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An axe worth ten shillings would buy three spars worth ten pounds in Sydney. A tenpenny nail would purchase a large fish. A musket and a little powder and lead were worth a ton of scraped flax. Baskets of potatoes would be brought down and ranged on the sea-beach three deep. The white trader would then stretch out enough calico to cover them. The strip was their price.

It kept Ernest busy in the spare hours of several months, and prevented him from thinking too much of his own immediate prospects, in his dreams for the golden future of humanity; and insomuch it did actually subserve some indirectly useful function; but on the other hand it wasted a considerable quantity of valuable tenpenny foolscap, and provided him after all with one more severe disappointment, to put on top of all the others to which he was just then being subjected.

And he changed his face every moment so, and with such power of mimicry that without so much as a smile of his own, he made even mother laugh so that she broke her new tenpenny waistband; and as for us children, we rolled on the floor, and Betty Muxworthy roared in the wash-up. Now although Mr.

"But he may not require your advice, Tommy, he may prefer deciding for himself. Now, the first lieutenant of the Naiad is a great Tartar, and I'm certain, if he is your captain, that, on the first word, he would have you under an arrest. There's an old saying, Tommy, `It's folly to kick against tenpenny nails; and that every officer does who kicks against his superior.

When Lee needed bullets, a minister tore the lead pipe out of his house in Richmond to send the lead to Lee. Flour rose to $400 a barrel. In one little town iron became so scarce that tenpenny nails were used for money.

And hanging over one of his arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sitting on one of his shoulders was a rat that could speak. So, the Devil said again: 'A Lemon has pips, And a Yard has ships, And I'll have Chips! 'What are you doing, Chips? said the rat that could speak.

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."

'But we'll eat them too, said the rat that could speak; 'and we'll let in the water and drown the crew, and we'll eat them too. Chips, being only a shipwright, and not a Man-of- war's man, said, 'You are welcome to it. But he couldn't keep his eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails; for nails and copper are a shipwright's sweethearts, and shipwrights will run away with them whenever they can.

Little demons, with long saws for noses, are making dreadful incisions into the toes of the unhappy sufferer; some are bringing pans of hot coals to keep the wounded member warm; a huge, solemn nightmare sits on the invalid's chest, staring solemnly into his eyes; a monster, with a pair of drumsticks, is banging a devil's tattoo on his forehead; and a pair of imps are nailing great tenpenny nails into his hands to make his happiness complete.

This, however, could hardly be achieved without some degree of violence; Madge held fast, and renewed her frantic entreaties to be permitted to cut down her mother. "It was but a tenpenny tow lost," she said, "and what was that to a woman's life?"