"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or other which only they two knew. They had all kinds of jokes and expressions from their younger days which were unintelligible to the rest; and what is vulgarly called "chaff" formed, perhaps, the staple of his conversation with them, varied now and then by a touch of sentiment, which was intended, by chance as it were, to open up to them for a moment the real deeper nature which they might not have suspected him of possessing. They used to twit him about his inclination to stoutness, ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... further, and soon touched famine prices. Wheat, which in the last decade of the nineteenth century had averaged about L9 a ton, rose to over L31 a ton, its price two years before the Battle of Waterloo. Other imported food-stuffs, of course, rose in proportion with the staple commodity, and the people of Britain saw, at first dimly, then more and more clearly, the real issue that had been involved in the depopulation of the rural districts to swell the populations of the towns, and the consequent lapse of enormous areas ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... indifference, or adverted to with a sneer. Now they form a convivial currency, and are brought forward on all occasions; they link our whole community together in good-humor and good-fellowship; they are the rallying points of home feeling; the seasoning of our civic festivities; the staple of local tales and local pleasantries; and are so harped upon by our writers of popular fiction that I find myself almost crowded off the legendary ground which I was the first to explore by the host who have followed in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... hound breaking from scent to view, and thrust Macbane back violently. The old man staggered and fell; but he clung round Livingstone's knees, as he groveled, till he was actually trampled down. There was a difficulty in the lock somewhere; but bolt and staple were torn away in an instant by the furious hand that grasped the handle, and so at last we stood in the presence of the man we had sought ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... catches at the authority of an Apocryphal book, ascribed to the patriarch Joseph, where Jacob is introduced speaking to his twelve sons: "I have read in the register of heaven what shall happen to you and your children."[123] But comets were the staple commodity that turned principally to account. In compliance, however, with the impressions of fear which the strangeness and excessive length of these stars made upon mankind, the Astrologers did not hesitate to pronounce them of a malign tendency; and the more so when ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... opposed to it. They don't want staple values, because, now and then, they can pick up a bargain or drive a hard trade. And they can peddle 'wildcat' stocks to tenderfeet.... We must stop that ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... concealed the interior of the room. He cautiously pushed on the double window. If no one had examined it, it ought to yield to the slightest pressure, for, during the afternoon, he had so fixed the bolt that it would not enter the staple. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... persons who possessed most of the landed property in the Weald, insomuch that almost all the ancient families of these parts, now of large estates and genteel rank in life, and some of them ennobled by titles, are sprung from ancestors who have used this great staple manufacture, now almost unknown here.' In his list of these families Hasted places the Austens, and he adds that these clothiers 'were usually called the Gray Coats of Kent; and were a body so numerous and united that at county ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... should have recourse to the spring near the brook Kedron. Rice is much used for food; but as the country is quite unsuited to the production of that aquatic grain, it is imported from Egypt in return for oil, the staple of Palestine. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... a hard job ahead of you," said The Chief. "Don't fail me. Plant plenty of staple crops, make sure there's enough food for everyone. If you think it's profitable, add more to the animal stock. I've authorized Kevenoe to allow money for the purchase of breeding stock. You can draw whatever you need ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... (always picked ripe, while green ones are imported from France!), beans, melons, squashes, and mushrooms. The last are eaten to a limited extent; Terra del Fuego, says Darwin, is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article of food. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... 'Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?' He had to submit good-humouredly to our continuous joking in German, though we always responded in French to his frequent demands for tonique or jambon cru, which seemed to form the staple of his diet. It was long after midnight when we reached Nuremberg, where we were obliged to halt for the night. We got ourselves conveyed to an inn by dint of much effort, and were kept waiting there some time before the door opened. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... cannot be classed among the staple trades of the town, but one of the largest establishments of the kind in the kingdom, if not in the world, is that of Messrs. Cadbury, at Bournville, where nearly 400 persons are employed. The annual consumption ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... at once, but forced conversation did not flourish. Bourcelles was not fashionable; no one ever had appendicitis there. Yet ailments of a milder order were the staple, inexhaustible subjects at meals. Instead of the weather, mon estomac was the inexhaustible tale. The girl brought in the little Cantonal newspaper, and the widow read out selections in a high, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... clover but it is easier gathered; it is in shallow cups while that of the clover is in deep tubes. The bees are up and at it before sunrise, and it takes a brisk shower to drive them in. But the clover blooms later and blooms everywhere, and is the staple source of supply of the finest quality of honey. The red clover yields up its stores only to the longer proboscis of the bumble-bee, else the bee pasturage of our agricultural districts would be unequaled. I do not know from what the famous honey of Chamouni in the Alps ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the former is scarcely visible to us now because the only record we have of the Norse faith is that contained in the fragmentary strains of ferocious Skalds, who sang chiefly to warriors, and the staple matter of whose songs was feats of martial prowess or entertaining mythological stories. Furthermore, there is above the heaven of the Asir a yet higher heaven, the abode of the far removed and inscrutable being, the rarely named Omnipotent One, the true All Father, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... which filled every newspaper and gave food to every tongue. In Eccleston these rejoicings were greater than in most places; for, by the national triumph of arms, it was supposed that a new market for the staple manufacture of the place would be opened; and so the trade, which had for a year or two been languishing, would now revive with redoubled vigour. Besides these legitimate causes of good spirits, there was the rank excitement of a coming election, in consequence of ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his back, and wrenched so terribly that the two clenched fists, lashed together, had been forced up higher than the shoulder-blades. From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous glance the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over a heavy beam and down to a staple in the wall. He did not want to look at the rigid legs, at the feet hanging down nervelessly, with their bare toes some six inches above the floor, to know that the man had been given the estrapade till he ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... military department, for the pay and provisions of the troops, necessity would compel the merchants of England to reduce their shipments to Australia. The great fall in the price of the principal colonial staple, wool, has added very materially to the difficulties arising out of this state of affairs, by reducing the value of remittances made in that article to one half of what it used to be. The quantity of wool increases, it is true, from year to year, but not to such an extent as to counterbalance the ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... amity and commerce between the two nations, and afterwards, if Sweden held it fit, when they sent an ambassador to England, or otherwise, to propound anything concerning the fishing for herrings or the traffic in America, or touching a staple at Narva, Revel, or Gothenburg (which Eric likewise discoursed of at large), that the Protector would give ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... excessive, and in Cromwell's time, with the accession of the Puritans to power, like a hundred other brilliant traits of the old English life from whose abuse had grown riot, it was purged away. Ben Jonson, in The Staple of Newes, puts into the mouth of a sour character a complaint which no doubt was becoming common in that day, and was probably well ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... five feet high. Within is a chamber about two feet high and six feet across, well above water and provided with a ventilator through the roof, also two entering passages under water, one winding for ordinary traffic, and one straight for carrying in wood, whose bark is a staple food. This house is kept perfectly tidy, and when the branch is stripped of all eatable parts, it is taken out and worked into the dam, which is a crooked bank of mud and sticks across the running stream. It holds the water so as to moat the ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... let me say here that, while slicing off the victim's ear is a staple situation among novelists who write of bandits, in all my experience with bandits—and I have known a thousand, most of 'em in Wall Street—I have never known it done, and I challenge those who write of South European highway-robbers to ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... an army? I've forgotten how many comprise a regiment." She went to work with steady fingers. "These lunch cloths of mine are becoming as staple as soap or quinine." ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... better opportunities. Protection as a solution, or at least as a palliative, seemed to the mass of the Republican coalition, even to the former Democrats for all their free trade traditions, not outrageous. To the Southerners it was an alarm bell. The Southern world was agricultural; its staple was cotton; the bulk of its market was in England. Ever since 1828, the Southern mind had been constantly on guard with regard to tariff, unceasingly fearful that protection would be imposed on it by Northern and Western ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Icon. Parkinson, Bib. Banks, No. 89.—Native name, MADAWICK, "Skip-jack" of the settlers. "Rays, D. 8-28; A. 2-23; P. 15." Very common in shallow sandy bays, and forming the staple food of the natives, who assemble in fine calm days, and drive shoals of this fish into weirs that they have constructed of shrubs and branches of trees. Specimen caught by hook on the 12th ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Yet the staple of public opinion was sound, as it must be where women predominate. The best of women could not see why they should not have anything they wanted for less than it cost the maker. To gaze at a sister woman ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... had believed, the staple of the lock clinging to the hard teak wood of which the chest was made. I must have been ten minutes at it, compelled to use a wooden bar as lever, before it yielded, groaning as it finally released its grip, like a soul in agony. I felt the girl clutch me in terror at the sound, her frightened ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... a staple production in the new world, when the fields were not destroyed by marauding parties. There were windmills that ground it coarsely and both cakes and porridge were made of it. The Indian women cracked and pounded it in a stone mortar and boiled it with fish or venison. The French brought ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... were merchants, of no valydytye.] Next yo{u} seme to implye by a coniecturall argumente, that Chaucers auncesters sholde be m{e}rcha{n}ts, for that in place where they haue dwelled the armes of the marchantes of the staple haue bin seene in the glasse windowes. This ys a mere coniecture, and of no valydytye. For the m{a}rchantes of the staple had not any armes granted to them (asI haue bin enformed) vntill longe after ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... diet absolutely contrary to her tastes; she confines herself to drinking the defensive liquid which the grub distils at the end of its intestine. For her this liquid is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavour, with which she relieves from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers, some highly spiced condiment, appetiser or aperient, or perhaps—who knows?—a substitute for honey. Although the qualities of the liquid escape me, I see at least that Odynerus cares nothing ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... about making him assistant superintendent. Had he stuck to his job he might have become a partner in the great firm of Cobb, Bates and Yerxa, and put Bates to the bad. It would have then been Cobb, Rogers and Yerxa—and later, H. H. Rogers, Dealer in Staple and Fancy Groceries. But something happened about this time that shook New Bedford to its center, and gave ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... contrasts ludicrously enough with the well-toned sobriety of what we may term its staple style, is made to surround, like the halo in old paintings, some of the men who were happy enough to be distinguished assertors of the Romish Church. We would instance, as a specimen, the biographical sketches of Bossuet and the Jesuit Bourdaloue, written by the late Dr. James Browne. ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... a half salt breath from the St. Lawrence, met the miller of San Joachim as he looked out; but he bolted the single thick door of the mill, and cast across it into a staple a hook as long as his body and as thick as his arm. At any alarm in the village he must undo these fastenings, and receive the refugees from Montgomery; yet he could not sleep without locking the door. So all that summer he had slept on a bench in the mill ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Southern States had apparently no limit. If the institution of Slavery could be rendered secure, the dominant minds of the South saw political power and boundless wealth within their grasp. They saw that they could control the product and regulate the price of a staple in constant demand among every people on the globe. The investment of the South in slaves represented a capital of two thousand millions of dollars, reckoned only upon the salable value of the chattel. Estimated by its capacity to produce wealth, the institution of Slavery ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... deep basement, in a large, dusky room that we shared with three other families, each family occupying one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest. Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence, and the question of floor space a staple bone of contention. The huge brick oven in which the four housewives cooked dinner was another prolific source of strife. Fights over pots were as frequent and as truculent as those over ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... of fine flax and hemp particularly attracted my attention. Both grow admirably in this country, and at no very distant period will form staple articles for home manufacture and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... into two great portions, the UPPER, and LOWER VALLEY, according to its general features, climate, staple productions, and habits of its population. The parallel of latitude that cuts the mouth of the Ohio river, will designate these ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... originally written in Persic and translated into Greek by Simeon Seth, A.D. 1070, and again turned into Latin by Giraldus Cambrensis about the year 1200. These four works with variations, additions, and dilutions, formed the staple of romantic fiction in verse ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... the staircase before him had a carved rail, and was broad and handsome and filthy. Oleron ascended it, avoiding contact with the rail and wall, and stopped at the first landing. A door facing him had been boarded up, but he pushed at that on his right hand, and an insecure bolt or staple yielded. He ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... page, the former hastened to the door, examined lock, latch, and bolt, and made them fast, with the most scrupulous attention. He superadded to these precautions that of a long screw-bolt, which he brought out of his pocket, and which he screwed on to the staple in such a manner as to render it impossible to withdraw it, or open the door, unless by breaking it down. The page held a light to him during the operation, which his master went through with much ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... uttered, was soon abundantly repeated; spoken in all dialects, and chaunted through all notes of the gamut, till the sound of it had grown a weariness rather than a pleasure. Sceptical sentimentality, view-hunting, love, friendship, suicide, and desperation, became the staple of literary ware; and though the epidemic, after a long course of years, subsided in Germany, it reappeared with various modifications in other countries, and everywhere abundant traces of its good and bad ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... often into convivial company of a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgarity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the whole store familiar features of life which form the staple of his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... murderous plot in "Hunted Down" is also laid in the Temple, "at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river," probably the end house of King's Bench Walk. Mr. Grewgious, Herbert Pocket, and Joe Gargery are associated with Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn. ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... mass of the rural population of these countries subsist almost exclusively upon vegetable aliment—a diet which poverty, and not inclination, prescribes for them. Were the flesh of animals the staple food of the British peasantry, their numbers would not be nearly so large as they now are, for a given area of land is capable of sustaining a far larger number of vegetarians than of meat eaters. The ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... fury she turned again to the fence. A superhuman effort brought away a staple. One wire was down and an instant later two more. Standing with one foot upon the wires to keep them from tangling about her horse's legs, she pulled her mount across into the wood. The foremost horseman was close upon her as she finally succeeded in urging the animal across ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a look through the port, he climbed over the gunwhale again, fastened a stern-sheet about his waist and to a staple, and at the risk, if he slipped or if the rope gave way, of plunging head foremost into the icy waters of the Cove, he let himself down until his head was on ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... and whimsical points of view. His very celebrity operated here to his disadvantage. It brought him into continual comparison with Johnson, who was the oracle of that circle and had given it a tone. Conversation was the great staple there, and of this Johnson was a master. He had been a reader and thinker from childhood; his melancholy temperament, which unfitted him for the pleasures of youth, had made him so. For many years past the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... smaller corns had long been over, and the younger Heathcote with his laborers had passed a day in depriving the luxuriant maize of its tops, in order to secure the nutritious blades for fodder, and to admit the sun and air to harden a grain, that is almost considered the staple production of the region he inhabited. The veteran Mark had ridden among the workmen, during their light toil, as well to enjoy a sight which promised abundance to his flocks and herds, as to throw in, on occasion, some wholesome spiritual precept, in which doctrinal ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... door with a clumsy old-fashioned latch, securely fastened by a staple and padlock. Ellen tried it ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the room, but it was not the breath of Vanne Castine. The sound came from the corner where the huge brown bear huddled in savage ease. When it stirred, as if in response to Shangois's song, the chains rattled. He was fastened by two chains to a staple driven into the foundation timbers of the house. Castine's bear might easily be allowed too ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mad the year before. The prime minister had recently been assassinated. The strain of nearly twenty years of war was telling severely on the nation. It was no time to take on a new enemy, eight millions strong, especially one who supplied so many staple products during peace and threatened both the sea flank of the mother country and the land flank ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... for he to the hall went, By the staple a-standing the steep roof he saw Shining fair with the gold, and the hand there of Grendel: For this sight that I see to the All-wielder thanks Befall now forthwith, for foul evil I bided, All griefs from this Grendel; but God, glory's Herder, 930 Wonder on wonder ever ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... hanging loose upon his neck. I had of course an ample supply of provisions in the wagon, including the shoulder of a sheep that had been slaughtered that morning; but mutton naturally formed the staple of our fare at Bella Vista when there was no buck meat in the house, and I was very heartily tired of both. I was therefore on the lookout for a pauw or a koraan—the great and small bustards of South Africa—and hoped to get one ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden that designated them "Jonson's dotages" is unfair ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... crushed the rocks and sifted the sand that yielded silver and gold, and the soil is ours that is richer than gold mines, whether we offer in evidence South Carolina, whose Sea-Island cotton surpasses the long staple of Egypt; or the Dakotas, matchless for wheat; or the lands of the cornstalk in the Mississippi Valley, that could feed all the tribes of Asia; or Nebraska, whose beets are sweeter with sugar than those that were the gift of Napoleon ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... dinner at Hatton Hall was over, it formed the staple of conversation in the neighborhood. Everyone wondered who would be there and who would be left out. About the dinner itself there was no doubt, for there is little variety in such entertainments. The meat and the drink offerings are similar, ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... also was referred the following proposition, which had been reported by the committee of detail, to wit: "No navigation act shall be passed without the assent of two-thirds of the members present in each house;" a proposition which the staple and commercial States were solicitous to retain, lest their commerce should be placed too much under the power of the Eastern States; but which these last States were as anxious to reject. This committee, of which also I had the honor to be a member, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... they serve far more purposes than this. They are the raw material, out of which many of our goodly garments of modern science and religion are made up. The illiterate negroes on the cotton plantation, and the rude hunters in the jungle or seal fishery, produce the staple, or procure the skins, which after long labour afford comfort and adornment to proud philosophers and peers. The golden cross on the saintly bosom and the glittering crown on the sovereign brow were embedded as rough ore in primeval rocks ages before their wearers were born to boast of them. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... and are brought forward on all occasions: they link our whole community together in good humor and good fellowship; they are the rallying-points of home feeling, the seasoning of our civic festivities, the staple of local tales and local pleasantries; and are so harped upon by our writers of popular fiction that I find myself almost crowded off the legendary ground which I was the first to explore by the host who have followed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "We keep cattle for their milk, as well as for their meat," he explained. "Cow's milk is a staple article of diet. There is a great milk ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... there were those who enriched themselves enormously as a consequence of the American advent, but the staple trade of the Colony was generally disrupted by the abnormal circumstances of the period; therefore it would serve no practical purpose to present the figures for that year for comparison with the results obtained in the years following that ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... might impose them. The devil politely replied in the affirmative. "Here, then," said she, "see this horse painted on the wall of the inn: I wish to mount him, and you must make me a whip of sand and a staple of walnuts." The devil bowed, and in a moment the horse was prancing before their eyes. The lady now had a large tub of holy water brought in, and invited the devil, as his second task, to plunge into it and refresh his weary limbs. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... wife, a good disposition will be found the most staple commodity. Most other virtues will flourish in so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... for more than fifty years actively interested in promoting the use of nuts as a staple food, I have given considerable thought and study to their dietetic value and have made many experiments. About twenty-five years ago it occurred to me that one of the above objections to the extensive dietetic use of nuts might be overcome by mechanical preparation of the nut before serving ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... real religion of the people centres round a dairy-ritual. From a practical and economic point of view, the work of the dairy consists in converting the milk of their buffaloes into the butter and buttermilk which constitute their staple diet. From a religious point of view, it consists in converting something they dare not eat into something they ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... of this threatening danger? Outwardly all now was peaceful. Each waking-time the fishers put forth in their long boats of metal strips covered with fish-skins. Every sleeping-time they returned laden with the fish that formed the principal staple ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... seamen, clad in nothing but shirt and breeches, were lolling, lying crouching on the deck forward, circled around Bulger. Seated on an upturned tub, he was busily engaged in baiting a hook. Tired of the "Irish horse" and salt pork that formed the staple of the sailors' food, he was taking advantage of the calm to fish for bonitos, a large fish over two feet long, the deadly enemy of the beautiful flying fish that every now and then fell panting upon the deck in their mad flight from marine ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... cart, drawn by a mettled steed and dispensing this medicinal beverage at a penny a glass, will insist upon being outside Westminster Abbey and another at the top of Cockspur Street every working day of the week for ever and ever, how can one help sooner or later spelling its staple product backwards and embroidering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... and reasons for and against the solitary system of confinement are well given in a communication sent to M. de Beranger after a visit to Paris, during which the subject of prison-management had formed a staple theme of discussion in the salons of that city. With much practical insight and clearness of reasoning, Mrs. Fry marshalled all the stock arguments, adding thereto such ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... that this whole physical system, by which our spirit is enclosed with all the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, and wants which form a part of it, are designed as an education to fit the soul for its immortality; and as worldly care forms the greater part of the staple of every human life, there must be some mode of viewing and meeting it, which converts it from an enemy of spirituality into a means of grace ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... possible to resort to irrigation. The quantity of labor required for previous tillage, cultivation, and harvesting of different crops, and the available supply, are primary essentials to be considered before entering upon the culture of any staple product, however remunerative it may appear in prospective. Facility and cost of transport to the nearest market or shipping port are the next desiderata to be ascertained, as well as a careful estimate of the cost of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... harshly, my boy," said the Admiral, drawing near his son gradually, for his wrath (like good vegetables) was very short of staple; "and when I do so you may feel quite certain that there is sound reason at the bottom of it"—here he looked as if his depth was unfathomable. "It is not only that I am not myself, because of the many hours spent ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... strongest mind frivolous at last. The lawyer, the senator, the magi of letters, all are insensibly guided—moulded—formed—by the judgment of the tribe they belong to, and the circle in which they move. Still more is it the case with the idlers of the great world, amongst whom the only main staple of talk ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Mrs. Jaroth's supper table Bob declared that quite evidently famine had not reached this retired spot. The platters were heaped with fried ham and fried eggs and sausages and other staple articles. These and the hot biscuit disappeared like snow before a ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... trade into a staple industry changed this point of view to a limited extent. The government, as we have seen, considered it desirable that colonists should be established in New France {62} at the expense of traders. For the St Lawrence, however, the first and only fruits of this enlightened policy had been ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... millstones Grotti and the two slaves and put them on board his vessel, bidding the women grind salt, which was a very valuable staple of commerce at that time. The women obeyed, and their millstones went round, grinding salt in abundance; but the Viking, as cruel as Frodi, would give the poor women no rest, wherefore a heavy punishment overtook him and his followers. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... seemed still some way below him. Should he risk a fall? He recollected the uneven character of the wall, and hauling himself up a little, he was able to stretch out his feet sufficiently to reach it. He put out one hand in the same direction, and caught hold of an iron staple. He could now clutch the wall, and feeling his way, he descended about eight feet to the ground. It was fortunate that he had not jumped, for, instead of sand, there was a slab of hard rock on which he would have fallen. Scarcely had he time to get under the rope, ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... wars, disease, and infanticide.[362] Like the Papuans generally, they live in settled villages and engage in fishing, agriculture, and commerce. The houses are solidly built of wood and are raised above the ground upon piles, which consist of a hard and durable timber, sometimes iron-wood.[363] The staple food of the people is sago, which they obtain from the sago-palm. These stately palms, with their fan-like foliage, are rare on the coral island of Tumleo, but grow abundantly in the swampy lowlands of the neighbouring mainland. Accordingly in the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... been working. His understanding succeeded in busying itself with other matters. With concentrated attention he then conceived the idea of a Sraddha. All those articles of his own food, consisting of fruits and roots, and all those kinds of staple grains that were agreeable to him, were carefully thought of by that sage possessed of wealth of penances. On the day of the New moon he invited a number of adorable Brahmanas (to his asylum). Possessed of great wisdom, Nimi caused them to be seated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... kitchen servants out of the reach of bribery. Even Sir Walter Besant, though he is fairly communicative to the young aspirant, has dropped no hints of the plain, pure, and wholesome menu he follows. Sala professed to eat everything, but that was probably his badinage. Possibly he had one staple, and took the rest as condiment. Then what did Shakespeare live on? Bacon? And Mr. Barrie, though he has written a delightful book about his pipe and tobacco, full of suggestion to the young humorist, lets out nothing or next to nothing of his meat and drink. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... in all England a plate is broken the fracture means new business for the district—even this majestic thought had probably never occurred to either of the girls. The fact is, that while in the Five Towns they were also in the Square, Bursley and the Square ignored the staple manufacture as perfectly as the district ignored the county. Bursley has the honours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial development can ever rob it of its superiority in age, which makes it absolutely sure in its conceit. And ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... belief was unbounded. All had made up their minds that a new era of human felicity had arrived; that "all the world was a stage," in the most dancing and delightful sense of the words; and that feasting and fetes were to form the staple of life for every future age. We were to live in a rosebud world. I heard around me in a thousand whispers, from some of the softest politicians that ever wore a smile, the assurance, that France was to become a political Arcadia, or rather ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... staple of wool was removed from Flanders to England; and Lincoln, with Westminster, Chichester, Canterbury, Bristol, and Hull, was made a staple town ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... grew on Terra; well, at least it was different, just as Poictesme brandy was different from Terran bourbon or Baldur honey-rum. That was the sort of thing that could be sold in interstellar trade anytime and anywhere; the luxury goods that were unique. Staple foodstuffs, utility textiles, metal products, could be produced anywhere, and sooner or later they were. That was the reason for the original, pre-War depression: the customers were all producing for themselves. He'd talk that over with his father. He wished he'd had time to take ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... the meaner kind would have been sternly denied; and, indeed, I have since heard tell that sufferance even went beyond the concealment of her Name, and that she was not even buried in woollen,—a thing then very strictly insisted upon, in order to encourage the staple manufactures of Lancashire and the North,—and that, either by a Faculty from the Arches Court, or a winking and conniving of Authority, she was placed in her coffin in the same garb in which she had lain in state. Of such ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... left few traces upon its ponderous pages, for the Rambler marks the culminating period of Johnson's worst qualities of style. The pompous and involved language seems indeed to be a fit clothing for the melancholy reflections which are its chief staple, and in spite of its unmistakable power it is as heavy reading as the heavy class of lay-sermonizing to which it belongs. Such literature, however, is often strangely popular in England, and the Rambler, though its circulation was limited, gave to ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... easy grade and a direct course reaching out into the West, even to the edge of the lands of Spain; and here stood wheeled vehicles able to traverse it and to carry drygoods and hardware, and especially domestic cotton fabrics, which formed the great staple of a "Santa Fe assortment." The people of the Middle West were now, in short, able to feed and clothe themselves and to offer a little of their surplus merchandise to some one else in sale. They had begun to export! Out yonder, in a strange ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... to meditate dreadful bloodthirsty thoughts, of which hair-triggers and Lord's Cricket-ground formed the staple. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... other playwrights were quick to seize the salient absurdities of such an advertisement. In The Staple of News Jonson proposed a News Trust to collect all the news of the world, corner it, classify it into authentic, apocryphal, barber's gossip, and so forth, and then sell it, for the sole benefit of the consumer, in lengths to suit all purchasers. In The Devil is an Ass ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... is a staple of wealth to the people of Scandinavia. They are diminutive in size, dun-colored, docile in habits, and excellent milk producers. It is said when they are well-fed they average from six to nine hundred gallons of milk a year. The mountain saeters, or dairies as we would call them, ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... girl slammed the pen door, jammed the hardwood peg into the staple, ran her fingers nervously through the pale fluff of her hair, and came hurrying across the yard to the door with a smile on her delicate ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and it is well to bear in mind by way of palliation that in Greek education Homer played as great a part as the Bible in ours. He might be taken simply or taken allegorically; but one way or the other he was the staple of education, and it might be assumed that every one would like the mere ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... hunting, and forestry, is the leading sector of the economy. It contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, to privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, to improve health services, to diversify exports, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... salutary and inevitable was the popular distrust of the aristocracy. When we read of the process of bribing the principal men, and of the conspiracy entered into by others, we must treat with contempt those accusations of the jealousy of the Grecian people towards their superiors which form the staple declamations of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... opera—tragedy, comedy, and drama—vaudeville—melodrama. The first division includes the French opera, the Italians, the Opera Comique; the second, the Francais and the Odeon; at the Porte St. Martin and Ambigu Comique, melodrama is the staple commodity, varied, however, with performances of a lighter kind; whilst vaudevilles, broad farces, and short comedies constitute the chief stock in trade of the remainder. At many of the theatres an entire change in the style ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... interest of the state demanded: that the supply of precious metals should not diminish; and that the nation should not be dependent upon rival countries for staple commodities. The supply of gold and silver actually present in the king's coffers, or within the radius of his tax-gatherers, was of far greater moment then than now. The issues of war, in an age when credit was relatively ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... difficulty, very generously placed some of his copies of tomb drawings at my disposal, and with this invaluable help I have been enabled to complete the present paper, and to lay before Halifax students some new details of manufacture bearing upon their staple industry. ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... necessary, and He hastened to convey her from the dungeon. He was at first prevented from doing so by a strong chain fastened round the prisoner's body, and fixing her to the neighbouring Wall. However, his natural strength being aided by anxiety to relieve the Unfortunate, He soon forced out the Staple to which one end of the Chain was attached. Then taking the Captive in his arms, He bent his course towards the Staircase. The rays of the Lamp above, as well as the murmur of female voices, guided his steps. He gained the Stairs, and in ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... their professors in some instances elevated to the rank of knighthood. [42] The excellent breed of sheep, which early became the subject of legislative solicitude, furnished them with an important staple which, together with the simpler manufactures and the various products of a prolific soil, formed the materials of a profitable commerce. [43] Augmentation of wealth brought with it the usual appetite for expensive pleasures; and the popular diffusion of luxury in the fourteenth and fifteenth ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... contributed to the widespread use and long-continued demands for Webster's Spelling Book, which was copyrighted. This book had the support of the authority of Webster's Dictionary—an original American work; and it soon became a staple article of merchandise which was kept in stock in every country store. It supplanted the New England Primer and became the first book in the hands of every pupil. Less marked in its religious instruction, ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... indiscriminate education, the corruptions of wretchedness and poverty in large towns, the neglect of literature and classical learning, and the grievances of scholarly refinement in a world in which Greek iambic and Latin hexameter count for nothing,—such form the staple of his theses and tirades! His approximation at times to the confines of French realistic art is of the most accidental or incidental kind. For Gissing is at heart, in his bones as the vulgar say, a thorough moralist and sentimentalist, an honest, true-born, downright ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... is very simple. Rice is the staple article of consumption. They like fruits and use them moderately. They eat things too, which would be most repulsive to the epicurean taste of an Anglo-Saxon. Even lizards and rats and young dogs they will not refuse. But these things are prepared in a manner to tempt the ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... fever of gallantry jumped overboard up to the waist in full fig; and one of the men following his example, we were soon afloat. The ladies applauded, and the Captain sat in his wet breaks for the rest of the voyage, in all the consciousness of being considered a hero. Ducks and onions are the grand staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of; a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... rice-planting; for here, in the sense in which we understand it, they do not "cast their bread upon the waters." There are eight or nine leading varieties of rice grown in Japan, all of which, except an upland species, require mud, water, and much puddling and nasty work. Rice is the staple food and the wealth of Japan. Its revenues were estimated in rice. Rice is grown ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... for a week the staple subject of gossip in the district, and Phemie Teinturiere, who had been the queen of the fete, was accustomed to remark, when talking it ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... donkeys, and were waiting, looking about them, curiously. I set two of them to lay a fire in the big grate, and the others I used as I required them. I took one of the boarhounds to the end of the hall furthest from the entrance, and there I drove a staple into the floor, to which I tied the dog with a short tether. Then, 'round him, I drew upon the floor the figure of a Pentacle, in chalk. Outside of the Pentacle, I made a circle with garlic. I did exactly the same thing with the other hound; but over more in the northeast ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... and Bodley's Library sixteen. "Possibly, no work before the age of printed books attained such immediate and astonishing popularity . . . translations, adaptations, and continuations of it formed one of the staple exercises of a host of medieval scribes."[1] A glance at the monastic and academic library catalogues of later date than mid- thirteenth century will prove more clearly than a shelf full of books how enormous was the influence of Aristotle. If such a collocation ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... was a hub about which swung a limited perimeter of rich farming lands. This fertile area was an oasis with steep desolation hedging it in on all sides, but within its narrow confines men could raise not only the corn which constituted the staple of their less fortunate neighbors, but the richer crop ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... read "God Bless our Home. If you don't like it, get out!" On the reverse side of this somewhat suggestive placard was the pleasing gastronomic intelligence, "Chicken to-day," chicken forming the staple of diet at Bongao, as of course fresh meat is to be had only at the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... also very chary of complications in the handling of money. He brings his wool into town once, and sometimes twice, a year, and that staple comprises the current coin of the country. His clip is weighed off in due course, and he proceeds to the store and sits down while the clerk figures up the amount. You may be foolish enough to ask him if he will buy a plough or a bag of coffee, but ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... accomplishments in the country, and Dogberry expressed a common notion when he said reading and writing come by nature. Sheets of news had become common in the town in James's time, the first newspaper being the English Mercury, which appeared in April, 1588, and furnished food for Jonson's satire in his "Staple of News." His accusation has a familiar sound when he says that people had a "hunger and thirst after published pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday, but made all at home, and no syllable of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
