work themselves embody a suggestive lesson. On December 10th, one thousand pounds had been given in one sum; twenty days later, fifty pounds more; and the next day, three and sixpence, followed, the same evening, by a second gift of a thousand pounds. Shortly after, a little bag, made of foreign seeds, and a flower wrought of shells, were sent to be sold for the fund; and, in connection with ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... wrote Moore, "he left the room, and in a minute or two returned carrying in his hand a white-leather bag. 'Look here,' he said, holding it up, 'this would be worth something to Murray, though you, I daresay, would not give sixpence for it.' 'What is it?' I asked. 'My Life and Adventures,' he answered. On hearing this I raised my hands in a gesture of wonder. 'It is not a thing,' he continued, 'that can be published during my lifetime, but you may have it if you like: there, do whatever you ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... a good deal of talking and settling with Lucy about what Emily and Henry wanted her to get for them in the town, before they went to bed. Emily had one shilling and sixpence, and Henry tenpence, and it was of great consequence to them that this money should be ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... out and die. We never realise the splendour of splendid health until the doctor prescribes six months in a nursing home as the only alternative to demise. We never appreciated butter until profiteers and the war sent the price up to four-and-sixpence for a pound. The extra five hundred a year which seems to stand in the way of our complete happiness—when we receive it, we realise that our happiness really required a thousand. Fame is a wonderful and beautiful state, until we become famous and find out how dull ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the publisher's statement that 'he does not mean by this to insinuate any want of merit in the poem, but rather a want of attention in the public.' Bit by bit his surgical instruments go to the pawnbroker. When one publisher sends his polite refusal poor Crabbe has only sixpence-farthing in the world, which, by the purchase of a pint of porter, is reduced to fourpence-halfpenny. The exchequer fills again by the disappearance of his wardrobe and his watch; but ebbs under a new temptation. He buys some odd volumes of Dryden ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued without them." On the 16th of February, only five days after this letter was received, An Elegy wrote in a Country Church-yard appeared as a large quarto pamphlet, anonymous, price sixpence. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... said John Whyley, giving a sniff as if he smelt a warm sixpence, but it was only caused ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... to all morality, Aristotle's, Cicero's, or anybody's. And, besides, of what use was it? For we bribed also. And as our bribes to those of the public being demonstrated out of Euclid to be as five shillings to sixpence, here again young Oxford had the advantage. But the contest was ruinous to the principles of the stable establishment about the mails. The whole corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur-rebribed; so that a horse-keeper, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a silver bullet. It's flat an' it ain't shaped like a bullet, but it's a bullet all the same. I've been cuttin' it out uv a silver sixpence, an' now it exactly fits my rifle. You an' Sol—an' I ain't sayin' anything ag'in' your marksmanship—could shoot at that dog all day without hurtin' him, but I'm goin' to kill him ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Private Henry Morgan was not of this type. Henry came in one evening rather the worse for liquor and with clubbed musket assaulted his unlovely reflection in an expensive mirror. I believe he is still paying for his lack of restraint at the rate of a sixpence per day, and will have canceled his obligation by January, 1921, if the ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... and experience, who are as persevering as they are energetic. After looking well over these most interesting plans there was nothing left for us to do except to make a sudden raid on the hotel, pick up our shawls and bags, pay a most moderate bill of seven shillings and sixpence for breakfast for three people and luncheon for two, and the use of a room all day, piteously entreat the mistress of the inn to sell us half a bottle of milk for G——'s breakfast to-morrow—as he will not drink the preserved milk—and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... tommy-book was paid up, and that incarnate nigger Diggs has made him take two waistcoats. Now the question rises, what is a collier to do with waistcoats? Pawn 'em I s'pose to Diggs' son-in-law, next door to his father's shop, and sell the ticket for sixpence. Now there's the question; keep to the question; the question is waistcoats and tommy; first ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the mainland, and English "soldier officers" in mufti. I did not lose much of my temper, however, for the odd, quaint little place pleased me. Not so another Roman citizen, or English travelling gent., who losing, perhaps, seven-and-sixpence, wrote a furious letter to the "Times," complaining of such horrors existing under the British flag, desecration of the English name, and so forth. Next week the lieutenant-governor, by "order," put an end to Roulette ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... "Here, boy—here's sixpence for you: you may be off. We've done enough for to-day, and may go home to Bellevue street." But it seems to Bertie Lisle, as he picks up his roll of music and comes down the aisle, that Bellevue street too is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... function as secretary and treasurer. Subscriptions flow in; and, to Bowley's infinite gratification, beer and spirits begin to flow out. The Charitable Chums, though eminently provident, are as bibulous as they are benevolent; for every sixpence they invest for the contingencies of the future tense, they imbibe at least half-a-crown for the exigencies of the present. The society soon rises into a condition of astonishing prosperity. The terms being liberal beyond all precedent, the Charitable Chums' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... was gone. Honest John had taken everything; he had not left his young master a single sixpence. At this revelation of the state of affairs, poor Richard, weakened as he was by his long excitement, threw himself on the bed and burst into tears. The attendant, to whom, as usual, he had been liberal, was affected by an emotion ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... expected (this is after a gale and wreck,) unless a break-water be constructed, which may be done for ninety-five thousand pounds, and there was a surplus revenue last year over the expenditure of thirteen shillings and sixpence, the local government being also indebted to the Commissariat chest in the sum of nine hundred pounds odd. Some complain of roads and bridges being in a defective state, and wonder why two thousand pounds extra per annum are not ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... 60, had a troublesome ulcer under the outer ankle, of an oblong form and of the size of sixpence. He has been long subject to ulcers of the legs, and he had a similar ulcer to the present one in the same situation, some years ago, which proved extremely difficult to heal under usual remedies. The ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... love, and enjoyed it, and, strange to say, had been enjoying it ever since, and falling in love more deeply every day of their affectionate, inconsequent, free-and-easy lives. What did it matter to them that neither owned a solitary sixpence, for which they had not a thousand uses? What did it matter to Dolly that Griffith's literary career had so far been so unremunerative that a new suit is as an event, and an extra shilling an era? What did it matter to Griffith that Dolly's dresses ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not 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 such an ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lord, it was the day before our feast, and I was to spend sixpence there, and that falls a ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... carefully explored and wrought. The abundance of the necessaries of life was so very great, that a gallon of wine was sometimes sold in Italy for less than three farthings, and a quarter of wheat at about five shillings and sixpence. Towards a country thus wisely governed, and rich and fertile, commerce was naturally attracted; and it was encouraged and protected by Theodoric: he established a free intercourse among all the provinces by sea and land: the city gates were never shut; and it was a common saying, "that ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... decencies all vary with the nature of the thing trafficked for. If a man makes up his mind during half his life to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl—[he] gets witnesses and testimony and so forth—but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on the counter. If instead of diamonds you want—(being a king or queen)—provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more diplomacy required; new ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Joe, "and I wouldn't give another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... deafening cries of "Boldheart! Boldheart!" with which he was received, when, carelessly leaping on the quarter-deck, he presented his prize to his men. They afterwards made two thousand four hundred and seventeen pound ten and sixpence ...
— Captain Boldheart & the Latin-Grammar Master - A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Lieut-Col. Robin Redforth, aged 9 • Charles Dickens
... dame ruled Flippie with a rod of iron, appropriating the whole of his small salary every month and refusing to give him so much as a sixpence. When Mrs. van Warmelo found this out she stealthily added half a crown to his earnings for his own use, and this the generous lad regularly spent on sweets, cakes, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... the investigations of the officer could not bring to light a greater sum in his pockets than a bad sixpence and a battered fourpenny-piece. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of them, and after the death of her husband she had to fend for all. The little croft was hungry land, and to make a sufficient living she used to weed for her more prosperous neighbours. It was ill-paid labour—ninepence a day fine days and sixpence all weathers, with a can of milk twice a week and a lump of butter thrown in now and then. The ways were hard and the children were the first to feel them. Five of them died. "They weren't willing to stay with me," she used to say. My father alone was left to her, and he was another Daniel. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... more to pull up at a small station. Here there was a mad scramble for supplies and the refreshment room was soon cleared out of its small stock. On the platform an extortionate German drove a brisk trade selling small bottles of lemonade at sixpence a bottle. More excitement was caused by a newsvendor mounting a box and holding aloft a single copy of the latest newspaper which he would sell to the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... die than carry a parcel through the street; however poor, some one must perform for him so menial an office: and he would consider it vastly beneath his dignity to accept charity, though if he had the chance would not hesitate to swindle you out of sixpence. But in matters of honesty these good people show a certain discrimination. Your servants, for example, would hesitate to steal money, especially if liable to detection, but not to take wine and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Simeon, "for you can get a goose here for sixpence, and there is no bird so big that it would be worth the half ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... gather books to read them, my Boeotian friend," says Mr. Joline; "the idea is a childish delusion. 'In early life,' says Walter Bagehot, 'there is an opinion that the obvious thing to do with a horse is to ride it; with a cake, to eat it; with a sixpence to spend it.' A few boyish persons carry this further, and think that the natural thing to do with a book is to read it. The mere reading of a rare book is a puerility, an idiosyncrasy of adolescence; it is the ownership of the book which is the matter of ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... story belongs to the class of what may be called "accumulative" stories, of which "The House that Jack built" is a good example. It is a version of the story so well known in English of the old woman who found a little crooked sixpence, and went to market and bought a little pig. As she was coming home the pig would not go over the stile. The old woman calls on a dog to bite pig, but the dog will not. Then she calls in turn on a stick, fire, water, ox, butcher, rope, rat, and cat. They all ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... sorry to see that Douglas Jerrold has not left sixpence to his family, though he was in receipt of L2000 a year (they ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... with the baggage and artillery. In the hilly country of the North of England, it was no light task to travel with heavy baggage. The big wagons could not be dragged up the steep ill-made roads, and the country people were sullenly unwilling to lend their carts. The general was reduced to paying sixpence for every cannon ball that could be carried up the hills. The Prince was already at Penrith on the 17th, but Lord George had been obliged to stop six miles short of that point. Marching before daybreak on the 18th, he reached a village called Clifton as the sun rose. A body of horsemen ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... quarter; but keep your lamps out for thruppenny-bits, or the publicans 'll shove 'em on you for sixpence." ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... afraid you will spoil the children, she said; "they expect presents, which is so dreadful. Hugh bet sixpence at lunch that you would bring him something, and he said to poor Mr. Hardy, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... see at present. I can sail a boat, and I won the swimming prize a month ago, and the sergeant who gives us lessons in single-stick and boxing says that he considers me his best pupil with the gloves, but all these things put together would not bring me in sixpence a week. I don't want to go away, and nothing would induce me to do so if I could be of the slightest use to you here. But can I be of any use? What is there for me to look forward to if I stay? I am sure that you would be always worrying over me if I did get some sort of situation ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... laid a little box on the table, and asked the new members to subscribe their half-guinea each. Each girl dropped her half-sovereign and sixpence into the box with the exception of Elma, who, coloring a little, said she would bring it to Gwin the next day. No one made any remark, as it was well known in the school that Elma was anything but well off, and Gwin privately resolved ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... Patty," Farnsworth began. "I know Sam Blaney, and you don't. I knew him years ago, and though I've not seen him of late years, he's the same old two and sixpence." ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... nothing," replied the Bornean. "The crocodile here eats men and women. Some are killed every year, and the government pays one and sixpence ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... of his tattered trouser pocket a dim and blackened sixpence—"'Ere 'e is, as large as life, a bit bald about the top o' 'is blessed old 'ead, Glory be good to 'im, but as useful as if all 'is 'air was still a blowin' an' a growin'! Aint that the King's picture, D. David? Don't it say 'Edwardus VII. D. G. Britt.,' which means Edward the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... alone, on deck, one Sunday, when I saw a little dog running about on board a vessel that lay outside of us. Around the neck of this animal, some one has fastened a sixpence, by a bit of riband rove through a hole. I thought this sixpence might be made better use of, in purchasing some cherries, for which I had a strong longing, and I gave chase. In attempting to return to our own ship, with the dog, I fell into the water, between the two vessels. I could ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... inhabitants; and as they gave larger quantities than the regular wood-carriers, they found no difficulty in selling. A ship freighted with coal for the cruisers having arrived from England, Mr. Gabriel procured them employment in unloading her at sixpence a day. They continued at this work for upward of a month, and nothing could exceed their astonishment at the vast amount of cargo one ship contained. As they themselves always afterward expressed it, they had labored every day from sunrise to sunset for a moon and a half, unloading, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... passed for paving with stone the street between Holborn Bridge and Holborn Bars, at the west end thereof, and also the streets of Southwark; and every person was made liable to maintain the pavement before his door, under the forfeiture of sixpence to the king ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... frequently mentioned favourably in these old wills. Another Cuckfield testator, in 1539, left to the high altar, "for tythes and oblacions negligently forgotten, sixpence." The same student of the Calendar of Sussex Wills in the District Probate Registry at Lewes, between 1541 and 1652, which the British Record Society have just published, copies the following passage from the will of Gerard Onstye, in 1568: ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... inventor's and proprietor's name. In the time of Galen, these quack oculists were very numerous, and Galen inveighs against them. Martial satirized them: "Now you are a gladiator who once were an ophthalmist; you did as a doctor what you do as a gladiator." "The blear-eyed Hylas would have paid you sixpence, O Quintus; one eye is gone, he will still pay threepence; make haste and take it, brief is your chance; when he is blind, he will pay you nothing." The oculists of Alexandria were very proficient, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... respectively. He next adverted to foreign paper, books, and glass, which were almost prohibited by excessive duties. He proposed a duty upon all books, bound and unbound, imported into this country, of sixpence per pound; on paper threepence per pound; and upon glass bottles three shillings per dozen. He next proceeded to the duties on metallic substances, as iron, copper, zinc, and lead. The duty on foreign iron was to be reduced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a man and tenpence for a horse; ai, ai, what a barin I have found. Sixpence for a man and tenpence for a horse. Bad news, bad news! ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... song a sixpence, Pocket full of rye; Four-and-twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened The birds began to sing, Wasn't that a dainty dish To set before ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... Romany Rye’ of the life of a gipsy gentleman working as a hedge-smith in the dingle or by the roadside seem to forget that Borrow was then working not for amusement, but for bread, and they forget how scant the bread must have been that could be bought for the odd sixpence or the few coppers that he was able to earn. To those, however, who do not forget this it needs no revelation from documents, and none from any surviving friend, to come to the conclusion that as Borrow was mainly ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... as Clements had become, he felt himself only as a great lord's steward to help a needy world; and I never heard that he spent a sixpence more upon himself, his equipage, or his family, from being some thousands a-year richer: though I certainly did hear that, owing to this legacy, every tenant upon Ballyriggan, and a vast number of struggling families in Spitalfields and round about St. Benet's, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... reaching the hands of Mr. Snape in due time on the following morning. This he did, by giving it to the boy who came to clean the lodging-house boots, with sundry injunctions that if he did not deliver it at the office by ten o'clock on the following morning, the sixpence accruing to him would never be paid. Mr. Corkscrew, however, said nothing as to the letter not being delivered before ten the next morning, and as other business took the boy along the Strand the same evening, he saw no reason why he ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... theatre was two-thirds empty, and two pounds four and sixpence represented the seats actually paid for. On the fourth evening they played almost to empty benches, the takings amounting to seventeen shillings and sixpence. This ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... to Dunglass, the two eldest children had been taken from school to work in the fields, where they earned wages beginning at sixpence a day. Their education, however, was continued in some sort at a night-school. John and his younger brother James, and the twins, Janet and William, who came next in order, attended the parish school at Cockburnspath, a mile away. Cockburnspath is a village of about two hundred and fifty inhabitants, ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... leave of his father, who was then in Leicester jail for debt, and set off for London with 'Bradshaw, the carrier.' He 'footed it all along,' and was six days on the way; spending for food two shillings and sixpence, and nothing for lodgings; but he was in good heart, I think, for almost the only joyous expression in his autobiography is this one, relating to this time: 'Hark, how the wagons ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the prisoners all flocking to see a fellow whipt for petty larceny, to which he was condemned by the court of quarter-sessions; but this soon ended in the disappointment of the spectators; for the fellow, after being stript, having advanced another sixpence, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Holla!—you, chairman!—here's sixpence—do step into that bookseller's shop, and call me a day-tall critick. I am very willing to give any one of 'em a crown to help me with his tackling, to get my father and my uncle Toby off the stairs, and to ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... now," went on Master d'Arfet "we should call ten shillings an acre good rent for unstocked land. We take it at sixpence per annum rent and twenty years' purchase. I am speaking of reasonably fertile land, and hardly need to point out that in offering any such price for mere barren foreshore I invite you to believe me half-witted. But, as ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... in examining into that point too closely, for the fact is, young Fipkin only paid him forty pounds out of seven hundred, for which he gave him I.O.U.'s; Algernon Deuceace not only did not pay him three hundred and twenty which he lost at blind hookey, but actually borrowed seven and sixpence in money from Walker, which has never been repaid to this day; and Lord Doublequits actually lost nineteen thousand pounds to him at heads and tails, which he never paid, pleading drunkenness and his minority. The reader may recollect a paragraph ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to Dick are strictly honourable," she remarked. "We've been engaged for the last eleven years, and I still have his engagement ring. It cost three-and-sixpence." ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... is from the new African Tea Fields, (that is the holds of ships in which it has spoiled, or become musty, or lost its bouquet, and the old chests of the usual dealers,) and is delivered in our ware-rooms for a mere song, so to speak: say the Song of Sixpence (a pound.) ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... pretentious dwellings were often rated for fewer. [y] Money was scarce, rich men rare. So also was great poverty. There was a scanty living for the majority. Trades were few, wages low. A farm-hand averaged three shillings a day, paid in provisions. Women of all work drudged for two shillings and sixpence per week, while a farm overseer received a salary of seventy dollars a year. The children of people in average circumstances walked barefoot to church, carrying their shoes and stockings, which they put on under the shelter of the big tree nearest to the meeting-house. Their fathers made one Sunday ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... thirty-fifth year of this king, an assize was fixed of bread, the price of which was settled according to the different prices of corn, from one shilling a quarter to seven shillings and sixpence,[****] money of that age. These great variations are alone a proof of bad tillage:[*****] yet did the prices often rise much higher than any taken notice ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... ANTONY—Your letter arrived safe to hand on Wednesday last, and I must say that I was not a little surprised at its contents; indeed, I thought so much about it that I revoked at Lady Betty Blabkin's whist-party, and lost four shillings and sixpence. You say that you have a child at your house belonging to your cousin, who married in so indecorous a manner. I hope what you say is true; but, at the same time, I know what bachelors are guilty of; although, ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... you may say anything you fancy. Stay, I'll say it for you. Yesterday I walked to Northbury. Northbury is over twenty miles from here. I walked every step of the way. In the evening I got there—I was footsore and weary. I had one and sixpence in my purse, no more for food, no more for bribes, no more for anything. I went to Northbury to see the Bertrams—to see that fine lady, that beloved friend of mine, Mrs. Bertram. She was from home. You probably know where she ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... booksellers' catalogues is full of instruction as to the changes of caprice. The collection of Dr. Rawlinson was sold in 1756. "The Vision of Pierce Plowman" (1561), and the "Creede of Pierce Plowman" (1553), brought between them no more than three shillings and sixpence. Eleven shillings were paid for the "Boke of Chivalrie" by Caxton. The "Boke of St. Albans," by Wynkyn de Worde, cost 1 pounds: 1s., and this was the highest sum paid for any one of two hundred ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... contrasted with each other. But how, I wonder! Is it a lecture or a magic lantern? Both, I dare say! Let's go in and see! I can't read any more of the bill. We may at least sit there till your ankle is better. 'Admission—front seats sixpence.' Come along. We may get a good laugh, who knows?—a thing cheap at any ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... morning, thou didst eat yesternight too much millet and bolymong. Come hither, sirrah, come hither, I will give thee some cakes. Whereupon Forgier, dreading no harm, in all simplicity went towards him, and drew a sixpence out of his leather satchel, thinking that Marquet would have sold him some of his cakes. But, instead of cakes, he gave him with his whip such a rude lash overthwart the legs, that the marks of the whipcord knots were apparent in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to its tables. Good wine, it may be incidentally remarked, was cheap enough when the Three Cranes was first opened, the delicate juice of the Gascoign grape being then vended, at fourpence the gallon, and Rhenish at sixpence! Prices, however, had risen considerably at the period of which we propose to treat; but the tavern was as well-reputed and well-frequented as ever: even more so, for it had considerably advanced in estimation since it came into the hands of a certain ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... art by the establishment of schools of design, or picture galleries; or by spending money upon an architectural public building when a brick box would answer the purpose. According to their views, not a shilling of public money must be bestowed upon a public park or pleasure-ground; not sixpence upon the relief of starvation, or the cure of disease. Those who hold these views support them by two lines of argument. They enforce them deductively by arguing from an assumed axiom, that the State has ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... gallows. His sentences, I am told, were not more severe than those of other judges: though mention is made of one case in early days in which he was thought to be too hard upon a ruffian who, on coming out of gaol, had robbed a little child of a sixpence. But his mode of passing sentence showed that his hatred of brutality included hatred of brutes. He did not affect to be reluctant to do his duty. He did not explain that he was acting for the real good of the prisoner, or apologise for being himself an erring mortal. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... in England then was almost as much of a curiosity as in the days of Franklin. Young Bradlaugh seemed to possess all the heresies. He became a vegetarian, rented a room for three shillings a week, and boarded himself on sixpence a day. Cooking is a matter of approbation and emulation, and he who cooketh unto himself alone is on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... space between each line almost amounting to prodigality; and to say that the "vellum was considered more precious than the genius of the author,"[81] is absurd, when we know that, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a dozen skins of parchment could be bought for sixpence; whilst that quantity written upon, if the subject possessed any interest at all, would fetch considerably more, there always being a demand and ready sale for books.[82] The supposition, therefore, that the monastic scribes erased classical manuscripts for the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... watching the fray regarded the man with looks of pity and commiseration, 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 ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... to school one day, and on his way he thought he heard somebody singing on the other side of a stone wall by the road, so he climbed up and looked over, and there underneath a stone he saw a sixpence, so ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... 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 able to keep them in view, but had sometimes ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... really of much more importance to me. It is, that you would send out Mr. Bass, and purchase me a bundle of pins and put them in your trunk for me. The cry for pins is so great that what I used to buy for seven shillings and sixpence are now twenty shillings, and not to be had for that. A bundle contains six thousand, for which I used to give a dollar; but if you can procure them for fifty shillings, or three pounds, pray let me have them. I am, with the tenderest ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... left the Oratory, which I may say was a school where the boys were allowed very considerable liberty, my father must have thought, no doubt, when he remembered the twenty-two and sixpence for birches, that it would be wise to send me somewhere where the rules of the college were, in his opinion, somewhat stricter. So off I was sent, early in 1870, to dear old Beaumont College, the Jesuit school, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... there's time one would give a month of for sixpence, and time you wouldn't give half an hour of for any money. Isn't that so, Katinka? What is it? why ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... visited Oberammergau this year. His account is instinct with keen criticism, fine feeling, and reasoning reverence. Moreover, whilst other works are padded out into bulky volumes, he says all that need be said in fifteen pages of a pleasantly-printed booklet—price sixpence. It is a reprint from letters which the errant Editor contributed to his journal, the Liverpool Daily Post, at the sign of which copies may be had. THE BARON DE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... young Indians stole some poultry from one of their neighbours, and they came to sell them to my major-domo for about sixpence. I had them called before me, to administer a lecture, and to punish them. With the utmost simplicity they made ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... 9, 1853, I received a letter from a Christian brother, accompanied with an order for eighty-eight pounds two shillings sixpence on his bankers, of which three pounds two shillings sixpence were the proceeds of an orphan box in a meeting-place of believers, and eighty-five pounds from a poor widow who had sold her little house, being all her property, and ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... whether his guide had not taken him by mistake to some Coal-hole or Cider-cellar, presided over by some former Baron Nicholson, and whether the furious eloquence of Messrs. Fox, Pitt, and Burke were not got up for the amusement of an audience admitted at sixpence a head. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... graces. Tom somehow became an enthusiast in cribbage, and would always loiter behind his companions for his quiet game; chatting pleasantly while the old lady cut and shuffled the dirty pack, striving keenly for the nightly stake of sixpence, which he seldom failed to lose, and laughingly wrangling with her over the last points in the game which decided the transfer of the two sixpences (duly posted in the snuffer-tray beside the cribbage-board) into his waistcoat pocket ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... distributed in large patches. The ears and cheeks should be red, with a blaze of white extending from the nose up the forehead, and ending between the ears in a crescentic curve. In the centre of this blaze at the top of the forehead there should be a clear "spot" of red, of the size of a sixpence. Tan ticks on the fore-legs and on the white muzzle are desirable. The Tricolour should in part have the tan of the Black and Tan, with markings like the Blenheim in black instead of red on a pearly-white ground. The ears and under the tail should ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... dressed for a fancy ball. I forget the title of the charity, but I remember that every lady who sold more than ten tickets received an autograph letter of thanks from the Duchess who was the president. The tickets were twelve and sixpence each and included light refreshments and a very substantial supper. One presumes the odd sixpence reached the poor—or at least the ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... and stepmother and sisters and all. My own mother too! There ain't a ha'porth against it. I don't want any one to give me sixpence in money. And she should live just like a lady. I can keep a servant for her to cook and do every mortal thing. But it ain't nothing of ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... himself nervously to play the host, and the first twinge of remorse which Linton felt came when Sheen pressed upon him a bag of biscuits which, he knew, could not have cost less than one and sixpence a pound. His heart warmed to one who could do the thing ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... which comes through England. The importation of English coal to Russia has afforded a noteworthy instance of the disadvantage hitherto occasioned by the want of direct navigation to St. Petersburg; the freight of a ton of coal from Newcastle to Cronstadt was six shillings and sixpence, but from Cronstadt to St. Petersburg it cost two shillings more. It is often said, in a tone of alarm and reproach, that Russia is very eager to get to the sea. The more Russia gets to the sea everywhere, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... that; but they're charlatans, professional artists, all, Pudgie. They haven't got any souls bigger than a sixpence to put into it.... You know, Pudgie, that Force and Matter are the same thing—that it's decided nowadays that you can't define matter otherwise than as ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... card an official appearance, there was a seal placed at one corner of it, marked by an inverted sixpence. There were but few persons receiving the cards who saw through the trick, and hence it was highly successful. As soon as the first streaks of gray were seen in the east, cabs began to rattle about Tower Hill, and continued to do so all that ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... "You'd get sixpence a day, perhaps," said Miss Benson, "and who would take care of baby, I should like to know? Prettily he'd be neglected, would not he? Why, he'd have the croup and the typhus fever in no time, and be ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... tyrants. When he told me that a clergyman of the Established Church, if he took up the cause of the working classes, might be the boldest and surest of all allies, just because, being established, and certain of his income, he cared not one sixpence what he said to any man alive, I did not care to answer him, as I might—And more shame upon the clergy that, having the safe vantage-ground which you describe, they dare not use it like men in a good cause, and speak their minds, if forsooth no one can stop ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... that I was not a Master of Arts. Could I not get myself made a Master? I said I understood that a Mastership was an article the University could not do under about five pounds, and that I was not disposed to go sixpence higher than three ten. They again said it was a pity, for it would be very inconvenient to them if I did not keep to something between a bishop and a poet. I might be anything I liked in reason, provided I showed ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... deal lower than at present. But at the rate of six shillings and eightpence the quarter, twelve shillings would in those times have purchased fourteen bushels and four-fifths of a bushel of wheat, which, at three and sixpence the bushel, would in the present times cost 51s. 4d. An ox hide, therefore, would in those times have purchased as much corn as ten shillings and threepence would purchase at present. Its real value was equal to ten shillings and threepence of our present money. In those ancient times, when ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... there happened to be good grass on Tom's selection and nowhere else, and he thought it wouldn't be a bad idea—to get a few poor sheep, and fatten them up for market: sheep were selling for about seven-and-sixpence a dozen at that time. Tom got a hundred or two, but the squatter had a man stationed at one side of the selection with dogs to set on the sheep directly they put their noses through the fence (Tom's was not a sheep fence). The dogs chased the sheep across the selection ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... if a man earns four shillings and sixpence halfpenny a day, how much does he make in a ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... character of the elephant are numerous. An elephant which was kept for exhibition at London, was often required, as is usual in such exhibitions, to pick up with his trunk a piece of money thrown upon the floor for this purpose. On one occasion a sixpence was thrown, which happened to roll a little out of his reach, not far from the wall. Being desired to pick it up, he stretched out his proboscis several times to reach it; failing in this, he stood motionless a few seconds, evidently considering ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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, they know ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... their guesses, and then they went in and asked, and as soon as Gerty found that it was only three-and-sixpence she began to feel in her pocket for 'er purse, just like your wife does when you go out with 'er, knowing all the time that it's on the mantelpiece with twopence-ha'penny and ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... looking up and noticing Rodney, though it did not appear that he recognized him, he said in a bantering tone, "Hello, here's a young warrior who looks as if he'd like to tempt the fair goddess, Chance, with a sixpence." ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... work the pumps are always forthcoming on the spot at any hour of the night, not alone for goodwill, as every man—and there have been as many as five hundred employed at a time—receives one shilling for the first hour and sixpence for every succeeding one, together with refreshments. In France, the law empowers the firemen to seize upon the bystanders, and compel them to give their services, without fee or reward. An Englishman at Bordeaux, whilst looking ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... children and their education, and who happens to be in Berlin, goes to see the Pestalozzi Froebel Haus, the great model Kindergarten where children of the working classes are received for fees varying from sixpence to three shillings a month, according to the means of the parents. There are large halls in which the children drill and sing, and there are classrooms in which twelve to sixteen children are taught at a time. Every room has ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... no' verra big or bonnie. Then I stopped a bit in the bar o' the ither hotel. Sixpence goes some way, ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Riddles had seen the direction I had taken, and he might hire one of the railway-station cabs to overtake me. Fortunately, the butcher's boy drove at a smart pace—faster, I thought, than any cab; but when we reached Hincham and I paid his sixpence and alighted, I ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... "We have not sixpence left in the world!" continued Maurice, vehemently. "We must leave this house to-morrow; we must sell all we have; I must go to jail, Ellen! You must work all the rest of your days harder than ever you did; and so must that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... poor-rate has to be paid, as a philanthropic institution. The difficulty with aged and infirm persons is not so much food and maintenance as the necessity for nursing and supervision, which are expensive and difficult to arrange. Tricker told me that he could live on sixpence a day, and if it had been a question of food only, and our village could have cut itself adrift from the Union and the rates it entailed, we could easily have more than kept the poor old man to the end of his days in comfort. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... 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 ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... by half-yearly drawings, commencing March 1, 1864. The special security of these bonds was the engagement of the Government to deliver cotton to the holders. Each bond, at the option of the holder, was convertible at its nominal amount into cotton at the rate of sixpence sterling for each pound of cotton—say four thousand pounds of cotton for each bond of a hundred pounds, or twenty-five hundred francs; and this could be done at any time not later than six months after the ratification ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... their term (however successful their exertions) they find themselves not only without gain, but so deeply indebted as forces them to emigrate or drive them to despair." He further relates how the merchants refused to allow a tax of sixpence per gallon on rum, to help them to defray administrative expenses; and he describes the merchants as "opposed to every measure of government which a governor may think proper to propose for the general benefit ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... vase, with Mr. Walters, as of the eighth century, I do not suppose that the amateur who gave it to a dancer and scratched the hexameter was of a later generation than the jug itself. The vase may have cost him sixpence: he would give his friend a new vase; it is improbable that old jugs were sold at curiosity shops in these days, and given by amateurs to artists. The inscription proves that, in the eighth to seventh centuries, at a time of very archaic characters (the Alpha is lying down on its side, the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Queen Anne. Strutt quotes a description of such an exhibition "by the manager of a show exhibited at the great house in the Strand, over against the Globe Tavern, near Hungerford Market; the best places at one shilling and the others at sixpence each: 'To be seen, the greatest Piece of Curiosity that ever arrived in England, being made by a famous engineer from the camp before Lisle, who, with great labour and industry, has collected into a moving picture the following figures: first, it doth represent ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Selina up to her duty, to drag her back into the straight path. The hopes connected with that project were now a phase that she had left behind her; she had not to-day an illusion about her sister large enough to cover a sixpence. She had passed through the period of superstition, which had lasted the longest—the time when it seemed to her, as at first, a kind of profanity to doubt of Selina and judge her, the elder sister whose beauty ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Mrs. Shafto's smart victoria was sold to a jobmaster for six pounds, Mrs. Billing secured a wonderful bargain in the Crown Derby tea service, and the Sheffield tea urn fell to Miss Tebbs for ten shillings and sixpence! On the other hand, rubbish was at a premium. The kitchen utensils were dispersed at an alarmingly high figure, and a Turkey carpet, aged twenty years, fetched more than ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... course to Leonora that is a mere nothing—no more than sixpence to most girls. Still, perhaps I'd better send for ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil |
