"Pitch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smaller elongated bullet, necessitated by the smaller calibre of the rifle, entailed some definite disadvantages. The lighter bullet is more affected by wind. Its greater relative length to diameter necessitates a sharper pitch of rifling in order properly to revolve the bullet (one turn in 10 in. for the .303 rifle as compared with one turn in 22 in. for the Martini-Henry). This, in its turn, necessitates a hard nickel envelope for the leaden bullet in order to prevent its "stripping,'' or being forced through ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... (there may be shells down below that hide a finer specimen) is the beautiful Peregrina. It was fished up by a little negro boy in 1560, who obtained his liberty by opening an oyster. The modest bivalve was so small that the boy in disgust was about to pitch it back into the sea. But he thought better of his rash determination, pulled the shells asunder, and, lo, the rarest of priceless pearls! [Moral. Don't despise little oysters.] La Peregrina is shaped like a pear, and is of the size of a pigeon's egg. It was presented to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... had already pulled out a few hairs, and was still tugging at the mustache, when M. Dubuis, with a back stroke of his hand, flung aside the officer's arm, and, seizing him by the collar, threw him down on the seat. Then, excited to a pitch of fury, his temples swollen and his eyes glaring, he kept throttling the officer with one hand, while with the other clenched he began to strike him violent blows in the face. The Prussian struggled, tried to draw his sword, to clinch with his adversary, who was on top of him. But M. Dubuis ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of the speaking voice are the middle and low keys. These should be used exclusively in daily conversation. The use of high pitch is due to habit or temperament, but may be overcome through judicious practice. The objection to a high-keyed voice is not only that it is disagreeable to the listener, but puts the speaker "out of tune" with ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... halt had to be called, and when they were still a good three miles from where they had left the boat, the sun went down, and the night came on with startling suddenness, so that at the end of a quarter of an hour it was dark as pitch beneath the trees, and the order was given to bear off to the right, so as ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... only criterion of right which he knew, and this alone would decide which opinion was right. That for himself, he had seen our affairs desperate and our credit lost, and that this was in a sudden and extraordinary degree raised to the highest pitch. I told him, all that was ever necessary to establish our credit, was an efficient government and an honest one, declaring it would sacredly pay our debts, laying taxes for this purpose, and applying them to it. I avoided going further into the subject. He ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... through the open hatches. A little thing provides entertainment at sea, Mistress Patricia. He would sit or stand for hours looking past me with a perfectly still face. The other wretches were quick to crowd up, whining to me to pitch them half pence or tobacco, but try as I would, I could not get word or look from him. Sink me! if he didn't have the impudence to resent ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... six-legged Marcus Curtiuses, while over their drowning bodies the heedless remainder march in safety to the other side. If the story is not true, it is at least well invented; for the ant-commonwealth everywhere carries to the extremest pitch the old Roman doctrine of the absolute subjection of the individual to the State. So exactly is this the case that in some species there are a few large, overgrown, lazy ants in each nest, which do no work themselves, but accompany the workers ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... opposition to the force of gravity, without being actually carried up. If a hodman, for example, wished to land a brick at an elevation of sixteen feet above the place where he stood, he would probably pitch it up to the bricklayer. He would thus impart, by a sudden effort, a velocity to the brick sufficient to raise it to the required height; the work accomplished by that effort being precisely the same as ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... once upon a time an old man and an old woman. The old man worked in the fields as a pitch-burner, while the old woman sat at home and spun flax. They were so poor that they could save nothing at all; all their earnings went in bare food, and when that was gone there was nothing left. At last the old woman had ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... was instantly tied tightly round the upper part of the arm to stop the rush of blood, and the stump was then dipped into boiling pitch, and Sweyn, who had become almost instantly insensible from the loss of blood, was carried to his father's tent. According to custom handsome presents of swords and armour were made to Edmund by those who had won by ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... said the youth, "there is on that palmetto bale a speck of pitch scarce larger than the pupil of my eye. Thou'lt need to strain thy sight to see it. Observe how my shaft will find it. Canst thou better such ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... least," he gasped, the breath knocked out of his body. Just the same, he was very much alarmed. It was as dark as pitch outside and in, and he could not help wondering how near the edge of the mountain side they were running. A false move of the flying horses and they might go rolling to the bottom of the ravine, hundreds of feet below. ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the surrounding country. The jehad of which he had been the chief instigator had certainly attained unexampled dimensions, and although it was not in the nature of things that every Afghan who carried arms should be inspired with religious fanaticism to such a pitch as to be utterly reckless of his life, swarms of fierce ghazees made formidable the levies which ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... were illumined in the early evening by the light of between four and five thousand lamps. It was called the silver illumination, and is described as having been very grand and delicate. Suddenly, on a given signal, four hundred men, stationed at their posts, exchanged the lamps for lighted pitch in iron pans fastened to the ribs of the dome. Then the dome shone afar as a splendid flaming crown ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... old days, when the world was young, there were no automobiles nor flying-machines to make one wonder; nor were there railway trains, nor telephones, nor mechanical inventions of any sort to keep people keyed up to a high pitch of excitement. Men and women lived simply and quietly. They were Nature's children, and breathed fresh air into their lungs instead of smoke and coal gas; and tramped through green meadows and deep forests instead of riding in street cars; and went to bed when it grew dark and rose with the ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... monotonous. His high favour at court kept her in subjects for uneasiness. He finally attempted a violent cure. He began to absent himself from the house with unusual frequence, but would not explain where he had been, even though Caroline wept and wailed. At length he wrought her to the pitch of desperation by his heartless indifference; then, one day, he brought home a portrait bust which a sculptor friend had made and with it a signed record of every hour and minute of his absence. This, if not a permanent cure, was at least ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Or, lastly, did he write only as a mythologist, and care for nothing but the exercise of his spleen and genius? If he had no other object than that, his conscientiousness would be reduced to a low pitch indeed. Foscolo is of opinion he was not only in earnest, but that he was very near taking himself for an apostle, and would have done so had his prophecies succeeded, perhaps with success to the pretension.[24] Thank heaven, his "Hell" has not embittered the mild reading-desks of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... a night of horror to the whole family—to everybody in and about Jingo Hall. The dogs set up a howl; the children bawled, cried, and took on; the Irish girl screeched; gin and laudanum, peppermint and "lollypops," the de'il to pay and no pitch hot. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... rioters. The commanding officer ordered them to fire, and several persons in the crowd were shot down. Their dead bodies were paraded through the city. This spectacle raised the indignation of the multitude to the highest pitch. Fresh barricades were erected in all the most populous quarters of the city, and the soldiers, stupefied and panic-struck, renounced all further opposition to the revolt. The King now named Marshal Bugeaud to the supreme command of the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... ready-made to your hands? Hearken, Captain Leigh. You've been a good captain to me, and I'll repay you with a bit of sound advice. Give up your gold-hunting, and toiling and moiling after honor and glory, and copy us. Take that fair maid behind you there to wife; pitch here with us; and see if you are not happier in one day than ever you were in all ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... first, and to charge the spahis with some squadrons of Mercy, which had already passed below Panczova, to protect the disembarkation of some, and the bridge constructed for the others, with eighty-four boats. On the 19th I went, with a large escort, to reconnoitre the place where I wished to pitch my camp. Twelve hundred spahis rushed upon us with unequalled fury, and shouted "Allah! Allah!" I know not why one of their officers broke through a squadron which was in front, to find me at the head of the second, where I placed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... plant ladders on the causeway and attempt the wall by storm, so shall we come to handstrokes at last and beset them with pitch and boiling oil and hew their ladders ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... of the pitch," said Jeremy. "Besides, it wasn't really a chance, because our umpire would never have given the treasurer out first ball. There are certain little courtesies which are ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... establish arbitrary power on the victory of Calvinism, and upheld, in conjunction with the brilliant policy abroad, a portion of the ancient freedom. In Scotland, the other home of pure Calvinism, where intolerance and religious tyranny reached a pitch equalled only among the Puritans in America, the perpetual troubles hindered the settlement of a fixed political system, and the restoration of order after the union with England stripped the Presbyterian ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Grotto. In between, from out of the corners of the cavern Bengal lights burst forth from time to time flooding for a few moments the whole of that gloomy palace with green, blue, white and rose-coloured flames to which the red flame of the pitch-torches with their black smoke formed ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... of the Tatler and Spectator had turned his head. He had been the editor of both those papers, and was not aware how entirely they owed their influence and popularity to the genius of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction to such a pitch that he every day committed some offence against good sense and good taste. All the discreet and moderate members of his own party regretted and condemned his folly. "I am in a thousand troubles," Addison wrote, "about poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an alarming effect upon Lida. Her nerves, wrought to the utmost pitch by her inward conflict, suddenly gave way. She became giddy; everything swam before her eyes, and she no longer knew if she were in the water or on the river-bank. Sanine had just time to seize her firmly and drag her backwards, secretly pleased at ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... was delivered of this dismal remonstrance I handed him the small object that I had extracted from the pitch-coated ball. "Before you make up your mind that we are likely to be 'left,' as you term it, suppose you look at this," ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... marshes on the coast make excellent rice plantations, and, when drained, are very fertile in cotton. Much of the low, sandy section, extending sixty miles from the coast, is covered with extensive forests of pitch-pine, that furnish large quantities of lumber, tar, turpentine, and resin, for export to Northern cities. When cleared and cultivated, this region proves quite fertile, but Southern energy has thus far been content to give it very little improvement. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... toward the river, but before they had made the corner, Tom Vanrevel was running with all the speed that was in him toward his enemy's house. The one block between him and that forbidden ground seemed to him miles long, and he felt that he was running as a man in a dream, and, at the highest pitch of agonized exertion, covering no space, but only working the air in one place, like a treadmill. All that was in his mind, heart, and soul was to reach Crailey. He had known by the revelation of Carewe's face in what ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... wore a very unfamiliar look to Anne. The floor was indeed scrubbed to a wonderful pitch of purity and so was every article of furniture in the room; the stove was polished until she could see her face in it; the walls were whitewashed and the window panes sparkled in the sunlight. By the table ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... drunk—but what is one to do—depression will drive a man to such a pitch of hysteria? But nothing happened. It seemed that I was not even equal to being thrown out of the window and I went away ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... principal ingredient of which is creosote. There are several reliable brands of preservatives and stains that may be had at a cost of about half that of paint. We must remark also the natural durability of redwood shingles in this climate if the roof has a good pitch. We reshingled our house roof after 20 years of use and found the shingles so sound that we turned them and shingled the sides and roof of a shed with them where they promise to be good for ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... than Flamineo. Pure and simple ambition of the Napoleonic order is the motive which impels into infamy the aspiring parasite of Brachiano: a savage melancholy inflames the baffled greed of Bosola to a pitch of wickedness not unqualified by relenting touches of profitless remorse, which come always either too early or too late to bear any serviceable fruit of compassion or redemption. There is no deeper or more Shakespearean ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... daring than the rest, tried to tweak him by the tail, when he made chase in so heroic a manner that he put them all to flight. Meantime Polly and Nelly, the parrots, kept flying above their heads, and occasionally alighting to rest on Murray's shoulder. Sometimes for a change one of them would pitch on the head or back of Master Queerface, with whom they were on the most friendly terms. The dangers they had gone through together seemed to have united them closely in the bonds of unity. Thus the party proceeded till they reached the governor's house. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... when I wish to sing the word "Fraeulein," I must first, and before all else, think of the pitch of the tone, before I attack the f. With the f, the tone must be there already, before I have pronounced it; to pass from the f to the r I must summon to my aid the auxiliary vowel oo, in order to prevent the formation of any unvocalized interstices ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... body of the sun is gaseous, though it is impossible for us to conceive of the condition of the gaseous core, subjected, as it is, at once to temperature and pressure both enormously great. Probably it is a gas so viscous that it would resist motion as pitch or putty does. Nor do we know much of the nature of either the sun-spots or the solar corona. Both seem to be produced by causes which lie within the sun; both undergo changes that are periodical and connected with each other. They exercise some influence upon ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... loud-voiced men of cocoa-nuts, what is it that you say? "Come try yer luck, roll, bowl, or pitch; the lydies stand' alf-way." One youth I saw who took his stand, a clerk of pith was he, He shut one eye and aimed with care, then let the ball fly free. Twice, thrice, nay, thirty times he flung, his BETSY standing by, And scornfully advising him to close his other eye. Yet, when at last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... almost constant recurrence of steam-boat explosions and consequent sacrifice of life, reports of which are daily to be seen in the newspapers, weighed somewhat heavily on my mind, and the latent fear was not lessened by seeing four barrels of pitch rolled on board, the very moment I set foot on the deck of the Narraganset. I had to console myself, however, as I best could under the circumstances, and trust to Providence; but had it not been for the payment of my fare, which had previously been arranged, and its inevitable loss if I ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... His groaning can be heard outside in the street. If a poor man's child wailed like that they would pitch it ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... then their wide-reaching thoughts are his as well as theirs. Imitating the condescension of some contemporary philosophers of the Infinite, he graciously accepts Christianity and patronizes the idea of Deity, though he gives you to understand that he could easily pitch a generalization outside of both. And thus, mistaking his slab-sidedness for many-sidedness, and forgetting that there is no insight without force to back it,—bedizened in conceit and magnificent in littleness,—he is thrown on society, walking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the hobby,[1] but her disdain reacheth higher than thou canst make wing. I tell thee, Montanus, in courting Phoebe, thou barkest with the wolves of Syria against the moon, and rovest at such a mark, with thy thoughts, as is beyond the pitch[2] of thy bow, praying to Love, when Love is pitiless, and thy malady remediless. For proof, Montanus, read these letters, wherein thou shalt see thy great ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... important character. He had, in fact, seen the wonderful orchestra-leader who, for more than fifty years, conducted the tumultuous concert of serious or court-vetues ideas, and who, always on the stage, always chief, the recognized leader of universal conversation, supplied the motives, gave the pitch, marked the measure, stamped the inspiration, and drew the first ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... songs, which are still preserved, marked this peculiar longing, which was moreover expressed by significant music, and was excited even by the bare mention of the sea. Some, in whom this susceptibility was carried to the greatest pitch, cast themselves with blind fury into the blue waves, as the St. Vitus's dancers occasionally did into rapid rivers. This condition, so opposite to the frightful state of hydrophobia, betrayed itself in others only in the pleasure afforded them by the ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... ragamuffin soldiers clattered down the street at double time. For a moment or two after they came into sight, only the massed uniforms caught the eyes of the intrenched Hollmans, and an alarmed murmur broke from the court-house. They had seen no troops detrain, or pitch camp. These men had sprung from the earth as startlingly as Jason's crop of dragon's teeth. But, when the command rounded the shoulder of a protecting wall to await further orders, the ragged stride of their marching, and the all-too-obvious bearing of the mountaineer proclaimed them ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... to hold pretty well," he told the two who expected to make use of it during the day. "Of course if the lake gets very rough so that you pitch about considerably, keep on the watch for a sudden inflow of water. The planks will hold, but I'm not so sure about the oakum I pounded ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... neither devours nor absorbs, and furthermore a fire which devours fire. There are coals big as mountains, and coals big as hills, and coals as large as the Dead Sea, and coals like huge stones, and there are rivers of pitch and sulphur flowing and seething ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... redemption, and pours some of it towards the four parts of the world, in allusion to the command of Christ: "Go teach all nations, baptising them" (Matt. XXVIII). He then dips the paschal candle three times into the water, singing, and each time raising his voice to a higher pitch than before: "May the power of the Holy Ghost descend upon the fulness of this font"; as when He descended, says Gavant, "in the form of a dove at the baptism of Christ represented by this candle plunged into the water". Then breathing three times on the water nearly in the form of a cross "that ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... had aboard. Jonathan, the coast-guard, came down to Lizard Town this morning, and said he seed a big vessel nigh under the cliffs toward midnight, or fancied he seed her: but fustly Jonathan's a buffle-head, and secondly 'twas pitch-dark; so if as he swears there weren't no blue light, 'tain't likely any man could see, let alone a daft fule like Jonathan. But, there, 'tain't no good for to blame he; durn Government! say I, for ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said the Princess, very composedly. "I have good hope that neither of them will involve you with any of yon dare- devils of Paris, whether male or female, and that we will regulate the pitch to which your courage soars, by the estimation of Greek philosophy, and the judgment of our blessed Lady of Mercy, not her of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... exceptional powers of intervention and comment, and an air of being disappointed about his offspring. It was shocking to lose him; it was like an unexpected hole in the universe, and the writing of "Death" upon the sky, but it did not tear Mr. Polly's heartstrings at first so much as rouse him to a pitch ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... that power which investigates secret things, and is called invention and contrivance? Does that man seem to be compounded of this earthly, mortal, and perishing nature, who first invented names for everything, which, if you will believe Pythagoras, is the highest pitch of wisdom? or he, who collected the dispersed inhabitants of the world, and united them, in the bonds of social life? or he, who confined the sounds of the voice, which used to seem infinite, to the marks of a few letters? or he who first ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... All around poison trees; and next to this, Strewn deep with fiery sands, an awful waste, Wherethrough the wicked toiled with blistering feet, 'Midst rocks of brass, red hot, which scorched, and pools Of bubbling pitch that gulfed them. Last the gorge Of Kutashala Mali,—frightful gate Of utmost Hell, with utmost horrors filled. Deadly and nameless were the plagues seen there; Which when the monarch reached, nigh overborne By terrors and the reek of tortured ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... short time ago it was a living man, with a voice, and eyes, and brain—and that is what makes me uncomfortable. If it were an old skull, it would be different. But it is a new skull. Almost I fancy at times that there is life lurking in the eyeless sockets, where the red firelight from the pitch-weighted logs plays in grewsome flashes; and I fancy, too, that in the brainless cavities of the skull there must still be some of the old passion, stirred into spirit life by the very madness of this night. A hundred ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... event cast discredit of some sort upon this gallant regiment. I want you all to banish any such thought from your minds as utterly untrue. You took part ... in a night operation of extreme difficulty on a pitch dark night, and did all in your power to make it a success. So do not let any false idea get into your minds. Think rather that what took place brings honour to your regiment, and add this event ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... looking round, I saw my father taking a straight burning stick out of the fire, and, after waiting for a minute, and examining the charred end to see if it was fitted for his purpose, he went to the hard-wood dresser, scoured to the last pitch of whiteness and cleanliness, and began drawing with the stick; the best substitute for chalk or charcoal within his reach, for his pocket-book pencil was not strong or bold enough for his purpose. When he had done, he began to explain his new model ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... o' slaves, though he knows it 's the corner Our libbaty rests on, the mis'able scorner! In short, he would wholly upset with his ravages All thet keeps us above the brute critters an' savages, An' pitch into all kinds o' briles an' confusions The holl of our civilized, free institutions; He writes fer thet rather unsafe print, the Courier, An' likely ez not hez a squintin' to Foorier; I 'll be ——, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... completely filled up. Frank's charming receptacle for my own heaving instrument was of that pleasing elasticity that I should not have discovered it had ever once been invaded by a larger weapon than my own, and the voluptuous sensations it produced upon my burning member as, excited to the highest pitch and swollen to the utmost extension, the fiery dart was plunged in and out of the burning furnace, were most exquisite. I felt, too, the full effect which Frank had already experienced of the greatly increased ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... threatened her when her American colonies, and France, and Spain, and Holland, were leagued against her, and when the armed neutrality of the Baltic disputed her maritime rights; never, though another Bonaparte should pitch his camp in sight of Dover Castle; never, till all has been staked and lost; never, till the four quarters of the world have been convulsed by the last struggle of the great English people for their place among the nations." This, Sir, is the true policy. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stood opposed to each other at the two extremities of the lists, the public expectation was strained to the highest pitch. Few augured the possibility that the encounter could terminate well for the Disinherited Knight, yet his courage and gallantry secured 30 the general good ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... he roared. "In bed on Tynwald morning. Pooh! this room smells of dead sleep, dead spirits, and dead everything. Let me get at that window—you pitch your clothes all over the floor. Ah! that's fresher! Headache? I should think so. Get up, then, and I'll drive ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... be mixed with the others. There was soon a regular stink of gas; I smelt it this time all right. We got our respirators on, which added to our discomfort. This went on for quite a long time. Then it also began to pour with rain and we were all drenched. The night was pitch dark. Every now and then the exploding shells around us and far away, the burning dumps near Ypres and the star shells along the line, lit up the whole panorama with an effect like that of lightning. The water and mud grew thick in the trench; and still ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... interest, it may even be said that he touches the emotions, when he pours out all his sadness before God, or rather - for his grief is impersonal - the sadness of the Jew, the humble sinner appealing to the mercy of God. When his feelings rise to their most solemn pitch, their strong pulsations visible through the unaccustomed poetic garb, the cloak of learned allusions drops of itself, and emotion is revealed under the strata of labored expressions. All the poems by Rashi belong under the ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... repetitions of her own, and she kept at them in a voice that rose to a higher and higher pitch, like the sound of an old well-pump. "Till I die! Till ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... terrors. Not until the clock showed her that in twenty minutes she must make her first entrance did she succumb. But Sir Lucien's gold snuff-box lay upon her dressing-table—and she was trembling. When at last she heard the sustained note of the oboe in the orchestra giving the pitch to the answering violins, she raised the jewelled lid ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... of boys was often among these scenes, where at home the evenings were spent in studying by the light of a pitch-pine knot. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... and listened: there was no sound from the ledge, or the Eagle's Nest that clung to it. Half timidly he descended the winding steps, and paused before the door of the cabin. "Mornie," he said, in a dry, metallic voice, whose only indication of the presence of sickness was in the lowness of its pitch,—"Mornie!" There was no reply. "Mornie," he repeated impatiently, "it's me,—Rand. If you want anything, you're to call me. I am just outside." Still no answer came from the silent cabin. He pushed open the door gently, hesitated, and ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and the distance which he had already gained, hindered Don Cornelio from perceiving the tone of irony in which he spoke; but almost at the same instant the speaker elevated his voice to a high pitch, though only the last words ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... kicked out a big lump of snow and struck it as plaster on my head. The idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished. Then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to a place of safety, and fainted away. The sun was setting when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before the Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred feet of descent to Breil was accomplished without a slip, or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a moment's silence. The interview was at its highest pitch of excitement. Micheline knew that she must put an end to it. She replied ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... which consisted in a kind of easy, imperturbable serenity, that no threat could disturb or ruffle. Nay, there appeared a kind of lurking good-humored defiance in his eye, which, joined to the irony of his manner, aggravated the resentment of M'Clutchy to the highest pitch. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... p. 154. Schoenhals, Krieg von 1805, p. 33. Paget's despatch, Oct. 25; Records: Austria, vol. 75. "The jealousy and misunderstanding among the generals had reached such a pitch that no communication took place between Ferdinand and Mack but in writing. Mack openly attributed his calamities to the ill-will and opposition of the Archduke and the rest of the generals. The Archduke ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... longitude 171 deg. 43' E. The calm continued till noon the next day, during which time we observed the variation to be 10 deg. 33' E. I now ordered the carpenters to work to caulk the decks. As we had neither pitch, tar, nor rosin, left to pay the seams, this was done with varnish of pine, and afterwards covered with coral sand, which made a cement far exceeding my expectation. In the afternoon, we had a boat in the water, and shot two albatrosses, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... epistolary intrigue? This is the second letter you have enclosed to my address, notwithstanding a miraculous long answer, and a subsequent short one or two of your own. If you do so again, I can't tell to what pitch my fury may soar. I shall send you verse or arsenic, as likely as any thing,—four thousand couplets on sheets beyond the privilege of franking; that privilege, sir, of which you take an undue advantage over a too susceptible senator, by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... natural accidents, our own adventures. There was one hot day when several of us, walking out towards Maidstone, were incited by the devil to despise ginger beer, and we fuddled ourselves dreadfully with ale; and a time when our young minds were infected to the pitch of buying pistols, by the legend of the Wild West. Young Roots from Highbury came back with a revolver and cartridges, and we went off six strong to live a free wild life one holiday afternoon. We fired our first shot deep in the old flint mine ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... account, what shall we think of him if he suffers nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even the twentieth to his ruin or disadvantage? But because the mind cannot be always in its fervour nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary to find out proper employments for it ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... d'Eglantine was not the only member of the assemblies of the Revolution to deserve a place in literature. The great orators, Mirabeau, Danton, Vergniaud, Robespierre, and others, rose to a high pitch of rhetoric in their speeches. Famous apostrophes which they uttered are still current phrases: Nous sommes ici par le volonte du peuple, et nous n'ont sortiront que par le force des bayonettes.—Silence aux trente voix!—De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... I seen 'im pass on de store w'ile I'm down below." His brows knit in a black scowl, and his voice slid off a pitch in ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the winning horse, I'm bound to be a Duke, of course; But wait and see—the slightest hitch Might altogether queer my pitch; So mum's the word," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... that if I could, I would not only talk but act; I would rather the world were angry with me than God.' But Rome always remained the chief object of his attacks. 'Well then,' he says of her, 'I know of another little song of Rome; if her ear itches for it, I will sing it to her and pitch the notes at their highest.' He concludes, 'God give us all a Christian understanding, and to the Christian nobility of the German nation, especially, a true spiritual courage to do their best for ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... diminish at once after the more intrepid of the Huguenots had, under military compulsion, been readmitted into Rouen. There were daily complaints of ill-usage. But the insolence of the dominant party rose to a still higher pitch when there appeared a royal edict—whether genuine or forged has not as yet been settled—by which the cardinal demands of the Huguenots were granted. The alleged concessions may not strike us as very extraordinary. They consisted chiefly in disarming ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw a doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a part—pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the moment to cover the truth. Sotillo's rapacity, excited to the highest pitch by the prospect of an immense booty, could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew might have been very much frightened by the accident, but he knew where the silver was concealed, and had invented this story, with his Jewish cunning, to put him entirely off ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... in their first onset in both points of attack, became exasperated to an extravagant pitch of fury, and determined upon the most savage revenge. A large party contrived to penetrate into the garden, by the rere, and some of them immediately rushed into the Turret. The Yeomen stationed there were upon an upper floor—they had ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... with anger. It would have done him good to "pitch into" Wilbur, but the latter looked him in the face so calmly and resolutely that discretion seemed to him the better part of valor, and with an oath ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... in which the pitch is not too low. Many people have the mistaken idea that young children cannot sing high. Listen to their shouts in the playground, to the notes they use when calling to each other, and this idea will ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... doctor got up and said that he must go. To be sure, the good-byes were a little hurriedly spoken, and the voices were at a little higher pitch than was usual; and when the doctor had gone, Keith and his father went at once upstairs to the ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... country. A good number of such as were most dissatisfied, embraced this opportunity of returning to Europe. The disappointment of their unreasonable hopes inflamed their rage against Columbus to the utmost pitch, and their distress made their ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... distress had risen to its highest pitch, a new and unexpected prospect suddenly revealed itself.[128] Several very influential friends of ours spoke to the Duke of Meiningen of our work. He summoned Froebel to him, and made inquiries as to his plans for the future. Froebel laid before him a plan for an educational ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... pardon," yawned Louise. "But Elizabeth couldn't hear way over there with Olga and Miss Laura. I say, girls," she added with her usual giggle, "I feel as if I'd been wound up to concert pitch and I've got to let down somehow. Get out your fiddle, Rose, and play us a jig. I've got to get some of this seriousness out of my system before I ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... Flat Crick deestrick, I'd like to know? Why, the boys have driv off the last two, and licked the one afore them like blazes. You might teach a summer school, when nothin' but children come. But I 'low it takes a right smart man to be school-master in Flat Crick in the winter. They'd pitch you out of doors, sonny, neck and ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... told you," said Mr. Jones, sharply and emphatically. "What do you mean by hangin' fire so? Do you s'pose this is child's play and make-believe? Don't ye know that when quiet, peaceable neighbors git riled up to our pitch, they mean what they say? Sw'ar, as I said, and be mighty sudden ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... still is Hooker's conduct on Friday, when his three columns came into presence of the enemy. What every one would have expected of Fighting Joe was, that at this supreme moment his energy would have risen to its highest pitch. It was a slight task to hold the enemy for a few hours. Before ordering the columns back, Hooker should have gone in person to Sykes's front. Here he would have shortly ascertained that Jackson was moving around his right. What easier than to leave a strong enough force at the edge ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... I began to know this by personal experience. The only one of the imaginative arts in which I had from childhood taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of which (and in this it surpasses perhaps every other art) consists in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up to a high pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which are already in the character, but to which this excitement gives a glow and a fervour, which, though transitory at its utmost height, is precious for sustaining them at other times. This effect of music I had often experienced; ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... study of natural phenomena must always lead to a certain Pythagorean habit of thought. When a string of a certain length is struck, a particular sound is produced. If the string is shortened in certain numeric proportions, other sounds will be produced. The pitch of the sounds may be expressed in figures. Physics also expresses colour-relations in figures. When two bodies combine into one substance, it always happens that a certain definite quantity of the one body, expressible in numbers, combines with a certain definite quantity of the other. The ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... of its beauty and its value, have tended to inflate his sentences with an appearance of display. His poetic diction is simpler than that of his prose; but here, too, he is habitually over-elevated, whence he becomes sometimes stilted, and oftentimes he drops below pitch with an inadequate and disappointing close. But we must honour him in the position which he holds. He is the leader of that noble series of English scholars who represent the first endeavouring stage of recovery after the great ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... their widest, and a great uproar of gabble. Two school-girls—home for the nooning—are idling over a gateway, half swinging, half musing, gazing intently. There is a gambrel-roofed mansion, with a balustrade along its upper pitch, and quaint ogees of ancient joinery over the hall-door; and through the cleanly scrubbed parlor-windows is to be seen a prim dame, who turns one spectacled glance upon the passing coach, and then resumes her sewing. There are red houses, with their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... her army to pitch their tents, and encamp where they were; and accompanied prince Amgiad to the city and palace, where he presented her to the king; who received her in a manner becoming her dignity. Assad, who was present, and knew her as soon as he saw her, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was very crowded and very hot, and Cleary had to sit on a step of the platform, but it was an exhibition of patriotism worth beholding. The band played with great gusto, and the whole audience was at the highest pitch of excitement. The chairman made an address, and Josh Thatcher responded in a few words for himself and his three companions. Then flowers were presented to them, and a little girl recited the "Charge of the ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... these, a boy and a girl, a ceaseless war of words was waged from morning to night. And as neither of them lacked ready wit, and both were in constant practice, the art of snapping was cultivated by them to the highest pitch. ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... you are quarrelling, and tying up little bags of roots to bury under the doorsteps to poison each other with. God sees you. You men steal away to every grog shop to sell your master's corn, that you may buy rum to drink. God sees you. You sneak into the back streets, or among the bushes, to pitch coppers. Although your masters may not find you out, God sees you; and he will punish you. You must forsake your sinful ways, and be faithful servants. Obey your old master and your young master—your old mistress and your young mistress. ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... an alarming plunge, seeming always to pitch forward yet never quite falling. Babbitt would have been no more astonished and no less had a ghost skipped out of the fog carrying his head. He accepted Frink with vast apathy; he grunted, "Poor ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of his passions, throw him off his guard, and then listen to his language; he will forget instantly his reading master, and all his rules of pronunciation and rhetoric, and he will speak the language to which he has been most accustomed. No master will then be near him to regulate the pitch and tones of his voice. We cannot believe that even Caius Gracchus could, when he was warmed by passion, have listened to Licinius's pitch-pipe.[5] Example, and constant attention to their manner of speaking in common conversation, we apprehend ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... neighbors of ours have given up in the most self-denying manner): suppose any neighbor were to cross the water and propose this kind of thing to us? Should we not be justified in humbly trying to pitch him into the water? If it were the King of Belgium himself we must do so. I mean that fighting, of course, is wrong; but that there are occasions when, &c.—I suppose I mean that that one-handed fight of Sayers is one of the most spirit-stirring little stories ever ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lord, except when I'm on the saw-dust; there I acknowledge, I do crow pretty loudly—but that's in the way of business,—and your lordship knows that we public jokers must pitch it strong sometimes to make our audience laugh, and bring the browns into the treasury. After all, my lord, I am not the rogue many people take me for,—more the other way, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... eyes grew bright, alert, again; the brooding passed from her face; the golden voice that had been so deep found its own familiar pitch. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... effect than much later work of the same sort, that for instance of St. Paul's without the Walls. The supreme beauty is the splendidly sustained simplicity of the whole. The thing represents a prodigious imagination extraordinarily strained, yet strained, at its happiest pitch, without breaking. Its happiest pitch I say, because this is the only creation of its strenuous author in presence of which you are in presence of serenity. You may invoke the idea of ease at St. Peter's without a sense of sacrilege—which you can hardly do, if you are ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... pitch him far off in rages. I know now, Celestine Durand. I admire her; oh, yis. Fine womans—a viecked eye. Mais une—no, not zat. Bad, I tell you. If your frien' love, haf nozzin' wis her. She gif ze bad money, one piece—" he held up a lean finger, ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... most unpleasant night. The captain and the people were much alarmed for the safety of the brig. The heavy ground swell, which set in, increased by the strength of the tide, caused her to pitch and labour so hard, that a man was placed to watch the cable, and give notice the moment it complained, a technical expression, which meant, the moment it gave signs of breaking. Daylight had scarcely dawned, when the pall ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and the ease with which, aided by the poles which each carried in his hand, they would stoop to the ground, pick up the article, and stand upright again. But if we admired the skill of one or two individuals, our admiration rose to a still higher pitch when we saw crowds of them together, all equally skilful; till they informed us that the thing was not an amusement, but universally practised for the ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... at fever pitch at their being tardy, he stood in front of the cadets, turning his anger on ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... and idle from the masts, yet the vessel rolled as in a storm, heaving on a tremendous swell so violently that it would seem her masts must be shaken out of her. The air was sweltering, the sky the color of burnished copper, out of which the sun beat remorselessly in almost perpendicular beams. Pitch ran from every seam of the decks, great blisters like bubbles rose upon the woodwork; the decks were no sooner swabbed than—presto!—it was as though they had not known the touch of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... great thing was how to get out to the barn without any one's noticing. Pony went to the woodshed door two or three times to look out. There were plenty of stars in the sky, but it seemed very dark, and he knew that it would be as black as pitch in the barn, and he did not see how he could ever dare to go out to it, much less into it. Every time he came back from looking he brought an armload of wood into the kitchen so that his mother would ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... upon the western side of the castle, and consequently the stream would be with them in making for shore. It was pitch dark, but they knew that the distance they would have to swim could not exceed forty ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... sea was found in a boiling state 100 yards off the new promontory made by the lava of Torre del Greco, and no boat could remain near it on account of the melting of the pitch in her bottom. For nearly a month after the eruption vast quantities of fine white ashes, mixed with volumes of steam, were thrown out from the crater; the clouds thus generated were condensed into heavy rain, and large tracts of the Vesuvian slopes were deluged ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... too strong for me. My curiosity broke my heart, so to say, and, 'Come what may, I'll risk it,' I said. I push the huge gate just wide enough to let me in, and here I am in a large garden. It was pitch dark; but, quite at the bottom of the garden, three windows in the lower story of the house were lighted up. I had ventured too far now to go back. So I went on, creeping along stealthily, until I reached a tree, against which I pressed closely, about the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... now. Don't you hear the engine coming back? I'll take this lantern and give 'em the signal to go ahead, in case that fool of a brakeman doesn't turn up on time, which I don't believe he will." Here the fellow chuckled meaningly. "You," he continued, "want to stay right here, and begin to pitch out the boxes as soon as she starts, and the rest of us'll be on hand to gather 'em in. You can easy jump out when she slows up at the top of the grade. You want to be sure, though, and shut the door behind you so as nothing won't ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... purpose. He got away with the boy safely after all. The house he found empty. A profound silence encompassed him all the time, except once, just as he got down the ladder with Tony in his arms, when a faint groan reached his ears. It seemed to come from the pitch-black space between the posts on which the house was built, but he did not stop ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad |
