"Pith" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... culture skims over that like a bird, never touching it with the tip of a wing. What she brings home is the freshness and brightness of life. She touches everything so daintily, she hits off a character in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue without tediousness, she mimics without vulgarity; her narration sparkles, but it does n't sting. The picture of her day is full of vivacity, and it gives new value and freshness to common things. If we could only have on the stage such actresses ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... verse-narratives into prose, and less would be lost in the transfer. In Multitude and Solitude, the author has given us more of the results of his own thinking than can be found in most of the poems. Whole pages are filled with the pith of meditative thought. In Captain Margaret, we have a remarkable combination of the love of romance ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned, now presenting every diversity of slouch. Next, are hats of the same original shape, made of coarse plaited straw or reeds, now very much broken and bent. Finally, there are the remains of one or two pith helmets and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... girt by a zone of fire and steel. Her villas and homesteads flamed or smoked; her orchards flared heavenward in a torrent of sparks or stood black sapless trunks charred to their inmost pith; the promise of her harvests lay as grey ashes over the land. But her ramparts, though breached in places, were yet manned by her sons, and their assailants recoiled pierced by the shafts or stunned by the catapults of the defence. Kaiser ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... game!" exclaimed Tom, jumping up, and preparing to follow his friend. But he did not have the chance. An instant later Mr. Damon burst through the bushes with every appearance of fright, his gun held above his head with one hand, and his pith helmet swaying to and fro ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... connection with it. The hills farther from the town are heavily wooded, and the timber is being sawed at mills along the shore road. On the streets are seen men of several nationalities, Chinese, Malays, Moros, East Indians, and occasionally a Caucasian in his customary white suit and pith helmet; but of all these the most dignified and stately is the Indian policeman. He is tall and slender, with frequently a fine black beard; his head is covered with the usual white turban, set off with a touch of ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... years to exterminate the coconut throughout the West Indies; belonging, we are told, to the Elaters—fire-fly, or skipjack beetles. His grub, like that of his cousin, our English wire-worm, and his nearer cousin, the great wire-worm of the sugar-cane, eats into the pith and marrow of growing shoots; and as the palm, being an endogen, increases from within by one bud, and therefore by one shoot only, when that is eaten out nothing remains for the tree but to die. And so it happens that almost ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... talking with that pleasant vivacity which she, poor girl, knew so well and valued so highly. Lady George liked it too, though she could hardly have given any reason for liking it, for, to tell the truth, there was not often much pith in ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... old methods of the explorer are still the best. Simply equipped with an elephant-rifle and a pith helmet, let him plunge into the bush and be lost to sight for a few years. Whereas the Missing Link may be relied on to remain resolutely beneath his rock at the sight of a sort of a Lord Mayor's Show wandering among the vegetation, the spectacle of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... a manner rush, that is dried to kindle fire and lanterns, and hight the feeding of fire. And this herb is put to burn in prickets and in tapers. The rind is stripped off unto the pith, and is so dried, and a little is left of the rind on the one side, to sustain the tender pith; and the less is left of the rind, the more clear the pith burneth in a lamp, and is the sooner kindled. And about Memphis and in Ind be such great rushes, that they ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... I have taken no end of pains with it, and it has been a matter of seven or eight hours a day lately. I mean the last few days. Rather too much. It knocked me off my sleep, and reduced "my poor back" to the consistency of pith. But I am picking up, partly by such gross material aid as bottled stout affords! and any amount of fresh air blowing in full draughts over ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... Herschel. Destruction and resuscitation of all things. 351. 2. Seeds within seeds, and bulbs within bulbs. Picture on the retina of the eye. Concentric strata of the earth. The great seed. 381. 3. The root, pith, lobes, plume, calyx, coral, sap, blood, leaves respire and absorb light. The crocodile in its egg. 409. XI. Opening of the flower. The petals, style, anthers, prolific dust. Transmutation of the silkworm. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... heart, yet shrewd therewith, Slow to resolve, but firm to hold; Still with parable and with myth Seasoning truth, like Them of old; Aptest humor and quaintest pith! (Still we smile o'er the tales ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... well done! That's the right spirit, and I never refuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice. There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I shall do what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him. But then, you see, he's made good use of his time,—a first-rate calculator,— can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's uncommonly knowing in ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give the pith of the story— ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sleep as soon as he was born, and has but just waked up—that's my notion about it. So now, instead of starting, the way most of us do, at the point of helplessness, he begins life with a body full of seven years' pith, and faculties sharp set as a new watch. Till now he has but dreamed; now he's going to exist, with so much the more extra impetus. He don't recollect what he's been ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... traveller returns,[19] puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus, conscience does make cowards of us all;[20] And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment,[21] With this regard, their currents turn away, And lose the name ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... Presidential campaigns of 1860 and 1864, when he seemed to be pleased with my efforts. I had once heard him make a stump speech which was evidently inspired by intense hatred of slavery, and remarkable for argumentative pith and sarcastic wit. But the impression his personality made upon me was not sympathetic: his face, long and pallid, topped with an ample dark-brown wig which was at the first glance recognized as such; beetling brows overhanging keen ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... on the style of Tacitus). "The work," says La Bletterie, "is brief without being superficial. Within the compass of a few pages, it comprises more of ethics and politics, more fine delineations of character, more substance and pith (suc), than can be collected from many a ponderous volume. It is not one of those barely agreeable descriptions, which gradually diffuse their influence over the soul, and leave it in undisturbed tranquillity. It is a picture in strong light, like the subject itself, full of fire, of sentiment, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... says, "the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and mankind." The assertion that they desired to invert this order, to destroy every social link in so far as it tended to produce inequalities, was the pith of his great indictment against the French "metaphysical" revolutionists. They had perverted the general logical precept of the sufficient reason for all inequalities by converting it into an assuming of the equality ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... waster weel, man! ground the waster weel!—haud him down—ye haena the pith o' a cat"—were the cries of advice, encouragement, and expostulation, from those who were on the bank, to the sportsman engaged with the salmon, who stood up to his middle in water, jingling among ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... final about this. And Gudrun seems like the end, to me. I don't know—but she seems so soft, her skin like silk, her arms heavy and soft. And it withers my consciousness, somehow, it burns the pith of my mind.' He went on a few paces, staring ahead, his eyes fixed, looking like a mask used in ghastly religions of the barbarians. 'It blasts your soul's eye,' he said, 'and leaves you sightless. Yet you WANT to be sightless, you ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... stone—with an identical inscription in hieroglyphics, in demotic and in Greek, furnished to Champollion (1810) and to Young the clew to the deciphering of the Egyptian writing, and thus the key to the sense of the monumental inscriptions. The Egyptian manuscripts were made of the pith of the byblus plant, cut into strips. These were laid side by side horizontally, with another layer of strips across them; the two layers being united by paste, and subjected to a heavy pressure. The Egyptians wrote with a reed, using ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Singhalese, is chiefly cultivated in the Kandyan hills for the sake of its sap, which is drawn, boiled down, and crystallised into a coarse brown sugar, in universal use amongst the inhabitants of the south and west of Ceylon, who also extract from its pith a farina scarcely inferior to sago. The black fibre of the leaf is twisted by the Rodiyas into ropes of considerable smoothness and tenacity. A single Kitool tree has been pointed out at Ambogammoa, which furnished the support of a Kandyan, his wife, and their children. A tree has been known ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Genealogies all the evening; and once or twice a week I will go to Gunnersbury and drink a bottle with Princess Amelia. Alas, dear lady! and cannot you do all that without skuttling from one end of the world to the other?—This was the, upshot of all Cineas's inquisitiveness: and this is the pith of this tedious letter from, Madam, your ladyship's most faithful Aulic Counsellor and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, dancing on every side? As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,—like a moonlight myth,— Lairing in labyrinths of the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... single-eye cuttings. The most common form of the cutting is the single bud with an inch of wood above and below, the ends being cut with a slant. Some modify this form by cutting away the wood on the side opposite the bud, exposing the pith the whole length of the cutting. In another form, a square cut is made directly under the bud, leaving an inch and a half of wood above. Or this last form is modified by making a long sloping cut from the bud to the upper end, thereby exposing the maximum ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's a boon his might, Guid faith he manna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities, and a' that, The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, Are higher rank than ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... blowing fresh outside with a strong send of sea. The spray flew in the oarsmen's faces. They saw the Union Jack blow abroad from the Flying Scud, the men clustered at the rail, the cook in the galley-door, the captain on the quarter-deck with a pith helmet and binoculars. And the whole familiar business, the comfort, company, and safety of a ship, heaving nearer at each stroke, maddened ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this interesting fragment needs no elaborate explanation: it contains the pith of Agur's practical philosophy in the form of an exhortation to renounce honour, glory, the esteem of men, &c., if we possess legitimate claims to such, and still more if we have none; the acquisition of peace and quiet is cheap at the price of obscurity; freedom from care and worry and from ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the [S']ami-tree is pregnant with fire.' The legend is, that the goddess Parvati, being one day under the influence of love, reposed on a trunk of this tree, whereby a sympathetic warmth was generated in the pith or interior of the wood, which ever after broke into a sacred flame on the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... with his jacket cut in the latest fashion, with his cockle-shell of a boat, which he managed as well on salt water as on fresh, sculling with his arms bare, a cigarette in his mouth, a monocle in his eye, and a pith-helmet, such as is worn in India. The young ladies used to gather on the sands to watch him as he struck the water with the broad blade of his scull, near enough for them to see and to admire his nautical ability. They thought all ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... instinct, Friedrich Wilhelm had discerned that all things in Prussia must point towards his Army; that his Army was the heart and pith; the State being the tree, every branch and leaf bound, after its sort, to be nutritive and productive for the Army's behoof. That, probably for any Nation in the long-run, and certainly for the Prussian Nation straightway, life or death ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... saying "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are" is as full of the "pith o' sense" to-day as in ye days of long ago, for food either makes us physically fit and fully efficient, or miserable failures with physical complications that keep us constantly ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... liquor)—and in fact to enter on a universal uproar of Machineries, Eldorados, "Unexampled Prosperities," which make a great noise for themselves in the days now come,' with much more to the same effect (xx. xiii.) Allowance made for the dialect, we do not see how the pith and root of the matter, the connection between the transactions of the eighteenth century and the industrial and colonial expansion that followed them, could be more firmly ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... sent for, and after many attempts, her bonnet and pretty little white Marseilles cloak were fastened, for she jumped, and Sallie jumped during the operation, till you would have thought they were pith witches, only they fortunately kept on their feet; afterward they kissed each other jumping, and the kisses lighted on the very ends of their noses, and Sallie ran to the corner with her, and bade her good-by, ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... hypogea), which grows in all parts of Southern Africa, and which forms a staple food of the native inhabitants. For vegetables they had the bulbs of many species of Ixias and Mesembryanthemums, among others the "Hottentot fig" (Mesembryanthemum edule). They had the "Caffir bread"—the inside pith of the stems of a species of Zamia; and the "Caffir chestnut," the fruit of the Brabeium stellatum; and last, not least, the enormous roots of the "elephant's foot" (Testudinaria elephantipes). They had wild onions and garlic too; and in the white flower-tops of a beautiful floating ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... it short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor, dry, empty thing In holes as he sat ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... of Georgia, which he designates the "Secondary Combats of the Mexican War," we observe that he has given an account of the engagement at Huamantla, and the fall of Walker. We believe the Major's account, compiled as it is from "the documents," to be in the main correct, but lacking incidental pith, and slightly erroneous in the grand denouement, in which our gallant friend—whose manly countenance even now stares us in the face, as if in life he "yet lived"—yielded up the balance of power ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... short steps: and I find no step can be taken without check from existing generalizations. Sowerby's definition of Monocotyledons, in his ninth volume, begins thus: "Herbs, (or rarely, and only in exotic genera,) trees, in which the wood, pith, and bark are indistinguishable." {157} Now if there be one plant more than another in which the pith is defined, it is the common Rush; while the nobler families of true herbs derive their principal character from being pithless altogether! ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... have now written and am going to write, is to impress upon medical students the value of power and promptitude in combination, for their professional purposes; the uses to them of nearness of the {Nous}, and of happy guessing; and how you may see the sense, and neatness, and pith of that excellent thinker, as well as best of all story-tellers, Miss Austen, when she says in Emma, "Depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck, there is always some talent in it." Talent here denoting intelligence and will in action. In all sciences except ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... your England as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, Either past or not arrived to pith and puissance, For who is he whose chin is but enrich'd With one appearing hair that will not follow Those cull'd and ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... solar neighbor was estimated in trillions, not billions, and that our little system, even with its new additions, was a child's handbreadth on the plane of the sky. He had brought along a small book called The Pith of Astronomy—a fascinating little volume—and he read from it about the great tempest of fire in the sun, where the waves of flame roll up two thousand miles high, though the sun itself is such a tiny star in the deeps ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which had plagued us so oft. Was away,—running after its head or its tail! Oh joy, Dobbin, dear, to jog on, and go soft, No row, no obstruction by hedge-gap or rail. Ah, then they discovered the pace and the pith Of Dobbin the dull, and his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... opened his mouth, and gave the young man a scientific lecture on mining, the pith ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... keen instinct for reality, and perhaps he found little in books that satisfied him. For poetry and philosophy he had small aptitude, and in science he had no training. What books he read he seemed to digest and get the pith of. Once, made suddenly conscious by defeat of his lack of book-culture, he took up Euclid's geometry, and resolutely studied and re-studied it. Doubtless that helped him in the close logic which often characterized his speeches. The strength of his speeches lay in their logic, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... have listened to his stories. Wherever those boys are now—scattered far and wide—they recall no scenes or events of their springtime without a remembrance of Dr. Evans and his tales, none of which were wanting in pith ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... fitly. The few of his old friends who are left will understand what I mean. But I can hardly make those who did not know him, or live in his time, comprehend it. That was his rare and unequalled gift of gathering and uttering the sentiment of the people. When new and doubtful matters of pith and moment were to be dealt with, and after a long apparent hesitation, and backing and filling, and what people who did not know him thought trembling in the balance, he would at last make up his mind, determine on his action, and strike a blow which had in it not only the vigor ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... to do, and Hercules reminded him that the natives often eat the young shoots of the ferns and the pith which the papyrus leaf contains. He himself, while following the caravan of Ibn Ilamis across the desert, had been more than once reduced to this expedient to satisfy his hunger. Happily, the ferns ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... oranges, carefully removing all pith, cut out pulpy pieces in each of natural divisions so that there is no skin of any kind or pips taken out with pieces fruit, sprinkle over these pieces tarragon, chervil, melted Crisco, brandy and sugar. This salad should be placed on ice if ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... dessert were distinguished for pith and cordiality. I would like to recount them in order, but am forced to admit that they would take up too much room, and that the last, which were the most touching, were not of ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Who sent out mandates through his huge empire From Gaudalchiber to the golden West For the instant sinking of all English ships And the instant execution of their crews Who durst appear in the Caribbean sea. Moreover, in the pith of their emprise A peril lurked—Burleigh's emissaries, The smooth-tongued Thomas Doughty, who had brought His brother—unacquitted of that charge Of poisoning, raised against him by the friends Of Essex, but in luckless time released Lately for lack of proof, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... brother's life 65 Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it; And follows close the rigour of the statute, To make him an example. All hope is gone, Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer To soften Angelo: and that's my pith of business 70 'Twixt ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... uniformly agreed that, on returning home, they sorely missed the water of the Mississippi. "I'll tell you, sir," said one very intelligent fellow, within whose hut I walked to light my cigar; "there's no pith in any other water after one's bin' used to drink o' this; it seems as though a man couldn't work on water ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... They would be all Greek and Hebrew to you. Thank your stars that you have got a sharp son, who can take the pith out of these papers, and give it a smack of the right flavor in serving it up. There are not ten men in England who could tell you this woman's story as I can tell it. It's a gift, old gentleman, of the sort that is given to very few people—and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... greater height than any similar plant now living, sometimes being as much as eight feet high. In the nature of their stems, too, they exhibited a more highly organised arrangement than their living representatives, having, according to Dr Williamson, a "fistular pith, an exogenous woody stem, and a thick smooth bark." The bark having almost al ways disappeared has left the fluted stem known to us as the calamite. The foliage consisted of whorls of long narrow leaves, which differed ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... express the sap, which contains the poison. The dry pith is wholesome and nourishing. Still, I do not mean to taste my cakes until I have tried their effect on our fowls and the ape." Our supply of roots being reduced to damp powder, the canvas bag was filled with it, and tying it tightly up, I attempted to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... mother sent me some pretty flower-holders made of bamboos of different lengths, intended evidently to hang against door-jambs or in hallways. The pith was hollowed out here and there, and the hole plugged from beneath to make little water pockets. These did admirably for a season, but when the wood dried, it invariably split, and treacherous dripping followed, most ruinous ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... passage would introduce a jarring note; moreover, the raked embers of past controversy seldom tend to the spiritual improvement of the present. An interesting judgment by Professor Horstman on Rolle's place in mysticism is too long for quotation; but the following sentence may be taken as the pith of it:—"His position as a mystic was mainly the result of the development of scholasticism. The exuberant luxuriant growth of the brain in the system of Scotus called forth the reaction of the heart, and this reaction is embodied in Richard Rolle, who as exclusively represents ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... others, in a little white dress with flounces and a little bag in my hand, such as they used to carry in those days. I didn't have any cap: I remember making myself a pretty little wreath of ribbons and the white pith you pull off when you strip reeds; there was lots of it in the places where we used to put the hemp to soak. That was one of my great days—that and the drawing lots for the pigs at Christmas—and the days when I went to help them tie up the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... peace. The cocoa-nut, the betel, the sago, and the gno or gomati, are the four favorite palms of the Dyaks. In their simple mode of life, these four trees supply them many necessaries and luxuries. The sago furnishes food; and after the pith has been extracted, the outer part forms a rough covering for the rougher floor, on which the farmer sleeps. The leaf of the sago is preferable for the roofing of houses to the nibong. The gomati, or gno, gives the black fibre ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... of the story much resembles Cinderella's famous adventures, and I need not repeat it here. The pith of the story turns upon the fact that a father purposes to marry his own daughter, or, in some versions, his daughter-in-law; and the daughter, naturally, as we say, objecting to this arrangement, runs away, and hence her many adventures. This famous story, told by English nurses to English children, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... way different from this. If I affirm that "species have been evolved by variation[1] (a natural process, the laws of which are for the most part unknown), aided by the subordinate action of natural selection," it seems to me that I enunciate a proposition which constitutes the very pith and marrow of the first edition of the "Origin of Species." And what the evolutionist stands in need of just now, is not an iteration of the fundamental principle of Darwinism, but some light upon the questions, What are ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in him I will tell him," Halfman affirmed. "Your honor over-refines your pleasant purpose. The pith is that he be killed. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... returned. On the ground, near the sill, had fallen an instrument, similar in outward form to the classic Cornucopiae, about five feet in length, and which appeared to be cut from some tree and made hollow by the pith being scooped out. The Norwegian taking it from the ground and applying the smaller end to his mouth, blew in it, and produced a blast that rang through the valley from one extremity to the other, and rattled ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... of pith, and, like the tender mother she is, sits on top of the nest waiting for her babies to grow up. This is a most unusual thing for a bee mother to do. The egg at the very bottom of the tube hatches first, but it has to wait until the others hatch. By-and-by Mrs. Carpenter-Bee takes ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... Unhappy child of thy mother, with thy happiness marred by consorting with this bed! thy purity is handled by the impurity of a peasant, thy nobility is bowed down by ignoble commonness, thy high birth is impaired by the estate of thy husband! But thou, if any pith be in thee, if valour reign in thy soul at all, if thou deem thyself fit husband for a king's daughter, wrest the sceptre from her father, retrieve thy lineage by thy valour, balance with courage thy lack of ancestry, requite by bravery thy detriment of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... concession, I take the liberty, in no unfriendly and polemical spirit, of asking you quite frankly what good you think can be done by resolutions of this character? I am not now referring to the resolution against myself. That is a matter of very minor importance. The pith of the whole business is in resolution number one, a resolution evidently framed with great care by the clever men who are engineering the present agitation in the Colony. Now, that resolution asks for two things—a termination of the war, and the restoration of the independence of ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... except the mosses that imitated the trees, vines, and other growing things, was made of corn-stalks and corn-husks—"shucks" as Virginians call them. The human creatures and the dumb animals were carved out of the firm, dried pith of the stalks, and afterward painted with water colors. The clothes of men and women were made of the soft inner shucks, dried carefully to the pliability of silk. Log and frame houses were built of the canes themselves; the smallest were used whole, the larger ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... is his answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and look ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... eye the cane is usually propagated; for, while in tropical countries the cane forms seeds, yet these seeds are rarely fertile. When the cane is ripe it is stripped of leaves, topped, and cut at the ground with a knife. The sugar is contained in solution in the pith ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... by them in '47, repeated in '64, and pleaded for once again in '72, this call to unity began to appear in the nineties as the one supreme commandment of the labor movement. And, in truth, it is an epitome of all their teachings. It is the pith of their program and the marrow of their principles. Nearly all else can be waived. Other principles can be altered; other programs abandoned; other methods revolutionized; but this principle, program, and method must not be tampered ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... mak' a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might, Guid faith he mauna fa' that! For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities, and a' that, The pith o sense an' pride o' worth, Are higher rank than ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... and aloes, I perceived a plant with large pointed leaves, which I knew to be the karata. I pointed out to the boys its beautiful red flowers; the leaves are an excellent application to wounds, and thread is made from the filaments, and the pith of the stem is used by the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... The pith of his speech was a powerful plea for allowing Greece to secure the emancipation of Greek populations, then under a Turkish rule heavy as that from which Russia claimed to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... something white slid in the waves. One lamentation, far and wide, Followed behind that flying dart. Things soulless and immortal died, As if they filled the self-same part; The flower, the girl, the oak, the man, Made the same dust from pith or heart, Then spoke I, calmly as one can Who with his purpose curbs his fear, And thus to both my question ran:— "What two are ye who cross me here, Upon these desolated lands, Whose open fields lie waste ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and came, watching the raft, which remained stationary. There were about a hundred of them armed with blow-tubes formed of a reed peculiar to these parts, and which is strengthened outside by the stem of a dwarf palm from which the pith has ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... and her allies, unless the established rules and etiquettes of strategy were abandoned. It was only by such rapidity of motion as should utterly transcend the suspicion of his adversaries, that he could hope to concentrate the whole pith and energy of a small force upon some one point of a much greater force opposed to it, and thus rob them (according to his own favourite phrase) of the victory. To effect such rapid marches, it was necessary that the soldiery should make up their minds to consider tents and baggage as idle ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... it rememb'reth me Upon my youth, and on my jollity, It tickleth me about mine hearte-root; Unto this day it doth mine hearte boot,* *good That I have had my world as in my time. But age, alas! that all will envenime,* *poison, embitter Hath me bereft my beauty and my pith:* *vigour Let go; farewell; the devil go therewith. The flour is gon, there is no more to tell, The bran, as I best may, now must I sell. But yet to be right merry will I fand.* *try Now forth to tell you of my fourth husband, I say, I in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... was a frank setting off of the masses against the classes," he returned. "He said the same things I had heard him say in conversation, only with more pith and point. Emmet has the Irish gift of expression when he's aroused—there's no doubt of it. He practically took for his text: The Man in the One-storied House against the Man in the Mansion. One thing struck me as especially keen. His opponents have been claiming that the city is a great ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... wide-awake. I regret I have had no opportunity of trying this combination, but can easily believe that the touch of the cool, smooth grass, to the wet brow, would be more agreeable than that of any other material. I need hardly mention Pith hats (to be bought under the Opera Colonnade, Pall Mall), Indian topees, and English hunting-caps, as having severally many merits. A muslin turban twisted into a rope and rolled round the hat is a common plan to keep the sun ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... nerve-cylinder, a glassy tube, with a pith of some firmness, which conveys sensation to the brain and the principle which induces motion ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... drift about on the sea, would Tsz-lu, I wonder, be my follower there?" That disciple was delighted at hearing the suggestion; whereupon the Master continued, "He surpasses me in his love of deeds of daring. But he does not in the least grasp the pith of my remark." ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... sections and putting water in the slides; 2. small forceps for handling delicate objects; 3. blotting paper for removing superfluous water from the slides and drawing fluids under the cover glass; 4. pieces of elder or sunflower pith, for holding ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... the fountain. A healthy poplar, seven or eight years old, is taken from its native soil, and a cold iron borer is run up the heart of the trunk from the roots, for six feet or more, by which means the pith is removed, and the trunk is made to assume the character of a pipe. A hole is then bored through from the outside of the trunk, to communicate with the highest point reached by the former operation, and in this second hole a spout is fixed. The same is done at a very short distance ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... rash to pronounce a decided opinion upon the much disputed question, whether, in addition to their Constitutions and Declarations, the Jesuits were provided with an esoteric code of rules known as Monita Secreta.[169] The existence of such a manual, which was supposed to contain the very pith of Jesuitical policy, has been confidently asserted and no less confidently denied. In the absence of direct evidence, it may be worth quoting two passages from Sarpi's Letters, which prove that this keen-sighted observer believed the Society to be governed in its practice by statutes inaccessible ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Aoutres lent him his shield and spear. When the King had hung the shield at his neck and held the spear in his hand, sword-girt, on the tall destrier armed, well seemed he in the make of his body and in his bearing to be a knight of great pith and hardiment. He planteth himself so stiffly in the stirrups that he maketh the saddlebows creak again and the destrier stagger under him that was right stout and swift, and he smiteth him of his spurs, and the horse maketh ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... mouth of the Liuche, which is very wide; the river oozes out through a forest of eschinomenae (pith tree). This was a rendezvous agreed upon between shore and lake parties, that the canoes might all cross to the other side, distant a mile and a half. The mouth of the Liuche forms the Bay of Ukaranga, so named because on the other side, whither we ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... hours they smiled with satisfaction as though they felt that to have escaped from Chinde, for even that brief time, was sufficient recompense for a thorough ducking and the pains of sea-sickness. On the bridge of the Adjutant, in white duck and pith helmets, were the only respectable members of Chinde society. We knew that they were the only respectable members of Chinde society, because they told us so themselves. On her lower deck she brought two French explorers, fully dressed for the part as Tartarin of Tarascon ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... approved fashion of Trente et Quarante. A similar scene is taking place at the Roulette table—a goodly crop of florins, with here and there a speck of gold shining amongst the silver harvest, is being sown over the field of the cloth of green, soon to be reaped by the croupier's sickle, and the pith ball is being dropped into the revolving basin that is partitioned off into so many tiny black and red niches. For the next twelve hours the processes in question are carried on swiftly and steadily, without variation or ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... sumpitan, like a bayonet, thus providing a weapon for use at close quarters. The dart is made from a sliver of bamboo, or from a palm-frond, scraped to the size of a steel knitting-needle. One end of the dart is imbedded in a cork-shaped piece of pith which fits the hole in the sumpitan as a cartridge fits the bore of a rifle; the other end, which is of needle-sharpness, is smeared with a paste made from the milky sap of the upas tree dissolved in a juice extracted from the root of the tuba. With the possible exception ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase of an empty snail-shell; another, attacking the pith of a dry bit of bramble, obtains for her grubs a cylindrical lodging and divides it into floors by means of partition-walls; a third employs the natural channel of a cut reed; a fourth is a rent-free tenant of the vacant galleries of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, round which systems grow. Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... box carried in the coat pocket. The captures should then be spread and dried on a grooved setting board, and a cabinet formed of cork-lined boxes or drawers; as a substitute for cork, frames with paper tightly stretched over them may be used, or the pith of corn-stalks or palm wood. Caterpillars should be preserved in spirits, or in glycerine with a ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... each pound of rhubarb cut without peeling, a pound of sugar and one lemon. Pare the yellow peel from the lemon, taking care to get none of the bitter white pith. Slice the pulp of the lemon in an earthen bowl, discarding the seeds. Put the rhubarb into the bowl with the sugar and lemon, cover and stand away in a cool place over night. In the morning turn into the preserving kettle, simmer gently three-quarters of an hour or until thick, take ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... ancients and in classical and later times "Indian ink," is now used more for drawing and engrossing than it is for commercial purposes. It belongs to the "carbon" class and in some form was the first one used in the very earliest times. In China it is applied with a brush or pith of some reed to the "rice" paper also there manufactured. It is easily washed away unless bichromate of ammonium or potassium in minute quantities be added to it, and then if the paper on which it appears be exposed for a short time to the action ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... Annularia and Sphenophyllum, common in the coal, and believed by Mr. Carruthers to be leaves of Calamites. Dr. Williamson, who has carefully studied the Calamites, thinks that they had a fistular pith, exogenous woody stem, and thick smooth bark, which last having always disappeared, leaves a fluted stem, as represented ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... the Silent. Shag-eared, military, hirsute ruffians—ex-captains of free companies and such marauders—were daily offering their services; there was no lack of them, and they had done but little. How should Parma, seeing this obscures undersized, thin-bearded, runaway clerk before him, expect pith and energy from him? He thought him quite unfit for an enterprise of moment, and declared as much to his secret councillors and to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Harris, indeed, contains the pith of the whole stanza:—"Notwithstanding the various fortune of Athens, as a city, Attica is still famous for olives, and Mount Hymettus for honey. Human institutions perish, but Nature is permanent."—Philolog. Inquiries.—I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... all eager to save their souls by fighting at the Pope's bidding, ardent to signalise their valour in so great an enterprise, and longing also for the pay and the plunder which William liberally promised. But the Normans themselves were the pith and the flower of the army; and William himself was the strongest, the sagest, and ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... alligator-pears, limes, and oranges. There is something about those oranges I should like to have explained. They are usually green and sweetish in taste, nor have they much white pith, but now and again you get a big bright yellow one from those trees that have been imported, and these are very pithy and in full possession of the flavour of verjuice. They have also got the papaw on the Coast, the Carica papaya of botanists. It is an insipid fruit. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... representation in the parable, however, is true to nature and fact: it would be a mistake to attribute to a miser a high appreciation of the dignity of man. Covetousness, in its more advanced stages, eats the pith out of the understanding, and leaves ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... of rush-lights are gone by, but rush-baskets for flowers and helmets are made by the children, and the white pith, when pressed, is made up into devices. (F. effusus) (F. glaucus) All in Itchen meadows. (F. acutiflorus) ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... brother, shall forgive a dunce. But should thy soul, form'd in some luckless hour, Vile interest scorn, nor madly grasp at power; 30 Should love of fame, in every noble mind A brave disease, with love of virtue join'd, Spur thee to deeds of pith, where courage, tried In Reason's court, is amply justified: Or, fond of knowledge, and averse to strife, Shouldst thou prefer the calmer walk of life; Shouldst thou, by pale and sickly study led, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... which was the School Chapel, and when he preached the place was crowded. He was something more than a monotonous mumbler of words: he made his addresses personal, direct, critical. His allusions were local, and contained a deal of wholesome criticism put with pith and point, well seasoned with a goodly dash of rough and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the new-comer from the ventilator of his pith helmet to the soles of his pipe-clayed shoes. "Excuse me, dear old sir," he said, "have I the honour of addressin' the Secretary ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; But an honest man's aboon [Footnote: above] his might— Gude faith, he maunna fa' [Footnote: must not claim (to make the honest man)] that! For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities, an' a' that, The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth, Are higher ranks ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... terrestrial bonds," she continued, not exactly remarking the pith of his last observation; "from bonds quasi- terrestrial and quasi-celestial. The full-formed limbs of the present age, running with quick streams of generous blood, will no longer bear the ligatures which past times have woven for the decrepit. Look down upon that ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... a belted knight, A marquis, duke and a' that, But an honest man's aboon his might Gude faith he mauna fa' that! For a' that and a' that, Their dignities and a' that, The pith o' sense and pride o' worth Are higher ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... whom his nurse is telling some wonderful story. Planchette put the clay down upon the slab, drew a pruning-knife from his pocket, cut two branches from an elder tree, and began to clean them of pith by blowing through them, as if Raphael had not ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a suit of brown karkee, with a white puggaree wound round his pith helmet, was just mounting in front of his bungalow at Deennugghur, some forty miles from Cawnpore, when two others ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... the form of tin water-bottles and ewers. Every native possesses a sweeping broom, sleeping mats, coarse or fine, and bamboo or grass baskets. Most families use an iron pan for cooking, with a half cocoa-nut shell for a ladle. A large nut shell filled with palm-oil, and containing a pith wick, is the ordinary Malay lamp. Among the poor, fresh leaves serve as plates and dishes, but ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... diligence to prevent any of them dying, so long as it is possible for them to continue alive. Why do they all draw their nourishment from roots as from a mouth dipped into the earth, and distribute the strong bark over the pith? Why are all the softer parts like the pith deeply encased within, while the external parts have the strong texture of wood, and outside of all is the bark to resist the weather's inclemency, like a champion stout in endurance? Again, how great is nature's diligence to ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... more provocative of attention than in Montaigne. They must have affected Shakspere as they have done so many others; and in point of fact his work, from HAMLET forth, shows a gain in nervous tension and pith, fairly attributable to the stirring impact of the style of Montaigne, with its incessancy of stroke, its opulence of colour, its hardy freshness of figure and epithet, its swift, unflagging stride. Seek in any of Shakspere's plays for such a strenuous rush of idea ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... modern monuments; and I was appalled to find that a sermon was being preached by the ecclesiastic of the day, nor were there any signs of an imminent termination. I am not aware that there was much pith in the discourse, but there was certainly a good deal of labor and earnestness in the preacher's mode of delivery; although, when he came to a close, it appeared that the audience was not more than half a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not so tall as the cocoa-nut tree, but is thicker and larger. The mid-ribs of its immense leaves are twelve or fifteen feet long, and sometimes the lower part is as thick as a man's leg. They are excessively light, consisting of a firm pith, covered with a hard rind. They are frequently used instead of bamboo; entire houses, indeed, are built of them. They serve for the roofs of houses, as also for the floors; and when pegged together, side ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... full bloom all over the forest, and so are foxgloves. The river is here fully 100 yards broad with 300 yards of flood on its western bank; so deep we had to remain in the canoes till within 50 yards of the higher ground. The people here chew the pith of the papyrus, which is three inches in diameter and as white as snow: it has very little sweetness or anything else in it. The headman of the village to which we went was out cutting wood for a garden, and his wife refused us a hut, but when ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... tried also to encourage civilised warfare among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed. His notions of charity at this early age were somewhat rudimentary; he used to peel rushes with the idea that the pith would afterwards "be given to the poor," though what possible use they could put it to he never attempted to explain. Indeed he seems at this time to have actually lived in that charming "Wonderland" which he afterwards ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... merry together: because for those two wanderers it was a great delight to see the faces of the children of men once more after so many months, and to hold converse with them; while for their part the young men marvelled at Ursula's beauty, and the pith and goodliness ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... and Scotch Reviewers, attributes the authorship of Peter Plymley to "Smug Sydney." See also his allusion to "Peter Pith" in ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Pauloma and Astika are the root; the part called Sambhava is the trunk; the books called Sabha and Aranya are the roosting perches; the books called Arani is the knitting knots; the books called Virata and Udyoga the pith; the book named Bhishma, the main branch; the book called Drona, the leaves; the book called Karna, the fair flowers; the book named Salya, their sweet smell; the books entitled Stri and Aishika, the refreshing shade; the book called Santi, the mighty fruit; the book called Aswamedha, the immortal ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... time before Christmas the discontented fir tree was the first to fall. As the axe cut sharply through the stem, and divided the pith, the tree fell with a groan to the earth, conscious of pain and faintness, and forgetting all its dreams of happiness, in sorrow at leaving its home in the forest. It knew that it should never again see its dear old ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... former Miss Tumlin; "talk's cheap before—" She would have considered it indelicate to supply the word "marriage," but by breaking off her sentence before she came to the pith of it she continued to maintain the proprieties, and at the same time conveyed to her audience that she was too old and experienced to permit any fledgling from her nest to be caught, for want of a warning, by such obvious ante-matrimonial ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... thoroughly than the idea of a foray. The summons of Bexir was gladly obeyed by the alcaydes of the border towns, and in a little while there was a force of fifteen hundred horse and four thousand foot, the very pith and marrow of the surrounding country, assembled within the walls of Ronda. The people of the place anticipated with eagerness the rich spoils of Andalusia soon to crowd their gates; throughout the day ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... they had oars as well. He "carried sail," while they spread not a "rag." The wind chanced to blow directly down-stream, and the broad wings of the bird, held out from his body, and half extended, caught the very pith of the breeze on their double concave surfaces, and carried him through the water with the velocity of an arrow. Do you think that he was not aware of this advantage when he ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... spreading through the world, all the little fires which men have made with the kindling of words from abstract conceptions,—go out. For however otherwise a man may be distinguished—unless there be in him a spirit of love, devotion, and self-sacrifice, we feel he lacks the very pith and beauty of manhood; and though he may be a great performer with his pen as one plays well on a musical instrument, a Great ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... round, hairy, viscid stalks, and large, fibrous roots; while that of Spanish as well as dwarf tobacco is harder and much smaller. The stalk is composed of a wood-like substance containing a glutinous pith, and is of about the same shade of color as the leaves. As the plant develops in size the stalk hardens, and when fully grown is ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... waistcoat, and his regimental trousers were tied round the waist by a bit of rope. On the sleeve of his collarless shirt were three dark dry splashes; he noticed them as he raised his arm to put on his pith helmet. The words did not reach his lips, but his heart cried out within him for a boy ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... doesn't rise to the top of the tree until he takes me—alive, I mean—he'll die a sub-inspector. But we'd better sleep on it. This is an enterprise of great pith and moment, and requires no end of thought. We must get your sister to come ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... was a piteous business,—not less piteous than revolting. But Helwyse felt no pity,—only ugly, hateful, unrelenting anger, needing not much stirring to blaze forth in fearful passion. Where now were his wise saws,—his philosophic indifference? Self-respect is the pith of such supports; which being gone, the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne |
