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




Fourpence   Listen
Fourpence

noun
1.
A former English silver coin worth four pennies.  Synonym: groat.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Fourpence" Quotes from Famous Books



... the muscles are strong and wiry. Peter was for getting some of his own sheep out here, and a few good horses. And Toffy had schemes for an immense shipping industry, which would carry cattle at so low a rate to England that beef might be sold there at fourpence a pound, which, as he remarked, would benefit all classes. Ross gave his two years' experience with a weight of wisdom. He had a share in the estancia, and having tried to live in London in a Government office on two hundred a year, found ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... nothing. It's too ridiculous. I had just scraped up four shillings for this little outing; and it cost me one-and-fourpence to get here. Well, Dubedat asked me to lend him half-a-crown to tip the chambermaid of the room his wife left her wraps in, and for the cloakroom. He said he only wanted it for five minutes, as she had his purse. So of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... dearth that is in many places of the realm of poultry, it is ordained that the price of a young capon shall not pass threepence, and of an old fourpence, of a hen twopence, of a pullet a penny, of a ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... fashionably dressed, and coming at the rate of one every twelve months. Having thus, by a liberal system of feeding and clothing, rendered him strong for labor, you must work him from dark to dark—pay him fourpence a day for three quarters of the year, with permission to beg or starve for the remainder. When in health task him beyond his strength, and when sick neglect him—for there is nothing so beautiful as kindness in a landlord, and gratitude ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... same and make good roof, replacing all defective work with new where necessary; only in his haste to come to his impressive climax—"the work to be done to the satisfaction of yourself or your Surveyor for the sum of L99.8.4 (ninety-nine pounds eight shillings and fourpence),"—he spelt this last word nesseracy. He called on the landlord, the gentleman of independent means at Brixton, with this document in his pocket and a strong conviction of his own honesty in his face, and pointed out that what he said all along had come ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... borough.' Scotland returned forty-five members and Cornwall forty-four members to Parliament! The reformers also demanded the abolition of the 'taxes on knowledge,' by which was meant the stamp duty of fourpence on every copy of a newspaper, a duty of threepence on every pound of paper, and a heavy tax upon advertisements. The new Poor Laws aroused bitter discontent. Instead of receiving payment of money for relief of poverty, as had formerly been the case, the poor ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... a list of objects of barter:—A looking-glass in a tin case, value, in Tripoli, thirty paras, purchases here two sahs of ghaseb. A common print handkerchief, value fourpence English money, only purchases three or four sahs ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... Dunstable's got just as much over at Day's. So you see the Trust is a jolly big show. Here are your two pages. That looks just like your scrawl, doesn't it? These would be fourpence in the ordinary way, but you can have 'em for nothing ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... beg to inform you that, under the administration of a paternal aunt who died intestate, your client is entitled to two thousand five hundred pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents.; one thousand five hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three per Cents., Reduced; one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred pounds, Bank Stock; three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock, besides other securities, making up about ten thousand pounds, which we are prepared ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... each trip of the boat. Just before the termination of the voyage a man goes round with a bugle turned upwards to receive the eleemosynary pence and half-pence of the passengers. I gave one of them, the other day, a silver fourpence, which fell into the vitals of the instrument, and compelled the man to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sufficient to attract competitors and yet on a scale provoking no one to grumble at the amount of subscribed money lost to the village. A free public tea was suggested. I resisted this largesse; and we compromised on 'No Charge for Bona-fide Schoolchildren'—whatever that might mean—and 'Fourpence a head for Adults.' ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... business was pressing. The first man I talked to on Dover pier was a Customs House official. You might have thought sorrow would have made him indifferent to a mere matter of forty-eight cigars. Instead of which, he appeared quite pleased when he found them. He demanded three-and-fourpence, and chuckled when he got it. On Dover platform a little girl laughed because a lady dropped a handbox on a dog; but then children are always callous—or, perhaps, she had not heard ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

... help," answered Hans. "Indeed, that is the only comfort of her—that she asks questions so fast you can scarce slide in an answer. She was free enough with her information as well— told me her name, and how many children she had, and that she paid three-and-fourpence the yard ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... now there are 40 men and 6 cars. The expense of 800 men and 50 cars would be about L13,000 a year, but these men will spend nothing. A car costs a scudo, and a man four carlins, a day. (A scudo is ten carlins, a carlin fourpence.) The Royal Family seldom or never come here; the Duke of Calabria has been once. The Amphitheatre, though not to be compared in size or beauty with the Coliseum, is much more perfect. The road here is beautiful, particularly about La Cava. I walked up to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... much oftener a poor countryman, who has wandered to London in search of employment, and, finding nothing else, has spent his last fourpence in the purchase of a besom, with which he hopes to earn a crust. Here his want of experience in town is very much against him. You may know him instantly from the old habitue of the streets: he plants himself in the very thick and throng of the most crowded thoroughfare—the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... Drury Lane. Anybody will show it to you. It is near the Strand, and you may know it by seeing no company whatever at any of the doors. Cab fares are eightpence a mile. A mile London measure is half a Dorsetshire mile, recollect. Porter is twopence per pint; what is called stout is fourpence. The Zoological Gardens are in the Regent's Park, and the price of admission is one shilling. Of the streets, I would recommend you to see Regent Street and the Quadrant, Bond Street, Piccadilly, Oxford Street, and Cheapside. I think ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... "Give us fourpence to buy a pound of golden syrup for tea, please, Padre," suddenly said Briar. "If there is a thing I love, it is golden syrup. A pound between us will give us quite ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... poet, and sends you his tragedy on John Huss; or he is a writer on mythological subjects, and is anxious to weary you with a theory that Jack the Giant Killer was Julius Caesar. At the worst, you can toss his gift into the waste-paper basket, or sell it for fourpence three-farthings, or set it on your bookshelf so as to keep the damp away from books of which you are not the Involuntary Bailee, but the unhappy purchaser. The case becomes truly black, as we have said, when the uncalled-for tribute has to be returned. Then it is sure to ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... can be found, and also that the trade in coal did not begin in Europe for some time afterward. And there really seems nothing improbable in the story that at a time when a kitten big enough to kill mice brought fourpence in England, such an animal, taken to a rat-infested, catless country, might not be sold for a sum large enough to start an enterprising youth in trade. Surely, the beginnings of some of our own railroad kings and financiers may as well ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... an air as I could muster, I offered him a beshlik—fourpence halfpenny. He thereupon became abusive and withdrew—in the end, hurriedly, because Rashid approached him ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... can be made in their appearance at a very small cost and with a very little extra trouble if we always have in the house a little preserved angelica and a few dried cherries. As these cost about a shilling or one and fourpence per pound, and even a quarter of a pound is sufficient to ornament two or three dozen dishes, the extra ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... Lord Burleigh "a case of Hallamshire whittells, being such fruites as his pore cuntrey affordeth with fame throughout the realme." Fuller afterwards speaks of the Sheffield knives as "for common use of the country people," and he cites an instance of a knave who cozened him out of fourpence for one when it was only ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... and the baby lived there. He left the child at a nursery every morning, fetching it away each evening on his return from work, and for that he paid fourpence a day, which included a limited supply of milk. How he managed to keep himself and more than half keep the child on the remaining two shillings I cannot say. I only know that he did it, and that not a soul ever helped ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... gave me some hopes of succeeding in time, though he observed that my performance was very deficient in the quaintness of expression that pleases the multitude: however, to encourage me, he ventured the expense of printing and paper, and, if I remember aright, my share of the sale amounted to fourpence halfpenny. ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... windows, the light coming in through the door and through the chinks between the timbers. The Senate met in one of the rooms of the town tavern. The backwoods legislators lodged at this tavern or at some other, at the cost of fourpence a day, the board being a shilling for the man, and sixpence for his horse, if the horse only ate hay; a half pint of liquor or a gallon of oats cost sixpence. [Footnote: Ramsey, 334.] Life was very rude and simple; no luxuries, and only the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... which involves want of necessaries. The offered consolation, indeed, came rather awkwardly from the elegant country gentleman to the poor scholar who had just known by experience what it was to live upon fourpence-halfpenny a day. Johnson resolutely looks facts in the face, and calls ugly things by their right names. Men, he tells us over and over again, are wretched, and there is no use in denying it. This doctrine appears in his familiar talk, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... with ready money, they turn factors, and take threepence or fourpence in the shilling brokerage. And here let me take notice of one very heinous abuse, not to say petty felony, which is practised in most of the great families about town, which is, when the tradesman gives the house-keeper or other commanding servant a penny or twopence in the shilling, ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe

... 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 ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... food and with rest) they had made me feel the fatigue of so long a night. I rose up, therefore, determined to find some place where I could sleep. I asked this friend of mine how much there was to pay, and he said 'fourpence'. Then we exchanged ritual salutations, and I took the road. I did not leave the town or village without noticing one extraordinary thing at the far end of it, which was that, whereas most places in France are ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... paper duty, which was removed in 1862. First came the abolition of the most oppressive portion of Lord Castlereagh's Six Acts, next the advertisement duties, and finally the stamp. The high price of the stamp, fourpence, kept the better journals at sevenpence, but a numerous class of unstamped journals at twopence sprang up in defiance of the law, and were allowed for a time to go on unchecked. They had a large circulation, one of them, The London Dispatch, attaining to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... persistent inquiry and demand, and such as he had found were not the fittest, and therefore were unlikely to survive. You would have supposed that in a district that never ceases to grumble about bad trade and unemployment, thousands of boys would have been delighted to buy the Daily at fourpence a dozen and sell it at sixpence. But ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... eightpence, if you're so anxious to know," Mrs. Crowl resumed. "And there ain't a woman in the Mile End Road as 'ud a-done it cheaper, with bread at fourpence threefarden a quartern and landlords clamburin' for rent every Monday morning almost afore the sun's up and folks draggin' and slidderin' on till their shoes is only fit to throw after brides and Christmas comin' and sevenpence a week ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... fell on a Thursday, 'Bias called upon Mrs Bosenna with his rent and with the pleasing announcement that in a week or so he proposed to pay her a further sum of seven pounds eight shillings and fourpence; this being the ascertained half-year's dividend earned by the hundred pounds she ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Boy-Bishop, who was to have for his supper a penny roll, a small cup of mild cider, two or three pennyworths of meat, and a pennyworth of cheese or butter. He might ask not more than six of his friends to dine with him at the Canon's room, and their dinner was to cost not more than fourpence a head. He was not to run about the streets in his episcopal gloves, and he was obliged to attend choir and school the next ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... double handfuls of money that he had tossed in the air like a child, to see it glitter. Sixteen hundred dollars from a lucky whaling cruise; seven hundred dollars, his share for salvaging the derelict steamer Shore Ditch; sixty-six pounds eight and fourpence that the passengers had raised for him when he saved the girl at Durban—that, and a gold medal, and a fancy certificate with the British and American flags intertwined. That medal! It had gone for ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... a cheap trip to Folkestone. I spent sevenpence on dropping pennies into silly automatic machines and peepshows of rowdy girls having a jolly time. I spent a penny on the lift and fourpence on refreshments. That cleaned me out. The rest of the time I was so miserable that I was glad to get back to the office. Now ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... wid you! Didn't I see you give Mr. Durfy a letther for fourpence this minit, and a bigger letther than this? and now you want me to pay elevenpence for this scrap of a thing. Do you think ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... before me at the present moment the envelope of an old letter. It was received from England in 1863 by my father. The three stamps on it show a value of 34 cents—one shilling, one fourpence and one penny. It is only a single letter, and a small one at that. In fact, if it were any larger it would have had more postage on it. Just think of the difference between now and then. The first postmaster I remember in Victoria was J. D'ewes. Something went ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... Stamped Edition, with which Gentlemen may be supplied regularly by giving their Orders direct to the Publisher, MR. GEORGE BELL, 186. Fleet Street (accompanied by a Post Office Order), is One pound and Fourpence for a twelve-month, or Ten shillings and Two ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various

... a family whose study was to make four-pence do as much as others made fourpence halfpenny do,' ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell

... took Cassis by the arm and led him to the excited group surrounding Ezra P. Hipps. The American's head and shoulders appeared above the crowd. He was offering Estuary Rails at fourpence three farthings. Catching sight of Nugent Cassis he broke into a grin, shook ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... their two extremes—say Pure Mathematics with Acting. Science as a rule deals with things, Art with man's thought and emotion about things. In Pure Mathematics things are rarefied into ideas, numbers, concepts, but still farther and farther away from the individual man. Two and two make four, and fourpence is not ninepence (or at any rate four is not nine) whether Alcibiades or Cleon keep the tally. In Acting on the other hand almost everything depends on personal interpretation—on the gesture, the walk, the gaze, the tone of a Siddons, the ruse smile ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... cases of Tynn and xiiij cases of wood, wt two Starrs and the image of the Trinite on the topp of the sayed orgayns." In 1570 the "payer of balowes" were sold, and in 1583 the pipes, "wayeng eleven score and thirteen pounds, went for fourpence half-farthing the pound." In 1632 a new one was obtained but its life was short, for in 1641 the Puritan party caused it to be sold "for the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... grudge, which, however, he never allowed any one but himself to fan into flame. His pique was natural. Garrick had been his pupil at Edial, near Lichfield; they had come up to town together with an easy united fortune of fourpence—"current coin o' the realm." Garrick soon had the world at his feet and garnered golden grain. Johnson became famous too, but remained poor and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... there is a church dedicated to the virgin martyr St. Tecla, where the falling sickness is, or used to be, cured by being transferred to a fowl. The patient first washed his limbs in a sacred well hard by, dropped fourpence into it as an offering, walked thrice round the well, and thrice repeated the Lord's prayer. Then the fowl, which was a cock or a hen according as the patient was a man or a woman, was put into a basket and carried round first the well and afterwards the church. Next the sufferer entered ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... another, and a bottle of milk at another, and finally, for dessert, they got a pound of raisins and almonds mixed together, which they chanced to see in a fruiterer's window. The cost of the whole, the boys found, when they came to foot up the account, was only two shillings and fourpence. ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott

... to extract the jaw-teeth of the head, the poor thing squealed so, that the bells rang, and the South End watchmen hollered fire for about an hour! This "old gentleman" has a way of sweating the crosses from a smooth fourpence, and makes them look so bran new, that he passes them for ten cent pieces! One case of his benevolence is "worthy of all praise;" he recently gave away to a poor Irishman's family, a bunch of cobwebs, and an old hat he had worn since the battle of Bunker Hill; upon these bounties ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... into the shop. There, dropping me upon a stool, he bade me eat. Pride of race prompted me politely to decline, but his language became so awful that in fear and trembling I obeyed. So soon as I was finished—it cost him two and fourpence, I remember—we walked down to the docks together, and he told me stories of the sea and land that made my blood run cold. Altogether, in the course of three weeks or a month, we met about half a dozen times, when much the same programme was gone ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... strong man will ever find work, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. But to make-out a victory, in those circumstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganisation, Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of those Three men rose to victory. That ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... minutes, and bowing clumsily at the same time. His fur cap had been previously removed and thrown on the ground. This was indeed a grand salaam, a ceremonious acknowledgment of a gift of something less than fourpence! ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... himself into the fire or a well, or in the path of a tiger, is he without blame?'" Such apathy seems almost unaccountable to English minds; but it may find a parallel in Lady Chatterton's story of the Irish parents, [7] who, after refusing to spend fourpence in nourishment for a dying child, came in deep grief after its death to their employer, to solicit an advance of thirty shillings to wake the corpse! Perhaps some ingenious systematists might hence deduce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... after her). Don't thank me, ma'am; thank the act of parleyment! Rum, fourpence; two penny pieces and a Willi'm-and-Mary tizzy makes a shilling; and a spade half-guinea is eleven and six (re-enter MRS. DRAKE with supper, pipe, etc.); and a blessed majesty George the First crown-piece makes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... suggests that you should go to our Shelter. You cannot, of course, go to the Casual Ward of the Workhouse as long as you have any money in your possession. You come along to one of our Shelters. On entering you pay fourpence, and are free of the establishment for the night. You can come in early or late. The company begins to assemble about five o'clock in the afternoon. In the women's Shelter you find that many come much earlier and sit sewing, reading ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... the approbation of his masters, and, greatly to his surprise, was in a short time promoted to the seat of honour at the head of the class. He observed that when Master Elliot entered he laid down fourpence, which he found was the fee for his admission into the school. This sum was given to a certain poor scholar, who was engaged to attend to the schoolrooms, swept them out, and also kept the seats and desks clean— John Tobin was ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... to a town, his lord could have him brought back to his old home. Any tax, too, fell more heavily on the poor than the rich. One tax, especially, called the poll tax, which was made when Richard was sixteen, vexed them greatly. Everyone above fifteen years old had to pay fourpence, and the collectors were often very rude and insolent. A man named Wat Tyler, in Kent, was so angry with a rude collector as to strike him dead. All the villagers came together with sticks, scythes, and flails; and Wat Tyler told them they would go to London, and tell the king how his poor ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thirteen and fourpence. I'm hoping to avoid the fourpence in discounts. Total spare cash, twenty pounds, and nearly three months to go before I touch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various

... could not help expostulating with him on this article, which seemed to be so falsely stated with regard to the number; when his questions drew on an explanation, by which he found he had incurred the penalty of three shillings and fourpence for every time he chanced to meet the conscientious attorney, either in the park, the coffee-house, or the street, provided they had exchanged the common salutation; and he had good reason to believe the solicitor had ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... of the penny papers, while a single sheet, and as such was regarded as a newspaper marvel; but when it came out—which it did soon after the Standard—as a double sheet the size of the Times, published at fourpence, for a penny, it created quite a sensation. Here was a penny paper, containing not only the same amount of telegraphic and general information as the other high-priced papers—their price being then fourpence—but also evidently written, in its leading article department, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... coast that they may not run unawares into the hands of an enemy. I found everything much dearer than when I was here in 1780. Sheep cost four Spanish dollars each and were so small that it answered better to purchase the mutton for the ship's daily use at fourpence ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... eranambatra into ten vary-venty, each of which last is about the weight of a plump grain of rice. Four weights, marked with a government stamp, are used in weighing the money. These weights are equal, respectively, to about a half-a-dollar, a quarter-dollar, sixpence, and fourpence. Other amounts are obtained by varying these in the opposite scales and adding grains of rice. But all this forms no difficulty in Madagascar. Like most Easterns the natives there dearly love to haggle and prolong a bargain—as our travellers found to their amusement that day; for not only were the ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... suffice to make up enough of change: therefore, after two gallons left behind him in libations as aforesaid, and two more bottled up for a drink-offering at home, Roger was contented to be owed seven and fourpence; a debt never likely to be liquidated. Much speculation this afforded to the gossips; and when the treater's back was turned, they touched their foreheads, for the man was clearly crazed, and they winked to each other with a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... speak of my affairs like that," I said, as if I were quite stupid; "I mean to pay fourpence for every twopence—both to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... think it only fair to say that certain issues of The Daily Mail and Evening News last week, whose amazing editorial organisations were so freely and disinterestedly engaged in overcoming colossal obstacles in order to give information about the approaching revolution, were worth anything from fourpence to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... divinity, and was frequently in Edinburgh attending the lectures at Divinity Hall. Wonderfully cheap was the living in those days, when, at the Edinburgh ordinaries, a good dinner could be had for fourpence, small beer included. John Witherspoon, years after a member of the American Congress, then a frank, generous young fellow, was a companion of Carlyle at this period, and they often went fishing together in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... from the press of Henry Wykes, bears the date 1567, and is in the duodecimo form; it produces with tolerable exactness the text of Berthelet, and has twenty-six new stories. Besides these, at least one other impression formerly existed: for, in 1576-7, Henry Bynneman paid to the Stationers' Company fourpence "and a copie" for "a booke entituled mery tales, wittye questions, and quycke answers."[2] No copy of Bynneman's edition has hitherto been discovered; a copy of that of 1567 was in the Harleian library. At the sale of the White-Knights collection ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... you what you do, Bill. You go to a hotel, and I'll beat it down to a lodging-house on Duke Street.... Juke Street!... Remember how I ran onto Pete on the street? He told me you could get a cot down there for fourpence." ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... "So you confess that you are a vile scoundrel!" he exclaimed. "You confess that you purchased an old promissory note of mine for fourpence, and then sent a man here to seize my goods! Ah! you'd like to trample the poor under foot, would you! Very well. I have you now, and I'll settle your account! Take that!" And so saying, he dealt his supposed creditor a terrible blow with his clinched fist that ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... Queen Anne for the "king's evil," as scrofula used to be called. Our honored friend The Dictator will tell you that the brother of one of his Andover schoolmates was taken to one of these gifted persons, who touched him, and hung a small bright silver coin, either a "fourpence ha'penny" or a "ninepence," about his neck, which, strange to say, after being worn a certain time, became tarnished, and finally black,—a proof of the poisonous matters which had become eliminated from the system and gathered upon the coin. I remember that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and equal?" Oh, NEBUCHADNEZZAR! how can they talk sech tommy-rot? Might as well say as Fiz and Four-Arf should be equally fourpence a pot. Nice hidea, but taint so, that's the wust on it. There's where these dreamers go wrong. Ought's nothink, and that as is, is; all the rest isn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... the other lady to her friend, handing the man a shilling, "I owe you sixpence, you give me fourpence and I'll ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... "I forgot fourpence on the counter," muttered the chemist, pulling the quilt over him. "Put it away in the ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... truth, he did, and that on a first-rate horse too. Having appointed Murtough Murphy his law-agent, he often rode over to the town to talk with him, and as Murtough could have some fun and thirteen and fourpence also per visit, he was always glad to see his "noble friend." The high road did not suit Andy's notion of things; he preferred the variety, shortness, and diversion of going across the country on these occasions; ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... that stew looked satisfying; that's where it is, you see—a man can come here and get a thoroughly nutritious and filling meal for the trifling sum of fourpence—and yet you meet people who tell you Vegetarianism is a mere passing fad! It's a force that's making itself increasingly felt—you must be conscious of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various

... days. His table manners are no longer regulated by the customs and etiquette of his fellows, but by the rules of the University. His lapses from good morals are no longer to be visited with penalties imposed by his own society; if he gambles or practises with sword and buckler, he is to pay fourpence; if he sins with his tongue, or shouts or makes melody when others wish to study or sleep, or brings to table an unsheathed knife, or speaks English, or goes into the town or the fields unaccompanied by a fellow-student, he is fined a farthing; if he ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... Attorney B., coolly drawing out a bill and receipt. "So, Neighbour Grace, you must pay me three and fourpence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... the most part honest, and therefore many a weary soul turns out of the streets where men and women swindle into this place where the thoughts of honest men are piled on shelves, or put out in the open air in boxes, marked twopence, fourpence, sixpence.... A real market this! A fair without vanity. There are pictures to look at in the windows, mementoes of dead artists and writers, and there is a constant stream of people, the oddest mixture to be found anywhere on earth.... Everybody ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... six and fourpence, two postage stamps, a small key, and her aunt's return half ticket ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... Dick,' says 'ee, 'which comes exactly to four shillins and fourpence a year,' says 'ee. 'An' they ain't paupers; Dick! If they wos paupers, it wouldn't be a big sum for 'em to give out o' any pocket-money they might chance to git from their pauper friends, but they're well-dressed people, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... of leg beef," said she, "and then we'll have fourpence left for bread and tea; no, take the other penny, too, and get half a pound of pieces at the butcher's for twopence and a twopenny tin of condensed milk, that's fourpence, and a three ha'penny loaf and one ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... entertainer opened his writing portfolio and began to scribble off note after note, with such rapidity that the amazed pauper at his elbow fairly lost his appetite, and, after a vain attempt to recover it, suggested that it might be as well for him to retire to one of the palatial fourpence-a-night residences in Dean and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... time-table showed that the price of Pauline Roper's ticket would be two pounds nine shillings and fourpence halfpenny. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea in silence. Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to pay my reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out of my pocket. The expected ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... that was in all England; and provision made for it of 'fourpence halfpenny a day.' Yet a giant, invincible soul; a true man's. One remembers always that story of the shoes at Oxford; the rough, seamy-faced, raw-boned College Servitor stalking about, in winter season, with his shoes worn out; how the charitable Gentleman ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... appears from official statements mentioned in McCulloch's "Commercial Dictionary," that the number imported from France alone amounts to about 60,000,000 a year; and supposing them on an average to cost fourpence a dozen, it follows that we pay our continental neighbours above L83,000 ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... conferred no benefit on the unfortunate author. What the booksellers would not do for him, Hogg resolved to do for himself; he originated a periodical, which he designated "The Spy," acting as his own publisher. The first number of this publication—a quarto weekly sheet, price fourpence—was issued on the first of September 1810. With varied popularity, this paper existed during the space of a year; and owing to the perseverance of the conductor might have subsisted a longer period, but for a certain ruggedness which occasionally disfigured it. As a whole, being ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... them one is obliged to go and sell some tommy, and much one gets for it. Bacon at ninepence a-pound at Diggs', which you may get at a huckster's for sixpence, and therefore the huckster can't be expected to give you more than fourpence halfpenny, by which token the tommy in our field just cuts our ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... readers a synopsis is attached," said Suzanne. "They're mostly small items; for instance, Madame Pillby—she's the little dressmaker round the corner, you know; though why an all-British spinster should call herself 'Madame' I can't imagine—five-and-fourpence-ha'penny." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various

... always came back singing after she had met and spoken to him. And then you talk about a prudent and sensible husband! I don't want Wenna to marry a watchful, mean, old, stocking-darning cripple, who will creep about the house all day and peer into cupboards, and give her fourpence-halfpenny a week to live on. I want her to marry a man—one that is strong enough to protect her. And I tell you, mother—I've said it before, and I say it again—she shall not marry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... complaint,' etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Last time she paid her visit when Midas had his Easter holidays, and one day, seeing mother quite exhausted by her efforts at entertainment, he made the brilliant proposal that he should take Miss Biggs off her hands for the sum of fourpence an hour. Mother agreed with enthusiasm, and Midas made quite a fortune in the next fortnight, with equal satisfaction to all concerned. In the morning he took Miss Biggs out walking to see the sights, and gave her his advice in the purchase of new ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... fourpence-halfpenny," she said at last, "and to-morrow is rent day. Rent will be eight shillings; that leaves me one-and-fourpence-half penny for food. Ef I give you all my money, Miss, how am I to pay rent? And how are the children to have ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... will find that he breaks your fall materially. In the event of your contemplating an offer of eightpence, on no account make the tender, or show the money, until you are safely on the pavement. It is very bad policy attempting to save the fourpence. You are very much in the power of a cabman, and he considers it a kind of fee not to do you any wilful damage. Any instruction, however, in the art of getting out of a cab, is wholly unnecessary if you are going any distance, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... tin mug. It was neither so valuable nor so handsome as the silver mug with dragon handles given me by my Indian godfather, but it was a novelty. When I looked closer, however, I found that it was marked, in plain figures, fourpence, which at that time was beyond my means; so I walked to the door, that I might solace the third period by looking out into the street. As I looked, there came down the hill a fine, large, sleek donkey, led by an old man-servant, and having on ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... discharged of the three farthings per pound which had been paid at its first importation, and then exported without further trouble; that the portion destined for home consumption should, in presence of the warehouse-keeper, be delivered to the purchaser, upon his paying the inland duty of fourpence per pound weight, to the proper officer appointed to receive it; by which means the merchant would be eased of the inconvenience of paying the duty upon importation, or of granting bonds and finding sureties for the payment, before ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... lots of scorn, "Fourpence!!"—just like that. Then he said the money was to go to buy things for the Indian troops, and what would they think of fourpence? Old Jones minimus said sixpence when he got his pocket-money on Saturday; then the Head came out to see what the row was about. When Tommy Brown ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various

... fourpence!" said the strange voice, speaking again, and this time it seemed to come from out of ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... Mrs. BARTHWICK's cook gave me a little bit of bacon. I'm going to make a stew. [She prepares for cooking.] There's fourteen shillings owing for rent, James, and of course I 've only got two and fourpence. They'll be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... up to that, she added, she could have all the work she had time for. She gave the little girl two pennies—two real pennies, the first money Hannah had ever earned. With a head spinning with triumph, she calculated that at that rate she could earn fourpence a day! ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... 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 ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... would not take his shield and do battle for the King should pay enough to hire one who would. The scutage was assessed at two marks. Later, the assessment varied. The mark was two thirds of a pound of silver by weight, or thirteen shillings and fourpence ($3.20). Reckoned in modern money, the tax was probably at least twenty times ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... visitors, flowers are to be had for the asking; on the market-place an enormous bouquet of tuberoses, violets, carnations, myrtle, priced at two or three francs, the price in Paris being twenty. Fruit also I found cheap, figs fourpence a dozen, and other kinds in proportion. This market is the great sight of Nice, and seen on a cloudless day—indeed it would be difficult to see it on any other—is a glory of colour of which it is impossible to give ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... or women or citizens of the City of London," the attendance of the clerks was limited to the number asked for by the friends of the deceased. No person was to receive more than eight-pence. The beadle might charge fourpence for the use of the hearse cloth. An extra charge of fourpence could be made if the clerks were wanted both in the afternoon and in the forenoon for the sermon or other service. The bearers might have twopence more than the usual wage. Each clerk was to have his ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... for a moment at the door, surveying the court, then walked up to a party of boys, and laid his hand on the shoulder of one, holding a silver fourpence to him. "Anderson Junior," said he, "there's your money. I am not going to let Stoneborough School be turned into a gin palace. I give you notice, it is not to be. Now you are not to bully May junior for telling me. He did not, I ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... sixpence. Four sixpences it were in all, besides six-and-eightpence as we bargained at first, and three-and-fourpence parchment. There! that's what I call a will; witnessed according to law, and all. Master Thurstan will be prettily taken in when I die, and he finds all his extra wage left back to him. But it will teach him it's not so easy as he thinks ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... again: "Strawberries! fourpence a pottle!" Thought gets dry in the brain; Ink gets dry in ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... only fair to say that the custom of 'shouting,' as it is called, is going—if it has not gone—out of fashion amongst the better classes in the capital cities. Beer, or more frequently spirits, form the favourite 'nobbler,' the price of which varies from fourpence to eightpence in Sydney and Adelaide according to the drink. In Melbourne all drinks are sixpence. There is a current story—which I know to be true—of two well-known colonials, who, on landing from the P. and 0. steamer at Southampton, immediately ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... It is extraordinary to the eyes of the thriftless English, who are never so happy as when they are overpaying Italian and other caterers in their own country, to notice how long these wiser folk will occupy a table on an expenditure of fourpence. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... walls, with no one to speak to. He determined to go home immediately after his work and take the child for a tram-ride. Even his dinner beer tasted bitter to him to-day, and when he left his work and turned his steps homewards he still had fourpence of his precious sixpence left, wherewith to ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh

... morning after this conversation with Alaric, Charley left his lodgings with a heavy heart, and wended his way towards Mecklenburg Square. At the corner of Davies Street he got an omnibus, which for fourpence took him to one of the little alleys near Gray's Inn, and there he got down, and threading the well- known locality, through Bedford Place and across Theobald's Road, soon found himself at the door of his generous patron. Oh! how he hated the house; how he hated the blear-eyed, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... descended three steps from the court into which he had been directed, and pushed open the swing door, behind which Emil Sachs announced his desire to supply the world with dinners at eightpence and vin ordinaire at fourpence the ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... with salt, she causes the salt to precipitate to the bottom, by setting the scummings in a warm oven. Where hogs are not much in use, and especially by the seaside, the coarser animal-oils will come very cheap. A pound of common grease may be procured for fourpence, and about six pounds of grease will dip a pound of rushes, and one pound of rushes may be bought for one shilling; so that a pound of rushes medicated and ready for use, will cost three shillings. If men that keep bees will mix a little wax with the grease, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... Oney saltee, a penny Uno soldo. Dooey saltee, twopence Dui soldi. Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi. Quarterer saltee, fourpence Quattro soldi. Chinker saltee, fivepence Cinque soldi. Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi. Say oney saltee, or setter Sette soldi. saltee, sevenpence Say dooee saltee, or otter Otto soldi. saltee, eightpence Say tray saltee, or nobba saltee, Nove ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... nap after supper. We played for about an hour and a half, by the end of which time George had won fourpence - George always is lucky at cards - and Harris and I had lost ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... feature of which is the extraordinarily low rates at which periodical literature may be transmitted. A magazine which may be sent to any place in the United States for from an eighth of a penny to a farthing, according to its weight, will cost for postage in England from two-pence-halfpenny to fourpence. It is not the mere difference in cost of the postage to the subscriber that counts, but the low American rate has permitted the adoption by the publishers of a system impossible to English magazine-makers, a system which ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... many a strange waif he came to know; many strange things he heard, and saw some that were abominable. It was to one of these last that he owed his deliverance from the Domain. For some time the rain had been merciless; one night after another he had been obliged to squander fourpence on a bed and reduce his board to the remaining eightpence: and he sat one morning near the Macquarrie Street entrance, hungry, for he had gone without breakfast, and wet, as he had already been for several days, when the cries of an animal in distress attracted his attention. Some ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... miles higher than the moon as naught nix naught, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over. Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the lot? Two shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eightpence, sixpence, fourpence. Twopence? Who said twopence? The gentleman in the scarecrow's hat? I am ashamed of the gentleman in the scarecrow's hat. I really am ashamed of him for his want of public spirit. Now I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come! I'll throw you in a working model of a old woman that was married to ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens

... Baruch Emanuel's shop, and papered its outside walls with moral pictorial posters, headed, "Where have you been to, Thomas Brown?" "Mike and his moke," and so on. Here, single-bedded cabins could be had as low as fourpence a night. From the journals in a tobacconist's window Esther gathered that the reading-public had increased, for there were importations from New York, both in jargon and in pure Hebrew, and from a large poster in Yiddish and English, announcing a public meeting, she learned ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... now, that we should have hour talk hover a pint of hot coffee? There's a heatin-house where the young man have took down the shutters and is dusting away in a manner as his real appetizing. I has fourpence in my pocket. You wouldn't mind my treating yer, ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... ones. His head was full of learning, but his pockets were empty. How he struggled through distress and difficulty during his first years in London the reader can learn from his "Life." He bedded and boarded for fourpence-halfpenny a day, and when too poor to pay for a bed, he wandered with Savage whole nights in the streets.[1] He struggled on manfully, never whining at his lot, but trying to make ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... set by Maurice and Sterling failed to win public favor. The crisis came about the middle of 1830 when Charles Wentworth Dilke became "supreme editor," enlisted Lamb, George Darley, Barry Cornwall and others on his staff, and reduced the price of the Athenaeum from eightpence to fourpence. The apparent folly of reducing the price and increasing the expenses did not lead to the generally prophesied collapse; this first experiment in modern methods resulted in the rapid growth of the Athenaeum's ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... commander, student, prisoner, and diplomatist, who had associated with all sorts of persons, from kings to alchemists and cooks, had learnt resourcefulness. But he was never too hard put to it perhaps, seeing that "if he had not fourpence, wherever he came he would find respect and credit." "No man knew better how to abound, and to be abased, and either ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... reasons which lead me to regard the Americans as a leisurely people rather than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with which they submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the barber. In England, one grudges five minutes for a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence; in America one can hardly escape in twenty-five minutes, and one pays (with the executioner's tip)[G] from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge would be by no means excessive if one wanted or enjoyed all the endless ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... therefore, considering the plenty of the cows and the scarcity of the money, yonder foolish cow seemeth unto me, in my conscience, worth not past a groat, if she be worth so much. Now then, her calf is not so much as she, by half. And therefore, since the cow is in my conscience worth but fourpence, my conscience cannot serve me, for sin of my soul, to appraise her calf above twopence. And so pass they not sixpence between them both. And therefore may I well eat them twain at this one meal and break not my penance ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... "Seymour Michael is one of the biggest rascals on God's earth. I would not trust him with fourpence round the corner." ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... as soon as possible, to be sold as manure for plowed land, wheat, barley, &c. Under this head, also, the dead cats are comprised. They are generally the perquisites of the women searchers. Dealers come to the wharf, or dust-field, every evening; they give sixpence for a white cat, fourpence for a colored cat, and for a black one according to her quality. The "hard-ware" includes all broken pottery pans, crockery, earthenware, oyster-shells, &c., which are ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... length, earned, in this way, quite a little sum of money. It was nearly all in cents; but then there was one fourpence which a lady gave him for a four-wheeled wagon that he made. He kept this money in a corner of his drawer, and, at last, there was quite a ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott

... shilling; two custards, sixpence each, two shillings; a bottle of ginger-beer, threepence, two and threepence; one raspberry cream, sixpence, two and ninepence; three gooseberry tarts, threepence, three shillings; two strawberry tarts, three and twopence; two raspberry ditto, three and fourpence; four cheesecakes, three and eightpence; two Bath buns, four shillings; and one lemon ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... and muddy. The season of unemployment set in, and I used to sit at home out of work for three days at a stretch, or did various little jobs, not in the painting line. For instance, I wheeled earth, earning about fourpence a day by it. Dr. Blagovo had gone away to Petersburg. My sister had given up coming to see me. Radish was laid up at home ill, expecting death from day ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... you many happy returns of the day, my dear child!" he went on, addressing the smiling little girl, who had run to meet him. "Allow me to give you a birthday-present. It's a second-hand pincushion, my dear. And it only cost fourpence-halfpenny!" ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... never so much as the flick of a coat-tail seen. Those are the sort of men I'm thinking of, not the bricklayer out of work, who smashes a window and gets ten years for breaking open a cheesemonger's till with nine and fourpence ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome



Words linked to "Fourpence" :   coin



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com