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Halfpenny   Listen
Halfpenny

noun
(pl. half-pence or half-pennies)
1.
An English coin worth half a penny.  Synonym: ha'penny.



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"Halfpenny" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Twopence-halfpenny for your thoughts, Fokey!" cried out Miss Rougemont, taking her cigar from her truly vermilion lips, as she beheld the young fellow lost in thought, seated at the head of his table, amidst melting ices, and cut pine-apples, and bottles full and empty, and cigar-ashes scattered ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... bought three good-sized newspapers for 5 cents, or twopence-halfpenny. One of them, The Daily Morning Post, was a large sheet, measuring 3 feet by 2, and well filled on both sides with close letter-press, for 2 cents, or one penny. The absence of duty on paper and of newspaper stamps is no doubt one great cause of the advanced intelligence of the mass of ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... package, which was not very large, she went with it to the studio, reflecting as she went that by the feel of it it was an unframed picture, and that if some one would only take away some of the beastly, dusty things that were already in the house—that wouldn't, so the bailiffs said, fetch a halfpenny—it would be better worth while than bringing new ones where ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... worth every halfpenny of it. I am alluding to the Christmas Number of the Penny Illustrated Paper, in which appears A Daughter of the People, by JOHN LATEY, Junior, who is Junior than ever in December. Capital Christmas Number, and will attract an ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various

... love comes to you, as it will come,—for no woman with your eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life!—never forget that it is the biggest thing in the world, the one altogether good and perfect gift. Don't let any twopenny-halfpenny considerations of worldly advantage influence you, nor the tittle-tattle of other folks, and even if it seems that something insurmountable lies between you and the fulfillment of love, go over it, or round it, or through it! If it's ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... sum and formal good wishes the fathers of the Hospice of the Catechumens thrust him out of their doors into the broad world. The youth who had begun the day with dreams of palaces, found himself at night sleeping in a den where he paid a halfpenny for the privilege of resting in the same room with the rude woman who kept the house, her husband, her five or six children, and various other lodgers. This rough awakening produced no consciousness of hardship in a nature which, beneath all fantastic dreams, always ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... but one penny in the world, thou shouldst haue it to buy Ginger bread: Hold, there is the very Remuneration I had of thy Maister, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou Pidgeon-egge of discretion. O & the heauens were so pleased, that thou wert but my Bastard; What a ioyfull father wouldst thou make mee? Goe to, thou hast it ad dungil, at the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... his capital in the shortest possible space of time—let him come out, and fearlessly. Living is cheap enough as far as the essentials are concerned. Butcher meat, not surpassed in any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, is to be had at twopence per pound; the fine four pound loaf for sixpence halfpenny; brown sugar, fourpence; white, sixpence; candles, sixpence per pound; tea, the finest, three shillings the pound; fresh butter, one shilling and threepence per pound. Wild fowl in abundance. Vegetables are cheaper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... his heel as if irresolute. "Yes, I am going. I am going back to my cabin, back to my wallowing in the mire. Why not? Is there anyone who cares the toss of a halfpenny what I do?" ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... his nonsense, his success and miscarriages in this world, depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set going—whether right or wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and smooth as a garden walk, which, when once they are used to, the devil himself sometimes shall ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... sick woman watched, panting feebly, making no sign. The purse—a cheap thing, stamped with forget-me-nots, and much worn at the edges where the papier-mache showed through its sham leather—contained a penny and a halfpenny; these, and in an inner stamp-pocket a scrap of paper, folded ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and within living memory, horses, donkeys and men may have been seen toiling up the winding ways to the top of the height, laden with tubs and barrels filled from the wells beneath the mountain, and hawkers retailing their contents at the price of a halfpenny a bucketful. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... he answered. 'I didn't want particular to go out again to-day, but anything to encourage a good young chap. There is a nice shop in Edgware Road—hundreds of books for fourpence-halfpenny each. Come ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... There never was anything of the parson or the benevolent old lady about me. I would rather give half a crown to an impertinent little boy who had just whopped another boy bigger than himself than give a halfpenny tract to a sickly child in its mother's arms: that's original sin in me, I suppose. But all that squalid sort of work you were in only made the jewel shine the more. I used to think I should like to marry a very grand woman, who could be presented at court ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... was all night in the streets; and next morning, being very hungry, he got up and walked about and asked everybody he met to give him a halfpenny to keep him from starving. But nobody stayed to answer him, and only two or three gave him a halfpenny; so that the poor boy was soon quite weak and faint ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... might be expected, nothing else was talked about. Conversation at breakfast was confined to the topic. No halfpenny paper, however many times its circulation might exceed that of any penny morning paper, ever propounded so fascinating and puzzling a breakfast-table problem. It was the utter impossibility of detecting the culprits that appealed to the schools. They had ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... Jorrocks were old friends, and Nosey's affairs having gone crooked, why of course, like most men in a similar situation, he was all the better for it; and while his creditors were taking twopence-halfpenny in the pound, he was taking his diversion on his wife's property, which a sagacious old father-in-law had secured to the family in the event of such a contingency as a failure happening; so knowing Jorrock's propensity for sports, and being desirous of chatting over all his gallant ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... considerable thoroughfare, as it was usual formerly for persons travelling from London to the West of England to come as far as this by water. In Elizabeth's reign it was ordered that watermen should pay a halfpenny for every stranger, and a farthing for every inhabitant of Putney, to the ferry-owner, or be fined 2s. 6d. In 1629 the Lord of the Manor received 15s. per year for ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... "what is your heart on your halfpenny,[1] or are you saying a dirge for your father's soul? What, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... and postcards, telegrams furnish another means of communication. For a telegram sent to any place in the United Kingdom, the charge is sixpence for the first twelve words, and a halfpenny for every word after the first twelve. Addresses are charged for, so a sixpennyworth of telegraphing does not represent a long message, but by ingenuity—and a business woman is nothing without ingenuity—a few words may be made to mean a great deal. The cost of a reply to a telegram ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various

... there were six million pounds of pepper annually consumed in Europe, which used to cost, when purchased at Aleppo, brought over land thither from India, at the rate of two shillings per lb.; whereas it now cost, purchased in India, only two-pence halfpenny per lb.: the consumption of cloves was 450,000 lbs.; cost at Aleppo four shillings and nine-pence per lb., in India nine-pence: the consumption of mace was 150,000 lbs.; cost at Aleppo the same per lb. as the cloves; in India it was bought at eight-pence per lb.: the consumption of nutmegs ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... brought us hither to the place where we desired to be, after traversing so many bad roads, in midwinter, with snows and frosts so great, with rain, and mud, and encounters of the enemy, in hunger and thirst, and without a halfpenny. Now is the time to show courage, manliness, and the strength of your bodies. If this bout you are victorious, you will be rich lords and mighty well off; if not, you will be quite the contrary. Yonder is the city whereof, in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... at last turned angrily upon her, but before he could utter a word another voice interposed: "What are you always worrying about, ma? Do come down and have your supper, and let Mr. Thorne finish his packing. He'll pay you every halfpenny he owes you: don't you know that?" And the door was shut with such decision that it was a miracle that Mrs. Bryant was not dashed against the opposite wall. "Come along," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... it may be noted that in spite of all the efforts of the League at collecting money, the subscriptions to the Irish Parliamentary Fund do not amount to a halfpenny per head of the population; as J. Dillon has remarked: "The National cause in Ireland could not live for six months if it were deprived of the support of the ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... tax of a halfpenny was placed upon newspapers, and led to several leading journals being discontinued, a failure facetiously termed "the fall of the leaf." "The Spectator" survived the loss, but not unshaken, and the price was raised to twopence. It seems strange that such an addition should ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... that makes people wear their hair long, or dress in a flamboyant way. I'll tell you a little story. You know Bertie Nash, the artist. I met him once in a Post Office, and he was buying a sheet of halfpenny stamps. I asked him if he was going to send out some circulars. He looked at me sadly, and said, 'No, I always use these—I can't use the penny stamps—such a crude red!' Now, he didn't do that to impress me: but it was a pose in a way, and he liked ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Fletcher felt the tightening of the lasso, but could not free himself from the fatal noose. He must pay whatever the cold-eyed creditor demanded. Two thousand dollars was the sum asked for the acknowledgment of having appropriated five hundred. Twopence for halfpenny has been accounted fair usury among the Jews; but in Christian communities it is only crime that accumulates interest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... longed, a little house appeared, and a woman in the shade sewing, and an old man. Also a bench and a table, and a tree over it. There I sat down and drank white wine and water many times. The woman charged me a halfpenny, and the old man would not talk. He did not take his old age garrulously. It was his business, not mine; but I should dearly have liked to have talked to him in Lingua Franca, and to have heard him on the story of his mountain: where it was haunted, by what, and on which ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... published an account of Guiana in 1602. Sparrey is chiefly remembered by his own account of how he purchased eight young women, the eldest but eighteen years of age, for a red-hafted knife, which in England had cost him but a halfpenny. This was not the sort of trade which Raleigh ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... were all, it would be fightable. But look at the Fact—a sworn enemy of everything the Pinkerton press stands for, politically, but fighting it with its own weapons—muddled thinking, sentimentality, prejudice, loose cant phrases. I tell you there'll hardly be a halfpenny to choose between the Pinkerton press and the Fact, by the time Peacock's done with it.... It's not Peacock's fault—except that he's weak. It's not the Syndicate's fault—except that they don't want to go on losing money for ever. It's the pressure of public demand and atmosphere. Atmosphere ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... are to be tolerated on different conditions, and at different prices; if they are tradesmen, their conversation will soon end, and may be well 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 part from ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... popular observances, some of which even still survive. Thus in England, especially the northern counties, there was a custom (now extinct) for poor women to carry round the "Advent images,'' two dolls dressed one to represent Christ and the other the Virgin Mary. A halfpenny was expected from every one to whom these were exhibited, and bad luck was thought to menace the household not visited by the doll-bearers before Christmas ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... just asking. But you boys always think you know better than your Poppas," said he; and then, turning to the Count, "It isn't worth while troubling, Count; I'll see that these reports get contradicted, if I have to buy up a daily paper and issue it at a halfpenny. Yes, sir, you can leave ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... caught them without difficulty. A single sweep of a small scoopnet would bring up half a bushel, carts were filled with them as fast as if picked up on dry land, and in the fishing season they were commonly sold at a shilling (eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) a bushel. The increase in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the multiplication ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... their provisions, and spend the whole day at their devotions. Now the old woman spends her Sunday penny. At the back of the chapel there is a large room where a person is employed to boil the kettle and supply cups of tea at a halfpenny each. Here the old lady makes herself very comfortable, and waits till service begins again. Halfpenny a cup would not, of course, pay the cost of the materials, but these are found by some earnest member of the body, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... spent about 4s. or more buying his good-for-nothing son an elegant snuff-bottle. In short, the man's folly makes it utterly useless to help him. I once before relieved him from threatened detention for debt for the amount of twopence-halfpenny, just after I had made him a present, and I expect perhaps to have to do so again. What astonishes me is that the Mongols can get into debt so far. I don't believe my Mongol can pass a single man he knows without being in danger of being dunned for some hopeless ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... flounced and set out, each bent on doing the agreeable, they became dangerous. The Miss Jawleyfords were uncommonly well got up, and Juliana, their mutual maid, deserved great credit for the impartiality she displayed in arraying them. There wasn't a halfpenny's worth of choice as to which was the best. This was the more creditable to the maid, inasmuch as the dresses—sea-green glaces—were rather dashed; and the worse they looked, the likelier they would be to become her property. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... considerations. Duty is the star of their programme; action the object of their lives. They receive no salaries; their simple necessaries are alone provided for. Some of them perhaps get half-a-crown a month as pocket money; but that will neither kill nor cure a man. Sevenpence halfpenny per week is a big sum—isn't it?—big enough for a Jesuit priest, but calculated to disturb the Christian balance of any other class of clergymen. If it isn't, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... that's covered up well, and it can be easily uncovered again; and I'll lay my head agin a halfpenny apple, that if we don't come to fetch that there, nobody else won't; for unless we told, nobody wouldn't ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... of gingerbread will it be, worthy sir?' the disconcerted gingerbread—man responded in a thin, little voice. 'Some are a farthing—and others cost a halfpenny. Have you a ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... has marked you for her own; and nothing will stop her now. You are doomed. [Straker comes back with a newspaper]. Here comes the New Man, demoralizing himself with a halfpenny paper as usual. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... and handsomely in the select subscription lists. He also knew that an invitation card in the present is as sure a bait as the promise of bliss hereafter. So Lady Ferriby announced by card (in an open envelope with a halfpenny stamp) that she should be "at home" to certain persons on a certain evening. And the good and the great flocked to Cambridge Terrace. The good and great are, one finds, a little mixed, from a ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, through life, to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... halfpenny. I'm nearly thirty and she's only forty, and of course she'll marry again. I will say of myself, too, that no person living cares ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... attractive that I reflected with disgust that all my ready cash, except one shilling and some coppers, had melted away amid the tawdry fascinations of a village booth. I was counting the coppers (sevenpence halfpenny), when all in a moment a dozen sixpenny fiddles leaped from their places and began to play, accordions of all sizes joined them, the drumsticks beat upon the drums, the penny trumpets sounded, and ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... aunty! Complexions don't matter tuppence-halfpenny in Rhodesia. You surely didn't imagine I was going to carry a sun-umbrella about, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... inform me what is the lowest price at which wholesome aerated waters are sold? I have been drinking some "Shadwell Seltzer, special cuvee," at a penny-halfpenny the syphon, and I fancy this may have something to do with my present symptoms, which include partial paralysis of the left side, violent spasms, an almost irresistible tendency to homicide, together with ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... "can you bear her? When you tell me those sort of things I just long to throw her gifts in her face and to say boldly, 'We won't take another halfpenny from you, we will go to the workhouse to spite you, we'll tell every one we can that we are connected with you. Yes, we'll go to the ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... valet de chambre, some general undertaker, who will perform the journey in so many months, 'if God permit,' much knowledge will not accrue. Some profit, at least: he will learn the amount to a halfpenny of every stage from Calais to Rome; he will be carried to the best inns, instructed where there is the best wine, and sup a livre cheaper than if the youth had been left to make the tour and the bargain ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... colours marvellous to behold. Men said indeed that Merchant Roger clearly owed that window to the Saint, seeing that when he first entered the town scarce a dozen years before, he came but as a poor pedlar, possessed of naught but 'a hap, a halfpenny, and a lambskin,' whereas these few years spent under the shadow of the Saint's protection had made him already a ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... saw a letter for herself on the table in the now familiar hand-writing, and was more relieved than perhaps she would have confessed even to her closest friend, when she saw the twopence-halfpenny English stamp on the envelope. Yet its contents were startling enough, and this letter she did not read to Katherine Kempt, but bore ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... was beneath Captain Vauvenarde's dignity to give her his name before the world. She must neither be Lola Brandt nor Madame Vauvenarde. She must give up her fairly lucrative profession and live in semi-detached obscurity up a little back street on an allowance of twopence-halfpenny a week and be happy and cheerful and devoted. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... in the street and interrupting people who are talking, he said: 'If they are tradesmen, their conversation will soon end, and may be well 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 part from ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... Pekin," he said, "via Szechuen and Yunnan. Nearly died of dysentery in Yunnan city. While I was there my servants deserted me, taking with them every halfpenny I possessed. Being suspected by the Mandarins, I was thrown into prison, managed eventually to escape, and so made my way on here. I thought to-day was going to ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... I must get it; there's no living longer, and enduring what I've endured. I dream of being rich; I waken every morning from visions where my hands are filled with money; that wakening turns my head, when I know and see there is not a halfpenny in the house, and when I see you, my son, sitting there, working like a fool with pen and brain, but without the power to earn a penny for me. Go out and work with your hands, I say again, and let me ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... six at twelvepence the piece, capons coarse nineteen dozen at sixpence the piece, cocks of grose seven dozen and nine at eightpence the piece, cocks coarse fourteen dozen and eight at threepence the piece, pullets, the best, twopence halfpenny, other pullets twopence, pigeons thirty-seven dozen at tenpence the dozen, swans fourteen dozen, larks three hundred and forty dozen at fivepence the dozen, &c. Edward Nevill was seneschal or steward, Thomas Ratcliffe, comptroller, ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... keep in mind that in the coal districts a bushel of coal only costs ninepence, and it will be demonstrated that over the greater part of England Watt reduced the price of a man's day's work, a day of ten hours' labor, to less than a sou (one halfpenny). ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... weekly books, and asked no questions, until the winding up of the executor's business; and the quarterly settlement of accounts made startling revelations that the balance at her bankers was just eleven shillings and fourpence halfpenny, and what was nearly as bad, the discovery was made in the presence of her fellow executor, who could not help giving a low whistle. She turned pale, and gasped for breath, in absolute amazement, for she was quite sure they ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... from the firing line I have seen the street so thick with flies that it was impossible to see (p. 260) the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the morning after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence, for halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette, salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup of cafe au lait for fifteen sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... touch them. If she has more sweet cake or fruit than she can eat, she puts it by, and lets it spoil and get mouldy rather than give it away; or if she sees a poor child begging in the streets, without shoes, stockings, or clothes to cover him, she will not part with a halfpenny to buy him a bit of bread, though she is told that he is starving with hunger. She never assists any one, nor is ever thankful or grateful for what is done for her. She covets everything she sees, yet takes no real pleasure ...
— The Bad Family and Other Stories • Mrs. Fenwick

... all of him come back, with a handful of guineas, and the memory of his father. Lord! I could have cried; and he up and blubbered fairly, a trick as he learned from ten Frenchmen he had killed. Ah! he have done his work well, and aimed a good conduck—fourpence-halfpenny a day, so long as ever he shall ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... courteously as he approached, and I perceived that on the crown his hair was somewhat more than thin. I hesitated a little, rather awkwardly, for the guide-book said that the porter exacted a fee of one peseta for opening the chapel—one could scarcely offer sevenpence-halfpenny to a duke. But he quickly put an end to all doubt, for, as he unlocked the door, he ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham

... who first took her to the bazaar. A titled lady of her acquaintance had heard that wire flower-baskets of a certain shape could be bought in the bazaar cheaper (by two-pence-halfpenny each) than in London; and after writing to her friend to ascertain the truth of the statement, she wrote again to authorize her to purchase three on her behalf. So Madam Liberality's godmother ordered out the blue carriage and pair, and ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... her to the proof," he said to himself, "if she likes this twopenny halfpenny cross, she is a miracle among women. But, of course, she won't like it and there'll be another scene. What a devil of a temper she was in this morning and how she made the fur fly! If she's like that now, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... constant struggles; instancing how, on one of these occasions, the girl concealed herself under a bookcase of the library belonging to the mansion in which her father served as footman, and having taken with her there, like a young Fawkes, matches and a halfpenny candle, was going to sit up all night reading when the family had retired, until her father discovered and prevented her scheme. Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... from their pauper friends, but they're well-dressed people, Dick, and they seems to be well off! Four an' fourpence a year! think o' that—not to mention the deduction w'en they goes for a month or two to the country each summer. Four an' fourpence a year, Dick! Some of 'em even goes so low as a halfpenny, which makes two an' twopence a year—7 pounds, 11 shillings, 8 pence in a seventy-year lifetime, Dick, supposin' their liberality began to flow ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... omnibuses—which run on rails but are dragged by horses. They are capable of holding forty passengers each, and as far as my experience goes carry an average load of sixty. The fare of the omnibus is six cents, or three pence. That of the street car five cents, or two pence halfpenny. They run along the different avenues, taking the length of the city. In the upper or new part of the town their course is simple enough, but as they descend to the Bowery, Peck Slip, and Pearl Street, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... saying means, literally, loses a sixpenny dagger for the sake of a halfpenny thong. "Spoken," says Kelly, "when people lose a considerable thing for not being at an ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... they expected a run, they ordered all persons to be paid in copper coin, as long as any money of this metal remained. It required a long time to count those halfpennies and centimes (five of which make a sou, or halfpenny), but the people were not tired with waiting until towards three o'clock in the afternoon, when the bank is shut up. They then became so clamorous that a company of gendarmes was placed for protection at the entrance ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... was I, and I faithfully served the ships With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny dips, And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights, And fine fresh peppermint drops for the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... love amounts to! You are lucky if he does not beat you. Very likely he does beat you, too. Ask him, if you have got one, whether he will marry you. He will laugh in your face, if he doesn't spit in it or give you a blow—though maybe he is not worth a bad halfpenny himself. And for what have you ruined your life, if you come to think of it? For the coffee they give you to drink and the plentiful meals? But with what object are they feeding you up? An honest girl couldn't swallow ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... no, not an atom from anybody's hand but mine if you please. That dog," said Jerry, pointing out the old leader of the troop, and speaking in a terrible voice, "lost a halfpenny to-day. ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... says nowadays that she conquered him, and another that he conquered her. I do not know [which it was], my dear. Did you ever see a two-headed halfpenny? Yes? Throw it up, and when it falls down ask me which side is under. A Welsher told me that story. Welshers ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... the following day, and the carpenter gave him a pile of boards to plane. He was to receive a halfpenny for each board; and to his own delight, and the carpenter's astonishment, he planed one hundred the first day, and received four shillings and twopence. Once more was Mrs. Garfield struck dumb. Her feelings of joy and thankfulness could not find expression in words. Was there ever a mother so blessed ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... a great proportion of our young people is being awakened, the curious reader may see for himself if he will expend a few pennies weekly for a month or so upon the halfpenny or penny "comic" papers which are bought so eagerly by boys. They begin upon the facts of sex as affairs of nodding and winking, of artful innuendo and scuffles in the dark. The earnest efforts of Broadbeam's minor kindred to knock the nonsense out of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... on either occasion. He sent me at different times several letters.... He also gave me one or two books; Veron's Rule of Faith and some Treatises of the Wallenburghs was one; a volume of St. Alfonso Liguori's sermons was another.... At a later date Dr. Russell sent me a large bundle of penny or halfpenny books ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... such names may have come into existence. To the same class must belong Besant, the name of a coin from Byzantium, its foreign origin giving it a dignity which is absent from the native Farthing and Halfpenny, though the latter, in one instance, was improved ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... models of ships; and such beautiful fans. Do you know how many persons it takes to make a fan? Fifteen; and although those fans at the Exhibition are each worth several guineas, yet, in France, tens of thousands are sold at not more than a halfpenny a-piece. The French fan-makers get two shillings and six-pence a-day each, for their labour. The people of France are our next-door neighbours, almost; and from being our bitterest enemies they have now become our most intimate friends, ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous

... short bit, five cents. In country places all over the Pacific coast, nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases the cost of life; as even for a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or sevenpence-halfpenny, as the case may be. You would say that this system of mutual robbery was as broad as it was long; but I have discovered a plan to make it broader, with which I here endow the public. It is brief and simple - radiantly simple. There is one place where five ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... believe to have disgraced herself as a woman and a wife for ever. Do your very worst; make public every shameful particular that you can—what advantage will you get by it? Revenge, I grant you. But will revenge put a halfpenny into your pocket? Will revenge pay a farthing towards your daughter's keep? Will revenge make us receive her? Not a bit of it! We shall be driven into a corner; we shall have no exposure to dread after you ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... worst and loudest, which are contemptible, nor the best, which are almost as non-sensational as the best London papers, but the average American daily paper) is, or ought to be, as acceptable reading to a cultivated man—still less to a refined woman—as almost any one of the penny, or some halfpenny, London papers. But the point that I would make and which I would insist on very earnestly is that the two do not stand for the same thing in relation to the peoples ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... I will undertake to place a capital dinner before you; and, except the trouble of catching the animals, it shall cost nothing beyond a halfpenny, which I will expend in mustard and pepper. I cannot grow the pepper, so I shall buy a farthing's-worth of that and a farthing's-worth of mustard seed, which I would grow, and could then give you mustard to ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... 40s. a year. The rest of the tenants were villeins or cottagers, thirteen of the former and eight of the latter. Each of the villeins had a messuage and half a virgate, 12 to 15 acres of arable land at least, for which his rent was chiefly corn and labour, though there were two money payments, a halfpenny on November 12 and a penny whenever he brewed. He had to pay a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on November 12, and at Christmas a cock, two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. His labour services were to plough, sow, and till half ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... other 362 days of the year, and leave the Champs Elysees free for the omnibuses to run, and the Tuileries' in quiet, so that the nurse-maids might come as usual, and the newspapers be read for a halfpenny apiece. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... East End Weight-for-age Welter Handicap, I said that the son of Rattlesnake could make mince-meat of all his rivals. Since then he has made for his owner L5,000,000 in added money, at an initial expense of twopence halfpenny for saveloys and onions, a combination of which this splendid animal is particularly fond. Loblolly Boy was by Rowdy out of Hoyden, and his pedigree mounts up to Sallycomeup, Kissmequick, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various

... spirit passes from man to man, and takes accurate note of the different scenes of which it becomes a witness. This is a natural and favorable medium for a satire, which Johnstone probably owed, in some measure, both to the "Diable Boiteux" of Gil Blas, and the "Adventures of a Halfpenny" of Dr. Bathurst. The circulation of the guinea enables the author to describe the characteristics of its possessors as seen by a truthful witness, and he has taken advantage of his opportunity to produce one of the most disgusting ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... and poor, are perfectly suited in their requirements; whilst at some places the stakes are unlimited, at others they must not exceed one dollar, and a player may wager as low as five cents, or twopence-halfpenny. These are for the accommodation of the very poorest workmen, discharged soldiers, broken-down ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much more considerable than a halfpenny post card? Who would project a serial novel, after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course?[22] Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thought indispensable to every army or garrison in the wilderness. Throughout this campaign it is repeatedly mentioned in general orders, and the soldiers are promised that they shall have as much of it as they want at a halfpenny ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... Highlander. He was quite as tall as our Archie, and though the hermit assured us he was only a baby when he bought him in Central Africa for about sevenpence halfpenny in Indian coin, he had now the wrinkled face of an old man of ninety—wrinkled, wizened, and weird. But his eye was singularly bright and young-looking. In his hand he carried a long pole from which he had bitten all the bark, and his only dress was a little petticoat of skunk skin, which ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... space he took it off and placed it in the palm of his right hand, which he closed, and then, extending both his hands, shut, asked those about him in which hand it was. Of course they all said in the right; but, upon Jack's opening the said hand, there was no halfpenny there. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... darning-cotton," said Babs in a whisper. "I buyed it last week with twopence-halfpenny; you remember the day I went with Mrs. Sutton to town. She said it was a very useful thing, for Hilda will want to mend Jasper's socks, and if she hasn't darning-cotton ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... parlour was all bright and tidy, and the plates stood on a sideboard ready for supper. Two noble punch-bowls graced the table, and a number of long "churchwarden" pipes supported the large brass coffer filled with tobacco, which opened only by some cunning mechanism, set in motion by dropping a halfpenny in a slit at the top. Mr. Binks was in the chair; Clodd, the butcher, sat opposite; a great fragrance of spice and lemon-peel pervaded the place. It only needed a speech to commence the proceedings, and Mr. Binks was equal to the occasion. It was a hearty welcome to their ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... drew 1920 in a fifty-pound sweepstake as the date of the ex-Kaiser's trial is now prepared to sell his chance for sixpence-halfpenny. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... from her bed, she nevertheless watched for the return of the spring and autumn migrants with all the eagerness of the born naturalist. She offered the children money if they would bring her the first tidings of the arrival of birds in the dale. There was always a halfpenny underneath the geranium pot in the window-sill for the child whose eye caught sight of the first swallow, redstart or sandpiper; or whose ear first recognised the clarion call of the cuckoo, or the evening ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman

... they so fain would have, is only a rest of idle bellies. They and we might easily be brought to atonement; touching all these matters, were it not that ambition, gluttony, and excess did let it. Hence cometh their whining, their heart is on their halfpenny. Out of doubt their clamours and stirs be to none other end, but to maintain more ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... boy, it was a perfect farce! I, myself, argued for twenty minutes with an old woman, who sat mewing like a cat on her box, and when I got her off it, thinking she had a thousand in diamonds, it was full of baby linen. And I'll tell you a better thing. An old Dutch Jew threw a two-penny-halfpenny bundle into the sea, and then he was so sick with himself that he went in after it. We hooked him out by the breeches with a boat-hook; but I believe he wished himself dead with the bundle. As for 'Four-Eyes,' he took what he thought was five ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... return from the Temple: but the morning was the time which he preferred; and one day, when he went on one of his eternal pretexts, and was chattering and flirting at the counter, a lady who had been reading yesterday's paper and eating a halfpenny bun for an hour in the back shop (if that paradise may be called a shop)—a lady stepped forward, laid down the ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of flour, a halfpenny worth of yeast, a pinch of salt, one pint of milk or water. Put the flour into a pan, with your fist hollow out a hole in the centre of the flour, place the yeast and salt at the bottom, then add the milk (which ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... 'answering messenger.' Miss Macpherson had felt it laid on her that day to come to the East End to my help, though knowing nothing whatever of the present need. When poor E. C. returned from the baths and washhouses in her clean clothing, (having sold her former rags for twopence-halfpenny), she was met by the loving offer of a home. She seemed afraid to believe it, and followed, as if in a dream, the friend so mercifully raised up for her. She was afterwards placed in service with a Christian friend, and her two little brothers were among the first inmates ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... don't understand," Lord Runton continued. "It is certain that there is an extraordinary amount of activity at Portsmouth and Woolwich, but even the little halfpenny sensational papers make no more than a passing allusion to it. Then look at the movements of our fleet. The whole of the Mediterranean Fleet is at Gibraltar, and the Channel Squadron is moving up the North Sea as though to join the ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord: 'What is your best—your very best ale a glass?' For it was a special occasion. I don't know what. It may have been my birthday. 'Twopence-halfpenny,' says the landlord, 'is the price of the Genuine Stunning Ale.' 'Then,' says I, producing the money, 'just draw me a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... goods upon the moors or the harvested fields, and held out. Some, who had no other place, encamped on the roadsides and in ditches, others upon land belonging to other people, whereupon they were prosecuted, and, having caused "damage of the value of a halfpenny," were fined a pound, and, being unable to pay it, worked it out on the treadmill. Thus they lived eight weeks and more of the wet fag-end of last summer under the open sky with their families, with no further shelter for themselves and their little ones than the calico curtains of their beds; ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... at it than I perceived myself to be lost. I had been short of money and had allowed my debt to mount; and it had now reached the sum, which I shall never forget, of twelve pounds thirteen and fourpence halfpenny. All evening I sat by the fire considering my situation. I could not pay the bill; my landlady would not suffer me to remove my boxes; and without either baggage or money, how was I to find another lodging? ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... newspaper shop, then fell to a haberdasher in consumption, and finally to a stationer; the three shops at the end of the street wallowed in and out of insolvency in the hands of a bicycle repairer and dealer, a gramaphone dealer, a tobacconist, a sixpenny-halfpenny bazaar-keeper, a shoemaker, a greengrocer, and the exploiter of a cinematograph peep-show—but none of them supplied friendship to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... these visits with their hands full of fading flowers, which they at length proffered me. On this I did what I suppose was expected: I inquired if there was a shop near where they could buy sweeties. They said there was, so I felt in my pockets, but only succeeded in finding two pence halfpenny in small money. This I gave them, and the youngsters, aged four and three, toddled off alone. Ere long they returned, and Ernest said, "We can't get sweeties for all this money" (I felt rebuked, but no rebuke was intended); "we can get sweeties for this" (showing a penny), "and for this" ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... it greatly by practice in secret after I left school, and I ended by making it a source of profit and pocket money to me when I entered the medical profession. What was I to do? I could not expect for years to make a halfpenny, as a physician. My genteel walk in life led me away from all immediate sources of emolument, and my father could only afford to give me an allowance which was too preposterously small to be mentioned. I had helped myself surreptitiously ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... emblem. The Fields were only just merging into the Square. We learn that in 1745, the streets were so thinly built in the neighbourhood, that 'when the heads of the Scottish rebels were placed on Temple Bar, a man stood in Leicester Fields, with a telescope, to give persons a sight of them for a halfpenny a piece.' Just as we are sometimes offered a view of Saturn's rings from Charing Cross! Hogarth's house now forms part of a French Hotel. The lean French cook staggering under the roast beef in the 'Gates of Calais' picture has been amply revenged. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... of Hector," the boy said. "Would you have currants, lady? These once bloomed in the island gardens of the blue Aegean. They are uncommon fine ones, and the figure is low; they're fourpence-halfpenny a pound. Would ye mayhap make trial of our teas? We do not advertise, as some folks do: but sell as ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... letters and newspapers. Each man carried a locked leather wallet, into which, through an opening, letters and other articles were placed, the postmen receiving a fee of a penny on every letter, and a halfpenny on every newspaper. This was a personal fee to the men over and above the ordinary postage. To warn the public of the postman's approach each man carried a large bell, which he rang vigorously as he went his rounds. These men, besides ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... young men in Nigeria, and as middle-aged men in St. Petersburg), and Belstairs, who was in abundant spirits and who was returning to England on the Gloritania at noon the next day, explained to the Duke that he had just borrowed fifty thousand pounds, on security that wouldn't be worth a halfpenny in England. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... little fellow, adroitly poising the halfpenny that he was about to throw, on the tip of his finger. "If I win by this toss I will show you the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... on together; another was whether Mrs. Gibson was extravagant or not. Now two letters during the week of her absence showed what was in those days considered a very proper amount of conjugal affection. Yet not too much—at elevenpence halfpenny postage. A third letter would have been extravagant. Sister looked to sister with an approving nod as Molly named the second letter, which arrived in Hollingford the very day before Mrs. Gibson was to return. They had settled between themselves that two letters would show the right amount ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... clerk, picking out a ticket from the rack, and stamping it, by sticking it in a noisy nick, before the would-be traveller could speak. When he could, it was with a bright shilling, given him at his father's last visit, a threepenny-piece, and twopence halfpenny, in his hand. ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn

... since you're so curious, I saw it a quarter of an hour ago in a special edition of a halfpenny rag; I was on my way to the office. (Showing paper.) Here you are! The Evening Courier. Quite a full account of the illness. You couldn't send for me, but you could ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett

... to go and see the picture at Durand-Ruel's. It was a view of Rome by twilight, seen between great umbrella pines, I thought it a splendid picture, and spurred somewhat, I confess, by a spirit of contradiction, I was seized with an eager desire to acquire it. But I had not a halfpenny of my own, there was my difficulty! To overcome it, I laid siege to my aunt Adelaide, who doted on her brother's children as if they had been her own, and who never (and well the rogues knew it!) could resist their wheedling. I succeeded, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,—buy a water-melon for a halfpenny,—split it, and scoop out the middle,—sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... which was, however, so little appreciated by the editor of this scurrilous publication, that we find him perpetrating the following sorry libel on the writer and three of his contemporaries: "To cheesemongers and others! Ready for delivery, at a halfpenny per pound, forty tons of foundered literature; viz., Mrs. Trollope's 'Unsatis-factory Boy,'[131] 'Master Humphrey's Clock' (refer to the second meaning in 'Johnson's Dictionary': 'an unsightly crawling thing'!), Captain Marryat's ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... her rent. On two other occasions she had also applied to them for the money to pay her workwomen, so that the debt had increased again to four hundred and twenty-five francs. Now, she no longer gave a halfpenny; she worked off the amount solely by the washing. It was not that she worked less, or that her business was not so prosperous. But something was going wrong in her home; the money seemed to melt away, and she was glad when she was able to make both ends meet. Mon Dieu! What's the use of complaining ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... nobody did dance much. There was a new Miss Bishop from Sir Cecil's endless hoard of beauty daughters, who is still prettier than her sisters. The new Spanish embassy was there—alas! Sir Cecil Bishop has never been in Spain! Monsieur de Fuentes is a halfpenny print of my Lord Huntingdon. His wife homely, but seems good-humoured and civil. The son does not degenerate from such high-born ugliness; the daughter-in-law was sick, and they say is not ugly, and has as good set of teeth as one can have, when one has but two and those ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... science cannot be too familiarly dealt with; and though too much familiarity certainly breeds contempt, we are only following the fashion of the day, in rendering science somewhat contemptible, by the strange liberties that publishers of Penny Cyclopaedias, three-halfpenny Informations, and twopenny Stores of Knowledge, are prone to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various

... if they are," Harry said cheerfully, "Evan can buy some more. Here, Evan; here are thirty-eight shillings and ninepence halfpenny, and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... he took fire, and praised too. Mutually exciting and being excited, his powerful voice could be heard above the din of hundreds of shouting voices. The dear man was happy in his soul, and so was I, and we did not care a halfpenny for the outside ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... jolly fine—I can't!" protested Noel. "Why, I only get about twopence-halfpenny a term. It isn't enough to pay a cat's expenses, besides being always up to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... Archives des Sciences physiques et naturelles de Geneve, 1894, by M. Margot. It appears that clean aluminium used as a pencil will leave a mark on clean damp glass. If, instead of a pencil, a small wheel of aluminium—say as big as a halfpenny and three times as thick—is rotated on the lathe, and a piece of glass pressed against it, the aluminium will form an adherent, though not very continuous ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... worship, which in point of fact no more specially concern the Romans than they do the Champenois, a voluntary contribution made by one hundred and thirty-nine millions of men would amply provide for them. If each individual among the faithful were to give a halfpenny per annum, the head of the Church would have something like L300,000 to spend upon his wax tapers and his incense, his choristers and his sacristans, and the repairs of the basilica of St. Peter's. No Roman Catholic would think of refusing his quota, because the Holy Father, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... said McTurk. "A halfpenny a week per bob is Beetle's charge. You must be beastly ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... then take a ship for Honolulu or San Francisco. A desperate chance; but we were desperate men. We had tried to work hard and honest. We had done so for best part of a year. No one could say we had taken the value of a halfpenny from any man. And yet we were not let stay right when we asked for nothing but to be let alone and live out the rest of ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood



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