Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Sixpence" Quotes from Famous Books



... half-yearly drawings, commencing March 1, 1864. The special security of these bonds was the engagement of the Government to deliver cotton to the holders. Each bond, at the option of the holder, was convertible at its nominal amount into cotton at the rate of sixpence sterling for each pound of cotton—say four thousand pounds of cotton for each bond of a hundred pounds, or twenty-five hundred francs; and this could be done at any time not later than six months after ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... we get our camera we shall be able to take photographs of the shorthorns,' you heaved a silly great sigh and said, 'It takes such a long time to save up with only a shilling a week pocket-money,' and of course what could he say but that when he was our age he only had sixpence?" ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... cup of chocolate after eating the roll, and the other after eating the scone. Meanwhile he read pages three and four of the Daily Telegraph. At a quarter to two he folded the paper, put down sixpence in payment, and slowly walked back to the office. He returned to his desk and there spent the afternoon solemnly poring over figures, casting accounts, comparing balance-sheets, writing letters, occasionally going for some purpose ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... highest ambition was to be taken on at the colliery where his father worked; and he shortly joined his elder brother James there as a "corf-bitter," or "picker," to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross. His wages were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence when he was set to drive ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... should furnish 30l. more. The boy was sent to Richmond School, Yorkshire, preparatory to his proceeding as a sizer to St. John's, but when he quitted school the friends were unable to advance another sixpence on his account. To help himself, Herbert Knowles wrote a poem, sent it to Southey with a history of his case, and asked permission to dedicate it to the Laureate. Southey, finding the poem "brimful of power and of promise," made inquiries of the schoolmaster, and received ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... Miss Wilson. "Take it, of course. Seven and sixpence is a ridiculous sum to give him for what he has done. It would only ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... Author of "Doing and Suffering," etc. Illustrated with 48 Plain Engravings and 12 Coloured Plates. Small 4to, Three Shillings and Sixpence, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... Errington, this first sunshine's as seductive as a pretty child—makes one ready to do anything! Why, I saw an old crossing-sweeper just now sweeping nothing at all—for it's as dry as a bone, you see—and I had to fork out a sixpence; encouraged useless industry just because of the change in the weather, 'pon ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... remember that thirty-seven and sixpence and two Mexican dollars are all I have in the world," he said to himself. "It would be bad business to allow them to suppose that I had more, until I find ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... peculiarities, Paganini was an incarnation of avarice and parsimony, with a most contradictory passion for gambling. He would haggle with you for sixpence, and stake a rouleau on a single turn at rouge et noir. He screwed you down in a bargain as tightly as if you were compressed in a vice; yet he had intervals of liberality, and sometimes did a generous action. In this he bore some resemblance ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... do not recommend that idea, unless it be supplemented by some effective method of combating a grave disadvantage. My own may not commend itself to every one. Each spring I entrust some casual little boy with a pail; he brings it back full of frog-spawn and receives sixpence. I speculate sometimes with complacency how many thousand of healthy and industrious batrachians I have reared and turned out for the benefit of my neighbours. Enough perhaps, but certainly no more, remain to serve me—that ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... talk with his compeers. It had not, however, rendered the society of these unconscionable and cold female creatures distasteful to him. Not a bit! He had even sought it and been ready to pay for that society in the correct manner—even to imperturbably beggaring himself of his final sixpence in order to do the honours of the latest cinema. Only, he had a sense of human superiority. It certainly did not occur to him that in the victimized young men there might exist faults which complemented those of ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... of acting. He had quitted the stage, and commenced picture-dealer; and when we met him in the Park, was running after a man, who, he said, had bought a picture of Rubens for three shillings and sixpence at a broker's stall in Drury-lane, and which was to make his (Wilder's) fortune. Our loud laughing at O'Leary's jokes, and his Irish brogue, and our stopping up the pathway, which is here very narrow, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... I, I too am no more than a bottle, An empty bottle, Heaving helpless on the mud of life, Without a label and without a cork, Empty I am, yet no man troubles To return me. And why? Because there is not sixpence on me. Bah! The sun goes down in the West (Or is it the East?) But I remain here, Drifting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various

... the fowl, which was a cock or a hen according as the patient was a man or a woman, was put into a basket and carried round first the well and afterwards the church. Next the sufferer entered the church and lay down under the communion table till break of day. After that he offered sixpence and departed, leaving the fowl in the church. If the bird died, the sickness was supposed to have been transferred to it from the man or woman, who was now rid of the disorder. As late as 1855 the old parish clerk of the village ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... useful public works. Previous to this, nothing could surpass the prostration and abject subserviency with which the miserable crowds solicited food or labor. Only give them labor at any rate—say sixpence a day—and they did not wish to beg or violate the laws. No, no; only give them peaceable employment, and they would rest not only perfectly contented, but deeply grateful. In the meantime, the employment they sought for was provided, not at sixpence, but at one-and-sixpence a ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... go, of course, for I had passed my word. But I watched him as long as he was in sight, and after he was gone lit out for cover as lively as you would want to see, and went the rest of the way home under the bush, for I didn’t trust him sixpence-worth. One thing I saw, I had been ass enough to give him warning, and that which I meant to do I ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Justices of Ireland,[1] The humble petition of Frances Harris, Who must starve and die a maid if it miscarries; Humbly sheweth, that I went to warm myself in Lady Betty's[2] chamber, because I was cold; And I had in a purse seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, (besides farthings) in money and gold; So because I had been buying things for my lady last night, I was resolved to tell my money, to see if it was right. Now, you must know, because my trunk has a very bad lock, Therefore all the money I have, which, God knows, is a very small ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... Chesterfield, spoken of the friend who had come to see him. When the French troops go over the parapet to make an advance, their battle cry shouts the praises of their Country. The British troops prefer to celebrate the advance in a more trivial fashion, 'This way to the early door, sixpence extra.' ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... the 3rd of the 6th of Henry VIII. it was enacted that master carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers, plumbers, glaziers, joiners, and other employers of such skilled workmen, should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat or drink was allowed, sixpence a day for the half year, fivepence a day for the other half; or fivepence-halfpenny for the yearly average. The common labourers were to receive fourpence a day for half the year, for the remaining half, threepence.[30] ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... instant death, if he touched one piece. He returned again and again, and found his father a sentinel as before. At last, he gave up attempting to obtain it: his crime made him miserable, and he continued in possession, without daring to expend one sixpence of all the money. He requested that, as his end was approaching, the money should be given to the church of his patron saint, wherever that church might be found; if there was not one, then that a church ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... two things. The difficulty exists especially, perhaps, in the thing called thrift; we men have so much encouraged each other in throwing money right and left, that there has come at last to be a sort of chivalrous and poetical air about losing sixpence. But on a broader and more candid consideration the case scarcely ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... flour, and sugar, and Indian meal, and pork, and ham, and vegetables, and wool anything; it is but a little of each that she wants. She has friends that would not permit her to earn another sixpence if they could help it, but she likes better to live as she does. And she is always as you saw her to-day cheerful and happy ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... man-servant entered merely to awaken and inform us, that Tim Cannon had won his fight of Josh Hudson, for which great event the guns were then firing, and that, in the joy of his heart, he had got up to claim an even bet of sixpence, which he had made with Kennedy relative to ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... in the month of July our lady the Queen, probably clad in ermine, and wearing on her head that gorgeous specimen of the jeweller's art which, when not in use, may be viewed at the Tower of London for the absurdly moderate sum of sixpence—our lady the Queen, I say, was reminded by her faithful Chancellor that various prisoners were awaiting trial in different parts of England and Wales, and among other ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... the yeoman, throwing himself into a despair. 'I shall soon begin to believe that my name is not worth sixpence ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... limited to a single performance, which will take place this evening under the Company's magnificent tent, in the Market Place, behind the old cross. Come one, come all! Performances to begin at eight precisely. Admission, one-and-sixpence. Children under ten years of age, half ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... Geordie was now fairly free from the uncongenial drudgery of farm life, and able to follow his own inclinations in the direction of mechanical labour. Besides, was he not earning the grand sum of sixpence a day as picker, increased to eightpence a little later on, when he rose to the more responsible and serious work of driving the gin-horse? A proud day indeed it was for him when, at fourteen, he was finally permitted to aid his ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... third bell from the bottom, and was admitted by another child, the daughter of the woman he was in search of. He gave the little thing sixpence, and asked for her mamma. The ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... Heartley and all his estate to her for her sole use and benefit in future, and not only him, but all my other admirers into the bargain wherever she can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't care sixpence. Assure her also as a last and indubitable proof of Warren's indifference to me, that he actually drew that gentleman's picture for me, and delivered it to me without ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... but she keeps them away from the cradle. They leave, rather ashamed of their suspicion. As they are going out of the door, a thought strikes one of them whereby they can make partial amends. Deciding to give the child sixpence, he returns, lifts up the covering of the cradle, and discovers the sheep. Mak and his wife both declare that an elf has changed their child into a sheep. The shepherds threaten to have the pair hanged. They seize Mak, throw him on a canvas, and toss him into the air until ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... full of side-shows, to which Mrs. Beale could introduce the little girl only, alas, by revealing to her so attractive, so enthralling a name: the side-shows, each time, were sixpence apiece, and the fond allegiance enjoyed by the elder of our pair had been established from the earliest time in spite of a paucity of sixpences. Small coin dropped from her as half-heartedly as answers from bad children to lessons that had not been looked ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... to death. Several of the settlers declined to pay anything towards the building of a new gaol, and it was not long a matter of doubt which article would be most likely to bear a productive tax; so a duty of one shilling per gallon was imposed upon spirits, sixpence on wine, and threepence upon porter or strong beer, to be applied to the above purpose. Building gaols is, beyond question, a necessary thing, especially in a colony chiefly formed of convicts: and ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... language, humble confessions and tearful pleadings before the throne, or—still strictly scriptural in expression—he warned and exhorted the impenitent. The contribution-box always received his sixpence as long as specie payment lasted, and the smallest fractional currency note thereafter; and to each of the regular annual offerings to the missionary cause, the Bible cause, and kindred Christian ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... ill-matched companions, occasionally throbbed into odd demonstrations. When she walked in Kensington Gardens she stopped the children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on the grass; she asked them their names and gave them sixpence and, when they were pretty, kissed them. Ralph noticed these quaint charities; he noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions might pass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... Frohman used to say. "He never charges me more than a penny for a shave because I am one of his regular customers. Otherwise it would be twopence. I always give his boy a sixpence, however, but ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... She might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; {171} in fact, the 'Vauxhall Papers,' published in the gardens, put forth a legend which favours such a dreadful supposition. We refer our readers to them—they are only sixpence apiece. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued without them." On the 16th of February, only five days after this letter was received, An Elegy wrote in a Country Church-yard appeared as a large quarto pamphlet, anonymous, price sixpence. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... Bath friend appeals to a miniature (engraved for this work) by Roche, of Bath, taken when she was in her seventy-seventh year. Like Cromwell, who told the painter that if he softened a harsh line or so much as omitted a wart, he should never be paid a sixpence,—she desired the artist to paint her face deeply rouged, which it always was[1], and to introduce a trivial deformity of the jaw, produced by a horse treading on her as she lay on the ground after a fall. In ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... thing[e]. And therefore, in all indictments for homicide, the instrument of death and the value are presented and found by the grand jury (as, that the stroke was given with a certain penknife, value sixpence) that the king or his grantee may claim the deodand: for it is no deodand, unless it be presented as such by a jury of twelve men[f]. No deodands are due for accidents happening upon the high sea, that being out of the jurisdiction ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... she said, "let us eat and drink. Take the book home, and put it away for your own reading. Here is sixpence out of my gains. I hope you will never need to trade, and, indeed, why should you, whether I live or die? How would the king's service suit you, and ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... sixpence always, but she had not been at home many days before she received a letter from her cousin that altered her intentions. Molly's ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... of my own, and with sixpence of it I bought a yard and a half of black calico at the post-office shop, and Mrs. Jones made me a cloak out of it; and with the other sixpence I bought a mask—for they sell toys there too. It was not a right sort of mask, but I could not make Mrs. Jones understand ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... Been out of work a month. Carman by trade. Arm withered, and cannot do work properly. Has slept here all the week; got an awful cold through the wet. Lives at odd jobs (they all do). Got sixpence yesterday for minding a cab and carrying a couple of parcels. Earned nothing to-day, but had one good meal; a lady gave it him. Has been walking about all day looking for ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... hitherto cheerless home. The ringing of the bell next morning failed to arouse him, but when Mrs. Aldergrass, noticing his absence from the table, inquired for him, Uncle Timothy answered, "Never mind, let him sleep—tuckered out, mebby—and you know we allus have a sixpence more ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... instincts tell me that I could retrieve my position and live respectably in the world, if I might only try my hand at portrait-painting—the thing of all others that I am naturally fittest for. But I have nobody to start me; no sitter to give me a first chance; nothing in my pocket but three-and-sixpence; and nothing in my mind but a doubt whether I shall struggle on a little longer, or end it immediately in the Thames. Don't let me detain you from your walk, my dear sir. I'm afraid Lady Malkinshaw will outlive me, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... of luck's way this week, for the next morning he had an accident with the ink, was fined sixpence for breaking one of the pots, and ordered upstairs to ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe

... graces' name, and the day and year of our arrival there, and of the free giving up of the province and kingdom, both by the king and people, unto her majesties' hands: together with her highnesse picture and arms, in a piece of sixpence current English monie, shewing itselfe by a hole made of purpose through the plate; underneath was likewise engraven the name of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... what to say in reply. The nature of the rebuke showed the deep interest Mattie felt in him. "If I had taken pay," said Tite, hesitating, "'twould have been different. I carried his carpet-bag, I know, but then I did it as a favor; and, as you saw, declined to take the sixpence he offered me. But I'll do as you say, Mattie, and won't do so again; for I want to please you, you know." The words fell nervously from Tite's lips, and there was a throbbing at the heart he ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... not pause or hesitate. She did not seem to think. Swiftly and accurately she found her walking-shoes and put them on, her hat and cloak; her purse with its half-crown, its sixpence and its few coppers. Swiftly she laid together a change of underwear and took from her dressing-table its few toilet appurtenances. She paused then, looking at the ornaments of her girlhood. She must have money. She must sell something; yet all these ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... rounded off my last sentence when he pointed to a house, half- native, half-European, in front of which was a staff bearing the British flag. With the generosity which marks the Englishman away from home I felt in my pockets and found a sixpence. I handed it to my companion; and with a "Talofa" the only Tongan I knew—I passed into the garden of the consulate. The consul himself came to the door when I knocked on the lintel. After glancing at my card he shook me by the hand, and then paused. His eyes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... points. The negative, which must be unvarnished, is leveled, and covered with a layer of warm gelatine solution (one in eight) about as thick as a sixpence. This done, and the gelatine set, the plate is immersed in alcohol for a few minutes in order to remove the greater part of the water from the gelatinous stratum. The next step is to allow the plate to remain for five or six minutes in a cold mixture ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... If a man makes up his mind during half his life to acquire a Pitt-diamond or a Pilgrim-pearl—[he] gets witnesses and testimony and so forth—but, surely, when I pass a shop where oranges are ticketed up seven for sixpence I offend no law by sparing all words and putting down the piece with a certain authoritative ring on the counter. If instead of diamonds you want—(being a king or queen)—provinces with live men on them ... there is so much more diplomacy ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... I am, ma! When she showed me the penny I told her that what you said was something awful, and worth sixpence at least!" ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... called for little remark. He was a worthy country doctor, with as much brains as would cover a sixpence, and the case was beyond him in every way. His remarks to the jury—equally stupid, with the exception of Jobson—were to the effect that it was evidently impossible to find out who had killed Jentham, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... commiseration, which the native perceiving, came up to him, holding the spear (still in the wound) in one hand, and turning round so as to expose the injury he had received, said, in the most moving terms, "Poor fellow, sixpence give ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... said he, "that is an awful bad one. Oh, oh, that is like lead, it sinks to the bottom, boots, spurs, and all. Oh, come, that will do, you may take my hat. What a droll fellow you be. You are the old sixpence, and nothin' will ever change you. I never see a feller have such spirits in my life; do you ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... post, whereon is engraved Her Grace's name and the day and year of our arrival here, and of the free giving up of the province, both by the people and king, into Her Majesty's hands, together with Her Highness' picture and arms in a piece of sixpence current money. The Spanish never so much as set foot in this country—the utmost of their discoveries reaching only to many degrees ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... doesn't greet with surly frowns Or naughty adjectives and nouns A tip of just a brace of "browns" Where he once got sixpence. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

... trade by selling winds to sailors. Even so late as 1814, Bessie Millie, of Pom[o]na (Orkney Islands), helped to eke out a livelihood by selling winds for sixpence. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... will, dear; and it will be a boon and a blessing to me to have you in our ranks—one of the new army of self-supporting, self-respecting women. I suppose you are right. I have never had a sixpence. But your husband deserves to be punished. Perhaps it is punishment enough to ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... an apple pie. A was an archer who shot at a frog. This is the house that Jack built. Three little kittens lost their mittens. Old Mother Hubbard. Sing a song of sixpence. The Queen of Hearts. I saw a ship a-sailing. Tom he was a piper's son. London Bridge is broken down. Cock Robin and Jenny Wren. ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various

... more than four thousand of these people, and also of nearly nine thousand professional gang robbers. Murder has been done when the booty did not exceed six cents. But the systematic hunting down of these dangerous classes is fast ridding India of this curse. If a man will murder another for a sixpence he can be induced to betray his fellow-murderers for a moderate sum. Is it not a blessing for the race that evil disintegrates? Only for good ends can men permanently combine; then no feared betrayal works dismay. As great movements, whether for good or evil, require many supporters, society has ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... week; two pounds a week of which I shall have to hand over to Thigh, who comes in as editor at a salary of ten pounds a week. All the staff will be engaged on similar conditions. Thigh is 'working' Beacham Brown beautifully—he won't have a sixpence to bless himself with when ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... catastrophe which happened ere this letter was well in his father's hand, accords ill with quotations from the Bible, and hopes fixed in heaven:—"As we gave," he says, "a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire, and burnt to ashes, and I was left, like a true poet, not worth a sixpence." ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... obliged to you, madam,' said she, 'as I do not know my way about London, if you would go with me to buy some things for my brothers, which I promised to carry back when I return. I have got some money to pay for them, for Charles gave me a sixpence, and three halfpence, and a farthing; and William gave me threepence; and I have got a silver penny and a twopence of my own, all screwed safely ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... High School lads in the days of Walter Scott, were accustomed to "smoke the cobler." The Brocas was a meadow sacred to badger-baiting and cat-hunts. The badgers were kept by a certain Jemmy Flowers, who charged sixpence for each "draw"; Puss was turned out of a bag and chased by dogs, her chance being to reach and climb a group of trees near the river, known as the "Brocas Clump." Of the quotations, "a Yorkshireman hippodamoio" (p. 35) is, I am told, an obiter ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... was raising green corn and strawberries, in a retired neighborhood where uncles were unknown. But, sir, when that Phantom, that Vampire, that Fate, loomed before my vision that day, if you had said, "Trover, I'll give ye sixpence for this neat little box of yours," I should have said, "Done!" with the trifling proviso that you should take my uncle ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... ignorance produce. They are not the profligate; they are not the selfish, the idle; they are not the frivolous, the insolent; they are not the wilfully ignorant who do not care to learn, and do not even—so brutish are they—think that there is anything worth learning in the world, save how to turn sixpence into a shilling, and then spend it on themselves. Not such are those who may hope to have their prayers heard, because they are worth hearing, and worth helping. But they are the people who say to themselves, not once in their lives, not ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... monarch, King Bladud. But let me be the one exception; let me respect the good sense of the reader, and not insult him by supposing him capable of believing a mythic jumble of kings and pigs and dirty marshes, which he will, if he cares to, find at full length in any 'Bath Guide'—price sixpence. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... lived with Temple, he used to pay his mother, at Leicester, a yearly visit. He travelled on foot, unless some violence of weather drove him into a wagon; and at night he would go to a penny lodging, where he purchased clean sheets for sixpence. This practice lord Orrery imputes to his innate love of grossness and vulgarity: some may ascribe it to his desire of surveying human life through all its varieties; and others, perhaps, with equal probability, to a passion which seems to have been deeply fixed in his heart, the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... to your application on behalf of Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy, we beg to inform you that, under the administration of a paternal aunt who died intestate, your client is entitled to two thousand five hundred pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents.; one thousand five hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three per Cents., Reduced; one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred pounds, Bank Stock; three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock, besides other securities, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... rakes, &c., I hauled this in. It was most infernally heavy, and turned out to be a cast-iron wheel of a steam plough or other farming implement. Then I was under weigh, and got round to the fish. It was still there. I could see its expressionless eye (about as big as a sixpence) out of the water and its mouth wide open, when I remembered I had forgotten the landing-net in my hurry. Then came the period of mental aberration common to the amateur. The fish was certainly 4 lbs. in weight, yet I tried to get him in with my hands. Of course he gave one big ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... heard they'd been forbid I felt as glad as if anybody had gied me sixpence," said an earnest voice—that of Olly Dowden, a woman who lived by making heath brooms, or besoms. Her nature was to be civil to enemies as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world for letting her ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember. His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet nobody seems clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your inquiry as to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the Romans really knew or said they knew about the German tribes who, as pirates, so greatly influenced the history of England, let him get Mr. Rouse's edition of Grenewey's translation of the Germania in Blackie's series of English texts; it will only cost sixpence, and for that money he will get a bit of Caesar's Gallic War and the Agricola as well. But the list nowadays is a very long one, luckily, and the lay reader has only to choose what period he would like to read up, and he will find for nearly every one first-hand evidence ready, ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... For one of the bracelets made of chain-work, we had as much provision of several sorts, as would fairly have been worth, in England, fifteen or sixteen pounds; and so of all the rest. Thus, that which when it was in coin was not worth sixpence to us, when thus converted into toys and trifles, was worth a hundred times its real value, and purchased for us anything we had ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... may be said to have commenced about a year before my birth, when my papa, a young fellow pretending to study the law in London, fell madly in love with Miss Smith, the daughter of a tradesman, who did not give her a sixpence, and afterwards became bankrupt. My papa married this Miss Smith, and carried her off to the country, where I was born, in ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... talk, but because he has not the first motion[516]. A man who is used to the applause of the House of Commons, has no wish for that of a private company. A man accustomed to throw for a thousand pounds, if set down to throw for sixpence, would not be at the pains to count his dice. Burke's talk is the ebullition of his mind; he does not talk from a desire of distinction, but because his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... possible honour in taking my daughter, the beauty of London, with fifty thousand a year, off my hands." But this was quite Maltravers!—if he had been proposing to the daughter of a country curate, without a sixpence, he would have been the humblest of the humble. The earl was embarrassed and discomposed—he was almost awed by the Siddons-like countenance and Coriolanus-like air of his future son-in-law-he even hinted nothing of the compromise as to time which he had made ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I shouldn't answer at all. I tell you I never talk with these creatures. I can't. If an old woman stops me, with her dried-apple face and whining voice, I give her a sixpence and tell her to hush up and go about her business. I fling coppers to the boys with slit breeches before they ask me, for I know they will tell me of mothers sick with consumption. Their devilish tears ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... had absolutely nothing to do, and I begged. What a week that was! One day the fire was going out and I had eaten nothing all day, and a little chap taking his girl out, gave me sixpence—to show off. Thank heaven for vanity! How the fish-shops smelt! But I went and spent it all on coals, and had the furnace bright red again, and then—Well, hunger makes a fool ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the pigeons are very fond of picking off the young sprouts. Lest you should think us too extravagant, I ought to tell you the cost of the flower-pots. Those which were presented to us, did not cost us anything. Those we bought, cost from a cent apiece to sixpence. Some two or three cost as high as fifteen or twenty cents apiece. But you will never understand how nice and how odd we have it, unless you step in some day ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... man," Mr. Bomford continued, "that you are offering him something which will improve his health, and he is yours, or rather his money is—his two and sixpence or whatever particular sum you may have designed to relieve him of. It is for that reason that you see the pages of the magazines and newspapers filled with advertisements of new cures for ancient diseases. There is more money in the country than there has ever ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... didn't hear me—he is deaf! Very angry. He expostulates, civilly. He saw I was asleep and didn't wish to disturb me! He has been driving up and down the Thames Embankment for the last three hours—charge seven and sixpence. Don't see my way out of the difficulty, except by payment. He thanks me, and suggests that he shall now drive me to the Museum for eighteen-pence. Very angry and refuse. He is hailed by someone else, and is off to pick up his new fare. On consideration it seems to me that my anger has led to nothing. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... in the necessary repairs. The expense of keeping the roads in good order is defrayed by a tax of six days' labour on every inhabitant of the towns and villages in the colony, which, however, may be commuted to a fine of seven shillings and sixpence. ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... never to be left in peace? Am I never to sit down to a meal without having work thrust upon me? Work—work—perpetually work? I have heard no other word in the last six years. I declare there are times"—he rose suddenly from his seat and turned to the window—"there are times when I feel that for sixpence I'd chuck it all—the whole ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... proposed to pay over to her yearly a certain sum out of the estate; but Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him. Never, so long as he lived, she told Stephen Verner, passionately, would she be obliged to him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind. And she had kept ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... you spend seven shillings on the doll,' answered the lady, 'you will only have sixpence left ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... crimson with joy, the little flower-girl received in one hand the unusual piece of money; and setting her basket on the ground, began hastily and tremblingly to pick out nearly half its contents as the price of the sixpence; but the gentleman stooped down, and taking up at random three bunches of the flowers, which ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury

... happened to be aground. Gangs could afford to corrupt witnesses or to pay knavish lawyers skilled in applying these vagaries of legislation. Juries also disliked convicting when the penalty for coining sixpence was the same as the penalty for killing a mother. It followed, as he shows by statistics, that half the persons committed for trial escaped by petty chicanery or corruption, or the reluctance of juries to convict for capital offences. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... Luke's, behind which a conclave of young men, together with a few old enough to have known better, met every Friday evening for the purpose of discussing and arranging the affairs of the universe. "Speaking members" were charged ten-and-sixpence per annum, which must have worked out at an extremely moderate rate per word; and "gentlemen whose subscriptions were more than three months in arrear," became, by Rule seven, powerless for good or evil. We called ourselves ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... employment in a sweater's shop, and a few months, or even weeks, gives all the necessary facility. Then comes the question of workroom; and here it is only necessary to take the family room, and hire a sewing machine, which is for rent at two shillings and sixpence, or sixty cents, a week. To organize the establishment all that is necessary is a baster, a machinist, a presser, and two or three women-workers, one for button-holing, one for felling, and one for general work, carrying home, etc. The baster may be a skilled woman; the presser ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the entrance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim sixpence on our departure. This had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is much public outcry against the meanness of the present Duke in his arrangements for the admission of visitors (chiefly, of course, his native countrymen) to view the magnificent palace which their forefathers bestowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... Jorrocks, "for time and the Surrey 'ounds wait for no man. That's not a werry elegant tit, but still it'll carry you to Croydon well enough, where I'll put you on a most undeniable bit of 'orse-flesh—a reg'lar clipper. That's a hack—what they calls three-and-sixpence a side, but I only pays half a crown. Now, Binjimin, cut away home, and tell Batsay to have dinner ready at half-past five to a minute, and to be most particular in doing the lamb to ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... replied the Bornean. "The crocodile here eats men and women. Some are killed every year, and the government pays one and sixpence apiece for the heads." ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... was an occupation of which she never tired. Never, since her days on the hill-slope above Naples, had she been able to indulge her passionate love for flowers; and to the girl who had been wont to regard sixpence spent on a branch of golden mimosa, or a handful of the big pink carnations which seem indigenous to the London streets, as something of an extravagance, the delight of filling bowls and vases ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... "It'll be sixpence, at least, Sally," said Mary, bringing her fist down on the table. "And we're all sick to death of women ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... incessant use of the bellows into burning. Besides the price of fuel, provisions of all sorts seem to me to be dear and bad. Milk is sold by the quart bottle: it is now fourpence per bottle, but rises to sixpence during the winter. Meat is eightpence a pound, but it is so thin and bony, and of such indifferent quality, that there is very little saving in that respect. I have not tasted any really good butter since we arrived, and we pay two shillings a pound for cheesy, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... my regiment, and not a sixpence is sent for that purpose. Can it be imagined that subjects fit for this service, who have been so much impressed with and alarmed at the want of provisions, which was a main objection to enlisting before, will more readily ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... opening up and turning to the new West, and the demand for unskilled labour for railway work was unlimited. The Irish emigrant seldom or never takes to the land when he goes to America, and navvy work just suited him. To a man accustomed to sixpence a day the wages offered seemed to represent unbounded wealth, and as the news spread in Ireland the move to America, which at the first seemed hopeless exile, presented itself as a highly desirable step towards social betterment. Emigration is now the result of attraction from America ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... are contrasted with each other. But how, I wonder! Is it a lecture or a magic lantern? Both, I dare say! Let's go in and see! I can't read any more of the bill. We may at least sit there till your ankle is better. 'Admission—front seats sixpence.' Come along. We may get a good laugh, who knows?—a thing cheap at any price—for ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... frequent the same district, about whom a variety of opinions were entertained,—some people thinking him not so foolish as he sometimes seemed. On one occasion a person, wishing to test whether he knew the value of money, held out a sixpence and a penny, and offered him his choice. "I'll tak the wee ane," he said, giving as his modest reason, "I'se no be greedy." At another time, a miller laughing at him for his witlessness, he said, "Some things I ken, and some I dinna ken." On being asked what he knew, he ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... he has no more hope of ever seeing that country than I have of being Emperor of Mexico.' 'Hasn't he?' says I; 'we'll tell you a different story about that, Mr. Doctor. If you can patch the poor devil up between this and next Monday, I'll take him home in my ship, without the passage costing him sixpence.' You don't feel offended with me for having called you a poor devil, eh, Joyce?—for you really were, you know—you really were an uncommonly poor creature just then," ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Ditte had a sixpence! Granny had given it to her once in their well-to-do-days, and she had kept it faithfully through all temptations up to now. It was to have bought her so many beautiful things, and now it had to go—to save little Kristian from a whipping. Slowly she kneeled down in ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... facts and opinions, I by no means neglected the child. She was not attractive; but fortunately she had reached the corrupt age of seven, when half a crown appears about as large as a saucer and is fully as rare as the dodo. For a shilling down, sixpence in her money-box, and an American gold dollar which I happened to find in my pocket, I bought the creature soul and body. She declared her intention to accompany me to the ends of the earth; and had to be chidden ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye; Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie; When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing; Was not that a dainty dish To ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... a Scotch song worth sixpence," quoth Maurice, who seemed bent on provoking the doctor's ire. "They contain nothing save some puling sentimentality about lasses with lint-white locks, or some absurd laudations of the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... his heirs and assigns that he the said John Springrove his heirs and assigns during the said term shall pay unto the said Gerald Fellcourt Aldclyffe his heirs and assigns the clear yearly rent of ten shillings and sixpence.... at the several times hereinbefore appointed for the payment thereof respectively. And also shall and at all times during the said term well and sufficiently repair and keep the said Cottage or Dwelling-house and all other the premises and all houses or buildings ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... me understand that I had won, so I smiled at him and nodded; he also smiled, and at once beckoned to me. He led me upstairs, and showed me a charming bed in a clean room, where there was a portrait of the Pope, looking cunning; the charge for that delightful and human place was sixpence, and as I said good-night to the youth, the man and woman from above said good-night also. And this was my first introduction to the most permanent feature in the Italian character. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... man, the poorest wretch in life, The crouching vassal to the tyrant wife! Who has no will but by her high permission; Who has not sixpence but in her possession; Who must to her his dear friend's secret tell; Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell! Were such the wife had fallen to my part, I'd break her spirit, or I'd break her heart; I'd charm ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... (afterwards Lugar) flows," when in 1781 he went to Irvine to learn the trade of a flax-dresser. "It was," he says, "an unlucky affair. As we were giving a welcome carousal to the New Year, the shop took fire and burned to ashes; and I was left, like a true poet, without a sixpence." His own heart, too, had unfortunately taken fire. He was poring over mathematics till, in his own phraseology,—still affected in its prose by the classical pedantries caught from Pope by Ramsay,—"the sun entered Virgo, when a charming fillette, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... before! I only hope they may sicken of pure fright, as has happened to many a fool before now! Ha! ha! ha! how they did run! They thought I was tied by the leg for once. But I had them—I had them! I warrant me they did not take the worth of a sixpence ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... second member of the committee; Miss Sedgwick, if the Salic law does not prevail in Berkshire, is the most natural person to do it. But the real truth is, the little Albaneses want to see the author of "The Scarlet Letter," and don't care a sixpence who else is on the committee. That is what they are up to. So if you want two dummies, on the classical condition not to leave the country except in case of invasion, absentees, voters by proxy, potential ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... lines of care and marks of smallpox, withal benevolent and honest-looking—the kind of man to whom one could intrust the inheritance of a child with the certainty that it would be carefully administered and scrupulously accounted for to the very last sixpence. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... the rank of corporal very early; for a Private John Lafontaine, who was promoted corporal, is shown in the muster roll terminating December 24th, 1796, as "claimed as a slave." The pay of a private in a West India regiment was then sixpence ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... allowed sixpence a week spending-money at Mr. Greene's, two cents, or a penny, being deducted for a bad mark. Sometimes I actually got a full week's income; once I let it run on up to 25 cents, but this was forbidden, it not being considered advisable that the boys should accumulate fortunes. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... add that the dollar is reckoned in this work at 100 cents of the United States of North America, and four shillings and sixpence of England. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... "The bill for those mirrors was only L98-7-6; and I made the man knock off the seven and sixpence as discount for cash. I'm learning to be a business ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... sir," continued the proprietor, waving one hand about oratorically, and dabbing his bald head with his hand. "Here, some of you, where's my yellow handkerchy? Oh, I know; I left it in that there apple-wood, and I'd lay sixpence, he's picked it up and swallowed it because it's yellow and he thinks it's the skin of a big orange. Got out of his cage, he did, sir, that there lion—been fiddling all night, I suppose, at the bolts and bars—and we followed him up ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... very provoking, and neither Mrs. Rusk nor Catherine Jones spent sixpence with him;—he was ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... from the new African Tea Fields, (that is the holds of ships in which it has spoiled, or become musty, or lost its bouquet, and the old chests of the usual dealers,) and is delivered in our ware-rooms for a mere song, so to speak: say the Song of Sixpence ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... previously to their proceeding, he was laid on his back, and while five or six Arabs held him on the sand, the rude operators burnt him on the left side under the ribs in three places, nearly the size of a sixpence each. The iron was again placed in the fire, and while heating, the thumbs of about a dozen Arabs were thrust into different parts of the poor man's side, to know if the pressure pained him, until his flesh was so bruised, that he declared all gave him ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... it is all I've got, but I had to put it in there with the ticket, because there's a hole in my purse that side, do you see?" and she showed it to the man, pushing her finger through the hole that he might see it better. "It was mother's purse, but she lost a sixpence one day, and then she gave it to me. It does all right for me, 'cause I only have pennies," she explained gravely as she put her purse back into her ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... thing?" she asked; and Marjory explained that it was the half of a sixpence with a hole in it. "Lisbeth says my mother wore it for luck, so I ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... they went to Trinity Church (which usually costs sixpence to enter, because of Shakespeare's tomb—a charge of which I am sure the poet would not approve). As the words in the sermon grew longer and longer, Hester made renewed efforts to get a glimpse of the tomb, but it was in a ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas

... discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he exhausted the output of the gold fields for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... passed through John Street to Hampstead Road, along Belsize Avenue and Buckland Crescent to Belsize Road, and so to Canterbury Road and Kilburn Lane. Here I met a fourth newspaper boy loaded with copies of the St. James' Gazette. He offered me one for seven-and-sixpence, or two for half a sovereign, but it seemed to me I had ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... man met with a sixpence, And for joy he gave up the ghost. And in the troubles of death, Even ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... compelled her to receive a shilling, where a pound was her due. The hapless orphan, instead of receiving from the hands of an executor a competency to set out in business, was obliged to give a final discharge on the payment of sixpence in the pound." (Dr. Ramsay's History of the United States, Vol. II., Chap. xviii., pp. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... left the Oratory, which I may say was a school where the boys were allowed very considerable liberty, my father must have thought, no doubt, when he remembered the twenty-two and sixpence for birches, that it would be wise to send me somewhere where the rules of the college were, in his opinion, somewhat stricter. So off I was sent, early in 1870, to dear old Beaumont College, the Jesuit school, situated in that ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... it with a whole kennel of collections to the purpose. I have had a dog myself, that would dream and talk in his sleep, turn round like Ned fool, and sleep all night in a porridge-pot. Mark but the skirmish between Sixpence and the fox, and it is miraculous how they overcome one another in honourable courtesy. The fox, though he wears a chain, runs as though he were free; mocking us (as it is a crafty beast), because we, having a lord and master to attend ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... family, "Eph Wheeler, he's got twenty-five cents, an' a English sixpence, an' a Yankee nickel. An' Mr Wheeler's only a common working man, a ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... enough to take off your hat, or to thank God upon your knees for the admirable constitution of society and your own convenient situation in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough to buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the point of the inquiry; and you must first have BOUGHT THE SIXPENCE. Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of spirit desires certainty in a thing ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... deep interest Mattie felt in him. "If I had taken pay," said Tite, hesitating, "'twould have been different. I carried his carpet-bag, I know, but then I did it as a favor; and, as you saw, declined to take the sixpence he offered me. But I'll do as you say, Mattie, and won't do so again; for I want to please you, you know." The words fell nervously from Tite's lips, and there was a throbbing at the heart ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... village-church, surrounded by villagers' graves, approached by four foot-paths over four stiles, perfect model of all the churches in all the novels of English literature,—was it partiality for me, ancient matron, or an eye to a silver sixpence, which made you, and makes you still, the heroine of my day of romance? At any rate, I shall never cease to invoke a blessing on that immaculate railway-company which decoyed me from London into the heart of England, and, with a coolness unexampled in the new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... returned again and again, and found his father a sentinel as before. At last, he gave up attempting to obtain it: his crime made him miserable, and he continued in possession, without daring to expend one sixpence of all the money. He requested that, as his end was approaching, the money should be given to the church of his patron saint, wherever that church might be found; if there was not one, then that a church might ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... a sixpence and told her to be a good girl. Then I advanced up a little strip of garden to where I had caught a glimpse of a venerable white-haired negro seated at the window, as if for exhibition, with a great open book in his hands. This he appeared to be reading with ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... quantity in the abstract; as, How, (meaning, in what degree,) however, howsoever, everso, something, anything, nothing, a groat, a sixpence, a sou-markee, and other nouns of quantity ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the early morning, pale, red-eyed, he would come into the passage of the inn, with his beautiful bow and sweep of the lifted hat, with his courteous smile and ready "Good morning, Anne!" Then he would turn to the bar, and feeling in his pockets for what small moneys he might have—sixpence, eightpence, tenpence, as the case might be—he would order so much gin and sit there drinking till it was all gone, then still sit there silent; or sometimes he would passionately speak of the woman he loved, of her beauty, sweetness, of how ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... were at Chatelin's, and I left them there, with a hackney-coach attending him." This was a different experience than fell to the lot of Pepys on the previous occasion, for he tells how the dinner cost the party eight shillings and sixpence apiece, and it was "a base dinner, which did not please us at all." The ordinary was evidently in the same class as Pontack's and Locket's, as may be inferred from it being classed with the latter ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... collected: endless "rekeninges!" Defrauders were fined; one, John Kent, of London, having tried to smuggle some wools to Dordrecht, the poet, poet though he was, discovered the offence; the wools were confiscated and sold, and Chaucer received seventy-one pounds four shillings and sixpence on the amount of the fine John ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... directed it to Miss Angelina Lascelles, and left it, about dusk, with the money-taker at the pit door. I signed myself, if I remember rightly, Pyramus. What would I not have given that evening to pay my sixpence like the rest of the audience, and feast my eyes upon her from some obscure corner! What would I not have given to add my ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... "she told me that she (then a girl of 19) sat by the side of Lamb during the performance. She remembered well, she said, that in course of the play a looking glass was broken, and that Lamb turned to her and whispered 'Sixpence!' She added that before the play began, while the guests were assembling, the butler announced 'Mr. Negus!'—upon which Lamb exclaimed, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... paid for by a halfpenny: if an inferior clings to the skirt of a superior, he will give twopence rather than be pulled off; and when you are happy enough to meet a lover and his mistress, never part with them under sixpence, for you may be sure they will never ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... prison,[2] he moralizes over the event in precisely the same strain as Mr. Micawber, using, indeed, the very same words, and calls on his son, with many tears, "to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that a shilling spent the other way would ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... All six pairs of eyes were fixed on Jinny's lap, but not a sound was heard. A blank look of disappointment fell over every face. Red-Head, poor Red-Head had done his best, but oh, what a mistake! He had bought a dressed doll, and as ten and sixpence, which was all he had got for the mug, will not go very far in such articles, it can be imagined that dolly herself, notwithstanding the gorgeousness of her attire, fell short, lamentably short, of the ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... to the night clerk at the Arlington. "Back again, like a bad sixpence! Have my trunk sent up, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... will be, and I never in a fine house before, and the two sixpences we have earned this week! How glad shall I be to put them in my teacher's hand! Johnny dear," said the little Susan, looking tenderly on her poor brother, "do you not think you need the sixpence yourself? I could buy you a sweet orange, or something nice for you to eat, it is so long since you had anything but bread ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins

... confess that the day's work has been a trick throughout. The diamond was pawned years ago. This trinket here is a copy in paste and worth perhaps some seven shillings sixpence. And those fellows were not constables, but just my cousin Eiran and two footmen in disguise. Nay, madam, you will learn with experience that to display unfailing candor is not without exception ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... break the blow: 'Mr. Lloyd, can you lend me five shillings?' and before I had recovered she continued—'I came in by train this morning, and I've lost my purse, and can't get back if you won't help me—at least I think I've lost my purse. I took it out to give sixpence to a beggar—and—and here is the sixpence!' and she held it out to me. She had given her purse to the beggar and carried the sixpence off in triumph. You may well say ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... and he'd have made a fortune, only that I noticed one day he used to be winking at the dog, and when he'd stop winking the dog would stop counting. We made him turn his back after that, and got the dog to count sixpence, but he barked for more than five shillings, he did so, and he would have counted up to a pound, maybe, only that his master turned round and hit him a kick. Every person that ever paid him a bet said they wanted their money ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... might have been the sprite of Madame Saqui; in fact, the "Vauxhall Papers" published in the gardens, put forth a legend, which favours such a dreadful supposition! We refer our readers to them—they are only sixpence a-piece. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... perfect equality which may be secured by taking away so much of the funds as are proved to be totally unnecessary for the wants of the population. I do not mean that you should withdraw from the Protestant Church every sixpence now in its possession; what I mean is, that you should separate it from the State, and appropriate all the funds of which it might justly be deprived to some grand national object, such as the support and extension of the system of education now established in Ireland; an ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... educate and send out in the world. This was generally known among his brother officers, and, although the cut of his uniforms was somewhat antiquated, and his best coat was tolerably threadbare, even the most thoughtless never ventured to quiz him. Every sixpence he could save went to the cottage in Lincolnshire. There his father had been the incumbent of a living of under a hundred and fifty pounds a year, on which he had to bring up his family and pay certain college debts, which had hung like a millstone ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... of Commons, on the second reading of the Scotch poor-law bill, June 12, 1845, he states the following fact with regard to the management of the Sutherland estate during this period, from 1811 to 1833, which certainly can speak for itself: "I can state as from fact that, from 1811 to 1833, not one sixpence of rent has been received from that county, but, on the contrary, there has been sent there, for the benefit and improvement of the people, a sum exceeding sixty ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... Sergeant-Major's wife did her washing during the night "before Self-Denial Week came on," so as to be able to stand all day long outside the station, in the cold, collecting: how widow Weak "keeps up her cartridges"; that is to say, goes on giving the Corps a regular subscription of sixpence a week since her husband's death, as before, "lest the Corps should ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... Nature compensates all who can afford to purchase the compensations. Strawberries, long waited for, shy, retiring fruit, have now nearly approached the popular price of sixpence a basket. A divine of a past generation declared that in his opinion the joys of Paradise would consist of eating strawberries to the sound of a trumpet. For a poor sixpence half of this transcendental pastime may be partaken of, and probably the brass ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... lad of perhaps ten years old, who, his head hidden in his arms against a tree trunk, was crying bitterly. I asked him what was the matter, and, after a little trouble—he was better than a mere bumpkin—I learnt that, having been sent with sixpence to pay a debt, he had lost the money. The poor little fellow was in a state of mind which in a grave man would be called the anguish of despair; he must have been crying for a long time; every muscle in his face quivered as if under torture, his limbs shook; his eyes, his voice, uttered such ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... for you all right," persisted Tommy. "You give me my grub and a shake-down and, say, sixpence a week, and I'll grumble ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... you will spoil the children, she said; "they expect presents, which is so dreadful. Hugh bet sixpence at lunch that you would bring him something, and he said to ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... their origin to names distinguished in our literature; as Oliver Goldsmith, for instance, is believed in his earlier days to have written such compositions. Dr. E.F. Rimbault gives us the following particulars as to some well-known favorites: "Sing a Song of Sixpence," is as old as the sixteenth century. "Three Blind Mice" is found in a music-book dated 1609. "The Frog and the Mouse" was licensed in 1580. "Three Children Sliding on the Ice" dates from 1633. "London ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... grumbles treason: but 'tis in such a deformed silence as witches raise their spirits in. Gravity he pretends in all things but in his private vice, for he will not in a hundred pound take one light sixpence. And it seems he was at Tilbury Camp, for you must not tell him of a Spaniard. He is a man of no conscience, for (like the Jakes-farmer that swooned with going into Bucklersbury) he falls into a cold sweat if he but look into the Chancery; thinks, in his religion, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... wife of the village near which we were encamped was called; and the poor woman, before we had finished our breakfast, gave birth to a daughter. The charge is half a rupee, or one shilling for a boy, and a quarter, or sixpence, for a girl. The tent-pitcher gave her ninepence, which the poor midwife thought very handsome, The mother had come fourteen miles upon a loaded cart over rough roads the night before; and went the same distance with her child the night after, upon the same cart. The first midwife in Europe could ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... subjects. And sometimes a rosy little school-boy climbed into our chair, and sat staring, with wide-open eyes, at the alligator, the rattlesnake, and the other curiosities of the barber's shop. His mother had sent him, with sixpence in his hand, to get his glossy curls cropped off. The incidents of the Revolution plentifully supplied the barber's customers with topics of conversation. They talked sorrowfully of the death of General Montgomery and the failure of our troops to take Quebec; for the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 2 6 Luke Clancy 0 2 6 John Doolin 0 2 6 "One would think they all agreed only to give two and sixpence apiece. And they comfortable men, too! And look at their names—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the names of the Blessed Evangelists, and only ten shillings among them! Oh, they are apostles not worthy of the name—we'll call them the Poor Apostles from this ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... altar was frequently mentioned favourably in these old wills. Another Cuckfield testator, in 1539, left to the high altar, "for tythes and oblacions negligently forgotten, sixpence." The same student of the Calendar of Sussex Wills in the District Probate Registry at Lewes, between 1541 and 1652, which the British Record Society have just published, copies the following passage from the will of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... on vegetation; and they are capable of destroying whole plantations of orange, mango, and lemon trees. They climb the tree, station themselves on the edge of a leaf and make a circular incision with their scissor-like jaws; the piece of leaf, about the size of a sixpence, held vertically between the jaws, is then borne off to the formicarium. This consists of low wide mounds, in the neighbourhood of which no vegetation is allowed, probably in order that the ventilation of the underground galleries may not be ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... disturb its own finances. It could make laws within certain limits but could not enforce the least of its decrees. It pledged its faith to discharge all debts contracted by the Continental Congress, but it could not collect a sixpence with which to do it. The States entering the agreement promised to refrain from inter-alliances and foreign treaties, from making war except against Indians or pirates, and from keeping standing armies or vessels of war; yet ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... mind, mum!" said the little man. "He mightn't like it, perhaps. There's a small order just come in for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur' as I could for sixpence. That's all. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... no doubt. A rare 'ard liver, cock-fighting, 'unting, 'orse-racing from one year's end to the other. Then after 'im came my grandfather; he went to the law, and a sad mess he made of it—went stony-broke and left my father without a sixpence; that is why mother didn't want me to go into livery. The family 'ad been coming down for generations, and mother thought that I was born to restore it; and so I was, but not as she thought, by carrying parcels up and down ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... in French characters on the lantern of his vehicle (we have a number 415 on board, one Le Goelec, gunner, who serves the left of one of my guns; happy thought! I shall remember this); his price is sixpence the journey, or five-pence an hour, for his customers. Capital! he shall have my custom, that is promised. And now, let us be off. The waiting-maids, who have escorted me to the door, fall on all fours as a final salute, and remain prostrate on the threshold as long as I ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... keys at my service, not only for my own person, but whoever I please to carry or send. I do not make much use of this privilege, to their great astonishment. It is the fashion for the greatest ladies to walk the streets, which are admirably paved; and a mask, price sixpence, with a little cloak, and the head of a domino, the genteel dress to carry you everywhere. The greatest equipage is a gondola, that holds eight persons, and is the price of an English chair. And it is so much the established fashion for everybody to live their own way, that nothing ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... been watching him admiringly. "You will be one of the beauties when you come out, dear Israfil," he said. "They will photograph you and put you into the shop windows, cabinet size two-and-sixpence. Sounds rather vulgar, though, doesn't it? Savours of desecration, to my mind. But, Israfil, you will certainly be the rage. One so seldom sees a good-looking man! Good-looking women are common enough and they make themselves still commoner nowadays," which remark coming from such ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... has killed heaps of people with influenza, debilitated others for their lives long, worried everybody with colds, etc. I have had three influenzas: but this is no wonder: for I live in a hut with walls as thin as a sixpence: windows that don't shut: a clay soil safe beneath my feet: a thatch perforated by lascivious sparrows over my head. Here I sit, read, smoke, and become very wise, and am already quite beyond earthly things. I must say to you, as Basil Montagu once said, in perfect charity, to his friends: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of my guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase, and a bit of board lying in my lap was my writing-table. I had no money to purchase candle or oil; in winter, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... soon raised." They were to receive two shillings and sixpence per day each, "out of which he was to maintain himself";—very little to risk one's life for; but in those days it was no concern with a man whether he was killed or not. Besides, it was worth something to get killed ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... And, if you bring That long-expected song to sing, Ciss needs not, ere she welcomes you, To find a sixpence in her shoe! If, of the mud he clears away, Tom bears the ignoble stain to-day, Come back, and he will not forget The heavens that yearn ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... will never be at rest but coin on: so that in some years we shall have at least five times fourscore and ten thousand pounds of this lumber. Now the current money of this kingdom is not reckoned to be above four hundred thousand pounds in all; and while there is a silver sixpence left, these blood-suckers will ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... should be false to the principles of art. Like my playing upon four instruments, and like my verses in four languages, my painting is admitted to show great talent—as yet only partially developed. Upon each of my works my estimable uncle advances me the sum of twelve shillings and sixpence. I paint one picture per week. In consideration of the restricted character of my wardrobe, my landlady is so obliging as to send my works to the only dealer with whom I can at present do business. I had never known until this morning who it was ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... may not be. I have other work to do. I have tarried with you over long," quoth Alleyne, and resolutely set forth upon his journey once more. They ran behind him some little way, offering him first fourpence and then sixpence a day, but he only smiled and shook his head, until at last they fell away from him. Looking back, he saw that the smaller had mounted on the younger's shoulders, and that they stood so, some ten feet high, waving their adieus ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... their hearths no less Than maids were wont to do, Yet who of late for cleanliness Finds sixpence in ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... she paused, and faltered, and grew red, meeting his eyes. He did not ask any further questions. He had grown pale as she grew red. Their looks exchanged a rapid communication, in which neither Lizzie's reluctance to speak nor his hesitation in asking was of any avail. He put down the sixpence which he had in his hand upon the counter, and went out into the night in a dumb confusion of mind, as if he had ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... "rather more than sixpence a day for a hoplite, and two shillings for a horseman." "The Aeginetan stater weighed about 196 grains, rather more than two of our shillings, and was divided into two drachms of 98 grains, each of which contained six ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... the last to step ashore. As I waited for Eli to change my sixpence, he nodded after the couple, who by this time had reached the top of the landing-stage, arm ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... intended for the villages must be cheap. When we consider the low prices at which reprinted books, the copyrights of which have expired, are now often met with, there really seems no difficulty in this. Sixpence, a shilling, eighteenpence; nothing must be more than two shillings, and a shilling should be the general maximum. For a shilling how many clever little books are on sale on London bookstalls! If so, why should not other books adapted to ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... kind of innocent pastime, such as cricket, football, swimming, skating in the winter, and so on; so you will not lack amusements—the necessaries for joining in which I will take care that you shall be provided with. And I have arranged that, for the present, you shall receive from the headmaster sixpence a week as pocket-money—a sum which I consider quite sufficient for a boy of your age. With regard to your studies, I would urge you to make the most of your opportunities; as, on the completion of your education, you will have to make your own way in the world. My profession, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... Ellison; but the other, intent on business, answered, "I am the only person at Ha-Ha Bay who speaks English, and I have come to ask if you would not like to make a promenade in my horse and buggy upon the mountain before breakfast. You shall be gone as long as you will for one shilling and sixpence. I will show you all that there is to be seen about the place, and the beautiful view of the bay from the top of the mountain. But it is elegant, you ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... forty pounds out of seven hundred, for which he gave him I.O.U.'s; Algernon Deuceace not only did not pay him three hundred and twenty which he lost at blind hookey, but actually borrowed seven and sixpence in money from Walker, which has never been repaid to this day; and Lord Doublequits actually lost nineteen thousand pounds to him at heads and tails, which he never paid, pleading drunkenness and his minority. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to live very cheaply, but how about the growers? If every man grew his own potatoes and lived on them, well and good, but he must have no rent to pay. That price would not pay for labour and manure. Oats are worth sixpence to ninepence a stone,—a ridiculous price; and we have not yet touched ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... at it in that light," he replied, returning my smile. "I vill give you a copper, on'y I hain't got change. You wouldn't mind comin' into this 'ere grog-shop while I git change, would you? Or if you'll lend me a sixpence I'll go in and git it ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne

... included Oroonoko in her three volume Collection of Novels selected and revised. Oroonoko, 'written originally by Mrs. Behn and revised by Mrs. Griffith'[2], was also issued separately, 'price sixpence'[3], in 1800, frontispieced by a very crude picture of a black-a-moor ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... already described, and at an average expense of seven florins—five shillings and tenpence each weekly—and thus the individual outlay for lodging, food, and other necessaries, was, in round numbers, seven shillings and sixpence a week. A dinner on New Year's Day, of baked pork and fried potatoes, with bread, wine, and apple ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... there fell desperately sick, and, being also extremely aged, was in danger of perishing in restraint for want of friends and means of relief. On August 27, 1656, the commissioners, having ascertained the truth of his petition, ordered him sixpence a day during his sickness; and (in answer probably to this poor prisoner's prayer to be spared from transportation) their order directed that it should be continued to him in his travel thence (after his recovery) to ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... such a small matter, Lord Arthur, that I do not care to make any charge. The dynamite comes to seven and sixpence, the clock will be three pounds ten, and the carriage about five shillings. I am only too pleased to oblige ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... camel, one gun, and old Selameh's sandals. Also, that those three men whom we saw on the 2d April at Abu Dahook's camp were of the same faction, probably also my visitors of the Khazneh yesterday. Selameh thought that for a couple of gazis (about three shillings and sixpence) he might succeed in a redemption of his goods. These I gave him, and he trudged back over the hills with one of his people, while we kept on our way. He was to meet us at our ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... day were missing from the carnival, others, as astonishing to us as the steam-organ would have been to those uncouth roisterers, were certainly present. Chief, perhaps, among these was the man who retailed the elixir of youth, the veritable eau de jouvence, to credulous drinkers at sixpence a bottle. This magician, whose dark mysterious face and glittering eyes indicated a strain of Romany blood, and whose accent proved that he had at any rate lived much in Yorkshire, had a small booth opposite the watch-house under the Town Hall. On ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... possible, to be sold as manure for ploughed land, wheat, barley, &c. Under this head, also, the dead cats are comprised. They are, generally, the perquisites of the women searchers. Dealers come to the wharf, or dust-field, every evening; they give sixpence for a white cat, fourpence for a colored cat, and for a black one according to her quality. The "hard-ware" includes all broken pottery, pans, crockery, earthenware, oyster-shells, &c, which are sold to make ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... see 'emselves in print, which I knows your 'abits, my late 'usband 'avin' bin a printer on a paper which bust up, not 'avin' the money to pay wages, thro' which, there was doo to him the sum of one pound seven and sixpence halfpenny, which I, bein' 'is widder, ought to 'ave, not that I expects to see it on this side of the grave—oh, dear, no!" and she gave a ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... the Fast Day, and the smith a religious man, it may cost your Honour as muckle as sixpence a shoe!" suggested the wily innkeeper, watching ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... throw for a thousand pounds, if set down to throw for sixpence, would not be at the pains to count his ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell

... of these extravagant flights of fancy, he perceived an alehouse. "Come," said he, on entering it, "I will indulge myself with spending one sixpence of this money." He hesitated, however, some few moments, about calling for punch, which was his favourite liquor, as his conscience loudly told him that his time for enjoyment ought to be at some distance, and not till he had paid his friend the money he had borrowed; that it ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... borrowed from a people not of European extraction.[5] The story belongs to the class of what may be called "accumulative" stories, of which "The House that Jack built" is a good example. It is a version of the story so well known in English of the old woman who found a little crooked sixpence, and went to market and bought a little pig. As she was coming home the pig would not go over the stile. The old woman calls on a dog to bite pig, but the dog will not. Then she calls in turn on a stick, fire, water, ox, butcher, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... eye can see it," the shoemaker went on, "a man in the trade can see the likeness between this boot and that last, although that is so deformed as hardly to recall one of God's creatures, and this is one of as pretty a pair as you'd get for ten-and- sixpence in Casterbridge. To you, nothing; but 'tis father's voot and daughter's voot to ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... no auks but me. You can't catch 'em alive. And I wouldn't sell no eggs at all till they'd first been blowed. I'd keep the business all in my own hands. Abner, I've been thinkin' a great deal about this thing. You've heard about the lively sixpence and the slow dollar? Well, sir, I'm goin' to sell them auk eggs for sixteen hundred dollars, two ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... to insist that a Chestertonian romance need differ appreciably from a Chestertonian essay, poem, or criticism. That a book by G.K.C. should describe itself as a novel means little more than that its original purchasing price was four shillings and sixpence. It might also contain passages of love, hate, and other human emotions, but then again, it might not. But one thing it would contain, and that is war. G.K.C. would be pugnacious, even when there was nothing to fight. His characters would wage their ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... admit he had not sufficient money. Three shillings and sixpence were what remained until he received the cheque ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... or that part of it occupying the best stalls, should be in evening dress. As evening dress is now also the rule in New York, this quandary is a thing of the past. Programmes at many of the English theaters are now free, where some years ago it was customary to sell bills of the play for sixpence. ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... sunlight over his hitherto cheerless home. The ringing of the bell next morning failed to arouse him, but when Mrs. Aldergrass, noticing his absence from the table, inquired for him, Uncle Timothy answered, "Never mind, let him sleep—tuckered out, mebby—and you know we allus have a sixpence more for an ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... them, without any apparent consciousness on their part of their reciprocal responsibilities. What I mean to say is that there are no eggs. The food which they eat resembles Christmas-pudding at the time when it is stirred, and I have suggested that a sixpence should be concealed in it every now and then—sixpence being apparently the current price of an egg—in order to indicate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various

... precepts, the singular imposition practised on many females, in persuading them to wear the inert acromatic belts, the strange infatuation of the opulent in paying five guineas for a pair of metallic tractors, not worth sixpence, the tables for blood-letting, and other absurdities still inserted in popular almanacs, (against all the rules of common sense)—all these yield in nothing to the absurdities and superstitious notions conveyed through the medium of astrology, dreams, and other ludicrous ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... outside the station a trap driven by a small boy, who had come in from Cadford to fetch some wire-netting. "That'll do us," said Stephen, and called to the boy, "If I pay your railway-ticket back, and if I give you sixpence as well, will you let us drive back in the trap?" The boy said no. "It will be all right," said Rickie. "I am Mrs. Failing's nephew." The boy shook his head. "And you know Mr. Wonham?" The boy couldn't say he didn't. "Then ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... encouragements in the important years of boyhood. The story was the story of his widowed mother and of her heroic struggle, keeping house for her shoemaking brother-in-law on the little money earned by the old bachelor's village cobbling, to save sixpence a week—sixpence to be gratefully returned to him on Saturday night. "That is the life of the poor!" he exclaimed earnestly. Then he added with bitterness, "And when I try to give them five shillings a week in their old age I am called the ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... have indicated with dotted lines. Of course his solution produces a cross, but it is not the symmetrical Greek variety required by the conditions of the puzzle. My young friend thought his attempt was "near enough" to be correct; but if he bought a penny apple with a sixpence he probably would not have thought it "near enough" if he had been given only fourpence change. As the reader advances he will realize the importance of this ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... in our infancy, we ate and spared not. Cakes of the most recherche description, and pastry, the lightness of which would have shamed Gunter, were each and all in their turn discussed; and what was our astonishment to find that, on calling for the bill, the charge amounted to about sixpence. ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... the beer to pay for the same, and bring his ticket up receipted when the subscriptions are paid; on failing to do so, a penalty of sixpence to be forfeited and ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... reward for the services they render. As an example of this kind, I will state the instance of a man who worked during the whole season, as hard and as well as any white man, at getting in the harvest for some setlers, and who only received bread, and sixpence a day, whilst the ordinary labourers would earn at least fifteen shillings. In many instances, they only receive a scanty allowance of food, so much so, that some settlers have told me that the natives left them because they had not ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... with that," said Molly; "and I have nothing to lend you, or I would; indeed, I would give you all I possess, but mother only gives me sixpence a week. Nothing would induce her to give me an allowance. I have sixpence a week just as if I were a baby, and you can quite understand I don't save out of that. What is ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... happen to such naughty little ladies. Here's a nice little bit of clearing in the wood, and we'll all come over, and Mother Rachel will tell your fortunes in a twinkling, and no one will be the wiser. Sixpence apiece, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... the water beneath the mangroves, I perceived the certain indications of an extensive and well-stocked oyster-bed. The bottom was thickly covered with them, in every stage of growth multitudes being scarcely larger than a sixpence. I could also see, through the shallow water, an immense number of little white specks, like drops of spermaceti, scattered about among them. It was evident, that here was an abundant and unfailing supply of these ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... railways, and God knows what else—whatever they wanted—I've sat at the Board of Guardians, and done my best to keep down the rates, till they kicked me out to make room for men who would sell their souls for a sixpence, and made ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... housewife pinched her arm and whispered sharply: "Not that, you good-for-nothing! Get the old one out of the cupboard. It leaks, and the Hillmen are so neat, and such nimble workers, that they are sure to mend it before they send it home. So one obliges the Fairy People, and saves sixpence ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... weavers, who feared the ruin of their business. But where, fifty years ago, there were but a hundred and forty lace-machines in use in England, there are now thirty-five hundred, while the price of lace has fallen from a hundred shillings the square yard to sixpence. Before this lace-machinery was invented, England manufactured only two million dollars' worth per annum, and in doing so employed only eight thousand-hands; whereas now she produces thirty million dollars' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... all round, place the rolled-out paste upon it, and by pressing the thumb of the right hand all round the upper part of the edge, the paste will be effectually fastened on, so as to prevent the juice from running out at the sides; a small hole the size of a sixpence must be made at the top of the pie, for ventilation, or otherwise the pie would burst. Bake the pie for an hour and ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and, getting the corners of his monstrous shirt-collar (Bob's private ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... household furniture, iron wrought, linen, linen-drapers' wares, lemons, oranges, and nuts; leather and calves' skins; mercery ware, silk and woollen, paper white and books, garden seeds, salt, tea, and woollen-drapery ware,—two shillings and sixpence respectively;—and so in proportion for any greater or less quantity. For every ton of cheese, flax, pewter, soap, marble, bell-metal, brass battery, and copper, two shillings respectively, and so in proportion for ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee

... never seen a wild elephant can form no idea of his real character, either mentally or physically. The unwieldy and sleepy-looking beast, who, penned up in his cage at a menagerie, receives a sixpence in his trunk, and turns round with difficulty to deposit it in a box; whose mental powers seem to be concentrated in the idea of receiving buns tossed into a gaping mouth by children's hands,—this very beast may have come from a warlike stock. His ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... before he was ten. He tended a widow's cows, led the plow- horses, and hoed turnips before he entered a colliery as a breaker-boy, where his task was to pick out stones and other foreign substances from the fuel. Sixpence a day was the wage. Soon at twopence more he was promoted to drive the gin-horse that, circling around a capstan, hoisted the buckets of water and coals out of the pit. At fourteen he became his father's assistant ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... join any class in the College whenever he wishes, on the payment of a very insignificant additional fee. For the drawing-classes this fee is five shillings. For the courses of one hour a week it is two shillings sixpence, for those of two hours it is four shillings. The drawing-classes are a trifle more costly, because the room for drawing is kept open ready for practice-work every evening in the week. There is also open for everybody every evening a Library, and the Principal's Bible-class ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... subsistence by selling favourable winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she said, to arrive, though occasionally the mariners had ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... I, "what shall I do? My master will never forgive me; and I haven't a single sixpence to pay a coach." Miss Betsy was just going to call one when I said that; but the coachman wouldn't have it at that price, he said, and I knew very well that SHE hadn't four or five shillings to pay for a wehicle. So, in the midst of that tarin rain, at midnight, we had to walk four miles, from Westminster ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... heard him laugh heartily over the recollections of one protracted excursion, towards the close of which the party found themselves a long day's walk—thirty miles, I think—from Edinburgh, without a single sixpence left among them. "We were put to our shifts," said he; "but we asked every now and then at a cottage door for a drink of water; and one or two of the good-wives, observing our worn-out looks, brought forth milk in place of water—so with that, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... asked, adding, after a pause, "Do you refer to the note which your solicitors will write me forthwith and charge me three-and-sixpence for?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various

... much to the taste of every body, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world, she would be very likely to give away sixpence of it; and nobody is afraid of her: that is ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... inordinately vain, arrogant, and withal easily led by designing persons. He stood up manfully for the cause in which he was embarked, and was most strenuous in his demands for money. "Personally he cared," he said, "not sixpence for his post; but would give five thousand sixpences, and six thousand shillings beside, to be rid of it;" but it was contrary to his dignity to "stand bucking with the States" for his salary. "Is it reason," ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and Culley were called to prove that Turner had said that the money he took to Tryon's house was his own money, and that he was going to recover the jewels; 'if any man could say that he lost sixpence of his money, or six-penny worth of his jewels, he had two fellows in custody ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... farming at Farnham, and he first ran away from Farnham to be a gardener. He was employed as a boy in the castle grounds, and there he met a man who was a gardener at Kew. They talked, and the eleven-year-old boy was fired to see for himself what gardening could be. Next day he started off, with sixpence-halfpenny in his pocket, and walked all day till he came to Richmond. There he should have had supper; he had threepence left to get it with. But threepence was exactly the price of a little book, The Tale of a Tub, which he spied in a bookseller's ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... passage to the Bull had sand on the floor, and carriers made it a house of call. To the Bell the two coaches came which went through Eastthorpe, and there they changed horses. Both the Bull and the Bell had market dinners, but at the Bell the charge was three-and- sixpence; sherry was often drunk, and there the steward to the Honourable Mr. Eaton, the principal landowner, always met the tenants. The Bell was Tory and the Bull was Whig, but no stranger of respectability, Whig or Tory, visiting Eastthorpe could possibly hesitate ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... thing which aggrieved the people was an order for the abatement of the coinage. Henceforward, the nine-penny piece was to pass for sixpence, the groat or four-penny piece for twopence, the two-penny piece for a penny, the penny for a halfpenny, and the halfpenny for a farthing. Yet notwithstanding this, or perhaps in consequence of it, the price of provisions ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... yer might arst—I don't mind a drink or two; but when it comes to half a dozen in a day it mounts up, I can tell yer. Drinks is sixpence here—I have to pay for it, an' pay carriage on it. It's all up ter me in the end. I used sometimes ter think it was lucky I wasn't west o' the sixpenny line, where I'd lose a shillin' on every ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... child's body for some young surgeons. Being upon honour to their employers, rather than disappoint the evening lecture of the students, they stole a live child, murdered it, and sold the body for three shillings and sixpence. They were hanged, but for the murder, not for the plagium [Footnote: This is, in its circumstances and issue, actually a case tried and reported.]—Your civil law has carried you a little ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... he has said "by Jove," and being near the collection-box, he quietly pulls sixpence out of his pocket and ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... would be attempted in it. But its main interest was in this, that it proposed a vote of credit for the Egyptian Expedition, which was to be provided for by addition to the income-tax, making it sixpence half-penny in the pound for the year. The financial proposals were agreed to. In the course of the session Mr. Bright resigned his place in the Cabinet on the ground that the intervention in Egypt was a manifest violation of the moral law, that the Government had interfered ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... payment of it, no fund as yet determined, nor any firm provision for the interest in the mean time. The consequence is, that the certificates of these debts sell greatly below par. When I left America, they could be bought for from two shillings and sixpence to fifteen shillings, in the pound: this difference proceeding from the circumstance of some STates having provided for paying the interest on those due in their own State, which others had not. Hence, an opinion had arisen with some, and propositions had even been ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... told me. But I shall want your help, Tilly, for the fish has to be carefully picked all to pieces; and if we leave a bit as big as a sixpence, ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... was at Dungeon Ghyll, a little ravine among the English lakes, down which trickles an exceedingly small stream of water, but which is, nevertheless, very picturesque,—as I followed the old man who shows it for a sixpence, he asked if we had come a long way. 'From America,' I replied. 'We have many Americans here,' said he; 'it is much easier to understand their language than that of other foreigners; they speak very good English, better than ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... see, a Spanish telegram, and it will cost"—he made a rapid calculation, then went to the sideboard and took out some silver. "It will cost five-and-sixpence. I therefore give you seven-and-sixpence, Frau Bauer. That is two shillings for your trouble. If possible, I should prefer that no one sees this telegram being despatched. ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... I was in London when a new man had taken hold of the old Cornhill, and they were trying to boom it, and they had a procession of these mudturtles that reached from Charing Cross to Temple Bar. Cornhill Magazine. Sixpence. Not a dull page in it.' I said to myself then that it was the livest thing I ever saw. I respected the man that did that thing from the bottom of my heart. I wonder I ever forgot it. But it shows what a shaky thing the human mind is ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... be said without exaggeration that it could hardly be much improved upon, so far as percentage of extraction is concerned; and yet the waste of power which is involved is something outrageous. For the treatment of a thin layer of slimes, perhaps no thicker than a sixpence, it is necessary to violently agitate, with a reciprocating movement, a large and heavy framework. Sometimes the quantity of stuff put through as the result of one horse-power working for an hour is not more ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... to be gained by it. Why is music published at four shillings when you can buy it for one and four, or at most one and eight? Why are novels published at thirty-one and six and the magazines at a shilling? "Shilling shockers" are sold at ninepence, which is as comical as selling "tenpenny nails" at sixpence. The same principle rules in other trades. It almost seems as if there is an ineradicable instinct in humanity for getting things below their price, even if at more than their value. Hence the marked popularity of "sales" and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... the mind, each in itself a composite of the carefully observed relations of separate and seemingly disparate facts. What is the pedigree of almost all great fortunes? Through vast combinations of trade, forlorn hopes of speculation, you trace them up to a clear head and a self-earned sixpence. It is the same with all large mental accumulations: they begin with a steady brain and the first solid result of thought, however small—the nucleus of speculation. The true aim of the scholar is not to crowd ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... half being for the roll and the other for the scone; he drank one moiety of the cup of chocolate after eating the roll, and the other after eating the scone. Meanwhile he read pages three and four of the Daily Telegraph. At a quarter to two he folded the paper, put down sixpence in payment, and slowly walked back to the office. He returned to his desk and there spent the afternoon solemnly poring over figures, casting accounts, comparing balance-sheets, writing letters, occasionally going for some purpose or ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... have buffets or rewards is known only to Heaven and to the Peers. I think that their Lordships are rather cowed. Indeed, if they venture on the course on which they lately seemed bent, I would not give sixpence for a coronet or a penny ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... this plain, oval plate was a little bit of an ornament no bigger than a sixpence. John Tracy took it for a star, Bob Martin said he knew it to be a Freemason's order, and Mr. Tressels, who almost overlooked it, thought it was nothing better than a fourpenny cherub. But Mr. Irons, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... to the father of this young lady. He had great concerns;—concerns so great that the payment of ten or twenty thousand pounds upon any trifle was the same thing to him,—as to men who are comfortable in their circumstances it matters little whether they pay sixpence or ninepence for their mutton chops. Such a man may be ruined at any time; but there was no doubt that to anyone marrying his daughter during the present season of his outrageous prosperity he could give a very large fortune indeed. Lady Carbury, who had ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... threepence, or sixpence, perhaps I guess not so much they are so easily raised; though I don't believe there are so fine as mine to be seen in this region. If I only had somebody to water the strawberries! we should have a great many. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Texans had asked for a hundred sheep, either for money or in barter (a sheep is worth about sixpence), they would have been supplied directly; but as soon as the flock was perceived one of the Texan leaders exclaimed, with an oath, "Mexicans' property, and a welcome booty; upon it, my boys, upon it, and no mercy," One of the poor Mexicans who had charge was shot through ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... so much in Christian teaching about this 'faith' that, I fancy, like a worn sixpence in a man's pocket, its very circulation from hand to hand has worn off the lettering. And many of us, from the very familiarity of the word, have only a dim conception of what it means. It may not be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... etc., are fractions. The next time he has a chop and a pint of stout in the city, the waiter should say—"A pound, sir, to you," and should add, "Please to remember the waiter in integers." Mr. Lowe fancies that when he pays one and sixpence, he pays in integers, and so he does, if his integer be a penny or a sixpence. Let him bring his mind to contemplate a mil as the integer, the lowest integer, and the seven cents five mils which he would pay under the new system would be payment in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... commonly in various kinds of matters that she wants—flour, and sugar, and Indian meal, and pork, and ham, and vegetables, and wool—anything; it is but a little of each that she wants. She has friends that would not permit her to earn another sixpence it they could help it, but she likes better to live as she does. And she is always as you saw her to-day—cheerful and happy as ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... Yet he kept his head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did so he talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to a first edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that he had picked up for sixpence in Liverpool, and thence to the Midland's proposal to drive a tunnel under the Knype Canal so as to link up the main-line with the Critchworth and Suddleford loop-line. Jos was too amazed to put in a word. Jos sat merely gaping—a ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... came, and Wantelo halloed out, "Three sticks for a penny, eighteen for a sixpence!" And the gentleman took a stick, and we had five shillings for three dozen throws! The gentleman played well, and got five cocoanuts, and took us to his carriage and gave me three glasses of brandy, so that I ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... soldiers, who nearly destroyed the church in 1648; and from an entry in the register of St. Sepulchre's Church, Northampton, for 1659, it would appear that there were collections made towards repairing the damage done by those worthies. This entry quaintly states that "seven shillings and sixpence" was received towards the repairs of the church of Edge Barston, in the county of Warwick, adding also that there was "never a minister in ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... and new issues had first declared itself. There were great evil-smelling yards and enclosures where some invincible jungle of weed furnished fuel for gigantic machinery (little cockneys came to stare at its clangorous oiliness and tip the men a sixpence); there were roads and tracks for big motors and vehicles—roads made of the interwoven fibres of hypertrophied hemp; there were towers containing steam sirens that could yell at once and warn the world against any ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells









Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |