"Piastre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... next morning on showing my tongue to the doctor, and paying a fee of one piastre (twopence) was free, and again put myself in motion. Lofty mountains seemed to rise to the west, and the cultivated plain now became broken into small ridges, partly covered with forest trees. The ploughing oxen now ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... bit of it," replied the doctor, "I heard a few days later that Selim, in his jail, wove little baskets, or played for hours at a time with a chaplet of glass balls, and that he would smilingly beg a piastre of European visitors, who were surprised by the caressing softness of his eyes. Moslem justice is slow. He was hanged six months later. No one, not even he himself, was greatly concerned about it. I was ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... you set foot in Egypt until the steamer sails is "Backsheesh! Backsheesh!" Give! give! give! Crowds surround you at every place, and from child to withered eld it is an incessant chorus. If one is weak enough to give a piastre he is done for; the crowd increases, and the roars of the beggars with it. There is no place in Egypt which can be enjoyed, owing to this nuisance; even on the top of the Pyramid the evil is unabated. Travellers must be to blame for such an annoyance. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie |
