"Promissory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... young writers are usually promissory notes that are never met. Now and then, however, one comes across a volume that is so far above the average that one can hardly resist the fascinating temptation of recklessly prophesying a fine future for its author. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... scantily furnished lodgings, doubtful of his next meal and in arrears for rent, heard this Macedonian cry as St. Paul did. He wrote a promissory and soothing note to his landlady, but fearing the "sweet sorrow" of personal parting, let his collapsed valise down from his window by a cord, and, by means of an economical combination of stage riding and pedestrianism, he presented himself, at ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... the newspaper extracts to deceive you forged the promissory note years ago, and the man who is setting spies on you is the man who forged those extracts; so we are sure to nail him. He is in the net; and very much to your credit. Leave the rest to me. I'll tell you more about it to-morrow. You must order your carriage ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... he had received the day before, as the first instalment of his new allowance. This was but a bad beginning of the new life he was expected to lead under the renewed fortunes which his father was preparing for him. He had given his promissory note for the money at a week's date, and had been extremely angry with Captain Vignolles because that gentleman had, under the circumstances, been a little anxious about it. It certainly was not singular that he should have been so, as Captain ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... his pecuniary difficulties increased to such an extent that he was driven to scatter broadcast "privy seals" or promissory notes for the purpose of raising money. These were not unfrequently placed in the hands of persons as they came out of church on Sunday evenings, a proceeding that caused ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... declared to the dismayed woman that the Alp belonged to him: her husband had secretly pledged it to him in return for a loan, after the bad harvest of the previous year. When the widow angrily accused him of being a liar the man produced a promissory note, spread it out, and with a hard laugh showed her his statement was confirmed in black and white. The distressed woman burst into tears and declared it was impossible that her late husband should have made a secret transaction of such a nature. The Alp was the sole inheritance ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... toy apart, piece by piece. "Wait till your pa comes home!" his mother had said, with terrible significance. Chug, deep in the toy's wreckage, seemed undismayed, so Mrs. Scaritt gave him a light promissory slap and went on about her housework. That night, before supper, Len Scaritt addressed his son with a sternness quite at variance ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... such guests as had business with him, and refused to accept payment for food or lodging; but very few people ever came to see him, and these were mostly old friends with whom he had financial dealings. Brandur was willing to make loans against promissory notes and the payment of interest. There were not many to whom he would entrust his money, however, and he never lost a penny. Whenever these callers came, he would bring ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... he failed to produce the money at the expiration of the year, the pledge (otherwise the Moonstone) was to be considered as forfeited to Mr. Luker—who would, in this latter case, generously make Mr. Godfrey a present of certain promissory notes of his (relating to former dealings) which were ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... be made. Do gentlemen appreciate the full import and meaning of that clause? Do they realize the full extent to which it will carry them? Every contract for the purchase of money is in legal contemplation a contract for the payment of gold and silver coin. Every promissory note, every bill of exchange, every lease reserving rent, every loan of money reserving interest, every bond issued by this government, is a contract to which the faith of the obligor is pledged, that the amount, whether ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... shop to make some purchases, amused himself while waiting by idly writing his name on a piece of blank paper lying on the counter; which he left there without thinking more about it. Derues, knowing the young man had means, as soon as he had gone, converted the signed paper into a promissory note for two thousand livres, to his order, payable at the majority of the signer. The bill, negotiated in trade, arrived when due at the wine merchant's, who, much surprised, called his young boarder and showed him the paper adorned ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... necessary for him to talk that way, Rashkind, because if he wants to get an up-to-date business man for his daughter, understand me, he couldn't expect the feller is going to take chances on an uncertified check oder a promissory note." ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... tailor, or a bootmaker, or something of the kind? Don't you say you have claims on me, and don't you talk of charges with vouchers, and heaven knows what? Come, let us hear. I'll give you a promissory note, and I daresay my friend Major M'Toddy will give ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... is a man of mark. Many eyes are fixed upon him; many have interest in his well-being; his movements are of concern; he can not disappear unheeded; his name is in many mouths; his name is upon many books; he is a man of note—of promissory note; he fills the speculation of many minds; men conjecture about him, wonder about him,—wonder and conjecture whether he will pay. He is a man of consequence, for many are running after him. His door is thronged with duns. He is inquired after every hour of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... had to. One must know people from whom one accepts promissory notes to liquidate those little affairs peculiar to the temple of chance. And New York's best furnished the neophytes for ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... preemptory, prelate, preliminary, preposterous, prerequisite, prerogative, presentiment, primogeniture, probation, probity, proclivity, procrastinate, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profligate, progenitor, proletarian, prolific, prolix, promiscuous, promissory, propaganda, propensity, prophylactic, propinquity, propitiatory, propitious, proprietary, prorogue, proselyte, prototype, protuberant, provender, proximity, prurient, psychical, psychological, puerile, pug-nacious, puissant, punctilious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... operations on the Chicago Board of Trade had he failed. He knew he would not fail now; Luck, the golden goddess, still staid at his shoulder. He did more than mortgage his property; he floated a number of promissory notes. His credit, always unimpeachable, he taxed to its farthest stretch; from every source he gathered in the sinews of the war he was waging. No sum was too great to daunt him, none too small to be ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... expected to replace the former national bank notes. When a local bank requires more currency it may deposit with the Federal Reserve Bank such valuable commercial paper as may be acceptable—for example, promissory notes of reliable business firms—and receive at once a supply of federal reserve notes. When business is brisk and large supplies of currency are demanded, the local banks will deposit whatever paper may be necessary ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... authority on hypnotism, who says: "A patient under the influence of hypnotism can be made to swallow poison, to inhale noxious gases. He can be led to make a manual gift of property, even to sign a promissory note or bill, or any kind of contract." Indeed, how can notaries or witnesses suspect any fraud when even the Doctor needs all his experience and all his skill to avoid falling into error? In criminal ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson ...
— All Day September • Roger Kuykendall
... rapid decay. Offutt's speculations had failed, and he had disappeared. The brothers Herndon, who had opened a new store, found business dull and unpromising. Becoming tired of their undertaking, they offered to sell out to Lincoln and Berry on credit, and took their promissory notes in payment. The new partners, in that excess of hope which usually attends all new ventures, also bought two other similar establishments that were in extremity, and for these likewise gave their notes. It is evident ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... time Leland was well and strong again. The chase after the Greek was dismissed from the official mind by this time: and Barndale, being reminded of Inspector Webb by the receipt of the promissory note for five hundred pounds, wrote to that official to offer him a week or two in the country. The inspector came, and brought the marvellous pipe with him. It had been detained until then to be put in evidence in case of the ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... admirers of the "Waterford system of passing a night and morning," that scarcely a day came without a draft upon the treasury for that legal imposition upon the liberty of the subject—the five-shilling fine; besides the discharge of promissory notes as compensation for trifling damages done to the heads and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... before this, Andreas Doederlein, confidently expecting that Herr Weisskopf would ask for the hand of his daughter, had borrowed a thousand marks from him. The miller had loaned him the money believing that he was thereby securing a promissory note on Dorothea. Doederlein had placed himself under obligations, and was consequently determined to carry out his plans with regard to the marriage ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... and smoked in the Ministry of Education. Even voting and vehicle-registry lists were being wiped out of existence by flames and the crushing of ashes at appropriate agencies. The planet's banks were completing the distribution of coin and currency, with promissory notes to those depositors they could not pay in full, and the real-estate registers were open so individuals could remove and hide or destroy their titles to property. The stockholders' books of corporations were being burned. Small ships parted with their wares ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... what it is to be, how many hundred themes it will have to consider, how many errors to analyze, how many new suggestions to introduce, how many criticisms of the old, how many expositions of the new. The present number of the JOURNAL is little more than a promissory note for its future. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... like this. It had been long since Mrs Keswick had had an opportunity of exercising that power of vituperative torment, which had driven a husband to the refuge of a reverted pistol; which had banished, for life, relatives and friends; and which, in the shape of a promissory curse, had held apart those who would have been husband and wife; and now, like the long stored up venom of a serpent, it burst out with the direful force given by ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... what is a vow? It is a deliberate promise made to God by which we bind ourselves to do something good that is more pleasing to Him than its omission would be. It differs from a promissory oath in this, that an oath makes God a witness of a promise made to a third party, while in a vow there is no third party, the promise being made directly to God. In a violated oath, we break faith with man; in a broken ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... dreary camp-hunt, with all its distasteful sequelae. Purcell, who had no more imagination than a promissory note, silently sulked under the officer's intimation that, being able-bodied men, he would expect the hunters also to ride with him. They were not of his county, and doubted their obligation, but they would not refuse to aid the ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... politics politician possession possible practically prairie precede precedent precedents preference preferred prejudice preparation primitive principal principle prisoner privilege probably proceed prodigy profession professor proffered prohibition promissory prove ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... dark shadow over the friendship of Constable and Murray, and eventually led to their complete separation. This was the system of persistent drawing of accommodation bills, renewals of bills, and promissory notes. Constable began to draw heavily upon Murray in April 1807, and the promissory notes went on accumulating until they constituted a mighty mass of paper money. Murray's banker cautioned him ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... discounted—A common way for young men to borrow money in nineteenth century Britain was to sign a promissory note (an "I.O.U."), often called a "bill," to repay the loan at a specified time. The lender gave the borrower less than the face value of the note (that is, he "discounted" the note), the difference being the interest. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... his way to Basset to see his sister Moss and her husband. For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs. Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss; and if the said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to lessen the fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr. Tulliver's ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... they shall, at the time fixed, be redeemed in money. To this category belong the paper money of the state which bears no interest, and the treasury-notes of the state which do bear interest, bank notes, bills of exchange, promissory notes, book-credits of private persons, sometimes even certificates of the storage of goods in public stores. It is estimated, that, at the present time, nine-tenths of all the payments made in Great Britain are effected without the aid of money, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... moment, the Mont de Piete still exists; but, doubtless, on a different plan; for Paris abounds with Maisons de pret. On the eve of particular days in each month when the shopkeepers' promissory notes become due, they here pledge articles in order to procure the means of making good their payments. But the crowd of borrowers is the greatest on the days immediately preceding those on which the Paris lottery is drawn; the hucksters, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... marked the word "investigate," which had so smitten Ben's attention, and marveled what matter it might be in the mountains worth investigating, and promissory of gain, if not the still-hunt, as it were, of the wily moonshiners. But yet her faith in Selwyn's motives and good will, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... agree with him," Graham said. "'You promised to love me always,' says the jilted one, and then strives to collect as if it were a promissory note for so many dollars. Dollars are dollars, but love lives or dies. When it is dead how can it be collected? We are all agreed, and the way is simple. We love. It is ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... least, but it is your consent I have to get. You might have a stroke, or lose your memory; you might even die, and there should I be left stranded. My love is so great that I can let it run no risks. And therefore, sir, if you will be so good, a promissory note to take effect ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Milner's desire to ignore these debts but to make a free grant for the relief of the Boer people. The British Government followed Lord Milner in making such a free grant—L3,000,000—and in rejecting the claim of the Boer leaders that this sum should be devoted to the payment of the promissory notes and receipts issued by them but it nevertheless allowed such notes and receipts to be submitted "as evidence of war losses" to the commissioners who were to be appointed to distribute ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... undertook to use his reason on the tradition, as he sometimes did to the detriment of the law, and, not understanding it, said he could see no reason why what was true of a bond should not be true of other contracts. His decision happened to be right, as it concerned a promissory note, where again the common law regarded the contract as inseparable from the paper on which it was written, but the reasoning was general, and soon was extended to other written contracts, and various absurd and unreal grounds of policy were invented ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... joke for a foreigner," said he. "A Frenchman remains five years in prison and comes out, free of his debts to be sure, for he is thenceforth bound only by his conscience, and that never troubles him; but a foreigner never comes out.—Give me your promissory note; my bookkeeper will take it up; he will get it protested; you will both be prosecuted and both be condemned to imprisonment in default of payment; then, when everything is in due form, you must sign a declaration. By doing this your interest will be accumulating, and you will have a pistol ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... scorching day or a sudden frost. Small owners, like us, whose income is far from being fixed, must base their estimates on their minimum, for they have no means of making up a deficit or a loss. What would become of us if a wine merchant became bankrupt? In my opinion, promissory notes are so many cabbage-leaves. To live as we are living, we ought always to have a year's income in hand and count on no more ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of the Familiar Law Adviser relate to Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes—and Benefit Societies and Savings' Banks—and will be found extremely useful to very different classes. They have in them all the reforming spirit of the times, and must be of essential service everywhere, since cheap law is as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... had had enough of the player, who always lost and never paid—never could pay, so Mr. Cohen probably believed. He therefore at that hour refused to accept Mr. John Ashley's 'promissory' stakes any longer. A very few heated words ensued, quickly checked by the management, who are ever on the alert to avoid the least suspicion ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... taught by the Churches; a promise to abstain from drink, bad language, dishonesty, etc.; and a solemn promise to obey the lawful orders of the Officers, and never on any consideration to oppose the interests of The Salvation Army. The last part, the promissory part, is made much stricter in the case of Candidates for the position of Officer; these solemnly promise not only to obey The General, but to report any case they may observe in others of 'neglect or variation from his orders and directions.' Membership of the Organisation thus depends on absolute ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of trying to obtain money by forging signatures to promissory-notes, also of the attempted assassination of Sieur Ragoulleau; condemned by the Court of Assizes at Paris on January 11, 1812, to twenty years hard labor. The elder Poiret, a man who never thought independently, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... calm, prudent, and faithful, might have been found a valuable confidant in opposition to the pretensions and secret intrigues of courtiers and princes. But Louis XVIII. was not in the least capable of governing his ministers. As a King he possessed great negative or promissory qualities, but few that were active and immediate. Outwardly imposing, judicious, acute, and circumspect, he could reconcile, restrain, and defeat; but he could neither inspire, direct, nor give the impulse while he held the reins. He had few ideas, and no passion. Persevering application to ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... reasons—meaning—a MAN. She scented instantly another of Biddy's tempestuous love-affairs. Had it been merely a question of lack of money with inclination goading, she felt pretty certain that Lady Bridget would have contrived to beg, borrow or steal—on a hazardous promissory note, after the happy-go-lucky financial morals of that section of society to which by birth she belonged. Or, failing these means, that she would have threatened some mad enterprise and so have frightened her aunt Eliza Countess of Gaverick into writing a cheque for three figures. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... in every nation a set of noisy moral imbeciles who cannot see that nations have an overwhelming interest in creating and maintaining a tradition of international good faith, and honouring their promissory notes as scrupulously as the moral imbeciles pay their silly gambling debts and fight their foolish duels, we are not, I presume, going to discard every international guarantee except the howitzer. Why, the very Prussian Militarists themselves are ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... the defence to the indictment by anticipation. Mr. Tahourdin is to give a contemporaneous existence to the transaction by the production of these letters and instruments, the receipt for two hundred pounds, and the promissory note for two hundred pounds more. From all this it is plain, that Mr. Cochrane Johnstone, at the very moment when he was settling with his agent his reward for the fraud he had committed, like a man of great ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... Cato, "Plato, thou reasonest well. It's all up now. I can show fight no more." But at no time of my life,' said Mr. Micawber, 'have I enjoyed a higher degree of satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties, chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two and four months, by that word) into the bosom of my ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... vivid description of all she and her dear ones went through, enables us to see almost with our own eyes how the invasion of America appears to the impecunious invader. It is thus "a human document" of considerable value, as well as a promissory note of future performance. The quick senses of the child, her keen powers of observation and introspection, her impressionability both to sensations and complex emotions—these are the very things out of which literature is made; the raw stuff of art. Her capacity to handle English—after ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... e'er forget our boyhood, And the days we spent at school, With the jolly youths and maidens Who with pencil for a tool, Squared the area of a circle, And minutely did compute The interest and discount On a promissory note? ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Commandeered at Johannesburg, he had accompanied the burghers from place to place till he had grown utterly sick of the whole business; and all the more because he had received no payment for his services except in promissory notes—which were worthless. He also stated that over three hundred foreigners had been landed at Delagoa Bay as ambulance men, wearing the red cross armlet; as such they had proceeded to Pretoria for enrolment, and there he had seen every man of them strip off the red cross, shouldering ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... formalism, such as an unreal and temporary transfer of property; but this is done, not in order to evade the guilt of perjury, but, in case of detection, to open a technical escape from its legal penalty. Promissory oaths are of equally little worth. There is not a public functionary from the President of the United States to the village constable, who does not take what is meant to be a solemn oath (though often administered with indecent levity) to be loyal ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... war, all those who carried these promissory notes shared the fate of the rich man in the fairy tale. The money collected at night turned to ashes before morning. This was the fatal fruit of the war which for seven years had scourged Europe. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... coll.—Mrs. W—and her son—both since dead: the latter rose to very high rank in an honourable profession. The old campaigner has now turned pious, and recently erected and endowed a chapel. He used to boast he had more promissory notes of gambling dupes than would be sufficient to cover the whole of Pall-Mall; he may with justice add, that he can command bank notes ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and they both stood looking, while the parting gifts of the clouds were gently reaching the ground, and the sun taking a cleared place in the western heaven, painted over against them, broad and bright, the promissory token that the earth should be overwhelmed with the waters no more. The rain-drops glittered as they fell; the grass looked up in refreshed green where the sun touched it; the clouds were driving over from the west, leaving broken fragments behind them upon the blue; and the bright and sweet ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the poor old man and otherwise abused him. When unable to obtain money, he would smash all the furniture in the house, until, for the sake of economy, his family gave him what he wanted. In order to get a five-pound note from money-lenders he would sign promissory notes for ten times that amount. He changed his ideas from one hour to another. Sometimes he wanted to enter the army, at others to emigrate to France, etc. When only fourteen he frequented houses of ill-fame, where he ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... pay back to Terry some cash in London, L170, together with other matters here, I have borrowed from Mr. Alexander Ballantyne the sum of L500, upon a promissory note for L512, 10s. payable 15th November to him or his order. If God should call me before that time, I request my son Walter will, in reverence to my memory, see that Mr. Alexander Ballantyne does not suffer for having obliged me in a sort of exigency—he ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... hunting down this woman "whose venom had infected the faithful of the whole West," and as recompense it as good as promised him "a crown of imperishable glory in heaven." Only that!—a crown in heaven; a promissory note and no indorser; always something away off yonder; not a word about the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was the thing Cauchon was destroying his soul for. A crown in heaven; it must have sounded like a sarcasm to him, after all his hard work. What should ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... happen that an individual may wish to increase his checking account at the bank, but that he has no actual cash with which to make a deposit with the bank. In this case he may give the bank his promissory note, together with stocks, bonds, or other forms of wealth, which the bank holds as security. In return, the bank credits him with a "deposit." This means that the bank extends its credit to the individual, by undertaking to honor checks for sums not actually ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... wrong thinking, I mean; other people have done the wrong thinking, and the farmer has suffered. Like many another bromide, the thought has grown on people that farmers are slow, uncouth, guileless, easily imposed on, ready to sign a promissory note for any smooth-tongued stranger who comes in for dinner. The stage and the colored supplements have spread this impression of the farmer, and the farmer has not cared. He felt he could stand it! Perhaps the women on the farm feel it more than the men, for women are more sensitive about such ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... me at my word, and though the Duke used all the arguments with her which he could think of, she bound my thumb with silk, and with a needle drew blood, with which she obliged me to sign a promissory note as follows: "I promise to Madame la Duchesse de Bouillon to continue united with the Duke her husband against the Parliament in case M. de Turenne approaches with the army under his command within twenty leagues of Paris and declares for the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the public treasury, and often it has been the desperate expedient of nearly bankrupt governments. Governmental paper money differs from bank notes in that its value does not necessarily depend on the promise of redemption by the issuer. It differs from promissory notes and bonds in that its value is not based on the interest it yields, but mainly on its monetary uses. The issue of paper money may save the government the payment of interest on an equal amount of bonds. The promise to receive paper ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... imagination hoary with age. The eyes of the toper glistened at the sight. Eagerly he stretched out both hands towards it. They actually trembled with desire. Hardly could he endure the delay of its uncorking. No sooner did the fine promissory note of the discharge of its tompion reach his ear, than he cried out, with the authority ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... own brains and ability, was devoting the same care to Barbara's apparently worthless papers that he would give to his own important business affairs. Suddenly he looked up. He held in his hand the promissory note signed by Ralph Le Baron acknowledging his debt for five thousand dollars to ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... said the porter; "I will bring them down to the carriage. The rest I must give you in promissory notes. These are worth a little less than a hundred dollars, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... profit, merely sufficient to cover the storeage and salary of the storekeeper: that the committee should raise money for the purchase of the oatmeal by their joint notes, which the banks would at once discount; all sales of the meal to be lodged each day in the bank to the account of the promissory notes outstanding. On winding up the transaction the oatmeal would be at least worth its present value; and if sold at a small profit, enough to cover the expenses, there would be no necessity for calling in any ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... known as the "Wild Cat Banks." Silver coin being very scarce, and the banks not being allowed to issue notes for a smaller amount than one dollar, several persons put out notes from 6 to 75 cents in value; these were called "Shinplasters." The Shinplaster was in the shape of a promissory note, made payable on demand. I have often seen persons with large rolls of these bills, the whole not amounting to more than five dollars. Some weeks after I had commenced business on my "own hook," I ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Undoubtedly, Kit did not think he had robbed his employers, because, if he had done so, he would not have stayed at Tarnside. He had, however, robbed somebody, and as Kit remembered his skill with the pen he saw a light. Gerald had used somebody else's name, on the back of a bill or promissory note, and now the ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... would permit himself the luxury of showing her that her affection for him was wholly returned, without in any way committing himself to a definite engagement. He would, in short, ask her to accept a sort of promissory note on his affections, to be presented at any time after ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... notification. The right honourable baronet went on to consider the principle of value. What, he asked, was a pound, and what the engagement to pay a pound? He contended that the word meant more than an abstraction—that it meant a certain weight of precious metal; and the engagement of a maker of a promissory note was to pay on demand a definite amount of that metal and fineness. A real measure of value in this just sense had existed till the year 1797, when bank paper became issuable without being convertible into metal. For some years the subject attracted little attention, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... began to lose hope at last, and went about in so moody a fashion that a shadow seemed to have fallen upon the cottage. By tacit consent the treasure had long been a forbidden subject, and even when the news of Selina's promissory note reached Dialstone Lane he had refused to discuss it. It had nothing to do with him, he said, and he washed his hands of it—a conclusion highly satisfactory to Miss Vickers, who had feared that ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... coat, buff waistcoat, cambric ruffles, and silver-gilt buckles. But, alas! the bunch of seals—topaz, agate, and cornelian—no longer buoyed the deep-anchored watch. The money due his father had been promptly paid, through the agency of a three-months' promissory note, and thus the most momentous result of the robbery was overcome. This security for the future, however, scarcely consoled him for the painful privation of the present. Without the watch, Alfred Barton felt that much of his ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... his fortunes. On his dismissal from office, Roshun-od Dowlah was put into gaol, and not released till he paid twenty-two lacs of rupees into the Treasury. He had given eight lacs, in our Government promissory notes, to his wife, and three to his son, and he took some lacs with him to Cawnpore, all made during the five years he held office. Sobhan Allee Khan, his deputy, was made to pay into the Treasury ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... am," he retorted briskly, "and I've got more conceit than a barber's cat for daring to do it. Wait a minute and I'll give you my promissory note. I'm paying seven per cent for bank accommodations lately. That rate of interest ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... nervous about first appearances," she said. "However, I think Ronald's got plenty of confidence, and, as he says, it's not much of a case: it isn't even a jury case. I'm afraid you'll find it dull, Mr. Spargo—it's only something about a promissory note." ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... very little from the deeply and genuinely serious. One of them he taught free, taking promissory notes for the lessons. But he held on to them because when they finally did teach themselves to sing and arrived at fame, his would be part of the glory—and glory meant more and more pupils of the paying kinds. His large income came from the other two kinds of pupils, the larger part of it ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... the public, and without interest, all the money they may want, to the amount of a competent circulation, by merely issuing their own promissory notes of proper denominations for the larger purposes of circulation, but not for the small. Leave that door open for the entrance of metallic money. . . . Providence seems, indeed, by a special dispensation, to have put down for us, without a struggle, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... her gardening the next morning, as good as her word. It was the last of March, and an anticipation of April, according to the fashion the months have of sending promissory notes in advance of them; and this year the spring was early. The sun was up, but not much more, when Lois, with her spade and rake and garden line, opened the little door in the garden fence and shut it after her. Then she was alone with the spring. The garden was quite a roomy place, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... English goods, and the increase of promissory notes, alarmed several persons connected with trade. An advertisement, signed John Dunn, offered a quantity of shares in the Derwent on liberal terms. At a meeting of the shareholders, Mr. Dunn maintained that the liabilities of the community were dangerous, and twenty times greater ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... remembered and ran down to the study, and pulled out a sheaf of bills and promissory notes, and renewals thereof, making a very ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Promissory Notes . . . as also all Contracts and Agreements whatsoever which shall be drawn and circulated or issued, or made and entered into, and shall be therein expressed . . . to be payable in Currency, Current Money, Spanish Dollars . . . shall be . . ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... every few Minutes to slap you in the Face with a Hundred Dollar Bill. You can take it from me, Dearie, I would jump the whole Game were it not for the Children. I have put in my whole Life trying to realize something on a Promissory Note that was a Bloomer to begin with. He has kidded me along ever since the World's Fair at Chicago, feeding me on Canned Stuff and showing me pictures of Electric Runabouts and Country Places on Long Island. In the Meantime ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... it. Call it the Gophers, then. Capital stock just eight hundred and eighty dollars, fully subscribed. I suppose it is fully subscribed, gentlemen?" He scrutinized us closely. "Ah, Frank! I see we'll have to take your promissory note. But the artistic certificates are not yet home from the engravers. Take your time. Maybe ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... in return promissory notes drawn on birch bark and signed with the figure of an otter, and it is said that all of them were afterward redeemed by ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... was prodigal, having lavished gifts upon Rodolphe and Leon; she had led a life of luxury and, in order to meet such expense had put her name to a number of promissory notes. She had obtained a power of attorney from her husband in the management of their common patrimony, fell in with a usurer who discounted the notes which, not being paid at the expiration of the time, were renewed under the name of a boon companion. Then came the stamped paper, the protests, ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... Thirty millions of the capital of the bank are now out, on loans and discounts, in the States on the Mississippi and its waters; ten millions of which are loaned on the discount of bills of exchange, foreign and domestic, and twenty millions on promissory notes. Now, Sir, how is it possible that this vast amount can be collected in so short a period without suffering, by any management whatever? We are to remember, that, when the collection of this debt begins, at that same time ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... realty ownership are on an exact parity from an economic standpoint. Each is evidence that I possess tangible property upon which I am paying taxes, and I emphatically object to a double dose. Exactly the same principle applies to promissory notes and bonds. A bond is nothing more nor less than a note. Suppose that I hold Illinois Central bonds to the extent of $10,000 instead of stock: The corporation has borrowed the money of me and invested it. It is paying taxes as well as interest on my property in consideration of use. As ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably into debt with the tart-woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory, engagements with the neighbouring lollipop-vendors and piemen—exhibited an early fondness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not care for music himself, but kept an orchestra for show. Lemm lived with him seven years in the capacity of orchestra conductor, and left him empty-handed. The nobleman was ruined, he intended to give him a promissory note, but in the sequel refused him even that—in short, did not pay him a farthing. He was advised to go away; but he was unwilling to return home in poverty from Russia, that great Russia which is a mine of gold for artists; he decided to remain and try his luck. For twenty ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... certificate of the sum at which he may be valued, to the owner of said slave; and the general treasurer of this state is hereby empowered and directed to give unto the said owner of the said slave, his promissory note, as treasurer, as aforesaid, for the sum of money at which he shall be valued, as aforesaid, payable on demand, with interest at the rate of six per cent. per annum; and that said notes, which shall be so given, shall be ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... 10th of February the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved in Committee 'That all promissory notes payable on demand issued by licensed Bankers in England or by the Bank of England for less than L5 shall not be issued or circulated beyond the 5th of April next.' Mr. Huskisson made an able speech in support of the proposal, showing that the inflation produced by the small note paper currency ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... attitude lost something of its correct dignity. After that the proprietor was called, and the whispered colloquy degenerated into altercation, whilst the ladies—not at all unaware of the situation—giggled amongst themselves. Finally, M. le Marquis offered a promissory ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... contract between the Chicago House Wrecking Company and the Exposition Company, which is of record, provides that the Chicago House Wrecking Company shall execute and deliver to the said Exposition Company at the time the contract is signed four promissory notes three for $100,000 each, and one for $50,000, making a total, all told including the certified check, of $450,000, and allows them six months in which ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Mardykes estate was in imminent danger. Sir Bale returned, having distributed I O Us and promissory notes in all directions about him—quite ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... that, under circumstances such as these, old maids become, like Richard III., keen-witted, fierce, bold, promissory,—if one may so use the word,—and, like inebriate clerks, no longer in ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... by exclaiming, "God save the King!" His lordship then called the attention of the jury to the law of the land; particularly to that portion relating to their present duty; and the grand jury presented me to the court, for feloniously taking a certain promissory note from the house of Israel Lewis. The King's Attorney had but one witness, and that was Lewis. He was called to the stand, permitted to relate his story, and retire without any cross-examination on the ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... when they all went to London—a time when society is in a sort of promissory state, full of hopes of dazzling delights to come, but for the present not dazzling, parliamentary, residential, a society made up of people who live in London, who are not merely gay birds of ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... so well that at the end of the conversation, in exchange for the thousand francs, he handed to the Counsellor the promissory notes for four thousand francs each, which were made payable to two farmers, who were entirely in Daumon's clutches. The young man, in addition, pledged his solemn word of honor that he would never disclose that the Counsellor had anything ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... to increase his difficulty. Offut's successors in business, two brothers named Herndon, had become discouraged, and they offered to sell out to Lincoln and an acquaintance of his named William F. Berry, on credit, taking their promissory notes in payment. Lincoln and Berry could not foresee that the town of New Salem had already lived through its best days, and was destined to dwindle and grow smaller until it almost disappeared from the face of the earth. Unduly hopeful, they accepted the offer, and also bought out, on credit, ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words, which are just as much used for idols as promissory notes are used for values. The ministers have a hard time of it without bell and book and holy water; they are dismounted men in armor since Luther cut their saddle-girths, and you can see they are quietly taking off one piece of iron ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to remember that while a running account may be collected at any time, the law cannot prevent the maker of a promissory note from selling all his belongings and leaving the country before the note ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... take a bankrupt's promissory note in lieu of told gold. It gives me small gratification, Miss Sophia very small indeed to see the bowing heads of the grain that yet my ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... covenant &c. 769; attest &c. (bear witness) 467. hold out an expectation; contract an obligation; become bound to, become sponsor for; answer for, be answerable for; secure; give security &c. 771; underwrite. adjure, administer an oath, put to one's oath, swear a witness. Adj. promising &c. v.; promissory; votive; under hand and seal, upon oath. promised &c. v.; affianced, pledged, bound; committed, compromised; in for it. Adv. as one's head shall answer for. Phr. in for a penny in for a pound; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... opening a book, when Nikolai Artemyevitch's valet came cautiously into his room and handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest. 'I hope,' he found in the note, 'that you as a man of honour will not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain promissory note which was talked of this morning. You are acquainted with my position and my rules, the insignificance of the sum in itself and the other circumstances; there are, in fine, family secrets which must be respected, and family tranquillity is something ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... taxation. In order to feed and clothe the army and pay its officers and soldiers, it was obliged to ask for money from the several states, and hardly ever got as much as was needed. It was obliged to borrow millions of dollars from France and Holland, and to issue promissory notes which soon became worthless. After the war was over it became clear that this so-called government could neither preserve order nor pay its debts, and accordingly it ceased to be respected either at home or abroad, and it became ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... &c 769; attest &c (bear witness) 467. hold out an expectation; contract an obligation; become bound to, become sponsor for; answer for, be answerable for; secure; give security &c 771; underwrite. adjure, administer an oath, put to one's oath, swear a witness. Adj. promising &c v.; promissory; votive; under hand and seal, upon oath. promised &c v.; affianced, pledged, bound; committed, compromised; in for it. Adv. as one's head shall answer for. Phr. in for a penny in for a pound; ex voto ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and promissory notes falling due on that date became automatically payable on the following day. Admission to the reviewing-stand was by card, some of which found their way into the hands of the speculators, and will shortly be the subject of a John Doe investigation by the district attorney of Middlesex ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... he; "I went to Richmond with my box of scrip and promissory notes, but I was not ill repaid. If I did not get my money, I acquired, at least, a host of distinguished acquaintances. But, Mr. Ritchie, you must ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... while the "delicate thing" shook herself saucily at his side. After he had crawled dripping ashore and wiped his eye-glasses, he engaged to sell the "delicate thing" to an Indian for one dollar and a half on a promissory note. The trade was suppressed, and he was urged to try again. A man who has held down a cane-bottom chair conscientiously for fifteen years looks askance at so fickle a thing as a canoe twenty-nine inches in the beam. They are nearly as ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... annoyed. But once more he was in dire need of some money. In Italy he had signed his name to certain documents which were now in the possession of Salvestro dei Medici, the well-known banker. These documents were "promissory notes" and they were due two months from date. Their total amount came to three hundred and forty pounds, Flemish gold. Under these circumstances, the noble knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and his proud soul. Instead, he suggested ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... this peasant's honesty. The soil has not only an integrant and actual value, it has also a potential value,—a value of the future,—which depends on our ability to make it valuable, and to employ it in our work. Destroy a bill of exchange, a promissory note, an annuity deed,—as a paper you destroy almost no value at all; but with this paper you destroy your title, and, in losing your title, you deprive yourself of your goods. Destroy the land, or, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable—they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness—and when retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... should exist. The Territorial government was weak; to enforce order it was necessary for the Governor to make requisition on the fort for troops.[529] The jail at Fort Snelling was also utilized for the punishment of many undesirable characters always drawn to a new region. James Higby who sold a promissory note which had already been paid, and Jacob Shipler who was arrested on a charge of assault and battery were both given terms in the jail at the fort. John R. McGregor, who became angry and threw his wife against a cooking stove, was separated from his help-meet for a period of three months ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... hooded figure brought him to a halt just at the corner, where the little road below the Blaines' wall joined the wider road that led down-hill. Business is business, and time a serious matter only for those who sign promissory notes; he ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... and then wandered about on the downs full of hope and thankfulness, seeking all I could to plant deep in my mind the long-rooted truths of resurrection, that they might be not only ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath conquered Death ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... place themselves in the situation of the half-famished cotter, surrounded by a wretched family clamorous for food, and judge what his feelings must be when he sees the tenth part of the produce of his potato garden exposed at harvest time to public CANT, or if he have given a promissory note for the payment of a certain sum of money to compensate for such tithe when it becomes due, to hear the heart-rending cries of his offspring clinging round him, and lamenting for the milk of which they are deprived by the cows being driven to the pound to be sold to discharge ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... that pleasure exclusively to yourself. In that case you may send a picture to the rummage sale of the Red Cross at — Fifth avenue. Mrs. Follett Drayton is in charge. Send any framed picture and between the picture and the backing insert five of Uncle Sam's promissory notes of the usual denomination. Put your name on the picture for purposes ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... France, they were not always ready to sacrifice their interests to her. They would not supply Ramesay's force with provisions in exchange for his promissory notes, but demanded hard cash. [Footnote: Ibid.] This he had not to give, and was near being compelled to abandon his position in consequence. At the same time, in consideration of specie payment, the inhabitants brought ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... a height of knowledge which don't carry much information with it,' replied Mr. Kornicker. 'I sued him on a promissory note. What he made it for, or how Rust got it, or any thing more about him, or it, or Harson, or Rust, I ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... interchanged between scheming individuals, are liberally discounted at the banks, which become so many mints to coin words into cash; and as the supply of words is inexhaustible, it may readily be supposed what a vast amount of promissory capital is soon in circulation. Every one now talks in thousands; nothing is heard but gigantic operations in trade, great purchases and sales of real property, and immense sums made at every transfer. All, to be sure, as yet exists in ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... it then existed, nourished every species of crime: tattered promissory notes, of small amount and doubtful parentage, fluttered about the colony: dumps, struck out from dollars, were imitated by a coin prepared without requiring much mechanical ingenuity; and plate, stolen by bushrangers and burglars, was ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... the teacher smarathya the circumstance that terms denoting the individual soul are used to denote Brahman is a mark enabling us to infer that the promissory declaration according to which through the knowledge of one thing everything is known is well established. If the individual soul were not identical with Brahman in so far as it is the effect of Brahman, then the knowledge of the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... to the banks against unsecured promissory notes of foreign States is the first sign that the Government here wishes to put ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... his Majesty's decree, under severe penalties, so that the royal officials, clerks, and guards who register and appraise the merchandise of the Sangleys in their vessels, shall not take the goods for themselves, or pick out the best, or give promissory notes. This is very unjust ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... attorney, that first service of notice of foreclosure would have come to me. It came to Garth instead; it had to come to him. By his simply ignoring the matter, failing to appear in court or to be represented by a lawyer when the matter was called, he allowed the Bar L-M to be sold to pay the promissory note of twenty-five thousand given by Arthur to your father. Your father bought in the property himself. It is now his and not mine; it would become absolutely his, with clear title, if I should allow this year of redemption to pass without paying ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... was skilful in his trade (after the manner of his nation, which in breeches and metaphysics—in inexpressibles and incomprehensibles—may instruct all Europe), but too fond of his pleasure. Some promissory notes of his had found their way into Hayes's hands, and had given him the means not only of providing Master Billings with a cheap apprenticeship, and a cheap partnership afterwards; but would empower him, in one or two years after the young ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... came that evening to sit on the porch in the soft warmth that autumn had borrowed from summers-to-come, with promissory note to pay it back when lovers were through with it. Miss Theodosia met ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... be sufficient for that purpose, it is impossible for reason alone to determine. CIVIL LAWS here supply the place of the natural CODE, and assign different terms for prescription, according to the different UTILITIES, proposed by the legislator. Bills of exchange and promissory notes, by the laws of most countries, prescribe sooner than bonds, and mortgages, and contracts ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... looked for a partisan in Carleton; doubly bitter, for Carleton goes one better than Murray. For years the French government had issued paper money in Quebec. After the conquest seventeen millions of these worthless government promissory notes were outstanding in the hands of the habitants. Knowing that the paper money is to be redeemed by the English government, English jobbers are now busy buying up the paper among the poor French at fifteen cents on the dollar. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... who smiled genially and said: "Duty's duty, Pilkinton. If you was to fail in your duty as a public officer, folks might git to think you wasn't the sort of citizen that could be trusted. Might even affect sich things as credit and promissory notes." ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... being lined and warmed and drowsed—and there was more to come! What had the holy folk to give you compared with the comfort of a good dinner? Could they make you dream, and see life rosy for a little? No, they could only give you promissory notes which never would be cashed. A man had nothing but his pluck—they only tried to undermine it, and make him squeal for help. He could see his precious doctor throwing up his hands: "Port after ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 1781, chiefly for the purpose of assistance to himself in the difficult office of superintendent of finance. That was the first experiment in America in the issue of a currency redeemable at sight—a promissory note payable on demand—which had been the practice of the bank of England for nearly a hundred years. It was a system so much superior to the colonial loan-office plans, and the scheme upon which the continental paper-money had been issued ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Quarter Sessions. This court has jurisdiction in all matters of contract from 40s. to L15; and, when the amount is liquidated or ascertained, either by the act of the parties, or the nature of the transaction, to L40. Thus a promissory note under L40 can be sued in this court before the district judge, who is usually a barrister: and an open or unsettled account under L15, but none above that amount; also, all matters of wrong, or, as the lawyers please to call it, tort, respecting personal ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... having to put up a single cent; at the most they might ask you for five thousand or ten thousand dollars. But they know you're good for any engagement you may make; they'd be tickled to death to have your promissory note. I suggest that you get in touch with a sound brokerage house in this city—one that is a member of the New York Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade—and sell, for my account, two hundred and fifty thousand bushels of December ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... taking this step, Burns thought that he was carrying out a legal, as well as a moral, obligation, we know not. The interpreters of the law now assert that the original marriage in 1786 had never been dissolved, and that the destruction of the promissory lines, and the temporary disownment of him by Jean and her family, could not in any way invalidate it. Indeed after all that had happened, for Burns to have deserted Jean, and married another, even if he legally could have ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... he had had enough of the player, who always lost and never paid—never could pay, so Mr. Cohen probably believed. He therefore at that hour refused to accept Mr. John Ashley's 'promissory' stakes any longer. A very few heated words ensued, quickly checked by the management, who are ever on the alert to avoid ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy |
