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Just look at the other shoemakers' boys; they hang their string of boots and shoes over their shoulders, and go whistling and singing along the streets quite at their ease, playing marbles at the corners for pennies with the newspaper boys; they know how to lie it out so as to escape beating, and have always some coppers in their pockets.
The Englishman may object, and with justice, that because an educated man must incorporate into his speech words and phrases and forms which are necessary for communication with the vulgar, there is no reason why he should not be able to reserve those forms and phrases for use with the vulgar only. A gentleman does not pay half-a-crown, lost at the card table to a friend, in coppers.
To a poor man with a large family of church-goers this matter of church collections is a serious business unless he can get four mites out of a shilling, as coppers are not used in the Transvaal; but I have known men of good standing inquire as eagerly for the despised threepenny-piece.
He desired peace and goodwill among men; he pitied with all his soul the weary and the broken whom he met, and wondered with regret that men should get irremediably involved in the toils of their own misdeeds; he was profuse with coppers, and even small silver, to the wretched waifs of society who swept the crossings he had to take on his triumphant way; he would even have bestowed forgiveness on his greatest enemy if he had met him then; for the divine joy of love was singing in his heart and raising him to the serene and glorious empyrean of heroes and gods.
A very considerable hoard of precious stones, nearly all diamonds, and all of them loose, without any setting whatever. Of course, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have family jewels; but those are exactly the jewels that are almost always set in particular articles of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to have kept theirs loose in their pockets, like coppers. "Second item.
For a few years the father earned a few coppers by playing before public-houses in the East End, and then took to the road. Somehow or other he found himself on the Continent, and after many years he had turned up here. It was all very vague and incoherent. Often starving, homeless, and speaking no language but his own, is it to be wondered that the man had lost count of days, years, and time?
'As you're perfect in that, resumed Squeers, turning to the boy, 'go and look after MY horse, and rub him down well, or I'll rub you down. The rest of the class go and draw water up, till somebody tells you to leave off, for it's washing-day tomorrow, and they want the coppers filled.
The traffic was not confined to men; for women and children kept pace with the army, trading in every possible article of necessity or luxury. For these disciples of the dime and the dollar war had no terrors. They took their muck-rakes, like the man in Bunyan, and gathered the almighty coppers, from the pestilential camp and the reeking battle-field.
"Nieces!" echoed the farmer, mechanically thrusting his hands into his breeches-pockets as if in search of something there, "nieces about me! what do you mean? Be that a newfangled word for coppers?" "Not for coppers, though perhaps for brass. But I spoke without metaphor. I object to nieces upon abstract principle, confirmed by the test of experience."
"Not until some time before the news reached you," One replied, pleasantly. "And what of it?" "Three fycers in a week, Gov'ner anybody'll tell you that's comin' it a bit thick." "Granted. What then?" "That's only part of it. Tike last week: Eighteen pinched, the queer plant in 'Igh Street pulled by the coppers " "I know, I know. To your point!" Seven hesitated under that steely stare.
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