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More "Twopenny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but a few common examples, chosen from a meagre little library, a "twopenny treasure-house," but they illustrate, on a minute scale, the nature of the collector's passion,—the character of his innocent pleasures. He occasionally lights on other literary relics of a more personal character than mere first editions. A lucky ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... nibbled to death by critics, but they are weakly ones that perish thus, such only as must otherwise soon have come to a natural death. Somewhat more numerous are those which are overfed with praise, and die of the surfeit. Brisk reputations, indeed, are like bottled twopenny, or pop "they sparkle, are exhaled, and fly"—not to heaven, but to the Limbo. To live among books, is in this respect like living among the tombs; you have in them speaking remembrancers of mortality. "Behold this ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... a pound of twopenny rice, Half a pound of treacle, Stir it up and make it nice, Pop goes ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... to popular demand were the majority of our countrymen of a stomach as unbounded as that of the Dundee laborer whom a Scotch journal commemorates. This extraordinary person, having not long since eaten nine large twopenny pies at a Dundee pie-shop within fourteen and a half minutes, announced his purpose to eat on the following Monday twelve pies within twenty-five minutes; and in fact, when the delicacies were put before him in the shape of a six-pound ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... saying, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed,' and I went to Jones', where I spent 2d., and there came Thomas Cornwall, and treated me with a pint of twopenny. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... to Banbury Cross, To see what Tommy can buy; A penny white loaf, a penny white cake, And a twopenny apple pie. ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... 'History of Susanna' had been an established puppet play for more than two generations. An old copy of verses on Bartholomew Fair in the year 1665, describing the penny and twopenny puppet plays, or, as they had been called in and since Queen Elizabeth's time, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... behind all that," he said. "They are making a dupe of you, Evelyn. A parcel of miserable Leicester Square conspirators, plundering the working-man of all countries of his small savings, and humbugging him with promises of twopenny-halfpenny revolutions! That is not the sort of thing for you to mix in. It is not English, all that dagger and dark-lantern business, even if it were real; but when it is only theatrical—when they are only stage daggers—when the wretched creatures who mouth about assassination and revolution ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... this money" (I felt rebuked, but no rebuke was intended); "we can get sweeties for this" (showing a penny), "and for this" (showing another penny), "but we cannot get them for all this," and he added the halfpenny to the two pence. I suppose they had wanted a twopenny cake, or something like that. I was amused, and left them to solve the difficulty their own way, being anxious to see ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the deuce couldn't he have kept his twopenny thunderbolt in his pocket for a few hours, instead of launching it to-night and spoiling our sole a la Morny and ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... much about her this way, either, though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the boy that rode him pulled his head half off—I saw him do it—and then he won the Chester, and brought his owners a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... be how to while away that hour. Well!—there was the Twopenny Tube. At that time it was new, and an excitement. Our friend had exactly fourpence in his pocket. That would take him to anywhere and back before the Bank closed. And also he could put some of that eau-de-Cologne ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... is of the child-like, of those who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if WE should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have neither one nor ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... growing more impudent every day. It's bound to end in a blow-up. These imitation Scotch niggers in their plaid sarongs, as they call them, will be getting up a big quarrel with my men with their bounce and contempt for my well-drilled, smart detachment. Here's every common, twopenny-halfpenny Malay looking down upon my fellows, while there isn't one among my lads who isn't a better man than their Rajah. There will be a row some day; ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... paper is inform'd by persons who have made it their business to be exact in their observations on the true value of these half-pence, that any person may expect to get a quart of twopenny ale for thirty-six ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... but I'm certain you're simply cut out for it all round, and you told me the other day you were particularly anxious to play it. You promised you'd stick to me through thick and thin and not care a twopenny—I mean a straw—what Jim ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... officers and their wives and families, there was perfect order and regularity observed. The "Ranger" had the honour of conveying Colonel Morley, who commanded the regiment, and there was a Mrs and two Miss Morleys. Then there was Captain Power, Captain Gosling, and Captain Twopenny; and Lieutenants Dawson, Hickman, and Ward; with Ensigns Holt and Gonne. There was a surgeon, David Davis, who hailed from Wales; and a paymaster, who was the stoutest man on board. There were several sergeants, but only ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the paper-makers, etc., etc. We kept no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time break and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress, in spite of principle: being call'd one morning to breakfast, I found it in a China bowl, with a spoon of silver! They had been bought for ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Mr. Pearsall Smith is lost to America. The warming pans and the twopenny tube have lured him away from us. Never again will he tread on peanut shells in the smoking car or read the runes about Phoebe Snow. Chiclets and Spearmint and Walt Mason and the Toonerville Trolley and the Prince Albert ads—these mean ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... I resent it. I resent the low notes in her voice. I resent the cajolery of the supple twists of her body. I resent her putting her hands on my shoulders, and, as the twopenny-halfpenny poets say, fanning my cheek with her breath. If it had not been for that I should never have promised to go in search of her impossible husband. At any rate, it is easy to discover his whereabouts. A French bookseller has telegraphed to Paris for the Annuaire ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... in a mournful tone about his ill-health, and his death, which he feels to be approaching, yet he has occasional touches of humor that remind me of old Mourteen on the north island. To-day a grotesque twopenny doll was lying on the floor near the old woman. He picked it up and examined it as if comparing it with her. Then he held it up: 'Is it you is after bringing that thing into the world,' he said, 'woman of ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Nor was his the case of the mere literary smatterer, content if he but learn the names of things. In him, to do and to do well was even a dearer ambition than to know. Anything done well, any craft, despatch, or finish, delighted and inspired him. I remember him with a twopenny Japanese box of three drawers, so exactly fitted that, when one was driven home, the others started from their places; the whole spirit of Japan, he told me, was pictured in that box; that plain piece of carpentry was as much ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the town looking for work, I engage the workmen and pay them, borrow money at a high rate of interest, and now that I myself am a contractor, I understand how it is that one may have to waste three days racing about the town in search of tilers on account of some twopenny-halfpenny job. People are civil to me, they address me politely, and in the houses where I work, they offer me tea, and send to enquire whether I wouldn't like dinner. Children and young girls often come and look at me with curiosity ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wealth of the Armenians. The convent is spacious, but squalid. Many hopping and crawling plagues are said to attack the skins of pilgrims who sleep there. It is laid out in courts and galleries, the mouldy doors of which are decorated with twopenny pictures of favourite saints and martyrs; and so great is the shabbiness and laziness, that you might fancy yourself in a convent in Italy. Brown-clad fathers, dirty, bearded, and sallow, go gliding about the corridors. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he didn't mind if 'e did, and arter drinking each other's healths very perlite 'e ordered a couple o' twopenny smokes, and by way of showing off paid for ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... is probably settled by this time by Mr. Clay's compromise bill, so that the legitimates of Europe may stop blowing their twopenny trumpets in triumph at our disunion. The same clashing of interests in Europe would have caused twenty years of war and torrents of bloodshed; with us it has caused three or four years of wordy war and some hundreds of gallons of ink; but no necks are ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the price of the paper to twopence— Twopenny Trash* was the title of the leading article—in order to give the League an opportunity of extending the paper's radius of action as an organ of the League's principles. . . . "Every reader who has been buying one copy at ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a little, and showed him a dingy street, a gin-palace, a low French eating-house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, and glittering hardness of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best: it is first-rate. His Twopenny Post-Bag is a perfect "nest of spicery"; where the Cayenne is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet's pen. In this too, our bard resembles the bee—he has ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Often, indeed, they would give such a one a load of hollow logs "filled with dirt in the middle, and both ends plugg'd up with a piece of the same." But if the captain commanding were "true steel, an old bold blade, one of the old buccaneers, a hearty brave toss-pot, a trump, a true twopenny"—why, then, they would spend thirty or forty pounds apiece in a drinking bout aboard his ship, "carousing and firing of Guns three or four days together." They were a careless company, concerned rather in ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... the present. We propose to deal with an earlier effort of Sir G. G. Stokes. Nearly two years ago he delivered a lecture at the Finsbury Polytechnic on the Immortality of the Soul. It was reported in the Family Churchman, and reprinted after revision as a twopenny pamphlet, with the first title of "I." This is the only pointed thing about it. The lecture is about "I," or, as Sir G. G. Stokes, might say, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the gratified Brownson. "Keep close eye on Grenelli, Officer Smith, and I may be able to overlook your shortcomings of this morning. I say, Mr. Indiman, but there's a regular miracle in this 'ere business. Now, how do you suppose this blessed little twopenny box ever come through an ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... astonishment. The panels all round were covered with portraits at full length, by Vandyke; and not one of them appeared without a ridiculous tie-periwig, in the style of those that usually hang over the shops of twopenny barbers. The straight boots in which the figures had been originally painted, and the other circumstances of attitude and drapery, so inconsistent with this monstrous furniture of the head, exhibited such a ludicrous appearance, that Pickle's wonder, in a little ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... than is necessary.' And then he glanced at Henry. 'Look here, my bold buccaneer, you've got nothing to do just now, have you? You can stroll along with me a bit, and we'll see if we can buy you a twopenny toy for ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... philanthropy, you can have a funeral procession as long as you like, at the rate of about forty shillings a foot. But you'll never touch the great heart of the enlightened public of these boroughs in any other way. Do you imagine anyone cared a twopenny ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... correctly clad in light flannels, eyed the fence critically before he clambered over it. "I can be trusted to tear myself if there's a twopenny splinter anywhere," said he. "Must admit it looks rather worth while over here, though. Hello—Dorothy's over already. Who's that assisting her? The Reverend Donald—in blue overalls! It's lucky Old Dutch can't see him ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... humanity. Is it history—when did it throw a light for you on modern politics? Is it science—when did it show you order in apparent disorder, and help you to put two and two together into an inseparable four? Is it ethics— when did it influence your conduct in a twopenny-halfpenny affair between man and man? Is it a novel—when did it help you to "understand all and forgive all"? Is it poetry—when was it a magnifying glass to disclose beauty to you, or a fire to warm your cooling faith? If you can answer these questions satisfactorily, ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... children. "Their fathers," she said, "wad not have done the like of it to a lone woman." Then the decay of the village itself, which had formerly contained a set of feuars and bonnet-lairds, who, under the name of the Chirupping Club, contrived to drink twopenny, qualified with brandy or whisky, at least twice or thrice a-week, was some ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... done, and Mr. Roland Yorke's spirits recovered their elasticity. He went home to dinner, as usual. Arthur preferred to remain at his post, and get on further, sending the housekeeper's little maid out for a twopenny roll, which he ate as he wrote. He was of a remarkably conscientious nature, and thought it only fair to sacrifice a little time in case of need, in return for the great favour which had been granted him by Mr. Galloway. Many of ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... he was privately relishing life with enviable gusto. In those days he could and did: being alive was the most satisfying pastime he could imagine, or cared to, who was a thundering success in his own conceit and in fact as well; since all the world for whose regard he cared a twopenny-bit admired, respected, and esteemed him in his public status, and admired, respected, and feared him in his private capacity, and paid him ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... might dub it an extravaganza; the fact remained that I was shut up in this lonely spot with four entirely able-bodied Germans and must match wits with them over some affair that apparently was of international consequence; for if it had been a twopenny business, Herr von Blenheim, the star agent of the kaiser, would never have ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Threepence" attracted a large number of the working classes to His Majesty's Theatre in spite of the price being higher than "A Twopenny Damn." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... change of editorship was taking place in the 'New Monthly Magazine;' and that Theodore Hook was to preside in the room of Mr. Hall. I am so much too modest and too wise to expect the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post. Besides, what has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim? So, I shall leave that poem of mine to your imagination; which won't be half as troublesome to you as if I asked you to read it; begging you to be assured—to write it down in ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... "How to Manage Twopenny Eggs" is the headline of a morning paper. A good plan is to grip them firmly round the neck ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... can no more restrain him from poaching than you can restrain a fox. The most popular man in the whole company is the much-incarcerated poacher, and no disguise whatever is made of the fact. A theft of a twopenny cabbage from a neighbour would set a mark against a man for life; a mean action performed when the hob-nailed company gather in the tap-room would be remembered for years; but a sportsman who blackens his face and creeps out at night to net the squire's birds is considered ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... scowling at Georgie, and positively trotted across the Green in the direction of the news-agent's. Instantly Georgie recollected that he had seen him there already this morning before his visit to Olga, buying a new twopenny paper in a yellow cover called "Todd's News." They had had a few words of genial conversation, and what could have happened in the last two hours that made Robert merely gnash his teeth at Georgie now, and make a ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... two huge cases of common and much damaged wax dolls, barrels of rotted dried apples, and decayed pork, an ice-making plant, bales and bales of second-hand clothing—men's, women's and children's—cheap and poisonous sweets in jars, thousands of twopenny looking-glasses, penny whistles, accordions that wouldn't accord, as the cockroaches had eaten them up except the wood and metal work, school slates and pencils, and a box of Bibles and Moody and Sankey hymn-books. And the smell was something awful! ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... Take a twopenny white Loaf, and pare away the Crust, and cut thin slices of it, then dip them first in Cream, then in the yolks of Eggs well beaten, and mixed with beaten Cinamon, then fry them in Butter, and serve them in with ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... velvet gown. And to hear the people crying 'Yes, me Lard!' and 'No, me Lard!' and to read the prodigious accounts of his Lordship in the papers: it seemed as if the people and he liked to be taken in by this twopenny splendour. Twopenny magnificence, indeed, exists all over Ireland, and may be considered as the great characteristic of the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he sank a shaft, sixty feet deep, rigged up a corrugated-iron engine-house with a winding-engine, and lowered his men one at a time down the shaft, in a big bucket. The whole affair was ricketty, amateurish, and twopenny. The name Connection Meadow was forgotten within three months. Everybody knew the place as Throttle-Ha'penny. "What!" said a collier to his wife: "have we got no coal? You'd better get a bit from Throttle-Ha'penny." "Nay," replied the wife, "I'm sure ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... rehandling. And besides, I was fallen into a panic of fear. How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the market, or a halfpenny ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... best scourged, perhaps, of all, these slaves. The cat reserved for them has fifty tails in place of merely two or three. Work, you higher middle-class slave, or you shall come down to the smoking of twopenny cigars; harder yet, or you shall drink shilling claret; harder, or you shall lose your carriage and ride in a penny bus; your wife's frocks shall be of last year's fashion; your trousers shall bag at the knees; from Kensington you shall be banished to Kilburn, if the tale of your bricks run ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... speciality at a Northern munition works' canteen. We have long been used to twopenny meals, but of course much more was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... a wonderful array of cheap workboxes, needle-cases, pin-trays, ornamental pens, boxes full of bon-bons, penny whistles, twopenny flutes, a Jew's-harp or two; in short, a medley of every kind of heterogeneous presents which could be produced with the modest sum of from a penny to twopence halfpenny. Grannie fully believed in numbers. She knew from past experience that the children would rather have ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... that penny on a novelette, or the other penny on a toy for some baby, it is possible that she will concentrate her expenditure more upon physical necessities, and so become, from the employer's point of view, a more efficient person. Without the trouble of adding twopence to her wages, he has added twopenny-worth to her food. In short, she has the holy satisfaction of being worth ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... properly accommodated in the stable, agreed to pass the time, until the weather should clear up, over a bowl of rumbo, which was accordingly prepared. But the fourth, refusing to join their company, took his station at the opposite side of the chimney, and called for a pint of twopenny, with which he indulged himself apart. At a little distance, on his left hand, there was another group, consisting of the landlady, a decent widow, her two daughters, the elder of whom seemed to be about the age ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... "We won't say any more about it; and if you want a horse to ride, we'll see if we can't find you a horse to ride. I dare say you think your old father a terrible martinet, but it's all for your good, you know. You must say to yourself when you feel dissatisfied about some little twopenny-halfpenny disappointment ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... him to live economically. "We kept no idle servants," says Franklin, "our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer with ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... that we should do the thing in style, so we stopped at a shop near the Agricultural Hall and purchased some big cigars. A huge card in the window claimed for these that they were "the most satisfactory twopenny smokes in London." I smoked two of them during the evening, and never felt more satisfied—using the word in its true sense, as implying that a person has had enough of a thing, and does not desire any more of it, just then—in ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... as it's this 'ere Mr. Macaroni," began the baker, who took in a twopenny paper every day, and gave himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... to the theatres varied according to the estimation in which they were held, and were raised on special occasions. "Twopenny rooms," or galleries, were to be found at the larger and more popular theatres. In Goffe's "Careless Shepherdess," 1656, acted at the Salisbury ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... living in the midst of sticks, stones, ditches, mud, and game, and concentrated upon the 'guinea buttons,' 'black-haired Susans,' 'red cloaks,' 'scarlet hoods,' the cunning craft of the old men, the fortune-telling of the old women, the 'sparkling eyes' and 'clapping of hands,' and 'twopenny hops' of the young women, who certainly can take care of themselves, just as other un-Christianised and uncivilised human beings can. I do not profess—at any rate, not for the present—to take up the cause of the men and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... a suitable response of rustic raillery from the young fisherman. An attack was now commenced upon the car-cakes and smoked fish, and sustained with great perseverance by assistance of a bicker or two of twopenny ale and a bottle of gin. The mendicant then retired to the straw of an out-house adjoining,the children had one by one crept into their nests,the old grandmother was deposited in her flock-bed,Steenie, notwithstanding his preceding fatigue, had the gallantry to accompany ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Concert Hall, &c., will soon be opened in Snow Hill, to be conducted on temperance principles.—A series of popular Monday evening concerts was commenced in the Town Hall, Nov. 12, 1844, and was continued for nearly two years.—Twopenny weekly "Concerts for the People" were started at the Music Hall, Broad Street (now Prince of Wales' Theatre), March 25, 1847, but they did not take well.—Threepenny Saturday evening concerts in Town Hall, were begun ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... studied the Scottish dialect, so that, on his return to England, he was able to explain to Pope the peculiar merits of the poem. And the poets, Gay and Ramsay, spent much time and emptied many glasses together at a twopenny alehouse opposite Queensberry House, kept by one Janet Hall, called ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... dissatisfaction in seeing our ambassadors at Court balls and diplomatic receptions in deacons' suits of modest black, without even a medal or decoration of any kind, except perhaps that gorgeous and overpowering insignia known as the Loyal Legion button, while every little twopenny kingdom of a mile square sends a representative in a uniform as brilliant as a peony and stiff with ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... to the editor of Longman's Magazine, but that misguided person was so ill-advised as to return it, accompanied with one of these abominable lithographed forms conveying his hypocritical regrets.' Murray sent a directed envelope with a twopenny- halfpenny stamp. The paper came back for three-halfpence by book-post. 'I have serious thoughts of sueing him for the odd penny!' 'Why should people be fools enough to read my rot when they have ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... Mary," roared the gallant soldier, becoming a rich purple. "I know my duty, thank God! and I'm going to do it. When a man insults my daughter, it's my duty, as a gentleman and an officer, to give him a jolly good thrashing. When that twopenny sawbones of a doctor was rude to you, I licked him within an inch of his life. I kicked him till he begged for mercy; and if more men had the courage to take the law into their own hands, there'd be fewer damned blackguards in ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... through the deliberately formed stipulations of ecclesiastical deeds and settlements. The state of things in St. Paul's and Westminster, however, throws the money-table of York Minster far into the shade. The holinesses of St. Paul's we found converted into a twopenny, and those of Westminster into a sixpenny show. For the small sum of twopence one may be admitted, at an English provincial fair, to see the old puppet exhibition of Punch and Judy, and of Solomon in all his glory; and for the small sum ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... science cannot be too familiarly dealt with; and though too much familiarity certainly breeds contempt, we are only following the fashion of the day, in rendering science somewhat contemptible, by the strange liberties that publishers of Penny Cyclopaedias, three-halfpenny Informations, and twopenny Stores of Knowledge, are prone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... more beer, and, drawing Mr. Chase to a bench, sat down to a long and steady argument. It shook his faith in human nature to find that his friend estimated the affair as a twenty-pound job, but he was in no position to bargain. They came out smoking twopenny cigars whose strength was remarkable for their age, and before they parted Mr. Chase was pledged to the hilt to do all that he could to save Mrs. Teak from the ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... at their lowest ebb. Waldo Orpington is a frivolous little fool who chirrups at drawing-room concerts and can recognise bits from different composers without referring to the programme, but all the same he occasionally has ideas. He didn't care a twopenny fiddlestring about the Cause, but he rather enjoyed the idea of having his finger in the political pie. Also it is possible, though I should think highly improbable, that he admired Lena Dubarri. Anyhow, when Lena gave a rather ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... 'You twopenny scoundrel! What do you mean by dogging a professional man's footsteps in this way? I'll break every bone in your skin if you attempt to track me, like a beastly cur sniffing at one's pocket. Do you think a gentleman will make his way home any the better for having the scent of your blacking-bottle ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... are played, and braggadocio claptraps uttered, on every occasion, however sacred or solemn: in the face of death, as by Barbes with his hideous Indian metaphor; in the teeth of reason, as by M. Victor Hugo with his twopenny-post poetry; and of justice, as by the King's absurd reply to this absurd demand! Suppose the Count of Paris to be twenty times a reed, and the Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why the law should not have its course? Justice is the God of our lower ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wretches had a miserable hovel of an inn to their own part on the western outskirts of the Chase, a place by the sign of the Hand and Hatchet, where they ate their rye-bread and drank their sour Clink, when they could muster coppers enough for a twopenny carouse. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... has just occurred to me—that this is a quadruple letter, and that Elstree may not be within the twopenny post. Pray Heaven my ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... dispute had excited such universal thirst, that half the young lawyers and writers, together with their very clerks, the class whom Butler was looking after, had adjourned the debate to some favourite tavern. It was computed by an experienced arithmetician, that there was as much twopenny ale consumed on the discussion as would have floated ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rates of the existing duties." In moving this resolution the chancellor of the exchequer said that he proposed a penny rate, because he had been convinced by the arguments and evidence of the committee that the latter expedient would involve less loss to the revenue than a twopenny postage, which had been recommended by the committee. After some observations from Mr. Goulburn and Sir Kobert Peel, both of whom intimated further hostility to such a change, the resolution was agreed to without a division. On the 12th of July, when the order ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... for him. That's the way of the world, that is. No, Dennis Wayman; I didn't bolt with the swag—not sixpence of Valentine Jernam's money have I had the spending of; no even what I won from him at cards. I was nobbled one day, without a moment's warning, on a twopenny-halfpenny charge of burglary—never you mind whether it was true, or whether it was false—that ain't worth going into. I was took under a false name, and I stuck to that false name, thinking it more convenient. I should have sent to let ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... we'd have sent 'em their confounded eggs weeks ago if only their rotten, twopenny-ha'penny incubator had worked ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... the shame of it was beyond my strength: but I - I -" he rose from his seat and began to pace the room in a disorder. "Well, who am I? A boy, who have never been tried, have never done anything except this twopenny impotent folly with my father. But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at least that kind of a man - or that kind of a boy, if you prefer it - that I could die in torments rather than that any one ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... second day after Tim's departure, I received a letter from him by the twopenny post. He had made the acquaintance of the gipsy, but had not extracted any information, being as yet afraid to venture any questions. He further stated that his new companion had no objection to a glass or two, and that he had no doubt but ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... wisdom upon us, reminds us of the old and approved fashion in which Paddy passes his bad shilling, by slipping it between two sound penny pieces. To be sure it is but twopence after all, and he gets neither more nor less than his twopenny-worth of intoxication, but he has succeeded in putting his shilling into circulation. Just such a circulation of wisdom may we expect from novels which are to teach philosophy, and politics, and political economy, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... worth more than your twopenny flag," shrieked Sloper, maddened even into some temporary emotion of courage by the insults ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... only with respect to the nature of it, as a penny is as perfect silver as a shilling; nor yet with respect to a comparative degree, for so a shilling arriveth more toward the perfection of the number twenty, than doth a twopenny or a threepenny piece; but it is a righteousness so perfect, that nothing can be added to, nor can any thing be taken from it; for so implieth the words of the text, he is righteous as Christ ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... There is one of the modern works of engineering that gives one something of this nameless fear of the exaggerations of an underworld; and that is the curious curved architecture of the under ground railway, commonly called the Twopenny Tube. Those squat archways, without any upright line or pillar, look as if they had been tunneled by huge worms who have never learned to lift their heads. It is the very underground palace of the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... as if the devil had been around. That cook must be the holiest kind of fraud. Only twelve days, too! Seems like craziness. I'll own up square to one thing: I seem to have figured too fine upon the flour. But the rest—my land! I'll never understand it! There's been more waste on this twopenny ship than what there is to an Atlantic Liner.' He stole a glance at his companions; nothing good was to be gleaned from their dark faces; and he had recourse to rage. 'You wait till I interview that cook!' he roared and smote the table with his fist. 'I'll interview the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... ask it? My poor little all—twenty pounds—is gone on twopenny-halfpenny presents during the past week or two. It seemed so little compared to the fortune that was coming. It's all over. The great day is further off by twenty pounds than it was before that poor drunken old fool lied to me. Yet she didn't lie either; she only forgot; you can't swim ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Beaumont, I won't stand it," exploded the large old gentleman. "I won't be made game of by a twopenny literary adventurer like that. I won't be made a ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... take up the newspaper. What heads the column? Half a score advertisements of the "Mysteries of Paris"—a new edition of the "Wandering Jew," "illustrated by the first artists"—"Memoirs of a Physician," in twopenny numbers and shilling volumes; French novels, in short, at all prices and in every form. We step into the club; the produce of Paris and Brussels presses strews the table, and an elderly gentleman, with a solemn face and quakerish coat, searches amongst them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... one of the play's failures, it is so trivial and unspiritual and vulgar. And it was spoilt for me from the first. When I was a child I went to the twopenny travelling theatre to see Hamlet. The Ghost had on a helmet and a breastplate. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard—to his twopenny ordinary in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... delighted to find a large audience gathering round him to listen while he gave one of the new boys a good setting down, "or you may find that, after I have done with you, you won't be fit to show your ugly mug in the row of grinning boobies staring over the wall at a twopenny-halfpenny wild-beast show." ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... striped waistcoat, light breeches and gaiters." What too were "bright basket buttons" on a brown coat? Fancy Balls too, like Mrs. Leo Hunter's, were given in the daytime, and caused no astonishment. Nor have we lodging-houses with beds on the "twopenny rope" principle. There are no "dry arches" of Waterloo Bridge: though here I suspect Boz was confounding them with ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... good fellow, tell us, will you, how such a person as you, a garreteer, confessing to dining upon the heel of a twopenny loaf and half an onion; making no secret of running up beer scores at public houses, when they will trust you; retailing your nasty scenes of low life, creatures dying in hospitals, work-house funerals, the adventures of street ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... bidding at these scenes of competition. It has been remarked as a singular circumstance that in the seventeenth century penny biddings were usual; but it was the silver penny of those days, and we have to remember the higher purchasing value of money. Twopenny and threepenny advances succeeded, and although these have long ceased in London, they yet survive in the provinces, where the lots are less important. Some of the principal houses now decline even sixpence, a shilling ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... wiped their chins with their napkins—the cuffs of their coats—arose, and went out to that sink of ruin, the gin shop, to rinse their teeth with a little rum, that being the favourite stimulus of the begging tribe. The twopenny dram of pure Jamaica is preferred by them, and particularly those who live in the country, to any other kind of malt, ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... wasn't a rich man, and didn't give a big order, they wouldn't care a twopenny damn ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... have such queer ideas," thought Queen Selina, as the chariot rapidly receded from sight. "As if that twopenny-halfpenny pendant of Miss Heritage's could—but the Court Godmother will be annoyed if I don't follow her advice—and it's best not to offend the old creature. I'll go up and see if it's ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the centre of the room) 'E's all right. Takes 'is fun where 'e finds it. And leaves it.... Cracks 'imself up, you know. Pretends 'e doesn't care a twopenny, but always got 'is eye on what you're thinking of 'im ... if you ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... at once; easy manner). I'd like to know about this swindle that's going to be sprung on him. I didn't mean to startle the old man. You see, on my way here I dropped into a barber's to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there that he was something of a character. He has been ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... confounded nonsense," said the fat sergeant, wiping his moist forehead. "I'd have given anything—sooner than it should have happened. There's that twopenny-fife of a man, Wilkins, squeaking about it all over the place. Hang him! I should like to punch his miserable little head, only my hands are so fat they'd feel like boxing-gloves to him. What do you think he ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... tis Shrovetuesday[267] and the prentices are pulling downe Covent Garden; the Brickes come as whole out as if he had swallowed Cherristones. Hey! will you take Tobacco in the Roll? here is a whole shiplading of Bermudas and one little twopenny paper of berrinas, with a superscription 'To my ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Harry, who now called Andrew upstairs, entreating him to carry out all those absurd notes as fast as possible, and to deliver them immediately, as they were of the greatest consequence. Upon hearing this, old Andrew lost not a moment, but threw on his hat, and instantly started off, looking like the twopenny postman, he carried such a prodigious parcel of invitations; while Harry and Laura stood at the drawing-room window, almost screaming with joy when they saw him set out, and when they observed that, to oblige them, he actually ran along the street at a sort of trot, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the great painter of the sunset. We nowadays go back to du Maurier's pictures, where the after-glow remains, and they seem separated from us by something thicker than time, as if a great wall had been built up between the age of the twopenny tube and that of the carriage-and-pair. And lest there should remain a link between them, over which we might be sentimental, the face of Buckingham Palace is to be despoiled, the long grey outline, characteristic ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... print them, and also whether he had not paid too dear for them already in giving John Clare a guinea. Full of these doubts, yet not wishing to make a mistake in the matter, he resolved to submit the question to a higher tribunal. One of his customers, the Rev. Mr Twopenny, incumbent of Little Casterton, had the reputation of a most learned critic, having published various theological and other treatises; and he being the only literary man known to Mr. Drury in or near Stamford, the owner of the 'New Public Library' resolved to make his appeal to him. Clare's rough ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... many years, was only bread and milk; and he ate it out of a twopenny earthen bowl ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... fortune, after filling my pockets from the twopenny boxes of the suburban bookstalls, to find, on turning out the heterogeneous contents, that I had accidentally become possessed of The Broken Vow, a comedy by the aforesaid lady, who waits to be enrolled in that much wanted book, a new edition of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... never intended for the laity, but was specially enjoyned to be used by "all and sindry Personis, Vicars and Curattis," both for their own edification, and for reading a portion of it to "thair awin parochianaris,"—"quhen thair cummis na precheour to thame to schaw thame the word of God."—Of the Twopenny Faith, published in 1559, no copy is known to ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... for the Orphans. This morning a brother from Gloucestershire brought me a doubloon, (18 1/2 pennyweights of fine gold,) a Spanish dollar, 2 small Spanish coins, 4 old English crown pieces, 2 old English half-crown pieces, 3 old shillings, 2 old sixpences, and an old twopenny piece. He told me that he had purposed to come a day sooner, but that, though he was quite prepared for his journey, his business did not allow him to leave home, but that immediately, when these coins were given to him for the Orphans, he was able to leave. On his arrival in Bristol, this ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... TWOPENNY. The malt beverage thus denominated, is not formed to keep, and therefore not likely to be brewed by any persons for their own consumption. The following proportions for one barrel, are inserted merely to add to general information in the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... called Greatheart; or, Samuel's Sentimental Side; and I think you will agree that it was a lot of title for twopence. Day after day, as I fumbled among the old books in the Twopenny Bin of the little secondhand bookseller's shop, that volume would wriggle itself forward and worm its way into my hands; and I would clench my teeth and thrust it to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... young man is indebted to his promotion for detecting a brother letter-sorter appropriating the contents of a penny letter to his own uses, at the precise time that the said Josiah Claypole had his eye on it, for reasons best known to himself. The twopenny-postmen are highly incensed at this unheard-of and unprecedented passing them over; and great fears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... I any exception to the rule. I stared, as well I might; but we said nothing for some minutes, and the stranger looked calmly on us, and then cocked his eye with a nautical air up at the sky, as if he expected to receive a twopenny-post letter from St. Michael, or a billet doux from the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... laughed Robin. "As if it could make twopenny-worth of difference whether a blonde or brunette ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... for her other expenses. But many workwomen, whose position is less fortunate than hers, since they have neither home nor family, buy a piece of bread and some other food to keep them through the day; and at night patronize the "twopenny rope," one with another, in a wretched room containing five or six beds, some of which are always engaged by men, as male lodgers are by far the most abundant. Yes; and in spite of the disgust that a poor and virtuous girl must feel at this arrangement, she must submit to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Religion; it is the Mystery Religion. Its priests are called to an awful and tremendous hierurgy; its pontiffs are to be the pathfinders, the bridge-makers between the world of sense and the world of spirit. And, in fact, they pass their time in preaching, not the eternal mysteries, but a twopenny morality, in changing the Wine of Angels and the Bread of Heaven into gingerbeer and mixed biscuits: a sorry transubstantiation, a sad alchemy, as ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... various unsuccessful attempts at serious satire, he hit upon a vein for which his light and brilliant wit eminently qualified him—the satirical and pungent verses on men and topics of the day, afterwards coll. in The Twopenny Post Bag, in which the Prince Regent especially was mercilessly ridiculed, and about the same time appeared Fables for the Holy Alliance. In 1818 he produced the Fudge Family in Paris, written in that city, which then swarmed with "groups of ridiculous English." Lalla Rookh, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... this is the day on which those charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every street and turning. The weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and bell-wires. In these little ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... citizen begins talking about the Irish language and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off of Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let you pour all manner of drink down ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... wearing them; they are as necessary, and as useful in a kitchen as pots and kettles: they will make a lark look as large as a FOWL, a goose as big as a SWAN, a leg of mutton as large as a hind quarter of beef; a twopenny loaf as large as a quartern;" and as philosophers assure you that pain even is only imaginary, we may justly believe the same of hunger; and if a servant who eats no more than one pound of food, imagines, by the aid of these glasses, that he has eaten three ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... has a wife as much disposed to frugality as himself. She helped in the business; they kept no idle servants; their table was plain and simple, their furniture of the cheapest. His breakfast for a long time was bread and milk, and he ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer with a pewter spoon. "But mark," he adds, "how luxuries will enter families and make a progress despite of principles: being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl, with a spoon ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... ought we not rather to esteem it a beneficent miracle that messages can arrive at all; that a little slip of paper will skim over all these weltering floods, and other inextricable confusions, and come at last, in the hand of the Twopenny Postman, safe to your lurking-place, like green leaf in the bill of Noah's Dove? Let us be grateful for mercies; let us use them while they are granted us. Time was when "they that feared the Lord spake often one to another." A friendly thought is the purest gift that man can afford to man. "Speech" ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... all imaginary innovations Shaw brought the sharp edge of the Irishman and the concentration of the Puritan, and thoroughly thrashed all competitors in the difficult art of being at once modern and intelligent. In twenty twopenny controversies he took the revolutionary side, I fear in most cases because it was called revolutionary. But the other revolutionists were abruptly startled by the presentation of quite rational and ingenious arguments on their own side. The ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... for some three weeks uneventfully enough for a desperate and disguised adventurer. I received several letters from my uncle, and I was thankful it had been arranged I should not answer them. The dear man had evidently such a twopenny-coloured conception of the hazardous life I was leading that a truthful recital of my adventures might have brought him down in person to stir things up. But there was nothing to ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... couch how he got round, got in, got home, on that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He admitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, "as broad as a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside out and upside ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... never heard you when you spoke to her, 'cause she was always trying to hear what some seedy old fool would be whispering to her across the counter. Then there were waitresses, and their notion of waiting was to spend an hour talking to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to look haughty and insulted whenever anybody as really wanted something ventured to ask for it. A frizzle-haired cashier used to make love all day out of her pigeon-hole with the two box-office boys from the Oxford Music Hall, who ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... entitled in his broken English manner "ze leap of ze frog;" and, as for grave Doctor Batson, whom we all thought so formal and dignified in his professional tether, why, the way in which he "stuck in his twopenny," as the boys said, and "gave a 'back,'" was a caution ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Gazette," and was author of a sea song once popular, "The King is a true British Sailor." He was an irreclaimable drunkard, thought only of the necessities of the hour, and slept in the fields when his finances would not admit of payment of a twopenny lodging in St. Giles's. His largest work was "Johnny Newcome in the Navy," for which the publisher gave him the generous remuneration of a shilling a day till he finished it. He died in ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... which in the social circle will in spite of all due gravity awaken a harmless smile, and Shenstone solemnly thanked God that his name was not liable to a pun. There are some names which excite horror, such as Mr. Stabback; others contempt, as Mr. Twopenny; and others of vulgar or absurd signification, subject too often to the insolence of domestic witlings, which occasions irritation even in the minds of worthy, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... refreshment tent, and blundered as far as offering her a twopenny ice-cream at the ice-cream stall. He was beginning to realize that she took her pleasures differently from most girls he knew; he felt disappointed and ill at ease with her—it would be dreadful if she went home and told Joanna she had not ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... on one side of a narrow table, Joey on the other, and his new acquaintance called for two pints of tea, a twopenny loaf, and two penny bits of cheese. The loaf was divided between them, and with their portion of cheese and pint of tea each they made a good breakfast. As soon as it was over, the young sailor said to Joey, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... topmost. Tauld, told. Tent, watch. Tere, muscle. Thae, those. Thieveless, useless. Thilk, that same. Thir, these. Thole, endure. Thrang, throng, thronging, busy. Thrave, twenty-four sheaves. Thraw, twist. Thrawart, perverse. Tint, lost. Tippeny, twopenny (ale). Tither, the other. Tittlin', whispering. Tochelod, dowered? dipped? Tod, fox. Tout, toot, blast. Tow, rope. Townmond, twelvemonth. Towsie, shaggy. Toy, cap. Transmugrify'd, changed, metamorphosed. Tryste, appointment, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... comes to you, as it will come,—for no woman with your eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life!—never forget that it is the biggest thing in the world, the one altogether good and perfect gift. Don't let any twopenny-halfpenny considerations of worldly advantage influence you, nor the tittle-tattle of other folks, and even if it seems that something insurmountable lies between you and the fulfillment of love, go over it, or round it, or through it! If it's a real love, your faith must be big enough to remove ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... you have no money, you had best remove into some cheaper ward; to the twopenny ward, it is likeliest to hold out with your means; or, if you will, you may go into the hole, and there ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... intellectual superiority of that kind. They have produced greater minds when, the mass of their countrymen were steeped in brutality, and Elizabethan surfeit of beef and ale, than they will ever produce with a twopenny-halfpenny universal education. What is the use? Progress. What is progress? Merely the adequate arrangement of inequalities—in the words of one of their own thinkers who knows most about it and troubles himself least about ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... full of hard work. A bottle was found by one of the crew containing a parchment record of the visit of the French in 1772; on the back Cook noted the names of his ships and the year of their visit, and adding a silver twopenny piece of 1772, replaced it in the bottle which was sealed with lead and hidden in a pile of stones in such a position that it could not escape the notice of any one visiting the spot. Running along the coast to the south-east they ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... do; and the Gloria folk have heard of it already, I can tell you; and in their stupid outsider sort of way they go on as if their little twopenny-halfpenny Republic were being made an occasion for great state alliances on the ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... a sudden he would sing some little twopenny love-ballad or sentimental nigger melody so touchingly that one had the lump in the throat; poor Snowdrop would weep ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... idiot!" she said. "What on earth induced you to do it? I could see at the time you didn't care a twopenny dip ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... thoroughly established: the future was tinged with a golden hue. Ivory would be almost inexhaustible, as it would flow from both east and west to the market where such luxuries as twopenny mirrors, fourpenny knives, handkerchiefs, ear-rings at a penny a pair, finger signet-rings at a shilling a dozen, could be obtained for such comparatively useless lumber ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... popular demand were the majority of our countrymen of a stomach as unbounded as that of the Dundee laborer whom a Scotch journal commemorates. This extraordinary person, having not long since eaten nine large twopenny pies at a Dundee pie-shop within fourteen and a half minutes, announced his purpose to eat on the following Monday twelve pies within twenty-five minutes; and in fact, when the delicacies were put before him in the shape of a six-pound pile, fourteen inches high, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... belles generally, like the beaux, may have disdained tobacco as vulgar, yet there were doubtless still to be found here and there respectable women who occasionally indulged in a smoke. In an early Spectator, Addison gives the rules of a "Twopenny Club, erected in this Place, for the Preservation of Friendship and good Neighbourhood," which met in a little ale-house and was frequented by artisans and mechanics. Rule II was, "Every member shall fill his pipe out of his own box"; ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... own daily commerce with humanity. Is it history—when did it throw a light for you on modern politics? Is it science—when did it show you order in apparent disorder, and help you to put two and two together into an inseparable four? Is it ethics—when did it influence your conduct in a twopenny-halfpenny affair between man and man? Is it a novel—when did it help you to "understand all and forgive all"? Is it poetry—when was it a magnifying glass to disclose beauty to you, or a fire to warm your cooling faith? If ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... the stage were two doors for the players, and between them hung a painted cloth or arras behind which the prompter stood. Over these doors were two plastered rooms, twopenny private boxes for gentlefolk. In one of them were three young men and a beautiful girl, wonderfully dressed. The men were speaking to her, but she looked down at Nick instead. "What a pretty boy!" she said, and tossed him a flower that one of the men had just given ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... with respect to the nature of it, as a penny is as perfect silver as a shilling; nor yet with respect to a comparative degree, for so a shilling arriveth more toward the perfection of the number twenty, than doth a twopenny or a threepenny piece; but it is a righteousness so perfect, that nothing can be added to, nor can any thing be taken from it; for so implieth the words of the text, he is righteous as Christ is righteous; yea, thus righteous before, and in order to his ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... vaulting powers in a sport which he entitled in his broken English manner "ze leap of ze frog;" and, as for grave Doctor Batson, whom we all thought so formal and dignified in his professional tether, why, the way in which he "stuck in his twopenny," as the boys said, and "gave a 'back,'" was a caution to ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... my eyes had been idle." Nor was his the case of the mere literary smatterer, content if he but learn the names of things. In him, to do and to do well was even a dearer ambition than to know. Anything done well, any craft, despatch, or finish, delighted and inspired him. I remember him with a twopenny Japanese box of three drawers, so exactly fitted that, when one was driven home, the others started from their places; the whole spirit of Japan, he told me, was pictured in that box; that plain ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and how far you may push your fortune—and all that you design to make of it, is, to return to Scotland, eat raw oatmeal cakes, baked upon a peat-fire, have your hand shaken by every loon of a blue-bonnet who chooses to dub you cousin, though your relationship comes by Noah; drink Scots twopenny ale, eat half-starved red-deer venison, when you can kill it, ride upon a galloway, and be called my right ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Parton, Read, Wharry, Jackson, and Mingay, no less than 'unruffled Samuel Salt,' were all real persons, and were called to the Bench of the Honourable Society by those very names. One mistake, indeed, Lamb makes—he writes of Mr. Twopenny as if he had been a Bencher. Now, there never yet was a Bencher of the name of Twopenny; though the mistake is easily accounted for. There was a Mr. Twopenny, a very thin man too, just as Lamb described him, who lived in the Temple; but he was not a Bencher, he ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... it is impossible to place any period of termination. I will not speak of the classics—reminiscences of much evil in our early lives. We do not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces or our forewords. I am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence will think of Mark Twain. Posterity will take care of itself, will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... writers, together with their very clerks, the class whom Butler was looking after, had adjourned the debate to some favourite tavern. It was computed by an experienced arithmetician, that there was as much twopenny ale consumed on the discussion as would have floated ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Lectures, however, pass—for the present. We propose to deal with an earlier effort of Sir G. G. Stokes. Nearly two years ago he delivered a lecture at the Finsbury Polytechnic on the Immortality of the Soul. It was reported in the Family Churchman, and reprinted after revision as a twopenny pamphlet, with the first title of "I." This is the only pointed thing about it. The lecture is about "I," or, as Sir G. G. Stokes, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... this 'ere Mr. Macaroni," began the baker, who took in a twopenny paper every day, and gave ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... Catechism, which was not intended for indiscriminate circulation among the laity, was not published until 1552; and The Twopenny Faith was not issued until the ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... preside. The business having so dwindled, Joanna was obliged to serve in the shop herself; and it galled and mortified her that Emily Lester, sitting in her large drawing-room over the way, could witness her own dancings up and down behind the counter at the beck and call of wretched twopenny customers, whose patronage she was driven to welcome gladly: persons to whom she was compelled to be civil in the street, while Emily was bounding along with her children and her governess, and conversing with the genteelest ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... twopenny," a name he used confidentially to her. "A little faint; the room is rather close," and he opened the window a trifle at the top, returning to his ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... hail it and so reach Hampstead in time for dinner, or whether he would dine at the Club. Edith would be annoyed if he failed to keep his appointment, and the Club dinners were not good. But neither were Edith's; moreover, by dining at the Club for one-and-six, and taking a twopenny tram instead of a three-and-sixpenny cab, he would ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the verdict, delivered from rolling clouds: "If you were only a mass of blathering vanity, Dick, I wouldn't mind,—I'd let you go to the deuce on your own mahl-stick; but when I consider what you are to me, and when I find that to vanity you add the twopenny- halfpenny pique of a twelve-year-old girl, then I bestir myself in your ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Why the deuce couldn't he have kept his twopenny thunderbolt in his pocket for a few hours, instead of launching it to-night and spoiling our sole a la Morny and ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... precocious young rascal of an Arthur for daring to propose to a play-actress, need not be told here. If pride exists amongst any folks in our country, and assuredly we have enough of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of twopenny old gentlewomen in small towns. "Gracious goodness," the cry was, "how infatuated the mother is about that pert and headstrong boy who gives himself the airs of a lord on his blood-horse, and for whom our society is not good enough, and who would ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indebted to his promotion for detecting a brother letter-sorter appropriating the contents of a penny letter to his own uses, at the precise time that the said Josiah Claypole had his eye on it, for reasons best known to himself. The twopenny-postmen are highly incensed at this unheard-of and unprecedented passing them over; and great fears are entertained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... blow-up. These imitation Scotch niggers in their plaid sarongs, as they call them, will be getting up a big quarrel with my men with their bounce and contempt for my well-drilled, smart detachment. Here's every common, twopenny-halfpenny Malay looking down upon my fellows, while there isn't one among my lads who isn't a better man than their Rajah. There will be a row some day; ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Squire. "We won't say any more about it; and if you want a horse to ride, we'll see if we can't find you a horse to ride. I dare say you think your old father a terrible martinet, but it's all for your good, you know. You must say to yourself when you feel dissatisfied about some little twopenny-halfpenny disappointment ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... a hundred-guinea chronometer with a twopenny watch-key—as by means of a dirty wooden plug you set all the waters of Versailles a-raging, and splashing, and storming—in like manner, and by like humble agents, were Mrs. Catherine's tumultuous passions set going. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... notes I made of the coaching trip were a few lines a day in twopenny pass-books bought before we started. As with "Round the World," I thought that I might some day write a magazine article, or give some account of my excursion for those who accompanied me; but one wintry day I decided that it was scarcely worth ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... coition and diet I was still fighting, and on the whole successfully. My fits of temper, however, were excessive and my ennui became gloomy despair. One day I blasphemed on crossing the Park and spoke contemptuously of "God and his twopenny ha'penny revolving balls," referring to the planetary system. But for long walks I should have gone mad. A. was drinking in the intervals of her fits. I found half-empty bottles of wine hidden away. This did not improve ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... prettinesses of allegorical language, and glittering hardness of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best: it is first-rate. His Twopenny Post-Bag is a perfect "nest of spicery"; where the Cayenne is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet's pen. In this too, our bard resembles the bee—he has its honey and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... man talks usually in a mournful tone about his ill-health, and his death, which he feels to be approaching, yet he has occasional touches of humor that remind me of old Mourteen on the north island. To-day a grotesque twopenny doll was lying on the floor near the old woman. He picked it up and examined it as if comparing it with her. Then he held it up: 'Is it you is after bringing that thing into the world,' he said, 'woman of ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... faith! so I were hearkened to, he should shrewdly smart for it." Then, turning to her sons, she said:—"My sons, I told you plainly enough that this ought not to be. Now, have you heard how your worthy brother-in-law treats your sister? Petty twopenny trader that he is: were it for me to act, as it is for you, after what he has said of her and done to her, nought would satisfy or appease me, till I had rid the earth of him. And were I a man, who am but a woman, none, other but myself should meddle with the affair. God's curse upon ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of admission to the theatres varied according to the estimation in which they were held, and were raised on special occasions. "Twopenny rooms," or galleries, were to be found at the larger and more popular theatres. In Goffe's "Careless Shepherdess," 1656, acted at the Salisbury ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Bessie at once; easy manner). I'd like to know about this swindle that's going to be sprung on him. I didn't mean to startle the old man. You see, on my way here I dropped into a barber's to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there that he was something of a character. He has been ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... her mother, and prefers the Captain to her husband to this day. If, in a word, these two men could be made to fight, I believe their wives would not be displeased; and the reason of all this misery, rage, and dissension, lies in a poor little twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput Street. ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thing, watchman," hallooed out the accused, "the b—counter-skipper never had any watch! he only filched a twopenny-halfpenny gilt chain out of his master, Levi, the pawnbroker's window, and stuck it in his eel-skin to make a show: ye did, ye pitiful, lanky-chopped son of a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lots sold would be about sixty-six. The early hour at which the sales began was soon dropped, and eventually the time of starting became noon, and from that to one or even two o'clock. It is quite certain that, up to ten shillings, penny and twopenny bids were accepted. The sales were chiefly held at the more noteworthy coffee-houses. Dr. King, in his translation (?) of Sorbiere's 'Journey to London,' 1698, says: 'I was at an auction of books at Tom's Coffee-house, near Ludgate, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the twelfth century had been told that the lightning had been driven for leagues underground, and had dragged at its destroying tail loads of laughing human beings, and if they had then been told that the people alluded to this pulverising portent chirpily as "The Twopenny Tube," they would have called down the fire of Heaven on us as a race of half-witted atheists. Probably they would have ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... forty shillings a day I'll stay; but if I can't earn that at once let us go back to New York. It is not the poverty I mind so much, nor yet the debt, nor yet even your distress, you dear old father. You and I could weather it out together on a twopenny roll. Things would never be altogether bad with us as long as we are together; and as long as we have not put ourselves in the power of Mahomet M. M. Fancy owing Mr. Moss a sum of money which we couldn't pay! Mahomet's 'little bill!' I would say to a Christian: 'All right, Mr. Christian, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... common examples, chosen from a meagre little library, a "twopenny treasure-house," but they illustrate, on a minute scale, the nature of the collector's passion,—the character of his innocent pleasures. He occasionally lights on other literary relics of a more personal character ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... distance came the tinkle of the muffin-man's bell, the cries of the buy-a-brooms. He remembered the glowing charcoal in the stoves of the chestnut and potato sellers; the appetising smell of the cooked-fish shops; the fragrant steam of the hot, dark coffee at the twopenny stall, when he had turned shivering out of bed; he sighed for the lights and jollity of the "Hare and Hounds" on a Saturday night. He would never see anything of the kind again. No; here, under bare blue skies, out of which the sun frizzled you alive; here, where it couldn't ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... house considerably before two, quite in the style of Mr. Knight. Nice smiling Mr. Barlowe met us at the door and, in reply to enquiries after news, said that peace was generally expected. I have taken possession of my bedroom, unpacked my bandbox, sent Miss P.'s two letters to the twopenny post, been visited by M^{de} Bigeon and am now writing by myself at the new table in the front room. It is snowing. We had some snowstorms[282] yesterday, and a smart frost at night, which gave us a hard road from Cobham to Kingston; but as it was then getting dirty and heavy, Henry had ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... ten o'clock is brewed a large bowl of 'poor man's punch'—ale posset! This is the event of the night. Ale posset, or milk and ale posset as some call it, is made in this wise. Set a quart of milk on the fire. While it boils, crumble a twopenny loaf into a deep bowl, upon which pour the boiling milk. Next, set two quarts of good ale to boil, into which grate ginger and nutmeg, adding a quantity of sugar. When the ale nearly boils, add it to the milk and bread in the bowl, stirring it while ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... sir, this is the last time I shall have to trouble you with these twopenny concerns. But until some step is taken by the three Powers, or until I have quite exhausted your indulgence, I shall continue to report our scandals as they arise. Once more, one thing or other: Either what I write is false, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were bent over his open volumes when his clerk entered noiselessly and placed on his table a letter which the twopenny-postman had just delivered. With an impatient shrug of the shoulders, Ardworth glanced towards the superscription; but his eye became earnest and his interest aroused as he recognized the hand. "Again!" he muttered. "What mystery is this? Who can feel such interest in my fate?" ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... newspaper. What heads the column? Half a score advertisements of the "Mysteries of Paris"—a new edition of the "Wandering Jew," "illustrated by the first artists"—"Memoirs of a Physician," in twopenny numbers and shilling volumes; French novels, in short, at all prices and in every form. We step into the club; the produce of Paris and Brussels presses strews the table, and an elderly gentleman, with a solemn face and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... gifts of any kind. We were neither of us witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, nevertheless, what it was which prevented us from obtaining acquaintance with persons who thronged to houses in which I could see nothing worth a twopenny omnibus fare. Certain it is, that we went out of our way sometimes to induce people to call upon us whom we thought we should like; but, if they came once or twice, they invariably dropped off, and we saw no more of them. This ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... telling me from his noisome couch how he got round, got in, got home, on that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He admitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, "as broad as a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... had kept the table as it was," pursued Steel over his cigar, "and had one of those flash-light photographs taken, as they do at all the twopenny banquets nowadays. All that was left of them—left ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... who are easy to please, who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men of their hands, the smiters and the builders and the judges, have lived long and done sternly and yet preserved this lovely character; and among our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, the shame were indelible if WE should lose it. Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality; they are the perfect duties. And it is the trouble with moral men that they have ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at a Northern munition works' canteen. We have long been used to twopenny meals, but of course much more was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... has passed a resolution in favour of Irish independence. The remark attributed to Mr. A.J. BALFOUR, that he always thought Colorado was the name of a twopenny cigar, has failed to ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... party must quit possession incontinently. Jack prevailed on a good many to sign this document—though some did not like the idea of walking out, demurred, and added after the word incontinently, "i.e. when convenient,"—and thus signed, they put the Round Robin under a twopenny cover, and dispatched it to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Messrs. Nevin & Nevin were of that dusty, gloomy and obsolete fashion which inspires such confidence in the would-be litigant. Large and raggedly bound volumes, which apparently had been acquired from the twopenny boxes outside second-hand bookshops, lined the shelves of the outer office, and the chairs were of an early-Victorian horsehair variety. Respectability had run to seed in those chambers. Mr. Jacob Nevin, the senior ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... old father-in-law had secured to the family in the event of such a contingency as a failure happening; so knowing Jorrock's propensity for sports, and being desirous of chatting over all his gallant doings with "The Surrey," shortly after the above-mentioned day he dispatched a "twopenny," offering him a day's shooting on his property in Surrey, adding, that he hoped he would dine with him after. Jorrocks being invited himself, with a freedom peculiar to fox-hunters, invited his friend the Yorkshireman, and visiting his armoury, selected ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Glenalmond, I give you my word, when I came out of that Court, I longed to die - the shame of it was beyond my strength: but I - I -" he rose from his seat and began to pace the room in a disorder. "Well, who am I? A boy, who have never been tried, have never done anything except this twopenny impotent folly with my father. But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at least that kind of a man - or that kind of a boy, if you prefer it - that I could die in torments rather than that any one should ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In the houses there is hardly anything to be got. No pepper, no onions, no meat killed or sold. No bread can be obtained for love or money. I laid in a stock of fresh bread in Tripoli for a fortnight, but my gluttonous camel driver devoured all in three or four days! There were no less than fifty twopenny loaves. He was accustomed to eat in the night, when I was asleep, and used to threaten to beat Said if he blabbed. I mentioned the circumstance after, to the Rais of Ghadames, who observed: "If you had brought a thousand loaves, all would have ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... at meetings hundreds of miles off, in the red velvet gown. And to hear the people crying 'Yes, me Lard!' and 'No, me Lard!' and to read the prodigious accounts of his Lordship in the papers: it seemed as if the people and he liked to be taken in by this twopenny splendour. Twopenny magnificence, indeed, exists all over Ireland, and may be considered as the great characteristic of the Snobbishness of ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... familiarly dealt with; and though too much familiarity certainly breeds contempt, we are only following the fashion of the day, in rendering science somewhat contemptible, by the strange liberties that publishers of Penny Cyclopaedias, three-halfpenny Informations, and twopenny Stores of Knowledge, are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... saying to me, "Look at the price of fresh eggs, and how much nicer it is to have your own." It is a curious thing about the country that people are always giving one disinterested advice in the matter of domestic economy. In London it is different. In London people let you take a twopenny bus ticket to Westminster instead of walking across the Park, and go to ruin in your own sweet way. They rather admire your dash. But in the country they tell you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... with the bills.] So this is the way the money goes! [Banging the bills.] While I have to smoke twopenny cigars! And can't ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... policeman pay his fare?" inquired the old gentleman on the twopenny tram, observing that no money passed between the constable and ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... building intended for use as a Concert Hall, &c., will soon be opened in Snow Hill, to be conducted on temperance principles.—A series of popular Monday evening concerts was commenced in the Town Hall, Nov. 12, 1844, and was continued for nearly two years.—Twopenny weekly "Concerts for the People" were started at the Music Hall, Broad Street (now Prince of Wales' Theatre), March 25, 1847, but they did not take well.—Threepenny Saturday evening concerts in Town Hall, were begun ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... Scrap, Flap (what d'ye call him), Trapp,(5) your Chancellor's chaplain. 'Tis called A Character of the Present Set of Whigs, and is going to be printed, and no doubt the author will take care to produce it in Ireland. Dr. Freind was with me, and pulled out a twopenny pamphlet just published, called The State of Wit,(6) giving a character of all the papers that have come out of late. The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the Examiner, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... him?" The stranger addressed Bessie with the utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. "I didn't want to startle the old man." He lowered his voice as though he had known her for years. "I dropped into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old man has been a character ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... such queer ideas," thought Queen Selina, as the chariot rapidly receded from sight. "As if that twopenny-halfpenny pendant of Miss Heritage's could—but the Court Godmother will be annoyed if I don't follow her advice—and it's best not to offend the old creature. I'll go up and see if it's ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... it again into the bottle, together with a silver twopenny piece of 1772. Having covered the mouth of the bottle with a leaden cap, he placed it, the next morning in a pile of stones, erected for the purpose, upon a little eminence on the north shore of the harbour, and near to the place where it ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... venture to state, of a far superior order, both as to drama and as to morality. It is not a mere lantern-hall, close and stuffy, with twopenny and fourpenny seats (half-price to children, and tea provided free at matinee performances), but a white-and-gold Picturedrome, catering to an exclusive class of patrons at sixpence and a shilling, with neat attendants in dove-grey who atomise scent about the aisles, two palms, one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... else matters a straw. If you love him enough to trust him with the whole of the rest of your life, you can surely trust him over a twopenny-halfpenny little secret which, after all, has nothing in the world to do with you. If you can't, do you know what ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... fish, as Sprat, Herring, Salmon; or the name of a thing, as Ginger, Hay, Wood; or of a colour, as Black, Gray, White, Green; or of a sound, as Bray; or the name of a month, as March, May; or of a place, as Barnet, Baldock, Hitchen; or the name of a coin, as Farthing, Penny, Twopenny; or of a profession, as Butcher, Baker, Carpenter, Piper, Fisher, Fletcher, Fowler, Glover; or a Jew's name, as Solomons, Isaacs, Jacobs; or a personal name, as Foot, Leg, Crookshanks, Heaviside, Sidebottom, Ramsbottom, Winterbottom; or a long name, as Blanchenhagen or Blanchhausen; ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... to be how to while away that hour. Well!—there was the Twopenny Tube. At that time it was new, and an excitement. Our friend had exactly fourpence in his pocket. That would take him to anywhere and back before the Bank closed. And also he could put some of that eau-de-Cologne on his face and hands. He had on ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... single blow, and to rise to the highest height of genius in the biggest battle that ever was fought, a mother of battles! But the Parisians wanting to save their trumpery skins, and afraid for their twopenny shops, open their gates and there is a beginning of the ragusades, and an end of all joy and happiness; they make a fool of the Empress, and fly the white flag out at the windows. The Emperor's closest friends among his generals forsake him at last and go over to ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... the cup, if she's fit. They don't know much about her this way, either, though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the boy that rode him pulled his head half off—I saw him do it—and then he won the Chester, and brought his owners a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... time when the fortunes of the Cause were at their lowest ebb. Waldo Orpington is a frivolous little fool who chirrups at drawing-room concerts and can recognise bits from different composers without referring to the programme, but all the same he occasionally has ideas. He didn't care a twopenny fiddlestring about the Cause, but he rather enjoyed the idea of having his finger in the political pie. Also it is possible, though I should think highly improbable, that he admired Lena Dubarri. Anyhow, when Lena gave a rather gloomy ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... really one of the play's failures, it is so trivial and unspiritual and vulgar. And it was spoilt for me from the first. When I was a child I went to the twopenny travelling theatre to see Hamlet. The Ghost had on a helmet and a breastplate. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... after Tim's departure, I received a letter from him by the twopenny post. He had made the acquaintance of the gipsy, but had not extracted any information, being as yet afraid to venture any questions. He further stated that his new companion had no objection to a glass or two, and that he had no doubt but that ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... stud at Hampton was doomed to be sold, and the sale thereof created something of a sensation. On this subject there is, in a little twopenny weekly magazine, called The Torch, 9 Sep., '37 (vol. i., p. 19), a periodical now long forgotten, a poem by Tom Hood, which I have not seen in any collection of his poems. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... stable, agreed to pass the time, until the weather should clear up, over a bowl of rumbo, which was accordingly prepared. But the fourth, refusing to join their company, took his station at the opposite side of the chimney, and called for a pint of twopenny, with which he indulged himself apart. At a little distance, on his left hand, there was another group, consisting of the landlady, a decent widow, her two daughters, the elder of whom seemed to be about the age of fifteen, and a country lad, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... through a perilous path of fire-irons, tribes of tongs, shovels in sheaves, skeleton bedsteads, wardrobe drawers agape, and cast clothes a-sweetening in the sun. But the crowd is really too thick to walk amongst. As we are on pleasure bent, let us be recklessly extravagant and take a twopenny ride on ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... had come to an agreement, like the simple young men who combine to maintain a twopenny baggage, she would have cost ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... practise these and punishments to those who don't. The Potter God will save you if you please him; that means he'll save your body from danger and not let you starve. Potterism has no notion of a God who doesn't care a twopenny damn whether you starve or not, but does care whether you're following the truth as you see it. In fact, Potterism has no room for Christianity; it prefers the God of the Old Testament. Of course, with their abominable cheek, the Potterites have taken Christianity ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... a long story. He's run with the hare and hunted with the hounds too long, and there's no man more hated between here and the Foyle. His life's not worth a twopenny-piece." ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... Dennis Wayman; I didn't bolt with the swag—not sixpence of Valentine Jernam's money have I had the spending of; no even what I won from him at cards. I was nobbled one day, without a moment's warning, on a twopenny-halfpenny charge of burglary—never you mind whether it was true, or whether it was false—that ain't worth going into. I was took under a false name, and I stuck to that false name, thinking it more convenient. I should have sent to let you know, if I could have found a safe hand to take ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... trouble getting my own legs away from the inn than I have getting my piebald horse out of the stable. Oh, if I only dared drink another pennyworth! Who knows but Jacob Shoemaker might trust me for a penny or two, if I begged enough? Hey, Jacob! Another twopenny ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... There was to be preaching as often as the Ordinary thought fit: if the Rector could not preach he must find a substitute who could. Plain expositions of the sacraments were made out, were to be read aloud to the congregations, and were published at twopence ("The Twopenny Faith"). Administration of the Eucharist except by priests was to be punished by excommunication. {98a} Knox himself desired death for others than true ministers who celebrated the sacrament. {98b} His "true ministers," about half-a-dozen of them at this time, of ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... closely-printed columns of the paper to local news, which are not read by one-twentieth part of those who purchase it. Each small town in Lancashire and Yorkshire, as well as elsewhere, would have its penny or twopenny newspaper, in which local news, local politics, and local talent, would have fair play; while large papers, like the Manchester Guardian or the Leeds Mercury, would be greatly improved by the change. They would be enabled to substitute good readable matter, literary ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... process. I have known it conjoined with a declarator of marriage.—Your beef is excellent,' he said to my father, who in vain endeavoured to resume his legal disquisition; 'but something highly powdered—and the twopenny is undeniable; but it is small swipes—small swipes—more of hop than malt-with your leave, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... same time, Mr Vanslyperken had made up his mind that a lad who could be floated out to the Nab buoy and back again without sinking—who could have a bullet through his head without a mark remaining—and who could swallow a whole twopenny-worth of arsenic without feeling more than a twinge in his stomach, was not so very easy to be made away with. That the corporal's vision was no fiction, was evident—the lad was not to be hurt by mortal man; but although the ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Stag o' Tyne. The poor wretches had a miserable hovel of an inn to their own part on the western outskirts of the Chase, a place by the sign of the Hand and Hatchet, where they ate their rye-bread and drank their sour Clink, when they could muster coppers enough for a twopenny carouse. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Susanna' had been an established puppet play for more than two generations. An old copy of verses on Bartholomew Fair in the year 1665, describing the penny and twopenny puppet plays, or, as they had been called in and since Queen Elizabeth's time, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... bowels when you have the least reason to fear that bad water may bring gastric fever to you or yours. If there is any tendency to constipation get some liquorice, and boil it thoroughly with about half an ounce of senna leaves to a twopenny stick. Strain well, and let all in any danger have a teaspoonful of this thrice a day. It will do wonders in keeping matters in a good state within. If possible, give a good rubbing all over once a week with hot vinegar, and ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... you must keep moving all night continually, whereby you avoids the hact; or else you goes to a twopenny-rope shop and gets a lie down. And your bundle you'd best leave at my house. Twopenny-rope society a'n't particular. I'm going off my beat; you walk home with me and leave your traps. Everybody knows me—Costello, V ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... development of their nature all partook, from the congresses of mighty monarchs down to those humbler but not less majestic types of the predominant influence, which, in the expressive language of that age, were recognised as twopenny goes. It is known only to those whose researches have led them through the intricacies of that phase of human progress, how multifarious and varied were the forms in which the inner spirit, objectively at work in mankind, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the refreshment tent, and blundered as far as offering her a twopenny ice-cream at the ice-cream stall. He was beginning to realize that she took her pleasures differently from most girls he knew; he felt disappointed and ill at ease with her—it would be dreadful if she went home and told Joanna ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was queer to remark the change that had taken place in Mrs. Hoggarty's character now: for whereas she was in the country among the topping persons of the village, and quite content with a tea-party at six and a game of twopenny whist afterwards,—in London she would never dine till seven; would have a fly from the mews to drive in the Park twice a week; cut and uncut, and ripped up and twisted over and over, all her old gowns, flounces, caps, and fallals, and kept my poor Mary from morning till night altering ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Travellers' Twopenny in Gas Works Garding,' this thing explains. 'All us man-servants at Travellers' Lodgings is named Deputy. When we're chock full and the Travellers is all a-bed I come out for my 'elth.' Then withdrawing into the road, and taking aim, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... the public seems to me to lie in the hands of the Examiners. I told Mr. Forster so, ages ago, when he talked to me about the gradual increase of the expenditure, and I have been confirmed in my opinion by all subsequent experience. What the people who read the reports may say, I should not care one twopenny d— if I had to administer ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... laughter; but Merton in a most gentlemanly 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, ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... Scourge," he edited "The Bon Ton" magazine, and "Quizzical Gazette," and was author of a sea song once popular, "The King is a true British Sailor." He was an irreclaimable drunkard, thought only of the necessities of the hour, and slept in the fields when his finances would not admit of payment of a twopenny lodging in St. Giles's. His largest work was "Johnny Newcome in the Navy," for which the publisher gave him the generous remuneration of a shilling a day till he finished it. He died in ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a twopenny trumpet, bought years ago in the village fair; and over it she and Captain Johnson tell, as best they can, between them, the story of Jackanapes's ride across the Goose Green; and how he won Lollo—the Gypsy's Lollo—the racer Lollo—dear ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... history of the bidding at these scenes of competition. It has been remarked as a singular circumstance that in the seventeenth century penny biddings were usual; but it was the silver penny of those days, and we have to remember the higher purchasing value of money. Twopenny and threepenny advances succeeded, and although these have long ceased in London, they yet survive in the provinces, where the lots are less important. Some of the principal houses now decline even sixpence, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... still a part of the great world; something depended on me. Fifty-six? yes, but what was that? Many men are at their best at fifty-six. So exhilarated was I, that just before I mounted the omnibus—it was a cold morning, but I would not ride inside—I treated myself to a twopenny cigar. My excitement soon wore off. I could not so far forget myself as not to make suggestions now and then, and Jackman took a delight in snubbing me. It was a trial to me also to sit with the clerks. We had never set ourselves up as grand people at Stockwell, but I ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... reasonable, Mary," roared the gallant soldier, becoming a rich purple. "I know my duty, thank God! and I'm going to do it. When a man insults my daughter, it's my duty, as a gentleman and an officer, to give him a jolly good thrashing. When that twopenny sawbones of a doctor was rude to you, I licked him within an inch of his life. I kicked him till he begged for mercy; and if more men had the courage to take the law into their own hands, there'd be fewer damned blackguards in ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... remotely suggests the various flow of the hexameter. Translators who employ verse give us a feeble Homer, dashed with their own conceits, and moulded to their own style. Translators who employ prose "tell the story without the song," but, at least, they add no twopenny "beauties" and cheap conceits of ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... purchasing old linen rags for the paper-makers, etc., etc. We kept no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time break and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress, in spite of principle: being call'd one morning to breakfast, I found it in a China bowl, with ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... not spend any of his money on drink; but he spent a lot on what he called 'The Cause'. Every week he bought some penny or twopenny pamphlets or some leaflets about Socialism, which he lent or gave to his mates; and in this way and by means of much talk he succeeded in converting a few to his party. Philpot, Harlow and a few others used to listen with interest, and some of them even paid for the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... that's true, how does it happen?" asked Dyck, with a little flash of interest. "Why should this little twopenny, one-horse place— I mean in size and furnishments—have such luck as to get the best there is in France? It means a lot of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
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