"Pile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dead on a wind, under close-reefed topsails, performed a stationary movement, called "pile-driving" by sailors, which, as the pilot suggested, would, if the breeze lasted, carry them to the coast of Holland. The two steam vessels, under fore-and-aft canvas, drew away rapidly to windward and ahead, and ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... strong family likeness in 'em all—the same ugly features, the same cast o' countenance. The "black knob" was discernible, there was no mistake: barn doors broken off, fences burnt up, glass out of windows; more white crops than green, and both lookin' poor and weedy; no wood pile, no sarse garden, no compost, no stock; moss in the mowin lands, thistles in the ploughed lands, and neglect every where; skinnin' had commenced—takin' all out and puttin' nothin' in—gittin' ready for a move, SO ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the cave,—you shall have possession as soon as we are gone, if you will draw off your party higher up this cliff and allow us to embark without molestation. If you do not immediately accept these terms, we shall certainly attack you: or you may do better if you please—pile your muskets, collect your wounded men, bring them down to the beach all ready to put into the boats, which, as soon as we are safe, we will give you possession of. Now is it a truce or ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... Thorberg came about with the quickening of the year. With the first blowing of the warm wet wind of the west, the fogs began to roll away off the land and pile themselves upon the flanks of the mountains. Then, when the earth had warmth enough in her body to thaw the iron mail about her ribs, the sickness in the Settlement abated. Men felt the light, and saw whence it came. The sun showed himself, first like a silver coin, then with sensible ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... and a speed of 20.4 miles an hour was well sustained and expended 5.88 foot-pounds per second, this being at the rate of 204 pounds sustained per horsepower. It was stated also that a gull in its observed maneuvers, rising up from a pile head on unflapping wings, then plunging forward against the wind and subsequently rising higher than his starting point, must either time his ascents and descents exactly with the variations in wind velocities, or must ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by Christian Mueller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... about with ladies of striking aspect. Occasional snatches of conversation, stray gems of wit, scintillated through the tranquil August air, and came familiarly to the ears of a party of some half-dozen men who stood by a pile of baggage at the entrance to ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... Grasping it he made his way hurriedly down the bank and along the water's edge to the quaking, seething mass. Cautiously he climbed out upon it, the water hissing about him in angry, spurting jets. He could feel the pile rising beneath him with fearful rapidity. A swift examination convinced Duncan of two startling truths—first, the jam must be broken immediately, or it would be too late, and second, he might break it, even with the ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Also, there was Dwight Brower, a young fellow of nineteen or so, who acted unaccountably. Instead of lounging around, according to his usual custom, hovering between piazza and dining-room, whistling softly, now and then turning over the pile of old magazines between whiles, in search of something with which to pass away the time, he passed through the hall on his return from church, and without exchanging a word with anyone went directly to his room. Once there, ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... off as fast as my legs could carry me; and the nearer home I drew, the greater became my fear of Mrs. Handsomebody. What would she say? Dinner would be over long ago I knew. My steps began to lag as I reached the Cathedral corner. The great grey pile usually so friendly now rose before me gloomily. Inside, the organ boomed like an accusing voice. My heart sank. Mrs. Handsomebody's house with the blinds drawn three-quarters of the way down the windows seemed to watch my approach with an air of ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... squirts first water and next ink into his captor's face; and it was curious to see the men weaving their heads from side to side to dodge the shot. They were as black as sweeps when the flurry ended; but a pile of fresh squid lay on the deck, and the large cod thinks very well of a little shiny piece of squid tentacle at the tip of a clam-baited hook. Next day they caught many fish, and met the Carrie ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Weald, upon October 17, 1877, is a great, if not a beautiful, pile of buildings, and is, in fact, one of the largest houses of the Order in the world. The visitor rings at the gate, and is admitted by a lay-brother dressed in the beautiful white habit, caught about the waist by a leathern girdle from which a rosary hangs. Upon his feet are ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... three or four weeks a new ovum or egg matures in the ovary and undergoes certain chemical changes, which send into the blood a substance called a hormone. This hormone is a messenger, stimulating the mucous membrane of the womb into making its velvet pile longer and softer, and its nutrient juices more abundant ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Bulawayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... times no! A few short days, and all will belong to Arthur Dynecourt. He will be "Sir Arthur" then, and the bride he covets will be unable to resist the temptations of a title, and the chance of being mistress of the stately old pile that will call him master. Let Sir Adrian die then in his distant garret alone, despairing, undiscoverable! For who will think of going to the haunted room in search of him? Who will even guess that any mission, however ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... fondly at his wife. I doubt if she had ever crossed the threshold of the Paloma before. I could see her blinking at the marble columns, at the velvet pile rugs, and the innumerable electric ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the little fortress was naturally characteristic of its owner. A leathern capote and leggings hung from a nail in one corner; in another lay a pile of buffalo robes. The rough walls were adorned with antlers of the moose and other deer, from the various branches of which hung several powder-horns, fire-bags, and bullet-pouches. Near the rude fireplace, the chimney of which was plastered outside ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... touch'd, he went Up from the blue sea to the continent, And reach'd the ample cavern of the Queen, Whom he found within; without seldom seen. A sun-like fire upon the hearth did flame; The matter precious, and divine the frame; Of cedar cleft and incense was the pile, That breathed an odour round about the isle. Herself was seated in an inner room, Whom sweetly sing he heard, and at her loom, About a curious web, whose yarn she threw In with a golden shuttle. A ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... pyre was built, the body burnt, and the ashes carefully gathered together, and placed in the finely-wrought urn and painted cinerary, and this in one larger and coarser. These were buried with the stone maize-grinder, and sometimes weapons and earthen dishes and food. Over the grave a pile of stones was raised, and skilful artificers were set to work on the hardest and toughest stone they could find to make a statue of the chief whose memory they reverenced. It must have taken months, if not years, to have fashioned the statue I have ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... and other igneous matters here and there. And one could not help entertaining the fancy that they were a specimen of what the other islands were once, or at least would have been now, had not each of them had its volcanic vents, to pile up hard lavas thousands of feet aloft, above the marine strata, and so consolidate each ragged chine of submerged mountain into one solid conical island, like St. Vincent at their northern end, and at their southern end that beautiful Grenada to which we were ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... some more sticks," ordered Selina, "and shavings, 'n' chunks of wood, 'n' anything you can find. Look here—in the kitchen-garden there's a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many as you can carry, and then go back ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... above that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I had first discovered the gold that the land nourished, the rain from the clouds had given the rushing life of the cataract; but which now, in the drought and the hush of the skies, was but a dead pile of stones. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... was the fort, the snow of a severe winter had been suffered to pile in drifts against the stockade till in places it nearly reached the top, so that the stockade was no longer an obstacle to ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... as it was growing dark, and the shadows creeping into the corners made him half shrink with terror lest they were the bayonets of those whose coming he was constantly expecting. He could not climb to the scaffolding, and so he sought a friendly pile of hay, and crouching down behind it, ere long fell asleep for the first time in ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... the landlord's fell—at least we thought so; he was confused, at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word that had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher several times and then went out. He must have visited an American, for when he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of temperature both of air and water, soon announced that we were approaching that equatorial divider of our globe, called "the Line," and in about one degree of latitude above it (1 deg. 16' N.) we made the islets of Saint Paul, a barren pile of rocks of about one mile and a half in length, and of inconsiderable breadth, standing solitarily and desolately here in mid ocean. Made their longitude by the mean of three chronometers; observation 29 deg. 19' ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the stairs and got behind a pile of crates in the shadows, while invective roared around them. This floor was lit by a single small bulb hanging from a socket in the ceiling. The windows were hung with heavy blankets to keep the ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in a pile on the table before her she added the old forged certificates from Halsey's pocket. There it lay, the incriminating, ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... royal birth, riches, or a large family, are of no avail: That all are transitory; virtue alone resisting the funeral pile. That this lady was first married to a duke, then to Stoke, a gentleman; And lastly, by the grave espoused ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... house at Chad was wrapped in sleep. The brilliant beams of a June moon illuminated the fine pile of gray masonry with a strong white light. Every castellated turret and twisted chimney stood out in bold relief from the heavy background of the pine wood behind, and the great courtyard lay white and still, lined by a dark ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and porters had gone about their own affairs, and had left the great building strangely cool and empty and silent. The wharves, too, were deserted—all but one, where a Hindu sat in the shade of a pile of luggage, and the top of a boat's mast wavered like the index of a balance above the edge ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this old-fashioned garden, in the midst of these old-fashioned flowers, with all the gentlenesses of old-fashioned life suggested by them, it is easier to imagine the people themselves than where all is so cold, hard, severe—so much on the defensive, as in that huge, sullen pile on the hilltop." ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... throng pressed up the steps, elbowing and scrambling. The competition was keen but good-natured. Phormio's broad jests and witticisms—he called all his customers by name—aided in forcing up the price. The turbot was knocked down to a rich gentleman's cook marketing for his master. The pile of fish decreased, the bidding sharpened. The "Market Wardens" seemed needed to check the jostling. But as the last eel was held up, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... his work. There was a pile of it in front of him and an accumulation in his drawers. For some time he wrote assiduously, but work was dry after the subject they had been discussing. He looked over at his partner and, seeing that that gentleman ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... junglelike forest, in rocks and adjacent to logs. Schaldach writes that "Their burrows go back under the large limestone blocks, and each burrow where I caught a mouse has a pile of excavated earth, like a tiny gopher mound." The trapping area was at an elevation of approximately 2800 feet on the steep sides of a small hill on top of which the field camp was situated. Schaldach indicated that this locality was transitional between arid tropical and humid tropical conditions. ...
— Mammals from Tamaulipas, Mexico • Rollin H. Baker
... roaring of which resounds for miles. Here the penguins drill and hold councils and law courts and marry and get divorced and hold political meetings, here the rabbits play and the terns foregather, and here the winds that blow from everywhere but the east, hunt and yell and pile in winter a twenty foot sea that breaks in seven miles of thunder under seven miles of spray thick as the smoke ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... at Tiny, and saw how wistfully her eyes rested on a pile of cakes that stood near; and that look decided him. "Would you like to have some of it?" he said, with a faint smile. The little girl's face flushed with joy at the prospect of such a treat. "Oh, daddy! if I could only take Dick some, ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... a game of dominoes, a mutilated picture-puzzle, some copies of Zion's Herald, and a pile of New York ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... a handful of correspondence, and proceeded to run her eye over the addresses. When about half the pile had been exhausted she stopped, and propounded the usual inquiry in ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... "your accounts and so forth," she looked at the table from which Mr. Aylett had arisen to set a chair for her. There was a pile of account-books at the side against the wall, but they were shut, and over heaped by pamphlets and newspapers; while before the owner's seat lay an open portfolio, an unfinished letter within it. Winston wiped his pen with deliberation, closed the portfolio, snapped to the spring-top ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... light of the fire he saw the vessels of the defense scattered. Now would be his chance to crowd through to the fishing fleet. With the wind and sea at his back he would pile them up on the rocks. Jumping to the Fuor d'Italia he sped away to direct the attack ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... propose again subscribing during the coming spring, and I only wish our Christian friends in England could witness the exciting scene of a contributing day, with how much joy the poor people come forward and cast down their blanket or blankets, gun, shirt, or elk skin, upon the general pile 'to help in building the ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... be so called, being window and chimney as well, fronted toward the south, facing the dry lakes and the mountains beyond. Close by, at the left, was a heap of bones, which, on a nearer view, disclosed themselves to be those of rabbits, coyotes and quail, while three or four larger bones in the pile might inform the zoologist that the fierce mountain-lion was not unknown to this region. To the right of the doorway, some ten feet from it, were two large flat stones, set facing each other, a few inches apart; ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... and pass not bye, Until this fetive (elegant) pile astound thine eye, That shoots aloft into the realms of day, The Record of the Builder's fame for aie— The pride of Bristowe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... could guess that in the soft blackness below me, filling up the foreground like a lake, the valley was there indeed; realise that if I stepped down, perhaps thirty yards or so, my feet would sink into the pile of the turf-carpet, and feel the sharp benediction of the dew. About me surged and beat an enormous silence. The only sound at all—and that was fitful—came from a fern-owl which, from a thorn-bush above me, churred softly and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... speak—Rosebery, Chamberlain, Asquith, etc.—when asked what he thought, said that a Chamberlain was not unknown to them in America, and that they could produce a Rosebery or an Asquith, but that a Hartington no man could find. His speaking was the finest example of pile-driving the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... has the problem of stopping a large machine weighing a ton or more, traveling at a landing speed of forty to fifty miles an hour, with the center of gravity just balanced over the under-carriage. An error in judgment will pile the machine up on its nose with a crashed propeller, and perhaps two broken wings and damaged under-carriage. Not a dangerous accident for the ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... about, looked eagerly, and lo! seen through the back window of a house in a street built at right angles, they saw the shape of a man's hand writing swiftly, steadily, on large quarto pages. As soon as one was finished, it was added to a pile which grew and grew, rising, as it were, visibly before ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... so intense that the boys were glad enough to stir around in the snow and wind to keep warm. They cut a big pile of firewood and piled the brushwood thickly around the shelter, taking care, however, to keep it from ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... followed Gray to the door, and there before it stood Ishmael, chopping away at random, upon the pile of wood, his cheeks flushed with fever and his eyes wild ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the night; when, looking on the back part of our camp, I thought I saw a creature within our fortification, and so indeed he was, except his haunches, for he had taken a running leap, I suppose, and with all his might had thrown himself clear over our palisades, except one strong pile, which stood higher than the rest, and which had caught hold of him, and by his weight he had hanged himself upon it, the spike of the pile running into his hinder haunch or thigh, on the inside; and by that he hung, growling and ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... tense, breathless silence the Story Girl placed our parcels on the lowest step, and laid her letter on the top of the pile. Her brown fingers trembled and her face ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to do," Arcot said tightly. "We can never hope to avoid that thing; we haven't got the power. I'm going to try for an orbit around it. We'll fall toward it and give the ship all the acceleration she'll take. There's no time to calculate—I'll just pile on the speed until ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... in Nice, they ca't, but damned, I think they micht as well ca't Nesty. The Pile-on, 's they ca't, 's aboot as big as the river Tay at Perth; and it's rainin' maist like Greenock. Dod, I've seen 's had mair o' what they ca' the I-talian at Muttonhole. I-talian! I haenae seen the sun for eicht and forty hours. Thomson's better, I believe. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sun. The grassman maintains just so much flesh on the bones of his beast as will suffice to hold them together under their burden, and this can be done without lucerne grass, so poor Tantalus toddles about, buried under a pile of sweet-scented, fresh, green herbage, ministering to the sleek aristocracy of his own kind, and returns to gnaw his daily allowance of kurbee. There is, however, one alleviation of his lot for which he may well be thankful, and ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... Although there would be considerable snow in winter, the roofs were usually flat, probably massive stone slabs supported by pillars within. Even in the poorer sections, this was true except for the very meanest houses and out-buildings, which were thatched. Here and there, some huge pile of masonry would rear itself above its lower neighbors, and, where the streets were wider, occasional groups of large buildings would be surrounded by battlemented walls. Stranor Sleth indicated one ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... was lying in the cabin near by, upon a pile of rubbish. Ten or twelve guerrillas were gathered about the fire, apparently drawing lots for my watch, boots, hat, etc. I now made an effort to find out how far I was hurt. I discovered that I could ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... expected of her. She hemstitched a fine white linen handkerchief for her father while I read. (She is never idle, being so essentially a nest- maker and comfort-producer and race-conserver; and she has a whole pile of ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... of them late at night, full of this perplexity. As he left the dreary old pile, he saw some one lurking in the shadow of the wall, apparently watching his movements. He hastened after the figure, but it glided away, and disappeared among some ruins. Shortly after he heard a low whistle, which was answered from a little distance. He had no longer a doubt but that ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... thundered up between them with the guns, took post behind the raised cross-road, and opened on the galloping horsemen with case-shot. At once the front was strewn with steeds and men; and gunners and infantry riddled the successive ranks, that rushed on only to pile up writhing heaps and bar retreat to the survivors in front. Some of these sought safety by a dash through the guns, while the greater number struggled and even laid about with their sabres to hew their way out ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... price; but the gentleman and lady who lived in the noble mansion which fronted it, would not, for the highest price which might have been offered them, have had those sweet flowers torn up, and a brick pile reared in the place—their only child, the dear little Carie, loved the garden so dearly, and spent so much of her ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... his patriotism not in the least dampened, returned to his Labrador home and divided all the fur of his winter's hunt into two equal piles. To one pile he added a ten dollar bill, and that pile, with the ten dollars added, he shipped at once to the "Patriotic Fund" in St. Johns. He had offered himself, and they would not take him, and this was all he could do ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... space Bruennhilde stands in contemplation of Siegfried's face, gazing with changing emotions, from passionate sorrow to solemn exultation. She turns at length to the vassals and commands them to build a great funeral pile. High and bright let the flames leap which shall devour the noble body. Let them bring Grane, that he with herself may follow the hero, whose honours her own body yearns to share. While they are fulfilling her wish, she falls once more into rapt study of ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... product could ever be made to come forth from such chaotic elements. But there Mr. Saul composed his sermons, and studied his Bible, and followed up, no doubt, some special darling pursuit, which his ambition dictated. But there he did not eat his meals; that had been made impossible by the pile of papers and dust; and his chop, therefore, or his broiled rasher, or bit of pig's fry was deposited for him on the little dressing-table, and ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... detail of her growing responsibility, but not at all disturbed to be discovered at her work. The desk which had been placed in her father's library was as near a duplicate of his in reduced size as could be found. A bunch of letters covered one end of it, while a neatly arranged pile of checks directly in front of her showed that the contents of her mail had proved profitable. She told Riley to bring Allen here, and the boy stood regarding her for a moment ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... see the stream, and the pile of lumber over which I had moralized. I could not help thinking that something must be done with those refuse logs and boards. I cannot exactly explain how it was, but that pile of senseless lumber seemed, in some indefinite manner, to connect ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... on yon shapeless pile? It wore, methought, a holy Druid's form, Musing on ancient days! The dying storm Moan'd in his lifted locks. Thou, night! the while Dost listen to his sad harp's wild complaint, Mother of shadows! as to thee he pours The broken strain, and plaintively deplores The fall of Druid ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... over," I thought, as I saw his gleaming teeth, and the thick pile of hair about his neck, a natural armour which had protected him in many an encounter with wolf or bear. And for the moment it seemed as if the great animal would send me clean over as he charged wildly; but ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Alphonso V. of Aragon in the fifteenth century, this massive pile, half-fortress and half-palace, is famous in Italian annals for its long association with the noble poetess Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara. Born in the old Castle of Marino, near Rome, one of the strongholds of the great feudal house of Colonna, the poetess, who ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... depths, stripped him of his clothes, bound him to a tree, and heaped dry fuel in a circle round him. While thus engaged they filled the air with the most fearful sounds to which their throats could give vent, a pandemonium of ear-piercing yells and screams. The pile prepared, it was set on fire. The flames spread rapidly through the dry brush. But by a chance that seemed providential, at that moment a sudden shower sent its rain-drops through the foliage, extinguished the increasing fire, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sat with her patient in the sunny library at Gleneesh. A small table was between them, upon which lay a pile of letters—his morning mail—ready for her to open, read to him, and pass across, should there chance to be one among them he wished to touch or to keep ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... and woke him up. We watched the signaling for a few minutes and then sent for Warm Spring Johnny. He said they were signaling that we were a strong party of soldiers and had come from the south. He then explained how the flashes were made. A pile of dry grass was collected and then surrounded by blankets. The grass was then fired and when the blaze was brightest the blankets on one side was quickly raised and again lowered, giving out a ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... beams were feebly reflected by the gilded work of the high altar, and the frames of the surrounding paintings, and rested upon the marble figures of the warriors and dames lying in the monumental repose of ages. The solemn pile must have presented much the same appearance when the pious discoverer performed his vigil, kneeling before this very altar, and praying and watching throughout the night, and pouring forth heartfelt praises for having been spared to accomplish ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the time he again reached the river-bank, coming out just above the mill, he had walked himself tired, but into quite a cheerful frame of mind. The mill was shut down for the night, its workers had gone home, and not a sound broke the evening stillness. The boy sat on a pile of slabs for a few minutes, resting, and watching the glowing splendor of sunset as reflected in the waters of the stream at his feet. At length he started up and was about to go to the house, where, as he had decided, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... Scipio's hut set his small eyes twinkling again. His unclean face creased up into a grin, and, softly tiptoeing to a far corner of the room, he deposited his sack with the greatest care. Then he stood up, and his eyes fixed themselves on a curious heap under the table. It was a tumbled pile of pale blue, dirty white, with a four-legged dash of yellow. And out of the heap he made the forms of two small sleeping children, each hugging in their arms an extremity of a yellow cur pup, also sound asleep, in the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... on the floor beside an open trunk. Around her was scattered a pile of feminine mysteries, twice as bulky as the trunk from which they had come, and the bed was littered with gowns as varied in hue as in material. Pink chiffon met green broadcloth, and white silk and blue gingham nestled side ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... pull all about mine ears; present me Death on the wheel, or at wild horses' heels; Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock, That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight; yet will I still Be ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... hit Tom instead of the gobbler," said Sue, who was safe out of harm's way behind a big pile of wood. "Don't ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... declamatory and paying discourses. Well, whether correct or false, the priests at St. Wilfrid's believed in the "miraculous cure," and decided forthwith to agitate for a church in honour of St. Walburge. That church is the one we now see on Maudlands—a vast and magnificent pile, larger in its proportions than any other Preston place of worship, and with a spire which can only be equalled for altitude by two others in the whole country. What a potent architectural charm was secreted in that mystic oil with which Father ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... rat; and if I'd ketched him then, you may depend upon it, I'd 'a' given his jacket a precious warming. As I said, he run off, but jest as I turned towards the tavern, I see him a-coming back, kinder wild-like; so I slipped behind a lumber-pile, hoping he might come over the bridge, so I could lay my fingers on him. The moon was about its highest, so I could see his face, plain as day,— white,—skim-milk warn't a circumstance to it,—and his eyes wide open as they could stretch. I ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... of Troezene were utterly deserted when Democrates threaded them. There was no moon, neither he nor his companion were overcertain of the way. Once they missed the right turn, wandered down a blind alley, and plunged into a pile of offal awaiting the scavenger dogs. But finally the seaman stopped at a low door in a narrow street, and a triple rap made it open. The scene was squalid. A rush-candle was burning on a table. Around it squatted seven men who rose and bowed as the strategus entered. In the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of these attempts to go north of America to Asia—Cabot's plan repeated. He pushed through unknown waters, threading his perilous way among icebergs, until (1576) he entered Baffin Bay. Here he heaped a pile of stones, declared the country an appendage of the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... thought out. Oh, how much more he can make us suffer than you could with your clumsy killings! She must go, but wait—not yet—not yet. Oh, my God! I couldn't stand it to see her go. It would cut into my heart and leave me to bleed to death. No, no, no—don't! Please don't! Don't pile it all on me at the last. The end has come anyway. Don't ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... rising from the stone on which he had seated himself, and wiping the blood, dust, and sweat from his haggard face, while his eyes gleamed like coals of fire; "Skarpedin the Dane has landed in the fiord, my house is a smoking pile, my children and most of the people in the stede are burned, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... shambled forward and began picking up my traps which had been dumped in a pile on the steps. His appearance struck me with such an instant feeling of repugnance, that even after I was used to the fellow, I never quite overcame that first involuntary shudder. He was not a full-blooded ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... tradesman, but in his pleasures he was fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles. Standing close to his chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across him to place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old woman; ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... served as seats for her and Sally Tracy in the old childish days stood in the same corner under the dormer window, through which the sun was even now pouring its setting rays. The chest was unlocked, and presently a goodly pile of clothing lay upon the floor ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... and is it thus thou hast estranged from me my beloved wife and innocent children?" The self-convicted minister uttered not a word, but trembled like one afflicted with the palsy. The sultan commanded instantly an enormous pile of wood to be kindled, and the vizier, being bound hand and foot, was forced into an engine, and cast from it into the fire, which rapidly consumed him to ashes. His house was then razed to the ground, his effefts left to the plunder of the populace, and the women of his haram and his children ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... get down there, I shall pile a couple of sacks over and throw the nets on the top, and there is no fear of your being disturbed. I will bring your meals in to you, and let you know what is doing in the town; but I shall not come in oftener than I can help. I shall leave the ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... The Indian widow, when she throws herself on the burning pile, with a noble courage does what she has been taught to look upon as a sacred duty, but she cannot but dread the fire which ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the castle showed itself clearly now, rising on each side of the bowmen's cottage and behind it, with a tower at each of its corners. To the left of the old cottage the main doorway opened to the great hall, in which a pile of a few huge oaks was being transformed into a massive stair. Three figures of strange men held up this ceiling with their heads and uplifted hands, when the castle was finished; but as yet the carvers had only begun their ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... evening Jinny came to him in his study. She carried the dreadfully familiar pile of ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... add the salt, pepper and oil, and mix thoroughly; add the vinegar and mix again. Pile the cubes in a mound in the salad-bowl. Mark out the surface of the mound into quarters with capers; fill in two opposite sections with chopped beet; use chopped whites of eggs in a third, and sifted yolks of eggs in the fourth section. ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... Gordon referred him to the Khedive's letter it was not forthcoming, and could not even be found for some time. When it was found the chief clerk received forty blows for not having before translated it! Amid a pile of letters which were disregarded, Gordon saw one from the British Government and one ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... amongst others, Peterbath, and the three Peaks, with their valley filled with woods. You also command an extensive view of the ocean, and even perceive the Isle of Bourbon forty leagues towards the west. From the summit of that stupendous pile of rocks Paul gazed upon the vessel which had borne away Virginia, and which, now ten leagues out at sea, appeared like a black spot in the midst of the ocean. He remained a great part of the day with his eyes fixed upon this object: when it had disappeared, he still fancied ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... over a quantity of rubbish in a little-used room, I disturbed a large black spider. Rushing forth, just in time to save itself from destruction through the capsizing of a pile of books, it paused for one moment, took a swift comprehensive glance at the position, then scuttled away across the floor, and was lost in an obscure corner of the room. This incident served to remind me of a fact I was nearly forgetting, that England is not a spiderless country. A foreigner, however ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... this immense mound. It is a scrub-turkey's nest. Thirty or forty lay their eggs in it. One could hardly imagine they could gather such a huge pile of sticks and earth and leaves. They bury their eggs, and heap up the nest until the laying time ceases. The moist heap heats and incubates the eggs. The young turkeys spring out of the shell, covered with a thick warm coat, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... on board—anybody?" I ask, with the air of a man of fashion. "To whom does that immense pile of luggage belong—under charge of the lady's-maid, the courier, and the British footman? A large white K is painted ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Brother Bobus, where to begin our purification, and where to end it? We may, like the curate in "Don Quixote," reprieve Amadis de Gaul, but shall we, therefore, make Esplandian, "his lawful-begotten son," a foundation for the funeral-pile we are to set a-blazing presently? To be sure, there is sense in the observation of the good and holy priest upon that memorable occasion. "This," said the barber, "is Amadis of Greece; and it is my opinion that all those upon this side are of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... me nervous, so that I cannot get to sleep, it is not because I suppose he is engaged in any unlawful or mysterious way. The only wicked suggestion that ever came into my head was one that was founded on the landlady's story of his having a pile of gold; it was a ridiculous fancy; besides, I suspect the story of sweating gold was only one of the many fables got up to make the Jews odious and afford a pretext for plundering them. As for the sound like a woman ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... father's footstool. But the more Midas loved his daughter, the more did he desire and seek for wealth. He thought, foolish man! that the best thing he could possibly do for this dear child would be to bequeath her the immensest pile of yellow, glistening coin, that had ever been heaped together since the world was made. Thus, he gave all his thoughts and all his time to this one purpose. If ever he happened to gaze for an instant at the gold-tinted clouds of sunset, he wished that they were real gold, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Catherine-wheel is a comparatively difficult thing to make. A serpent, on the other hand, could not well help burning, and when, for all that, one simply would not burn, that was a humiliation that could not be suffered. So I would bend over the shells as they stuck in the pile of sand and begin to blow, in order to give new life to the dying tinder fire. When it went out entirely, that was really the best thing for me. But if it went off suddenly, my hair was singed or my forehead burned. Nothing worse ever happened, for the angel was protecting ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... "I spent it at first as though there was no end to my little pile," he said. "I had pulled up when your letter came, but I only had enough left to pay my way back to Florida, buy this pony, and the outfit you suggested. There's nothing left. The fellows tried to get me ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... but we would take care that there should be as much useful furniture of all sorts there, as to render it unnecessary for you to move a stick. If you should think this a convenience, then I should propose to you to pile your furniture in the middle of the rooms at Tavistock House, and go out to Devonshire Terrace two or three weeks before Michaelmas, to enable my workmen to commence their operations. This might be ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... know an amateur photographer never wants for a reason when he gets caught intruding on private grounds," he explained; "his enthusiasm is supposed to tempt him to take any risks. And Frank, if we run across any trouble don't hesitate to pile all the blame on me. I'm willing to stand ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... replied, "we have not had our Indian summer yet; and while that lasts we shall use but little fuel, and if you and the children are smart, you can get quite a pile ahead." ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... of the king in England, and was not likely to be used again for that purpose. But to prevent this, Lambert handled it in such fashion that it was left a vast pile of ruins, unfit to harbor a garrison. He then drew off his troops, not having discovered the concealed men in this proceeding. Ten days passed. Then the two flung down their wall and emerged among the ruins. They found the castle a place ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... day before he had looked ill and had stopped work before the day was over. He was evidently suffering from exhaustion, but had declared that he needed nothing, and after sitting down to rest upon a pile of bricks for a while, had gone off to his home—wherever that ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard |
