"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of the officers, finding himself distanced, turned his horse into the fields lying between the two roads, with the purpose of riding across and cutting off the flight of the fugitive. He had not taken many steps, however, before he found his horse floundering in a clay-pit, while Revere on the opposite road shot past, with a ringing shout ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... far and away beyond their own powers; and they speak with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is able to drive a thousand men before him. But does that make him one of them? No; the raggedest tramp in the pit would smile at the idea. He couldn't comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't in any remote way conceive of it. Well, to the king, the nobles, and all the nation, down to the very slaves and tramps, I was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... already dug a pit for a twelve-foot hotbed. Now, a twelve-foot hotbed will start an enormous number ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... 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 the boxes. There were twelve ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... they scream and shiver, While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong Down to ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Aborigines, p. 51. A man of the Ta-ta-thi tribe in New South Wales informed Mr. A. L. P. Cameron that the natives believed in a pit of fire where bad men were roasted after death. This reported belief, resting apparently on the testimony of a single informant, may without doubt be ascribed to the influence of Christian teaching. See A. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... facing death by famine every winter, by drought or cyclone every summer, and by open war or secret scalp-raid every month in the year; and then say that the racking nerve-strain of the commuter's time-table, the deadly clash of the wheat-pit, or the rasping grind of office-hours, would be ruinous to the uncivilized nervous system. Certainly, in those belated savages, the dwellers in our slums, hysteria, diseases of the imagination, enjoyment of ill health, and the whole brood of functional nervous disturbances are ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... in her hands. Brief shudders rocked her body and she wailed out long sighs while pressing her hands tighter against her eyes, as though abandoning herself to the blackness of desolation, a dark, deep pit into which she seemed ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... discerning la-bas, those visions described by De Quincey, Poe, or De Nerval. Alfred Kubin has doubtless experienced the rapture of the initiate. There is a certain plate in which a figure rushes down the secret narrow pathway zigzagging from the still stars to the bottommost pit of hell, the head crowned as if by a flaming ecstasy, the arms extended in hysteria, the feet of abnormal size. A thrilling design with Blake-like hints—for Blake was master of the "flaming door" and the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... case at least, a mutilated woman was left unburied to be eaten by dogs,—and would have been completely devoured, had not one of our Teachers come on the scene next day, and, unaided, dug a grave and buried her." And then the writer lets in the lurid light of the Nether Pit in this closing picture: "One instance of the disgusting depravity of the people shocked me much. A man, who even attends Service in the district where the above dreadful affair took place, on seeing the poor mutilated form of the woman, addressed it thus—'If only the Gospel had not reached ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... with appreciative, though not loving eyes. "If he had lived in the time of his father JACOB, it would have been no use his brothers putting him in the pit; he would have argued himself clean out before they were half a mile on their way back to the family place in Canaan. Weak part of his position is that he is trying to serve two Bills, BALFOUR'S and PARNELL'S. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... a' the collies in full cry and made a bonny to-do among the Elect. The poor beast made a breenge and got a hat on its snout, and then a fling o' its heid ended matters, and there was the pig in the deacon's hat, and sair pit aboot was the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... Miladi was delighted with hers. Some seagull must have brought the pit across the ocean. It is so much finer than any we have ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... understand, Conniston? Does the horror of it get hold of you? Can you make yourself believe that it is possible? Am I mad to allow such a suspicion to creep into my brain? Shan Tung—Miriam Kirkstone! And she sees herself standing now at the very edge of the pit of hell, and it is ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... B.C., and it was with terror found that the Gauls would twice take possession of the soil of Rome. On the advice of the priests, there was dug within the city, in the middle of the cattle-market, a huge pit, in which two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive; for thus they took possession of the soil of Rome, the oracle was fulfilled, and the mishap averted. Thirteen years afterwards, on occasion of the disaster at Cann, the same atrocity was again committed, at ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... permanent. Clint had a way of suddenly waking, at the most inopportune moments, to the fact that he was due to play left tackle on the Brimfield Football Team against Claflin School in a few days, and when he did he invariably experienced an appalling sick feeling at the pit of his stomach and became for the moment incapable of speech or action. When this occurred in class during, say, a faltering elucidation of the Iliad, it produced anything but a favourable impression on the instructor. Fortunately, while actually engaged in ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... prisoners were led straight down the Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen garden in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit had been dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large crowd stood in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and many of Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty—Germans, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 species of contempt, obloquy, and insult, until she had made his home insupportable, or courting the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... of triumph he muttered at the moment that his glance rested upon it, and five seconds later he had the trapdoor open and was peering down into the narrow pit in which wooden steps rested. The spaniel began to bark wildly, whereupon Kerry grasped him, tucked him under his arm, and ran up to the room above, where he deposited the furiously wriggling animal. He stepped quickly back ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... say this to frighten you away from being religious? God forbid. Better to be religious and to fear and love God, though you were tempted by all the devils out of the pit, than to be irreligious and a mere animal, and be tempted only by your own carnal nature, as the animals are. Better to be tempted, like the hermits of old, and even to fall and rise again, singing, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... had turned cold and reserved. De Marsay, the model adopted by all the youth of Paris, did not make a greater display of reticence in speech and deed than did Lucien. As to brains, the journalist had ere now proved his mettle. De Marsay, against whom many people chose to pit Lucien, giving a preference to the poet, was ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... didn't it come to the same thing of my getting there, and he set me up in a dark high place, the like of the yew-tree near Carne Castle. And then he saith, 'Look back, Zeb'; and I looked, and behold Springhaven was all afire, like the bottomless pit, or the thunder-storm of Egypt, or the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And two figures was jumping about in the flames, like the furnace in the plain of Dura, and one of them was young Squire Carne, and the other ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... an evening paper, crowds can be seen in London every day waiting to go into the pit. Oh, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... later, Kit's ton was across the lake, and he had gained three days on himself. And when John Bellew overtook him, he was well along toward Deep Lake, another volcanic pit ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... representation the great pun was made;—I say the great pun, as we say the great ton of Heidelberg. As one of the performers was singing the line, 'L'amour a vaincu Loth,' (vingt culottes,) a voice from the pit cried out, 'Qu'il en donne ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... recants, and is baptized; and there are not wanting evil tongues which declare that there is a wonderful similarity in his physiognomy every year. However this may be, there is no doubt that some one is annually dug out of the Ghetto, which is the pit of Judaism here in Rome; and if he fall back again, after receiving the temporal reward, and without waiting for the spiritual, he probably finds it worth his while to do so, in view of the zeal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... promise he had made to Talma: that celebrated actor played before a pit of kings, and it was, perhaps, this fact, or the expectant face of Napoleon, whose eyes were on him, or the presence of Alexander, who was never weary of praising him—it was probably all this that enkindled the actor's enthusiasm. Never before had Talma played more effectively—never before had ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... fourth she is allowed to remain in camp, only signifying her condition by wearing a basket of empty shells on her back.[103] Among the Kia blacks of the Prosperine River, on the east coast of Queensland, a girl at puberty has to sit or lie down in a shallow pit away from the camp; a rough hut of bushes is erected over her to protect her from the inclemency of the weather. There she stays for about a week, waited on by her mother and sister, the only persons to whom she ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... to accomplish this by novel-writing. And to his honor be it said that for a long series of years he kept sending every penny he could spare, above the barest necessities, to his creditors, refusing to avail himself of the bankruptcy law and accept a compromise. But it was a bottomless pit into which he was throwing his hard-earned pennies, and in the end he had to yield to the persuasions of his family and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... known that a taper will not burn where carbonic acid exists in any considerable quantity, or when there is a marked deficiency of oxygen. From this originated the judicious practice of sinking a lighted candle into a well or pit before descending into it. If the flame is extinguished, respiration cannot there be maintained, and life would be sacrificed should a person venture in, until the noxious air ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... of the just is as choice silver." The silver bowl, from which was sprinkled the sacrificial blood, recalled the same incident, for it was Reuben who advised his brothers to throw Joseph into the pit rather than to kill him. The spoon of ten shekels of gold symbolized the deed of Reuben, who restrained Jacob's sons from bloodshed, hence the gold out of which the spoon was fashioned had a blood-red ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... sounded; and I saw a star fall from heaven to the earth, and there was given him the key of the pit of the abyss. [9:2]And he opened the pit of the abyss; and there arose up a smoke from the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit. [9:3]And from the smoke went out locusts on the earth, and power was given them like the power ...
— The New Testament • Various
... "I've fallen into the pit and am far on the road to perdition," Elinor said. "I hurried down this way from choir practice and Uncle Lloyd's gone and left the lower door locked. It thundered so, and Dennie didn't come into the study, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... golden hair," cried Dona Clara; "these are truly emerald eyes."[67] The senora, her neighbour, examined the gitanilla piecemeal. She made a pepetoria[68] of all her joints and members, and coming at last to a dimple in her chin, she said, "Oh, what a dimple! it is a pit into which all eyes that behold it must fall." Thereupon an esquire in attendance on Dona Clara, an elderly gentleman with a long beard, exclaimed, "Call you this a dimple, senora? I know little of dimples then if this be one. It is no dimple, but a grave of living desires. I vow to God the gitanilla ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hilarity. This is serious business, Cappy. I can show you where you and I can waltz into the Chicago Pit, make a killing on December wheat, and escape with a sizable wad ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... special dancing-stage (-orchestra-) with the altar in the middle, on which the Greek chorus performed its part, or, to speak more correctly, the space thus appropriated among the Greeks served with the Romans as a sort of pit; accordingly the choral dance at least, with its artistic alternations and intermixture of music and declamation, must have been omitted in Rome, and, even if the chorus was retained, it had but little importance. Of course there were various alterations of detail, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he had invited the two provinces to send their delegate to a conference at which the union would be discussed. The shrill protests of the German party were successful; for the next few years the Slavs were being pushed into their pit and then helped half-way out again. Schmerling, the German, would evolve an electoral system by which the Parliament must always have a German majority; Francis Deak, the Hungarian, would make excellent ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... of some goats, and laid snares for them, with rice for a bait I had set the traps in the night, and found they had all stood, though the bait was gone. So I thought of a new way to take them, which was to make a pit and lay sticks and grass on it, so as to hide it; and in this way I caught an old goat and some kids. But the old goat was much too fierce for me, so I let him go. I brought all the young ones home, and let them fast a long time, till at last ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... in a Bottle, the first of Poe's tales of terror; the skill of Poe illustrated in Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Cash of Amontillado; Poe's psychology; his technique in The Pit and the Pendulum and in his detective stories; his influence; the art of Poe; his ideal in writing a ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... became a vast sea of mud. I have already spoken of Virginia mud. It beggars description. Your feet sink into it frequently ankle deep, and you lift them out with a sough. In some places it seemed as bottomless as a pit of quicksand. The old-established roads were measurably passable, but, as I have heretofore explained, most of the troops had to march directly across the fields, and here it proved absolutely impossible to move ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... Adams was the only one of the band who wondered at the sight, and thanked God for undeserved and unexpected mercy, for he alone fully understood the polluted stock from which they had all sprung, and the terrible pit of heathenish wickedness from which they had been rescued, not by him (the humbled mutineer had long since escaped from that delusion), but by the Word ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Western science seems to be moving gradually towards a recognition of this fact which has been known to the Yogis of the East for centuries, and some recent Western writers have termed the Solar Plexus the "Abdominal Brain." The Solar Plexus is situated in the Epigastric region, just back of the "pit of the stomach" on either side of the spinal column. It is composed of white and gray brain matter, similar to that composing the other brains of man. It has control of the main internal organs of man, and plays a much ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... test of raising man out of the pit. And how does it propose to do it? Not by minimizing the danger and need. It says: "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores." It demands ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... are so very very brown: just like those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood, and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... which attacked the city of Dijon in 1558, a lady, named Nicole Lentillet, being reputed dead of the epidemic, was thrown into a great pit, wherein they buried the dead. The day after her interment, in the morning, she came to herself again, and made vain efforts to get out, but her weakness, and the weight of the other bodies with which she was covered, prevented her doing so. She remained in this horrible situation for four days, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... climbed into the enclosed passenger pit of the monoplane—a Mayther—his ears seemed literally to be ringing with the drumming, mighty voice of Moyen. But now that voice, instead of merely speaking, rang with sardonic laughter. He had never heard the laughter ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... his curved sword high above his head and brought it down with such force that had I not dodged him just in time, he would have smashed my skull. Lowering my rifle quickly till its muzzle almost touched his flowing garments, I fired, but unfortunately the bullet passed beneath his arm-pit, and flattened itself against the wall. Again, muttering some fearful imprecation in Arabic, he raised his gleaming blade, and, unable to fire at such close quarters, I was then compelled to use my rifle to ward off his attack. For an instant we struggled ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... the matter of muscular power it is difficult to make any absolute statement. The muscular development of women among primitive peoples is well known. Japanese women will coal a vessel with a rapidity unsurpassable by men. The pit-brow women of the Lancashire collieries are said to be of finer physical development than any other class of women workers. I have seen the women of Northern Spain perform feats ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... feet on the stone sill and his hands clasping the iron bar. He felt sheer and absolute terror. The spires of the cathedral were invisible and only a few far lights showed dimly. It seemed to him that he was suspended over a bottomless pit, and he shivered ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... clients, or the law regarding, Hurries from Nando's down to Covent Garden. Yet, he's a scholar; mark him in the pit, With critic catcall sound the stops of wit! Supreme at George's, he harangues the throng, Censor of style, from tragedy ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to see the silo after the lightning had struck it. Jim said he'd always been curious about that silo. It was one of the best in the county, but Sam never used it. He used a pit. ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... laden with passengers. In about two hours we arrived at the Newell farm, and found a gathering which at first sight seemed like a county fair. In the midst was a tent, and a crowd was pressing for admission. Entering, we saw a large pit or grave, and, at the bottom of it, perhaps five feet below the surface, an enormous figure, apparently of Onondaga gray limestone. It was a stone giant, with massive features, the whole body nude, the limbs contracted as if in agony. It had a color as if it had lain ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... consciousness I found myself in a hotel near by with several doctors attending me. My leg was swollen from the knee to the thigh, and the swelling, almost to the point of bursting, extended along the body up to the arm-pit. The pain was almost beyond endurance. I lay at the hotel something over a week without being able to turn myself in bed. I had a steamer stop at the nearest point possible, and was carried to it on a litter. I was then taken to Vicksburg, where I remained unable ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... giant British bombing machines developed in 1918 that raided Germany. The size is shown by comparison with the human figures. Note the forward gunner, the pilot, the rear gunner and the window of the commodious cock-pit within which the airmen could ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... "pull." There reached him presently that same sinking at the pit of the stomach he had known when Clay had thrashed him. He learned that when a lawbreaker is going strong, friends at court who are under obligations to him are a bulwark of strength, but when one's power is shaken politicians prefer ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... an awkward position under her side. The muscles so held irritated a few nerves, and now a vague scene floated in on the drowsy mind. She fancied she and Carrie were somewhere beside an old coal-mine. She could see the tall runway and the heap of earth and coal cast out. There was a deep pit, into which they were looking; they could see the curious wet stones far down where the wall disappeared in vague shadows. An old basket, used for descending, was hanging there, fastened ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... matter is as to the moral character of the services performed by these companies. Some held that their characteristics were divinely pure, intellectual, exalting; others that in abandoned pleasures they were fouler than the Stygian pit. The Church Fathers, Clement, Irenaus, Tertullian, and the rest, influenced by a mixture of prejudice, hatred, and horror, against every thing connected with paganism, declared, in round terms, that the Mysteries were unmitigated sinks of iniquity and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... 'They hurried away to the theatre, full of malignity and denunciations against a man whose name they had never heard, and a performance which they could not understand; for they were resolved to judge for themselves, and would not suffer the town to be imposed upon by scribblers. In the pit they exerted themselves with great spirit and vivacity; called out for the tunes of obscene songs, talked loudly at intervals of Shakespeare and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... be till your head was on your pillow that the truth and intensity of her beauty would flash upon you, that the sweetness of her voice would come upon your ear. A sudden half-hour with the Neroni was like falling into a pit, an evening spent with Eleanor like an unexpected ramble in some ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... case," said Olly, the besom-maker. "And yet how people do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn't use to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what do I say?—why, almost without a desk to lean ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... suddenly, and the eyes shine out, twinkling and dancing like stars reflected in running water, and it stamps its little foot upon the stage in a comic passion—and—nous verrons. It sold oranges in the pit, folks tell me, a year ago. It may be selling sinecures and captaincies in a year or two, and putting another shilling in the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... walls that the Romans made on our shores, so ancient that they were crumbling to decay. There they set him down, and raised a great flat stone, close to the greatest wall, which covered the mouth of a deep pit. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... calm, the waves having quite ceased to break. Only a heavy swell lifted the ship up at intervals, letting her roll down again, and swaying gently to and fro with a gentle rocking motion which would have sent us all to sleep but for the hunger which now kept us awake with a nasty, gnawing pain at the pit of our stomachs. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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
... battery. He desired, therefore, to have a flapper at his elbow, and I had the honor to be deputed to that office. I planted him in an upper box, pretty nearly over the stage, in full view of the pit and galleries, and perfectly well situated to give the echo all its play through the hollows and recesses of the theater. The success of our maneuver was complete. All eyes were upon Johnson, who sat in a front row of a side box; and when he laughed, everybody thought themselves ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... in praise of the Confession: "Whoever has once felt a gentle breath of the bracing mountain air which is wafted from this mighty mountain of faith [the Augsburg Confession] no longer seeks to pit against its firm and quiet dignity his own uncertain, immature, and wavering thoughts nor to direct the vain and childish puff of his mouth against that breath of God in order to give it a different direction." (Theol. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... couched their own thoughts. As we speak baby-talk to the infant, and broken English to the Frenchman, he unconsciously dealt in expressions adapted to the wild eager faces that looked into his. Here had surely been a temptation that would have dragged the young speaker down to the pit which the great adversary had made ready for him, but for the strong Deliverer who walked amid the flames of fire with the three faithful "children" ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... to leave themselves in night, But can no more obscure my Congreve's light, Than swarms of gnats, that wanton in a ray Which gave them birth, can rob the world of day. What northern hive pour'd out these foes to wit? Whence came these Goths to overrun the pit? How would you blush the shameful birth to hear Of those you so ignobly stoop to fear; For, ill to them, long have I travell'd since, Round all the circles of impertinence, Search'd in the nest where ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... of trilogy of novels dealing with wheat, the object being an arraignment of wheat operations at Chicago, and the consequent gambling with the world's food-supply. The first of the series, "The Octopus," deals with wheat raising and transportation; the second, "The Pit," a vigorous, human story covers wheat-exchange gambling, and appeared in 1903; the third, which was to have been entitled "The Wolf," was cut short by the author's death, which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things through teaching and drilling have to know how to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... man, thou judgest of others by thine own evil heart. Thou, at least, art unrivalled in perfidy, and standest alone—a base deceiver in the garb of virtue and religion—like a deep pit whose yawning mouth ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... aperient and cooling medicines are indicated, and also applications of the subacetate of lead, or spermaceti ointment. A weak infusion of tobacco may be resorted to when other things fail, but it must be used with much caution. The same may be said of all mercurial preparations. The tanner's pit has little efficacy, except in slight cases. Slight bleedings may be serviceable, and especially in full habits; setons may be resorted to in obstinate cases. A change in the mode of feeding will often ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold-seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at the beginning of his labor. In the mean time I made no remark. Jupiter, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... weeks ago Gordon would have been horrified at such a thing; but now it seemed a splendid jest. He would not have cribbed himself. He preferred to beat a man with his own brains, though Mansell would have protested that it was a greater effort to pit one's brains against a master long trained in spotting tricks than against some dull-headed scholar. The Public School system, at any rate, teaches its sons the art of framing very ingenious theories with which to defend their faults; a negative virtue, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... considered the earth as a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas, as a kind of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor. To the north of the earth was a great mountain; at night the sun was pushed into a pit and pulled out again in the morning, with heaven as a loft and hell as a cellar. In the Atlantic Ocean, at some unknown distance from Europe, was one of the openings into hell, into which a ship sailing to this point, would ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Harrison's money and 'tumbled me down a stone-pit.' In an hour they dragged him out again, and he naturally asked what they wanted with him, as they had his money already. One of these miscreants wounded Harrison again, and—stuffed his pockets full of 'a great quantity of money.' If they had ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... man will not pray over the counter of a public-house. A man will not pray over a sharp bargain. A man will not pray that God may bless his outbursts of anger, or sensuality and the like. A man will not pray when he feels that he is deep down in some pit of self-caused alienation from God. The possibility of praying in given circumstances is a sharp test, although a very rough and ready one, whether we ought to be in these circumstances or not. Do not let us go where we cannot ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... red heather, low faya-bushes, (whence the name of the island,) and a great variety of mosses. The cattle are fed on beans and lupines. Firewood is obtained from the opposite island of Pico, five miles off, and from the Caldeira or Crater, a pit five miles round and fifteen hundred feet deep, at the summit of Fayal, whence great fagots are brought upon the heads of men and girls. It is an oversight in the "New American Cyclopaedia" to say of Fayal that "the chief object of agriculture is the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... hanging. An exclamation at the same moment from my uncle reached my ears. I tore off the bandage from my eyes, and looking round, I saw him but a short distance from me, and discovered that we were at the bottom of a chalk-pit, with all our limbs safe and sound, instead of being both of us mangled corpses at the foot of High-Peak Cliff. Our position was not dignified; and certainly, though it was much less romantic and full of horror than it would have been had the catastrophe we expected really occurred, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... do is to get him at least a footing on firm ground, and to give him room to live. Then you may have a chance. At present you have none. And you will have all the better opportunity to find a way to his heart, if he comes to know that it was you who pulled him out of the horrible pit and the miry clay in which he was ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... observant of whatsoever is good, because she desires to improve herself. Her great object is to understand, not to instruct. The great art (since it is recognised that art is required even in the commerce of words) is not to pit against one another two arrogant opponents, eager to parade their learning and to amuse the company by discussing questions the solution of which no one troubles about, but to illumine every unprofitable ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... right. There's no joke about this. Mrs. Goring is as deep as the Bottomless Pit! There's something back of those big violet eyes of hers that burns clear through you. She's coming to see you presently. What d' ye think about ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... say,"—and here the emphasis was very strong on the word sorry,—"so cold as Longroyston." And the tone in which Longroyston was uttered would almost have drawn tears from a critical audience in the pit of a playhouse. The Duchess was a woman of about forty, very handsome, but with no meaning in her beauty, carrying a good fixed colour in her face, which did not look like paint, but which probably had received some little assistance ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... and see the bear-pit," said the guide. I obeyed with alacrity, and, leaning over the rail, had the pleasure of seeing the most beautiful bruin my eyes had ever rested upon. She was as glossy as a new silk hat; her eyes were as soft and timid as those of a frightened deer, and, when she moved, she was ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... contumely, who dared impute to him a crime that was any man's but my father's. I realize that certain policies called for this stroke on your part, but it can not be. My dear uncle, you have digged a fine pit, and I hope you will find a safe way out of it. I refuse to marry the Princess Hildegarde. This is final. It can be arranged without any discredit to the duke or to yourself. Let it be said that her serene highness has thrown me over. I shan't ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... feet, the firemen toiled away, scattering shovels-full of coal evenly over the fires, wielding their slice bars ... greeting with oaths and comic curses the awkward coal passer who spilled with his laden wheelbarrow into the slightly lower pit ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... "They are in action this afternoon, and I am in charge of H.T.M. I'll give you a good show. I have only one pit available, as Fritz dropped a 'crump' in the other yesterday, and blew the whole show to smithereens. My sergeant was sitting smoking at the time, and when she blew up it lifted him clean out of the trench, without even so much as scratching ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... in the crook of his arm, he was groping in vain outreachings for something to lay hold of, for some clear-minded, clean-hearted adviser who could tell him what to do; how he should clamber out of this pit of humiliation into which nothing more culpable than an honest zeal for civic righteousness had precipitated him. In his despair he told himself that there was no one, and then suddenly he remembered—Patricia ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... which the railway is to be extended, work on the extension having just been commenced. The mines are owned by Messrs. Dunsmuir & Sons, and at the present time they are working at five shafts, the output for the month of August being 17,000 tons. We went down the shaft of No. 5 pit, which was 240 feet deep, and found the seam was very thick, from 10 to 11 feet, but not very solid block coal, having apparently been crushed. The mines are all connected with wharves on the coast at Departure Bay by a three-feet gauge ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... the willow wedges, wet them till they swelled and split, With their silent strength, the fragment, sent it thundering down the pit. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... clerk for the judge's signature. There were a large number of attorneys' clerks to be sworn, and it being a moral impossibility to swear them all at once, the struggles of these gentlemen to reach the clerk in spectacles, were like those of a crowd to get in at the pit door of a theatre when Gracious Majesty honours it with its presence. Another functionary, from time to time, exercised his lungs in calling over the names of those who had been sworn, for the purpose of restoring ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... can see from the sketch, it opens like a pair of scissors. Its blades are very sharp, and as it cuts the fruit, the blades pierce right through the flesh until they meet the pit in the center. The curves in the blade catch the stone and hold it fast, while the points and heels of the blades overlap until they have cut entirely ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... instead clapped their hands and shouted as they reached the ground. For an instant Tantor, the elephant, paused with upraised trunk and tail, with great ears up-pricked, and then he swung on along the trail at a rapid, shuffling pace—straight toward the covered pit with its sharpened ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... done is generous and honest in the sight of God;—nay, the very fountain-head of my wo is love and compassion! Yes, yes!—fix your glittering eyes on me; contemplate me in the abyss of poverty where I am fallen! From the bottom of that pit I lift my brow boldly toward you, and your silent glance does not force me to grovel in the earth with shame! Here, in the presence of your noble images, I am alone with my soul, with my conscience;—hero, no mortification can touch the being who, as gentleman, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... pretty clothes, fine shoes, and soon he brought her gifts as well. Much he learned from her red, smart mouth. Much he learned from her tender, supple hand. Him, who was, regarding love, still a boy and had a tendency to plunge blindly and insatiably into lust like into a bottomless pit, him she taught, thoroughly starting with the basics, about that school of thought which teaches that pleasure cannot be be taken without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every look, every spot of the body, however ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... so generous as Macklin. The author of The Disputes between the Director of D——y, and the Pit Potentates, one "B.Y.," champions the cause of the non-principal players against such as Mrs. Clive, "for the low-salary'd Players are always at the labouring Oar, and at constant Expence, while the rest are serv'd ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... it's only half Sunday without you, but you know we should do to other people as we should like they should do to us; and I know very well what I should like if my mother was dying; and Jerry, dear, I am sure it won't break the Sabbath; for if pulling a poor beast or donkey out of a pit would not spoil it, I am quite sure taking poor Dinah ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... months Wapi had been the property of Blake, and it was now the dead of a long and sunless arctic night. Blake's cabin, built of ship timber and veneered with blocks of ice, was built in the face of a deep pit that sheltered it from wind and storm. To this cabin came the Nanatalmutes from the east, and the Kogmollocks from the west, bartering their furs and whalebone and seal-oil for the things Blake gave in exchange, and ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... Winchester proved to be a small, rather isolated house near Kingsworthy. It stood in its own grounds, surrounded by a high wall, and at the rear was a very fair garage, that had been specially constructed, with inspection-pit and the various appliances. ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... afore they come up agin. An' then they shtand in tubs while their wives an' sweethearts washes an' scrubs thim, an' makes white men out o' the black men that comes up, an' thin walks thim off home. Now, shtandin' in a tub at the mouth o' the pit to be washed by yer wimmenfolks is what we wouldn't do in this counthry—'tisn't black naygurs we are—an' these men that lives in the dark and have no time to think, an' nothin' to think wid, these are the men ye put to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... are met by Mrs. Clarke, who has spent many years with her husband in Africa. The Mission has a good farm and garden, and since the climate is not as bad as in many parts, its inmates enjoy fair health. A large wooden building is used as a chapel and school, and near it is a saw pit and a carpenter's shop where the boys make furniture and boxes for sale at Irebu and other Posts in the neighbourhood, for the furniture of the Ikoko Mission is quite famous. The girls all wear plain, blue frocks which ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... great truth of self-derived, self-determined, timeless, undecaying Being. And what better symbol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out, could be found of that God in whose life there is no tendency to death, whose work digs no pit of weariness into which it falls, who gives and is none the poorer, who fears no exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... over the blunt hill-tops, and the sky vibrating with larks, a long wing of smoke lies round the horizon. The country, rather thinly and languidly cultivated above, has a valuable sub-soil, and is burrowed with mines; the breath of pit and factory, out of sight, thickens the lower sky, and lies heavily over the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted agriculturists, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... my London men friends threaten coming down to Manchester during my engagement there; Charles and Henry Greville, Chorley, and even Moxon, who declared, if my play was brought out, he must be in the pit the first night to see it. [This was my play called "An English Tragedy," which there was some talk of bringing out at Manchester.] I dare say the courage of all of them will give out before this bitter cold, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... me being discovered dead in a bog or a pit full of snow, your conscience won't whisper that ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... into a half-made road across a warren. A cart-track led at right-angles to a gravel pit, beyond which the chimneys of a cottage rose amongst a clump of trees at the border of a thick wood. Tussocks of feathery grass covered the rough surface of the ground, and out of these the larks soared ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... baby was not touched, either by the mother or her attendants, until the afterbirth was expelled. The birth and recuperation were carried out in a pit filled with warm ashes. A slow birth was blamed on the belief that the mother had slept too much or been lazy during ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... he was thinking she must surely be the most beautiful woman he had ever encountered. The whole country might be covered with boards if it gave us such women as this. He felt the urgent need of some phrase, to pull the situation out of this pit into which it had fallen. He was a little unready, his faculties all as it were neglecting his needs and crowding to the windows to stare, and meanwhile she spoke again, with something of the frankness ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... too, mourned in his doublet of grey, As if powdered with rime on a dull winter's day; He twittered of love—how he courted a fair, Who altered her mind, and so made him despair. In a stone-pit he chose her a place for a nest, But she, like a wanton, but made it a jest. Though he dabbled in brooks to convince her how kind He would feed her with worms which he laboured to find, Till he e'en got the ague, still nought could prevail, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... drove him, lashing and cutting—and again, and many times again, until the poor thing rolled on the floor whimpering and sobbing. I shall have to give an account of this some day. I shall have to whip my master with a red-hot serpent round the blazing furnace of the pit, and I shall do it with agony, because here my love and my ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... that we know. We can only pretend to know. There is no real Knowledge but only Ignorance. Ignorance should be exalted. In Ignorance lies peace, contentment, happiness, and safety." Even of his work—of his dreams he said this. He said: "It is no use." To the very edge of this pit he came but he ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... no time left for him to answer in. The buccaneers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one after another, into the pit, and to dig with their fingers, throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan found a piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths. It was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a quarter ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hard to say it, yet I do not know but that you are right, my dear," agreed Mrs. Blake. "Strong men, if unhampered, have a chance to fight their way up out of the social pit. But women and girls, even when they escape the—the worst down there, can hardly hope ever to attain—And of course those that fall!—Our dual code of morality is hideously unjust to our sex, yet it still is the code under which ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... terrible had been her happiness on the edge of the pit! The days in Greece—Robin—Dion's return from the war! And she had wished to live rightly; she had loved the noble things; she had had ideals and she had tried to follow them. Purity before ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... of the blast, great clouds of earth flew high in the air. Hal and Chester felt the ground open up beneath them and they gasped for breath as they were precipitated into what seemed a bottomless pit. How far they fell they could not tell, but it seemed a long ways; and hardly had they struck bottom when a shower of earth fell ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... way of binding her to himself beyond recall, by forcing her to make a will in which she promised "to die when he died, and to be wherever he was." This was a dreadful thought for the poor soul. Must she be drawn along with him into the bottomless pit? Must she go down with him, even into hell? She deemed herself for ever lost. Become his property, his mere tool, she was used and misused by him for all kinds of purposes. He made her do the most shameful things. He employed her as a magical charm to gain over the rest of the nuns. A holy ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... declare, Mis' Mayberry, looks to me like you swallow what folks give you in this world whole, pit and all, and never bat a eye. I've got to go home and put on Buck's and Mr. Peavey's supper and sprinkle down some of my wash." And without further parley Mrs. Peavey marched home through a little swinging gate in the wall that had been for years a gap ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... my stall at eve I sit (And these remarks would still apply, Perhaps with greater force, were I Accommodated in the Pit)— Worn with the long day's dusty strife, I ask a brief surcease of gloom; I want a mirror held to life, But not the life ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... "In the court of the prison," we obtain some information from Jer. xxxii. 2: "Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the prison, [Hebrew: bHcr hmTrh], which is in the house of the king of Judah;" compare Jer. xxxviii. 6, according to which the pit into which the prophet was let down, was in the court of the prison. According to these passages, the court of the prison formed, agreeably to the customs of the East, part of the royal castle on Zion; and it was in this court that the tower rose. The other principal passage is in the Song of Solomon ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... what becomes of the Irish mutining.[566] But he doth seriously bethink him whether Of the gull'd people he be more esteem'd For his long cloak or for[567] his great black feather By which each gull is now a gallant deem'd; Or of a journey he deliberates To Paris-garden, Cock-pit, or the play; Or how to steal a dog he meditates, Or what he shall unto his mistress say. Yet with these thoughts he thinks himself most fit To be of counsel with ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... "Your terror," added he, "cannot equal mine; for, last night, as I lay in bed quite awake, the apparition of your husband appeared to me, shewed me several ghastly stabs in his body; told me that he had been murdered by such a person (naming the man), and his body thrown into such a marl-pit, which he then particularly described. The alarm was given, the pit searched, the body found, and the wounds answered the description given of them. The man whom the ghost had accused was apprehended, and committed, on a ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... coat, the big tears striking his pea-jacket and bounding off. It had been many years since these springs had yielded a drop—not when anybody could see. They must have scalded his rugged cheeks as molten metal scalds a sand-pit. ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... homeward! There was nothing to lean upon there. No strength of ever-enduring love, to be, as it were, a second self to him in his weakness. No outstretched arm to drag him, with something of super-human power, out of the miry pit into which he had fallen; but, instead, an indignant hand to thrust ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... herself, and now she was not holding it steadily. There was nothing to do. She could write a mere note of inquiry to Mr. Penzance, but that was all. She could only walk up and down the lanes and think—whether he lay dying or not. She could do nothing, even if a day came when she knew that a pit had been dug in the clay and he had been lowered into it with creaking ropes, and the clods shovelled back upon him where he lay still—never having told her that he was glad that her being had turned to him and her heart cried aloud ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wonder to-day at the legend of the native neglect of him. Was he not even at that time on all lips, had not my brother, promptly master of the subject, beckoned on my lagging mind with a recital of The Gold-Bug and The Pit and the Pendulum?—both of which, however, I was soon enough to read for myself, adding to them The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Were we not also forever mounting on little platforms at our infant schools to "speak" The Raven ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... inns, and thus she fell beautifully into the pit which I had digged for her; and it was presently arranged that she should ride on to the Wheel of Pleasure and order a dinner, which she was to do me the honour of ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... heroic Kearny! victorious McClellan! why did ye not order a Te Deum on the occasion of this great victory over a band of Vermont minstrels, half of whom were—girls! How must the hearts of the illustrious West-Pointers have pit-a-patted with joy, and dilated with triumph, as they saw the Hutchinson troupe—Asa B., and Lizzie C., little Dennett and Freddy, naive Viola, melodeon and all—scampering back through the mud, bowed beneath the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... morning when we have slept out the night, so sure shall we then awake. What if our carcasses become as vile as those of the beasts that perish, what if our bones are digged up and scattered about the pit brink, and worms consume our flesh, yet we know that our Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at the last on earth, and we shall see Him ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... very superfetation of lunacy—I would caution the reader to keep a sharp eye on my arguments, hereabouts particularly. The Cretan, who, in declaring all Cretans to be liars, left the question of his veracity doubtful to all eternity, fell into a pit of his own digging. Not unlike the unfortunate Cretan, Mr. White has tumbled headlong into his own snare. It was, for the rest, entirely unavailing that he insisted on the insanity of those who should gainsay his fundamental postulate. Sanity, of a crude sort, may accept ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the rattling of the chain, his wretched companions in misfortune, nay, all that surrounded him, could not fail to recall the fate awaiting him. He was to grow grey in slavish toil within a close, hot pit, whose atmosphere choked the lungs, deprived of the bliss of breathing the fresh air and beholding the sunlight; loaded with chains, beaten and insulted, starving and thirsting, spending days and nights in a monotony ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... same still. He will stand the great test that one can go into the world with him and not be ashamed of him. I know, dearest, even without that shake of the head, the small value you attach to this, but it is a great element in that droll contract, by which one person agrees to pit his temper against another's, and which we are told is made in heaven, with angels as sponsors. Mr. Walpole is sufficiently good-looking to be prepossessing, he is well bred, very courteous, converses ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever |
