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Updated: June 9, 2025
I werily believe there was change for a couple o' suv'rins in it, then, Sammy, all in ha'pence; and as the people come out, they rattled the pennies in it, till you'd ha' thought that no mortal plate as ever was baked, could ha' stood the wear and tear. What d'ye think it was all for? 'For another tea-drinkin', perhaps, said Sam.
O'Leary, when placing his money upon the table, observed the singular practice of announcing aloud the amount of his bet, which, for his own information, he not only reduced to English but also Irish currency; thus the stillness of the room was every instant broken by a strong Irish accent pronouncing something of this sort "five francs," "four and a penny" "ten francs," "eight and three ha'pence."
An inland-bred man, in his boyhood he had run away to sea, and the sea, that had irresistibly woed his youthful fancy, had no whit fulfilled his boyish dreams. It was not always blue, he found; the ship was not always running before a spanking breeze; more kicks than ha'pence, more rope's-endings than blessings, came his way during the first few years of his sailor life.
They exploit him for bullion. The women get the ha'pence, the kicks are all his own. The girls take every gift as a matter of course, and yet they develop greatly when a catastrophe arrives and the man of many millions goes up or goes down, and his daughters take to stenography or typewriting. I have heard many tales of heroism from the lips of girls who counted the principals among their friends.
All through, what has my life been? Bend, bend, bend my old creaking back till it would ache like breaking; wade about in the foul mire, never a dry stitch; empty belly, sore hands, hat off to my Lord Redface; kicks and ha'pence; and now, here, at the hind end, when I'm worn to my poor bones, a kick and done with it."
Few of my relatives would have wished to own a broken-down one-legged old tar like me. I found a brother a lawyer, and a cousin a parson, and two or three other relations; but, from what I heard, I thought I should `get more kicks than ha'pence' if I troubled them, so I determined to 'bout ship and stand off again. I was, howsomdever, very nearly being found out.
So we draw about the kitchen fire and play a round game of cards for ha'pence, or go to the billiard-room, for a match at corks and by one consent a messenger is sent over for the wagonette Grez shall be left to- morrow. To-morrow dawns so fair that two of the party agree to walk back for exercise, and let their kidnap-sacks follow by the trap.
Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir. No; they was two for three ha'pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woeful sore.
Weddings were celebrated among the Auld Lichts by showers of ha'pence, and the guests on their way to the bride's house had to scatter to the hungry rabble like housewives feeding poultry.
"Aye," I would say in a voice too low to be heard by my father. The order at Sam's was usually a sixpenny loaf, three ha'pence worth of tea and sugar and half an ounce of tobacco. There were times when Barney had no work for my father, and on such occasions I came home empty-handed. Then Jamie would go out to find work as a day laborer. Periods like these were glossed over by Anna's humor and wit.
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