"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nervous feeling gripped the pit of John's stomach as he followed with Benton and Brennan behind the man who led them up the hill as the others branched out in pairs through the brush, spreading ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... Viceroyalties in the world, that of Peru was undoubtedly the proudest during the earlier Spanish colonial period, for the holder of the high office governed not merely a country, but the greater half of a vast Continent. Seeing that the colonial policy of Spain invariably tended to pit one of her subordinate Powers against another in order to avoid the acquirement of too much authority on the part of any special person, it was only natural that the authority of the Viceroy, although great, was not supreme even in his ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Matriena Pavlovna, leaning her head forward and smiling. By the intonation of her voice she seemed to say, "All are equal to-day," and wiping her mouth with a bandana handkerchief which she kept under her arm-pit, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and never would be a chance for him to do it;—and all their arguments, all the sheer dreadful tyranny of fact, had no weight with him at all: he went on and on. What was his sword of strength? Where were the Allies in whom he trusted? How dared he pit K'ung Ch'iu of Lu against time and the world and me?—The Unseen was with him, and the Silence; and he (perhaps) lifted no veil from the Unseen, and kept silent as to the silence;—and yet maintained his Movement, and held his disciples together, and saved his people,—as ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... committee decided to use cast-iron for the Columbiad, and in particular the grey description. This metal is, in fact, the most tenacious, ductile, and malleable, suitable for all moulding operations, and when smelted with pit coal it is of superior quality for engine-cylinders, hydraulic ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... spoke his thought went to his rifle, leaning against a dead log ten feet away. This was the moment of test: the jealousy and rivalry and hatred between himself and Ray had reached the crisis. And the spirit of murder, terrible past any demon of the Pit, came stalking from the savage ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... malice digg'd a pit, But there themselves are cast; My God makes all their mischief light On their ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... those who have rejected the new religion and its priests are precipitated into a pit of perdition, in the midst of which sits the judge, with his executioners, with swords in their hands, while the guilty are dragged before him by the hair and feet. In the distance is a furnace, and another crowd of "infidels" under punishment. But ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... to joke in his class. His unhappy audience has no choice but laughter. No doubt in point of intellect the English judges and the bar represent the most highly trained product of the British Empire. But when it comes to fun, they ought not to pit ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... foolishly confiding husband; it meant perpetual temptation, and at last—a fall! And yet God had guided him to choose that sermon rather than the other. He had abandoned himself passively to His guidance—could that lead to the brink of the pit?... He cried out suddenly like one in bodily anguish. He had found the explanation. God cared for no half-victories. Flight to Chicago must seem to Him the veriest cowardice. God intended him to stay in Kansas ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... Right to Labor" was printed, many persons expressed their regret that so little was said about sin and destitution in Boston itself; and many refused to believe that every pit-fall and snare open in the Old World gaped as widely here. "You have only the testimony of the girls themselves," they would reply, when I privately told them what I had not thought it wise to print. I have never regretted yielding to the motives which decided me to withhold ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... I know thee now; thou cam'st But once in thine own form, and ever since Hast been too near me in a worser one. Back to the pit, I ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... of vice and shame, full of infamous suggestions, going as far as they can without exposing themselves to the clutch of the law. I name none of them; but say that on some fashionable tables there lie 'family newspapers' that are the very vomit of the pit. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... forming in it, like fowl's eggs, so that for eight months she brought up blood. And she also was at the point of death, with nothing but her skin left on her bones, and dying of hunger, when she drank some water of Lourdes and had the pit of her stomach washed with it. Three minutes afterwards, her doctor, who on the previous day had left her almost in the last throes, scarce breathing, found her up and sitting by the fireside, eating a tender chicken's wing with a good appetite. She had no more tumours, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... features became the objects of her attention in their inverse order, and the richly endowed talents, with which he was so signally accomplished, furnished objects of special consideration to her reflective soul. He was exceedingly fascinating and a dangerous object to pit against the heart of any woman. Still Marjorie was shrewd enough to peer beneath his superficial qualities, allowing herself to become absorbed in a penetrating study of the man, his character, his peculiarities;—so absorbed, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... whae's denying it?" said my uncle. "Pit it as ye please, hae't your ain way; I'll do naething to cross ye. Just tell me what like ye'll be wanting, and ye'll see that we'll can ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to tell you 'bout how we killed hogs in my day. We digged a deep pit in de groun' and heated big rocks red hot and filled up de pit with water and dropped dem hot rocks in and got de water hot; den we stuck de hogs and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... were still yelling, so I pulled myself together and went at the last hurdle viciously and got clean over, and then put it on all I could to the winning-post. I guessed I'd done it in thirty seconds, and wished there was a pit I could tumble ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... wrath of the Lord of Hosts, the Land is darkned. Our Land is darkned indeed; since the Powers of Darkness are turned in upon us: 'tis a dark time, yea a black night indeed, now the Ty-dogs of the Pit are abroad among us: but, It is through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts! Inasmuch as the Fire-brands of Hell it self are used for the scorching of us, with cause enough may we cry out, What means the heat of this anger? Blessed Lord! Are all ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... blurred vision of the things about which he talks so sweetly. He would be more poignant, and more likely to draw people after him, if he had living images burned into his consciousness. My own set of pictures all stand out with ghastly plainness as if they were lit up by streaks of fire from the Pit. I have come through the Valley of the Shadow into which I ventured with a light heart, and those who know me might point and say what was said of a giant: "There is the man who has been in hell." It was true. Through the dim and sordid inferno, I moved ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... shades and emotions the story of her life and love? And if every other beauty had failed, Angelica's eyes would have atoned for the loss. They were large, softly- black, slow-moving, or again, in a moment, flashing with the fire that lay hidden in the dark pit of the iris. ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... in which the Uphams had taken shelter was in sight of the old homestead, some rods farther on, on the opposite side of the road. It stood in a sandy waste of weeds on the border of an old gravel-pit—an ancient cottage, with a wretched crouch of humility in its very roof. It had been covered with a feeble coat of red paint years ago, and cloudy lines of it still survived the wash of old rains and ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rhyme, of the most melancholy stupidity that ever was. Yet there was something very comical in the conditions of its performance, and in the possibility that public and manager were playing at cross- purposes. There we were in the pit, an assemblage of hard-working Yankees of decently moral lives and simple traditions, country-bred many of us and of plebeian stock and training, vulgar enough perhaps, but probably not depraved, and, excepting the first lady's friends, certainly not educated ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... accompanied by Montgolfier and Roziers. At sight of them the enthusiasm of the house rose to fever pitch. The other voyagers also entered, and were greeted with the same demonstrations. Cries arose from the pit to begin the opera again, in honour of the visitors. The curtain then fell, and when it again rose, after a few moments, the actor who filled the role of Agamemnon advanced with crowns, which he handed to Madame de Flesselles, ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... method of cultivation is employed, as the main issue, houses are constructed especially for the purpose. In general the houses are of two kinds. Those which are largely above the ground, and those where a greater or lesser pit is excavated so that the larger part of the house is below ground. Between these extremes all gradations exist. Probably it is easier to maintain an equable temperature when the house is largely below ground. Where it is largely ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... simply one of those many instances in animals where unconscious habit has the same result as conscious prevision. The hours between midnight and dawn are the busiest. The turtles excavate with their broad, webbed paws, deep holes in the fine sand— the first corner, in each case, making a pit about three feet deep, laying its eggs (about 120 in number) and covering them with sand; the next making its deposit at the top of that of its predecessor, and so on until every pit is full. The whole body of turtles frequenting a praia does not finish laying in less ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... heart he despises them. Those whom he leads he knows to be blind, and his trade is to persuade them that they can see. The Illusion has made them mad; none sees whither he is going; the next step may plunge them all into the pit; they live for they know not what. All this is known to yonder man; and, being unenlightened, he has no way of escape, but yields to his destiny, which is, that he shall be the bond-servant of lies." In short, the discovery which the Oriental believed himself to have made was this—that neither ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... and then a faint cry came up from far, far down the long ice gallery. It was repeated. There could be no doubt that it was from my friends. I waited to consider whether I should return and get others to come down with more ropes, so that should Short and Obed have fallen into an ice-pit, we might help them out; or whether it was best to wait and see if they were working their own way up, as I found from experience they might be able to do. It was while thus waiting for them that I was able to admire the beauty of the scene. The floor was ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... Virgil, visits; it is the scene of righteous retribution through which he is led; it is the apportionment of punishment and reward to crime or virtue, in this upper world, that he is doomed to witness. We enter the city of lamentation—we look down the depths of the bottomless pit—we stand at the edge of the burning lake. His survey is not a mere transient visit like that of Ulysses in Homer, or of AEneas in Virgil. He is taken slowly and deliberately through every successive circle of Malebolge; descending down which, like the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... shall ply no more in my daughter Hackney's quarters: You shall have the city, from White-Chapel to Temple-Bar, and she shall have to Covent-Garden downwards: At the play-houses, she shall ply the boxes, because she has the better face; and you shall have the pit, because you can prattle best ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... once Larry uttered a yell of pain and anger. One of Phil's missiles had landed in the pit of the fellow's stomach. Larry doubled up like a jacknife, and, dropping suddenly, rolled rapidly toward the ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... thrusting about her she was met by the two men and as she came up to them La Touche was cursing the wind. The Wooley had all but blown him down too. He had got up sooner than Bompard and had received the full face of it "in the pit of the stomach." He seemed to look on it as a personal matter affecting ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Little did you think, sir, when you was digging that pit for my rubbish, eh? 'E may 'ave been watchin' you digging it ... ooh! I have to sit in my kitchen and think ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... of this added to his timidity, which being unfortunately physical as well as mental, caused him to be universally looked down upon by his brothers. Even Marian began to share the feeling when she saw him turn pale and start back from the verge of a precipitous chalk pit where she could stand in perfect indifference, and when she heard him aver his preference for quiet horses. Mayflower's caperings were to him and Caroline so shocking, and it appeared to them so improper that she ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... "This useful invention, which puts the amateur in the way of forming an intelligent judgment of the legs of a dancing-girl, was thought at that time to be the cause of a dangerous schism. The Jansenists of the pit exclaimed heresy, scandal; and were opposed to the shortened petticoats. The Molinists, on the contrary, held that this innovation was in character with the spirit of the primitive church, which was opposed to the sight of pirouettes and pigeon-wings, embarrassed by the length of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... sudden roar as of flame from the very mouth of the pit, and for the space of a single second all grew light as day. A blinding flash passed across my face, and there was heat for an instant that seemed to shrivel skin, and flesh, and bone. Then came steps, and I heard Colonel Wragge utter a great cry, wilder than ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the state of things materially different in the gun-room, or cock-pit, or on the orlops. Most of the people of a two-decked ship are berthed on the lower gun deck, and the order to "clear ship" is more necessary to a vessel of that construction, before going to quarters seriously, than to smaller craft; though it is usual ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was brought to Elene where she waited to hear tidings, and she bade her servants lift the weakened Judas from the dark pit; then they led him, half dead with hunger, out of the city to the hill of Calvary. There Judas prayed to the God whom he now feared and worshipped for a sign, some token to guide them in their search for the Holy Cross. As he prayed a sweet-smelling vapour, curling ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Serves me with his writ, I'll take the bay horse To Marley gravel pit. Over the quarry edge, I'll sit him tight, If he wants the brown hide, He's welcome to ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you must battle for and can only win at last when utterly beaten. Hard by their inn, close enough for a priestly homily to have been audible, stood a church campanile, wherein hung a Bell, not ostensibly communicating with the demons of the pit; in daylight rather a merry comrade. But at night, when the children of nerves lay stretched, he threw off the mask. As soon as they had fairly nestled, he smote their pillows a shattering blow, loud for the retold preluding quarters, incredibly clanging ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... scream, followed by a heavy thud, and running in the direction of the noise, narrowly avoided falling into a pit, the sides of which were partly overgrown with weeds ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... home whistling and congratulating himself on the escape he had made, described what had happened, and it was noised abroad in the country that the people who had gone away, and had never returned, had all fallen into that pit; for till then they had never known what had happened to those who had heard the voice ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... Pegge in 1775, 'that a creature so useful and so noble as the cock should be so enormously abused by us. It is true the massacre of Shrove Tuesday seems in a declining way, and in a few years, it is to be hoped, will be totally disused; but the cock-pit still continues a reproach to the humanity of Englishmen. It is unknown to me when the pitched battle first entered England; but it was probably brought hither by the Romans. The bird was here before Caesar's ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of black and gray pin stripes, and the "Doll's House" might use the outline of a doll's house in grass green on green-bordered white paper, and white envelopes lined with grass green. Each of these devices must be as small as the outline of a cherry pit and the paper of the smallest size that comes. (Envelopes 3-1/2 x 5 inches or paper 4 x 6 and envelopes the same size to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... brows and tear our beards. Cries one: 'I know what is down there!' Another turns to him: 'You lie!' A third challenges: 'Prove yourselves!' And thus do professors, students, psychologists, churchmen, laymen, infidels, and fools, gather about the pit! This much for study," he snapped his finger. "Unless a man have faith, he is in darkness to the end ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... And even then he will leave his cherished and tranquil retirement soon enough, for the agitation and excitement of this new world. God grant that he may never repent of having exposed the unspotted obscurity of his name and his person to the shoals, the squalls and tempests of the pit, and above all (for what does a mere failure matter?) to the wretched bickerings of the wings; of having entered that shifting, foggy, stormy atmosphere, where ignorance dogmatises, where envy hisses, where cabals cringe and crawl, where the probity of talent has so often ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Bostil peered long into the shadows. Then he looked up. The ragged ramparts far above frowned bold and black at a few cold stars, and the blue of its sky was without the usual velvety brightness. How far it was up to that corrugated rim! All of a sudden Bostil hated this vast ebony pit. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... and all the others smiled. "She may have gone through a good deal," they remarked, "but how can she ever presume to pit herself against an old lady like you? So why don't you, venerable senior, tell her what it is so that we too may ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... meeting had not lasted many seconds, and yet it seemed to Cousin Hans that in these moments he had toppled from ledge to ledge, many fathoms down, into a deep, black pit. He supported himself with both hands against an old, high-backed easy-chair; he neither heard, saw, nor thought; but half mechanically he repeated to himself: "It was not she—it was ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... biography, he has attempted an appreciation of Peacock's art. As we set ourselves a similar task so recently as February last, when reviewing Dr. Young's edition of the plays, we feel no call to restate our estimate or pit it against that of this new critic. It need only be said that he realizes, as does Mr. Van Doren, the singularity of Peacock's genius; that, though neither has succeeded in showing precisely why it is unique, the English critic has brought forward some highly illuminating suggestions; and that reduction ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... his sign declared, a lawyer by profession. By occupation and common consent he was the Son of his Father. This was the shadow in which Billy lived, the pit out of which he had unsuccessfully striven for years to climb and, he had come to believe, the grave in which his ambitions were destined to be buried. Filial respect and duty he paid beyond the habit of most sons, but he ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... years, he had been stupid and illiberal, but nothing worse; in his old age, he seemed to seek out opportunities of wickedness and outrage, and at last he gave way to transports which could only be likened to those of a fiend from the Pit, permitted for a season to afflict the earth. He was as base as he was wicked; a thief, and perjured, as well as an insatiable murderer. The only trait that seems to ally him with manhood is itself animal and repulsive. He had wholly ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... to set him off with the same energy in a much worse direction," answered Fisher; "a pretty endless sort of direction, a bottomless pit as deep as ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... engaged, therefore he called to him to come, and after much persuasion the elder brother left the lodge and joined the younger and the slave See-na-ulth, and together they paddled up the stream to Ok-sock-tis opposite the present village of O-pit-ches-aht. Across the river there were houses in which more klootsmuk lived, but at this time they were employed in gathering Kwanis in the land behind, and when the young men sought them out they were afraid and all but one took flight escaping to the woods. This one ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... witches danced in the same manner. 'We used to go to a gravel pit which lay hard by a cross-way, and there we put on a garment over our heads, and then danced round.'[506] The round dance was so essentially a witch dance that More says, 'It might be here very seasonable to enquire into the nature of those large dark Rings in the grass, which they call Fairy ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... had gained my loins. It was moving towards the pit of my stomach. The helplessness with which I suffered its invasion was not the least part of my agony,—it was that helplessness which we know in dreadful dreams. I understood, quite well, that if I did but give myself ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... they had a common faith. The general character of a community formed of a rude people, emerging from fetish and demon worship, can be readily supposed. I suspect the converts made by the monk Augustine and his companions had not a little in their character and conduct to show the pit from which they had been taken; and yet that was the dawning of a day for the Anglian and Saxon race in our country for which we have abundant reason to be thankful. There is no doubt much imperfection in Kol and ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... from the dragon's jaws for sowing, then watch for the time when the night is parted in twain, then bathe in the stream of the tireless river, and alone, apart from others, clad in dusky raiment, dig a rounded pit; and therein slay a ewe, and sacrifice it whole, heaping high the pyre on the very edge of the pit. And propitiate only-begotten Hecate, daughter of Perses, pouring from a goblet the hive-stored labour of bees. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... Directly behind the structure was the smoking hut, or defumador, as it is called. Inside this are a number of sticks inclined in pyramid form and covered with palm-leaves. In the floor a hole was dug for the fire that serves for coagulating the rubber-milk. Over this pit is hung a sort of frame for guiding the heavy stick employed in the smoking of the rubber. At this time the process had not become for me the familiar story that it was destined to be. Beneath the hut were several unfinished paddles and a canoe under construction. The latter are invariably ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... soon as he is taken out; then laid on a bed or mattrass in a warm apartment, with the head and upper part a little raised, and the nostrils cleaned with a feather dipped in oil. Let the body be gently rubbed with common salt, or with flannels dipped in spirits; the pit of the stomach fomented with hot brandy, the temples stimulated with spirits of hartshorn, and bladders of lukewarm water applied to different parts of the body, or a warming-pan wrapped in flannel gently moved along ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... done. He will pour in the oil and balm. His glorious, blessed presence will do more for you in one hour, than all your struggling, praying, and wrestling have done all these weary years. He will lift you up out of the pit. You are in the mire now, and the more you struggle the more you sink; but He will lift you out of it, and put your feet on the rock, and then you will stand firm. Stretch out your withered hand, whatever it may be;—say, "I will, Lord." You have the power, and mind, you have the obligation, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... both stood, and not a word to say, By silence overborne, until at last The young man breathed, "Look how the end of day Falls heavily, as though the earth were cast Into a shapeless soundless pit, where ray Of heavenly light never the verge has past. Yet will the late moon's light anon shine here, And then gray light, and then ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... our side, when they rose vp against vs, if the Lord himselfe had not (out of his vnspeakeable goodnesse toward vs and our posteritie) broken their snares, and deliuered our soules out of that horrible gunpowder pit; these bellowing Buls of Basan, and Canon-mouthed hell-hounds would haue made on this day such a roare, that all Christendome should haue felt it, and the whole world haue feared it. [ba]O Lord God of all power, ...
— An Exposition of the Last Psalme • John Boys
... throw down one by one their dearest prejudices at her feet, and then, like a very actress, picks them up, like so many flowers, returning them to the breast of the owners with a smile and a courtesy and trips off the stage with a glance at the Pit. Count Christian, Baron Frederic, Baroness—what is her name—all open their arms, and Consuelo will not consent to entail disgrace &c. &c. No, you say—she leaves them in order to solve the problem of her true feeling, whether she can really love Albert; but remember that this is done, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... knees beside Dulcie's chair, kissing her hands. The fire lighted them. It was like a play, with Mary a forlorn spectator in the blackness of the pit. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... a big pit here among the rocks and bait it with the two dead wildcats. We can drag the wildcats on the ground around here and to the pit, and maybe the lion will follow the trail up and ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... voice, that it was not yet too late to retreat if I felt myself physically too weak to undergo the necessary tortures. I replied that I was not too weak, in a tone which I intended to be resolute, but which, in spite of me, seemed to come from the pit ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Drury's potent king extorts applause, And pit, box, gallery, echo, 'How divine!' Whilst, versed in all the drama's mystic laws, His graceful action ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... neck. When this had no effect he continued the stream over his body, clad in linen clothes, much as one waters a flower bed. The children held their breath and watched. Signs of returning life were visible. As the cold shower struck the pit of his stomach, one knee hitched. Encouraged, Herbert spilt the last pint in his upturned face. It contorted, he choked, gasped, ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... court and opposition both grow more violent every day from the same cause; the victory of the former. Both sides torment me with their affairs, though it is so plain I do not care a straw about either. I wish I -were great enough to say, as a French officer on the stage at Paris said to the pit, "Accordez vous, canaille!" Yet to a man without ambition or interestedness, politicians are canaille. Nothing appears to me more ridiculous in my life than my having ever loved their squabbles, and that at an age when I loved better things too! My poor neutrality, which thing I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... herself, and straightened her head and faced him. "There is nothing for me to be lifted out of," said she. "You speak as if I were in a pit. I am on ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a boy were entombed for nine days, from noon on Wednesday, April 11th, to mid-day on Friday, April 20th, in the Tynewydd Pit, Rhondda Valley. They were at length rescued by the almost super-human efforts of a band of brave workers, who, at the risk of their lives, cut through 38 yards of the solid coal-rock in order to get at their companions, working day and ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the aphorism of Solomon—"Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein"—is verified by multiplied examples the wide world over every day of the year, and it received a very striking verification in the events which we shall chronicle ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... that she is going to join her husband, and she answers also in singing that so she will do. As soon as she arrives at the place where they are always burned she waits with the musicians till her husband is burned, whose body they place in a very large pit that has been made ready for it, covered with much firewood. Before they light the fire his mother or his nearest relative takes a vessel of water on the head and a firebrand in the hand, and goes three times round the pit, and at each ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... 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 into the hate of sunshine. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the imp, with a laugh more disgusting than before, 'first give me a piece of coin for having caught your horse so nicely; but for me, you and your pretty beast would be lying in the pit down ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... nose-like hand which Nature has given it in compensation for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master, accepting the presents which will be profitable to him. It always walks cautiously, remembering that fatal fall into the hunter's pit which was the beginning of its captivity. When requested to do so, it exhales its breath, which is said to be a remedy ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... last office was to fix the two lighted altar candles on the head and foot railing of the bed. They showed the corpse in its appalling stillness, and stood like two angels, with the pit between them. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... fellows, for I've seen the Fell Sergeant in too many ugly fashions to be much put about at a hanging match. But it was such a poor home-coming! It told me as plain as could be, what I had heard rumours of in the low country, riding round from the port of Leith, that the land was uneasy, and that pit and gallows were bye-ordinar busy at the gates of our castle. When I left for my last session at Glascow College, the countryside was quiet as a village green, never a raider nor a reiver in the land, and so ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... tossed aside his club and rushed to grip him with his hands. He caught him by the collar, tucked him under his arm and set off with him to Taram-taq. But the prince drew the dagger of Timus and thrust it upwards through the giant's arm-pit, for its full length. This made Chil-maq drop him and try to pick up his club; but when he stooped the mighty sword shore him through ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... because artists were generally competitors. Actors, writers, singers, conductors, composers were pitted against each other. The world that should be calm, serene, harmonious, and perfectly balanced became a cock-pit, raucous with angry voices, dabbled with blood, and strewn with the torn ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the Saturday matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy who ate his peanuts and guyed the gladiators ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the Rabbis triumphed, superfluously justified in the eyes of their flock against this blaspheming materialist. Nay, Uriel should fall into the pit himself had digged. The elders of the congregation appealed to the magistrates; they translated with bated breath passages from the baleful book, Tradicoens Phariseas conferidos con a Ley escrida. Uriel was summoned before ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... occupied the next two hours (to the infinite but masked amusement of the town) in floundering about in the mud, setting up tents in the boggy wood above the settlement, and with much pains transporting thither as many of their possessions as they did not lose in the bottomless pit ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... languidly on, heated by his feverish recollections and desires, tormented by useless self-reproach, and physically intoxicated by the balmy atmosphere and the odor of the flowering shrubs at his feet. Arriving at the edge of a somewhat deep pit, he tried to leap across with a single bound, but, whether he made a false start, or that he was weakened and dizzy with the conflicting emotions with which he had been battling, he missed his footing and fell, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the pyramid. It has four entrances, the main one being in the north; and the passages form a perfect labyrinth, which it is perilous to enter. Porticoes with columns, galleries, and chambers, all end in a kind of pit, in the bottom of which a hiding place was contrived, doubtless intended to contain the most precious objects of the funeral furniture. The pyramids which surround this extraordinary monument have been nearly all built on one plan, and only differ in their proportions. The door ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... ritualistic services before her husband's accession to the Throne, but she far more often attended Low or Broad Church services. On Sundays at Sandringham the Prince used, in the afternoons, to walk about the grounds with his family or guests, visit the kennels, the bear-pit, the model farms or the Princess's lovely little dairy and its suite of tiny attached rooms where tea would often be served. In London he would sometime attend Divine service again or else pay calls in his private hansom and then ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... stood on glebe land, and ought therefore, to be placed under his hands, had hardly been able to keep himself off the ground. His proposed cure for the evil that had been done,—as an immediate remedy before erection and demolition could be carried out, was to form the vicarage manure pit close against the chapel door,—"and then let anybody touch our property who dares!" He had, however, been too cautious to carry out any such strategy as this, without direct authority from the Commander-in-Chief. "Master thinks a deal too much on 'em," he had said ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... electoral bodies under the same conservative influences which had been dominant for so many generations. He did not foresee, as Palmerston did thirty years later, that, even if the political actors remained the same, they "would play to the gallery" instead of to the pit or boxes. He would, indeed, have repudiated the maxim: "Everything for the people, and nothing by the people"; he was fully prepared to place the house of commons in the hands of the people, or at least of the great middle class, but he regarded ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Whitfield, or Wesley. All the members of the Christian family are trained to fit them for their respective positions in the church of Christ. It is a pleasant and profitable exercise to look back to the day of our espousals, and trace the operations of Divine grace in digging us from the hole of the pit; but the important question with us all should be, not so much HOW we became enlightened, but NOW do we love Christ? Now do we regret our want of greater conformity to his image? If we can honestly answer these questions in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the bar and got hold of it at the expense of a broken finger. They strained and tugged. The slippery cadmium finally eluded both of them, bounded over the railing into the pit, struck a nomplate far below and was witheringly consumed in ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... Housewife sees a Rat In her Trap in the Morning taken, With Pleasure her Heart goes pit-a-pat, In Revenge for her Loss of Bacon. Then she throws him To the Dog or Cat, To be worried, ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... Tyrone tuk a little orf'cer bhoy, but divil a bit was he in command, as I'll dimonstrate presintly. We an' they came over the brow av the hill, wan on each side av the gut, an' there was that ondacint Reserve waitin' down below like rats in a pit. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... is not often encountered, and shows plainer by night than by day. Timon-like, he always swims by himself; gliding along just under the surface, revealing a long, vague shape, of a milky hue; with glimpses now and then of his bottomless white pit of teeth. No need of a dentist hath he. Seen at night, stealing along like a spirit in the water, with horrific serenity of aspect, the White Shark sent many a thrill to us twain in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is refused though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into some bottomless pit or gulf. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... structure in common. Among these families of higher plants, over two hundred in number, is one known as the rose family. Notwithstanding their close relationship, the modes of seed dispersion are varied. The seeds of plums and cherries and hawthorns are surrounded by a hard pit, or stone, which protects the seeds, while animals eat the fleshy portion of the fruit. When ripe, raspberries leave the dry receptacle and look like miniature thimbles, while the blackberry is fleshy throughout. The dry, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... occlusal surface, cut the cervical portion down to a strong square base, with a slight pit, undercut, or angle, at the buccal and lingual corners; where there is sufficient material, a slight groove across the base, far enough from the margin so that it will not be broken out, can be made in place of the pit, ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... a wild-cat, kicking, struggling, scratching; striking with elbows and fists. He caught one of the three by his collar, and tore his jacket open from the neck to the waist; he drove his foot into the pit of the stomach of another, and knocked him breathless. The other lads not in the fight stood upon the benches and the beds around, but such was the awe inspired by the prestige of the bachelors that not one ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... was all carried off, and the pit was empty, then came out these two dragons, and made great din, and fought fiercely down in the dyke. Never saw any man any loathlier fight; flames of fire flew from their mouths! The monarch saw this fight, their grim gestures; then was he astonished in this worlds-realm, ...
— Brut • Layamon
... thee, and to find pardon for their crimes, through the merits of thy only Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." He no sooner repeated the word Amen, together with an act of thanksgiving, but he expired. His executioners then took the body and cast it down a great precipice into a deep pit; and notwithstanding the fall, it seemed only to have received a few slight bruises. The very place which was before a frightful precipice, seemed to have changed its nature; and the acts say, no more dangers or accidents happened in it to travellers. The Christians ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the settlement he invited Tim and Sambo to accompany him, and to dig a pit in which to catch the animal. We had a short time before manufactured some wooden spades, which served very well for digging in soft ground: we each took one, and Kallolo having fixed on a spot over which he considered the tapir was accustomed to pass, we set to work to dig the pit. ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... by the hand, and led him to a deep, deep pit, where, giving him a push, they sent him headlong to the bottom; and taking a shovel, which they found on the ground, they covered him with earth. Then they bade their sister unfasten the door, and they rated her soundly for the fault she had committed, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... decretals, clementines, and other such drugs of the devilyea, if Heytesburg's sophisms, Porphyry's universals, Aristotle's logic, and Dunse's divinity, with such other lousy legerdemains (begging your pardon, Miss Wardour) and fruits of the bottomless pit,had leaped out of our libraries, for the accommodation of grocers, candlemakers, soapsellers, and other worldly occupiers, we might have been therewith contented. But to put our ancient chronicles, our noble histories, our learned ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... is it? Never mind, Dad, I'll try not to shock you again. Haven't had much hankering for closets since I got shut up in that hole over in Sydney. They called it a prison, but it was more like a potato-pit than ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... packed, both in the smart orchestra boxes and in the pit, as well as in the more plebeian balconies and galleries above. Gluck's ORPHEUS made a strong appeal to the more intellectual portions of the house, whilst the fashionable women, the gaily-dressed and brilliant throng, spoke to the eye of those ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ramp, growing narrower and steeper. And louder sounded the insane, coughing howls of the dog. Then the passage was abruptly barred by a grill of black stone. Garin peered through its bars at a flight of stairs leading down into a pit. From the pit arose ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... of light, leapt from Bromo at frequent intervals all night long as we traveled on ponies through the tropical jungle trail, upward, and onward to the brink of that pit of hell. ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... back the throttle. There was a blast and a roar. I had the same lonesome feeling in the pit of my 10 stomach that had seized me when I first took the express elevator in ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... another; I fled to Lord Chester, he did not heed me. I took refuge with the marchioness; she was as sullen as an east wind could make her. Lady Harriett would talk of nothing but the horses: Sir Lionel would not talk at all. I was in the lowest pit of despondency, and the devils that kept me there were as blue as Lady Chester's nose. Silent, sad, sorrowful, and sulky, I rode away from the crowd, and moralized on its vicious propensities. One grows marvellously honest when the species ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I am?" retorted the bear, with dignity. "I am the Bear of Berne. You will find me on the shield of the city, and kept in a pit by the citizens ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Till, gathering impulse in the upward walk, And strength in purer air, and keener sight In the sweet light that dawned upon my soul, I grasped the arm of Jesus, and was safe. And now, when I look back upon my life, It seems as if that noble man were sent To give me rescue from the pit of death. But from his distant height he could not reach And act upon my soul; so Heaven allowed Temptation's ladder 'twixt his soul and mine That they might meet and yield his mission thrift. I doubt not in my grateful soul to-night That ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... of root and stump, can be called easy under the best of circumstances; but easy it was as compared with what lay beyond and above it. Nevertheless, many Argonauts had never penetrated even thus far, and of those who had, a considerable proportion had turned back at the giant pit three miles above. One look at the towering barrier had been enough for them. The Chilkoot was more than a mountain, more than an obstacle of nature; it was a Presence, a tremendous and a terrifying Personality ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... years gone," he continued—"three years, O tribune, and every hour a whole lifetime of misery—a lifetime in a bottomless pit with death, and no relief but in labor—and in all that time not a word from any one, not a whisper. Oh, if, in being forgotten, we could only forget! If only I could hide from that scene—my sister torn from me, my mother's last look! ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... qualities in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too: della bella persona, che mi fu tolta; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these alti guai. And the racking winds, in that aer bruno, whirl them away again, to wail for ever!—Strange to think: Dante ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... silence and opening of eyes at this, for every one was well aware that a latent feeling of enmity existed between these two, and their personal strength and courage being equally well-known, no one up to that time had ventured to pit these two against each other. There was no help for it now, however. They were bound in honour, as well as by the laws of the community, to enter into conflict. Indeed they showed no inclination to avoid the trial, for Angut at once stepped quietly ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... and then, as he began to munch, he glanced down at the pit he had excavated with his keen teeth right to the core. "Er! Yah!" he cried, spitting out the piece. "Why, it's all maggoty!" and he threw the pear back with excellent aim; but it was deftly caught, and returned in a way that would have won praise at cricket. Joe's aim was excellent, too; but ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... blessed day. First there be all the apples stolen—then there be all the hives turned topsy-turvy in the garden—then there be Caesar with his flank opened by the bull—then there be the bull broken through the hedge and tumbled into the saw-pit—and now I come to get more help to drag him out, I find one woman dead like, and John looks as if ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I'll have to uncouple you now, and let in the twilight! Hate to do it—Ugh!" The right swing went smashing out—not to the jaw, but at just the proper instant to the pit of Tusk's stomach. In another fraction of a second Brent was five feet away, wiping the perspiration from his forehead and watching the big ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to the left of this cleared place. All around it are thick woods, and upon the east and west the river banks are as steep and impassable as precipices. At the southern extremity of the open ground, and facing and commanding the road, a rifle-pit had been dug, about one hundred and twenty feet long—capable of containing fifty or sixty men, and about that number were posted in it. When Colonel Johnson's brigade neared the enemy, he sent Cluke with his own regiment and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... together with Cassandra, and in part because he brought Cassandra, was murdered—felled with an axe—on his return home by his wife Clytaemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Their bodies were cast into a pit among the rocks. In vengeance for this, Orestes, Agamemnon's son, committed "mother-murder," and in consequence was driven by the Erinyes (Furies) of his ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... She was not so frightened here. The smell of Kazan was strong about her. For an hour she lay motionless, with her head resting on the club clotted with his hair and blood. Night found her still there. And when the moon and the stars came out she crawled back into the pit in the white sand that Kazan's body ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... attention.]), we really were such constructively by the place we assumed. If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy of theatres was valid against us,—where no man can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes. But the soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the case of the theatre, it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate attractions, unless the pit may be supposed to have an advantage for ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... scowling. "Now mark me this! Though I, being very man, do know myself all unworthy maid so sweet and peerless, yet, and she stoop to wed me, then will I make her lady proud and dame of divers goodly manors and castles, of village and hamlet, pit and gallows, sac and soc, with powers the high, the middle and the low and with ten-score lances in her train. For though in humble guise I went, no nameless rogue am I, but Knight of Shene, Lord of Westover, Framling, Bracton ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... limpid streams of liberty, it has polluted the minds of your youth, sown the seeds of despotism, and without a speedy check to her ravages, will sink you into a pit of infamy, where you shall be robbed of all the honours you have ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... saw beating against the feet of this towering figure, unheeded and unrecognized because so far beneath it; he told of his own puny efforts to warn this giant of the storm which he thought he saw approaching, but in doing this he had betrayed his own ignorance, and had prepared the pit into which ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... PIT'AKA' (lit. a basket), the name given to the sacred books of the Buddhists, and constituting collectively the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... never know who he is," he said to himself "In this neighbourhood the first comer will take his shirt and trousers. They will suppose he has been killed and robbed, no uncommon matter in these days, and his body will be thrown into the public pit, and no one be any the wiser. I will burn the coat and waistcoat as ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... the graves they proceeded to open the large pit, but the sight was too horrible, and they carried Imre away by force. He could not have looked on what was there and still ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... live and learn," said his father whimsically. "Our blunders are often very expensive. The only redeeming thing about them is that we pass our experience on to others and save them from tumbling into the same pit. Thus it was with the early railroad builders. When the Boston and Providence Road was constructed this mistake was not repeated and a flexible wooden roadbed was laid. In the meantime a short steam railroad line had been built from Boston to Newton, a distance of seven miles, and gradually ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... aspects of war, but the economist deals with things as they are, not as they ought to be. Moral science even is not a preaching agency, desirous of dividing with the clergy the ethical guidance of the people. When men pit science against religion, they usually refer to its superior power of explaining reality. And if it be objected that therefore no morally educative agency would remain if religion were discarded, the answer is simple. A system of moral idealism founded on science—it is absurd to call it science—does ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... her contempt of the Emperor. Yet she continued to utter them until she was led to the place of execution, and whether she was innocent or not, she certainly appeared to be so. Nay, even when she was being let down into the dreadful pit and her dress caught as she was being lowered, she turned and readjusted it, and when the executioner offered her his hand she declined it and drew back, as though she put away from her with horror the idea of having her chaste and pure body defiled by his loathsome ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... which were words in very black letters: FULL SPEED, HALF SPEED, and so on. To one side was a disk around which two colored arrows, one red and one green, were racing. A gong was at the man's ear. At his feet was a pit into which a great mass of highly polished steel was driving in and out, in and ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... sat in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets; I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did I care? My heart was beating with the rapture of her backward glance. I cared neither for Ray nor the Duke nor any living person. For with me it was the one supreme moment of a man's lifetime, come too at the very moment of my despair. I was no longer at the bottom of the pit. The wonderful ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
