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Penny   Listen
noun
Penny  n.  (pl. pennies or pence. pennies denotes the number of coins; pence the amount of pennies in value)  
1.
A former English coin, originally of copper, then of bronze, the twelfth part of an English shilling in account value, and equal to four farthings, or about two cents; usually indicated by the abbreviation d. (the initial of denarius). Note: "The chief Anglo-Saxon coin, and for a long period the only one, corresponded to the denarius of the Continent... (and was) called penny, denarius, or denier." The ancient silver penny was worth about three pence sterling (see Pennyweight). The old Scotch penny was only one twelfth the value of the English coin. In the United States the word penny is popularly used for cent.
2.
Any small sum or coin; a groat; a stiver.
3.
Money, in general; as, to turn an honest penny. "What penny hath Rome borne, What men provided, what munition sent?"
4.
(Script.) See Denarius.
Penny cress (Bot.), an annual herb of the Mustard family, having round, flat pods like silver pennies (Thlaspi arvense). Also spelled pennycress.
Penny dog (Zool.), a kind of shark found on the South coast of Britain: the tope.
Penny pincher, Penny father, a penurious person; a miser; a niggard. The latter phrase is now obsolete.
Penny grass (Bot.), pennyroyal. (R.)
Penny post, a post carrying a letter for a penny; also, a mail carrier.
Penny wise, wise or prudent only in small matters; saving small sums while losing larger; penny-wise; used chiefly in the phrase, penny wise and pound foolish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Penny" Quotes from Famous Books



... and suggesting that she might have been more safe had she been content to bestow herself upon some country neighbour of less dangerous pretensions. Others declared that it was no such great match after all. They knew his income to a penny, and believed that the young people would find it very difficult to keep a house in London unless the old squire intended to assist them. But, nevertheless, Lily was envied as she rode through the town with her handsome ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... An I do, let me die poisoned with some venomous hiss, and never live to look as high as the two-penny ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... holland, and it is the coarsest blue serge during the winter; never, never anything else—no style, no fashion, no pretty ribbons, not even a cherry ribbon for my hair, and so little pocket-money, oh! so little—only a penny a week. What can a girl do with a penny a week? Of course, she does allow me a few stamps, just a very few, to send Mummy letters, but she does keep me so terribly close. Sometimes I can scarcely bear the life. Oh, what a difference the Scholarship would make, and Sir John Wallis ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... in the shape of capital. The truth was that he had never had enough capital. He had heavily mortgaged the house at Toft End in order to purchase his partners' shares in the business and have the whole undertaking to himself, and he profoundly regretted it. He needed every penny that he could collect; the strictest economy was necessary if he meant to survive the struggle. And here he was paying eight pounds a week to a personage purely ornamental, after having squandered hundreds in rendering that personage ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... of the yeomanry were very popular during the sixteenth century, and were sold as penny chapbooks for many years. They form an interesting link in the history of English prose fiction, representing as they do the first appearance of a popular demand for prose stories, and the first appearance, except in Chaucer, of other than military or clerical heroes. They possess ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... the vicar. "She says that she would think shame to take money from friends as long as she can work, because every penny that she would thus get would be so much less to go to the helpless poor; of whom, she says, with much truth, there are enough and to spare. And I quite agree with her as regards her principle; but it does not apply fully to her, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... practice, holding on there until something may turn up. And for six months I have had to wait; a weary six months they have been. You see I cannot ask my father for money—or, at least, I cannot bring myself to take an unnecessary penny of his money—for I know how hard a fight it is with him to keep the roof over our heads and pay for the modest little horse and trap which are as necessary to his trade as a goose is to a tailor. Foul fare the grasping taxman who wrings a couple of guineas from us on the ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... (Seven feet deep.)—A Roman coin of Commodus and a penny of George III. at eight ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... word of a gentleman, thou cannot have it a penny under; think on it, think on it, while I meditate on my fair mistress— Nunc sequor imperium, magne Cupido, tuum. Whate'er become of this dull, threadbare clerk, I must be costly in my mistress' eye: Ladies regard not ragged company. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... to 'ave Reform now, Beck. The peopul's to have their rights and libties, hand the luds is to be put down, hand beefsteaks is to be a penny a ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for a penny, in for a pound. While we are here, we may as well see all that is to be seen. I won't ask you how you liked the comedy. I want to see something lively now, to remove the disagreeable impressions it has left ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... Charles Trywit and Harry Finish were excellent masters for initiating a man into the knowledge of the world) to perceive that a person, however admirable may be his qualities, does not readily find a welcome without a penny in his pocket. In the neighbourhood of Thames Court he had, indeed, many acquaintances; but the fineness of his language, acquired from his education, and the elegance of his air, in which he attempted to blend in happy ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Martha and little Nan were driven home by the August thunderstorms. Martha was wonderfully successful this year, and gained more money by selling her bilberries than she thought necessary to show to Stephen; though, on his part, he always brought her every penny of ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... city, he visited me almost every day, even when I had not desired him to bring me any thing. Several times I received from him some small supplies of food for the money I had given him. I once gave him a half- dollar to get changed; and he brought me back every penny of it, at his ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... Arthur dropped down on the rug beside her. "They're worth so much more that I couldn't let you have them for a penny," she ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... be able to obtain a fairly good dinner in one of the little Italian restaurants for ninepence. His tea would cost the same as his breakfast. To these sums he must add twopence for tobacco and a penny for an evening paper—impossible to do without tobacco, and he must know what was going on in the world. He could therefore live for one shilling and eightpence a day—eleven shillings a week—to which ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... not a penny, was inscribed among the active members of the Section; the law accorded this privilege only to such citizens as were rich enough to pay a contribution equivalent in amount to three days' work, and demanded a ten days' contribution to qualify an elector ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... cabaretts in France they have writ upon the walls in fair letters to be read "Dieu te regarde." as a good lesson to be in every man's mind, and have also in Holland their poor's box; in both which places at the making all contracts and bargains they give so much, which they call God's penny. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... sticking feathers in their hats. That's all right; that is charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to the poor little crossing-sweeper got up also—in its Sunday dress—the dirtiest rags it has that it may beg the better: we shall give it a penny, and think how good we are. That's charity going abroad. But what does justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian justice has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind, decrepit this ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... a little drop in his head. He told these under-officers that he was one of that kind of folk who never are afraid of anything. Then he was just the kind of man they liked, said they, and he might easily earn a good penny, before he was a day older, for the king paid a hundred dollars to anyone who would stand as sentinel in the church all night, beside ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... towne, and bespoke shoes, as also got him to find me a taylor to make me some clothes, my owne being not yet in towne, nor Pym, my Lord Sandwich's taylor. So he helped me to a pretty man, one Mr. Penny, against St. Dunstan's Church. Thence to the 'Change and there met Mr. Moore, newly come to towne, and took him home to dinner with me and after dinner to talke, and he and I do conclude my Lord's case to be very bad and may be worse, if he do not get a pardon for his doings about the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... thee: yet for the out-side of thy pouertie, we must make an exchange; therefore dis-case thee instantly (thou must thinke there's a necessitie in't) and change Garments with this Gentleman: Though the penny-worth (on his side) be the worst, yet hold thee, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... particular man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and halfpenny novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our day, might learn from good literature nothing except the power to appreciate good literature. But from bad literature he might learn to govern empires and look ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... acquire the knowledge of the value of the coin, which is indeed rather intricate; first a sou, or what we should call a halfpenny, is four liards or five centimes; then there are two sou pieces, which resemble our penny pieces; there is likewise a little dingy looking copper coin, with an N upon one side and 10 centimes on the other, that is also two sous; they once had a little silver wash upon them, but it has now disappeared. Next there ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... the leaping flea o'er many a mile of pillow and sheet, by the great Atlantic's margin. Round and round, till the heart—and not only the heart—grows sick, and the mad brain whirls and reels, have I ridden the small, but extremely hard, horse, that may, for a penny, be mounted amid the plains of Peckham Rye; and high above the heads of the giddy throngs of Barnet (though it is doubtful if anyone among them was half so giddy as was I) have I swung in highly-coloured car, worked by a man with ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... made it the cheapest book printed. For example, the American Bible Society offers an edition of the whole Bible as low as fifteen cents and the New Testament at five cents, and the British Society at sixpence and one penny, respectively. These low prices, made possible by their policy of selling the books at cost or below cost," etc.—New York Sun, February ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... instance, is, at Paris, one penny the pound, and in London at eight-pence the quartern loaf, which weighs just four French pounds, the price is exactly double. If every thing was conducted in a fair way, corn, from all countries, where it is equally as ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... fellows who are alive. Perhaps, I did not pay those others enough attention. How could I? They cannot think. They cannot speak. They make a complicated verbal noise, but all I am able to translate from it is, that a something called lip-salve can be bought in some particular shop one penny cheaper than it can in a certain other shop. They will twitter for hours about the way a piece of ribbon was stitched to a hat which they saw in a tramcar. They agitate themselves wondering whether a muff should be this size or that size?—I say, they ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... the present time, support 1,200 newspapers. There being no stamp-duty, no duty on paper, and none on advertisements, the yearly cost of a daily paper, such as the New York Tribune for instance, is only 5 dollars, or one guinea. The price of a single copy of such papers is only 2 cents, or one penny; and many papers are only one cent, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... spelling the longest, a piece of the Sermon on the Mount, selected because there were no names in it. It was a painful performance to reverent ears, and as soon as practicable Mrs Carbonel stopped it with "Good child!" and a penny, and asked what the others read. Those who were not "in the Testament" read the "Universal Spelling-book," provided at their own expense, but not in much better condition, and from this George Hewlett, son and heir to the carpenter, and a very different person from his ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hardly believe that, notwithstanding he was the possessor of this princely revenue, the baron was not satisfied, but oppressed and ground down his unfortunate tenants to the very last penny he could possibly squeeze out of them. In all his exactions he was seconded and encouraged by his steward Klootz, an old rascal who took a malicious pleasure in his master's cruelty, and who chuckled and rubbed his hands with the greatest apparent ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... to become of them all?" he thought. "I have ten children, and my wages are so small, and food and clothing are so dear. When the poor wife was well, she used to look after the cow and poultry, and turn a little penny, but now she is ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... From her, I think, I inherited my charity and love for the poor. God favored me with the blessing of being her successor in that holy exercise. There was not one in the town, or its environs, who did not praise her for this virtue. She sometimes gave to the last penny in the house, though she had a large family to maintain, and yet she did ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... Distress in London; Riots there; The Liverpool Petition; Good Behaviour of the Working class in Liverpool; Great effort made to give relief; Amateur Performances; Handsome Sum realized; Enthusiasm exhibited on the occasion; Lord Cochrane; His Fine; Exertion of his Friends in Liverpool; The Penny Subscription; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... "No, nor a penny to spend on training. I must be taken as I am, or not at all. Don't discourage me, Eleanor, please. Mollie runs the cold tap persistently at home, and I really need appreciation. There must be something that I can do, if I set my ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... 'was not a leader-writer for the penny press, nor, for that matter, was Horace. Regulus says: "The soldier ransomed by gold will come keener for the fight—will he by—by gum!" That's the meaning of scilicet. It indicates contempt—bitter contempt. "Forsooth," forsooth! You'll be talking about "speckled beauties" ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... thoughts are worth far more than a penny," fell from the lady on the couch, who had observed her for ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... no sooner do their sorceries cease, though but the moment before they were reveling and banqueting with Marc Antony, or quaffing nectar with Jupiter himself, it is a safe wager of a pound to a penny that half of them go supperless to bed. A set of poor but pleasant rogues! miserable but merry wags! that weep without sorrow, stab without anger, die without dread, and laugh, sing, and dance to inspire mirth in others while ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... pocket—a golden half guinea in a little box, with three shillings and a few coppers, including a farthing. The pence she gave to three of her little brothers and sisters. One boy, however, 'had huffed her,' and got no penny. But she relented, and, when she went out, bought for him a mince-pie. Her visit of New Year's Day was to her maternal aunt, Mrs. Colley, living at Saltpetre Bank (Dock Street, behind the London Dock). She meant ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... that the tearing up that paper made no difference, that she was powerless of herself to act until she was of age, so she will wait quietly till then before making another effort. And in his heart Guy thought how he would not take a penny from her, but would insist upon her keeping it. Still he should respect her all the more for her sense of justice and generosity, he thought, and when her twenty-first birthday came and passed, and week after week went by, and ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes

... food supply only held out. Cartridges were manufactured on an enormous scale; the General calculated that over half a million were fired away during four months of the siege. Eight steamers, which were nothing more than ordinary vessels, similar to the "Penny Steamers" on the Thames, were armour-plated, and made to act as miniature men-of-war, new ones were built, old ones were fitted up and adapted, and landsmen were trained to take them into action. "Our steamers," Gordon said, ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... all sad, or joyful only in some vague vision of conquest over death. But the Johnsonian vanity of wishes is on the whole satisfactory to Johnson—accepted with gentlemanly resignation by Pope—triumphantly and with bray of penny trumpets and blowing of steam-whistles, proclaimed for the glorious discovery of the civilised ages, by Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Adam Smith, and Co. There is no God, but have we not invented gunpowder?—who wants a God, with that in his pocket?[179] There is no Resurrection, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Mr. James' chilluns was little saplings. I'se gwine on eighty-six and dem big boys raise dey hats to me. White people has respec' for me kaize I ain't never been in jail. I knows how to carry myself, and I specs to die dat way if I can. Lil chile what jus' could talk good gived me a penny dis mawning. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... reproached him with being better fitted for a pedlar than a lawyer,—so persistently did he trudge over all the neighbouring counties in search of the beauties of nature and the historic associations of battle, siege, or legend. On one occasion when, with their last penny spent, Scott and one of his companions had returned to Edinburgh, living during their last day on drinks of milk offered by generous peasant-women, and the hips and haws on the hedges, he remarked to ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... to her finances; and the Beaubien was actively cooeperating with her in the social advancement of Carmen. It is true, she gasped whenever her thought wandered to her notes which the Beaubien held, notes which demanded every penny of her principal as collateral. And she often meditated very soberly over the large sums which she had put into the purchase of Simiti stock, at the whispered suggestions of Ames, and under the irresistibly pious and persuasive ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... people will be erected. I have the refusal"—here the colonel lowered his voice—"of two thousand acres of the best private-residence land in the county, contiguous to this very spot, which I can buy for fo' dollars an acre. It is worth fo' dollars a square foot if it is worth a penny. But, suh, it would be little short of highway rob'ry to take this property at that figger, and I shall arrange with Fitz to include in his prospectus the payment of one hundred dollars an acre for this land, payable either in the common stock ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... know about that," said Jost, "but now listen to me. Do you know how a fellow who hasn't so much as a penny in his purse, can in one night get enough to build a big stone house, like the one the landlord of the lion has in Fohrensee, and make himself a gentleman all at once? I know how; I know somebody who has explained ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri

... was suddenly in Drymouth on important business. I thought to myself on waking this morning—I took a room at the 'Three Tuns'—'Why, there are Charles and Maggie whom I haven't seen for an age.' I'd have sent you a telegram but the truth is, my dear, that I didn't want to spend a penny more than I must. Things haven't been going so well with me of late. It's a long story. I want your father's advice. I've had the worst of luck and I could tell you one or two things that would simply surprise you—but anyway, there it is. Just for a night I'm sure you won't mind. To-morrow ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... deuce with my writing time, For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws; He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme, And he leaves me—well, God knows It takes the shine from a tunester's line When a little mate of the deathless Nine Pipes up under ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... bank-notes. I have often wished those bank-notes were in the depths of the infernal regions; they have given my son much more trouble than relief. I know not how many inconveniences they have caused him. Nobody in France has a penny; but, saving your presence, and to speak in plain palatine, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... present day, the ambulating magicians frequent the Old Boulevards, and there tell fortunes for three or four sous; while those persons that value science according to the price set on it, disdaining these two-penny conjurers, repair to fortune-tellers of a superior class, who take from three to six francs, and more, when the opportunity offers. The TROPHONIUS of Paris is Citizen Martin, who lives at N deg. 1773 Rue d'Anjou: the PHEMONOE is Madame Villeneuve, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... Fenety—now 'Queen's Printer' at Fredericton —established the Commercial News, at St. John, New Brunswick, the first tri-weekly and penny paper in the Maritime Provinces, which he conducted for a quarter of a century, until he disposed of it to Mr. Edward Willis, under whose editorial supervision it has always exercised considerable influence in the public affairs of the province. ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... sometimes is, to explore still further, with a vague idea of reaching some unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting the small traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and comic songs which here and there jostled one another in the short compass of a single window. I think it was a cold shudder that suddenly passed through me that first told me that ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... continued Coleman, not heeding the interruption, "he is as rich as Croesus; now Lucy hasn't a penny, and all her family are as poor as rats, so what does he do but go to my father, promises to settle no end of tin on her, and ends by asking him to manage the matter for him. Whereupon the governor sends for Lucy, spins her a long yarn about duty ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... shop; and sometimes it refreshes my memory for me on the backside of a Chancery lane parcel. For your comfort too, Mr. Bayes, I have not only seen it, as you may perceive, but have read it too, and can quote it as freely upon occasion as a frugal tradesman can quote that noble treatise The Worth of a Penny, to his extravagant 'prentice, that revels in stewed ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... Livingstone was engaged in collecting specimens of cotton, and upwards of three hundred pounds were thus obtained, at a price of less than a penny a pound, which showed that cotton of a superior quality could be raised by native labour alone, and that but for the slave trade a large amount might be raised ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... is the theory of the government, if the practice of the government be unjust and tyrannical. We rise in rebellion against a despotism incomparably more dreadful than that which induced the colonists to take up arms against the mother country; not on account of a three-penny tax on tea, but because fetters of living iron are fastened on the limbs of millions of our countrymen, and our most sacred rights are trampled in the dust. As citizens of the State, we appeal to the State ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... weighing, possibly, a fraction over a pound, was three shillings (sixty cents), delicious fresh rolls, sixpence (ten cents) a dozen, buttermilk on draught, threepence (five cents) a glass; English ale, half a dollar (fifty cents) a pint bottle; black pudding, a penny a pound; and as much cold roast pork and beans, or boiled ham, as I liked for a shilling. The man smiled at my ignorance in asking the price of pork in Chicago—the great pork-packing ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the other a lack of good breeding and education. The Sparks, father and daughter, Americans of the lower class, though willing to spend any number of dollars for their own pleasure, expected that every penny they disbursed should receive its full equivalent in service; the place therefore offered so gracefully and spontaneously to Mademoiselle de Nailles was far from being a sinecure. Jacqueline received her salary on the same footing as Justine, the Parisian maid, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... several family papers, and among them a general confession which she desired to make; when she wrote it, however, her mind was disordered; she knew not what she had said or done, being distraught at the time, in a foreign country, deserted by her relatives, forced to borrow every penny. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... who have in fact less honesty, are employed in our billiard and gambling-houses. I have seen two music-grinders, one of whom was formerly a captain of infantry, and the other a Counsellor of Parliament. Every, day you may bestow your penny or halfpenny on two veiled girls playing on the guitar or harp—the one the daughter of a ci-devant Duke, and the other of a ci-devant Marquis, a general under Louis XVI. They, are usually placed, the one on the Boulevards, and the other in the Elysian Fields; each with an old woman ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... After more than a century of Union finance, after contributing, all told, over three hundred and twenty millions of money to the Imperial purse over and above expenditure in Ireland, they have now ceased to contribute a penny, and are a little in debt. As we shall see, when I come to a closer examination of finance, the main factor in producing this result has been the Old Age Pensions. The application of the British scale, unmodified, to Ireland is the kind of blunder which the Union encourages. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... have travelled it is quite extraordinary what an appalling mass of nonsensical rubbish can be supplied to the public by politicians, by newspaper penny-a-liners, and by home royal geographo-parasites at large, who base their arguments on such unsteady foundation. It is quite sufficient for some people to open an atlas and place their fingers on a surface of cobalt blue paint in order to select strategical harbours, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... hand, the Odrysians flocked down in still larger numbers, and on the other, the tribes which gave in their adhesion from time to time were amalgamated with his armament. They got into quarters on the flat country above Selybria at about three miles (5) distance from the sea. As to pay, not a penny was as yet forthcoming, and the soldiers were cruelly disaffected to Xenophon, whilst Seuthes, on his side, was no longer so friendlily disposed. If Xenophon ever wished to come face to face with him, want of leisure or some other difficulty always ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... measures of capacity by cubing them. The standard of weights was originally taken from corns of wheat, whence the lowest denomination of weights we have is still called a grain; thirty two of which are directed, by the statute called compositio mensurarum, to compose a penny weight, whereof twenty make an ounce, twelve ounces a pound, and so upwards. And upon these principles the first standards were made; which, being originally so fixed by the crown, their subsequent regulations have been generally made by the king in parliament. Thus, under ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... hours at a stretch, gazing at her. He was mad over her: I understand that! She would fall asleep tired at night, and he would wake to kiss her in her sleep and make the sign of the cross over her. He would go about in a dirty old coat, he was stingy to everyone else, but would spend his last penny for her, giving her expensive presents, and it was his greatest delight when she was pleased with what he gave her. Fathers always love their daughters more than the mothers do. Some girls live happily at home! And I believe I should never let ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... has robbed you, papa. A just man did not speak there! Every penny in those debts is stamped with Mr. Milburn's injuries and coined by his sacrifices. Have you spent his money ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... will give me your letter, and I swear to you, I will cross the mountains of Kaf, to deliver you!—I will pay you all back. By Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I swear! May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not account to you for the last penny!' ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... the clerk, whom the wine had rendered tender-hearted; "he will not have a penny. I pity him with all ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... right with you, friend—only more so. I have nothing, absolutely nothing! You've twenty-three cents, hey? A bad number, that twenty-three. Give me the odd penny, and perhaps luck'll change for both of us.' I put the copper into his hand, and in chucking it into his pocket he dropped it. It rolled out to the center of the walk, and in an instant not less ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... unless I can get the Magician to give me time. I will ask him to let me pay him part of my debt year by year till all is paid. If he will, my gratitude will know no bounds, and I will pay him every penny I owe." ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... contributions of Catholics, on being received, are immediately invested in securities bearing interest, which securities are again sold as may be necessary for current needs, and expended for the welfare of Catholic Christianity. Every penny is most carefully accounted for. These moneys are generally invested in Italian national bonds—a curious fact, and indicative of considerable confidence in the existing state of things, as well as a significant guarantee of the Vatican's ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... great city, of the great idea he had conceived of making money, and of the Farm Investment Company he had instituted—the simple system of applying the crushing power of capital to exact the uttermost penny from the farm loans. And now here he was back again, true to his word, with a million dollars in his belt. "To-morrow," he had murmured, "I will tell them. It will be Xmas." Then William—yes, reader, it was William (see line ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... sent them their confounded eggs long ago, if only their rotten, twopenny-ha'penny incubator had worked with any approach to decency." He paused. "Or would you be sarcastic, Garny, old horse? No, better put it so that they'll understand. Say that I consider that the manufacturer of the thing ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... the railroad now, Madge, and haven't turned a dishonest penny in a long time. Of course you heard of the robbery of the midnight express down in the central part of the State last night? Some of the morning papers have ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton

... II ordered the repeal of the earlier act because of the poor quality of tobacco being submitted. After the overthrow of the King in 1688/89, the collection of quitrents continued for the most part in tobacco at the rate of one penny per pound. ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... greeted with a howl of indignation all over the country. It was thought that its founders were inspired by a deep-laid political scheme for centralizing the government and setting up a hereditary aristocracy. The press teemed with invective and ridicule, and the feeling thus expressed by the penny-a-liners was shared by able men accustomed to weigh their words. Franklin dealt with it in a spirit of banter, and John Adams in a spirit of abhorrence; while Samuel Adams pointed out the dangers inherent in the principle of hereditary transmission of honours, and in the admission ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... Liberty, possibly the secretary of that body, which owned its inability to put anything in writing, had provided a penny bottle of ink and a sticky-looking, red pen-holder. The speaker took up the pen suspiciously, and laid it down again. He rubbed his finger and thumb together. His suspicions had apparently been justifiable. It was a sticky one! Then he lapsed into thought. Perhaps he was ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses," Matth. xviii. 32, 33, 34, 35. When we cannot dispense with one penny, how should he dispense with his talents? And when we cannot pardon ten, how should he forgive ten thousand? When he hath forgiven my brother all his iniquity, may not I pardon one? Shall I impute that which God will not impute, or discover that which God hath covered? How should I expect he ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... she was screwing up her eyes in the endeavour to penetrate the darkness of the stable. "Poor wold Blackbird," she said, "I wish it hadn't come to this. It do seem cruel someway. There, he did never cost 'ee a penny, wi'out 'twas for shoes, and he've a-worked hard ever sin' he could pull a cart—never a bit o' vice or mischief. It do seem cruel hard as he shouldn't end his days on the place ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... resumed Mrs. Cluppins, 'unbeknown to Mrs. Bardell; I had been out with a little basket, gentlemen, to buy three pounds of red kidney pertaties, which was three pound, tuppense ha'penny, when I see Mrs. Bardell's street ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... does the lovely, lonely oil lamp swing at the corners of our streets. Your Lordships can wend your way homeward as far West as Kensington, or as far North as Highbury, without meeting the casual footpad. The town is drained; the river is embanked; our streets are paved; and we have a penny post. Almost all that is left to us of the good old times are these bars, arbitrarily set up across our thoroughfare, watched by a gentleman in a seedy suit, and a rain-beaten hat girt with tarnished golden ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... reason now, save railway rivalries and retail ideas—obstacles some able and active man is certain to sweep away sooner or later—why the post-office should not deliver parcels anywhere within a radius of a hundred miles in a few hours at a penny or less for a pound and a little over,[19] put our newspapers in our letter-boxes direct from the printing-office, and, in fact, hand in nearly every constant need of the civilized household, except possibly butcher's meat, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... in moss and water, and, treading twice in the same tracks, found a bog of oozing, icy mud. Therefore, as the town doubled daily in size, it grew endwise like a string of dominoes, till the shore from Cape Nome to Penny River was a long reach of white, glinting in the low rays of the arctic sunset like foamy breakers on a ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... wade in up to your waist when the tide is near flood, and let no one see you but me. Or if that is not satisfactory, here is another plan even better. Get it all out of the house as quick as you can, not reserving a penny for yourself, and distribute it to the poor five shillings to one, five pounds to another, a hundred to a third; philosophy might constitute a claim to a double or triple share. For my part—and I do not ask for myself, only ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... mean just that, Penny. I'm getting a line on this thing, and I think that the criminal or the criminal's friends or accomplices are utilizing occult forces in their own behalf. I think, Miss Crane, the more messages you get telling you ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... depend on that. I don't say nothing against our skipper; what he does is all right and above board, and a better man nor officer never stepped a deck, but, mark my words, that 'ere 'Chatham's' people now will be filling their pockets with gold dollars, while we shan't have a penny piece to chink in ours; as for our ship, I knows what I knows, and I thinks what ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... the interior. The sheikh, who superintended it, however, fixed the prices of all wares, for which he was entitled to a commission; and, after every bargain, the seller returned to the buyer a stated part of the price by way of a blessing, or a "luck-penny" as it would be called in England. Cowries were here used as coins, though somewhat cumbersome, as twenty were worth only a halfpenny; thus, in paying a pound sterling, nine thousand six hundred shells had to be counted out. As he remarks: "The great advantage of the use of the cowrie is that ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... one in our country villages, and these books reflect its thoughts and manners as half-penny ballads do the life of the streets of London. The ballads are not more true to the facts; but they give us, in a coarser form, far more of the spirit than we get from the same facts reflected in the intellect of a Dickens, for instance, or of any writer far enough above the scene to be properly ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... could eat at a meal, which to me was for some time a very nauseous sight. She would craunch the wing of a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although it were nine times as large as that of a full-grown turkey; and put a bit of bread in her mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves. She drank out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The spoons, forks, and other instruments, were all in the same proportion. I remember when Glumdalclitch ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... normal, unspoiled, happy girl who's always been so busy thinking of everything else that she's never had a moment to think of herself. Now to show that you forgive my two-a-penny lectures, will you let me eat dinner with you off your tray? And what are you doing with these books? And did you know Dr. Bowerman's going to let ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... seems also marvellous to me, especially when I observe for how little a matter some men will study, contrive, make, and tell a lie. You shall have some that will lie it over and over, and that for a penny profit. Yea, lie and stand in it, although they know that they lie. Yea, you shall have some men that will not stick to tell lie after lie, though themselves get nothing thereby. They will tell lies in their ordinary ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that vade mecum (price one penny) of the British soldier: French, and how to speak it. It was night, not day, but ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... buying tools with which to work.[A] The Government supplied next to nothing. In 1902 between the King's River and the Kaweah, an area of somewhere near a million acres, the complete inventory of fire-fighting tools consisted of two rakes made from fifty cents' worth of twenty-penny nails. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... church-sides like some frankly happy stone-crop, or wall-flower, just as wholesomely coloured and tenderly shaped, you must come to Florence. Come for choice in this golden afternoon of the year. Green figs are twelve-a-penny; you can get peaches for the asking, and grapes and melons without it; brown men are treading the wine-fat in every little white hill-town, and in Florence itself you may stumble upon them, as I once did, plying their mystery in a battered old church—sight only ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... Church never used its influence to make the hire worthy of the labourer; instead of that, it has always sought to grind the last penny out of the people, and then it pauperized them with alms," ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... penny, doubting man," she laughed. "The money is yours, all earned by the farm; perhaps not quite all, because we have not more than half as many animals as we had before. But, as I told you, we are growing vegetables, and for that we must have ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... joke was such that it appears in the title to one of his works, the opus 129. It is a rondo a capriccio for piano, with the title, Die Wuth ueber den verlorenen Groschen (fury over a lost penny), of which Schumann says "it would be difficult to find anything merrier than this whim. It is the ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... Regent Inlet, and from North Devon by Lancaster Sound. Various names are given to various parts of the land—thus the north-western part is called Cockburn Land, farther [v.03 p.0193] east is North Galloway; on the extreme eastern peninsula are Cumberland and Penny Lands, while the southern is called Meta Incognita; in the west is Fox Land. In the southern part of the interior are two large lakes, Amadjuak, which lies at an altitude of 289 ft., ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... old time when Ireland was paved with penny loaves and the houses thatched with pancakes; and there was a king had a son, and the mother died, and he married another wife; and she had three daughters, and their names were Catherine Snowflake, and Broad ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... was suspended. Massachusetts was put under arbitrary despotism. Towns were forbidden to meet, except for the choice of officers; there must be no deliberation; "discussion must be suppressed." He was to levy all the taxes; he assessed a penny in the pound in all the towns. Rev. John Wise, one of the ministers of Ipswich, advised the people to resist the tax. "Democracy," said he, "is Christ's government in Church and State; we have a good God and a good king; we shall do well to stand to our privileges." One of the Council said, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker



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