"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... redouble, Heaven open, heed my trouble! God, if my cause Thine shall be, Grant a day of victory! Fell all Thy foes now! Fell all Thy foes now! Roll forth Thy thunders, Thy lightning affright them, Into the pit, the bottomless, smite them, Their seed uproot, Tread under foot! Send then Thy snowy white dove peace-bringing, Unto Thy faithful Thy token winging, Olive-branch fair of Thy summer's fruition After the deluge of ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... was brought close to the hole, and the bones rattled down into that black pit. The two skulls struck against each other; a spark, not likely to be seen by those standing near, was doubtless exchanged between the head that made 'The Philosophical Dictionary' and the head that made 'The Social Contract,' When that was done, when the sack was shaken, when Voltaire ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... happiness. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." The revelations of high life that come to the challenge and the fight are only the occasional croppings out of disquietudes that are, underneath, like the stars of heaven for multitude, but like the demons of the pit for hate. The misery that to-night in the cellar cuddles up in the straw is not so utter as the princely disquietude which stalks through splendid drawing-rooms, brooding over the slights and offences of high life. The bitterness of trouble seems ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... be only to do well, And he alone be crowned who did excel. Ye call them Whigs, who from the church withdrew, But now we have our stage dissenters too, Who scruple ceremonies of pit and box, And very few are sound and orthodox, But love disorder so, and are so nice, They hate conformity, though 'tis in vice. Some are for patent hierarchy; and some, Like the old Gauls, seek out for elbow room; Their arbitrary governors disown, And build a conventicle stage of their ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... twenty, in the pit at La Scala, with music-mad Milan all about him. Two-Hawks! He remembered now. The nickname the young bloods had given her because she had been eternally guarded by her mother and aunt, fierce-beaked Calabrians, who had determined ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... us and past us as though a mine of powder had been fired beneath our feet, tearing the rocks from their base. The god Tezcat had burst into a score of pieces, and these fell round us like a flight of arrows, and yet we were not touched. My head was grazed by his head, his feet dug a pit before my feet, but I stood there unhurt, the false god had no power over the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... hurried consultation, in which Krail showed himself most solicitous on my behalf," the pale-faced girl went on. "Aided by Flockart, I think, he scraped away a hole in a pit full of dead leaves, and there the body must have been concealed just as it was. To me they all took a solemn vow to keep what they declared to be my secret. The bottle containing the wine from which the poor American girl had drunk was broken and hidden, the plates and food swiftly ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... that nose-like hand which Nature has given it in compensation for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master, accepting the presents which will be profitable to him. It always walks cautiously, remembering that fatal fall into the hunter's pit which was the beginning of its captivity. When requested to do so, it exhales its breath, which is said to be ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... fight, but being reluctant to do so, menace each other by threats and sabre-rattling, edging slowly forward, each hoping that his adversary will retreat rather than do battle"; but the Emperor's comparison was not exact, for one of these swordsmen had behind him a bottomless pit, ready to engulf him at the first backward step, so that having to choose between an ignominious death and a combat in which he might be successful he had to choose the latter. This was the situation in which Alexander found himself, a situation made ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... amongst you those who have whetted the sword against the bosom that is only filled with love for you all. Therefore have the stern lords of heaven loosened the chains of the river; therefore doth this evil menace ye. Neither will it pass away until they who dug the pit for the servant of the stars are ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the year, disputants are set against each other, as we pit dogs and game cocks. High bets are made in favor of one or the other, and a premium is given to ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... insufficiency of material for a biography, he has attempted an appreciation of Peacock's art. As we set ourselves a similar task so recently as February last, when reviewing Dr. Young's edition of the plays, we feel no call to restate our estimate or pit it against that of this new critic. It need only be said that he realizes, as does Mr. Van Doren, the singularity of Peacock's genius; that, though neither has succeeded in showing precisely why it is unique, the English critic has brought forward some highly illuminating suggestions; ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... us the end was nigh. With awe-struck gladness we looked around, Waiting to hear the last trumpet sound. From living death in that desolate Bay, We had sprung to welcome the judgment day; Although in the pit should our lot be cast, So that this our great woe should end at last. The bleak spring came, the ice did part; Devils entered each sailor's heart; No blessed thoughts sweetened our wretched lives, Of the distant mother's, sweethearts, and wives; ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... labours in these parts, have been of essential service;—helped some sunken ones out of a pit, strengthened some weak hands, and confirmed some wavering ones, as well as comforted the mourners. She has no cause to be discouraged about her labours, ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... are laid, and fastened down with chains or iron bands. Presently birds of prey, so numerous within the tropics and always waiting to devour, pounce upon the corpse and quickly tear the flesh from the bones, while the skeleton remains intact. This is afterward deposited in a pit dug within the same enclosure, and which remains open till completely filled up with bones; after which another is dug, and when the enclosure can conveniently contain no more pits a new one is selected ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... a visit to the Tump Pit at or near Rowley Regis at a time when the men were taking their midday meal. There was a sort of Hall of Eblis there, a roof thirty feet high or thereabouts, and the men sat in a darkness dimly revealed ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... not call a conference at Cardiff: he went straight to Wales and spoke to the workers at the mouth of the pit. What arbitration and conciliation had failed to do, his hypnotic oratory achieved. The men went back to the mines with ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... more intimate with the women of the house of Grandet than the Cruchots were, and could put into their minds certain ideas which would lead, sooner or later, to success. To this the former retorted that the Abbe Cruchot was the most insinuating man in the world: pit a woman against a monk, and the struggle was even. "It is diamond cut diamond," ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... compares his later novels with the promise of Lettres de Mon Moulin and Le Petit Chose. Naturalism demands nothing more severely than an impersonal treatment of its themes. Of three very personal and romantic writers, our own Stevenson escaped the pit into which both Bjoernson and Daudet stumbled. You may say the temptation came later to him. But the temptation to follow an European fashion does, as a rule, befall a Briton last of all men, for reasons of ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... diversion and amusement palled upon him. A fearful melancholia settled over him, a despair, an abhorrence of living that could not be uttered. This only was during the day. It was that night that Vandover went down into the pit. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit." ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... which filled our villages with fear and confusion. It is no new thing in that continent for the heretics to lend arms to the pagans and to the Mahometans in order to put down the Christian name. A savage end it is to pit themselves for the private ends of trade and in a religious war, on the side of the koran and of idolatry, which they themselves condemn, against the gospel, which they persecute with fury. The three fleets went out then, for their campaign, and not having anyone to oppose them, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... note her at once among thousands. Yet my first glance was fruitless. I looked again, examined the house slowly face by face, and again was baffled. I could see all but a small portion of the pit, the upper boxes and gallery. Pit and gallery were out of the question. She might, though it was hardly likely, be in the tier just above, and I determined to satisfy myself after the end of Act I. Meantime I scanned ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... row with two seamstresses. I'd picked them up in the Chausseestrasse—cute little beasts, too.... But when Brunhilde stretched out her wonderful, white arms to him and sang: 'On to new deeds, O hero!' why I felt like taking the two girls by the scruff of the neck and pitching them down into the pit, I was so ashamed. Because, you see, Siegfried had his Brunhilde who inspired him to do great deeds. And what have I? ... A couple of hard cases picked up ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... quoth one, "the work achieved. We do, and we delight to do, our best: But that is little; for, my dear," quoth she, "This tower and town have been infested long With angels."—"Ay," the other made reply, "I had a little evil-one, of late, That I picked up as it was crawling out O' the pit, and took and cherished in my breast. It would divine for me, and oft would moan, 'Pray thee, no churches,' and it spake of this. But I was harried once,—thou know'st by whom,— And fled in here; and, when he followed me, I crouching ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together Knelt down with angry prayers For tamed and shabby tigers And dancing dogs and bears, And wretched, blind pit ponies, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... over-ripe plums on the wall in front of me to see what he would do with them. At first he fell eagerly to releasing the pit, and then to cutting his way to the kernel in the pit. After one of them had been disposed of in this way, he proceeded to carry off the others and place them here and there amid the branches of a plum-tree from which he had stolen every plum long before they ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... he was a very dutiful son and humble-spirited. Those who pit their intelligences against the forces of Nature, and try to search out her secrets, become humble. He could not altogether respect his father; the gulf between them was too wide and deep. But even at his present age of three and thirty he considered it a duty to submit himself ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... inaugurate his command with the shadow of a success, the Government organs chant themselves hoarse in praise and prophecy. But the popular hero knows right well, that the ground is already mined under his feet; the first reverse will drag him down into a pit of obscurity, if not of odium, deep and dark as Abiram's grave. Of all taskmasters, a Democracy is the most pitilessly irrational; it were better for an unfaithful or unlucky servant to fall into Pharaoh's hands, than to lie at the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... gripped the pit of John's stomach as he followed with Benton and Brennan behind the man who led them up the hill as the others branched out in pairs through the brush, spreading ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... rides to Thorolfsfell. There he saw a great reek of coal smoke east of the homestead, so he rides thither, and gets off his horse and ties him up, but he goes where the smoke was thickest. Then he sees where the charcoal pit is, and a man stands by it. He saw that he had thrust his spear in the ground by him. Brynjolf goes along with the smoke right up to him, but he was eager at his work, and saw him not. Brynjolf gave him a stroke on the head with his axe, and he turned so quick round that Brynjolf loosed ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... watch, since you want to know. There was just time. I took that notebook, and ran down the stairs on tiptoe. Have you ever listened to the pit-pat of a man running round and round the shaft of a deep staircase? They have a gaslight at the bottom burning night and day. I suppose it's gleaming down there now.... The sound ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... injustice. Yet, she gave it a superficial respect, born of those three years of suffering which had been the result of the penalty inflicted on her. It was as an effect of this latter feeling that she was determined on one thing of vital importance: that never would she be guilty of anything to pit her against the law's decrees. She had known too many hours of anguish in the doom set on her life because she had been deemed a violator of the law. No, never would she let herself take any position in which the law could accuse her.... But there remained the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... is a stairway to a 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes." Now, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, "poor Christian was so confounded, that he did not know his own voice.... Just when he was come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind." I need not enlarge upon the similar drift of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the French, because they were thought to be no longer necessary. It is, however, probable enough, that this fort Assumption would have been a check upon the Chicasaws, who are always roving in those parts. Besides, the steep banks of Prud'homme contain iron and pit-coal. On the other hand, the country is very beautiful, and of an excellent quality, abounding with plains and meadows, which favour the excursions of the Chicasaws, and which they will ever continue to make upon us, till we have the address to ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... compelled to retire to a ravine and act on the defensive. The attack was made with such caution that the soldiers fell back without undue haste, and had ample opportunity to secure their horses in the natural pit, which was a ravine that during wet seasons formed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... enrageant de nous veoir aller en la Nouuelle France pour conuertir les infidelles et diminuer sa puissance, par dpit il sousleuoit tous les Elemens contre nous, et vouloit abysmer ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... to offend all subsequent picnickers. At Woodbridge people did not make public messes of themselves. If they picnicked on a glacier they did up their eggshells in a neat package, which, in default of a handy bottomless pit, they took home with them and put in their garbage pails. That's the way nice people behaved, and what on earth was there to ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... make love to her. He was far too clever for that. He knew that with a woman like Kitty, in Kitty's state of mind, he had nothing to gain by making love. Neither did he propose to pit his will against hers. That course had answered well enough in the time of his possession of her. Passion, which was great in her, greater than her will, made his will powerless over her. His plan was to match the forces of her brain with ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... to pick any particular spot to jump for. When he did jump he might have been directly over a picket fence, or a bottomless pit—he did not ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... expressed no contempt, but only a sad patience, a melancholy surprise, such as a celestial angel might feel in being suddenly confronted with some secret shame and horror of the Pit. ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... the persons had smallpox in one year. Within a few years one half of the sturdy red men of our forests were slain by smallpox when it first visited our shores. Before the year 1798 few boys or girls reached the age of twenty years without a pit-marked face due to the dreadful disease of smallpox. This disease was formerly more common than measles and chicken pox now are because we had not yet learned how to prevent it as ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... humanity until they in their turn are sorely punished for simple errors, and are brought to the maturity of celestial fruits. Your life, my daughter, has been one long error. You have fallen into the pit which you dug for yourself; we fail ever on the side we have ourselves weakened. You gave your heart to an unnatural son, in whom you made your glory, and you have misunderstood the child who is your true glory. You have been so deeply unjust that you ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... have known it," Mr. Stuart thinks, gravely; "brown beauties always did play the dickens with me. I thought that at five-and-twenty I had outgrown all that sort of youthful rubbish, and here I am on the brink of the pit again. Falling in love in the present, involves matrimony in the future, and matrimony has been the horror of my life since I was four years old. And then the governor wouldn't hear of it. I'm to be handed over to the first 'daughter of a hundred earls' ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his Lordship. He meant well by all parties,—himself, who would share the glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an heroic opportunity,—his own country, which would continue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, which would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... written in the very phrensy of passion; but their effect upon the reader was changed somewhat when he reflected that she had been sufficiently self-possessed meanwhile to make careful copies before sending them, to be exhibited, as specimens of her genius, to a mob of the pit, which never fails to recognize a point. Indeed, in petticoats or in pantaloons, making a show of her "heart" in the publication of these letters to a gentleman whom she had treated with every ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... perfectly still where he had halted at the first sound of the descending stone door. Not again would he easily be precipitated to the gryf pit, or some similar danger, as had occurred when Lu-don had trapped him in the Temple of the Gryf. As he stood there his eyes slowly grew accustomed to the darkness and he became aware that a dim light was entering the chamber through some opening, ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... weather, he has no doubt that he could master him, and hand him over to the quarter sessions. He says that a hundred pounds would be no bad thing to be disbanded upon; for he wishes to take an inn at Swanton Morley, keep a cock-pit, and live respectably. ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... was merely through an oversight that the pit ponies did not record their votes at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... entered this place our ears were greeted by a confused hubbub of human voices, squealing of rats, barking of dogs, and the cries of various other animals. Here we beheld a kind of cock-pit, around which a great many people, seeming of all ranks, but chiefly of the lower, were gathered, and in it we saw a dog destroy a great many rats in a very small period; and when the dog had destroyed the rats, we saw a fight between a dog and a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... The fact that she makes a duchess allude to "these kind of things" struck me at first as a subtlety of characterization, till I discovered that, some pages later, the author fell herself into the identical pit. But I suppose there is hardly any one of us wholly innocent of this offence; anyhow, it is only a small blemish upon a pleasant and (in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... tell the Pit: For once you met your master, A man who carried in his soul Three charms against disaster, The Devil ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... largely automatic. There was not enough traffic to bother me. The details of leaving the office so hastily had been too engrossing for thought of Alan and Babs. But now, in my little pit at the controls, my mind flung ahead. They had located him. That meant Franz Polter, for whom we had been searching nearly four years. And my memory went back into the past with ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... books as missiles, with which they kept up a skirmishing cannonade against the foe. Imagine the tableau! Two elderly gentlemen enter hurriedly, paterfamilias receiving, quite unintentionally, the first edition of "Paradise Lost" in the pit of his stomach, his friend narrowly escaping a closer personal acquaintance with a quarto Hamlet than he had ever had before. Finale: great outburst of wrath, and rapid retreat of the combatants, many wounded (volumes) being left ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... bastard!" Brother Jacques shuddered. "Bah! What could I do? I could become only a spectator. My word for it, it has been a fine comedy, this bonhomie of mine, this hail-fellow well met. And only to-night he saw the pit at his feet. If that fool of a corporal had ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... and I believe it will hold in most of our Country Employments: Country People universally know that all Trees consist of Roots, Stems, Boughs, Leaves, &c. but can give no account of the Species, Virtues, or farther Culture, besides the making of a Pit or Hole; casting, and treading in the Earth, &c. which require a deeper search, than they are capable of: We are then to exact Labour, not Conduct and Reason, from the greatest part of them; and the business of Planting is an Art or Science (for so ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... 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 ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... ambassadors; on the left, that of the French Ministers. A large gallery was reserved for the ladies of the court, who all dressed magnificently and wore sparkling jewels. A number of distinguished men filled the pit, all in court dress, with small-sword, and ribbons and orders. During the entr'actes the Emperor's liveried footmen carried about ices and refreshments of various kinds. The hall was most brilliantly lit. The balls in the great rooms of the first ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... to drag the piece into an old abandoned French gun pit. The historical position of that gun was one kilometre due east of the town of Bathelemont and three hundred metres northeast of the Bauzemont-Bathelemont road. The position was located two miles ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... than any other living, the heart of the woman who is supposed to be so calm and placid! Now you can have some idea what I have suffered to-night, when I saw the same pit opening for you? Do you understand me? Have I ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... stereo camera and teleceiver scanners that were sending the opening ceremonies of the Solar Exposition to all parts of the Alliance moved in to focus on the capsule as it was lowered into a deep, concrete-lined pit. ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... old man, with a wave of his hand, "the woman wouldn't let me, and I shouldn't care to myself. A hundred times you have tried to drag me out of the pit, and I have tried myself, but nothing came of it. Give it up. I must stick in my filthy hole. This minute, here I am sitting, looking at your angel face, yet something is drawing me home to my hole. Such is my fate. You can't draw a dung-beetle ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... into confusion; that fortitude, while it gives confidence, may not make us rash; lest knowledge, while it knows and yet loves not, may swell the mind; lest piety, while it swerves from the right line, may become distorted; and lest fear, while it is unduly alarmed, may plunge us into the pit of despair." Therefore the virtues are more excellent than the gifts ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... to receive my just sentence from the Tribunal of Love. It is life, or death, fair Felice that I look for, let me not languish in despair; give judgment, O ye fair, give judgment, that I may know my doom. A word from thy sacred lips can cure my bleeding heart, or a frown can doom me to the pit of misery." ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... practical men were turned thereby to the long-neglected possibilities of steam. Wind was extremely inconvenient for the purpose of pumping, because in these latitudes it is inconstant: it was costly, too, because at any time the labourers might be obliged to sit at the pit's mouth for weeks together, whistling for a gale or waiting for the water to be got under again. But steam had already been used for pumping upon one or two estates in England—rather as a toy than in earnest—before ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... addressing the chair, "it is not possible for the mind to coin, or the tongue to utter baser libels against an injured people. Their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves as the light of heaven is more cheering than the darkness of the pit. Many of their number are in the most affluent circumstances, and distinguished for their refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flourishing churches, supplied by pastors of their own color, in various parts of the land, embracing a large body of the truly excellent of the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Rudy. He wound his arm about her, looked in her strange clear eyes, yes, only for a second—but was it spiritual life or was it death which flowed through him? Was he raised on high, or did he sink into the deep, murderous ice-pit, deeper and ever deeper? He saw icy walls like bluish green glass, numberless clefts yawned around, and the water sounded as it dropped, like a chime of bells; it was pearly, clear and shone in bluish white flames. The Ice-Maiden ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... the other, so that reference to negro soldiers is avoided. The negro soldiers appear to have received the same care as the white; on the other hand, some of the rebel officers told with much gusto how Colonel Shaw's body had been thrown into a common pit and those of two of his men ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... one vaguely espied yonder under the trees, was that of the headsman's assistants fixing the knife in position. A lantern slowly came and went, and five or six shadows danced over the ground. But nothing else could be distinguished, the square was like a large black pit, around which ever broke the waves of the noisy crowd which one could not see. And beyond the square one could only identify the flaring wine shops, which showed forth like lighthouses in the night. All the surrounding district of poverty and ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... offered not so much a chance of solution as an opportunity to revive the old dramatic story. He could see, when he closed his eyes, the local photographers climbing to that cabin and later sending its pictures broadcast, and divers gentlemen of the press, eager to pit their wits against ten years of time and the ability of a once conspicuous man to hide from the law, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in times of peace the speaker was a reasonably kind man and reasonably regardful of the rights of his fellowmen. Certainly he was most courteous to us and most considerate; but he described this slaughter-pit scene with the enthusiasm of one who was a partner in a most creditable ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... like that; and among those who did, the further distinction between those who used vile language casually, or even jocularly, and those who were driven to it only by anger. But for these first few minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some foul pit abysmally below the lowest level ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the very water I go into to baptize in, let alone men that want to murder me; but I am more afraid to go against my revelations, for I know if I went against them there would be nothing for me but the pit and eternal fire. I don't say that it would be the same for any of you. I used to preach that it would, but in prison, when I thought of my folks standing up to be killed, I thought perhaps I had gone beyond what was told me in preaching that way; ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... else, dat young Merrit darky, to oc'py his pu'pit. He in'juce him, an' 'en he say dat he gwine be absent a few Sundays, an' 'en he tek hissef off, outen de chu'ch, widout ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... darkness in the woods is the darkness of the pit itself. She found a fallen tree, and climbed on it to rest and think. Night in gloomy places brings an eerie feeling sometimes to the bravest—dormant sense impressions, running back to the cave age and beyond, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... giving their names—that is to say, whose grease is imposed on people for blacking; then there were the executioners, and the puffers of bad wares. In the midst of all the merriment, as it must have been, that was going on, shot up from a pit a stem, a tree, a monstrous flower, a large toadstool, and a cupola. These were the Utopian productions of the honoured assembly, the entire amount of their offerings to the world during the past year. Sparks flew ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... dangerously, fresh. Reassured on this point, she decided to follow the man and find out what he was doing. It was only when she did not know what he was about that she so dreaded him. Given the opportunity to watch him unseen, she was willing enough to pit her cunning against his, and to rob him as audaciously as she would rob any of ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... gold-haired mistress white and drawn, saw her witless shaking, saw her tear and rend herself, heard her jerked words of loathing, blasphemy, and obscene defiance—and fairly fled the house. "For," as she said, "if words of man or woman could bring the rafters about our ears, or open a pit to send us lightly whither we all must go who have heard them, those words which Madam Olimpia spat about her must surely do it." So much she confessed to afterwards, but no more; for she ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... sultry. No one appeared in the road, and yet some belated pedestrian might run against her at any moment, for the dense darkness shrouded even the nearest objects. But she knew the way, and had determined to follow the Danube and go along the woodlands to the tanner's pit, whence the Hiltner house was easily reached. In this way she could pass around the gate, which otherwise she would have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... floor of solid granite was the pit containing the sarcophagi of the dead monarch, of his favorite son and destined heir, Shaemus, and his well-beloved queen, Neferari Thermuthis. The opening into the pit had been sealed when Rameses had descended to emerge no more. The chamber over it was brilliant with frescoing and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... They will recall how I said before my house, that my neighbour could not have been doubly a mother, unless she had first been doubly a wife. I have the best reason now to know that I was wrong, and I am caught in my own snare. She who digs a pit for another, cannot tell that she may not fall into the hole herself. If you wish to speak loudly concerning your neighbour, it is best to say nothing of him but in praise. The only way to keep me from shame, is that one of my children ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... owner of it and that it had not been exaggerated in any manner or degree. With the exception of one instance the proof had been bloodless, for he reasoned that gun-play should give way, whenever possible, to a crushing "right" or "left" to the point of the jaw or the pit of the stomach. His proficiency in the manly art was polished and thorough and bespoke earnest application. The last doubting Thomas to be convinced came to five minutes after his diaphragm had been rudely and suddenly raised several inches by a low right ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... 1—600 x 300 feet. Examined by the best obtainable placer experts and under the most favorable conditions money could afford. Prospect Shaft No. L:—Through natural, clean sand and fine river gravel. Depth of pit 10 feet. Every foot showed gold in paying quantities. A four foot streak, extremely rich, passes through this section. Red-rock was not reached but the values increase with depth, as is ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... some things square an' some things round, An' little game cocks ain't sol' by de pound; Dey's weighed by sand an' pluck an' grit An' de number o' dead dey leave in de pit. An' dey ain't by deyselves in rank like dat— No, dey ain't by ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... purple heath, could have been so sublimely hilly as that ridge up to which the ranked furrows rose like aspiring angels. No valley, confused with needless cottages and towns, can have been so utterly valleyish as that abyss into which the down-rushing furrows raged like demons into the swirling pit. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... more now. My heart goes pit-a-pat. When you receive this I shall be packing for my journey. It will be splendid to see Susan in the moment of your triumph. Altogether, dear, I never felt more elated in my life. This great and unexpected excitement has ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... Blessed be Thou, O Lord; for Thou camest to my help. This seems to me to be in principle the temptation of Judas, only that Satan did not dare to tempt me so openly. But he might have led me by little and little, as he led Judas, to the same pit of destruction. ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... undershirt and overalls that appeared filthy. He held a cloth in his hand and strode toward the nearest sheep. Folding the cloth round the neck of the sheep, he dragged it forward, with an ease which showed great strength, and threw it into a pit that yawned at the side. Souse went the sheep into a murky, muddy pool and disappeared. But suddenly its head came up and then its shoulders. And it began half to walk and half swim down what appeared to be a narrow boxlike ditch that contained other floundering sheep. Then ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... saw the depths of the pit that Chaka had dug for me, and blessed my Ehlose who had put into my heart those words which I should answer. I hoped also that Chaka would now let me go; but it was not to be, for this was but ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... of a week a rough, strong, habitable home was made, door, window, shutter and bars included, two of their helpers having come provided with a pit-saw for cutting the bigger pine-trunks up into rough boards, which were to be paid for out of the first gold winnings the young ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... the window. He halted a short distance away and was evidently haranguing the crowd round him, and in his vehemence raised his arm. The moment he did so Tom's bow twanged. The arrow struck him at the unprotected part under the arm-pit, and he fell headlong from his horse. Maddened with rage the crowd no longer hesitated, and again attacked the door. Just as they did so there was a roar of exultation down the street as twelve men brought up a solid gate that they had beaten in ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... beckoning him to a hideous battle and a victory that he had never imagined in his wildest dreams. And then out of the darkness the kind voice spoke again, and the kind hand was stretched out to draw him up from the pit. It was sweet to think of that which he had found at last; the boy's picture incarnate, all the passion and compassion of his longing, all the pity and love and consolation. She, that beautiful passionate woman offering up her beauty in sacrifice to him, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Coleridge did not talk much, but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had fallen into one pit called Bell, secondly falling into another pit called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... a very awkward predicament. He has driven his ball into a deep sand-pit from which a very clever professional golfer might perhaps extricate himself by a powerful stroke with a niblick. But young William is not a professional, and indeed knows nothing about the game. So he takes his driver and his other wooden ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... opinion at all. At the theatre, men of cultivation and of literary attainments have always had more difficulty than elsewhere in making their taste prevail over that of the people, and in preventing themselves from being carried away by the latter. The pit has frequently ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I dressed, made the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of his shins, and then at that rehearsal (which was the last) I went in front, sir, to the back of the pit, and whenever his reading brought him into profile, I called out "I don't see no wafers!" And at night ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... so thick with dead that I believe I saw one soldier to every two yards. You might have walked for a mile on bodies without ever putting foot to the ground. They buried their dead when they had time, piling fifteen or twenty in a shallow pit." ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... known Evasio all my life," the Count de Sarrion once said to his son. "I have stood at the edge of that pit and looked in. I do not know to this day whether there is gold at the bottom or mud. I have never quarreled with him, and, therefore, we have never ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... on that stage it seems as though we were watching a battle between the demons of the Pit and the seraphs of Light, and the demons triumph. Eight hours telling a sadness, with every moment worse than its predecessor. All the world against Him, and hardly any let up so that we feel like leaving our place and rushing for the stage and giving congratulations with both hands ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... combats. The relics are next carried to the council-house of the nation, where they are publicly displayed, with the presents destined to be interred with them. Sometimes the remains are even carried on bearers from village to village. At length they are laid in a deep pit, lined with rich furs; tears and lamentations are again renewed, and for some time fresh provisions are daily laid, by this simple people, upon the graves ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... are now unbarred, and this ragged 'pent up little Utica' rends itself, but not without much more scratching and much swearing. O, the cold-blooded oaths that rang from those young lips! As the passage to the pit is by a sort of cellar door, I lost sight of the young scamps as the last one ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the others smiled. "She may have gone through a good deal," they remarked, "but how can she ever presume to pit herself against an old lady like you? So why don't you, venerable senior, tell her what it is so that we too may ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... magnificence of my retinue, to find variety. And yet how dearly am I to pay for a few gratifications which were in fact no better than specious allurements to destruction, and flowers that slightly covered the pit of ruin! In the bloom of manhood, in the full career of youth to be cast forth an UNPITIED, NECESSITOUS, MISERABLE VAGABOND! All but this I could have borne without a sigh. Were I threatened with death, in this opening scene of life, I could submit with cheerfulness. But to drag along a protracted ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... generation, at the very farthest confine of a large southern city. And that is why the entire region was called the Yamskaya Sloboda—the Stage-drivers' Borough; or simply Yamskaya, or Yamkas—Little Ditches, or, shorter still, Yama—The Pit. In the course of time, when hauling by steam killed off transportation by horses, the mettlesome tribe of the stage-drivers little by little lost its boisterous ways and its brave customs, went over into other occupations, fell apart and scattered. But for many years—even up to this time—a ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... among the hours, And if their smiles encountered, he went mad, And raged deep inward, till the light was brown Before his vision, and the world forgot, Looked wicked as some old dull murder-spot. A star with lurid beams, she seemed to crown The pit of infamy: and then again He fainted on his vengefulness, and strove To ape the magnanimity of love, And smote himself, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... system. Character is a superstition, a wretched fetish. Once a year wouldn't be too often to seize upon sinners whose blameless life has placed them above suspicion, and turn them inside out before the community, so as to show people how the smoke of the Pit had been quietly blackening their interior. That would destroy character as a cult." He laughed again. "Well, this isn't business,—though it isn't pleasure, either, exactly. What I came for was to ask ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... done by hollowing out a circular pit in the sandy earth, and then the four separating some distance from each other, drove the crickets towards a common centre—the pit. After some manoeuvring, a large quantity was brought together, and these being pressed upon ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... may share This bustling season's epidemic care; Like Caesar's pilot, dignified by Fate, Toss'd in one common storm with all the great; Distress'd alike the statesman and the wit, When one the borough courts, and one the pit. 10 The busy candidates for power and fame Have hopes, and fears, and wishes just the same; Disabled both to combat, or to fly, Must hear all taunts, and hear without reply. Unchecked, on both loud rabbles vent their rage, As mongrels ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett |
