"Small change" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Small Change.%—The consequences of the suspension were very serious. In the first place, all the small silver coins, the dimes, half dollars, and quarter dollars, disappeared at once, and the people were again forced to do as they had done in 1789, and use "ticket money." All ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... daggers, and the whole crowd yelled murder, and I started for our hotel on a run, and the whole population of Rome seemed to follow me, and I might as well have been a negro accused of crime in the states. I thought they would burn me at the stake, but dad came out of the hotel and threw a handful of small change into the crowd, and it was ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... toes were peeping out of his worn little boots, and his trousers were patched. This was all the better for Cecile's hidden treasure, and as she was a wise little girl, she took the hint given her by the coffee-man, and not only hid her money, but next time she wanted anything offered very small change. This was rendered easy, for the man at the coffee-stall had given her mostly sixpences ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... is commoner than people think. Dinah, who was ridiculous from the perversity of her cleverness, had really great qualities of soul, but circumstances did not bring these rarer powers to light, while a provincial life debased the small change of her wit from day to day. Monsieur de la Baudraye, on the contrary, devoid of soul, of strength, and of wit, was fated to figure as a man of character, simply by pursuing a plan of conduct which he was ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... housewives feeding poultry. Willie Todd, the best man, who had never come out so strong in his life before, slipped through the back window, while the crowd, led on by Kitty McQueen, seethed in front, and making a bolt for it to the "'Sosh," was back in a moment with a handful of small change. "Dinna toss ower lavishly at first," the smith whispered me nervously, as we followed Jess and Willie into the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... abstractions by mental process requires the closest kind of reasoning; and if we attempt to delineate all the complications which follow even such a small change, we will find the job a lengthy one. But with a large model having adjustable parts we provide ourselves with the means for the very best practical solution, and the workman who makes and manipulates such a model will soon ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... with dilated eyes and confused look generally, and laid it down only with this difference actually to her, that she had in her own realization, in one short moment been suddenly transformed from Mr. Rayne's dependent waif into a richly endowed heiress, independent and free. A small change indeed for Honor Edgeworth. It had not power to chisel in finer style the features of her handsome face, nor the power to direct into her heart a purer, holier or more worthy sense of duty than already reigned there. No, it could make her no better. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... there is surplusage, superabundance; the measure is heaped and running over. From his sheer wealth, he is often the most undramatic of writers. He is so frequently greater than his occasion, he has no small change to suit emergencies, and we have guineas in place of groats. Romeo is more than a mortal lover, and Mercutio more than a mortal wit; the kings in the Shakspearian world are more kingly than earthly sovereigns; Rosalind's laughter was never heard save in the Forest of Arden. His madmen seem to have ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... connections, was in the habit of patronizing a fashionable restaurant, partaking of sumptuous lunches and dinners, and evading full payment, under pretence that he had forgotten his pocket-book, or had omitted, in the hurry of business, to provide himself with small change, etc. Thus, if his check called for one dollar he would pay sixty cents, but invariably forgot upon the next, or any succeeding day, to 'settle' the balance due of forty cents. This 'little game,' so profitable to himself, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... people are conducted in this way. They have gold in rods which they weigh, and they reckon its value by its weight in saggi, but they have no coined money. Their small change again is made in this way. They have salt which they boil and set in a mould [flat below and round above],[NOTE 4] and every piece from the mould weighs about half a pound. Now, 80 moulds of this salt are worth one saggio of fine gold, which is a weight so called. So this salt ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... which failed to fulfill Jervy's private anticipations. He had aimed straight at her purse—and he had only hit her heart! He tried a broad hint next. "I wonder whether I shall have a shilling or two left to give Mrs. Sowler, when I have paid for the supper?" He sighed, and pulled out some small change, and looked at it in eloquent silence. Phoebe was hit in the right place at last. She handed him her purse. "What is mine will be yours, when we are married," she said; "why not now?" Jervy expressed his sense ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... he never met and never heard of, but the cipaye is a broth of a boy, and I am a broth of a boy myself; and if we don't get a full meal of meat, and a turban, and slippers, and the value of a gold mohur in small change as a matter of convenience, bedad, my friend, I could lay my finger on a garden where there is going to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the tree. The servant—a colored man—told the judge that there was no occasion for cutting down the tree, but just to back the buggy. Pleased at the good sense of the fellow, Judge Marshall told him that he would leave him something at the inn hard by, where he intended to stop, having then no small change. In due time the man applied, and a dollar was handed him. Being asked if he knew who it was that gave him the dollar, he replied: "No, sir: I concluded he was a gentleman by his leaving the money, but I think he is the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... that the number of subjects upon which Newman had no ideas was extremely large, and it must be added that as regards those subjects upon which he was without ideas he was also perfectly without words. He had little of the small change of conversation, and his stock of ready-made formulas and phrases was the scantiest. On the other hand he had plenty of attention to bestow, and his estimate of the importance of a topic did not depend upon ...
— The American • Henry James
... said Raskolnikoff, fumbling in his pocket and drawing out a handful of small change (for he had again lain down in his clothes), "and fetch me a white roll. Go to the pork shop as well, and buy me a bit of ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... description, desired to make my acquaintance; but I am a modest youth, and do not wish to frequent the society of personages so important. Wherefore I took pains to excuse myself from visiting him, and departed in so much haste, that I, like yourself, had no time to procure sumpter-mules or small change,—nay, I could not even find a return-chaise, nor ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... two, whose very names were the symbol of greatness and virtue. But such miseries could never intrude upon the domestic circle left to me, while, secluded in our beloved forest, we passed our lives in tranquillity. Some small change indeed the progress of years brought here; and time, as it is wont, stamped the traces of mortality on our pleasures and expectations. Idris, the most affectionate wife, sister and friend, was a tender and loving mother. The feeling was not with her as with many, a pastime; ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... welcome was the beggar who told him for one hour the story of his poverty and who was not half as poor as any given Samana. He did not treat the rich foreign merchant any different than the servant who shaved him and the street-vendor whom he let cheat him out of some small change when buying bananas. When Kamaswami came to him, to complain about his worries or to reproach him concerning his business, he listened curiously and happily, was puzzled by him, tried to understand him, consented that he was a ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... mad waltzes to the measure of the wheels. He believed that he had a star. He pitched his half-crowns to the turnpike-men, and sought to propitiate Fortune by displaying a signal indifference to small change; in which method of courting her he was perfectly serious. He absolutely rejected coppers. They "crossed his luck." Nor can we say that he is not an authority on this point: the Goddess certainly does not deal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... actually pleased when Caroline "held up" a stout person in a fur coat and a motor veil to add pleasantly: "I suppose you are expecting visitors this week?" Which remark is the recognized conversational small change in Thorhaven, during spring and summer, scarcely more personal than the "Fine day!" of the country labourers who live in the still ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... the proper method of carrying money, which in these lands should never be intrusted to box or bag. A common cotton purse secured in a breast pocket (for Egypt now abounds in that civilized animal the pickpocket) contained silver pieces and small change. My gold, of which I carried twenty-five sovereigns, and papers, were committed to a substantial leathern belt of Maghrabi manufacture, made to be strapped round the waist under the dress. This is ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Grand Couronne. Until, if ever, I give my heart again no man shall possess me. I play, I kiss, I philander—as you call it—but what are these trifles? Des bagatelles, rien de tout!" He did not realise her serene indifference to the small change of love and her respect for its true gold. But I do not think that Rust, when Madame consented to be his companion at Brighton, seriously misjudged her motives. He did not know, of course, or in the last degree suspect that she designed his ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... encircled their wigs was gone, and they were often snubbed and silenced by ignorant justices. The punishment for being found out is life-long and terrible. Their clients paid the fees partly in small change and partly in rum. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... come to me recommended as one of the best bar-keepers in New Orleans; he was posted up in all the fancy drinks and fancy names, he wore fancy clothes and had a fancy dog, and I fancied pretty soon that the rascal had taken a fancy to my small change, so I discharged him ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... being in need of some small change called down-stairs to the cook and enquired: "Mary, have you any 'coppers' down there?" "Yes, mum, I've two; but if you please, mum, they're both me ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... longer hovers over time, as an abstraction; it underlies time, as a reality. Such is exactly, on this point, the attitude of the philosophy of Forms or Ideas. It establishes between eternity and time the same relation as between a piece of gold and the small change—change so small that payment goes on for ever without the debt being paid off. The debt could be paid at once with the piece of gold. It is this that Plato expresses in his magnificent language when he says that God, unable to make the world ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... half- dime^, nickel, buffalo nickel, V nickel^, dime, disme^, mercury dime^, quarter, two bits, half dollar, dollar, silver dollar, Eisenhower dollar, Susan B. Anthony dollar^. precious metals, gold, silver, copper, bullion, ingot, nugget. petty cash, pocket money, change, small change, small coin, doit^, stiver^, rap, mite, farthing, sou, penny, shilling, tester, groat, guinea; rouleau^; wampum; good sum, round sum, lump sum; power of money, plum, lac of rupees. major coin, crown; minor coin. monetarist, monetary theory. [Science of coins] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have occurred. I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command any thing. What well laid, and what better executed scheme of his is there, but what a small change of nature is entirely able to defeat and abolish. If but one element happens to encroach a little upon another, what confusion may it not create in his affairs, what havoc, what destruction: the servant destined to his use, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... said he, with a smile, as at some strange, unheard-of incident. "I have run short of small change. I am afraid I shall have to call upon ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... often forgotten. There is no society where smiles, pleasant looks and animal spirits are not welcomed and deemed of more importance than sallies of wit, or refinements of understanding. The little civilities, which form the small change of life may appear separately of little moment, but, like the spare pennies which amount to such large fortunes in a lifetime, they owe their importance to repetition ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... the matter of finances bothered me. With the banks closed, we have little money available. Even if we had a considerable sum, I wouldn't know where to keep it. A cupboard or desk seemed an insecure place and my financial experience has been limited to a little money purse with small change and probably only one bill. Just now, Grandfather's keyster is the Rock of Gibraltar, the financial prop that is sustaining the whole structure. But what about this prop? How strong is it? Will it outlast the depression? ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... (he suddenly dropped his voice, looking towards the door by which Nastasya had gone out) "in a slit in my waistcoat pocket, here, feel.... I believe they won't take the waistcoat off, and left seven roubles in my purse to keep up appearances, as though that were all I have. You see, it's in small change and the coppers are on the table, so they won't guess that I've hidden the money, but will suppose that that's all. For God knows where I may have to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the bill," answered Cutter from within; and Madame Patoff could hear the landlord counting out the small change upon a plate, the ringing silver marks and the dull little clatter ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the atmospheric pressure are most interesting and conclusive. "Having three small, round glass bubbles, blown at the flame of a lamp, about the size of hazel-nuts," he says, "each of them with a short, slender stem, by means whereof they were so exactly poised in water that a very small change of weight would make them either emerge or sink; at a time when the atmosphere was of convenient weight, I put them into a wide-mouthed glass of common water, and leaving them in a quiet place, where they were frequently in my eye, I observed that sometimes they would be at ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... curate, hastily. 'I opened the box myself. This morning I found I had not enough small change for the Mothers' Independent Unity Measles and Croup Insurance payments. I suppose this is NOT ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... off! let us be off!" Ledantec repeated, leaving go of me, and at that time I paid attention to what he said, and, after throwing some small change onto the floor, I followed him, to make him understand, when he should be quite sober, that he saw before him a poor Albino prostitute, who ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... for once not in the mood for the small change of conversation. Some weighty thought possessed him that gave his eye a remote quality even when he seemed to be sharing the general attention in the conversation, and it was as much resentment at the summons from his abstraction and ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... their clothes as an ape for fleas, I watching. And when he had all their valuables he laid them on the footboard, and then, as we passed some Bedouin tents, he kicked them off. But he seems an honest fellow, for he gave them back some small change to buy food with, should ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... much money around with me to sech places as this here, but what little I've got ain't quite divided up enough to be handy; I don't mind gettin' a fifty into new Gover'ment greenbacks myself. My wife 'n' me are countin' on stayin' on here a consid'able of a spell, maybe, an' small change ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... prove that he was kept in mind, enough to keep him in hope, beer, and tobacco. 'But what would you have?' thought Morris; and ruefully poured into his hand a half-crown, a florin, and eightpence in small change. For a man in Morris's position, at war with all society, and conducting, with the hand of inexperience, a widely ramified intrigue, the sum was already a derision. John would have to be doing; no mistake of that. 'But then,' asked the hell-like voice, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... ordered a second glass of grog, and drank it in gulps, and fell into such deep thought that he let his cigar go out. Evidently, a man in search of an idea. And, to all appearance, he found what he wanted on a sudden. In a hurry he paid his reckoning, and left his small change and his unfinished cigar on the table, and was off before the ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... his parents wished him to make a figure in the world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the small change of every-day society in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done him ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... be ashamed to set down all he poured out to me in this beggarly vein, or the very short and grudging answers that I made to him. There were times when I was tempted to stop his mouth with some small change; but whether it was from shame or pride—whether it was for my own sake or Catriona's—whether it was because I thought him no fit father for his daughter, or because I resented that grossness of immediate falsity that clung about the man himself—the thing was clean beyond me. And I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... One-to-Eight to an even more staggering One-to-Ten. That meant that anybody holding less than a ten-dollar bet on such a winner would only get his own money back because the track does not insult its clients by weighing them down with coins in the form of small change. They keep the change and call it "Breakage" for any amount over an ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... by this declaration. No representation that he made was believed. His pockets were searched, and all the money he had, except some small change, was found to be counterfeit. A commitment was at once made out against him, and he was sent to jail, to await his trial on the charge of passing ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... lying sick of consumption in the next village, and two children, one of whom was a cripple, wandering in the streets of Boston. I remembered that this tremendous indictment against Fortune touched the family, and that the distressed fisherman was provided with clothes, food, and some small change. The food and small change had disappeared, but the garments for the consumptive wife, where were they? He had been ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... of the cleverest; a little, perhaps, too much japanned by preferment in the church and the tuition of youth, as well as inoculated with the disease of domestic felicity, besides being over-run with fine feelings about woman and constancy (that small change of Love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal); but, otherwise, a very worthy man, who has lately got a pretty wife, and (I suppose) a child by this ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... I like the French. They have much of the old Latin urbanitas, many kindly qualities, and most of the minor virtues which do duty as the small change of social intercourse. But for the sake of France, I am glad that Paris has lost its prestige, for its rule has been a blight and a curse to the entire country; and for the sake of Europe, I am ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... standkeeper, and promptly gave the youth a fifty-cent piece and a lot of small change. With his bananas in one hand and his money in another Sammy retired to a distance, to count his change and make sure it ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the rate of speed when a small change in the speed of rotation produces a comparatively great change in the electro-motive force. It corresponds to the same current (the critical current) in any given ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Duke and took him up to Brown's home at noon. Brown, who had been drinking and was in a very unpleasant mood, was struck with amazement at sight of the dog. He gave the wharf hand some small change, and, when he was gone, took Duke into the back yard and beat him. Next, he tied the dog ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... hidden receptacle he drew forth the complete uniform of a Uhlan lieutenant. "Turn your back for a little, Fraulein," he said softly. "I must make a small change in my toilet." ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... dressmaker to be obstacles to our union. I just want you—your dainty little self—if you had only your 'wee coatie,' as Burns says. Now look here! I want you to bring your influence to bear upon your mother, and so make a small change in our plans. The earlier we can have our honeymoon, the more pleasant the hotels will be. I do want your first experiences with me to be without a shadow of discomfort. In July half the world starts for its ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... response. I am a little horror-struck, when we leave, to see Halicarnassus hold out his hand as if about to give money to this brave and British soldier, and scarcely less so to see our soldier receive it quietly. But I need not be, for my observation should have taught me that small change—fees I believe it is called—circulates universally in Canada. Out doors and in, it is all one. Everybody takes a fee, and is not ashamed. You fee at the falls, and you fee at the steps. You fee the church, and here we have feed the army; and if we should call ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... dispatch. Their work was expedited for them by reason that already they knew where you carried your valuables. Once Marr ran his swift and practiced fingers over your body he knew where your watch was, your wallet, your purse for small change, your ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... profession never left him. He was continually paying out something. If you presented a conversational check to him in the way of a remark, he would, figuratively speaking, immediately jump to his little window and proceed to cash it, sometimes astonishing you by the amount of small change he would ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... we give our love to whoever loves us? A fine parcel of paupers we should all be, wasting our inheritance in pitiful small change! Shall I give a thousand beggars a half hour's happiness, or shall I make one soul rich his whole ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... saying this, was taking out some small change from his pockets to give to the children. He gave a small ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... the lid of his stein and pushed it away. His heart always warmed at the sight of this goose-girl. So she had a dowry and was going to be married? He felt of his wallet, and a kindly thought came into being. He counted down the small change for the beer, slid back his chair, and sauntered to the bar. Gretchen recognized him, and the recognition brought a smile to ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... but the diminutives of the great word "love;" they are but the small change of passion, meteorites, star-dust of the great ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... fell into another fault; he merely lent his attention, and never gave it. Though this may not be so mortifying, it shows a kind of semi-concession which is almost as unsatisfactory to the hearer and leaves him dissatisfied. Nothing brings more profit in the commerce of society than the small change of attention. He that heareth let him hear, is not only a gospel precept, it is an excellent speculation; follow it, and all will be forgiven you, even vice. Canalis took a great deal of trouble in his anxiety ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... see us again before we went to Taloo, the planters wished us a pleasant journey; and, on parting, very generously presented us with a pound or two of what sailors call "plug" tobacco; telling us to cut it up into small change; the Virginian weed being the principal circulating ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... arrested, taken to the town and put in prison. It soon became known, from what Aglaia said, that Sergey Nikanoritch had been present at the murder. A search was made in his room, and money was found in an unusual place, in his snowboots under the stove, and the money was all in small change, three hundred one-rouble notes. He swore he had made this money himself, and that he hadn't been in the tavern for a year, but witnesses testified that he was poor and had been in great want of money of late, and that he used to go every day to the tavern to borrow from Matvey; and the ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... lunch time so we did not stay for explanations, but hurried back to the town with the weeping old Turk, gave him our small change, which seemed to cure the pains in his feet, and hunted for ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... it appears, made now a small change in the site of his capital, but did not move to Fang, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... want. Sacrifices of all kinds have already been made to prevent our being overwhelmed with mortification." As he uttered these last words he drew forth his hand from his pocket with about two francs in small change, which he held exposed on his palm before the notary. "And now, behold," continued he, with a bitter smile,—"behold every cent I have in the world; and to-morrow rich people are to dine at my house! If my poverty is betrayed by any thing, farewell to my child's ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... light Comtesse de Fiesque, she said: "What preserves her beauty is that it is salted in folly." Of James II of England, she remarked, "The Holy Spirit has eaten up his understanding." The saying that the eight generals appointed at the death of Turenne were "the small change for Turenne" has been attributed to her. It is certainly not to a woman of such keen insight and ready wit that one can attach any of the affectations which later crept into ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... glories of the place. A few of the worshippers belonged to families hard by, who had got permission to attend, and who brought in various choice scraps of information, about the sayings and doings at the house and on the place, which circulated as freely as the same sort of small change does ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ingenious allegories, examined them without vanity, with no enthusiasm, and seemed to regard them as accessories inherent to the composition, as conventional ornaments, the good and current small change of art. The adulations of Racine, in his "Berenice," having all a foundation of truth, please him, but chiefly for the grace of the poetry; and he sometimes recited them, when he wished to recall and quote some ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... artificiality of several London seasons; he the man of definite conquering tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in his very repose holding aloof from these agglomerations of units in which one loses one's importance even to oneself. They had no common conversational small change. They had to use the great pieces of general ideas, but they exchanged them trivially. It was no serious commerce. Perhaps she had not much of that coin. Nothing significant came from her. It could not be said that ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... had engaged companions before, who being entertaining were not trustworthy, or being trustworthy were insufferably dull. She could trust Dolly with the most onerous of her domestic or social charges, she found, and there was no fear of her small change disappearing or her visitors being bored. So the position of that "young person" became an assured and decently ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... trade coins were put out by coffee-house keepers and other tradesmen in the seventeenth century as evidence of an amount due, as stated thereon, by the issuer to the holder. Tokens originated because of the scarcity of small change. They were of brass, copper, pewter, and even leather, gilded. They bore the name, address, and calling of the issuer, the nominal value of the piece, and some reference to his trade. They were readily redeemed, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... I must speak as I found them. I hope they were not a just sample of their whole nation; for these gentry would exercise every imposition, and even insinuate the thing that was not, the more easily to plunder us of our hard earned pittance of small change. Had they shown any generosity, like the British tar, I should have passed over their conduct in silence; but after they had stripped our men of every farthing, they would say to them—"Monsieur, you have won all our money, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the "Cowrie" (Cyproea moneta) see vol. iv. 77. The Badam or Bidam (almond) used by way of small change in India, I have ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... themselves destroy one of their chief pleasures. No doubt we planted the notion in the McGregor mind that the small kindnesses of life may be made profitable, by offering to pay for the milk; and probably the next travelers in that Eden will succeed in leaving some small change there, if they ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... says I. 'Now go back to your work and get civilized. Keep your hands off the weather unless you're ready to follow it up in a personal manner, It's a subject that naturally belongs to sociability and the forming of new ties, and I hate to see it handed out in small change ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... make away with such minor belongings as a silver watch, a fountain pen, a spectacle case, a slightly used handkerchief, an unused one carried for emergencies, and the neat patent-clasp purse in which I customarily kept an amount of small change for casual purchases. I lost no time in getting my charges indoors, for it was quite plain that there must be ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... purer spirits choked by them. The deer scents out a man and powder (though a late invention) at a great distance; a hungry hunter, bread; and the raven, a carrion; their brains, being long clarified by the high and subtle air, will observe a very small change in a trice. Thus a man of the second sight, perceiving the operations of these forecasting invisible people among us (indulged through a stupendous providence to give warnings of some remarkable events, either in the air, earth, or waters), told he saw a ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... a great Buddha on his throne, and before him a lacquer tray, on which my faithful sailor servant places any small change he may find lying loose in the pockets of my clothes. Madame Prune, whose mind is much swayed by mysticism, at once supposed herself before a regular altar; in the gravest manner possible she addressed a brief ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... be no doubt about Milly Flaxman's goodness; in fact, some of the girls at Ascham complained that it "slopped over." Her clothes were made on hygienic principles which she treated as a branch of morals, and she often refused to offer the small change of polite society because it weighed somewhat light in the scales of truth. But these were foibles that the young people's friends were sure Ian Stewart would never notice. As to him, although only four and thirty, he was already a distinguished man. A scholar, a philosopher, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... view, and business houses resorted to the use of their own notes as a convenience. The government stamps were not well adapted to circulate as currency, and they soon gave way to notes of handsome design which came into universal use as the "small change" ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the dried fig to take the place of the green fig, and for raisins to be made from the grapes. For all these things are changes from a former state into other states; not a destruction, but a certain fixed economy and administration. Such is going away from home and a small change: such is death, a greater change, not from the state which now is to that which is not, but to that which is not now. Shall I then no longer exist? You will not exist, but you will be something else, of which the world now has need; for you also came ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... the boy promised to remember, and took a loving farewell of her. Then his lady mother drew from her sleeve a little purse, in which were her private savings: six gold crowns and one in small change,[1] and this she gave to her son. Also, calling one of the attendants of the Bishop, she entrusted him with the little trunk containing linen and other necessaries for Bayard, begging him to give it in the care of the equerry who would have charge of the boy ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... unknown; but the mean value as determined by Joule and Thomson, in their celebrated experiments with porous plugs, was 492.66 deg. F. This value would slightly change his result. It will be seen from the above that a small change in the constants used may affect by several units the computed value of the mechanical equivalent. I have computed it, using 1.406 for the ratio of the specific heat of air at constant pressure to that at constant volume, 491.13 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... fury, but now he felt as weak as a child. He went quietly to the bench, took up his overcoat, put it on without a word, and went out of the hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there was no one there. He took fifty kopecks in small change out of his pocket and put them on the table for his night's lodging, the candle, and the trouble he had given. Coming out of the hut he saw nothing but forest all round. He walked at hazard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut, to the right or to the left. Hurrying there ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ago—och, don't ax me to stop. Isn't your lightsome laugh, whin you wor young, in my ears? and your step that 'ud not bend the flower of the field—Kathleen, I can't, indeed I can't, bear to think of what you wor, nor of what you are now, when in the coorse of age and natur, but a small change ought to be upon you! Sure I ought to make every struggle to take you and these sorrowful crathurs out of ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... they're about ready to make over their bank- accounts to him. They LIKE him, you know,—a lot of folks DO like just that kind of slippery snake. It's funny,—you'd think anyone with ordinary common-sense would grab hold of his watch and his small change, and hang on to it—hard, as soon as Br'er Snider hove in sight. But no,—they try to crowd their money onto him... Real gold! Of course it was real,—that's what fetched 'em. They don't stop to think that there's no connection proved between the gold and the sea-water. What got ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... are!" said Rodolphe. "One would take them for fragments of sunshine. If I were a king I would have no other small change, and would have them stamped ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... it, and was then possessed of five dollar Banco, for which I could get no further exchange than the two Rix Geld before mentioned, neither would she return my money. I took the first opportunity of snatching it from her, first the two dollar note and then the three, and pushing the small change lying on the table towards her, walked out of the house. Having managed to pay the horses we wished to proceed but the driver refused to go, under the plea that I had taken three dollars from the woman of ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... the whole distance (twenty-five miles), rather than take a low price for it. Besides skins, honey, and beeswax, eggs and poultry were always salable. One of my necessities in housekeeping was a bag of small change, and, as I never refused to take what was brought to me, my pantry was often so overstocked with eggs and my coops with ducks and chickens, that it was a hard matter to know how to ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... Besides the spectators in our windows, he had a little crowd on the sidewalk, to whom he went round for contributions, but I did not observe that anybody gave him so much as a halfpenny. It is strange to see how many people are aiming at the small change in your pocket. In every square a beggar-woman meets you, and turns back to follow your steps with her miserable murmur. At the street-crossings there are old men or little girls with their brooms; urchins propose ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... after a little to grow very bold, and sat up to try my skill at paddling. But even a small change in the disposition of the weight will produce violent changes in the behaviour of a coracle. And I had hardly moved before the boat, giving up at once her gentle dancing movement, ran straight down a slope of water so steep that it made me giddy, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nature must win the particular little battles which it is fitted to wage. When a conscienceless mind is buttressed by a pugnacious temperament then houses and land, and cattle and maidservants, and such-like, the small change of existence, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... afternoon in her society. He wanted to keep her, but he did not know how to keep her. He was quite at a loss. Strange that a man great enough and brilliant enough to get buried in Westminster Abbey had not sufficient of the small change of cleverness to retain the company of a Mrs. Alice Challice! Yet so it was. Happily he was buoyed up by the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... and attaches of two peregrinating theatres, several peep-shows, and a dozen various games of chance, are vying with each other in the noisiness of their demonstrations to attract the attention and small change of the crowd to their respective enterprises. Like every other highway in this part of France the Marne and Bhine Canal is fringed with an avenue of poplars, that from neighboring elevations can be seen winding along the beautiful valley for miles, presenting ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... but it is evidently the "Nusf" or half-dirham. Lane (iii.235), noting that the dinar is worth 170 "nusfs" in this tale, thinks that it was written (or copied?) after the Osmanh Conquest of Egypt. Unfortunately he cannot tell the precise period when the value of the small change ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Litteraire, Rue Volney. Only the old servants remain. The club is no longer open to non-member dinner guests. The price of meals is reduced to three and a half francs for lunch, and to four francs for dinner, including wine, mineral water, beer, or cider. There is great scarcity of small change. To alleviate this, ivory bridge or poker counters, marked fifty centimes, and one franc, are given in change and circulate for payment of ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... the expression of her face in the darkness it would have satisfied him that she did not receive that style of compliment like many of the belles of his acquaintance, who would take the small change of flattery with the smiling complacency of ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... had happened? There was the fact. Often since that awful hour I have reflected that it requires no great imagination to see the finger of Providence in the matter. Ayesha locked up in her living tomb waiting from age to age for the coming of her lover worked but a small change in the order of the World. But Ayesha strong and happy in her love, clothed in immortal youth and goddess beauty, and the wisdom of the centuries, would have revolutionised society, and even perchance ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... necessarily distant, when the balance of expediency may turn in favour of its adoption. They suggest "that some need may become felt which can only be satisfied by proportional representation in some form or another," and I do not think I misrepresent their attitude in believing that a very small change of circumstances might suffice to precipitate a reversal of their present conclusion. All who are familiar with the conduct of political controversies must recognize the situation thus revealed. Again and again have proposals of reform been made which the wise ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... the dollar-piece (371-1/4 grains); therefore, when it became profitable to withdraw the dollar-pieces and substitute gold, it gave exactly the same profit to withdraw two halves or four quarters in silver. For this reason all the subsidiary silver had gone out of circulation, and there was no "small change" in the country. The legislation of 1853 rectified this error: (1) by reducing the quantity of pure silver in a dollar's worth of subsidiary coin to 345.6 grains. By making so much less an amount of silver equal to a dollar of small coins, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... small change is useful in a State, and tends to reduce the price of small articles. Perhaps it would not be amiss to coin three, more pieces of silver, one of the value of five tenths, or half a dollar, one of the value of two tenths, which would be equal to the Spanish pistereen, and one ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and he delivered into Withers' hands one, two tins of corned beef and a round ox-tongue. He put the basket on his head and came down the street again, shrilly whistling. If Diva had had any reasonably small change in her pocket, she would assuredly have given him some small share in it. Lacking this, she trundled home with all speed, and began cutting out roses with swift and certain strokes ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... of small change, which the father immediately took and tossed into the street. Instantly there was a heterogeneous mass of young Hibernians piled up in the dirt in a grand struggle for spoils. It reminded me of football incidents ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... signal for a fearful scene of cannibalism. The bodies of slaves are not protected by taboo like those of their masters. They belong to the tribe; they were a sort of small change thrown among the mourners, and the moment the sacrifice was over, the whole crowd, chiefs, warriors, old men, women, children, without distinction of age, or sex, fell upon the senseless remains with brutal appetite. Faster than a rapid pen could describe it, the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... at the Overhaul in good time. Dad took the horse out of the dray and tied him to a tree. Dave led Bess about, and we stood and watched the shanty-keeper unpacking gingerbeer. Joe asked Dad for sixpence to buy some, but Dad had n't any small change. We remained in front of the booth through most of the day, and ran after any corks that popped out and handed them in again to the shanty-keeper. He did n't ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... sorry, but I have no small change—nothing but sovereigns and half crowns. Could any one ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the long run, would be to close our professedly Christian Churches the moment war is declared by us, and reopen them only on the signing of the treaty of peace. No doubt to many of us the privation thus imposed would be far worse than the privation of small change, of horses and motor cars, of express trains, and all the other prosaic inconveniences of war. But would it be worse than the privation of faith, and the horror of the soul, wrought by the spectacle of nations praying to their common Father to assist them in sabring ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... jacket, drunk at one in the morning. Here is the hard face of Big Business scowling at its desk; and here the glittering Heroine of the hour in her dress of shimmering sequins, making such tepid creatures as Madeline and Kate look like the small change out of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... said the rector, as he fingered the small change in his breeches pocket; and pointing with the other hand to the broad back of the black sow, exclaimed, 'This is the one, DUPLEX AGITUR PER LUMBOS SPINA! She's got a back like an ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... avarice! Can that low vice alloy so much ambition? I tell thee, fellow, that two thalers in Small change will subdivide into a treasure. Do not five hundred thousand heroes daily 680 Risk lives and souls for the tithe of one thaler? When had ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... other hand, that it is a farce to go to the every-day markets of life, whether for daily food or for daily social intercourse, with the bullion and certified checks of our official dignity; we go rather with the small change that jingles in all pockets alike, and is ready to be handed out for the frequent and unimportant buying and selling of the day and hour. We look upon this grallatory attitude toward life as artificial and hampering, and prefer to walk among ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... with those who have a world of thoughts in their heart and brain. Men who have so much in them to give out in great works long dreamed of, profess a certain contempt for conversation, a commerce in which the intellect spends itself in small change," returned the haughty Negrepelisse. She still had courage to defend Lucien, but less for Lucien's ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... early August, hesitated before he rang the bell. He glanced over his shoulder at the hot, dusty street where a swarm of hot, dusty children were shrilling and shrieking, or staring at him round-eyed, dived into his pockets, fished up a handful of small change, whistled to insure their greater attention, and flung the coin among them. While they were snatching at the money like a flock of pigeons over a handful of grain, the elderly gentleman rang the bell. He could hear it jangling through the house, but it brought no immediate response. After ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... look in at the shops over the whole surface of the territory, in the towns or in the villages, where these articles are disposed of. Daily and all day long, consumers abound; their large coppers and small change constantly rattle on the counter; and out of every large copper and every small piece of silver the national treasury gets so many centimes: that is its share, and it is very sure of it, for it is already in hand, having received ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 'What amount of small change, Missis,' he said, with an abstracted air, after a little meditation, 'might you call ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... year 1720 it was generally acknowledged in Ireland that there was a want there of the small change, necessary in the transaction of petty dealings with shopkeepers and tradesmen. It has been indignantly denied by contemporary writers that this small change meant copper coins. They asserted that there was no lack of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... us as angels sometimes do—unawares—two weeks before, with cinders in his ears and the grime of a dusty right-of-way upon his collar. He had worked for the sheet two weeks and then, on a Saturday night, had borrowed what sums of small change he could and under cover of friendly night had moved on to parts unknown, leaving us dazzled by the careless, somewhat patronizing brilliance of his manner, and stuffed to our earlobes with tales of the splendid, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... that all this care and thought for expense would have taught him the value of money. Not at all. He never could seem to learn its value, never cared for it, and never could keep it. He liked to toss his small change among groups of street boys, and it is said he once spent his last roubles in sending a cablegram to von Buelow in America, to thank him for his admirable performance of his first Piano Concerto. Often his friends protested ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... an extempore grace, pronounced by the poet at a dinner-table, in Dumfries: he was ever ready to contribute the small change of rhyme, for either the use or ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... mamoodies, worth about twelve-pence each. Both these and the rupees are likewise coined in halves and quarters; so that three-pence is the smallest piece of current silver in the country. That which passes current for small change is brass money, which they call pices, of which three, or thereabout, are worth an English penny. These are made so massy, that the brass in them, when put to other uses, is well worth the quantity of silver at which they are rated. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... enthusiasm with comfort. He had, moreover, all our native mistrust for intellectual discretion, and our native relish for sonorous superlatives. As a critic he was very much more generous than just, and his mildest terms of approbation were "stupendous," "transcendent," and "incomparable." The small change of admiration seemed to him no coin for a gentleman to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he was personally altogether a mystery. His professions, somehow, were all half- professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... justified his existence and joined the ranks o' canny married men—the while he strove to appear as scornful of the future as he had been fearful of it five minutes before. He jingled less than three dollars in small change in his vest pocket, and while he strove to appear jaunty, away inside of him he was a worried man. He could not ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... much his parents wished him to make a figure in the world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the small change of everyday society in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... he might drink his fill. And all for what? Again she burned from head to foot, and, groaning, hid her face. All for the making of a picture that should bring him world-wide fame! His love for her had been naught but small change flung liberally enough that he might purchase therewith the desire of his artist's soul. It had been just a means to an end. No more than ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... drain of small change for liquor, had nearly exhausted all the money in the house long before the winter was over. The accommodating landlord seemed to discover, as by instinct, this condition of things, and encouraged Warburton to run up a score. He well knew that at any time it was easy to get the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of heavy commercial payments, which finds expression especially in the magnitude and costliness of the most usual medium of exchange. Thus, all payments are made in England in paper (for sums of at least five pounds sterling) or in gold coin. Silver is used only as small change, like copper in most other countries. (Infra, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... them, so I shoved in another plate with all speed, and made a second exposure, which was no better than the first. Had there been time, I would have made a third to be sure, for plates are no object when a study is at all worth while. As a rule each succeeding effort enables you to make some small change for the better, and you must figure on always having enough to lose one through a defective plate or ill luck in development, and yet end with a picture ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... every large transaction in the United Kingdom is settled by cheque, that is, by a series of ledger transfers, notes and specie being but the small change by which the fractional amounts are paid. A large proportion of these transactions are arranged through the operation of the London Clearing House. This is facilitated by the fact that every bank in the United Kingdom has an agent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... nothing," he answered, beginning to bustle cheerily about the place, setting a box straight here, removing an empty one there, opening the till and counting the small change, and, generally, doing all those things which he was accustomed to do when he appeared in ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... shuffle our poverty out of sight. It is not a poverty of technique—we are dexterous enough; nor is it a poverty of invention—we are clever enough; it is the poverty of the spiritual bankrupt trying to divert attention by a prodigal display of the smallest of small change. ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... familiarity with divers nooks and crannies in the practical experience of life, in a man now so hard put to it for a livelihood. There are persons, however, who might have a good stock of talent, if they did not turn it all into small change. And you, reader, know as well as I do, that when a sovereign or a shilling is once broken into, the change scatters and dispends itself in a way quite unaccountable. Still coppers are useful in household bills; and when Waife was really at a pinch, somehow or other, by hook ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... song, joked with the horse, and when the horse nickered laughed a young horse-laugh to keep him company. It did me good to see the rascal so cheery. I gave him an extra shilling at Braendhagen for his lively spirit, at which he grinned all over wider than ever, put the small change in his pocket, and with his red night-cap in one hand made a dodge of his head at me, as if snapping at a fly, and then held out his spare hand to give me a shake. Of course I ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... incomprehensible that feeble women should have received, without being a hundred times crushed to pieces, the frightful blows of which we have spoken? How can we explain such a power of resistance? A very small change, operated by the nervous fluid, would suffice to render the matter very simple. Let us suppose the skin and fibres of the convulsionists to acquire, in virtue of their peculiar state of excitement, a consistency analogous to that of gum-elastic; then all the facts that astonish us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... yet there undoubtedly remains—at least as far as the more complex life of man is concerned—a cause of good or evil fortune as yet untouched by our explanations, in the often visible will of chance, which one might almost call the "small change" of fatality. We know—and this is one of those formless but fundamental ideas on the laws of life that the experience of thousands of years has turned into a kind of instinct—we know that men exist who, other things being equal, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I shed a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother. I then took what small change ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Factor displayed before them the wares of John Bull, Uncle Sam, or Johnny Canuck, or any seductive lure made in Germany. Ig-ly-o-bok and Nan-a-sook-tok bought what they found to their liking, took small change out of two silver-fox skins, and put the remaining six pelts back into the wooden box which formed at once their savings bank and letter of credit for the season to come. The hungry-eyed H.B. man confided ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... and solely Bordeaux of a mild quality. After this Bacchanalian proceeding we went out into the orchard, which was reserved for family use, and sat on a bench under an apple-tree. Armstrong called his little boy who had been at supper with us and gave him a whispered message, together with some small change. The messenger disappeared, and after a short absence returned with two very domestic cigars, transparently bought for the nonce from some neighboring grocer. "Have a smoke," commanded my host, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... articles for payment, as of money, it is essential to have a great quantity and variety of small change, wherewith the traveller can pay for small services, for carrying messages, for draughts of milk, pieces of meat, etc. Beads, shells, tobacco, needles, awls, cotton caps, handkerchiefs, clasp-knives, small axes, spear and arrow ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... meal times, there was the miserable pretence of friendliness and comfortable ease kept up, for fear of distressing Lady Ashbridge. It was dreary work for all concerned, but, luckily, not difficult of accomplishment. A little chatter about the weather, the merest small change of conversation, especially if that conversation was held between Michael and his father, was sufficient to wreathe her in smiles, and she would, according to habit, break in with some wrecking remark, that entailed starting this talk all afresh. But when she left the room a glowering silence would ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... is like small change; it flows A thousand different ways, and throws Thoughts into circulation, Of trivial value each, but which Combin'd, make social converse rich ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... her husband—widened it for the reason that now, for the first time, he perceived how lonely he was. The baby had furnished him with constant delight and preoccupation. He had looked forward all day to seeing it at night, and questions relating to it had supplied a never-ceasing small change of conversation between him and her. He had let her go her way with a smile on his face. Selma did not choose to dwell on the situation, but it was obvious that Lewis continued to look glum, and that there were apt to be long silences between them ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... japanned by preferment in the church and the tuition of youth, as well as inoculated with the disease of domestic felicity, besides being overrun with fine feelings about women and constancy (that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal;) but, otherwise, a very worthy man, who has lately got a pretty wife, and (I suppose) a child by this time. Pray remember ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... it is quite certain that there is no space of three weeks, or anything like it, either between the arrival in Cyprus and the brawl, or between the brawl and the temptation. And I draw attention to the supposition chiefly to show that quite a small change would remove the difficulties, and to insist that there is nothing wrong at all in regard to the time from the temptation onward. How to account for the existing contradictions I do not at all profess to know, and I ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... was introduced by the president of the club, who, quoting from the Mark Twain autobiography, recalled the day when the distinguished writer came to New York with $3 in small change in his pockets and a $10 bill sewed in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... climate, than in Europe.[478] The guinea-fowl has become thoroughly feral in Jamaica and in St. Domingo,[479] and has diminished in size; the legs are black, whereas the legs of the aboriginal African bird are said to be grey. This small change is worth notice on account of the often-repeated statement that all feral animals invariably revert in every character to their ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... nothing impressive there. He was quite tall, nearly six feet, with moderately broad shoulders, but his figure was anything but shapely. He seemed to stoop a little, his stomach was the least bit protuberant, and he talked commonplaces—the small change of newspaper and street and business gossip. People liked him in his own neighborhood. He was thought to be honest and kindly; and he was, as far as he knew. His wife and four children were as average and insignificant as the wives and children ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... said. "The man is a fool ... But anyhow Mersch don't count for much in this particular show. He's no money in it even, so you may put your pride in your pocket, or wherever you keep it. It's all right. Straight. He's only the small change." ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... latitudes probably did not possess an independent circulation sufficient to lower the temperature so that glaciers could form. This may have been owing to the shallow sea bottom south of Cape Horn having been above the surface of the water, the channel having since been formed by a comparatively small change in the ocean's level. For, while considering this subject, it is well to keep in mind that whenever the western continent extended to the antarctic circle it prevented the independent circulation of the Southern Ocean waters, consequently during such times ice periods ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... de new sto'es!" murmured the girl. Negroes—the men in dirty dusters, the women in smart calicoes, girls in dowdy muslins and boy's hats—and mountain whites, coatless men, shoeless women—hung about the counters dawdling away their small change. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... nothing of the kind. The scanty supplies—a few fowls, sun-dried fish, kola-nuts, beans, and red peppers—were spread upon skins, or stored in well-worked baskets, an art carried to perfection in Africa; even the Somali Bedawin weave pots that will hold water. The small change was represented by a medium which even Montesquieu would not set down as a certain mark of civilization. The horse-shoe of Loggun (Denham and Clapperton), the Fan fleam, the "small piece of iron like an ace of spades on the upper Nile" (Baker), and the iron money of the brachycephalic ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... by following the system prescribed in this Meditation, a man of superiority will be relieved from the necessity of putting his thoughts into small change, when he wishes to be understood by his wife, if indeed this man of superiority has been guilty of the folly of marrying one of those poor creatures who cannot understand him, instead of choosing for his wife a young girl whose mind and heart he has tested ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... end of the purse there were fifteen louis d'or, and in the other some small change. The theft was so flagrant, and denied with such effrontery, that Hippolyte no longer felt a doubt as to his neighbors' morals. He stood still on the stairs, and got down with some difficulty; his knees shook, he felt dizzy, he was in a cold sweat, he shivered, and found himself unable to walk, struggling, ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... representation of the tutelary god of riches, with long inscriptions in Chinese characters, seals in black and red, and an indication of value in ancient Japanese characters. I do not learn whether notes of considerable amount are still used in Japan; but Sir R. Alcock speaks of banknotes for small change from 30 to 500 cash and more, as in general use ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... agreeable person, a professional politician, who astonished me by the fact that however starved we might be, he had always a flask of whisky wherewith to treat his friends! Where or how he always got it I never could divine. But in America every politician always has whisky or small change wherewith to treat. Always. Money was generally of little use, for there was rarely anything to buy anywhere. I soon developed here and there an Indian-like instinct in many things, and this is indeed deep in my nature. I cannot explain it, but it is there. I became expert when we approached ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... wanting in America for small change. We have none but those of the King of England. After one silver or gold medal is struck from the dies, for the person to be honoured, they may be usefully employed in striking copper money, or ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... in such a bag. Handkerchief, some small change, perhaps a vanity-box, gloves, tickets—whatever would be needed on an afternoon's ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... period of twenty-one years, Macindoe became insolvent, and was necessitated to abandon the concern. He returned to Paisley and resumed the loom, at the same time adding to his finances by keeping a small change-house, and taking part as an instrumental musician at the local concerts. He excelled in the use of the violin. Ingenious as a mechanic, and skilled in his original employment, he invented a machine for figuring on muslin, for which ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... chances, and the stroll would doubtless have appeared a very monotonous affair to a person fond of rational conversation. Nor was there much even to themselves of diversification till they got into a small change-house at Davidson's Mains, where, with a rampant authority, they contrived to get served up to them a kind of dinner, intending to make up for the want of better edibles by potations ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... that they were his subjects; and they were not likely to acknowledge this to be so, unless they thought that he would pardon them. After some further conversation, the two officers, with their companions, took their leave, feeling that they had taken very small change out of His Highness. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston |
