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He would sometimes throw his heels over his head, and come down on his feet, uttering oaths in a circle. And thus, in a rage, he was the first who performed a somerset, and did what others have since learned to do for merriment and money. Once Rugg was seen to bite a tenpenny nail in halves.
"His paper in the Spectator beats thy best, Dick, thou sluggard," the Right Honorable Mr. Addison exclaimed. "He is the author of that famous No. 996, for which you have all been giving me the credit." "The rascal foiled me at capping verses," Dean Swift said, "and won a tenpenny piece of me, plague take him!"
And now, although poor Ponto had just been so cruelly made to bleed on occasion of his son's new uniform, and though he was in the direst and most cut-throat spirits with an overdrawn account at the banker's, and other pressing evils of poverty; although a tenpenny bottle of Marsala and an awful parsimony presided generally at his table, yet the poor fellow was obliged to assume the most frank and jovial air of cordiality; and all the covers being removed from the hangings, and new dresses being procured for the young ladies, and the family plate being unlocked and displayed, the house and all within assumed a benevolent and festive appearance.
She ordered him to buy her a present every day, but it was never to cost above a shilling. But when one day he appeared with a diamond necklace, it was taken very coldly, he was not even thanked for it, and he was made to feel, once for all, that the tenpenny ones were the best investments toward her favor.
But Boots stuck out his tenpenny nail, and she cut at it. 'Nay! nay! he's as hard as iron still', said the Troll's daughter, when she got back to her father; 'we can't take him yet. After another eight days the same thing happened, and this time Boots stuck out his birchen pin. 'Well, he's a little better', she said, when she got back to the Troll; 'but still he'll be as hard as wood to chew.
Algernon said this, and entrenched his fluttering spirit behind common sense, but he found it a cold corner. The longing for Champagne stimulant increased in fervour. Arithmetic languished. As he was going up the hill, the wheels were still for a moment, and hearing "Tenpenny Nail" shouted, he put forth his head, and asked what the cry was, concerning that horse. "Gone lame," was the answer.
The present chief is 'King' Tom Peter, who is also a first-class police-constable under the Colonial Grovernment; and his subjects hold themselves far superior to their brethren in the old home down coast. 'We men work for cash-money; you men work for waist-cloth. Again 'pig-iron and tenpenny nails!
A similar change had passed upon his stock. There was Punch and Fun amongst the papers, and tenpenny Shaksperes on the counter, printed on straw-paper, with ugly wood-cuts. The former class of publications had not vanished, but was mingled with cheap editions of some worthy of being called books. "I see you have changed your mind since I saw you last," I said.
The citizens retorted with a practical jest, which was still more barbarous. They cut off the heads of eleven prisoners and put them into a barrel, which they threw into the Spanish camp. A Label upon the barrel contained these words: "Deliver these ten heads to Duke Alva in payment of his tenpenny tax, with one additional head for interest."
Nor was there any mark on the opposite part of the thigh to denote its place, as when a ball forces itself straight through a limb, and lodges, perhaps, close to the skin on the other side. Nothing was visible but a small, ragged puncture, bluish about the edges, as if the rough point of a tenpenny nail had been forced into the flesh, and withdrawn.
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