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Half-penny   Listen
noun
half-penny, halfpenny  n.  (pl. half-pence or half-pennies)  An English coin of the value of half a penny, no longer minted; also, the value of half a penny.
Synonyms: ha'penny.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Half-penny" Quotes from Famous Books



... exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was twopence a week for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon one occasion I had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which I had destined for the purpose of a red herring in the morning, but so hungry as to be hardly able to endure life, when I pulled off my clothes at night, I found that I had lost my half-penny. I buried my head in the miserable ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... offers as pretty a piece of table-turning as any audience need desire. I wish I could explain how the DUKE plays with his enemies, and finally—but no, I said I wouldn't, and I will keep my word. Two little carpings, however. Surely it is wrong to speak of "catch half-penny" journalism in the time of WELLINGTON. My impression is that the journalists of those days caught at least fourpence by their wares. And I confess to an emotion of disappointment when the heroine bounced up at the court-martial and said that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... owned by the principal advertisers. This is the direction in which journalistic property is now tending, and at any juncture steps might be taken, in one or other of the great centres of newspaper enterprise, which would precipitate the ultimate movement. Hardly any one who buys a half-penny paper to-day imagines for a moment that there is any actual profit ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... Senior Wrangler,' said Claude, 'will you tell me where is the difference between a half-penny ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stones. Mifflin was writing busily in his notebook on the other side of the bridge. I thought to myself, "Bless the lad, he's jotting down some picturesque notes of something that has struck his romantic eye." And just then he spoke—"Four and eleven pence half-penny so far to-day!" ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... I told him, "for a quarter of a million. Mr. Heathcote shot himself. I am told that there is a probable dividend of sixpence-half-penny in the pound to ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... school-time, for which he had been often rebuked. One day, having particularly pleased the master, the latter, who was eating apples himself, and who would now and then with great ostentation present a boy with some half-penny token of his mansuetude, called out to his favorite of the moment: "Le Grice, here is an apple for you." Le Grice, who felt his dignity hurt as a Grecian, but was more pleased at having this opportunity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... settled down to keeping the mediocre paintings against which his protests were loudest. He who thundered against the degeneracy of journalism accepted the patronage of the titled promoter of the half-penny press. Architects carried their respectability to the professional chair it adorns, and illustrators rested in the comfortable berths provided by Punch. Friendships cooled, and friends who never missed a Thursday look the ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... he laid it on with a thick brush, wherever the grease of hypocrisy could show off best. But work as he would, the 'shares' in his journalistic concerns were steadily going down,—none of his numerous magazines or 'half-penny rags,' paid so well as they had hitherto done; while the one paper which had lately been so prominently used by the King, continued to prosper, the public having now learned to accept with avidity and eagerness the brilliant articles which bore the signature of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... is not my intention to spend time in discussing these insignificant half-penny intellects. I have merely alluded to them in order to bring to your mind the fact that to many persons the idea of "sense" and that of "senses" is very closely allied. They consider all knowledge and wisdom as "sense;" and all such sense as being derived directly from their ordinary five senses. ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... drunk brackish water and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with a tedious existence; but upon his return he can sell a pound of his tea for a half-penny less than the English merchant, and his purpose ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... I stopped singing—when I left the theatre for ever I had not in my purse one half-penny. Roland gave me fifty dollars; that came from Elizabeth—that was all I had. When it was gone, Roland was employed by Mr. Lanhearne. I ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... "Contention" only by a particle or a conjunction. By this "capricious arithmetic," only six lines in the scenes with Jack Cade in the "Second Part of Henry VI." are credited to Shakspere, and we are asked to believe that the man who was to fix the price of bread at "seven half-penny loaves for a penny," to give the "three-hooped pot ten hoops," to "make it felony to drink small beer," was portrayed by Marlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or Lilly, or Kyd, or Nash, or somebody else ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... attempted to work. I had no relation living, and I never kept a friend above a week when I was able to joke. Thus I was forced to beg my bread, and a sorry trade I have found it, Mr. Harley. I told all my misfortunes truly, but they were seldom believed; and the few who gave me a half-penny as they passed, did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people do n't care to give alms without some security for their money,—such as a wooden leg, or a withered arm, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... moon does shine as bright as day, Leave your supper, and leave your sleep, And meet your play-fellows in the street; Come with a whoop, and come with a call, And come with a good will, or not at all. Up the ladder and down the wall, A half-penny roll will serve us all. You'll find milk and I'll find flour, And we'll have pudding in ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various

... last one of the children observed to the following effect:—"You should have taken it to master, because he would know if it was bad better than you." This was a convincing argument, and to my great delight, the boy replied—"How much did the song cost?" The reply was, "A half-penny." "Here, then, take it," says the child, "I had one given me to-day; so now remember I have paid you for it, but if you bring any more songs to school I will tell master." This seemed to give general satisfaction ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... of smuggled brandy; in which, besides it's intrinsic excellence, every glass would derive an additional zest from the consideration that it had been the honored means of cheating government out of three pence half-penny.—With all his horror however of regular government and subordination, Mr. Dulberry was made sensible that on the present occasion he must submit to some such oppression; for, as he was wholly unsupported in his annoyance, the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... half-pence might be taken as the average rate in the United States, the number of letters would be reduced from 300,000,000 to 200,000,000 a year. There is, however, a class of letters which in the States are passed through the post-office at the rate of one half-penny a letter, whereas there is no rate of postage with us less than a penny. Taking these half-penny letters into consideration, I am disposed to regard the average rate of American postage at about five farthings, which would give the number of letters at 250,000,000. We shall at any rate be ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... and himself. Had Lecount got her smelling-bottle? Excellent creature! let her give it directly to Miss Bygrave, and let the coachman drive carefully. If the coachman shook Miss Bygrave he should not have a half-penny for himself. Mesmerism was frequently useful in these cases. Mr. Noel Vanstone's father had been the most powerful mesmerist in Europe, and Mr. Noel Vanstone was his father's son. Might he mesmerize? Might he order that infernal coachman to draw up in a shady place adapted ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... pennies, and when anyone wanted a half-penny, he chopped the silver penny in two, and if he wanted a farthing he chopped the silver penny in four, so that money was all sorts of queer shapes. But Edward the First had caused round copper half-pennies and farthings to be made, and when the Welsh prince had heard of this he had ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit

... in this world," he said, "two heaps of human happiness and misery; now if I can take but the smallest bit from one heap and add it to the other I carry a point—if, as I go home, a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something." There was even in him a strain, if not of humour, of a shrewdness which was akin to it, and expressed itself in many pithy sayings. "If two angels came ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... deplorable health forced her to live with her relatives in a distant province, received an anonymous letter specifying that M. Paul Visire, who had not a half-penny when he married her, was spending her dowry on a married woman, E— C—, that he gave this woman thirty-thousand-franc motor-cars, and pearl necklaces costing twenty-five thousand francs, and that he was going straight to dishonour and ruin. Madame Paul Visire read the letter, fell into hysterics, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... inferred that he wore that beard only to save the trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of the three on my side of the carriage, and he was absorbed in the pages of a half-penny paper—I think he was reading the police reports—which was interposed between him and the child in the corner diagonally opposite to that which ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... brandy. Mr. Benson came back with me, and Mr. Glenthorpe took the bottle from him and filled the glasses himself, telling the young gentleman that the brandy was the best in England, a relic of the old smuggling days, but far too good for scoundrels who had never paid the King's revenue one half-penny. Then when Mr. Benson had left the room he began to talk about the field again, and how anxious he was to start the excavations. That was about all I heard, sir, for shortly afterwards Mr. Glenthorpe told me to clear away the things, which took me several ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... Eternal City at the Fountain of Trevi," Edith suggested to Rafael. "I have heard that whoever wishes to return to Rome, should go to the fountain on the last evening of his visit, take a drink out of the basin with his left hand, then turn and throw a half-penny into the water over his left shoulder. I surely wish to ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... and fivepence and a half-penny," said Comus, reflectively. "It's a ridiculous sum to last me for the next three days, and I owe a card debt ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... So upon that these letters may end. I would like to have concluded by a protestation that, in making these frank statements as to the working of, and against, the Conspirators, I personally draw no pecuniary benefit of any sort, not a sovereign, not a bob, not a half-penny stamp. It is perhaps better, however, to anticipate discovery by owning up to the fact that my frankness is being paid for at so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various

... it without prejudice, it seemed quite a good proposition on paper. So on we went. The Turf Tissue was to be sold to the public at twopence a copy, a half-penny of which was to go to the seller. It was a good commission, but by giving it we hoped to attract a very large number of the newsboys who sold the evening paper, in view of the fact that by publishing the Tissue at 10 A.M. the sale ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... excellence of the music, the masses of flowers, the number of great names and well-advertised society beauties present, would subsequently provide material for long and eulogistic paragraphs in the half-penny press ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... a sufficient guerdon for a service so light. But what he has lost in substantial emolument, he has gained in morale; he is infinitely more polite and attentive than he was; he sweeps ten times as clean for a half-penny as he did for twopence or sixpence, and thanks you more heartily than was his wont in the days of yore. The truth is, that civility, as a speculation, is found to pay; and the want of it, even among the very lowest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... foreign parts of London like the noise, and give them pennies. Sometimes the man has a monkey, which always attracts the children. Other men walk about with barrows selling ice-cream; this is sold at a half-penny a time, and the children lick it out of little glasses and have no spoons: one wonders how often the glasses are washed. But that does not trouble the little street children at all; they follow the ice-cream man in throngs like ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... unexpectedly visited the Restaurant in City Road and inspected this praiseworthy effort to supply wholesome food at low prices to the poor. After walking about and speaking to many of the people, they enjoyed a "three-course dinner" costing four pence half-penny, and left amid ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... island superior as a granary to even the more productive portions of the Italian mainland. Sicily could never have revealed the marvellous fertility of the valley of the Po, where a bushel and a half of wheat could be purchased for five pence half-penny, and the same quantity of barley was sold for half this price;[205] but it was easier to get Sicilian corn to Rome by sea than to get Gallic corn to Rome by land; and the system of taxation and requisitions which had grown out ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... out to buy some vegetables in the middle of the morning she got me a half-penny journal. It was just such a one as these upon my desk, only that the copy I read was damp from the press, and these are so dry and brittle, they crack if I touch them. I have a copy of the actual issue I read ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... dotted with cottages, and bounded with undulating hills, with now and then glimpses of blue water; and as we walk down Citadel Hill, we feel half-reconciled to Halifax, its queer little streets, its quaint, mouldy old gables, its soldiers and sailors, its fogs, cabs, penny and half-penny tokens, and all its little, odd, outlandish peculiarities. Peace be with it! after all, it has a quiet charm ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... a kennel for a body, and a sink for a soul; give me my change and my gin, you scoundrel! Humph, is that all right, you Procrustes of the counter, chopping our lawful appetites down to your rascally standard of seven-pence half-penny? Why don't you take a motto, you Paynim dog? Here's one for you—'Measure for measure, and the devil to pay!' Humph, you pitiful toadstool of a trader, you have no more spirit than an empty water-bottle; ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mingled with the most exquisite philosophic calm, from believing that unconscious matter is the cause of conscious thought, that the truest human affection is nothing worthier than the love of a spoonful of nitric acid for a copper half-penny, and that annihilation is the most satisfactory end of human life. From such views both the intellect and the heart of man will recoil with well-founded disgust—his logical powers will perceive the absurdity of the argument, and his taste and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... for a franc. Later it rose to 3 francs then 5, then 9, then 15 francs. Then with a sudden leap it reached 23 francs on one day. That was the high-water mark, for it came down after that. The Times was too expensive for the likes of me. I used to content myself with the Flandres Liberale, a half-penny paper published then in Ghent and sold in Brussels for a franc or more according to the difficulty in getting it in. These papers used to be wrapped up very tight and small and smuggled into Brussels in a basket of fruit or a cart full of dirty washing. They could not of course be bought ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan

... do not see whence money is to come. We were not able to buy bread today as usual. March 20. This has been again a day of very great mercies. In the morning we met round our breakfast which the Lord had provided for us, though we had not a single penny left. The last half-penny was spent for milk. We were then still looking to Jesus for fresh supplies. We both had no doubt that the Lord would interfere. I felt it a trial that I had but little earnestness in asking the Lord, and had this not ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller

... Trinity College, Cambridge, contain more remarkable rules, which are in theory still valid, although obsolete in fact. All the scholars, it is there said, who are absent from prayers,—Bachelors excepted,—if over eighteen years of age, 'shall be fined a half-penny, but if they have not completed the year of their age above mentioned, they shall be chastised with rods in the hall on Friday.' At this chastisement all undergraduates were required to be lookers on, the Dean having the rod of punishment in his hand; and it was provided also, that whosoever should ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... thing; economy is more romantic than extravagance. Heaven knows I for one speak disinterestedly in the matter; for I cannot clearly remember saving a half-penny ever since I was born. But the thing is true; economy, properly understood, is the more poetic. Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic because it is waste. It is prosaic to throw money away, because it is prosaic to throw anything ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... charged in a London Court with striking his mother with a boot, the mother admitted that she had cut the boy's face because he had called her by an opprobrious German name. On the advice of the magistrate the family have decided to discontinue their subscription to the half-penny press. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

... d'Esgrignon family have lost their manorial rights, that therefore they have been robbed of their hoard of treasure? The young Count has a right to do as he pleases; and so long as he does not owe you a half-penny, you have no ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... happens from Crows, Black Birds, and Squirrels, by pulling up corn at this season of the year, therefore, be it enacted by this Town meeting, that ninepence as a bounty per head be given for every full-grown crow, and twopence half-penny per head for every young crow, and twopence half-penny per head for every crow blackbird, and one penny half-penny per head for every red-winged blackbird, and one penny half-penny per head for every thrush or jay bird and streaked squirrel that shall be killed, and presented to the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... sell for fattening, and women's advice is never worth twopence. Yours isn't worth even a half-penny. What are ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... spirit, was to-day absent on an errand to the town; and Edith, who loved children, stopped at the threshold to notice two or three little curly-headed prattlers, who were playing together at grotto making, an amusement which cost grandfather many a half-penny. Some dispute seemed to have arisen at the moment of their entrance between the young builders, for a good-humoured, plain-looking girl, of twelve, the nursemaid of the baby, and the care-taker of four other little ones, was trying to pacify the aggrieved. In vain—little Susy ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... walked with her at one time," said old Timothy Tangs. "But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman, and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd take her up like a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he'll make her as nesh as her mother was. But ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... an old woman among the laborers who used to sell us soup: I got a cupful every day for a half-penny, with a bit of bread in it; and might eat as much beet-root besides as I liked; not a very wholesome meal, to be sure, but God took care that it should not disagree ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... been sent to school, delving from morning till night at an employment utterly unsuited to her sex and her strength, and which I should consider dangerous to her eyesight, to earn for her poor parents a half-penny per day. Think of this, ye who talk, not always without reason, of "factory slaves" and the meagre rewards of labor in America. In any community where labor is even decently rewarded, that child should have been enabled to earn every day at least as much as her fortnight's work on the stone-heap ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... considered simply as Patoux, was lucky in his life and labours,—also that it was an easy thing to grow celery, provided God's blessing was on the soil. For the rest, he took small care; he knew that the world wagged in different ways in different climates,- -he read his half-penny journal daily, and professed to be interested in the political situation just for the fun of the thing, but in reality he thought the French Senate a pack of fools, and wondered what they meant by always talking ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... glory of the Eternal, as the love which we bear our friends and relations, our tender human sympathies, are inconsistent with that supreme homage of the heart to the Unseen, which really does but sanctify and exalt what is of earth. At a later date Dr. Russell sent me a large bundle of penny or half-penny books of devotion, of all sorts, as they are found in the booksellers' shops at Rome; and, on looking them over, I was quite astonished to find how different they were from what I had fancied, how little ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... them, but for all our aims and objects. Nothing that concerns us is so small but that His Infinite Intelligence follows it; no need of ours is so large but that His All-Ownership can meet it. "Do not two sparrows sell for a half-penny?" is our Lord's illustration on this point, "yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave. But as for you," He reasons, in order that we may understand the infinitesimal nature of God's care, "the very hairs on your ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... Not a steamer had crossed the Atlantic by steam alone when the queen came to the throne, and her accession was in the year previous to that during which Wheatstone in this country, and Morse in America, introduced electric telegraphy. We, who enjoy express trains, six-penny telegrams, half-penny post-cards, and the parcel post, can scarcely realize that we are so near the time when mail-coaches and sailing-packets were almost the only means of conveyance, and when postage was a serious burden. The greatness of the changes ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... offered us his tobacco box, from which the Reverend filled his briar. I remained true to my packet of "Queen of the Harem." I shall think twice before chucking up cig. smoking as long as "Queen of the Harem" don't go above tuppence-half-penny per ten. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... resolving to make amends, fell one-half in my demand; upon which he stared at me and told me his hands were full. I attempted others without finding employment, and was actually reduced to a very uncomfortable prospect, when I bethought myself of offering my talents to the printers of half-penny ballads and other such occasional essays, as are hawked about the streets. With this in view I applied to one of the most noted and vociferous of this tribe, who directed me to a person whom I found entertaining ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... exclaimed harshly. "I've lost her! It was only the kiddie that bound us together. She never cared a half-penny about me. I always knew I should never hold her unless we had ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... the church, places were built gallery wise, one above another, where the dean, prebends and their wives, gentlemen, and the better sort, very well heard the sermon: the rest either stood or sat in the green, upon long forms provided for them, paying a penny or half-penny a-piece, as they did at S. Paul's Cross in London. The Bishop and chancellor heard the sermons at the windows of the Bishop's palace: the pulpit had a large covering of lead over it, and a cross upon it; and there were eight or ten stairs of stone about it, upon which the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... crossed his face that his new word should be thus lightly bandied, but he went on—"Just listen here: an apple-woman who had four score of apples in her cart, sold three dozen at four pence, half-penny a dozen; two and a half dozen at five pence a dozen. At what price would she have to sell the ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... all my heart!" he said. "On this condition, Graybrooke, that every farthing of it is settled on Natalie, and on her children after her. Not a half-penny to me!" he cried magnanimously, in his brassiest tones. "Not a half-penny ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins

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

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

... beard, a shabby suit of clothes and a generally neglected person, drew at first pity, with wonder to see such a figure in a drawing-room. It was currently reported that a person in Limerick offered him a halfpenny, mistaking him for a beggar; and if not true, the story was yet well invented. This young man had taken high honours in Dublin University and had studied for the bar, where under the auspices of his eminent kinsman he had excellent prospects; but ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... never going to sell another turnip as long as he lives, if he can help it. Gradually the facts are allowed to edge in until at last, and when each man has taken off God knows how much from the value of his soul, and spent two shillings' worth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket, both parties separate courteously, only to carry out the same spiritual truth on a radish perhaps or a spool of thread, or it may be even a house and lot, or a battleship, or a war, or a rumour of ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... of discretion as there be crowns o' the sun [Note 1] in a halfpenny," said he. "Nineteen, quotha! Why, thou idle hilding [youth], I have years sixty-nine, and I never ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... they found their lamps burn so much better from being properly attended to, they began to make him some small return; and at length it became the custom with every housewife who accepted his services, to pay him a halfpenny a week during the winter months for cleaning her lamp. He never asked for it; if payment was omitted, never even hinted at it; received what was given him thankfully; and was regarded with kindness, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... commercial spirit. It isn't war with Germany that we have to fear. It's the ruin of our commerce by their great assiduity and more up-to-date methods. Now you've had a statement of policy from me for which the halfpenny Press would give me a thousand guineas ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... dressing-gown, and freshly shaved, he looked more Roman than he ever did, except in his bath. Having disposed of coffee, he was wont to read his letters, and The Morning Post, for he had always been a Tory, and could not stomach paying a halfpenny for his news. Not that there were many letters—when a man has reached the age of eighty, who should write to him, except to ask ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... boy," said Davy, "but it's aisier still to see where you are going to. Ever seen the black man on the beach at all? No? Him with the performing birds? You know—jacks and ravens and owls and such like. Well, he's been wanting something like you this long time. Wouldn't trust, but he'd give twopence-halfpenny for you—and drinks all round. You'd make his fortune as ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... treacle, and three quarters of a pound of hops. This will make twenty-five gallons of wholesome beer, which will be fit for use in a fortnight; but it is not calculated for keeping, especially in warm weather. Beer brewed in this way will not cost one halfpenny a pint. An agreeable table beer may be made ready for drinking in three or four days, consisting of treacle and water, fermented with a little yeast. Boil six or seven gallons of water, pour it on the same quantity of cold water in a cask, and a gallon of treacle. Stir them well together; ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... he said, "are always at the mercy of the halfpenny press, but you know, Brott, your appearance so often in Society lately has set men's tongues wagging. There is no harm done, but it is time to stop them. You are right to want to understand these people. You must go down amongst them. It has been slumming in Mayfair ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

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

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

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

... winds up an everlasting wire cable, and the initiated will tell you that here is the mechanism. I gave up asking questions. If it pleases Providence to make a car run up and down a slit in the ground for many miles, and if for twopence halfpenny I can ride in that car, why shall I seek the reasons of the miracle? Rather let me look out of the windows till the shops give place to thousands and thousands of little houses made of wood (to imitate stone), each house just big enough ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... countenance of great intelligence, but a slow and somewhat formal manner of speech, and a strong provincial accent,—"an' it please you, King Edward's edict ordains every Englishman to have a bow of his own height; and he who neglects the shaft on a holiday forfeiteth one halfpenny and some honour. For the rest, methinks that the citizens of London will become of more worth and potency every year; and it shall not be my fault if I do not, though but a humble headman to your worshipful mastership, help to ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... liquors is almost unknown. Tobacco too, which is all made up in the Papal factories and chiefly grown in the country, is reasonable in price, though poor in quality. In the country and the poorer parts of the city, the dearest cigar you can buy is only a baioccho, or under one halfpenny; and from this fact you may conclude what the price of the common cheap cigars is to a native. From all these causes, I feel no doubt that the cost of living for the poor is comparatively small, though of course the rate of wages is small in proportion. For ordinary unskilled labour, the day-wages, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... issue, as well as afterwards in volumes, the essays had an extensive sale. They were to be found on every breakfast-table, and so popular did they prove, that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax destroyed a number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the price of the Spectator. The vivacity and humour of the paper were visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift wrote, 'seems to have gathered new life, and to have a new ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... placed upon the ground. Each will have a square of space allotted, perhaps six feet square, and there she will sit with her merchandise in a basket or baskets before her. For each square they will pay the lessee a halfpenny for the day, which is only three hours or so. The time to go is in the morning from six till eight, for that is the busy time. Later on all the stalls will be closed, but in the early morning the market is thronged. Every householder is then buying ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... it to count over before they fall asleep, their dreams of it as they lie asleep, their hopes of seeing it again when weary winter and spring and summer have at last slipped away. They listen to stories of wrecks, and find a halfpenny for the sham sailor who trolls his ballads in the street. Now and then they look lovingly at the ships and the sand-buckets piled away in the play-cupboard. So with one abiding thought at their little hearts the long days glide away till autumn finds them again children ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

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

... of those halfpenny weeklies which—with a nerve which is the only creditable thing about them—call themselves comic. He did not see the Bishop until a shadow falling across his paper caused him to ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... Ford. This 'tis to 125 be married! this 'tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am: I will now take the lecher; he is at my house; he cannot 'scape me; 'tis impossible he should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse, nor into a pepper-box: but, lest the devil that guides 130 him should aid him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make me tame: ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... hundreds of small shops in which a miscellaneous collection of hardware and dry goods are to be found, and where many things are sold wonderfully cheap. You may buy gimlets at a penny each, white cotton thread at four balls for a halfpenny, and penknives, corkscrews, gunpowder, writing-paper, and many other articles as cheap or cheaper than you can purchase them in England. The shopkeeper is very good-natured; he will show you everything he has, and does not seem to mind if you buy ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... only studied philosophy, he has become a philosopher, and not merely a philosopher in theory but a philosopher in soul—a practising philosopher. He might stagger for a moment under the shock of a tremendous sorrow to one whom he loved, but not all the shovings of all the halfpenny editors of our commercialized journalism, not even the most contemptible desertion of his friends, could move his equilibrium by ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... was taxed one halfpenny in the pound the first year, a penny more the second, and to proceed by a certain ratio to be determined upon, always less than any other tax upon property. Such a tax would be subtracted from the interest at the time of payment, without any ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

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

... Admiral said, as he and his men were about to perish, 'My lads, the way to heaven is as short by sea as by land.' But the wounded heart in the agony of its grief is slow to realize that fact. Sailors ought to be serious men; every halfpenny they earn is won at the risk of a life. In Lowestoft, I am glad to find, many of them are. 'The Salvation Army has done 'em a deal of good,' says a decent woman, with whom I happened to scrape an acquaintance at the most attractive coffee-house I have ever seen—the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... bringing in a measure of relief. It took six months and an immense deal of speechifying to bring this measure to maturity; but at last, in 1836, the stamp duty was reduced from fourpence to one penny, being one halfpenny less than it had been originally fixed at in 1760. The Tories were the great friends of this reduction, and Lord Lyndhurst, who had been instrumental in abolishing many of the most oppressive enactments with which the measure had been clogged, wished to do away with the duty altogether. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... was the abundance of salmon caught in the Elbe, and even in the Mulde at Dessau, that it was stipulated as in Scotland, that servants should not have salmon more than twice or thrice in the week. The lowest price for salmon was then twopence halfpenny a pound. As a boy I can remember seeing the salmon in large numbers leap over a weir in the very town of Dessau, and though they had travelled for so many miles inland, the fish was very good, though not so good as Severn salmon. Game also was very cheap, and sold for not much more ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... the Wimpole Theatre reopened with the same company and gave 'Sunshine through the Clouds' and 'Only a Halfpenny'; and in 1860 for the last time with 'The Jacobite' by Planche; a scene from 'King John'; and 'Helping Hands' by Tom Taylor. The last was a beautiful play, but too refined for the ordinary theatre, and consequently did not have the run ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

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

... impossible to buy him everything that struck his fancy. Julian said no more; and when he went to bed he expressed great condolence, and said he would not ask his father for anything if he were so poor, but that he would give him all his own money (amounting to five-pence halfpenny). When he lay down, his face shone with a splendor of joy that he was able thus to make his father's affairs assume a brighter aspect. This enormous sum of money which Julian had he intended, at Christmas-time, to devote to buying a toy for baby ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... got a thundering lot to be thankful for too. To begin with, she'll wait for you, and then, if necessary, marry on twopence-halfpenny a year, and make you comfortable on it too. As far as her father is concerned, she's very devoted to him, and would never do anything to annoy him if she could possibly help it, as I easily spotted the night ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... a halfpenny to us, though they are paying twenty per cent. on the paid-up capital. He seems to have determined that the real heir should get nothing, even if there were no will. A ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... poor idiot, give me a halfpenny," said Martin, in a doleful voice, as he threw into his face and whole figure a look of helpless stupidity and awkwardness, which ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... know those little books called When were you Born? There's one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go. Bobbie's idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we found out which month hit off Mary's character. That would give us the month, and narrow it down ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... woke in the morning he found nearly all his fellow-passengers gone. One or two were waiting for dinner, nine o'clock; it was now six. He paid the landlady her demand, two pfenning, or about an English halfpenny, and he of the pitchfork demanded trinkgeld, and getting a trifle more than usual, and seeing Gerard eye a foaming milk-pail he had just brought from the cow, hoisted it up bodily to his lips. "Drink your fill, man," said he, and on Gerard offering to pay for the delicious draught, told him in broad ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... manner said to Gowing: "I don't think you quite understand me. I intended to convey that our charming host and hostess were superior to the follies of fashion, and preferred leading a simple and wholesome life to gadding about to twopenny-halfpenny tea-drinking afternoons, and ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... offices?—there are four very good rooms, a kitchen, and a garret for Laura, in Catherine-street, in the Strand; or would you like a house in the Waterloo-road?—it would be very pleasant, only there is that halfpenny toll at the bridge. The boys may go to King's College, mayn't they? Does all this read to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... not an atom from anybody's hand but mine if you please. That dog," said Jerry, pointing out the old leader of the troop, and speaking in a terrible voice, "lost a halfpenny to-day. He goes without ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... those who administer government must be answerable. It is a matter of such indifference, a matter about which the people care so very little, that were a man to be sent over Britain to offer them an exemption from it at a halfpenny a piece, very few would purchase it.' This was a specimen of that laxity of talking, which I have heard him fairly acknowledge[214]; for, surely, while the power of granting general warrants was supposed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

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

... one of my schoolmates told me, when a boy, of a seventh son of a seventh son, somewhere in Essex County, who touched for the scrofula, and who used to hang a silver fourpence halfpenny about the neck of those who came to him, which fourpence halfpenny it was solemnly affirmed became of a remarkably black color after having been some time worn, and that his own brother had been subjected to this extraordinary treatment; but ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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

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

... bare-footed child asleep, with its bundle of papers in its arms ... child-labour costs so little that it may be well employed, every evening, to sell tenpenny-worth of papers, of which the poor boy will receive a penny, or a penny halfpenny. And continually in all big cities you may see robust men tramping about who have been out of work for months, while their daughters grow pale in the overheated vapours of the workshops for dressing stuffs, and their sons are filling blacking-pots ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... molasses used in concocting it was thought indispensable to every army or garrison in the wilderness. Throughout this campaign it is repeatedly mentioned in general orders, and the soldiers are promised that they shall have as much of it as they want at a halfpenny a quart.[725] ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... it is painful and unpleasant. Do you think it would be a wise thing for a man, if he began to suspect that he was insolvent, to refuse to look into his books or to take stock, and let things drift, till there was not a halfpenny in the pound for anybody? What do you suppose his creditors would call him? They would not compliment him on either his honesty or his prudence, would they? And is it not the part of a wise man, if he begins to see that something is wrong, to get to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... said that you enter this place of amusement gratis, for, though a slight tribute of seventy-five centimes (circa seven-pence halfpenny sterling) is required for the admission of every person, yet you may take refreshment to the amount of that sum, without again putting your hand into your pocket; because the counter mark, given at the door, is received at the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... all the rest of it produce so fragrant an idea? Think of a mountain of lavender lifting itself in purple poignancy into the silver skies and filling men's nostrils with a new breath of life—a purple hill of incense. It is true that upon my few excursions of discovery on a halfpenny tram I have failed to hit the precise spot. But it must be there; some poet called it by its name. There is at least warrant enough for the solemn purple plumes (following the botanical formation of lavender) which I have required people to wear in the neighbourhood ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... enter it to my account?" than to pay your money down. First the bill has to be added up, and, strange as it may seem, these shop people appear to take hours over a simple addition sum. "Eight and elevenpence halfpenny if you please, ma'am." Of course you have not enough silver, and so are obliged to wait for change. Then someone has to be found to sign. Altogether it takes quite five minutes longer paying ready money; and think, how ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... some paltry, blackguard sprite, Condemn'd to drudgery in the night; Thou hast no work to do in the house, Nor halfpenny to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various

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

... abbot's study, and to be kept especially for his private reading; an ordinal, very beautiful to look upon, being sumptuously bound.[411] Indeed, so multis voluminibus did he bestow, that he expended more than 100l. in this way, an immense sum in those old days, when a halfpenny a day was deemed ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... family. But these men, though they mingled so freely with the labourer, were his worst enemy. The little profit they made was entirely accumulated by careful economy. They were avaricious and penurious to the last degree, and grudged every halfpenny to the labouring man. They were, and the remnant of them still are, the determined opponent of all progress. The interior of some of these cottage-farmsteads, which still exist, is almost Dutch-like in simplicity and homeliness. The fireplace is of a vast ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... was alive then—gave him a new threepenny bit each week to give to a barrel-organ man who played before the house at Bournemouth. Augustus at the age of two invariably changed it on the stairs with the butler for two pennies and two halfpennies, keeping one penny halfpenny for himself. ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... of the others met at a small coffee-house and surprised each other in the act of ordering coffee and biscuits, because neither could summon from his pockets the requisite amount—namely, eightpence halfpenny—wherewith to pay ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... it seems her desire to tumble over it, and plunge into the arms of a rough old fisherman, who is gazing quietly up at her with a sarcastic smile. He has put up a lot of fish for which she has offered "sex (six) skillings." A skilling is about equal to a halfpenny. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne

... left the room backwards, bowing to the company; nor of his punctiliousness, industry, and painstaking attention to detail—he kept accurate accounts not only of all his property by double entry but also of his daily expenditure, which he balanced to a halfpenny every evening, and his handwriting, always beautiful and legible, was more so at sixty- six than at twenty-six; nor of his patience and cheerfulness during years of anxiety when he had few to sympathize with him; nor of the strange mixture of simplicity and shrewdness that caused one who ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

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

... for instance. "Nobby" was a weedy little Cockney who became my "batman," or servant. He had complete control of my privy purse, did all my shopping, and haggled over my every halfpenny as carefully as though it were his own. Then, when he had served me for over six months, I overheard him one day recounting his prison experiences, and I discovered that he had been a pilferer and pickpocket well known in all the London police courts. In his odd moments out of jail, ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett

... take care, Hadria; that is a mood in which one may mistake any twopenny-halfpenny little luminary for ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... more brains than a halfpenny bun," he said; "no details about how and when the silver ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... never paid a halfpenny for lodging nobut [Note 1] once, and that was th' last night afore I got here. Some nights I lay in a barn upo' th' hay: but most on 'em I got took in at a farm-house, and did an hour or two's work for 'em i' th' morn to pay ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... 1712, a tax of a halfpenny was placed upon newspapers, and led to several leading journals being discontinued, a failure facetiously termed "the fall of the leaf." "The Spectator" survived the loss, but not unshaken, and the price ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... and wide. Driven to bed long before his accustomed hour, he heard raucous voices rending the night, bellowing in hideous antiphony from this side of the street and the other, as the vendors of a halfpenny paper made the most of what Providence had ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... having a fresh one made. View here, gentle reader, a wood-cut taken from the same: "This coin, which is very finely engraved, and bears a strong profile likeness of himself, is known to collectors by the name of 'THE MILLER HALFPENNY.' Mr. Miller was extremely careful into whose hands the impressions went; and they are now become so rare as to produce at sales from three to five guineas." Gentleman's Magazine; vol. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... pigs and elephants, which happened to be in fashion at the time. She also doubted the expediency of tying up two peacocks' feathers with a yellow ribbon, and hanging them in solitary glory on the wall flanked by plates of Kaga ware, at tenpence-halfpenny a-piece. Lettice's taste had been formed by her father, and was somewhat masculine in its simplicity, and she cared only for the finer kinds of art, whether in porcelain or painting. But she was fain to confess ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... interminable queues outside canteens, washing-places, and stuffy hammock-rooms in narrow alleys, and of leisure hours spent on deck among a human carpet of khaki, playing euchre, or reading the advertisement columns of ancient halfpenny papers. There was physical exercise, and a parade every day, but the chief duty was that of sentry-go, which recurred to each of us every five days, and lasted for twenty-four hours. The ship teemed with sentries. To look out ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... breaking out on his face. I thought it was the small-pox, and was so terrified that I had scarcely strength or presence of mind enough to draw up the glass. Our little boy was leaning out of the door to give a halfpenny to the child. My God! if that child had ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... all games of chance or partial skill. The supposition is, that the issue is uncertain, and that there is no positive means of ascertaining it. It is dependent on the turn of a die, on the tossing up of a halfpenny: to be fair it must be a lottery; there is no knowing but by the event; and it is this which keeps the interest alive, and works up the passion little short of madness. There is all the agitation of suspense, all the alternation ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... moreover, is not a merry man, hurrying on his rounds. He goes slowly and pessimistically, and likes to see the halfpenny ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... said, looking up, "and every twopenny-halfpenny thing out of my traveling bag; but the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... heard a rumour of apprenticeship to a tailor, he had the same night dropped from the gable window to the ground, and with three halfpence in his pocket had wandered and begged his way to Aberdeen, arriving with one halfpenny left. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... a farthing for some fish a little boy brought up from the river, and a halfpenny for some fresh-baked bread, and a part of her precious four-shilling piece for an iron fry-pan, or "spider." Laden with these, she hurried back to see how Ann Mary had endured the old doctor's roughness. She found her sister very tired, but, proudly ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... discharging the principal and interest due on the four lottery funds of the ninth and tenth years of queen Anne. By the Bank act the governors and company declared themselves willing to accept an annuity of eighty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-one pounds, seven shillings and tenpence halfpenny, or the principal of one million seven hundred and seventy-five thousand and twenty-seven pounds, seventeen shillings and tenpence halfpenny, in lieu of the present annuity, amounting to one hundred and six thousand five hundred and one pounds, thirteen shillings ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

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

... delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys dance a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure to turn it into a halfpenny. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Brigadier-General Edwards in command of the 164th Brigade. And he remained in command of that famous Brigade until the end of the war. As I studied the countenance of General Stockwell on that country road at Boisdinghem that afternoon I realized that he was no ordinary twopenny-halfpenny brigadier; but I did not then know that this was the man who, less than twelve months later, was destined to stand between Ludendorff and decisive victory in his last dramatic throw at Givenchy on the glorious ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,—buy a watermelon for a halfpenny,—split it, and scoop out the middle,—sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... bow his own height always ready for use, and to instruct his children in the art. In every township the butts were ordered to be set up, and the people were required to shoot "up and down" every Sunday and feast-day, under penalty of one halfpenny. ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... Oracle which appeared on the following, or rather the same, morning electrified Europe. Nothing like it had been known in the memory of man. For one halfpenny, the city clerk, the millionaire, and the politician were alike treated to a sensation which, since the days of Caxton, has known no parallel. The whole of the front page of the paper was devoted to a leading ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... admitted. "Seems to me I may have been a bit indiscreet in talking so much to that young reporter. I have just read his account of my interview, and he's got it pat, word by word. Now, Mr. Jacks, if you'll just invest a halfpenny in that newspaper, you don't need to ask me any questions. That young man had a kind of pleasant way with him, and I ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... silver, which after five shillings the ounce is 187 pounds, ten shillings." This would be in American money over nine and a quarter millions of dollars as the sum of the ten thousand talents. The same authority gives as the value of the penny (Roman) sevenpence half-penny, or fifteen cents, making the second debt equivalent to about fifteen dollars. Comparison with talents mentioned elsewhere may be allowable. Trench says: "How vast a sum it was we can most vividly realize to ourselves by comparing it with other sums mentioned in Scripture. In the construction ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... that for our drive through the town, half a mile beyond it and back again, we are charged the astonishingly modest fare of two-pence half-penny! ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... youth who is reading for the Bar. Why, the property is all entailed, and he will scarcely have a half-penny, for his mother brought no money to the Arnotts. Oh, this is too much! To throw up Mr. Russell for an Anthony. Are you engaged to him with your parents' consent, may I ask, and if so, why was the matter concealed from me, who would certainly have declined ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... the forest is mine," he said, crossing himself quickly, and holding out his hand. "Take the money; it's my forest. That's Ryabinin's way of doing business; he doesn't haggle over every half-penny," he added, scowling and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... shillings; in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia twenty-five; while in Canada, at the time of my visit, it was worth twenty-four and four pence. There your shilling is fifteen pence, or a quarter-dollar; while your quarter-dollar is a shilling. Your sixpence is seven pence-half-penny, or a "York shilling;" while your penny is a "copper" of indeterminate value apparently. Comparatively speaking, very little metallic money is in circulation. You receive bills marked five shillings, when, to your surprise, you can only ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... thoroughfare, with forethought of the near approach of noon I obtain some pears, and hand an ekmek-jee a coin for some bread; he passes over a tough flat cake, abundantly sufficient for my purpose, together with the change. A zaptieh, looking on, observes that the man has retained a whole half-penny for the bread, and orders him to fork over another cake; I refuse to take it up, whereupon the zaptieh fulfils his ideas of justice by ordering the ekmek-jae to give it to a ragged youth among ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... copper coinage of this realm, in which he speculated to considerable advantage. Nor did he trouble his borrowers with abstract calculations of figures, or references to ready-reckoners; his simple rule of interest being all comprised in the one golden sentence, 'two-pence for every half-penny,' which greatly simplified the accounts, and which, as a familiar precept, more easily acquired and retained in the memory than any known rule of arithmetic, cannot be too strongly recommended ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens



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