"Threepenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... milkpails for Aunt Anna, and even such holy kill-times as going to church regularly and watching Neilus when he is passing round the plate after 'Let your light so shine before men'—light to his practical intellect being clearly a synonym for silver in the shape of threepenny bits! ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... had to the use of wampum as a substitute,[22] and corn, cattle, and other commodities were made legal tenders in payment of debts.[23] In 1652 a mint was established at Boston, and a law was passed providing for the coinage of all bullion, plate, and Spanish coin into "twelve-penny, sixpenny, and threepenny pieces." The master of the mint was John Hull, and the shillings coined by him were called "Pine-Tree Shillings," because they bore on one side the ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... all the more to reflect that if he had put it by, it would have gone far towards the purchase of an 'Orient' carpet in brilliant colours. Then there had been other expenses of his youth: he had purchased threepenny and even fourpenny cigars, the latter rarely, but the former frequently, sometimes singly, and sometimes in bundles of twelve for half-a-crown. Once a meerschaum pipe had haunted him for six weeks; the tobacconist had drawn it out of a drawer with some air of secrecy as he was buying a packet ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... When you cherish the soothing idea That somebody else pays the bill! Old wine is a pleasure that's hollow When at your own table you sit, For you're thinking each mouthful you swallow Has cost you, has cost you a threepenny-bit! So bumpers—aye, ever so many— And then, if you will, many more! This wine doesn't cost us a penny, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... time two shillings did not go far among twenty-four people. But though presents were out of the question, one could get twenty-four really beautiful Christmas cards for the money, and if some of them were ha'penny ones, then one could afford real snow on a threepenny one for the most important uncle, meaning by "most important," perhaps (but I have forgotten now), the one most likely to be generous in return. Of the fun of choosing those twenty-four cards I need not now speak, nor of the best method of seeing to it that somebody ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... questioned Tom concerning his parents; and when Tom informed his majesty they were very poor people, the king led him into his treasury, and told him he should pay his friends a visit, and take with him as much money as he could carry. Tom procured a little purse, and putting a threepenny piece into it, with much labour and difficulty got it upon his back; and after travelling two days and nights, arrived at his father's house. His mother met him at the door, almost tired to death, having in forty-eight hours travelled almost ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... said the Bishop, "was a sort of cosmopolitan—he tried to teach a little of everything. He was a good-hearted man. He loved to give threepenny-pieces to the boys who pleased him. I well remember one day during prayers—we were all assembled in the big hall—and the head master was reading them. Suddenly the door opened and a big boy, very nervous and conscience-stricken, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of local topography and Roman roads, and all sorts of truck, and I find it better to leave it at that. Tiresome to go into long explanations. In fact," added Puffin in a burst of confidence, "the study I've done on Roman roads these last six months wouldn't cover a threepenny piece." ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... a threepenny packet to every ten gallons of hot water used; let the clothes soak all night in the solution; in the morning give them a slight boil, adding a little more Patent Borax, if they be very greasy or dirty. By this ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the box round, Mr. Ketchmaid watching in helpless indignation as the customers, discarding their pipes, thanked Mr. Wiggett warmly, and helped themselves to a threepenny cigar apiece. Mr. Clark was so particular that he spoilt at least two by undue pinching before he could ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... would snip it off so nicely as you cannot imagine. Like a true goldsmith he kept all your holidays; there was not one wanting in his calendar; when ready money was scarce, he would set them a-telling a thousand pounds in sixpences, groats, and threepenny-pieces. It would have done your heart good to have seen him charge through an army of lawyers, attorneys, clerks, and tradesmen; sometimes with sword in hand, at other times nuzzling like an eel in the mud. When a fellow stuck like a bur, that ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... easiest possible disguises, Mr. Narkom. A wig, a stick of grease-paint, a threepenny twist of crepe hair, and there you are! No, I do not believe that the man is a Cingalese at all; and, far from his having any connection with what you were pleased to term just now a change of front on the part of the Buddhists ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... who had nowhere particular to sleep on the eve of Christmas Day, could scarcely be expected to be "merry." All the time he was talking about Watts's he was fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, and I know he was feeling if he had there a threepenny-bit. But if he had, it didn't come immediately handy, and before he got hold of it the thought of the sufficient provision which awaited me at Watts's afforded vicarious satisfaction to his charitable feelings, and he was content with bidding me a kindly good-night, as he pointed ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... two threepenny bits and five and twenty farthings—the whole show! Ha! May the Lord Jesus never remember them or ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... and wickedness, and I do beg forgiveness of all those whom I may have injured unintentionally or otherwise; and at the same time do pardon all those who may have done me wrong, even to John Jones, the turnpike man, who unjustly made me pay the threepenny toll twice over on Easter last, when I went up to ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... or Connemara, meet a procession composed of Patsy McCann the Tinker and the Ass and Mary with Finaun the Archangel, Caeltia the Seraph, Art the Cherub, Eileen ni Cooley (a savage lady of easy morals), Billy the Music, the Seraph Cuchulain and Brien O'Brien, a lost soul who had a threepenny-bit stolen on him by Cuchulain that same, you would guess there's only one living man could be behind it—to wit JAMES STEPHENS, Crock-of-Gold STEPHENS. Fantastic things indeed happen in The Demi-Gods (MACMILLAN), which is a kind of inspired nightmare, a sort of Chestertonian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... inlets of Sydney Harbour. The place is now a populous marine suburb with terraces of shoddy, jerry-built atrocities crowding closely around many beautiful houses with spacious grounds surrounded by handsome trees. Threepenny steamers, packed with people, run every half-hour from Sydney, and the once beautiful dell at the head of the bay, into which a crystal stream of water ran, is as squalid and detestable as a Twickenham lane in summer, when the path ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... and felt hastily in her pocket for a threepenny-bit with a hole in it, which she had meant to hang on a ribbon round her neck, for luck. She hovered round the unfortunate plum-owner, and said, "We have had some of your plums; we thought it wasn't stealing, but now I am not so sure. So here's some ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... pale the child is! And how eloquently the blue eyes invite a purchaser, for it is only with looks that the wares are extolled! I still see them both before me! The threepenny pieces they get are to help their starving mother to heat the attic room in those winter days which, cold though they are, may warm the heart. Looking at them our mother told us how hunger hurts, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nothing. Neither Time, which is Mudie, nor Eternity, which is Fame, will know you, and your verses remain till doom in an ironical editio princeps, which not even the foolish bookman shall rescue from the threepenny box. It is very unlikely that you will escape as did Narcissus, for ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... They would go to immense trouble to work off any small swindle in the sporting line. In short the general consensus of opinion was that they were a very "fly" crowd at Mulligan's, and if you went there you wanted to "keep your eyes skinned" or they'd "have" you over a threepenny-bit. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... at once, Dick's jacket pockets stuffed full of provisions and the threepenny bit jingling merrily against Paddy's half-crown. But there was no chance of earning more that day, and they had to sleep in the loose hay at the foot of a hay rick, belonging to a ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... collection Sunday to-day, boys," he said. "Have you all got your threepenny-bits ready? I like to see my boys give cheerfully and liberally of their abundance. If any boy does not happen to have any small change, I can accommodate him if he comes ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... boholawn (ragweed), sez I to meself there was apt to be somebody lookin' after him. For bedad it seems to me mostwhiles the littler a thing is the more people there'll be consaitin' they can't get on widout it; and that's lucky, belike, or else it might aisy get lost entirely, like a threepenny bit rowled away into a crack. But if you come to considher," Con said, hurrying on lest his allusion to the coin should be construed as a hint that he thought of payment for his services, "most people's lookin' out ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... to support the "stinginess" that the vicar has determined in Mr. Marrapit's character. Mr. Fletcher, for example, has lugubriously shown what has to be put up with when in the service of a man who had every inch of the grounds searched because a threepenny bit had been dropped. "It's 'ard—damn 'ard," Mr Fletcher said on that occasion. "I'm a gardener, I am; not a treasure-'unter." Murmurs of sympathy chorused endorsement ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... was a plate as well; and, being a plate, he remembered vaguely something about a collection. The association of ideas worked itself out in a remote and dreamlike way; he felt in his pocket for a shilling, a sixpence, or a threepenny bit, and wondered for a second where the big, dark building was to which all this belonged. Something was changed, it seemed. His clothes, this dancing sunshine, joy and laughter. The world was new. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Druids' wisdom, the healing power of herbs. So she came another day, and brought some herbs, and sorted them out on a table, and said: 'This is Dwareen (knapweed); and what you have to do with this, is to put it down with other herbs, and with a bit of threepenny sugar, and to boil it, and to drink it, for pains in the bones; and don't be afraid but it will cure you. Sure the Lord put it in ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... There were a number of tin check plates, marked respectively 3d. and 6d. each, which enabled the person to whom they were given to obtain an equivalent in refreshment of any kind at the Sir John Falstaff. The threepenny checks were for the workmen, and the sixpenny ones for the tradesmen. The chief housemaid had the distribution of these checks to persons employed in the house, the head-gardener to those engaged in the gardens, and the coachman to those ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... met Pepperpot, at a stone less than weight for age, with a baby on his back, at Esher last year, the betting being then 20 to 7 against the Harkaway filly, he showed what his true form was. Pepperpot, of course, is a rank impostor, but a careful man might do worse than put a spare threepenny-bit on Toothpick, who always runs better in a snow-storm. As for Dutchman, everybody knows he's not a flyer, and only a man whose brains are made of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... Gentleman dives vaguely in a pocket, and eventually produces a threepenny bit, which he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... Government were driven to pledging their own private credit in order to obtain the smallest article necessary to its continuance. In fact, to such a pass did things come that when the country was annexed a single threepenny bit (which had doubtless been overlooked) was found in the Treasury chest, together with acknowledgments of debts to the extent ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard |
