"Threepence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went down, and walked into the arms of the enterprising gentlemen whom you chanced to notice. They must have been very hungry, for even if they had carried the job through they could not have expected to make their fortunes. In point of fact, they would have cleared one-and-threepence. But when you're hungry you can see no further than the pit of your stomach. Do you know, I almost sympathise with the poor brutes. People sometimes say to me, 'What are you?' I have often half a mind to reply, 'I have been hungry.' My stars, be hungry ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... meadows, with their "winking Mary-buds," will be all cut up into building lots in the good times coming, and Philomel caught and put in a cage to sing to tourists at threepence a head. ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... day, when he had been sent to Clifton to sell some flowers, he had seen an old woman with a board beside her covered with various sparkling stones, which people stopped to look at as they passed, and he remembered that some people bought the stones; one paid twopence, another threepence, and another sixpence for them; and Jem heard her say that she got them amongst the neighbouring rocks: so he thought that if he tried he might find some too, and sell them as ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... that I am but discharging in a trifling degree, my debt of gratitude to this young gentleman, in acknowledging my obligation to him. As the man who called for bread and cheese, when feeling in his pocket for the last threepence to pay for it, found a sovereign that he was not aware he possessed, countermanded the order for the lunch, and bade them bring him the best dinner they could get; so I told the servant when she brought the tea, that ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Horse,' but the blazing fire and sedulous kindness of the landlady of the 'Dun Cow' shake him, and his soul labours! Heavy is the ploughed land, dark, dreary, and wet the day. His purpose is at last fixed for beer! Threepence is put down for the vigour of the ale, and one penny for the stupefaction of tobacco, and these are the joys and holidays of millions, the greatest pleasure and relaxation which it is in the power of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... soldiers nodded. One was counting his gains, which amounted to almost threepence. The loser wore a brave air of indifference, as behoved a reckless soldier taking loss or gain in ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... of parliament, passed on May 10, 1773, "with little debate and no opposition," the company, on exportation of its teas to America, was allowed a drawback of the full amount of English duties, binding itself only to pay the threepence duty, on its being landed in ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... ready cash (some four shillings sterling) to redeem such articles as that sum would cover. Accordingly, they duly attended to bid, and Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs's things:—Lot 1, price one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a "valuable assortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan: Lot 2, of a villainous dirty table-cloth ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... occurred to him as yet. A few persons had said "good-day " or "good-night" to him in passing,—a farmer had asked him to hold his horse for a quarter of an hour, which he had done, and had thereby earned threepence,—but he had met with no interesting or exciting incidents which could come under the head of "adventures." Nevertheless he was gathering fresh experiences,—experiences which all tended to show him how the best and brightest part of life is foolishly wasted and squandered by the modern ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... going to come York over me in that way, or Yankee either. There is threepence for your pound of bran; ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... refreshment-room they went. They grew very friendly over hot coffee and a rasher of bacon, and then Geoff laid out threepence on a railway guide, and proceeded ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... meat, not surpassed in any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, is to be had at twopence per pound; the fine four pound loaf for sixpence halfpenny; brown sugar, fourpence; white, sixpence; candles, sixpence per pound; tea, the finest, three shillings the pound; fresh butter, one shilling and threepence per pound. Wild fowl in abundance. Vegetables are cheaper than in any part of England. Wines of moderate price, but not of good quality. Spirits first-rate, and every kind cheaper than in England, except whisky, which is seventeen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... only threepence, but there are people who have to consider the threepences; if Julia was one, she knew that Mr. Gillat was another, and she had allowed for this threepence, and he probably had not. He demurred, but she insisted. "Then I won't let you ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... tea-tax, which alone of the taxes lately imposed upon the colonies, the home Government was determined to retain, was met with defiance throughout America. 'Tis true we paid a shilling in the pound at home, and asked only threepence from Boston or Charleston; but as a question of principle, the impost was refused by the provinces, which indeed ever showed a most spirited determination to pay as little as they could help. In Charleston the tea-ships were unloaded, and the cargoes stored in ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with Mrs Aspinall. Two coppers and two half-pence in her purse were threepence to her now, and the absence of one of the half-pence made a difference to her, especially in Paddy's market—that eloquent advertisement of a young city's sin and poverty and rotten wealth—on Saturday night. She counted the coppers as anxiously and nervously as a thirsty dead-beat does. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... when we startled a man who was returning, not quite sober, from the fair at Boroughbridge. As we had our sticks in our hands, he evidently thought we were robbers and meant mischief, for he begged us not to molest him, saying he had only threepence in his pocket, to which we were welcome. We were highly amused, and the man was very pleased when he found he could keep the coppers, "to pay," as he said, "for another pint." The stones, weighing about 36 tons each, were 20 to 30 feet high, and as no one knew who placed them there, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... length of his smile, but Foster gave me a little satisfaction by saying that if a man was ass enough to write about "exponents of the game," he was probably paid a penny a line for what he wrote, and had sacrificed me for the sake of threepence. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... looked upon it as a high point of indiscretion in monster-mongers and other retailers of strange sights to hang out a fair picture over the door, drawn after the life, with a most eloquent description underneath; this has saved me many a threepence.... Such is exactly the fate at this time of prefaces.... This expedient was admirable at first; our great Dryden has long carried it as far as it would go, and with incredible success. He has often said to me in confidence, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the father mended a wheel in an adjacent shed, the daughter was obliged to get up shivering to carry the flagon of wine and the three glasses to the arbour, where she placed them on one of the tables. And, having pocketed the price of the wine—threepence—in silence, she went back to her seat with a sullen look, as if annoyed at having been compelled to make such a long journey. Meanwhile the three men had sat down, and Prada gaily filled each of the glasses, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in endeavoring to settle the currency. Honest John Hull's pine-tree shillings had long ago been worn out, or lost, or melted down again; and their place was supplied by bills of paper or parchment, which were nominally valued at threepence and upwards. The value of these bills kept continually sinking, because the real hard money could not be obtained for them. They were a great deal worse than the old Indian currency of clam-shells. These disorders of the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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, and some of their followers, at various times throughout the period ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Those who, like ourselves, land at Halifax for the interior, are anxious to obtain rooms at the hotel, and all who have nothing else to do hurry to the ice-shop, where the luxury of a tumbler of raspberry-cream ice can be obtained for threepence. Besides the hurried rush of those who with these varied objects in view leave the steamer, there are crowds of incomers in the shape of porters, visitors, and coalheavers, and passengers for the States, who prefer the comfort and known punctuality of the Royal Mail steamers to the delay, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... a weedy loafer with a bottle nose and watery blue eyes, agreed to pull across for threepence; but no sooner were they embarked and on the tide-way, than he lay on his oars and jerked his thumb towards the moving ship. "Make it a crown, ma'am, and I'll ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search. The story goes also that within ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... prosperously till she died. I began to feel rather unwell, too, and thought it best to give up working and the public-house: so I wrote to the authorities at Chelsea, and obtained through the influence of a kind gentleman an addition of threepence a day to my pension, making a shilling in all; and with that I am now living in a house that was bequeathed to me for as long as I live by my late master, as comfortably as these circumstances and the interposition of a ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... an absurd conviction that this ought to be a sixpenny telegram. The thing worried him. He wanted to give the brat sixpence, and he had only threepence and a shilling, and he didn't know what to do and his brain couldn't think. It would be a shocking thing to give her a shilling, and he couldn't somehow give just coppers for so important a thing as Hugh's death. Then all this problem vanished and he handed the child the shilling. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... waiting for her rent, has taken the key away from him; or else he shrinks to some tavern on the outskirts of the town, where he waits for daybreak over a crust of bread and a mug of beer. When he has not threepence in his pocket, as sometimes happens, he has recourse either to a hackney-carriage belonging to a friend, or to a coachman of some man of quality, who gives him a bed on the straw beside the horses. In the morning he still has bits of the mattress in his hair. If the weather is mild, he measures ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... pence sterling; and that the gentleman who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting several months, "Well! I'll give you fourpence for them, if you will be answerable for the extra threepence yourself, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... October, a negro was arrested for picking two cocoanuts, value threepence. This arrest had every exasperating condition. The fruit was taken from a plantation whose title was disputed, and upon which the negroes had squatted. The law which made the plucking of fruit a crime was itself peculiarly obnoxious. The magistrate before whom the offence was to be tried, rightly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... had been rifled by the aid of so simple a dodge as duplicate keys. Even in Tottenham Court Road a couple of ingenious persons had burnt a hole in a guaranteed safe by means of common gas at three and threepence per thousand cubic feet. These surprises could not occur at Hugo's. His Safe Deposit really was what it pretended to be. All contingencies were provided for. It was the final ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... in this particular, has afforded as melancholy and unquestionable proof of distress as the last, while it bore other evidence, which though trivial in itself, is not unworthy of notice. Last year two theatrical shows visited us, displaying their "Red Barn" tragedies, and illuminated ghosts, at threepence per head, at which they did well; as also did a tremendous giantess, a monstrously fat boy, and several other "wonderful works of nature:" this year only one show of any description attended, and that, with ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... military-looking back had been seen by her to pass within the swing-doors of the "Queen's Arms" for his usual morning refreshment. Then she had occupied herself chiefly by collecting her various things at their respective shops, purchased by Frank's two-pound-ten, and putting them on. She had had a clear threepence to spare beyond the few shillings she had determined to put by out of the total, and had expended it by a visit to the cinematograph show in Victoria Street. There had been a very touching series of pictures of the "Old Home in the Country," ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... "They must pay one tax to know we keep the right to tax," said the King. It was as if the King's followers had winked slyly at one another and said: "We shall see—we shall see! Those colonists must have their tea to drink, and a little matter of threepence a pound ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... sometimes pick up a very decent day's work. Now and then the muse is unkind, or the day uncommonly quiet, and then we rather starve; and sometimes the unconscionable editors will clip our paragraphs when they are a little too rhetorical, and snip off twopence or threepence at a go. I have many a time had my pot of porter snipped off of my dinner in this way; and have had to dine with dry lips. However, I cannot complain. I rose gradually in the lower ranks of the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... villain;—the man who had everything to lose—the man who had nothing in the wide world but his own mischievous, rascally life, a gold watch, chain and seals, which he had stolen the day before, and thirteen shillings and threepence halfpenny in his ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the above an expenditure for all pauper lunatics of threepence a head per week, being the cost of certificates of lunacy, expenses ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... won't ask you how much for the lot, but how little? How little are you thinking of? Don't be ashamed to mention it, because my fortune-teller knows already." (Then making believe to whisper, I kissed her,—and she kissed me.) "Why, she says you are thinking of as little as three and threepence! I couldn't have believed it, even of you, unless she told me. Three and threepence! And a set of printed tables in the lot that'll calculate your income up to forty thousand a year! With an income of forty thousand a year, you grudge three and sixpence. Well then, I'll ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... thousand times, always with the familiar stamp. It was very gay. Old Perce, as he was called, was a carver in a City restaurant. It was he who received orders from the knowing; and in return for apparent tit-bits he received acknowledgments in coin—twopence or threepence a time. Therefore, when he reached home each evening, nicely cheery and about a quarter drunk, his first act after having tea was to withdraw from his pockets a paper bag or two—such as those supplied by banks ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... itself among such a set of persons! And how it happens that when a poor hardworking creature of us has laboriously earned sixpence, the Government comes in, and (as some compute) says, "I will thank you for threepence of that, as per account, for getting you peace to spend the other threepence," our amazement begins to be considerable,—and I think results will follow from it by and by. Not the most dexterous keeping of the peace, your Lordship, unless it ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... "At threepence a card! Then I can have two of them, Julia! and I can send one of them to Priscilla, for poor Priscilla has spent all her money on fireworks, and hasn't anything to remember ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... educated for the Church I employed in removing all the loose stones which choked the surface of the ground, and subsequently in sweeping and scraping the courtyard. I gave them sixpence a day if they worked from early morning, or threepence if they came at noon after their lessons. There was a shepherd's family, upon the hill about 250 feet above the monastery, of seven handsome children, two boys of nineteen and seventeen, and five girls. These were hard at work, even to a pretty little child of four years ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... do a great deal with a pound a week. Let us consider for a moment: rent, which includes all rates and taxes, five shillings a week; gas, purchased on the beautiful and simple penny-in-the-slot system, say, one shilling and threepence, and firing one shilling and sixpence—at Brown's you only have a fire when it is really cold, and it is wonderful how far you can make a halfpenny bundle of wood go when you know the trick of it. Now we come to the not ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... has been selling milk at threepence per quart. In trade circles it is supposed that he is doing it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... articles to be conveyed to Gleneesh according to orders. So he looked straight before him, presenting a sphinx-like profile beneath the peak of his leather cap, while a slow and solemn porter helped Jane and her luggage into the motor. When she had rewarded the porter with threepence, conscientiously endeavouring to live down to her box, the chauffeur moved foot and hand with the silent precision of a machine, they swung round into the open, and took the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... both jokes of Andrew's. Borde's house, whither, it is said, Edward VI. once came on a visit to the jester, still stands. The oak room in which Andrew welcomed the youthful king is shown at a cost of threepence per head, and you may buy pictorial postcards and German wooden toys ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... town of Albany with garden and dairy produce. I wish him every success, and hope that he will include eggs and poultry in his scheme; for the only eggs which we have been able to procure have been six in number, and have cost threepence each. These, too, were only supplied as a special favour, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of Rum or Brandy made into Punch for four shillings; and so in proportion to the smallest quantity, which is half-a-quartern for threepence; and Gentlemen may have it as soon made as a gill of wine ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... she determined to give a tea-party and invite a number of persons of whom we know something already. She took a half-sheet of note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a country "merchant's clerk" adds up two and threepence (New-England nomenclature) and twelve and a half cents, figure by figure, and fraction by fraction, before he can be sure they will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody. After much consideration the list ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great with child; and longing,—saving your honour's reverence—for stew'd prunes; sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruit dish, a dish of some threepence; your honours have seen such dishes; they are not China dishes, ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... in meat, and another six in tea! Or think what such an addition means to those working-women from the North, who at the same time protested in Trafalgar Square against the compulsory insurance because the payment of threepence a week would lose them two of their dinners—twice the penn'orth of bread and ha'porth of cheese that ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... the best compost. A distance of six inches apart each way, and a depth of about two inches will suffice for these plants, and a warm sunny spot is most suitable. The roots are very cheap, a dozen of various colours costing only threepence or fourpence. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Secretary of the Vegetarian Society, for placing some of their bulletins in my hands, and for suggestions and help. He has also written several useful popular booklets on food of a very practical character, at from a penny to threepence each. ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... shop did not offer a very large selection of goods for an expenditure of threepence. Gwen was almost at her wits' end what to choose, and finally came away with a cake of oatmeal soap and a large red chalk pencil. Walking back up ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... good gossip on the way, and when they were coming home from church they always turned into the tavern which lay by the wayside and drank half a pint together. This was at the time when half a pint of brandy cost threepence, so that was just a penny from ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... kitchen by a small round window, did duty as an ante-chamber, and filled the space between the bedroom, the kitchen, and house doors—three doors in all. The rooms were paved with bricks, and hung with a hideous wall-paper at threepence apiece; the chimneypieces that adorned them were of the kind called capucines—a shelf set on a couple of brackets painted to resemble wood. Here in these three rooms dwelt five human beings, three of them children. Any one, therefore, can imagine how the walls were covered with ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... receipt as much coffee will be obtained for threepence as you would otherwise get for a shilling; and it is the ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... the few pence I had. Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and I felt that I could go only a short distance that day. I took off my jacket, and went into a shop, where I exchanged it finally for one and fourpence. For threepence I refreshed myself completely, and limped seven miles further. I slept under another haystack, after washing my blistered feet in a stream, and went on in rather better spirits, coming at last to the bare wide downs near Dover. I ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of the body. The oldest of the two judges guesses at the person, by naming a name, then the younger judge, and lastly the oldest again. If they hit upon the right name, the steward leads the person back again; but, if they do not, he takes off the winnow-sheet, and the person receives a threepence, makes a low obeisance to the judges, but speaks not a word. When the second servant was brought, the younger judge guessed first and third; and this they did alternately, till all the money was given away. Whatever servant had not ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... the way I was always singing. A bit later there was another contest, and I won that, too, with a six-bladed knife for a prize. But I did not keep the knife, for, for all my mither could do to stop me, I'd begun even in those days to be a great pipe smoker, and I sold the knife for threepence, which bought me an ounce of thick black—a tobacco I still like, though I can afford a better now, ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... in one energetic struggle to eradicate the type. If she thought at all it was in the dumb, incoherent manner of her class: at the actual moment a vision of a hat with red flowers she had seen in a shop window flickered across her mind, chased away by a hazy wonder as to how much supper threepence halfpenny would provide. That thought, too, fell away before a sudden, shrewd calculation as to the possible harvest to be gleaned from the two people just coming over the ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... the little town of five hundred inhabitants. The important product of the region at first was Monongahela flour which long held a high place in the New Orleans market. Coal was being mined as early as 1796 and was worth locally threepence halfpenny a bushel, though within seven years it was being sold at Philadelphia at thirty-seven and a half cents a bushel. The fur trade with the Illinois country grew less important as the century came to its close, but Maynard and Morrison, cooperating ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... had a whole threepence to herself in her young life. She caught at the tempting suggestion, and Bywater drilled into her his instructions, finding her excessively stupid in the process. Perhaps that was all the better. "Now you mind, you are not to say who wants Mr. Ketch, unless he asks," ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... still very low, it seems rather to have increased since the conquest; at least, if we may judge of the increase of money by the price of corn. The medium between the highest and lowest prices of wheat, assigned by the statute, is four shillings and threepence a quarter; that is, twelve shillings and ninepence of our present money. This is near half of the middling price in our time. Yet the middling price of cattle, so late as the reign of King Richard, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... am a short mistress with 'em, I can tell you. Our Aphabell shall hear of it, I promise you, when I get home. I bade him yester-even fetch me two pound o' prunes from the spicer's, and gave him threepence in his hand to pay for 'em; and if the rascal went not and lost the money at cross and pile with Gregory White, and never a prune have I in the store-cupboard. He's at all evers playing me tricks o' that fashion. 'Tisn't a week since I sent him for a dozen o' Paris candles, and ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... for the purpose of affording relief to these that the Lines Trust has been formed. It is proposed that all orders for lines shall be supplied out of our vast stock. Our charges are moderate, and vary between threepence and sixpence per hundred lines. The higher charge is made for Greek impositions, which, for obvious reasons, entail a greater degree of labour on our large and ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... to the Government of a country to pay the judges and their officers, the soldiers and sailors, to keep up ships and buy weapons, and do all that is wanted to protect us and keep us in order. Taxes are sometimes made by calling on everybody to pay money in proportion to what they have—say threepence for every hundred pounds; sometimes they are made by putting what is called a duty on something that is bought and sold—making it sell for more than its natural price—so that the Government gets the money ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to chatting about our rowing experiences this morning, and to recounting stories of our first efforts in the art of oarsmanship. My own earliest boating recollection is of five of us contributing threepence each and taking out a curiously constructed craft on the Regent's Park lake, drying ourselves subsequently, in ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Hereto some other man would add also the desire that we have to benefit other countries and to impeach our own. And it is, so sure as God liveth, that every trifle which cometh from beyond the sea, though it be not worth threepence, is more esteemed than a continual commodity at home with us, which far exceedeth that value. In time past the use of this commodity consisteth (for the most part) in cloth and woolsteds; but now, by means of strangers succoured here from domestic persecution, the same hath been employed unto ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... which I will answer with another as extraordinary: you desire I would burn your letters: I desire you would keep mine. I know but of one way of making what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet: sure you would not grudge threepence for a halfpenny sheet, when you give as much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the future, our correspondence will ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... things came across his heart; 'it is too late now to go back. Those who once cared for me have thrown me over.' And then he would again think of Waterloo Bridge, and the Monument, and of what might be done for threepence or fourpence in a ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... at these tiny saucers of the thinnest ivory, the largest not bigger than a silver threepence, which contain in their centres a milk-white crust of stone, pierced, as you see under the magnifier, into a thousand cells, each with its living architect within. Here are two kinds: in one the tubular cells radiate from the centre, giving it the appearance of a tiny compound ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... "carridge" from London 11s. 10d. Whitewashing the church came to 1 pound: 1s., and work in the gallery to 10s. 4d. Besides, there was a continual payment for dozens of sprow heads, also for fox heads at threepence apiece, for a badger's head, a "poul cat," marten cats, and hedgehogs. These last, together with sparrows, continue to appear till 1832, when the Rev. Robert Shuckburgh, in the vestry, protested against such use of the church rate, and it was discontinued. Mr. Shuckburgh was the first resident curate ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... much good white bread for three- halfpence or twopence, as will serve an Englishman a whole day, and flour in proportion. Good strong beer also may be had of the brewer, for about twopence a quart, and of the alehouses that retail it for threepence a quart. Bear Quay, below bridge, is a great market for malt, wheat, and horse-corn; and Queenhithe, above the bridge, for malt, wheat, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... Dick, and they laid down eightpence for a pound of sausages, and threepence for a small loaf, and returned to the barge. Here they fried their sausages and made some tea, for the fire in the stove was not out, and the good-natured bargewoman had left them a small bucketful of coke ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... way agreeable in person, conversation, and behaviour, but without any fortune, which of them shall he choose?" This question was started by the poet, and once every week the club were called to the consideration of matters connected with rural life and industry: their expenses were limited to threepence a week; and till the departure of Burns to the distant Mossgiel, the club continued to live and thrive; on his removal it lost the spirit which gave it birth, and was heard of no more; but its aims ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... it is far easier to under than over sell it. The words of the modern minor poet are as rubies, and what if his sets bring a hundred guineas?—it is more as it should be, than that any sacrilegious hand should fumble them for threepence. It recalls that golden age of which Mr. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... infrequent 'bus, the slow and tedious horse-tram, and the exorbitant cab were the means of locomotion in which a city of six million people put its trust. The electric tram, clean, frequent, and rapid, will be everywhere; the electric cab will run at a normal fare of threepence a mile; perhaps also there will be electric overhead railways, constructed upon a system which does not interfere with the perspective of the main thoroughfares, for the overhead electric railway, whatever may be its defects, is a means of ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... to be expected in the teacher may be surmised from the circumstance of his salary being sometimes less than the munificent sum of threepence-halfpenny per day! With such machinery we may feel it was an achievement to be grateful for, if by the end of the winter's session the children had learnt to read, write, and cipher moderately, and could repeat by heart ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... attending; and from this holy fire, and no other, was every fire in the land first lit for the winter. It was deemed an act of the highest impiety to kindle the winter fires from any other; and for this favour the head of every house paid a Scrubal, or threepence, tax, to the Arch-Druid of Samhain." [222] Another writer mentions another Irish moon-god. "The next heathen divinity which I would bring under notice is St. Luan, alias Molua, alias Euan, alias Lugidus, alias ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... less. Then she said I would come back to faith because I had a restless mind. This means to leave church by back door of sin and re-enter through the skylight of repentance. Cannot repent. Told her so and asked for sixpence. Got threepence. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Shepherd said enthusiastically; "we'll stick together, and you see how we'll get on; and look here, I vote we each pay threepence a week, that will get us a room at two bob, and candles. Then we can work a' night wi'out ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... father founded, in conjunction with David Bogue, a well-known publisher of the time, a journal called the Illustrated Times, which for several years competed successfully with the Illustrated London News. It was issued at threepence per copy, and an old memorandum of the printers now lying before me shows that in the paper's earlier years the average printings were 130,000 copies weekly—a notable figure for that period, and one which was ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... some stiff grind in seamanship and other naval acquirements, similar to the examinations we used to undergo on board the old Saint Vincent; and as we now were rated really as seamen, with the pay of one shilling and threepence a day, instead of sevenpence, besides having all the dirty work of the ship taken off our hands, Mick and I considered ourselves in clover, as ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... night. I gets thirteen shillings a week from Master H., and a shilling on Sundays, and I hev got five children and a wife to keep out of that—that's two shillings a week for each on us, that's just threepence halfpenny a day, look 'ee, sir. And what victuals be I to buy wi' that, let alone beer? and a man can't do no work wi'out a quart a day, and that's fourpence, and there's my share, look 'ee, gone at onst. Wur be I to get any victuals, and wur be I to get any ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... known as Mrs. Trimmer's "Natural History." This I read, as usual, thoroughly and often, and wrote my name at the end, ending with a long snaky flourish. Years passed by, and I was at the University, when one evening, dropping in at an auction, I bought for six cents, or threepence, "a blind bundle" of six books tied up with a cord. It was a bargain, for I found in it in good condition the first American editions of De Quincey's "Opium-Eater," "The Rejected Addresses," and the Poems of Coleridge. But what startled me was a familiar-looking copy of Mrs. Trimmer's "Natural History," ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... would be stopped till the two shillings were made up. Threepence a week each, and a month seemed long to look forward to. Gloomily they leaned over the gate in the evening. Patter, patter, nearer and nearer came little feet. "Lizababuff has opened her money-box, and here is sixpence for George ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... Adams for one. He went and started wot 'e called a Benevolent Club. Threepence a week each we paid agin sickness or accident, and Tom was secretary. Three weeks arter the club was started he caught a chill and was laid up for a month. He got back to work a week, and then 'e sprained something in 'is leg; and arter that was well 'is inside went wrong. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... which she laughed so heartily, that I had to wait until the first transports of her amusement were over before I could finish by saying, that for my part I should be glad to give an hour's lesson for threepence, only, if she pleased, I should prefer it in silver. But how was she to know, she asked, that I could teach her properly. I told her I would let her hear me play; whereupon she led me into the shop, through a back room in which her husband ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Thomas has fortunately preserved a note of another innovation. The Guardians of a certain union in Cambridgeshire had committed the offence of spending three shillings and threepence of public money on toys for sick pauper children in the workhouse infirmary. The case had occurred before, and the Board's legal advisers had held the expenditure to be unwarrantable, and had surcharged the offending Guardians. Dilke was questioned in the House about the matter, and admitted the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... a threepence bow'd would hire me Old as I am, to Queene it: but I pray you, What thinke you of a Dutchesse? Haue you limbs To beare that load of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... cakes and water-melons, we heard strange gurgles in the kitchen, and then Cheon appeared choking and coughing, but triumphantly announcing that he had found the wealth in his first mouthful. "My word! Me close up gobble him," he chuckled, exhibiting the pudding-coated threepence, and not one of us grudged him his good omens. May they ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... containing over a hundred songs sung by all the great singers of the day—Macdermott, Madam Langtry, Sims Reeves, and other eminent vocalists—besides numerous toasts and readings. Well, I won't ask sixpence, and I won't take fivepence, fourpence, threepence, twopence—no, I only ask a penny. Sold again, and got the money. Take care of the ha'pence" (to his assistant), "for we gives them to the blind when they can see to pick 'em up." We of course bought a copy of the famous collection ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... won by hammer and loom and pick rather than by arts of war. For it is written in history that neither king nor army can bar the path to the man who having twopence in his strong box, and knowing well where he can turn it to threepence, sets his mind to that one end. And as the frontier has broadened, the mind of Britain has broadened too, spreading out until all men can see that the ways of the island are continental, even as those ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a ride in the morning with Grant. I rode a horse of his, a very nice one. The sun becomes powerful very early, but it is a charming climate now. The abundance of all things wonderful: beef and mutton at about threepence a pound; peaches, grapes, and all sorts of vegetables in plenty; ice in profusion. I daresay, however, that in six weeks' time ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... bit dull at fust, but arter he had 'ad two or three 'arf-pints 'e began to take a brighter view of things. He found a very nice, cosey little public-'ouse he hadn't been in before, and, arter getting two and threepence and a pint for the 'arf-dollar with Ginger's tooth-marks on, he began to think that the world wasn't 'arf as bad a place as people ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... nowhere else so comfortable. I was here last night, and Monday and Tuesday as well, that's four nights this week. I had no money for lodgings, couldn't earn any, try as I might. I've had one bit of bread to-day nothing else whatever, and I've earned nothing to-day or yesterday; I had threepence the day before. Gets my living by carrying parcels, or minding horses, or odd jobs of that sort. You see I haven't got my health, that's where it is. I used to work on the London General Omnibus Company and after that on the Road Car Company, but ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Mr. Prigg's friend, of seven hundred and twenty-two pounds, six shillings and eightpence-half-penny, left a balance due to Honest Lawyer Prigg of three hundred and twenty-eight pounds, seven shillings and threepence,—subject, of course, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... allowing the Americans to buy tea as cheaply as if no import duty had been levied. The British authorities assumed that Americans would be satisfied to sell the principle for which they were contending for threepence on a pound of tea. They learned the American character better when two ships laden with tea arrived in Boston. The citizens gathered in the old South Meeting-house, and in the evening about sixty men, disguised as Indians, boarded the ships and cast the tea into the harbor. Upon news of this ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... afraid of a dead cat, or our glasses broken, and so were always of their side. I dined again at Delaval's; and in the evening, at the Coffee-house, heard Sir Andrew Fountaine(28) was come to town. This has been but an insipid sort of day, and I have nothing to remark upon it worth threepence: I hope MD had a better, with the Dean, the Bishop, or Mrs. Walls.(29) Why, the reason you lost four and eightpence last night but one at Manley's was, because you played bad games: I took notice of six that you had ten to one against you: Would any but a mad lady go ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... and droll be Rowe allow'd Till the third watchman's toll; Let Jervas gratis paint, and Frowde Save threepence and ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... register with bogus names. They put down dozens of people who don't exist, with the object of polling somebody for them—if any of them should escape the scrutiny of the opposite party—and with the further object of causing the Unionist party expense and loss of time. For there is a stamp duty of threepence to be paid for every objection, and then the Loyalist lawyer and his staff are kept at work for six weeks, instead of a fortnight or three weeks, which should be the outside time taken. Then the annoyance and loss of time to the industrious Unionist voters, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... well-employed chamber, could earn in this way enough, at all events, to make a handsome addition to the pocket-money which was likely to be thought suitable for a youth of fifteen by such a man as the elder Scott. The allowance being, I believe, threepence for every page containing a certain fixed number of words, when Walter had finished, as he tells us he occasionally did, 120 pages within twenty-four hours, his fee would amount to thirty shillings; and in his early letters I find him more than once congratulating ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... in Suifu, who undertook to take me to Chaotong, 290 miles, in thirteen days, special inducement being held out to them in the shape of a reward of one shilling each to do the journey in eleven days. Their pay was to be seven shillings and threepence each, apart from the bonus, and of course they had to find themselves. They brought me from the coolie-hong, where they were engaged, an agreement signed by the hong-master, which was to be returned to them in Chaotong, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... witch, opening the shop door. "But do step in. We met yesterday, you may remember. I'll ask the ferryman to get half-a-dozen halfpenny buns for tea, if you will be so kind as to lend me threepence. We ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... "they do; but their orders are not obeyed. There's Frederick, for instance. He's only eight, I know, but he's got something up his sleeve. He asked me yesterday if I could lend him threepence, and did I think that a small notebook with a pencil would be a nice present for a sort of uncle on his birthday—not a father, mind you, but an uncle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... from Constance! The writing on the envelope was not Constance's; but even before examining it she had had a peculiar qualm. She received letters from England nearly every day asking about rooms and prices (and on many of them she had to pay threepence excess postage, because the writers carelessly or carefully forgot that a penny stamp was not sufficient); there was nothing to distinguish this envelope, and yet her first glance at it had startled her; and when, deciphering the smudged post-mark, she made out the word 'Bursley,' her heart ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... would not go on thus without pay any longer; so he went to his master, and said, 'I have worked hard for you a long time, I will trust to you to give me what I deserve to have for my trouble.' The farmer was a sad miser, and knew that his man was very simple-hearted; so he took out threepence, and gave him for every year's service a penny. The poor fellow thought it was a great deal of money to have, and said to himself, 'Why should I work hard, and live here on bad fare any longer? I can now travel into the wide world, and make myself merry.' With that he put his money into his ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... and where very little was expected by society. We must also take into account the very low prices which then ruled at Dessau with regard to almost all the necessaries of life. I see from the old newspapers that beef sold at about threepence a pound (two groschen), mutton at about twopence. Wine was sold at seven to eight groschen a bottle, a better sort for twelve to fourteen groschen—a groschen being about a penny. People drank mostly beer, and this was sold under Government inspection at two ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... glaring too viciously at Mr. Crowl to reply. He understood the message as if it were printed. It ran: "You have broken one of my best glasses. You have annihilated threepence, or a week's school fees for half the family." Peter wished she would turn the lightning upon Denzil, a conductor down whom it would run innocuously. He stooped down and picked up the pieces as carefully as if they were cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... a railway official that a passenger who pays threepence for a ticket to-day is really only giving the company twopence, the rest being water, owing to the decline in the purchasing power of money. A movement is now on foot among some of the regular passengers to endeavour to persuade ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... the partial repeal of the duties, and of the intention of the government not to lay any further taxes on America for the purpose of revenue. In its amount, namely, threepence on the pound, the tea duty was not a grievance, for the duty of one shilling paid in England was returned on re-exportation, so that the Americans could buy their tea ninepence per pound cheaper than in England. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... respect, in both of which the parents concurred; and his severity did not cost the old man a penny when he made his Easter rounds to collect the "sweepings." It may, perhaps, be well to explain that the "sweepings" consisted of an annual sum of threepence which every householder contributed towards the cleaning of the church, and which represented a large part of the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of actual face value, they are most beautifully made, and, indeed, would pass anywhere. Let me tell you that every sovereign contains a certain amount of alloy which reduces its actual value to about eighteen and threepence. Now you can see where the profit comes in. Supposing these men turn out a couple of thousand sovereigns a day—no very difficult matter with a plant like theirs; and, of course, the money can be disposed of with the greatest possible ease. This leaves a profit of a hundred and ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... Ethelred, it was equal in weight to our threepence. Till the time of King Edward I. the penny was struck with a cross, so deeply indented in it, that it might be easily broken, and parted on occasion into two parts, thence called half-pennies; or into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... physick," whose name is still a household word with many a plain thinking English person, published in 1652, for the benefit of the Commonwealth, his "Compleat Method whereby a man may cure himself being sick, for threepence charge, with such things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English bodies." Likewise in 1696 the Honourable Richard Boyle, F.R.S., published "A Collection of Choice, Safe, and Simple English Remedies, easily prepared, very useful in families, and fitted ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... goes on with much earnestness and prolixity to prove that the Pope's confirmation of the church lands to those who held them by King Henry's donation, was null and fraudulent: Which is a point that I believe no Protestant in England would give threepence to have his choice whether it should be true or false: It might indeed serve as a passage in his history, among a thousand other instances, to detect the knavery of the court of Rome; but I ask, where could be the use of it in this Introduction? Or why all this haste in publishing it at this juncture; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... short notice of the plays of the night before, and a few items of what we now call society gossip. The advertisements, after the paper had been in existence three years, averaged about fifty a day, most of them very short. Its price was threepence, English, equal to about twelve cents of our present currency. The paper upon which it was printed was coarse and cheap. In the third year of its existence, on the first of January, 1788, the name was changed to "The Times." The editor humorously ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... —and swing all day upon his lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead. The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are .. copied verbatim from my right arm, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... application to the gentlemen of the committee appointed to carry on the above building; to whom security was to be given for the payment of one shilling per gallon on the purchase of spirits, sixpence per gallon on the purchase of wine, and threepence per gallon on the purchase of porter or strong beer; these sums, if the permits were granted, which depended on the character of the person applying, were to be paid into the hands of the committee, and appropriated to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... club, which restricted its membership to two dozen, appointed the meetings on Monday, Thursday and Saturday of each week, allowed a member to introduce a friend once a week, insisted that each member should spend at least sixpence at each gathering, enforced a fine of threepence for absence, and laid down the regulation that every individual should defray his own expense. And a final rule stipulated a penny tip for the waiter. The meeting-place was a tavern in Essex Street, known ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... had been out and got a shilling's-worth of soap, and six-penn'orth of blue, and brought home one shilling; and there was the sausages—no one could recollect what they had cost, though they talked so much about their taste; and five-pence-worth of red-herrings, and the butter; yes, and threepence to the beggar who said he had been in Sebastopol. Harold's head was ready to turn round before it was all done; but he got away at last, with a scolding for not ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enough to consume such a mass of mutton. As a matter of fact, there were, I suppose, four or five large dealers present, any one of whom would have bought every sheep, could he have seen a fair chance of a possible profit of threepence a head; to say nothing of innumerable smaller dealers and retail butchers, good for a score or two apiece. What I may call the parochial horizon is well illustrated, too, by the announcement of a domestic economist: ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the twenty men, there is to be a master of the mariners, who is to receive sixpence a-day, a constable, who is to receive a like sum, and each mariner threepence a-day. These five ports, with other smaller ones attached to them, provided in all 57 ships, 1187 men, and 57 boys, one boy being on board each ship. These boys were called gromets. A gromet is now the name given to a ring of rope ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... out of prison; and as he professes to be very well pleased with waiting upon me, he dreads the approach of his release. Every person in the jail has the same allowance, and if they choose to work, the Governor enables them to earn from threepence up to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... houses, stretching northward, and westward, and eastward now fills up the ancient hiatus. Trinity Church cost 9,080 pounds 9s. 3d., and that sum was raised partly by subscriptions and donations and partly by the sale of pews. Who gave the ultimate threepence we cannot tell, neither are we told in what way ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... twenty-seven English shillings, and brings back one moidore, of full weight, is a gainer of ninepence Irish; in a guinea, the advantage is threepence, and twopence in a pistole. The BANKERS, who are generally masters of all our gold, and silver, with this advantage, have sent over as much of the latter, as came into their hands. The value of one thousand ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... remember that you may now go anywhere for a penny a mile—one fourth the former charge at five or six times the rate. The 'short stages,' of which there were a great many, ran to and from the suburbs: they were like the omnibuses, but not so frequent, and they cost a great deal more. Threepence a mile was the usual charge. There was a penny post in London, first set up by a private person. A letter sent from London cost twopence the first stage: threepence for two stages: above 150 miles, sixpence: Ireland and Scotland, sixpence: any foreign country a shilling. There were no bank notes ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... Roman Catholic Church in Lower Canada, then invests those lands with a fictitious value, and sets them down as representing "a capital of L700,000!" whereas the rights to these lands are simply seignorial, and the annual revenue arising from them does not amount to threepence per acre. The Jesuits' estates, 891,845 acres—by far the largest item in the Bishop's paper—are in the hands of the Government, and not of the Roman Catholic Church ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... there's threepence to be earned, even if you are tired all over," he murmured, as he trudged to and fro. Presently a cheerful sound of teacups and a delightful smell of toast came from the cottage, and then the old woman brought out a broom ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... School as a Soldiers' Home where the men were welcome to sing and play, read, and write letters to their hearts' content. Here also every afternoon from 200 to 700 soldiers were supplied with an excellent cup of tea and some bread and butter for threepence each. A threepenny piece is there called "a tickey," and till the troops arrived that was the lowest coin in use. An Orange Free Stater scorned to look at a penny; but a British soldier's pay is constructed ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... and two guineas for No. 80. The same descriptions of yarns are now profitably making at prices ranging from about tenpence to twentypence per lb. At the same period common calicoes were saleable at about two shillings per yard, which now may be purchased for threepence. Will it be said that the Indian spinner and weaver by hand could not, at the same epoch, have produced their wares at one-half the price, had not importation, with unrelenting jealousy, been interdicted? Was the rigid prohibition of the export of machinery no concession, all exclusively ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... about the King's going to Ranelagh—No matter; there is no such thing as truth. Garrick exhibits the coronation, and, opening the end of the stage, discovers a real bonfire and real mob: the houses in Drury-lane let their windows at threepence a head. Rich is going to produce a finer coronation, nay, than the real one; for there is to be a dinner for the Knights of the Bath and the Barons of the Cinque-ports, which ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the day that I was ill.—Fanny bought me that when she went out for the day. It cost threepence. Wasn't it dear? Dora Ellis and Vera Knowles clubbed together and bought me that at the bazaar. It's supposed to be for matches. I am going to give it to Jack at Christmas. That's Ethel's mother! She is really awfully nice, though you wouldn't think so. That's Flora's little brother. Isn't ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... threepence. Trumpet for myself, twopence, that's fivepence. Ginger-nuts for Tony, twopence, and a mug with a Grenadier on for the Postman, fourpence, that's elevenpence. Shooting-gallery a penny, that's a shilling. Giddy-go-round, a penny, that's one and a penny. Treating Tony, one and twopence. ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... literature in a cheap periodical form. The work was illustrated with woodcuts, and so great was its success that from No. 1 to No. 106 there were sold twenty million copies; but the undertaking was heavily handicapped by the paper tax of threepence per pound (see The Struggles of a Book, C. Knight, 1850, 8vo). In 1840 an article appeared in the Quarterly Review, written, it is said, by Sir F. B. Head, but which is more in the style of T. F. Dibdin, on the Clowes printing-office. Even at that time ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... brown volume in the corner. How it got there I cannot imagine, for it is one of those which I bought for threepence out of the remnant box in Edinburgh, and its weather-beaten comrades are up yonder in the back gallery, while this one has elbowed its way among the quality in the stalls. But it is worth a word or two. Take it out and handle it! See how swarthy it is, how squat, with how bullet-proof ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to whom the present writer is indebted for these particulars with regard to Sir John Cheshire's receipts, adds: "The fees of counsel's clerks form a great contrast with those that are now demanded, being only threepence on a fee of half-a-guinea, sixpence for a guinea, and one shilling for two guineas." Of course the increase of clerk's fees tells more in favor of the master than the servant. At the present time the clerk of a barrister in fairly ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... rapidly, for she was anxious to get out of Mr. Dove's neighborhood, and she also thought it just possible that she might meet Primrose or Jasmine returning home. Besides the fifteen shillings which were to pay for her ticket she had threepence of her own in her pocket. When she had walked about half an hour, and thought that she had gone a long way, and felt quite sure that she could not be very far from the railway station which led to Rosebury, the Pink awoke, and twisting and turning in her ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... me in order to rescue myself from the difficulties which surrounded me. I presently sank into a sleep, which endured during the remainder of the day, and the whole of the succeeding night. I awoke about nine on the morrow, and spent my last threepence on a breakfast somewhat more luxurious than the immediately preceding ones, for one penny of the sum was expended on ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire if the weather happens to be cold. I get through the day in this way until five o'clock, and then I dine: at a cost, on the average, of one and threepence. Having still a little money to spend on my evening's entertainment, I look into the old-established coffee-shop as I go home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of toast. So, as the large hand of the clock makes its way round to the ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... at the door, he was almost tired to death, having in forty-eight hours traveled almost half a mile with a huge silver threepence upon his back. Both his parents were glad to see him, especially when he had brought such an amazing sum of money with him. They placed him in a walnut-shell by the fireside and feasted him for three days upon a hazel-nut, which made him sick, for a whole nut ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... their limbs—little else could they do, poor fellows for the first lieutenant looked sharp after their kits to see that they did not sell any of their rigging; and as for money, we had been five years without touching a farthing of pay, and I don't suppose there was a matter of threepence among the men before the mast. However, liberty's liberty after all; and if they couldn't go ashore and get glorious, rather than not go on shore at all, they went ashore and kept sober perforce. I do think, myself, it's a very bad thing to ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... have taken it. He said no good-byes. He left no messages, no explanations. He went. On the next afternoon but one he arrived at Victoria with fivepence in his pocket. Twopence he paid to deposit his luggage in the cloakroom, and threepence for the Underground fare to Charing Cross. From Charing Cross he walked up to Kenilworth Mansions and got a sovereign from Mark Snyder. Coutts's, where Mark financed himself, was closed, and a sovereign was ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... feather-beds, and but eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass costing more than threepence. ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... dank and cool! You see, Madam, the collar was a patent waterproof one. One of those you wash over night with a tooth-brush, and hang on the back of your chair to dry, and there you have it next morning rejuvenesced. It was the only collar he had in the world, it saved threepence a week at least, and that, to a South Kensington "science teacher in training," living on the guinea a week allowed by a parental but parsimonious government, is a sum to consider. It had come to Lewisham as a great discovery. He had seen it first in a shop window full of indiarubber ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... postage is ninepence," said I, "here's a shilling." "Well, I call that honourable," said the old woman, taking the shilling and putting it into her pocket—"here's your change, young man," said she, offering me threepence. "Pray keep that for yourself," said I; "you deserve it for your trouble." "Well, I call that genteel," said the old woman; "and as one good turn deserves another, since you look as if you couldn't read, I ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... one and threepence a week in rent for her cottage, and this was the most serious drain upon her resources. She apparently could live without food or fire, but the rent must be paid. "An' I do get a bit be'ind sometimes," she confessed apologetically, "an' then it's ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... established until the twentieth century. And it was only a few years ago that the greatest newspaper of the world—and a very stronghold of upper-class monopoly—was able, or driven, to reduce its price from threepence (six cents) to a penny. But I specify the case of the London Times because, like a miracle of divine healing, but entirely due to the cheapness of paper, is the change of its policy from that of brutal imperialism to the democratic ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... rest of the girls. Cicely, on the other hand, was the exact opposite of her sister; but being the younger, and less masterful, she gave in to Rhoda, and on the day they were to go home she rose, at Rhoda's command, from her bed at six o'clock, very unwillingly though, for the saving of threepence on her journey was nothing to Cicely in comparison to the discomfort of ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... department it was called, was not the chief clerk but one who ranked higher still and was styled Head of Department, and he received a salary of about 300 pounds. Moderate salaries prevailed, but the sovereign was worth much more then than now, while wants were fewer. Beer was threepence the pint and tobacco threepence the ounce, and beer we drank but never whiskey or wine; and pipes we ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... very jolly," I said when I had examined the rails. "I shall want about a mile of them. Threepence ha'penny a foot? Then I shan't ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... intervals of creeping about his duties, kept an eye open for possible additions to his staff of creditors. Most of the clerks at the Planet had been laid under contribution by him in their time, for Harold had a way with him that was good for threepence any pay-day, and it seemed to him that things had come to a sorry pass if he could not extract something special from Plutocrat Balmer in his hour ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... but there are people who have to consider the threepences; if Julia was one, she knew that Mr. Gillat was another, and she had allowed for this threepence, and he probably had not. He demurred, but she insisted. "Then I won't let you come with me;" and ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... smelling mud. It had never been used, for there was not an article of furniture in it; nor could a human being, much less a pig, have lived there many days. Yet the "back apartment" made a difference in the rent. The Davenports paid threepence more for having two rooms. When he turned round again, he saw the woman suckling the child from her ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reconcile the opposition, and perhaps himself, to the measure, by plausible reasoning. An impost of threepence on the pound could never, he alleged, be opposed by the colonists, unless they were determined to rebel against Great Britain. Besides, a duty on that article, payable in England, and amounting to nearly one shilling on the pound, was taken off on its exportation to America, so that the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... chisel, or house-breaking instrument. But the man was dead. George had wrenched from him his own tool, and having first jabbed him all over with insufficient wounds, had at last driven the steel through his windpipe. The small boy escaped, carrying with him two shillings and threepence which Kate had ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... shilling, sixpence, threepence, and twopence. On one side of each coin was stamped a rude representation of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Such delectable cakes, two for a penny! Such seductive scraps of meat, which would make a breakfast nourishing as well as relishing, possibly even what called itself a dinner, blushing to see themselves labelled threepence or fourpence! We did not know whether to smile or to drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and intensified by the agreement between Lord North and the East India Company, to remit the duty of a shilling in the pound on all teas exported by it to America, where the threepence duty on the pound was to be ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson |
