"Pith" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... costumes—a company, say of The Merchant of Venice, another of The Cingalee, and a Variety Show or two. There were sellers of green bananas and soda water and native sweet cakes in all the colours you can think of, and British soldiers in khaki and pith helmets, and everyone running about with properties and luggage on their ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... was on north-east side; there it was 9 inches, from pith to bark next on east 8 1/2 inches, on south 8 inches, north 6 1/2 inches, west 6 1/2 inches, least on north-west side, 6 inches. The most light in this case came from the north-east. This was in ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a mock embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the spring came, she carried down sod and turf, and made for herself a seat in the central chamber, there to sit and think. By and by she fastened an oil lamp to the wall, and would light its rush-pith-wick, and read by it. Occasionally she made a good peat fire, for she had found a chimney that went sloping into the upper air; and if it did not always draw well, peat-smoke is as pleasant as wholesome, and she could bear a good deal ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... the butt of his pistol; but no answer was returned. On the ground, near the sill, had fallen an instrument, similar in outward form to the classic Cornucopiae, about five feet in length, and which appeared to be cut from some tree and made hollow by the pith being scooped out. The Norwegian taking it from the ground and applying the smaller end to his mouth, blew in it, and produced a blast that rang through the valley from one extremity to the other, and rattled among the rocks of the mountains. He bade us be still and listen; and the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... head with "the golden tresses of the dead." But it was as an observer and a delineator of man in all his moods that he was the bright, consummate flower of humanity. His experiences were wide and varied. He had absorbed into himself and made his own the pith and wisdom of his day. As the fittest survives, each age embodies in itself all worthy of preservation in the ages gone before. In Shakespeare's pages we find a reflection, perfect and absolute, of the age of Elizabeth, and therefore of ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... there's a nice youngster of excellent pith; Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith! But he shouted a song for the brave and the free— Just read on his medal, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... beauty and pure joy, by giving form to angelic beings, by interpreting Mariolatry in all its charm and pathos, and by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, painting lent efficient aid to piety. Yet painting had to omit the very pith and kernel of Christianity as conceived by devout, uncompromising purists. Nor did it do what the Church would have desired. Instead of riveting the fetters of ecclesiastical authority, instead of enforcing mysticism and asceticism, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... them remain one night to cool; then cut off the bottoms, and keep them in a dry, cool place. Cheap lights are made, by dipping rushes in tallow; the rushes being first stripped of nearly the whole of the hard outer covering and the pith alone being retained with just enough of the tough bark to keep ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... renown, Of various nations, and all volunteers; Not fighting for their country or its crown, But wishing to be one day brigadiers; Also to have the sacking of a town;— A pleasant thing to young men at their years. 'Mongst them were several Englishmen of pith, Sixteen called ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... heaven; neither has it a staircase of a million steps. Its flavour is faint and the steps are few. These few tasteless chapters are the staircase. If among my readers there is one of the Malini's disposition, I warn him that without climbing these steps he will not arrive at the pith of the story. ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... honour! Every word of it is worth a pint of guineas; and this is the pith of it. Far down West Indies way, some twenty-five, maybe, or thirty years ago, there was a plate ship wrecked upon a reef. I got it from a Spaniard, who had been sworn upon oath to keep it secret by priests who knew. The ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... He could find in none of those animals a sociable companion, because none of them had a soul like his, and consequently, could not share in the sweet joy that arises from an interchange of thoughts and sentiments, which constitutes the charming pith of life. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... to be the head or beginning of a Pith, as it were, or a part of the body which seemed more spungy then the rest, and much more irregularly flawed, which from T ascended by EE, though less visible, into the small neck towards A. The Grain, as it were, of all the flaws, that proceeds from all the outward Surface ADCCDA, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, 'round which systems grow; Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the centre of the room, which had just been suspended with all the formalities of a military execution. It appeared that the unfortunate beast had transgressed the laws of war; it had climbed the ramparts of a card-board fortress, and had actually eaten two pith sentries on duty at the bastions. It was to be exposed to the public view as an example during three days following! Catharine, unluckily, was so lost to the fitness of things as to betray open merriment. The Grand Duke was furious; and she had to retire, excusing herself with difficulty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... have often turned enforced solitude to account in executing works of great pith and moment. It is in solitude that the passion for spiritual perfection best nurses itself. The soul communes with itself in loneliness until its energy often becomes intense. But whether a man profits by solitude or not will mainly depend upon his own temperament, training and character. While, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... ring is made of a piece of splint or flat pith fifteen inches long. Form this into a ring, having ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... theory of Heracleitus from the side of modern astronomy, the harmony between old and new is equally striking. All substances, said he, spring from fire and to fire they are bound to return. It does not require much special knowledge to realise that this statement contains the pith of the latest theories of the birth and death of worlds. From fire-mist, says the modern astronomer, they were condensed, and to fire-mist, by collisions or otherwise, they will return. What the particular stages may be, what the significance of the nebula;, what the cosmic functions ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Forgave a brother, shall forgive a dunce. But should thy soul, form'd in some luckless hour, Vile interest scorn, nor madly grasp at power; 30 Should love of fame, in every noble mind A brave disease, with love of virtue join'd, Spur thee to deeds of pith, where courage, tried In Reason's court, is amply justified: Or, fond of knowledge, and averse to strife, Shouldst thou prefer the calmer walk of life; Shouldst thou, by pale and sickly study led, Pursue coy Science to the fountain-head; Virtue thy guide, and public good thy end, Should ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the manly, wholesome Anglo-Saxon tongue, the produce—witty, frivolous, prurient, and amusing—of Gallic imagination. But either the translations shared the interdict incurred by the objectionable originals, or the plan adopted to obtain their partial acceptance, destroyed pith and point. Letters from plague-ridden shores are fitted for the perusal of the uninfected by fumigation and other mysterious processes. They reach us reeking with aromatics and defaced by perforations, intended doubtless to favour the escape of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, And leave your England, as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women, Either past or not arriv'd to pith and puissance. For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd With one appearing hair, that will not follow These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege; Behold the ordnance on their carriages, With ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... like raw turnip-shavings and tastes like green almonds; is very delicate and good. Costs the life of a palm tree 12 to 20 years old—for it is the pith. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seems minded of late years to exterminate the coconut throughout the West Indies; belonging, we are told, to the Elaters—fire-fly, or skipjack beetles. His grub, like that of his cousin, our English wire-worm, and his nearer cousin, the great wire-worm of the sugar-cane, eats into the pith and marrow of growing shoots; and as the palm, being an endogen, increases from within by one bud, and therefore by one shoot only, when that is eaten out nothing remains for the tree but to die. And so ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... knew not what to do, and Hercules reminded him that the natives often eat the young shoots of the ferns and the pith which the papyrus leaf contains. He himself, while following the caravan of Ibn Ilamis across the desert, had been more than once reduced to this expedient to satisfy his hunger. Happily, the ferns and the papyrus grew in profusion along the banks, and the marrow ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... at the stranger's raiment. A pith helmet, Norfolk jacket, moleskin riding-breeches, leather puttees, and stout, pigskin footwear—these ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... extracts are given from letters of distinguished contemporaries who knew the orator. Colonel T.W. Higginson writes thus: "I have hardly heard his equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic presentation, in striking at the pith of an ethical question, and in single [signal] illustrations and examples." Another writes, in reference to the impromptu speech delivered at the meeting at Rochester on the death of Lincoln: "I have heard Webster and Clay in their best moments, Channing and Beecher in their highest ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... surprised Keith had he known how accurately the young engineer he had glanced at and dismissed as almost an amateur at the game, followed the trend of his scheming. There is not much variation in the methods of Mining Promotion, and Westlake was an observer and a conserver of the pith ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... disciple, Dumont in the spring of 1802 brought out his Traites de Legislation de M. Jeremie Bentham. The book was partly a translation from Bentham's published and unpublished works,[293] and partly a statement of the pith of the new doctrine in Dumont's own language. It had the great merit of putting Bentham's meaning vigorously and compactly, and free from many of the digressions, minute discussions of minor points and arguments requiring a special knowledge of English law, which had impeded ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... inhabitants. For vegetables they had the bulbs of many species of Ixias and Mesembryanthemums, among others the "Hottentot fig" (Mesembryanthemum edule). They had the "Caffir bread"—the inside pith of the stems of a species of Zamia; and the "Caffir chestnut," the fruit of the Brabeium stellatum; and last, not least, the enormous roots of the "elephant's foot" (Testudinaria elephantipes). They had wild onions ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... 'You come inside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming head.' There was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came, Bible in hand, after the manner of them—a little sandy chap in specks and a pith helmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there in the shadows, with my copper head and my big goggles, struck him a bit of a heap at first. 'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in calico?' for ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... ere a crossing-place could be found. During this time poor McPhail fared very hardly. He saw numerous herds of elk, but they bounded past unharmed: he had no rifle. He tried in vain to find some edible roots, and was at length reduced to the necessity of chewing grass and the pith of ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... spot. But Magellan was known to have gone by the Horn, and where a Portuguese could go an Englishman could go. Drake proposed to try. There was a party in Elizabeth's Council against these adventures, and in favour of peace with Spain; but Elizabeth herself was always for enterprises of pith and moment. She was willing to help, and others of her Council were willing too, provided their names were not to appear. The responsibility was to be Drake's own. Again the vessels in which he was preparing to tempt fortune seem preposterously small. ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... flax is used most largely in our textile manufactures. The linen fiber consists of the bast cells of certain species of flax grown in Europe, Africa, and the United States. All bast fibers are obtained near the outer surface of the plant stems. The pith and woody tissues are of no value. The flax plant is an annual and to obtain the best fibers it must be gathered before it is fully ripe. To obtain seed from which the best quality of linseed oil can be made it is usually necessary to sacrifice the quality ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... right sick for a year or more, sir. I got a blow on the head in a saw mill on Briony Creek and it made me just as useless as a bit of pith. The doctor says I am all right now, sir. I got tired of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... might disapprove of its editorials often, and regret their appearance—as I did—but it was impossible not to be carried onward by the hardy logic of the writer: impossible not to admire the Swift-like pith and vigor of this man, who seemed to have re-discovered the lost ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... to each pound of rhubarb cut without peeling, a pound of sugar and one lemon. Pare the yellow peel from the lemon, taking care to get none of the bitter white pith. Slice the pulp of the lemon in an earthen bowl, discarding the seeds. Put the rhubarb into the bowl with the sugar and lemon, cover and stand away in a cool place over night. In the morning turn into the preserving ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... Kirwan. 321. X. 1. Seeds suspended in their pods. Stars discovered by Mr. Herschel. Destruction and resuscitation of all things. 351. 2. Seeds within seeds, and bulbs within bulbs. Picture on the retina of the eye. Concentric strata of the earth. The great seed. 381. 3. The root, pith, lobes, plume, calyx, coral, sap, blood, leaves respire and absorb light. The crocodile in its egg. 409. XI. Opening of the flower. The petals, style, anthers, prolific dust. Transmutation of the silkworm. 441. XII. 1. Leaf-buds changed into flower-buds by wounding the bark, or strangulating ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... course, is universally known, rags, straw, old rope, poplar pith, etc., are the materials used. The best writing-paper is made of linen rags, which are for the most part imported from Germany. For ordinary writing and printing paper cotton rags are used, while straw and hemp, and even wool, go largely into the construction of ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... pith of historic eras can be expressed in the analytic words, phrases, or sentences with which their dates are enunciated. If the foregoing and subsequent examples are carefully, not hurriedly, studied, the student can readily hereafter retain a great deal of the ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... essence of a conversation is extracted, and the whole scene indicated by a few telling touches. We are tempted to fancy that we have heard the very thing, and rashly infer that Boswell was simply the mechanical transmitter of the good things uttered. Any one who will try to put down the pith of a brilliant conversation within the same space, may soon satisfy himself of the absurdity of such an hypothesis, and will learn to appreciate Boswell's powers not only of memory but artistic representation. Such a feat implies not only admirable quickness of appreciation, but ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... senses nave been re and imaginings. Instead of spiritual joy, the undivided joy of pure being, there has been self-indulgence of body and mind. These are all real forces, but distorted from their true nature and goal. They must be extricated, like gems from the matrix, like the pith from the reed, steadily, without destructive violence. Spiritual powers are to be drawn forth ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... catch a sufficient number in six months. And, if caught, how could they be preserved, together with the original stock of insects necessary to supply the world after the deluge? Some insects eat only bark; others, resinous secretions, the pith, solid wood, leaves, sap in the veins, as the aphid, flowers, pollen, and honey. Wood, bark, resin, and honey might have been supplied; but how could green leaves, sap, flowers and pollen, be furnished to those insects absolutely requiring them for existence? Thirty species ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... epitomizing, and, as far as possible, suppressing, what their predecessors produced. Criticisms are offered to us as substitutes for the works criticised; volumes are tapped that their sap and pith may be extracted; the analyst takes our labor upon himself and generously presents us with the fruits. Up to a certain point the process is unobjectionable, and we have reason to be grateful to those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to one end of the sumpitan, like a bayonet, thus providing a weapon for use at close quarters. The dart is made from a sliver of bamboo, or from a palm-frond, scraped to the size of a steel knitting-needle. One end of the dart is imbedded in a cork-shaped piece of pith which fits the hole in the sumpitan as a cartridge fits the bore of a rifle; the other end, which is of needle-sharpness, is smeared with a paste made from the milky sap of the upas tree dissolved in a juice extracted from the root of the tuba. With the possible exception of curare, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... described as "the size of a thumb" because of its abiding-place in the heart, often likened to a lotus-bud which is similar to a thumb in size and shape. Through the process of steadfast discrimination, one should learn to differentiate the Soul from the body, just as one separates the pith from ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed. His notions of charity at this early age were somewhat rudimentary; he used to peel rushes with the idea that the pith would afterwards "be given to the poor," though what possible use they could put it to he never attempted to explain. Indeed he seems at this time to have actually lived in that charming "Wonderland" which he afterwards described ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... all terrestrial bonds," she continued, not exactly remarking the pith of his last observation; "from bonds quasi- terrestrial and quasi-celestial. The full-formed limbs of the present age, running with quick streams of generous blood, will no longer bear the ligatures which past times ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... space, sought to prove him a liar by his defence of the Jay treaty in the Camillus papers, and made him insult Washington in language so un-Hamiltonian that to-day it excites pity for the desperation of the Virginians. When it finally arrived at the pith and marrow of the assault, however, it was with quite an innocent air. This was a carefully concocted version of the Reynolds affair. Callender had obtained possession of the papers which Monroe, Muhlenberg, and Venable had prepared to submit to the President, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... or paper bags sold by Ume, we see a pack of what seem to be tiny colored jackstraws or fine shavings. They are made by cutting out very thin slices of pith in the shape of men, women, birds, flowers, fishes, bats, tortoises, tools, and many other things. These are gummed, folded up, and pinched tightly, until each one looks like nothing but a shred of linen or a tiny chip of frayed wood. If you drop one of them into a bowl of hot water, ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Gunnersbury and drink a bottle with Princess Amelia. Alas, dear lady! and cannot you do all that without skuttling from one end of the world to the other?—This was the, upshot of all Cineas's inquisitiveness: and this is the pith of this tedious letter from, Madam, your ladyship's most faithful ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... is this. They take a reed and shave one side of the surface flat. In this they make a small incision to reach the pith, and introducing a stick, purposely blunted at the end, into it, turn it round between the hands (as chocolate is milled) as swiftly as possible, until flame be produced. As this operation is not only laborious, but the effect tedious, they frequently ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out of ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as it were, of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and mankind." The assertion that they desired to invert this order, to destroy every social link in so far as it tended to produce inequalities, was the pith of his great indictment against the French "metaphysical" revolutionists. They had perverted the general logical precept of the sufficient reason for all inequalities by converting it into an assuming of the equality of concrete units. They fell ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the privilege of being everywhere and always the same, because the human race is one. The white man (European or Caucasian), the black man (Ethiopian), the yellow man (Mongol), and the red man (American) are only varieties of the human species. As the Scots express it with wonted pith, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... write, is to impress upon medical students the value of power and promptitude in combination, for their professional purposes; the uses to them of nearness of the {Nous}, and of happy guessing; and how you may see the sense, and neatness, and pith of that excellent thinker, as well as best of all story-tellers, Miss Austen, when she says in Emma, "Depend upon it, a lucky guess is never merely luck, there is always some talent in it." Talent here denoting intelligence and will in action. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the electric telegraph; first, that in which frictional electricity has been proposed to produce sparks and motion of pith ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... speech he devotes to that important question, which the Enquirer says is the real question, and which many of your speakers doubtless here say is the real question, precisely eleven lines—one short paragraph. And the pith of that paragraph is contained in these two lines: "I am sorry that what I have to say on that subject for publication I must reserve for ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... tablets—whose many-leaved tablets, are they then, that are tumbled out upon us here, glowing with 'all saws, all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there.' And if aphorisms are made out of the pith and heart of sciences, if 'no man can write good aphorisms who is not sound and grounded,' what Wittenberg, what ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... cut it short, did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor, dry, empty thing In holes as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... drill shooting-kit, very white at the seams and a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him thoughtfully, from his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots. 'You look very nice, I think. Are you sure you've everything you'll need—quinine, ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... accomplishing absolutely nothing by continuing the struggle, nothing more than a woman yoked to a Silenus hoping to reform him when he daily grew worse under her eyes. The Government had blocked him. The party had blocked him. What was the pith of it all, anyway? Should those who had the power be given the legal right to take what they cared to seize? It was the same old question that had split every country up into revolution. And closest of all, keenest of all arguments, the new influence that had come into ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... that, on returning home, they sorely missed the water of the Mississippi. "I'll tell you, sir," said one very intelligent fellow, within whose hut I walked to light my cigar; "there's no pith in any other water after one's bin' used to drink o' this; it seems as though a man couldn't work on ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... layers. For the filling, take two good-sized, juicy oranges. Flavor two tablespoonfuls of sugar by rubbing it over the skin of the oranges, then peel, remove the white rind, and cut into small pieces, discarding the seeds and the central pith. Put the orange pulp in a china bowl, and set in a dish of boiling water. When it is hot, stir in a heaping teaspoonful of cornstarch which has been braided smooth in two spoonfuls of water. Stir constantly until the starch has cooked, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... all; he grew and grew; and he stood there in all his greenery; rich green was he winter and summer. People that saw him said, "That's a fine tree!" and toward Christmas he was the first that was cut down. The axe struck deep into the very pith; the Tree fell to the earth with a sigh: he felt a pang—it was like a swoon; he could not think of happiness, for he was sad at being parted from his home, from the place where he had sprung up. He well knew that he should never see his dear old ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... in the Church of England prior to the Reformation, called 'The Festival,' contains the pith of these lying legends and pretended miracles. Omitting the obscene parts, it ought to be republished, to exhibit the absurdities of popery as it was then seen ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the pith of the first. To me it is of more moment than the other three. It is irregular and wavering in outline, the moods are wandering and capricious, yet who dares deny its power, its beauty? In its use of accessory figures it does not reveal so much ingenuity, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... use is an ingeniously contrived weapon. It is made from a species of palm-tree. When an Indian wants one, he goes into the woods and selects a tree with a long slender stem of less than an inch in diameter; he extracts the pith out of this, and then cuts another stem, so much larger than the first that he can push the small tube into the bore of the large one,—thus the slight bend in one is counteracted by the other, and a perfectly straight pipe is formed. The mouthpiece is afterwards neatly finished off. The arrows ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... decorated, and in which each group of the guests were supplied with food cooked after the manner of their own country. A ball followed, in which the people of each nation danced their national dances to their national music. The pith of the joke, in the Russian appreciation of that day, came at the end, the bride and groom being conducted to a bed of ice in an icy palace, in which they were forced to spend the night, guards being stationed at the door to prevent ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... upright, he took it in his fore-paws, and with his incisor teeth—shaped perfectly like an adze for such a purpose—stripped it of its outer covering, beginning at the severed edge, and laying bare the white pith, on ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... we will but listen and look, we will hear and see and feel this central life. This is the pith of the message we find repeated again and again in various forms throughout Wordsworth's poetry, and perhaps best summed up at the end of the fourth book of the Excursion, a book which should be closely studied by any one who would ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... these exalted moments that Caroline had learned to fear him most. It was in the quiet, tired reserve, the dullness, even, that kept him company between these outbursts that she found that exhausting drain upon her sympathies which was the very pith and substance of their alliance. It was the tacit admission of disappointment under all this glamour of success—the helplessness of the enchanter to at all enchant himself—that awoke in her an illogical, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... can't. They would be all Greek and Hebrew to you. Thank your stars that you have got a sharp son, who can take the pith out of these papers, and give it a smack of the right flavor in serving it up. There are not ten men in England who could tell you this woman's story as I can tell it. It's a gift, old gentleman, of the sort that is given to very few ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... desire to attract attention, etc.) and not to esthetics—that is, the love of beauty for its own sake. Such a germ of esthetic pleasure we find in our infants years before they have the faintest conception of what is meant by personal beauty; and this brings me to the pith of my argument. Had the facts warranted it, I might have freely conceded that savages decorate themselves for the sake of gaining an advantage in courtship without thereby in the least yielding the main ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... bare arm of the milkmaid, Adonis drew the figure down a pith toward the small lake that was on one edge of the ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... the text, he reached the pith of his sermon: "A man out of place is only half a man. His nature is perverted. He becomes restless and discontented and his life is made a failure, while the same person might have made a success of all his undertakings if he had been properly ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the Pope's bidding, ardent to signalise their valour in so great an enterprise, and longing also for the pay and the plunder which William liberally promised. But the Normans themselves were the pith and the flower of the army; and William himself was the strongest, the sagest, and fiercest spirit of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... dew be a manner of airy substance, and most subtle outward, natheless in a wonder manner it is strong in working and virtue. For it besprinkleth the earth, and maketh it plenteous, and maketh flour, pith, and marrow increase in corn and grains: and fatteth and bringeth forth broad oysters and other shell fish in the sea, and namely dew of spring time. For by night in spring time oysters open themselves against dew, and receive dew that cometh ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... lieutenant bars and a pith helmet and was carrying a large piece of wood in imitation of Norton's swagger stick. Terrence took one look at him and at the two orderlies who stood behind him holding his field kit. He strode toward him scowling, placed his fists on his hips and stood glaring up at the Greenback as he ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... freedom of banishment. We were going to say (but it might sound vainglorious), where do things read so well as in notes? but we will put the question in another form:—Where do you so well test an author's learning and knowledge of his subject?—where do you find the pith of his most elaborate researches?—where do his most original suggestions escape?—where do you meet with the details that fix your attention at the time and cling to your memory for ever?—where do both writer and reader luxuriate so much at their case, and feel that they are wisely ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... of past controversy seldom tend to the spiritual improvement of the present. An interesting judgment by Professor Horstman on Rolle's place in mysticism is too long for quotation; but the following sentence may be taken as the pith of it:—"His position as a mystic was mainly the result of the development of scholasticism. The exuberant luxuriant growth of the brain in the system of Scotus called forth the reaction of the heart, and this reaction is embodied in Richard Rolle, who as exclusively represents ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... is a woody shell, enclosing a wide pith and covered by a thick cortex traversed by resin-ducts. By removing the scales and cortex from the axis (fig. 65) the wood is seen to be in sinuous strands uniting above and below fusiform openings, the points of ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... means a coolness springs up between him and the G. C. Of this the Game-Captain is made aware when the game commences. The partial slacker, scorning to insert his head in the scrum, assumes a commanding position outside and from this point criticises the Game-Captain's decisions with severity and pith. The last end of the partial slacker is generally a sad one. Stung by some pungent home-thrust, the Game-Captain is fain to try chastisement, and by these means silences ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... rubbed, she experienced no effect whatever.[11] Yet when M. de Faremont, on the nineteenth of January, tried the same experiment with a stick of sealing-wax and a glass tube, well prepared by rubbing, he obtained no effect whatever. So also a pendulum of light pith, brought into close proximity to her person at various points, was neither attracted nor repulsed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... should take umbrage at my frankness, which ought to assure you of my interest in your happiness and improvement, permit me to remind you of the oriental definition of a faithful friend, that has more pith than verbal polish,— ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... bear to see nothing happy. The pony had sense enough to reply, weary as he was, with a stronger kick, which took Master Lancelot in the knee, and discouraged him for any further contest. Bully as he was, the boy had too much of ancient Yordas pith in him to howl, or cry, or even whimper, but sat down on a little ridge to nurse his poor knee, and meditate revenge against the animal with hoofs. Presently pain and wrath combined became too much for the weakness of his frame, and he fell back and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... in the same room. Casual visitors were simply announced by an usher, and were received whenever business did not prevent. Mr. Davis' manner was unvarying in its quiet and courtesy, drawing out all that one had to tell, and indicating by brief answer, or criticism, that he had extracted the pith from it. At that moment he was the very idol of the people; the grand embodiment to them of their grand cause; and they gave him their hands unquestioning, to applaud any move soever he might make. And equally unthinking as this popular manifestation ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... his opinions, and stubborn in the maintenance of them, Hardouin reproduced the least reprehensible in his "Ad Censuram Scriptorum Veterum Prologomena." From the manner in which he has been replied to by scholars all over Europe, especially in Holland, France and Germany, conspicuous among whom for pith of argument stand Basnage, Leclerc, Lacroze, Ittig and Bierling, nobody at the present day considers that what he said about the monuments of antiquity is worthy of the slightest attention, though everybody acknowledges his wonderful memory, sagacity, ingenuity, and mastery of all kinds of literature, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... we haue, Then flye to others that we know not of. Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all, And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought, And enterprizes of great pith and moment, With this regard their Currants turne away, And loose the name of Action. Soft you now, The faire Ophelia? Nimph, in thy Orizons ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... with the leaflets attached,—there can be no mistake. The thicker part of the stem is in such a state of keeping, that it presents to the microscope, in a sliced preparation, the internal structure, and exhibits, as in recent coniferous twigs of a year's growth, a central pith, a single ring of reticulated tissue arranged in lines that radiate outwards, and a thin layer of enveloping bark. Nothing, then, can be more certain than that this ancient twig, which must be accepted as representative of the foliage of whole forests of the Secondary ages ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... First, come soft felt wide-awakes, broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned, now presenting every diversity of slouch. Next, are hats of the same original shape, made of coarse plaited straw or reeds, now very much broken and bent. Finally, there are the remains of one or two pith helmets ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Thomas Gordon had been a man like Robert Williamson I shouldn't have waited to see your Kilmeny. But they are all right—rugged and grim, but of good stock and pith—native refinement and strong character. But I must say candidly that I hope your young lady hasn't ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the afternoon discourses were practical. The original design of Yale College was to found a divinity school. To a mind appreciative, like mine, his preaching was a continual course of education and a continual feast. He was copious and polished in style, though disciplined and logical. There was a pith and power of doctrine there that has not been ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... "It was the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two moments at which I hold that a man's soul may be caught apart, may be cut off from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a light-tight camera. You cannot have forgotten them ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... Authority has resources,—which ought it not to put forth? If it cannot realise money, the Royal Authority is as good as dead; dead of that surest and miserablest death, inanition. Risk and win; without risk all is already lost! For the rest, as in enterprises of pith, a touch of stratagem often proves furthersome, his Majesty announces a Royal Hunt, for the 19th of November next; and all whom it concerns are joyfully getting their ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... out beyond the nearest fixed star; but then he remembered that the distance to that first solar neighbor was estimated in trillions, not billions, and that our little system, even with its new additions, was a child's handbreadth on the plane of the sky. He had brought along a small book called The Pith of Astronomy—a fascinating little volume—and he read from it about the great tempest of fire in the sun, where the waves of flame roll up two thousand miles high, though the sun itself is such a tiny star in the deeps ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... is sago flour. The sago palm is known to the natives under the name of rumbiah, the pith, after its first preliminary washing, is called lamantah (i.e., raw), and after its preparation for export by the Chinese, sagu. The botanical name is Metroxylon, M. Laevis being that of the variety the trunk of ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... not the only ones that haunt the forest. There is a host of parasites besides, principally Insects and their larvae, which bore their way into the very heart of the tree, making their home in the bark and pith, and not the less numerous because hidden from sight. These also have their counterparts in the Reef, where numbers of boring Shells and marine Worms work their way into the solid substance of the wall, piercing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... sun tells severely on the British battalions, as the hospital returns show. Of course, since Mutiny days, many salutary changes have been made in the dress and equipment of the soldier. The small cap with its insufficient puggaree is replaced by the pith helmet, the shade of which is increased by a long quilted covering. The high stock and thick, tight uniforms are gone, and a cool and comfortable khaki kit has been substituted. A spine protector covers the back, and in other ways rational improvements have been effected. But the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... statement in regard to colonial government. His lordship denounced the imprudence of the Colonial Reform Association, which, by its correspondence with disaffected persons, kept alive discontent wherever it existed, and indirectly promoted it everywhere else. The pith of the noble lord's statement was, that the colonies were a source of strength in peace and war, contrary to the doctrine propounded by Messrs. Cobden and Bright: that it was the duty of England to preserve her colonial influence, and to extend civilization and freedom wherever her flag ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... every degree produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes, and the infusion of a China plant is sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippic islands give a flavour to our European bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of an hundred climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... went there, felled the cherry tree, and for fear of touching the pith while stripping off the bark, the youth requested all ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... not intend to go back to that room where he had left the candle burning. Oh no! He couldn't have faced even the entry and the staircase with the broken step—certainly not that pith-white, fascinating room. He would go back for the present to his old arrangement, of workroom and separate sleeping-quarters; he would go to his old landlady at once—presently—when he had finished his brandy—and see ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... if you put the head of a bear in boiling water, the tusks will always split open later on. With the bones of the sheep's head, it will not make so much difference. But we couldn't get the horns off yet awhile—they'll have to dry out before they will slip from the pith, and the best way is not to take them off at all. If we keep on scraping and salting we'll keep our ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... whose arms are without muscles and whose back is without pith, will strive in vain to lift the weight which the brawny vigour of another tosses from the ground almost without an effort. It is with the mind and the spirit as with the body; only this, that the muscles ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... each other, sitting. "Here's pith!" said Gibson. "Pith!" said the other in chorus, and they nodded to each other in amity, primed glasses up and ready. And then it was eyes heavenward and the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... blew triumphantly, And these two champions eagerly, They spurr'd their horse with spear on breast, Pertly[2] to prove their pith they press'd. That round rink-room[3] was at utterance, But Talbart's horse with a mischance He outterit,[4] and to run was loth; Whereof Talbart was wonder wroth. The Squier forth his rink[5] he ran, Commended well ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the next day buying a war correspondent's outfit: the camel, the travelling bath, the putties, the pith helmet, the quinine, the sleeping-bag, and the thousand-and-one other necessities of active service. On the Friday his colleagues at the office came down in a body to Southampton to see him off. Little did they think that nearly a year would ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... up at daybreak, and making my toilet by tightening my belt and putting on my mud-spattered pith helmet, I went down to the water's edge to try to find some means of communicating with the ship. During my absence at the front there had evidently been strong winds and heavy seas, for the strip of beach was covered with the wrecks of lighters which had been smashed while trying to land supplies ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... together, but the Puritan and the scoffer are like oil and water. Yet the Puritan is the oil, for he will be ever atop. These courtiers do but stand for themselves, while the others are backed up by the pith and marrow of the army. It is well that we are afoot to-morrow. The King's troops are, I hear, pouring across Salisbury Plain, but their ordnance and stores are delaying them, for they know well that they must bring all they need, since ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... extraordinary had taken place. Imposing silence, Grimaud put out the little night lamp, then knelt down and poured into the lieutenant's ear a recital melodramatic enough not to require play of feature to give it pith. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... atween oursels, my Lord has na the heart of a true bairn to that aged and worthy grannie of the papistry, our leddy the Virgin Mary—here's her health, poor auld deaf and dumb creature—she has na, I doubt, the pith to warsle wi' the blast she ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... worthy priest for fasting and prayer And mortification most deserving; And as for preaching beyond compare, He'd exert his powers for three or four hours, With greater pith than Sydney Smith Or ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... order to express the sap, which contains the poison. The dry pith is wholesome and nourishing. Still, I do not mean to taste my cakes until I have tried their effect on our fowls and the ape." Our supply of roots being reduced to damp powder, the canvas bag was filled with it, and tying it tightly up, I attempted to squeeze it, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... I, therefore, infer that it will be readily yielded, that in regard to the treaty, in aid of which this bill is exhibited, the treaty-making power has not exceeded its just limits. So far we have proceeded on sure ground; we now come to the pith of the question. Is the legislative sanction necessary to give it effect? I answer in the negative. Why? Because, by the second clause of the sixth article of the constitution, it is declared that all treaties made or which shall be made, under the authority of the United ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... reading, his gravity or want of gravity, but from the fact of his having been educated for the ministry, which in those days required a great deal more preaching damnation to sinners than now. His unwillingness to do so was the means of his leaving the pulpit, and this gave the pith of the toast or ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... more or less current use. Among such words are carpos fruit, pericarpion seed vessel pericarp, and metra, the word used by him for the central core of any stem whether formed of wood, pith, or other substance. It is from the usage of Theophrastus that the exact definition of fruit and pericarp has come down to us.[18] We may easily discern also the purpose for which he introduces into botany the term metra, a word meaning primarily ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... grown up and gone out from the village who have listened to his stories. Wherever those boys are now—scattered far and wide—they recall no scenes or events of their springtime without a remembrance of Dr. Evans and his tales, none of which were wanting in pith or amusement.] ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... one can tell so much so briefly. Here are the facts then—bare. He found a punt and a pole, got across to the steps on the opposite side, picked up an elderly gentleman in an alpaca jacket and a pith helmet, cruised with him vaguely for twenty minutes, conveyed him tortuously into the midst of a thicket of forget-me-not spangled sedges, splashed some water-weed over him, hit him twice with the punt pole, and finally landed ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the same palpitation of heart which Boswell experienced when introduced to Johnson. I was welcomed with both hands, and such kind, and complimentary words, that confusion and fear alike forsook me. When I saw him in Edinburgh, he was in the very pith and flush of life—even in my opinion a thought more fat than bard beseems; when I looked on him now, thirteen years had not passed over him and left no mark behind: his hair was growing thin and grey; the stamp of years and study was on his brow: he told me he had suffered much lately ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... bit the chin strap of his pith helmet, for the landing party wore the regulation uniform for service ashore in the tropics. He muttered ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... are full of the pith of facts. Dread of Africa lay deep in the Spanish heart and gave point to these and other magical and romantic tales. The story of how the great conqueror, Mohammed, had come out from the deserts of Arabia ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... There is nothing forced, nothing foisted in or patched up, nothing fragmentary. The rhymes are easy and good, the words choice and proper, the meaning clear and intelligible, the melodies lovely and hearty, and in summa all is so rare and majestic, so full of pith and power, so cheering and comforting, that, in sooth, you will not find his ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... the mouth of the Liuche, which is very wide; the river oozes out through a forest of eschinomenae (pith tree). This was a rendezvous agreed upon between shore and lake parties, that the canoes might all cross to the other side, distant a mile and a half. The mouth of the Liuche forms the Bay of Ukaranga, so named because on the other side, whither we were about to cross our party, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley |
