"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room, restless and weary but wide awake. He called for a stiff peg, drank it, and tumbled into bed. He was whirled away into broken dreams. Now he was running down the gridiron, with the old thrill in his blood. With that sudden inconceivable twist of dreams, he saw the black pit of the tramp-steamer and felt the hell-heat in his face. Again, he was in the Andes, toiling with his girders over unspeakable chasms. A shifting glance at the old billiard-room in the club, the letter, and his subsequent wild night of intoxication, the one time in ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... shall get. Poe's philosophy of art, as discovered in his essays and his creative work, is purely Latin and, as such, incomprehensible and even naughty to the Saxon mind. To the average bookish Englishman Poe means "The Pit and the Pendulum," and his finest poetry means nothing at all. Tell that Englishman that Poe wrote more beautiful lyrics than Tennyson, and he will blankly put you down as mad. (So ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... appeared again in public, and died within a year. "My dear friend," she wrote to me, not a month before her death, "I have been trying all my life to get a thorough knowledge of the masculine nature, but my woman's plummet will not reach to the bottom of that chaotic pit of selfishness and principle, expedience and firmness for the right, brutality and tenderness, gullibility and devilish shrewdness, which I have tried to sound. Only one thing is clear—we women cannot do without what we have sometimes, alas! sneered at as THE CHIVELRY OF THE ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... this process, or to the action of nature, or to the combined efforts of nature and his friends, that Bumpus owed his recovery, we cannot pretend to say; but certain it is that, on Corrie making a severer dab than usual into the pit of the seaman's stomach, he gave a gasp and a sneeze, the latter of which almost overturned Poopy, who chanced to be gazing wildly into his countenance at the moment. At the same time he involuntarily threw up his right arm, and fetched Corrie such a tremendous backhander on the chest ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... their height. It was an invention of the Chevalier de Bullon, who only obtained pardon for assuming the title of Prince d'Auvergne, nobody exactly knew why, by rendering this service to the dissipated society of the time. It was he who had invented the double flooring which put the pit on a level with the stage: and the regent, who highly appreciated all good inventions, had granted him in recompense a pension of two thousand livres, which was four times what the Grand Roi had given to Corneille. That beautiful room, with its rich and grave architecture, which the Cardinal ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... how they have been living ever since as happy as two turtle-doves down in Devonshire,—till that scoundrel, Lieutenant Smith, went to Bideford! Smith has been found dead at the bottom of a saw-pit. Nobody's sorry for him. She's in a madhouse at Exeter; and Jones has disappeared, and couldn't have had more than thirty shillings in his pocket." This is quite as much as anybody ought to want to know previous to the unravelling of the tragedy of the Jones's. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Burning (Vol. ii., p. 6.).—In the Mendip mining district in Somersetshire, I am credibly informed that within seventy years a person has been burned alive for stealing ore from the pit mouth. There must be some old inhabitant who can attest this fact, and it would be desirable to obtain ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... this tremendous volley of superlatives, which Sampson hawked up from the pit of his stomach and hurled at her in thunder. 'Is the carl daft,' she said, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... his brethren," whispered Flurry. "I am going to put him in the pit directly, only I wondered what I should do for the camels —this is Issachar, and this Gad. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the next world, I find myself repeating the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the "Minister's Wooing," when she was thinking of that hell depicted by the old theology; "Oh my wedding day, why did they rejoice? Brides should wear mourning, every family is built over this awful pit of despair, and only ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... and briars, and along a track through a bed of rushes, over which they spread their cloaks for him to walk on. Having reached a wall at the back of the villa, Phaon advised him to hide himself a while in a sand-pit; when he replied, "I will not go underground alive." Staying there some little time, while preparations were made for bringing him privately into the villa, he took up some water out of a neighboring tank in his ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... the neighbourhood of a certain evil place, where I should be punished for all my croakings. We travelled at this rate, I dare say, fifteen miles, without seeing a single shed: at last, one or two miserable cottages appeared, darkened by heath, and stuck in a sand-pit; from whence issued a half-starved generation, that pursued us a long while with their piteous wailings. The heavy roads and ugly prospects, together with the petulant clamours of my petitioners, made me quite uncharitable. I was in a dark, remorseless mood, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... croaked, eagerly. He caught at the idea as if it were a life-line, and obviously began to drag himself out of a pit with its help. "It was self-defense," he repeated. "You vas fighting, I s'pose. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... prosperity. It is because he 'went with Abram' that he 'had flocks, and herds, and tents.' Of course, the connection between despising the world and possessing it is not thus close in New Testament times. But even now, one often sees that the men who will be rich fall into a pit of poverty, and that a heart set on higher things, which counts earthly advantages second and not first, wins a sufficiency of these most surely. Foxlike cunning, and wolf-like rapacity, and Devil-like selfishness, which make up a large portion of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... no time left for him to answer in. The buccaneers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one after another, into the pit and to dig with their fingers, throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan found a piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths. It was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acquainted with the fireside in no better shape than that of the sullen stove; and more probably they will have grown up amid furnace heat in houses which might be fancied to have their foundation over the infernal pit, whence sulphurous steams and unbreathable exhalations ascend through the apertures of the floor. There will be nothing to attract these poor children to one centre. They will never behold one another through that peculiar ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... later joined by a half dozen more of the village craftsmen and so also visited the forge and foundry, the sawmill and the wagon shop. Altamont additionally looked at the flume, a rough structure of logs lined with sheet aluminum; and at the nitriary, a shed-roofed pit in which potassium nitrate was extracted from the community's ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... upon their exportation, amounting at present (1783) to more than five shillings the ton, or more than fifteen shillings the chaldron, Newcastle measure; which is, in most cases, more than the original value of the commodity at the coal-pit, or even at the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... packing in the heap, and because the peat coal is less inflammable than wood coal. The heaps may likewise be made much smaller than is needful in case of wood, viz.: six to eight feet in diameter, and four feet high. The pit is arranged as follows: The ground is selected and prepared as for charcoal burning, and should be elevated, dry and compact. Three stout poles are firmly driven into the ground, so as to stand vertically and equi-distant from each other, leaving within them a space ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... careful and ingenious observer, I should have thought nothing of the case."), sent me in the spring some seeds, with an account of the spot where they were found, namely, in a layer at the bottom of a deep sand pit, near Melrose, above the level of the river, and which sand pit he thinks must have been accumulated in a lake, when the whole features of the valleys were different, ages ago; since which whole barriers of rock, it appears, must have been worn down. These seeds germinated freely, and I sent some ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... am certain that a man named Elmer H. Griggs must be horrid. But truly, Daddy, I think I shall have to go to Boston. I can't stay here. If something doesn't happen soon, I shall throw myself into the silo pit out ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... Heights climbing towards the changing heavens. Westward, less bold and jagged, but still a mighty barrier in almost any other companionship, are the sister heights of Bolivar, scarred and seamed with earth-work and rifle-pit, and bristling with abattis and battery. Down the intervening valley plunges the Shenandoah and winds the macadam of the highway, its dust subdued for the time being; while, straight away to the front, mist-wreathed at their base from the sleeping waters of the winding canal, cloud-capped ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... you mad?" cried his friend. "Would you plunge this country into war? Would you pit two peoples, like cocks on a floor? And would you use women ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... Dardale Moss, as black as pitch and as rotten as the grave, up that zigzag wall you call a road, that looks like chalk in the moonlight, through Dunner Cleugh, as dark as a coal-pit, and down here to the George and the Dragon, where you have a roaring fire, wise men, good punch—here it is—and a corpse in your coach-house. Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Come, landlord, ladle out the ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Tunglow, and has returned with the front part of his head cleanly shaved. I asked him what the people had thought of our appearance. He answered that they were greatly afraid lest we should fire upon them, and their hearts at first went pit-a-pat; but when they heard from him how well we treated him, and that we were no friends to the Rebels, they said 'Poussa' ('that's Buddha's ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... passionately exclaiming: "Oh, that a man who could have entertained the gods with high conceits and philosophic parle,—could have communed with spirits of the skies, should be assailed and pestered from the pit!—Go on, woman, we will exorcise you, we will purge you, though you be fouler than the Augean stable, that had been left uncleaned for thirty years; ay, though you be as foul as is the stall that holds the grimy company of the lost, and which goes uncleaned for ever. Proceed, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... German, without replying, leaped out of the pit, and shouted in a voice that trembled with anger, "Does you know, Mr. Edie Ochiltree, who it is you are putting off your gibes and your jests upon? You base old person, I will cleave your skull-piece with ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... longer, fell in and was engulfed in the fiery, seething lava. This lava, instead of welling up and filling the crater and perhaps flowing out, was drawn down through the throat of the volcano into the earth, and left an enormous pit or crater where ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... contemned. A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse. ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.
... they have, I fear, 'virgined it e'er since'! Oh, for the pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view of the comic strength of the company at ——, drawn up in battle-array in the Clandestine Marriage, with a coup d'oeil of the pit, boxes, and gallery, to cure for ever the love of the ideal, and the desire to shine and make holiday in the eyes of others, instead of retiring within ourselves and keeping our wishes and our thoughts at home!—Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... very mouth of the pit now, and through the branches of the trees the men saw him suddenly spring forward, and stoop as if to pick up something, and bitter cries rent the stillness of ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... that there was a schoolmaster living in a village about six miles from Halle, who was in the habit of holding a prayer meeting at four o'clock every morning, with the miners, before they went into the pit, giving them also an address, I thought he was a believer; and as I knew so very few brethren, I went to see him, in order, if it might be, to strengthen his hands. About two years afterwards, he told me that when I came ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... the gauntlet of prejudice and vulgar abuse. It is pleasant in this way to have your opinion quoted against yourself, and your own sayings repeated to you as good things. I was once talking to an intelligent man in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight's performance of Filch. 'Ah!' he said, 'little Simmons was the fellow to play that character.' He added, 'There was a most excellent remark made upon his acting it in the Examiner (I think it was)—That he looked as if he had the gallows in one ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... three days, the Norman coast has been thrashed by squalls of driving snow. The wild geese are honking in V-shaped lines to an inland refuge for the white sea is no longer tenable. Curlews cry hoarsely over the frozen fields. It is tough enough lying hidden in my sand pit on the open beach beyond the dunes, where I crack away at the ricketing flights of fat gray plover and beat myself to keep warm. Fuel is scarce and there is hardly a sou to be earned fishing in ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... turned to my landlady's library. It consisted of Derham's "Physico- and Astro-Theology," "The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin," by one Taylor, D.D., "The Ready Reckoner or Tradesman's Sure Guide," and "The Path to the Pit delineated, with Twelve Engravings on Copper-plate." For distraction I fell to pacing the room, and rehearsing those remembered tags of Latin verse concerning which M. de Culemberg had long ago assured me, "My son, we know not when, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for "Rothemurche's rant," an air which puts me in raptures; and, in fact, unless I be pleased with the tune, I never can make verses to it. Here I have Clarke on my side, who is a judge that I will pit against any of you. "Rothemurche," he says, "is an air both original and beautiful;" and, on his recommendation, I have taken the first part of the tune for a chorus, and the fourth or last part for the song. I am but two stanzas deep in the work, and possibly you may think, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... mused; "'the horrible pit an' the miry clay.' What a sufferin' pity it is we pore sinners cayn't dance a little now and ag'in 'thout havin' to walk right up and pay the fiddler! Tom-Jeff, there, now, he's a-thinkin' the price ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... "In the plague-pit!" shouted Sir Norman, making a spring at him; but the man darted off like a ghostly flash into the inner room, and closed and bolted the door ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... too dark to see clearly into the pit below, but John could tell from the coarse optimism and rugged vitality of the remarks and voices that they proceeded from middle-class Americans of the more spirited type. Then Mr. Washington put out his cane and touched a button in the grass, and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the dead was a very sacred ceremony, and accompanied with many forms. The corpse was laid in a pit till the flesh decayed, the bones were then cleaned, and a part of them distributed among the relations and friends to be preserved as relics, part laid in consecrated ground. Dying persons sometimes desired that their bones should be thrown into the crater of the volcano at O Wahi, which was ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... also, though, looking back later, it seemed to him that he snatched his happiness on the very edge of the pit, and that even at the time he must have been ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... theatre entirely obliterated; nor indeed do I think that all the perfumes of Arabia would overpower it. Having walked about, and admired all the varieties of fancy costumes, I, being nearly frozen, went to the Countess C—-a's box on the pit tier, and enveloped myself in a cloak. They pointed out the most distinguished persons in the boxes, amongst others the family of the E—-s, who seem very handsome, with brilliant colours and fine teeth. We remained ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Mauna Kea from Hilo has a shapely aspect, for its top is broken into peaks, said to be the craters of extinct volcanoes, but my eyes seek the dome-like curve of Mauna Loa with far deeper interest, for it is as yet an unfinished mountain. It has a huge crater on its summit 800 feet in depth, and a pit of unresting fire on its side; it throbs and rumbles, and palpitates; it has sent forth floods of fire over all this part of Hawaii, and at any moment it may be crowned with a lonely light, showing that its tremendous forces are again in activity. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Montana, where she lives, she wanders among the box rustlers, the beer jerkers, biscuit shooters, and plunges out into the sand and barrenness, but finds everything dumb. The six toothbrushes in the bathroom make her wild and profane. She flirts with death at the top of a dark, deep pit, and thinks out the stages of decomposition if she yielded herself to Death, who would dearly love to have her. She confesses herself a thief on several occasions, but comforts herself because the stolen money was given to the poor. Sometimes her ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... fledglings theorizing on the threshold of Love. They were robust and realized souls. They had loved before, with others, in the days before they met; and in those days they had throttled Love with caresses, and killed him with kisses, and buried him in the pit of satiety. ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... conceptions of the grandest master of instrumental music are incomprehensible; to whom Beethoven unlocks no portal in heaven; to whom Rossini has no mysteries on earth unsolved by the critics of the pit,—suddenly hears the human voice of the human singer, and at the sound of that voice the walls which enclosed him fall. The something far from and beyond the routine of his commonplace existence becomes known to him. He of himself, poor man, can make nothing of it. He cannot put it down ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I, 'I'll pit up a prayer, as I'm on my knees onyway.' I'm no' giftit like some, I ken; but, Robert, I prayed for that laddie gaun afore his Maker as I never prayed afore or since. And when I spak' aboot the forgiein' o' sin, the laddie juist steekit his een ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of sopor, which had lasted a day and a half; there had been delirium for two or three days, during which time the child had never had a clear moment. There was a purple rash all over the body. The temperature of the body I found 112 F., on placing my pocket-thermometer under the pit of the arm; the pulse was small, but exceedingly quick. There was considerable inflammation of the throat and swelling of the face; the breath was very bad. There was a blister on the throat and a mustard plaster on each of the ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... eventually as the spiritual director of a congregation and parish. Similarly, the laudable ambition which, in the case of a humble Scotch matron, is expressed in the wish and exertion to see her Jamie or Geordie "wag his pow in the pou'pit," produces, when realized, salutary effects in the whole family connection. These effects, which Mr. Froude would doubtless allow and commend in their case, he finds it creditable to ignore the very possibility of in the experience ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... fairly spooky. Only the pit-pats of their footsteps wakened dull echoes through the vaulted cavern. Johnny could not help feeling that there were more than three men in this cave. In vain he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the walls to right and ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... and put to their wits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion? Was not his evil finger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams? Who else gave the Jesuit missionaries—locusts from the pit as they were—such a hold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled to hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles? To the vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light wantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... three or four intensely busy men, though, at Zanzibar, who were out at all hours of the day. I know one, an American; I fancy I hear the quick pit-pat of his feet on the pavement beneath the Consulate, his cheery voice ringing the salutation, "Yambo!" to every one he met; and he had lived at Zanzibar ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... after Hester had taken Bet home, she found herself in the entrance of The Cleopatra Theatre, about seven o'clock. A new piece was to be put on the stage that night, and the entrance to the small pit was already crowded with rough men and frowsy, untidy, disreputable girls. They all nodded to Hester, and seemed pleased to see her, and one or two made way to get ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... their bets, both individually and through the agency of the "farmer," who, standing in the centre of the ring, cried out chaffingly in Visayan to faint-hearted gamesters. Then circles were drawn on the earthen floor of the pit, and the money put up on each cock deposited in one or the other of these rings. At the end of the fight some one appointed cried out the name of the victorious bird, and the winners swarmed down into the pit where they collected their money and the original stakes. There is never ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... dig,' said the boy. And they dug, and found a large pit like a well, filled with ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... his well developed feet made a racket, the sound twofold increased by the acoustics of the damp tent. Alfred's voice sounded louder to himself than ever before, notwithstanding he worked his whole first number with his back to the audience. (In theatres the orchestra is always in a pit in front of the performers—in a circus concert the orchestra is behind ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... is not meant that the characters are truer to life than those in The Way of the World, but that they are truer to average life, and therefore more easily recognisable by the average spectator. Tattle, for instance, is so gross a fool, that any fool in the pit could see his folly; Witwoud might deceive all but the elect. No familiarity—direct or indirect—with a particular mode of life and speech is necessary to the appreciation of Love for Love. Sir Sampson Legend is your unmistakable heavy father, cross-grained and bullying. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... match between a darky cook of one of the returning outfits and a locoed white man, a mendicant of the place, and invited us to be present. Straw knew the foreman of the outfit to which the darky belonged, and the two had fixed it up to pit the two in a contest, under the pretense that a large wager had been made on which was the better fiddler. The contest was to take place at once in the corral of the Lone Star livery stable, and promised to be humorous if nothing more. So ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... inverted bowl (Fig. 8). It forms the floor of the thorax (chest) and the roof of the abdomen. It is attached by a strong tendon to the spinal column behind, and to the walls of the thorax at its lowest part, which is below the ribs. In front its attachment is to the cartilage at the pit of the stomach. It also connects with the transverse abdominal muscle. The diaphragm being convex, in inspiration the contraction of its fibres flattens it downward and presses down the organs in the abdomen, thus increasing the depth of ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... to this spot of many memories, I could not quit it again; while my wild woodland life lasted, here must I have my lair, and being here I could not leave that mournful skeleton above ground. With labour I excavated a pit to bury it, careful not to cut or injure a broad-leafed creeper that had begun to spread itself over the spot; and after refilling the hole I drew the long, trailing stems ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... hundred and fifty feet in diameter and nearly regular in shape. In 1846 its walls were eleven or twelve feet high, by about fifty feet base. It will be noticed that there is a gate at or near each angle of the octagon except one, and in front of that angle was a pit, from which some of the earth to form the walls was taken. Facing each gateway a mound was placed, as if ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... it I do not here invite the covetous miser to disturb the dead who can frame no idea of treasure distinct from gold and silver but him who knows that wisdom and virtue are the true and sole riches of man. Is not truth a treasure think you? Which yet Democritus assures us is buried in a deep pit or grave and he bad reason for whereas we meet elsewhere with nothing but pain and deceit we no sooner look down into a grave but truth faceth us and tells ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... not going to cry, Mrs. Dr. dear, and that you may tie to, but whether I shall manage to smile or not will be as Providence ordains and as the pit of my stomach feels. Have you room there for this fruit-cake? And the shortbread? And the mince-pie? That blessed boy shall not starve, whether they have anything to eat in that Quebec place or not. Everything ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... proceeded at once to perform it. In the same way he lost not a moment's time in probing the wound and extracting the projectile whenever it had lodged in some locality where it might do further mischief, as in the muscles of the neck, the region of the arm pit, the thigh joint, the ligaments of the knee and elbow. Severed arteries, too, had to be tied without delay. Other wounds were merely dressed by one of the hospital stewards under his direction and left to await developments. He had already with his own hand performed four amputations, the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... shattered in one place, and the debris from it had fallen over and partly blocked up the steps leading to that floor from the second story; two or three of the corner turrets had been injured by small shells; and there was a deep scar, or circular pit, in the face of the eastern wall, over the moat, where the masonry had been struck squarely by a heavy projectile; but, with the exception of these comparatively trifling injuries, the old fortress remained intact. Newspaper men described it ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... plunder the temple, about B.C. 180, and ending with the victory of Judas Maccabeus over Nicanor, B.C. 161. Both of the letters are regarded as spurious. The second of them abounds in marvellous legends—how, upon the destruction of the first temple, the sacred fire of the altar was hid in a hollow pit without water; how, at the close of the captivity, it was found in the form of thick water, which being by the command of Nehemiah sprinkled on the wood of the altar and the sacrifices, there was kindled, when the sun ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... that Belfast can continue for ever in a prosperity isolated and aloof from the country in which she is situated. Either she must throw in her lot with Ireland or Ireland must drag Ireland down into one common pit of adversity. Lord Pirrie, the enterprising and fearless director of the great shipbuilding works on Queen's Island—works which maintained their pre-eminence and continued their output through the dark days of the shipbuilding trade on the Clyde and the Thames—has been ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... is. One moment you drop into an abyss and the next you are back in the world that you would think too deep for any noise but the trumpet of the Last Judgment. And then off you go again. Your very soul seems to slip down into a bottomless black pit. Then up once more into a startled consciousness. A mere plaything of cruel sleep one is, then. Tormented ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... he shouted cheerfully. He waved his hat, and disappeared in the darkness. I stood at the gate till the last rapid pit-pat of his feet died away in the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... bar. I heard it also proclaimed to them that attended on the Man that sat on the Cloud, Gather together the Tares, the Chaff, and Stubble, and cast them into the burning Lake. And with that, the bottomless pit opened, just whereabout I stood; out of the mouth of which there came in an abundant manner, smoke and coals of fire, with hideous noises. It was also said to the same persons, Gather my Wheat into the Garner. And with that I saw many catch'd up and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... run away five year ago. My ole folks, and eight brudders and sisters, is down dere in de pit now; waitin' for the Lord to set 'em free. And He's gwine to do it soon, soon!" As she uttered the last words, a sudden light chased the tragic shadow from Hepsey's face, and the solemn fervor of her voice thrilled Christie's heart. All her anger died out in a great pity, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... is to feed the officers; and there are four men who have the rottenest time of anyone—they're the miners who burrow and dig, dig and burrow day and night towards the German lines; poor half-naked fellows who wheel little trucks of earth to the pit shaft or who lie on their stomachs working away with picks. And it's always an awful race to see if they'll blow up the Germans, or if it will be ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... ignorance, by a separate movement collects itself. Just as a goldsmith taking a small bit of gold, gives to it a newer and fairer form, so the soul after destroying this body and removing ignorance fashions a newer and fairer form as of the Pit@rs, the Gandharvas, the gods, of Prajapati or Brahma or of any other being....As he acts and behaves so he becomes, good by good deeds, bad by bad deeds, virtuous by virtuous deeds and vicious by vice. The man is full ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... continued power. "They say we must fight until slavery is extinguished. We are to upturn the foundations of our Constitution. At this very moment, when the fate of the nation and of individuals trembles in the balance, these madmen ask us to plunge into a bottomless pit of controversy upon indefinite purposes. Does not every man know that we must have a united North to triumph? Can we get a united North upon a theory that the Constitution can be set aside at the will of one man, because, forsooth, he judges it to be a military necessity? I never ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow, although it came quite close to it, but it was stopped short by the pine woods which protected it. Its low houses looked like paving stones in a large meadow, from up there. Hauser's little daughter ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... it was—a snake-like motion. And then Ferguson's gun was out; its cold muzzle pressed deep into the pit of Leviatt's stomach, and Ferguson's left hand was pinning Leviatt's right to his side, the range boss's hand still wrapped around the butt of his half-drawn weapon. Then came Ferguson's voice again, dry, filled ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and Statutes I denie: God pardon all Oathes that are broke to mee, God keepe all Vowes vnbroke are made to thee. Make me that nothing haue, with nothing grieu'd, And thou with all pleas'd, that hast all atchieu'd. Long may'st thou liue in Richards Seat to sit, And soone lye Richard in an Earthie Pit. God saue King Henry, vn-King'd Richard sayes, And send him many yeeres of Sunne-shine dayes. What more remaines? North. No more: but that you reade These Accusations, and these grieuous Crymes, Committed by your Person, and your followers, Against the State, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my son an' heir, O, bid him breed him up wi' care; An' if he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast! An' warn him what I winna name, To stay content wi' yowes at hame An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, Like ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and emotions the story of her life and love? And if every other beauty had failed, Angelica's eyes would have atoned for the loss. They were large, softly- black, slow-moving, or again, in a moment, flashing with the fire that lay hidden in the dark pit of the iris. ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... that dreadful pit." She shuddered. "I could not see who you were, did not know whether friend or enemy—but oh, my heart almost died in pity for you, Walter," she breathed. "What can ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... were pushed to John's side and they lay ready to his grasp. Then as the Arrow began its downward curve, he laid his glasses aside and watched. The most advanced German batteries were placed in a pit, into which a telephone wire ran. Evidently these guns, like the French, were fired by order from some distant point. John longed to hurl a bomb at the pit, but the chances were ten to one that he would miss it, and he ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that, on the contrary, it was the spirit of Anti-Christ, it was the will of Man with his greeds, his cruelty, his self-sufficient pride, together with a host of other evils, which had brought all this to pass. But could not—would not—God deliver the innocent; must all alike descend into the pit? ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... breathing, and, as he persevered and went from stage to stage of this painful exercise, he heard the blood rushing in his head and felt as if his skull was being split, as if his belly were being cut open with a butcher's knife, and finally as if he were thrown into a pit of burning coals. Elsewhere[319] he gives further details of the horrible penances which he inflicted on himself. He gradually reduced his food to a grain of rice each day. He lived on seeds and grass, and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... is observant of whatsoever is good, because she desires to improve herself. Her great object is to understand, not to instruct. The great art (since it is recognised that art is required even in the commerce of words) is not to pit against one another two arrogant opponents, eager to parade their learning and to amuse the company by discussing questions the solution of which no one troubles about, but to illumine every unprofitable disputation by bringing in the help of all who can throw a little light on the points at ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... No far forest country, no secret paths, nor cloven hills, nothing but a gleam of pale horizontal sky, that broods over pleasant places far away, and sends in, through the wild overgrowth of the thicket, a ray of broken daylight into the hopeless pit. No flaunting plumes nor brandished lances, but stern purpose in the turn of the crestless helmet, visible victory in the drawing back of the prepared right arm behind the steady point. No more claws, nor teeth, nor manes, nor stinging ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... chimney was built, there was usually placed on one side of the kitchen fireplace a brick oven which had a smoke uptake into the chimney—and-an ash-pit below. The great door was of iron. This oven was usually heated once a week. A great fire of dry wood, called oven wood, was kindled within it and kept burning fiercely for some hours. This thoroughly heated all the bricks. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the truth by geomancy, and said, "Verily this King is a diviner, whose like there is not in the world." Thereupon Queen Zumurrud bade flay the Nazarene and stuff his skin with straw and hang it over the gate of the race-course. Moreover, she commended to dig a pit without the city and burn therein his flesh and bones and throw over his ashes offal and ordure. "We hear and obey," answered they, and did with him all she bade; and, when the folk saw what had befallen the Christian, they said, "Serve him right; but what an unlucky mouthful ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... said Dr Budge, "I want to go to the chalk-pit beyond Rumborough to-morrow, and if you were both to go with me we might find something ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... the cellar stairs. "Now don't ye go to makin' yourself work," cried the guests. "No, don't! we ain't needin' nothin'; we was late about supper." But their hostess stepped carefully down and disappeared for a few minutes, while the cat hovered anxiously at the edge of the black pit. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... than others, and one feels as though one might carry these impressions intact to the grave. In this tomb there was nothing so impressive as this view across the well and through the entrance in the opposite wall. At one's feet lay the dark pit; around one the gaudy paintings gleamed; and through the window-like aperture before one, a dim suggestion could be obtained of a white-pillared hall. The intense eagerness to know what was beyond, and, at the same time, the feeling ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... believed that he was invincible in arms, and that no man could stand against him, in which belief he was somewhat excused by his long record of successes, and it seemed to him no more than a sorry joke that a lad and a scholar like Dante should really pit his pigmy self against Simone's giantship. It was no information of Maleotti's that told Simone the truth about the unknown poet. That, as you know, he found out for himself, and if he did but despise any skill that Dante might attain in arms, he had the clumsy man's horror of the thing he could ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hordes, those tented caravans, Whose graceful steeds have plied through centuries past Those barren, trackless wastes; some of the men Who, Egypt-bound with spicery and balm, Halted beside the lonely pit, and bartered there For that young lad whose coat dyed in the blood Of kids, made Jacob with wild agony exclaim, "This is my Joseph's coat! He has, no doubt, Been rent in ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... What time my heart is overwhelmed do Thou lead me unto the rock that is higher than I; and God answers us by being Himself a shade upon the right hand, and the sun shall not smite by day, nor the moon by night. And there is the Loneliness of the Deep, when we are plunged into the pit of our hearts to fight with terrible temptations—a conflict no other man knows about or can help us in. Shall God, Who sees us fighting there, and falling under the sense of our helplessness, leave ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... said Freydisa, "that we wait here until the moon rises, which it should do soon. When the wind has driven away the clouds it will show us our path, but if we go on in this darkness we shall fall into some pit. It is not cold to-night, and you will take ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... a Roman brickyard, about two fields from the Bathhouse, along the pathway which now runs northwards through Coal Pit Wood and skirts Bracken Wood. The pits are still visible where the clay was dug; also the broad “ride,” running east and west through Bracken Wood, near these pits, is said to have been a ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... I heard a step, A soft pit-pat surprise, And looking round my eyes fell deep Into sweet ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... understanding, Norwich was infamously conspicuous in persecuting unto death the saints of the Most High, under the sanguinary despotism of popish Mary; and the spot where they suffered, called the Lollard's pit, lies just outside the town, over Bishop's bridge, having a circular excavation against the side of Moushold-hill. This, at least to within a year or two ago, was kept distinct, an opening by the road-side. My father often took us to walk in that direction, and pointed out the ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... of the explosion had upset the whole neighbourhood, horses were still rearing, and people were running demented, hither and thither. And numerous policemen had hastened up, and a rushing crowd was already blocking the lower part of the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy, which was now as black as a pit, every light in it having been extinguished; whilst on the Boulevard a hawker of the "Voix du Peuple" still stubbornly vociferated: "The new scandal of the African Railway Lines! The thirty-two bribe-takers of the Chamber and the Senate! The ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... throw, was whispered in his ear. We've the advantage. But why it was an advantage to fight from the right rather than from the left Joseph was too excited to inquire, for the cocks had just been put into the ring or pit, and Joseph recognised the tall lank bird that the Heeler had taken out of his basket in the orchard. He's fighting to-day with long spurs, he was told. But why does he fight the other bird—a yearling? he heard the woman ask; and he ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... skittles or danced with the girls; and, indeed, never took any recreation but that of drinking on Saturday nights with his friend Harry, the Scotch pedlar. His supporters called him Sweet William; his enemies the Bottomless Pit. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... but solidly-packed devil-fish all the way to the dome! A slaughter pit! And we, of course, are to be ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... will be remarked, had already widened greatly the sphere of his doubts; but, the larger the field, the greater the chance of finding a marl-pit; and, if there be such a thing as truth, every fresh doubt is yet another finger-post pointing towards its dwelling.—So talked the curate to himself, and, full in the face, rounding the corner of ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... a glass box restrain the Fiend that had made his life a Hell upon earth? What did Steynker and Colfe and these others—all gaping at him open-mouthed—know of the Devil with whom he had wrestled deep beneath the Pit itself for ten thousand centuries of horror—centuries whose ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Oh yes—act as if you had not seen that beautiful illumination the day before yesterday evening—that's right—when the rick was burned down, and then the gunpowder dispersed the fire, so that nothing but a black pit remained for ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... were to walk over half an hour northward, up the hill, and look for the quarries near the top of the high terrace above the village. This we did, but at first without result. We passed a small grassy pit, where some of the rock was visible, but it did not look at all promising. We went back and forth, and up the hill, until we were practically on the top. The country was beautiful, and by the roadside ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... deeper and deeper into the pit which he had dug for the Indian. This last speech was most unhappy and impolitic for the side he was advocating. It put dreadful weapons into the hands of Red Iron, which the crafty 'old man eloquent' did not fail to use ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... shall bee, where such wicked men were, as God in former times in extraordinary, and miraculous manner, had destroyed from off the face of the Earth: As for Example, that they are in Inferno, in Tartarus, or in the bottomelesse pit; because Corah, Dathan, and Abirom, were swallowed up alive into the earth. Not that the Writers of the Scripture would have us beleeve, there could be in the globe of the Earth, which is not only finite, but also ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... a half-made road across a warren. A cart-track led at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the chimneys of a cottage rose amongst a clump of trees at the border of a thick wood. Tussocks of feathery grass covered the rough surface of the ground, and out of these the larks soared into the hate of sunshine. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Hoyt, of New Canaan, Conn., writes:—"Our horse stables are constructed with a movable floor and pit beneath, which holds 20 loads of muck of 25 bushels per load. Spring and fall, this pit is filled with fresh muck, which receives all the urine of the horses, and being occasionally worked over and mixed, furnishes us annually with 40 loads of ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... where you would have shuddered if Bond Street had seen you carrying a parcel no larger than your card-case; but those considerations rarely troubled you here. Very likely, your servant was lying crouched in a rifle pit, having "pots" at the Russians, or keeping watch and ward in the long lines of trenches, or, stripped to his shirt, shovelling powder and shot into the great guns, whose steady roar broke the evening's calm. ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... soon cleared off the soil, and came to what appeared to be a coffin or a large chest. Both then got out of the pit to consider how they should remove the chest; the whole party were discussing the matter, when a tremendous crash, succeeded by a terrific yell, was heard at the other end of the church, and a ghastly and half-naked figure, looking like a corpse broken from the tomb, rushed forward with ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... however, thought he might benefit by the ladder, as well as his corpulent visitor, and, just as the latter reached the ground, jumped, first, on his stern, then, on his shoulder, skipped out of the pit, and was off in a moment, leaving the man staring and swearing at his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the weather rigging. Except for the ship's own lantern, and for some lights in Shoreby town, that were already fading to leeward, the whole world of air was as black as in a pit. Only from time to time, as the Good Hope swooped dizzily down into the valley of the rollers, a crest would break—a great cataract of snowy foam would leap in one instant into being—and, in an instant more, would stream ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that held Ian's attention, and whose outlines he was tracing with his forefinger, but the devils, one big fellow with cows' horns and wings drooping like those of a moulting crow, and a bevy of imps with young horns and curly tails who were pulling a half-buried body toward the fiery pit by its hair. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... introduced with ease, and when they are well understood by those to whom they are addressed.' 'An antithesis renders a passage piquant'; but the dire results of a too-frequent indulgence in it are relentlessly set forth. Pages and pages are devoted to a minute survey of the pit-falls of punctuation. But when the young lady of that period had skirted all these, and had observed all the manifold rules of caligraphy that were here laid down for her, she was not, even then, out of the wood. Very special stress was laid ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... and very big and very complex about these new relations of capital and labor. A new economic society has sprung up, and we must effect a new set of adjustments. We must not pit power against weakness. The employer is generally, in our day, as I have said, not an individual, but a powerful group; and yet the workingman when dealing with his employer is still, under our ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... boulders that bestrew its banks. Obliged to wait until the preceding couple had holed out, our citizen and golfer amused himself by upturning one of the great lichen-stained boulders. He gazed into the dank pit thus disclosed to his eyes, and half drew back dismayed at the extraordinary activity of insect life that was revealed. It was so sudden, so unexpected. Beneath that grey and solemn boulder that Time and man accepted as a freehold tenant ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... gorgeously-attired Queen of Sheba, who also smiled and examined him minutely through a pair of eye-glasses fastened on the end of a gold-mounted stick, the place of torment, wherever and whatever it might be, held no deeper pit for him. What he had climbed the mountain to find was a little girl in a school frock, who had sat on the yellowing grass with one arm around the neck of a great dog, looking fearlessly up at him and telling him she ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... pretend to know. There is no real Knowledge but only Ignorance. Ignorance should be exalted. In Ignorance lies peace, contentment, happiness, and safety." Even of his work—of his dreams he said this. He said: "It is no use." To the very edge of this pit he came but he did ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... comes just from this, that so many who call themselves Christians have never once got a glimpse of themselves as they really are. I remember once peering over the edge of the crater of Vesuvius, and looking down into the pit, all swirling with sulphurous fumes. Have you ever looked into your hearts, in that fashion, and seen the wreathing smoke and the flashing fire there? If you have, you will cleave to that Christ, who is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... her, saw a movement in the bank on which she was standing. They called to her to take care, but it was too late. The bank fell in, and she was carried down along with it. A man ran to help her, but the sides of the pit were crumbling round her: a large stone fell on her head; the rubbish followed, and she was overwhelmed. When she was dug out afterwards, the pence were found in her pocket. Bunyan was perfectly satisfied that her death ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... that she washed his "foul clothes"—that by degrees he came to be wealthy and rode in his own yellow coach—that his wife went abroad in society "in a flowered tabby gown"—that Pepys forsook his habits of poverty and exchanged his twelve-penny seat in the theatre gallery for a place in the pit—and that on a rare occasion (doubtless when he was alone and there was but one seat to buy) he arose to the ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... marble balustrade and looked down into the huge pit with marble walls and sanded floor. All around it were cages in which were confined great beasts; and alcoves in which she and her guests, behind iron bars, would sit, when sated with love and feasting, to watch the animals fight ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... respected, that, even should the subscription not fill, I should at least see a Theatre capable of being charged with and ultimately of discharging what should remain justly due to the proprietors. To illustrate this I refer to the size of the pit, the number of private boxes, and the annexation of a tavern; but in what a situation would the doctrine of your Committee leave me and my son? 'It is nothing to us how the Theatre is built, or whether it prospers or not.' These are two circumstances we have nothing to do ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... around the circular pit in the sward of the asteroid where one Steel-Blue had shown him the power of ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... water tugged at her as though a hundred hands had laid hold of her person. She was nearly arm-pit deep in the flood, and her uncle's body was so heavy that she had all she could do to hold ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... Maggard busied about his dooryard, albeit with his rifle standing ready to hand, and to-day he wore his shirt with the arm-pit pistol holster ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... train running at a great speed would take the pit into which I had guided it, and I was much interested in watching it. One of my colleagues thought that it would actually jump it, and indeed it was not very far from doing so. Fortunately, however, it fell short, and the buffers of the engine struck the other ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as I have seen it, I do like very well, and the house very full. But I could take little pleasure more than the play, for not being able to look about, for fear of being seen. Here only I saw a French lady in the pit, with a tunique, just like one of ours, only a handkercher about her neck; but this fashion for a woman did not look decent. Thence walked to my bookseller's, and there he did give me a list of the twenty who were nominated for the Commission in Parliament for the Accounts: ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... so interested in creating hell for the wicked," he said, "that sometimes the good get into the pit themselves just to see how hot it really is. And find the wicked have never been there.... Hamil, the hopelessly wicked—and there are few of them who are not mentally irresponsible—never go to hell because they wouldn't mind it if they did. It's the good who are hell's architects ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... still defying, and her colors flaming, flying, In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead, Soared the Orient into darkness with her living and her dying: "Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls," the ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... poisons are medicines and homoeopathic, the fumes of fear a remedy of sulphur for cutaneous sin. The thought in which our terrors arrive is always at last a gospel, is glad tidings. Dante, Paul, Swedenborg, Edwards have seen the pit. It opens only in the holiness of such men,—is a thunder out of clear sky, before which generations of the impure, like brute beasts, tremble and cower. An equal moral genius will see that the ascension of an immortal Love has left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... cistern cut in the rock. Inside of this spiral staircase, instead of concentric circles which twist around with each complete turn, the involutions become wider as they proceed, in such a way that the bottom of the pit is three times as large as the opening. Is it an architectural freak, or did some reasonable cause determine such an odd construction? It matters little to us. The result was to cause in the cistern that vague reverberation which anyone may hear upon placing a shell at ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... narrow. Very probably they used the terms of the Pauline Gospel, and said much of grace, and faith, and the Spirit, and the things above. But none the less they were the victims of an awful self-delusion; teachers whose doctrine led downwards to the pit. To them he comes at length, explicitly and finally. In view of them he places before the Philippians once more the fact of his own and his brethren's examples, and then the sanctifying power of that blessed hope, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... know so much about that," replied Drew, quietly. "I have no wish to seem cowardly, but it is not very pleasant moleing along here in the darkness. I keep expecting to step down into some bottomless pit." ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... interest in her may be a purely artistic one, although mistaken. She'll never make a good variety-actress: she's too heavy. And the boys don't give her a fair show. No woman can make a debut in my version of 'Somnambula,' and have the front row in the pit say to her in the sleepwalking scene, 'You're out rather late, Mornie. Kinder forgot to put on your things, didn't you? Mother sick, I suppose, and you're goin' for more gin? Hurry along, or you'll ketch it when ye get home.' Why, you couldn't do ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... furious attacks which, after the fashion of the day, the opposition papers hurled against every act of the Federalist leaders, and which aimed as much to defile their characters as to discredit their policies, they saw a pit of anarchy yawning. Between parties so constituted, no alternative remained but a fight to a finish; and, from the moment the Federalists became genuinely anti-democratic, they were doomed. Only accident or conspicuous success ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... would draw him up by his cord even from the pit of hell. But when he dies, though St. Francis comes to take him, one of the Black Cherubim of hell seizes and claims him, truly urging that absolution for an intended sin is a contradiction in terms, since absolution assumes penitence. Again, among the hypocrites in the sixth ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne |
