"Twopenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impatiently waiting in the cold, up there came a merry-faced lad of about ten, and began, in great glee, to describe to us the glorious things that were performed by those "dear little monkeys and dogs." He was quite eloquent in his delight; and, "Oh!" said he, "if I had but another sechser (twopenny-piece), wouldn't I see it again!" "There is another sechser, then!" said I, and put one into his fat little hand. What an astonished, bright face looked up into mine; and he seized my hand in both his, and shook it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... about sixty-six. The early hour at which the sales began was soon dropped, and eventually the time of starting became noon, and from that to one or even two o'clock. It is quite certain that, up to ten shillings, penny and twopenny bids were accepted. The sales were chiefly held at the more noteworthy coffee-houses. Dr. King, in his translation (?) of Sorbiere's 'Journey to London,' 1698, says: 'I was at an auction of books at Tom's Coffee-house, near Ludgate, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... to those who practise these and punishments to those who don't. The Potter God will save you if you please him; that means he'll save your body from danger and not let you starve. Potterism has no notion of a God who doesn't care a twopenny damn whether you starve or not, but does care whether you're following the truth as you see it. In fact, Potterism has no room for Christianity; it prefers the God of the Old Testament. Of course, with their abominable cheek, the Potterites have taken ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... he let them get to Paris, that he might swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the rest,—a mother-battle, as 'twere. But there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and their trumpery shops; they opened the gates. Then the Ragusades began, and happiness ended. The Empress was fooled, and the white banner flaunted from the windows. The generals whom he had made his nearest friends abandoned him for the Bourbons,—a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... a yellow-haired lady manageress who never heard you when you spoke to her, 'cause she was always trying to hear what some seedy old fool would be whispering to her across the counter. Then there were waitresses, and their notion of waiting was to spend an hour talking to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to look haughty and insulted whenever anybody as really wanted something ventured to ask for it. A frizzle-haired cashier used to make love all day out of her pigeon-hole with the two box-office boys from the Oxford Music Hall, who ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in the minds of worthy, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Art thou already weary of the way?" He has put it in, and several others of hers, but she is very unequal, and I don't know if the others should be there, but you should take the one in question. It sadly wants new punctuation, being vilely printed just as I first saw it when a boy in some twopenny edition. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... day. It's bound to end in a blow-up. These imitation Scotch niggers in their plaid sarongs, as they call them, will be getting up a big quarrel with my men with their bounce and contempt for my well-drilled, smart detachment. Here's every common, twopenny-halfpenny Malay looking down upon my fellows, while there isn't one among my lads who isn't a better man than their Rajah. There will be a row some day; won't ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... and pay them, borrow money at a high rate of interest, and now that I myself am a contractor, I understand how it is that one may have to waste three days racing about the town in search of tilers on account of some twopenny-halfpenny job. People are civil to me, they address me politely, and in the houses where I work, they offer me tea, and send to enquire whether I wouldn't like dinner. Children and young girls often come and look at me with curiosity ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fatigued from morning till night about twopenny matters, if any of which is forgotten I am complained of as a man who minds not his business. I pray heaven for a lazy and lucrative office, and then I shall with alacrity turn my shop out of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... o' Tyne. The poor wretches had a miserable hovel of an inn to their own part on the western outskirts of the Chase, a place by the sign of the Hand and Hatchet, where they ate their rye-bread and drank their sour Clink, when they could muster coppers enough for a twopenny carouse. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... passed under my lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard—to his twopenny ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... this 'ere Mr. Macaroni," began the baker, who took in a twopenny paper every day, and gave himself well-informed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... to live economically. "We kept no idle servants," says Franklin, "our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... at once; easy manner). I'd like to know about this swindle that's going to be sprung on him. I didn't mean to startle the old man. You see, on my way here I dropped into a barber's to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there that he was something of a character. He has been a ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... Tauld, told. Tent, watch. Tere, muscle. Thae, those. Thieveless, useless. Thilk, that same. Thir, these. Thole, endure. Thrang, throng, thronging, busy. Thrave, twenty-four sheaves. Thraw, twist. Thrawart, perverse. Tint, lost. Tippeny, twopenny (ale). Tither, the other. Tittlin', whispering. Tochelod, dowered? dipped? Tod, fox. Tout, toot, blast. Tow, rope. Townmond, twelvemonth. Towsie, shaggy. Toy, cap. Transmugrify'd, changed, metamorphosed. Tryste, appointment, fair. Twa, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... don't know much about her this way, either, though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the boy that rode him pulled his head half off—I saw him do it—and then he won the Chester, and brought his owners a pot ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... of the exchequer said that he proposed a penny rate, because he had been convinced by the arguments and evidence of the committee that the latter expedient would involve less loss to the revenue than a twopenny postage, which had been recommended by the committee. After some observations from Mr. Goulburn and Sir Kobert Peel, both of whom intimated further hostility to such a change, the resolution was agreed to without a division. On the 12th of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to all men. Whatsoever you may find in the uttermost corners of the earth, that you shall find in London. It is the city of the world. You may stand in Piccadilly Circus at midnight and fingerpost yourself to the country of your dreams. A penny or twopenny omnibus will land you in the heart of France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Russia, Palestine, China, the Malay Peninsula, Norway, Sweden, Holland, and Hooligania; to all of which places I propose to take you, for food and drink, laughter and chatter, in the pages that follow. I shall ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... that's true, how does it happen?" asked Dyck, with a little flash of interest. "Why should this little twopenny, one-horse place— I mean in size and furnishments—have such luck as to get the best there is in France? It means a lot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her—jokes about as delicate as a kick from his charger. Whereas, Mrs. Bute consulted her in matters of taste or difficulty, admired her poetry, and by a thousand acts of kindness and politeness, showed her appreciation of Briggs; and if she made Firkin a twopenny-halfpenny present, accompanied it with so many compliments, that the twopence-half-penny was transmuted into gold in the heart of the grateful waiting-maid, who, besides, was looking forwards quite contentedly to some prodigious benefit which must happen to her ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said suddenly. "There's this about it. It's all jolly well, but a fellow's got to think for himself, Dave, old man. Now it doesn't matter a twopenny cuss to me about old Kitely—I don't care if he was scragged twice over—I've no doubt he deserved it. But it'll matter a lot to M. & C. if they're found out. I can touch that five hundred easy as winking—but—you take my meaning?—I daresay M. & C. 'ud run to ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible manner. Whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her; but before she could get to her the child fell into her swooning fit, and at last, with much pain and straining herself, she vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and being demanded by this deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth. And at other times the elder child declared unto this deponent that during the time of her fits she saw ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... fool. On the other hand, I have nobody to care a twopenny curse what becomes of me. Same thing, you see, in the end. Come, man, cheer up. Tell me what is wrong. Seventeen pounds ten shillings is not exactly wealth, but if you want it you ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... book bound in blue paper lying open, face downwards, on the sofa, and Philip idly took it up. It was a twopenny novelette, and the author was Courtenay Paget. That was the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... their speech for one, two, and once for eight days together. At times they had swooning fits, and, when they could speak, were taken with a fit of coughing, and vomited phlegm and crooked pins; and once a great twopenny nail, with above forty pins; which nail he, the examinant, saw vomited up, with many of the pins. The nail and pins were produced in the court. Thus the children continued for two months, during which time the examinant often made them read in the New Testament, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... a snoff! Yes, my lady. Well, when Pa'son St. Cleeve married this homespun woman the toppermost folk wouldn't speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he'd no longer get his living by curing their twopenny souls o' such d—- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took to farming straightway, and then 'a dropped down dead in a nor'-west thunderstorm; it being said—hee-hee!—that Master God was in tantrums wi'en ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... for the laity, but was specially enjoyned to be used by "all and sindry Personis, Vicars and Curattis," both for their own edification, and for reading a portion of it to "thair awin parochianaris,"—"quhen thair cummis na precheour to thame to schaw thame the word of God."—Of the Twopenny Faith, published in 1559, no copy is ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... sir, this is the last time I shall have to trouble you with these twopenny concerns. But until some step is taken by the three Powers, or until I have quite exhausted your indulgence, I shall continue to report our scandals as they arise. Once more, one thing or other: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is really one of the play's failures, it is so trivial and unspiritual and vulgar. And it was spoilt for me from the first. When I was a child I went to the twopenny travelling theatre to see Hamlet. The Ghost had on a helmet and a breastplate. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... and much damaged wax dolls, barrels of rotted dried apples, and decayed pork, an ice-making plant, bales and bales of second-hand clothing—men's, women's and children's—cheap and poisonous sweets in jars, thousands of twopenny looking-glasses, penny whistles, accordions that wouldn't accord, as the cockroaches had eaten them up except the wood and metal work, school slates and pencils, and a box of Bibles and Moody and Sankey hymn-books. And the smell was something awful! I asked the captain ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... for devoting six or eight closely-printed columns of the paper to local news, which are not read by one-twentieth part of those who purchase it. Each small town in Lancashire and Yorkshire, as well as elsewhere, would have its penny or twopenny newspaper, in which local news, local politics, and local talent, would have fair play; while large papers, like the Manchester Guardian or the Leeds Mercury, would be greatly improved by the change. They would be enabled to substitute good readable matter, literary ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... else matters a straw. If you love him enough to trust him with the whole of the rest of your life, you can surely trust him over a twopenny-halfpenny little secret which, after all, has nothing in the world to do with you. If you can't, do you know what ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... prints, pictures, pipes, china (all cracked), Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed; A twopenny treasury, wondrous to see; What matter? 'tis pleasant ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the adventures of Agnes and Monrose and the exploits of the winged ass. Every man of cultivation knew by heart the choice passages of this diverting and philosophical poem. Evariste Gamelin himself, stern-tempered as he was, when he recovered his twopenny knife from Elodie's lap, recited the going down of Grisbourdon into hell, with a good deal of spirit. The citoyenne Thevenin sang without ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... commercial panic brought on by overspeculation in railways, and partly to a repeated failure of the crops. To relieve the potato famine in Ireland, Parliament voted L10,000,000 for that country. In the midst of this general distress the twopenny omnibuses made their first appearance in London, and the first issue of the "Daily News" appeared in the metropolis. Leigh Hunt brought out his stories from the Italian poets. Sir Aubrey De Vere, the Irish poet, died in his thirty-ninth year. A ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... down to any meal without wearing them; they are as necessary, and as useful in a kitchen as pots and kettles: they will make a lark look as large as a FOWL, a goose as big as a SWAN, a leg of mutton as large as a hind quarter of beef; a twopenny loaf as large as a quartern;" and as philosophers assure you that pain even is only imaginary, we may justly believe the same of hunger; and if a servant who eats no more than one pound of food, imagines, by the aid of these glasses, that he has eaten three pounds, his ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... inhabited by swans and monstrous pike. The Hall used to be one of the hideous brick erections of the time of pigtails and laced waistcoats,—the footman style of dress and architecture. But the genius of Barry (that great architect whom the people on the twopenny steamboats seem to appreciate more than some grumbling members of the House of Commons) has transformed, without destroying it, into a charming Italian Villa, with gardens, in which the Italian style has been happily adapted to our climate; for instance, round- headed laurels, grown for the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... since been on your track, but it was reserved for me to discover the last of the Birkenheads in the anonymous author of the 'Baronet's Wife.' That romance, in which you have had the baseness to use your knowledge of a mother's guilt as a motif in your twopenny plot, unveiled to me the secret of your hidden existence. You must stop the story, or alter the following numbers; you must give up your discreditable mode of life. Heavens, that a Birkenhead should be a literary character! ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... agreeing that he would print them, and also whether he had not paid too dear for them already in giving John Clare a guinea. Full of these doubts, yet not wishing to make a mistake in the matter, he resolved to submit the question to a higher tribunal. One of his customers, the Rev. Mr Twopenny, incumbent of Little Casterton, had the reputation of a most learned critic, having published various theological and other treatises; and he being the only literary man known to Mr. Drury in or near Stamford, the owner of the 'New Public Library' resolved to make ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... into the refreshment tent, and blundered as far as offering her a twopenny ice-cream at the ice-cream stall. He was beginning to realize that she took her pleasures differently from most girls he knew; he felt disappointed and ill at ease with her—it would be dreadful if she went home and told Joanna she ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... public talk of passing off their wisdom upon us, reminds us of the old and approved fashion in which Paddy passes his bad shilling, by slipping it between two sound penny pieces. To be sure it is but twopence after all, and he gets neither more nor less than his twopenny-worth of intoxication, but he has succeeded in putting his shilling into circulation. Just such a circulation of wisdom may we expect from novels which are to teach philosophy, and politics, and political economy, and I know not what else. But such works have succeeded, you will tell me. What shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... fortune, after filling my pockets from the twopenny boxes of the suburban bookstalls, to find, on turning out the heterogeneous contents, that I had accidentally become possessed of The Broken Vow, a comedy by the aforesaid lady, who waits to be enrolled in that much wanted book, a new edition of the Biographia ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... Why the deuce couldn't he have kept his twopenny thunderbolt in his pocket for a few hours, instead of launching it to-night and spoiling our sole a la Morny ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... modern ideas of comfort become in vogue. Just behind the kitchen-garden a great cross ditch, called Foul-water Drain, runs, or rather creeps, down to the Wash, looking on that side as though it had been made to act as a moat to the house; and on the other side of the drain there is Twopenny Drove, at the end of which Twopenny Ferry leads to Twopenny Hall, a farmhouse across the Wash belonging to Mr. Caldigate. The fields around are all square and all flat, all mostly arable, and are often so deep in mud that a stranger ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... "Falsehood, Mr. Roundabout," says the noble critic: "You were then not a lad; you were then six-and-twenty years of age." You see he knew better than papa and mamma and parish register. It was easier for him to think and say I lied, on a twopenny matter connected with my own affairs, than to imagine he was mistaken. Years ago, in a time when we were very mad wags, Arcturus and myself met a gentleman from China who knew the language. We began to speak Chinese against him. We said we were born in China. We ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... child's book about a century old, of which various editions have been published in London, Glasgow, and other places. It is stated in one of its late prefaces that it was originally issued at Stockton in a small twopenny brochure, without date, printed by and for R.Christopher. Sir Harris Nicholas says it appeared in the year 1783. The American "Mother Goose" contains many interpolated articles indigenous in the Western hemisphere, which are of various, and some ...
— Chenodia - The Classic Mother Goose • Jacob Bigelow
... propose to deal with an earlier effort of Sir G. G. Stokes. Nearly two years ago he delivered a lecture at the Finsbury Polytechnic on the Immortality of the Soul. It was reported in the Family Churchman, and reprinted after revision as a twopenny pamphlet, with the first title of "I." This is the only pointed thing about it. The lecture is about "I," or, as Sir G. G. Stokes, might ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the altered shape of the thin girl in the mended jacket and the large and feathered hat that topped the colossal structure of fair, frizzled hair, even as she dried her eyes with a twopenny handkerchief edged with cotton lace, and tried to laugh. He took the lean chin of W. Keyse between his white, strong, supple fingers, and turned the triangular, hollow-cheeked face to the light, and said, touching the little round blue scar left by the enemy's bullet at the angle ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny addition to the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the policeman pay his fare?" inquired the old gentleman on the twopenny tram, observing that no money passed between the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... to ride, we'll see if we can't find you a horse to ride. I dare say you think your old father a terrible martinet, but it's all for your good, you know. You must say to yourself when you feel dissatisfied about some little twopenny-halfpenny disappointment ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... 164th Brigade. And he remained in command of that famous Brigade until the end of the war. As I studied the countenance of General Stockwell on that country road at Boisdinghem that afternoon I realized that he was no ordinary twopenny-halfpenny brigadier; but I did not then know that this was the man who, less than twelve months later, was destined to stand between Ludendorff and decisive victory in his last dramatic throw at Givenchy on the glorious ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... being a witch, and she was placed in the stocks. Being placed in the stocks, further threats were uttered, and both children were afflicted with fits. Upon recovery they "would cough extremely, and bring up much phlegm and crooked pins, and one time a twopenny nail with a very broad head; which pins (amounting to forty or more), together with the twopenny nail, were produced in court, with the affirmation of the said deponnent that he was present when the said nail was vomited up, and also most ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... attracted a large number of the working classes to His Majesty's Theatre in spite of the price being higher than "A Twopenny Damn." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... game, and concentrated upon the 'guinea buttons,' 'black-haired Susans,' 'red cloaks,' 'scarlet hoods,' the cunning craft of the old men, the fortune-telling of the old women, the 'sparkling eyes' and 'clapping of hands,' and 'twopenny hops' of the young women, who certainly can take care of themselves, just as other un-Christianised and uncivilised human beings can. I do not profess—at any rate, not for the present—to take up the cause of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... house in a tremendous hurry, merely scowling at Georgie, and positively trotted across the Green in the direction of the news-agent's. Instantly Georgie recollected that he had seen him there already this morning before his visit to Olga, buying a new twopenny paper in a yellow cover called "Todd's News." They had had a few words of genial conversation, and what could have happened in the last two hours that made Robert merely gnash his teeth at Georgie now, and make a second visit ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Melodies. After making various unsuccessful attempts at serious satire, he hit upon a vein for which his light and brilliant wit eminently qualified him—the satirical and pungent verses on men and topics of the day, afterwards coll. in The Twopenny Post Bag, in which the Prince Regent especially was mercilessly ridiculed, and about the same time appeared Fables for the Holy Alliance. In 1818 he produced the Fudge Family in Paris, written in that city, which then swarmed with "groups of ridiculous ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... abandon the struggle for intellectual superiority of that kind. They have produced greater minds when, the mass of their countrymen were steeped in brutality, and Elizabethan surfeit of beef and ale, than they will ever produce with a twopenny-halfpenny universal education. What is the use? Progress. What is progress? Merely the adequate arrangement of inequalities—in the words of one of their own thinkers who knows most about it and troubles himself least about theories. What is the use of your ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Stella, May 14th, 1711, Swift informs her: "Dr. Freind was with me, and pulled out a twopenny pamphlet just published called 'The State of Wit,' giving a character of all the papers that have come out of late. The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called 'The Examiner,' and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift" (vol. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... was not intended for indiscriminate circulation among the laity, was not published until 1552; and The Twopenny Faith was not issued ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... non-commissioned officers and their wives and families, there was perfect order and regularity observed. The "Ranger" had the honour of conveying Colonel Morley, who commanded the regiment, and there was a Mrs and two Miss Morleys. Then there was Captain Power, Captain Gosling, and Captain Twopenny; and Lieutenants Dawson, Hickman, and Ward; with Ensigns Holt and Gonne. There was a surgeon, David Davis, who hailed from Wales; and a paymaster, who was the stoutest man on board. There were several sergeants, but only one, Serjeant Rumbelow, whose name it is necessary to record. He was accompanied ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... post-office in Sydney, and a twopenny post, with delivery twice a day, in the town itself. There is, likewise, a Savings' Bank,[141] a Mechanics' Institute, several large schools or colleges; and, in short, so far as is possible, the usages and institutions of England, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... he replied, "that you might trade your lawful right in the lady for a twopenny whistle and not ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... master, tis Shrovetuesday[267] and the prentices are pulling downe Covent Garden; the Brickes come as whole out as if he had swallowed Cherristones. Hey! will you take Tobacco in the Roll? here is a whole shiplading of Bermudas and one little twopenny paper of berrinas, with a superscription 'To my very ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... such queer ideas," thought Queen Selina, as the chariot rapidly receded from sight. "As if that twopenny-halfpenny pendant of Miss Heritage's could—but the Court Godmother will be annoyed if I don't follow her advice—and it's best not to offend the old creature. I'll go up and see if it's still in ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... altogether. These sceptical doubts would naturally be repelled by the other with scorn and indignation as airy reveries subversive of the faith and manifestly contradicted by experience. "Can anything be plainer," he might say, "than that I light my twopenny candle on earth and that the sun then kindles his great fire in heaven? I should be glad to know whether, when I have put on my green robe in spring, the trees do not afterwards do the same? These are facts patent to everybody, and on them I take my stand. I am a plain practical ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... twelvepence or two loaves, value sixpence each: and even when the sizes and price of the loaves varied, it was used to express the larger loaf, or the two smaller loaves. A dozen of bread was also divided into six twopenny, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various
... the gossip over the good twopenny in every ale-house within three or four miles of Ellangowan, that being about the diameter of the orbit in which our friend Godfrey Bertram, Esq., J. P., must be considered as the principal luminary. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Is it history—when did it throw a light for you on modern politics? Is it science—when did it show you order in apparent disorder, and help you to put two and two together into an inseparable four? Is it ethics— when did it influence your conduct in a twopenny-halfpenny affair between man and man? Is it a novel—when did it help you to "understand all and forgive all"? Is it poetry—when was it a magnifying glass to disclose beauty to you, or a fire to warm your cooling faith? If you ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... time, until the weather should clear up, over a bowl of rumbo, which was accordingly prepared. But the fourth, refusing to join their company, took his station at the opposite side of the chimney, and called for a pint of twopenny, with which he indulged himself apart. At a little distance, on his left hand, there was another group, consisting of the landlady, a decent widow, her two daughters, the elder of whom seemed to be about the age of fifteen, and a country lad, who served both as ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... be the nest of a mare? Ought the moon to be taught by the laws of space To turn half round without right-about-face? Our whimsey crotchets will manage it all; Deep! Deep! posterity will them call! Though the world, for the present, lets them fall Down! Down! to the twopenny box of the stall! ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of your father," says Mr. Esmond, kindly, "and sure a father may dispossess himself in favor of his son. I abdicate the twopenny crown, and invest you with the kingdom of Brentford; don't be a fool and cry; you make a much taller and handsomer viscount than ever I could." But the fond boy, with oaths and protestations, laughter and incoherent outbreaks of passionate emotion, could not be got, for ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... broken shoulder, and a broken back. It is a sad business for us all; bad for you, when head quarters come to hear of it, and bad for me, in not being sharper. But it might have been worse," he added; "why, the fugitive might have been the Prince himself, instead of this twopenny-halfpenny ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... style of Mr. Knight. Nice smiling Mr. Barlowe met us at the door and, in reply to enquiries after news, said that peace was generally expected. I have taken possession of my bedroom, unpacked my bandbox, sent Miss P.'s two letters to the twopenny post, been visited by M^{de} Bigeon and am now writing by myself at the new table in the front room. It is snowing. We had some snowstorms[282] yesterday, and a smart frost at night, which gave us a hard road from Cobham to Kingston; but as it was then ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... acti is out of favour just now: the world is on the move. Yes, but sometimes it moves backwards. When I was a boy, our twopenny textbooks told us that man was a reasoning animal; nowadays, there are learned volumes to prove to us that human reason is but a higher rung in the ladder whose foot reaches down to the bottommost depths of animal life. There ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... home from a Wagner concert with a black eye. He, Jory, had nearly had a duel at the Cafe Baudequin on account of one of his last articles in 'The Drummer.' The fact was he was giving it hot to the twopenny-halfpenny painters, the men with the usurped reputations! The campaign against the hanging committee of the Salon was making a deuce of a row; not a shred would be left of those guardians of the ideal, who wanted to prevent nature from ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... speciality at a Northern munition works' canteen. We have long been used to twopenny meals, but of course much more was charged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... luck. I suppose there was some kink in Abraham. Poor devil, he's gone to the dogs altogether. He's got some twopenny-halfpenny job in the medical at Alexandria — sanitary officer or something like that. I'm told he lives with an ugly old Greek woman and has half a dozen scrofulous kids. The fact is, I suppose, that it's not enough to have brains. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... sudden he would sing some little twopenny love-ballad or sentimental nigger melody so touchingly that one had the lump in the throat; poor Snowdrop would weep ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... he was telling me from his noisome couch how he got round, got in, got home, on that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He admitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, "as broad as a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... unfinished poem, The Trumpet Hath Sounded; and in 1832 a very long poem called The Bridal. Some of them, as for example a poem called Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel, are written in penny and twopenny notebooks of the kind used by laundresses. Occasionally her father has purchased a sixpenny book and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... out half a dozen together, pretty much with the same tone and emphasis as though he had said a twopenny postman; "the devil ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... than is necessary.' And then he glanced at Henry. 'Look here, my bold buccaneer, you've got nothing to do just now, have you? You can stroll along with me a bit, and we'll see if we can buy you a twopenny toy for ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... you have no money, you had best remove into some cheaper ward; to the twopenny ward, it is likeliest to hold out with your means; or, if you will, you may go into the hole, and there you ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... was unusual; but if children were taken young and had half the attention paid to their palates that folks give to their eyes and ears, with their fool drawing-teachers and music-masters in the attempt to enable them to bore somebody with their twopenny accomplishments, we should soon have a race of gourmets; and gourmets make cooks. No chef can do his best without appreciation. For the matter of that, a cook must be born,—he must have the feeling for ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... bidding at these scenes of competition. It has been remarked as a singular circumstance that in the seventeenth century penny biddings were usual; but it was the silver penny of those days, and we have to remember the higher purchasing value of money. Twopenny and threepenny advances succeeded, and although these have long ceased in London, they yet survive in the provinces, where the lots are less important. Some of the principal houses now decline even sixpence, a shilling being the minimum offer entertained. The twopenny ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... theatre is, I venture to state, of a far superior order, both as to drama and as to morality. It is not a mere lantern-hall, close and stuffy, with twopenny and fourpenny seats (half-price to children, and tea provided free at matinee performances), but a white-and-gold Picturedrome, catering to an exclusive class of patrons at sixpence and a shilling, with neat attendants in dove-grey ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... month left for her other expenses. But many workwomen, whose position is less fortunate than hers, since they have neither home nor family, buy a piece of bread and some other food to keep them through the day; and at night patronize the "twopenny rope," one with another, in a wretched room containing five or six beds, some of which are always engaged by men, as male lodgers are by far the most abundant. Yes; and in spite of the disgust that a poor and virtuous girl must feel at this arrangement, she must submit to it; for a lodging-house ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... is impossible to place any period of termination. I will not speak of the classics—reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We do not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces or our forewords. I am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence will think of Mark Twain. Posterity will take care of itself, will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little, and showed him a dingy street, a gin-palace, a low French eating-house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... how to while away that hour. Well!—there was the Twopenny Tube. At that time it was new, and an excitement. Our friend had exactly fourpence in his pocket. That would take him to anywhere and back before the Bank closed. And also he could put some of that eau-de-Cologne on his face and hands. He had on him still a sense ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... fellow-citizens by a long course of unbridled miscellaneous philanthropy, you can have a funeral procession as long as you like, at the rate of about forty shillings a foot. But you'll never touch the great heart of the enlightened public of these boroughs in any other way. Do you imagine anyone cared a twopenny damn for ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... holiest kind of fraud. Only twelve days, too! Seems like craziness. I'll own up square to one thing: I seem to have figured too fine upon the flour. But the rest—my land! I'll never understand it! There's been more waste on this twopenny ship than what there is to an Atlantic Liner.' He stole a glance at his companions; nothing good was to be gleaned from their dark faces; and he had recourse to rage. 'You wait till I interview that cook!' he roared and smote the table with his fist. 'I'll ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... in a mournful tone about his ill-health, and his death, which he feels to be approaching, yet he has occasional touches of humor that remind me of old Mourteen on the north island. To-day a grotesque twopenny doll was lying on the floor near the old woman. He picked it up and examined it as if comparing it with her. Then he held it up: 'Is it you is after bringing that thing into the world,' he ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge |
